Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Deep in the paradox
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/05/2022
» In Cairo, a religious student at the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University is recruited by secret police to infiltrate a Muslim Brotherhood cell. In Mashad, a holy city in Iran, a serial killer prowls a seedy suburb and strangles head-scarfed prostitutes. In the first film, bloodlust officials torture dissidents with abandon. In the second film, religion is evoked and the name of God is cited as a justification for murder. This begs the obvious question: Will Boy From Heaven be banned in Egypt, and Holy Spider Iran?
Sucking the wind out of the elections
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/05/2018
» The verb of the week is "to dood".
Youth start clock ticking on old guard
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/03/2018
» Let's hand the torch to the young, for the world of cynical adults requires a dose of youthful idealism.
The Faustian promise in a blaming game
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2017
» Through a tangled web of pride, vanity, moral superiority, Nietzschean negativity, Faustian promises and pseudo-Jedi cool, the junta keeps to its playbook by blaming everyone except themselves.
On the ‘right’ side of crime and impunity
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/09/2017
» Crime and punishment, or crime and impunity? For most people, the former. For the powerful, the well connected, for those on the right side of history, maybe the latter.
Popping the question of hero or killer
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/03/2016
» A hero to some is a murderer to others — how I wish the world were less tortuous.
Flag turns the national into factional
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/02/2014
» Red, white and blue. The tricolour Thai national flag has never been this omnipresent.
Mandela let us see we're all so very human
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/12/2013
» On Tuesday night I caught the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom at a screening in Dubai, where I was attending a film festival. On that same day, South Africa bid adieu to Nelson Mandela, the man, the fighter, the prisoner, the township hero who became a global idol for peace, the towering personality whose stature and courage were so formidable that no movie could ever match.
Beyond kill-bill fever, whistles and photo-ops
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/11/2013
» From the vantage point of a Haagen-Dazs parlour, democracy was alive, kicking, pretty, high-pitched and well-dressed, mostly in black and white. Let's say it's democracy, for convenience's sake, when in fact it was a hearty turnout at Ratchaprasong on Thursday to oppose a clause, just a clause, of the ludicrous amnesty bill.
Power for the people isn't a matter of class
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/09/2013
» Even the man-eating tigers that have prowled the forest for centuries would become victims if the project isn't scrapped or reconsidered. "No sane person in the world would agree to this project", says an engineer on the environmental committee. To demonstrate their staunch objection, "protesters are making a 400km march in a bid to draw greater attention to what's at stake", reported Time magazine this week.