Showing 1 - 10 of 10
Mahathir's win shows voting works
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/05/2018
» This week all my friends went to vote. In Malaysia, of course.
To Myanmar with love
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/11/2016
» The big problem about shooting a film in Myanmar, says Thai filmmaker Chartchai Ketnust, was not obtaining permission. It was the mob of onlookers trying to get a peek of the stars.
Fed up to our eyeballs of the aqua-calypse
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/06/2016
» When storm clouds loom and thunder strikes, we think of one person. When the monsoon hits and water falls from Bangkok skies, his face appears in our dreams: Lord Mayor of Bangkok, wading the knee-deep floods of Ratchadaphisek Road like a horseman of the aqua-calypse, having come straight from his 16-million-baht office which, until recently, overlooked a 39-million-baht lighting décor.
Superficiality takes aim at Scala
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/06/2016
» There is a mix of rage, gloom and longing as, once again, the fate of the Scala theatre in Siam Square is questioned. To wreck is easy, to save is hard. The jackhammer screeches louder than nostalgia. Will the Scala, that quaint majesty stuck in a prime retail area, that solemn granddaddy in the flashy, messy, heavily commercialised quarter, be next to fall?
The politics and poetry of private jokes
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/05/2016
» Let's compare scores. In Thailand, a python had a wrestling match with a penis. In Myanmar, a dissenting poet was punished for a poem allegedly written on his penis. In the Philippines, the newly-elected president, aged 71, announced last month that he didn't want to "hang" his penis, and that "when I take Viagra, it stands up".
Regional favourites, new and old
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/04/2016
» The 2nd Bangkok Asean Film Festival begins on Thursday at SF World Cinema, and will travel to Khon Kaen, Surat Thani and Chiang Mai later.
When the O2 is impure, breathe CO2
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/06/2015
» Congratulations. Peace prevails. Silence is golden. Reform is at full throttle. Reconciliation will glue the cracked golden axe into one shiny piece. Politicians can grow mushrooms. Generals can play golf. Elections are overrated. Democracy is a dream. Only the road map is real. Love is in the air. Citizens can stop worrying and learn how to love the bomb. Everything will be all right. Why worry? Why complain? Why think?
Missing Picture, Berkeley premiere at Salaya Doc
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/01/2015
» It’s funny and sad that some Thai academics are still embroiled in a debate about whether documentary film is film. Funny, because it is. Sad, because Cambodia, whose film industry and film schools are struggling hard to regain their cultural significance, has a documentary film that won a prize in Cannes and was nominated for the latest Oscars — in the foreign language category where it competed with four other fiction films. That film, The Missing Picture, will finally have a Thailand premier at the “4th Salaya International Documentary Film Festival”, a cine-event that has consistently gained ground and reinforced the importance of documentary filmmaking as art and as a social statement.
Count to 12 and you'll be brainwashed
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/10/2014
» Friends often ask me, what movies are you looking forward to seeing? The vagaries of taste and fluctuations of mood always make this simple question difficult to answer. Gone Girl? Sure, for the perfect blend of satire and marital horror. Interstellar? Yes, for what looks like a nebula-warped cosmic philosophising. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay? Definitely, for what looks like an inadvertent allegory of our Golden Axe misadventure as the Capitol crumbles under the weight of the three-fingered salute. King Naresuan Part 6 and maybe 7 or why not 8 then please-bring-it-on 9? Yep, bless my soul with the whole shebang, for what looks like the umpteenth elephant circus and post-Koh Tao Myanmar bashing.
Airing new agendas
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/10/2012
» The 27-rai compound of low-rise, industrial-chic grey buildings on Vibhavadi Rangsit Road is a picture of calm authority. Nearly 900 people work here in the offices, studios and control rooms of the country's only public television station, the non-profit, four-and-a-half-year-old, largely admired if sometimes embattled TV Thai, better known as Thai PBS.