This newcomer is following in her father’s footsteps. As her first film, Khon-Lok-Jit (Distortion) hits screens, Apa “Maggie” Bhavilai, 18, talks about mental illness and her family.

BK: What was it like playing a mentally ill person?
My first impression after reading the script was, “Whoa! What a challenge!” And that’s what it really was. To get a clear understanding of how Kwang thinks and feels, I had to dig deep into her complex background. People who have mental disorders tend to be quite quiet and speak with their eyes instead. So I had to learn how to communicate more with my eyes. There were workshops between the director, the actors and the crew. And there was an acting course with M.L. Pandevanop “Mom Noi” Devakul. I also did more research by watching films and reading books about mentally ill people.

BK: Did it affect you, having to enter her personality?
Of course it did. Sometimes during the shooting, I would be too deeply involved in the character’s mind to tune out. I wasn’t aware of it until the crew noticed that I was so absent-minded that they had to pull me back to reality. As for my attitude towards life, the film emphasizes what I’ve always believed: you can choose whether to be happy or depressed, it depends on you. I never let miserable ideas destroy me as the characters in the film do.

BK: Do you feel any pressure being the daughter of famous entertainer Arun Bhavilai?
No, not really. I think my personal life doesn’t matter. What matters is my performance. The only thing on my mind is to do my best. I’m sure this film will prove how I really put in a lot of effort to this role. I want to let my work speak for me.

BK: Has your father given you any advice about starting your acting career?
He tells me to be friendly and generous. At work, I always bring snacks for everyone. More importantly, he always reminds me that everyone in the film crew is equally important, not just the director or the actors. So he teaches me to respect everyone I work with no matter who they are.

BK: What’s your lifestyle like? Do you party a lot?
I rather stay with my mom and hang out at my father’s restaurant, Koona [in Ladprao 71]. Mom and I like to bake and we’re opening a new business, making tab bod [liver pate].

BK: What are your future career plans?
When I was a child, I often tagged along with my dad when he worked. So I’ve always been familiar with the entertainment industry. And now I’m studying Communication Arts in Bangkok University’s International Program. So my goal is crystal clear: I want to work in entertainment. I’m interested in it all—acting, singing and dancing. I would leap at any chance offered to me. I also want to work behind the scenes when I get older and have gained more experience. Benjamaporn Meekaeo.

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Directed by James McTeigue; starring John Cusack, Luke Evans and Alice Eve.

“The director who stitched The Raven together has no idea how to frame or compose a scene, let alone ‘grow’ a film organically.” Kathleen Murphy, MSN Movies

“Poe, not Conan Doyle? Cusack, not Downey? No wit, no fun, no engaging derring do? Beg pardon, Watson, we’ve stumbled into some foggy crime detective clone, 40 years too early. Best to move along.” Kimberly Gadette, Doddle

“It’s neither grand nor grisly enough to seriously satisfy Poe-ish cravings for murder, mystery and literary allusions.” Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times

“They want it to be Seven meets Sherlock Holmes and you can tell Cusack is into it. Unfortunately the plot is ridiculous and the murder-mystery is boring. Jeff Bayer, The Scorecard Review

“Quoth the Raven - nevermore. it seems like good advice because nothing in this movie is worth ravin’ about.” Gary Wolcott, Tri-City Herald

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Growing up in a very traditional Thai family, Anucha Sumaman was encouraged to pursue classical Thai arts. He studied khon since the age of 12 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in traditional Thai dancing before pursuing a contemporary dance career with the 18 Monkeys Dance Theater. Here, he tells to us about his upcoming show, Demon in Venice, choreographed by Jitti Chompee.

Why switch to contemporary dance?
Actually, I’m still dancing both traditional Thai and contemporary styles. The thing is, after I got to watch contemporary dance shows, it kind of drew me in and I realized, this is it. This is what I want to do. I was off to a stumbling start, doing contemporary dance here and there. Then I got my first change to works with Jitti in a contemporary dance show called 18 Crowns.

Your prior work was quite difficult to understand.
As a dancer I’m positive that each kind of artwork has its own charm and you don’t have to understand everything. Nowadays, we have a bunch of stuff that’s easy on the eyes, so why not try something different. Our show tries to encourage people to think out of the box, move out of their comfort zone and see their world from a different perspective.

Contemporary dance doesn’t seem to attract a lot of people, though.
People don’t go to shows because they don’t know that we have one. For example, shows at the Thailand Cultural Center have large audiences because everybody has heard of them. Thailand needs to have ways to broadcast art news whether it’s public or private. It’ll help tremendously. Another thing is that to watch a contemporary show you have to be open-minded and accept that you’ll be challenged by it—don’t just be offended. I think that’s why contemporary shows are more popular in Western society.

Would you ever like to produce or choreograph your own stuff?
To be a good producer you need to have lots and lots of experience. I did a few of my own shows actually but I think I need more experience, so for now, I would say I’m a good performer. Maybe in five years, when I’ve gained more experience, I’ll do my own show.

How do you feel about this performance?
I’m concerned. Happy, yeah, but concerned because it is the first time that I’ll be acting without a mask. I’ve never done it before so it’s quite tough. But it’s good, too, because it gives the show a different dynamic, like theater. And then there’s my body. In a contemporary dance show, you need to have a very firm body on stage—it just looks more fascinating. So I need to lose some more weight! It’s never been a problem with khon where we wear all these beautiful clothes. Proudpisut Sang-ou-thai

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The Nine Neighborhood Center

999 Rama 9 Rd. 02-620-7485-6 www.thenine.co.th
There’s no supermarket and the wine bar options are particularly uninspired. Grab some Southern Thai food on the 2/F and a hot chocolate at Duc de Praslin.

Crystal Design Center

1420/1 Praditmanutham Rd., 02-101-5999
Divided into two sections, Phase 1 is heavy on home decor and furniture, while Phase 2 is a more varied mix of lifestyle options. Huge and far, CDC remains a cool hangout thanks to Est. 33 and The Aston Gastro Bar.

Rain Hill

Sukhumvit Soi 47, 02-260-7447
Japanese dining options abound in this small but well-formed mall, as well as a rather sexy looking branch of Wine Connection and a couple of cute cafes. The great downtown location, cascading water, funky little boutiques and a small supermarket make it pretty hip and happening spot, too.

Aree Garden

T.O.U. Development Co., Ltd. Soi Aree Samphan 11 (opposite Mininistry of Finance), 02-278-3258. www.areegarden.com
Located at the end of Soi Aree Samphan, this small, lush hangout spot is home to Mahuna bookstore, HOBS, Polka Dot Cafe and sushi bar Sakana. Also, don’t forget to check out their Saturday Market which offers some craftworks, secondhand accessories and more.

K Village

93, 95 Sukhumvit Soi 26. 02-258-9919/-21. www.kvillagebangkok.com
This well-rounded mall packs in standalone fashion boutiques, a cool bar (Five) and a supermarket/fresh market making it a decent community option.

The Crystal

Praditmanutham Rd. 02-101-5959.
Set as part of the luxury housing development project Crystal Park, The Crystal is the first community mall in this area and brings a standard roundup of chain stores: Starbucks, iStudio, Tops Market and even a Falabella.

Nawamin Festival Walk - Nawamin City Avenue

299 Prasertmanukit Rd., Sena Intersection, 02-660-9020. www.facebook.com/NawaminFestivalWalk
Nawamin Festival Walk, located right next to Nawamin City Avenue, reeks of some misplaced middle-American outdoor theme park (there’s even a giant windmill at the entrance). You’ve got your wine bistros, your Japanese sweets and even a French-Vietname eatery, Red Basket.

J-Avenue

Thonglor Soi 15 bangkok, 02-660-9000
This veteran community mall is the real deal, with a true neighborhood following, and a selection of shops catering to their hiso tastes, from imported brand bags to cutest dessert shops—and one of the more handsome Greyhound Cafes.

The Circle

39 Ratchapruek Rd., 02-865-6850. www.thecircle.co.th
The Circle is one of the first lifestyle malls that brought a touch of hip to Thonburi. With its Palio-esque design and more than 200 shops including fashion boutiques and cafes like Greyhound, Peony Tea Room and Pancake Cafe, the buzz is still on.

The Walk

Ratchaphruek Rd, 084-910-5654. www.thewalk.co.th
Finally, over-crowded The Circle has a potential rival, this one with air-con. The outside looks like CDC or Chic Ministry (on Praditmanoontham Rd.) but the inside is, unfortunately, more like the basement section of Paradise Park or The Paris floor at Terminal 21. Furthermore, most of the restaurants are chains so don’t expect cute indies places. Even the supermarket is a Big-C.

La Villa

356 Phaholyothin Rd. 02-273-1995. BTS Ari
Their Mac Cafe occasionally carries secondhand Apple gear, there’s a Villa Supermarket, a branch of After You and a few fashion boutiques lurking in the back of the ground floor. Too bad the dining options are so lackluster.

City Viva

58 Narathiwat Ratchanakarin Soi 6, 02-676-9601. www.thecityviva.com
Situated in the heart of the CBD, close to Chong Nonsi, this place is a little sketchy in terms of its focus. Still, a supermarket and some interesting restaurants, notably the surprisingly good Wine Fusion and the informal pub atmosphere of Bloc Beer & Bistro, do pull in the after office crowd.

The Portico Langsuan

31 Soi Langsuan, Ploenchit, 02-652-1968. BTS Chitlom.
The Portico is a petite space mostly devoted to cafes and restaurants, although there is a yoga studio in there, too. Don’t miss Masatomi Patisserie, where Japanese influences and French techniques are combined for subtler and lighter variations of pastry classics.

Park Lane

Sukhumvit Soi 61, BTS Ekkamai, 02-3821580-85, 02-3821587-99. www.parklanebangkok.com
Close to the BTS this place is Hi So with a capital H, but is actually more community than most. A large supermarket with pharmacy and bakery means it does provide the basics, but there are also plenty of Japanese restaurants, high fashion boutiques and even a doggy cafe as well. If you have kids, then Play Time on the top floor is a lifesaver and means you can drop them off while enjoying an imported brew at Pint with its pub vibe downstairs.

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Are the likes of K. Village and Seenspace a sign of urban renewal? Or the death of urban planning? By Amitha Amranand

It’s Saturday night and you’re standing there, waiting for a table at a restaurant with the word “wine” in it. Maybe it’s Wine Connection or Wine I Love You—it doesn’t really matter. The place has an industrial chic décor, affordable bottles and it’s positively packed with elegant, young Bangkokians. Is it in a charming dead-end soi? A leafy avenue? A quiet square? No. It’s in a “community mall,” everyone’s new favorite place to hangout.

Since K Village opened in 2010, Bangkok has seen a veritable explosion of such spaces: Festival Walk, Nawamin City Walk, Rain Hill, Seenspace, Grass Thong Lor, Aree Garden, La Villa, Crystal Design Center, The Nine, The Circle, The Walk, The Crystal, Portico, Park Lane—the list is almost endless. They don’t belong to retail giants The Mall (Paragon, Emporium) or Central. They have outdoor circulation areas. They’re meant to be smaller than your regular mall (although Crystal Design Center is quite the behemoth). And they all provide an experience that shuts them off from their often drab surroundings.

The trend shows no sign of slowing down. If anything, developers seem to be aggressively injecting more community malls into every quarter of our sprawling capital. In February, Index Living Mall Co., Ltd. announced that it planned to invest five billion baht in building five more community malls in the next five years. Pure Sammakorn Development Co., Ltd.’s vision isn’t any less expansive. It will open its third Pure Place Community Mall in May on the booming Ratchapreuk Road, while aiming to unveil two more by next year. Siam Future Development Co., Ltd, whose projects include La Villa, J Avenue and Festival Walk, among others, believes there’s room in Bangkok for at least 150 more community malls—that’s right, 150.

COMMUNITY MALL 101

What exactly is a community mall? No one in Bangkok really agrees on a single definition. To some, what makes a mall a community mall is the kind of services it offers to the surrounding residents. National Artist and president of 49 Group, a multi-disciplinary architecture firm, Nithi Sthapitanonda bases his definition on the USA’s strip malls. For him, these malls, which are usually situated in residential areas, especially in the suburbs, contain all the shops and services that people need in their daily lives.
“Community malls in Thailand are not like that. Some places only have restaurants. When people come in wanting to buy medicine, there’s no pharmacy. If they need their clothes to be dry-cleaned, they can’t do that. The concept is all wrong,” says Nithi.

With the hyper-growth of community malls in recent years, most of us would probably distinguish a community mall from a mega mall by looking at the size and design. Yet, Ariya Aruninta of the Department of Landscape Architecture, Chulalongkorn University, who has written extensively on urban land management, doesn’t differentiate big malls from community malls based on these two criteria.
“It depends on the size of the community. If it’s a community in a city, then a shopping mall is a kind of community mall. Sometimes it can be a mega mall because our city has become a mega city,” Ariya says.

COMMUNITY, WHAT COMMUNITY?

Panida Tosnaitada’s Aree Garden, located in Soi Ari Samphan, is composed of 10 small shops, housed in a sleek and airy black metal structure that encircles a lush courtyard garden. And it has plenty of community cred. Most of the restaurants found in Aree Garden do not belong to a chain. Some of the owners are even Panida’s friends. There’s a nail salon on the upper level owned by people from the neighborhood. Tucked in one corner, Mahuna Books Et Cetera carries obscure Thai titles, handmade cards, and serves as an office for Kiao Klao Pimpakarn, the publishing house of the renowned writer and National Artist Naowarat Pongpaiboon.

“My family all live in this neighborhood. I grew up in the Sukhumvit area, but during the weekends and summer holidays, I came to stay at my grandmas. So I’m familiar with this area…When I was young, we used to cycle around. It was very cool and pleasant, with big trees and few cars. There were never any traffic jams in the soi,” Panida says.

But Aree Garden’s ties to the community and neighborhood are fairly exceptional. The Nine, K. Village and La Villa all have their share of chains, like iStudio, Au Bon Pain or Red Mango. And the shoppers inside sometimes drive a long way to get to them—as their vast parking lots demonstrate.

“Bangkokians assemble in loose groups. They don’t form real communities, unlike in the US or Japan, where cities are divided into different neighborhoods, and where each zone is well planned, with a school, a fire station, a post office,” says Ariya.
Architect Patama Roonrakwit of Community Architects for Shelter and Environment (CASE), who works closely with poor communities in Thailand through a participatory design process, sees the relationship between community and commerce in Bangkok as fairly random.

“It starts with a good location, which then attracts people to settle and form a community. As the community grows, it pulls in commerce. And as commerce grows, it pulls in more people to settle. Bangkok just keeps spreading with no rhyme or reason,” says Patama. The no-nonsense architect is of the same opinion as Ariya, that there are very few real communities remaining in Bangkok, except old communities like Bang Lampu and the slum areas. Community malls serve loose groups of shoppers, a certain demographic perhaps, but not genuine communities.

CONSUMER HEAVEN

A recent ABAC poll reveals that 71.6 percent of the people surveyed go to community malls to eat, while 41.3 percent see them as a place to meet and hang out with their friends. More than half of the people surveyed choose to go to community malls because of the proximity to their homes, while 46.9 percent find that community malls offer a full range of services and products. Ariya conducted another survey in 2009 to find out how city dwellers like to spend their free time. Shopping ranked first as Bangkokians’ favorite activity outside their homes.

“Why are community malls being built? It’s not because people need them. They’re being built because developers conduct market research to gauge the possible business to be made in a given area. Do they ask people whether they want it or not? No. They don’t care. They only look at people’s spending power and what the area is like, based on the market research,” Ariya says. “But I also think there are more advantages than disadvantages to community malls.”

Another landscape architect, Arrak Ouiyamaphan, admits there is growing emphasis on atmosphere and open space and that the new generation of community malls pays more attention to the landscape design. More focus on the design of the outdoor space usually translates to more trees. One of the city’s very first community malls, J Avenue is a fitting example of what Arrak is talking about. There, cars are protected from the sun beneath the shade of frangipani. A magnificent ancient tree hovers above the mall’s frontage. And a thick, tall row of greenery makes it difficult to see part of J Avenue’s façade. Aree Garden, too, considered the landscape design before the structure, according to Panida.

FILLING GAPS IN THE CITY

Community malls are also filling a void left by the city’s poor urban planning, and even architecture. Ashley Sutton, who is behind the famed bar Iron Fairies (Soi Thong Lor) opened his next two bars in community malls: Fat Gut’z (in Grass, Thong Lor) and Clouds (in Seenspace Thonglor Soi 13). He also designed Five, which just opened at K Village. Sutton actually prefers the atmosphere and benefits of community malls to shophouses, such as the one where he built Iron Fairies.
“The shophouses are absolutely disgusting architecture,” says Sutton who has had to face crumbling walls, an old and dirty sewer system, an outdated electrical system and disgruntled neighbors with Iron Fairies. “With community malls, you get a more solid shell to work with, whereas with a shophouse, you get a lot of problems,” Sutton confirms.

Owned and run by Seenspace Co., Ltd., an imported furniture distributor, Seenspace 13 caters to a young and hip crowd. The stylish structure is home to independent restaurants and accessories shops rather than well-known brands. But while Sutton’s bar has done well, on the mall’s uppermost level a space still sits empty, waiting to be rented. In the afternoon, the shops are open, but the mall is practically deserted. The space picks up at night, and Seenspace Co. Ltd. tells us that the business is so far a success.

Sutton, too, believes that for a community mall to succeed, it should have restaurants, banks, and a small supermarket to generate traffic during the day. Seenspace may stand apart from some of Thonglor’s community malls, with its refusal to rent out its spaces to chain stores, but like many community malls in Bangkok, it lacks diversity and the services needed in people’s day-to-day lives.

There are also those who disagree with the community mall model. A resident of the Ari neighborhood, Antika Teparak of Salt restaurant finds little appeal in community malls. “In community malls, there are restrictions on closing and opening hours. And we don’t want to share the space with other shops, where each one has its own target customer. I see community mall shoppers as people who don’t know what they want. They go to see what’s available, then they choose. When people go to a standalone restaurant, they have a real intention to go there,” says Antika, who is now opening a second restaurant across from Salt.

But Antika is also quick to admit that La Villa, across the road from her soi, is a success and has brought convenience to Ari’s residents. She even says that without the opening of the community mall, she might have hesitated longer before deciding to invest in a standalone restaurant in this area. She also sees benefits, like good parking and better customer traffic, to running a business in a community mall. In fact, one community mall is offering her an enticing space that allows for relative isolation from the hubbub and the creative freedom with respect to the design. The restaurateur is certainly keeping her options open.

Community malls may not be perfect, they fit into a city that’s growing even further from urbanism ideals—particularly when it comes to walkability. Six-lane avenues like Silom, Phaya Thai, Sathorn, Rama IV, Phetburi or Sukhumvit are at times impossible to cross on foot. Sidewalks are potholed, lack any shade and are overrun with motorcycles. Available retail space is in dilapidated shophouses with cranky landlords. The reality is that community malls are not wrecking perfect little streets since these only exist in our imaginations. On the contrary, community malls are a manifestation of Bangkok’s rapid growth, its lack of community and the absence of urban planning. Long-standing communities naturally develop the shops, restaurants and services needed for them to function. But when the neighborhood is made of mushrooming moo ban (gated communities) and condos, it seems the best you can hope for is a community mall to open next door.

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