Showing 81 - 90 of 99
Asia's alter ego
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/03/2013
» Two upcoming film showcases explore the many faces of Asean and offer a close look at Thailand.
Truth, Prayuth and a few good 'Tob Jote' men
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/03/2013
» Army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha is Jack Nicholson, lashing out against unpatriotic puppies who dare to ask hard questions.
Going to jail for writing is a horror story
Business, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/03/2013
» Interestingly, getting people killed can't be as bad as disturbing people. Fatal recklessness isn't as unforgivable as deliberate provocation. At one extreme, murder is sometimes more tolerable than writing. To know how to toe the line, to know what to write and what not to write, has become a political as well as literary dilemma - and here we're talking about Chinese Nobel literature laureate Mo Yan's semi-endorsement of censorship and jailed editor Somyot Prueksakasemsuk's sentence for breaking the lese majeste law. And we thought clemency was the way of our world.
Troubled Territories
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/02/2013
» The Preah Vihear conflict and the heartache of democracy are the themes of two new Thai films set to premier at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival this week.
See no evil
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/01/2013
» We're dying to know what's there beyond the cloud, but the proverbial silver lining, if there ever was going to be one, was obscured from our airwaves.
Some like it hot, but we'd prefer to chill
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/11/2012
» The Israelis like it hot. Hamas likes it hot. The "BB" lovebirds Boonchai and Bongkot, naturally, like it hot. The southern insurgents, painfully, like it hot. The 3G bidders like it hot. The British tabloids, fantasising about Barack Obama's flirtatious eyeing of our LOL prime minister, like it - or wish it - hot. The anti-Yingluck Facebook brigade, taking their cue from the tabloids and elevating the initial fantasy into a sexist smear campaign, like it hot. Marilyn Monroe, who liked it very hot way back in 1959, would be turning in her grave.
Baptism of fire
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/11/2012
» Nothing in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master matches the freakish intensity of the milkshake moment at the end of There Will Be Blood, but here's another strange, affecting character study whose quivers come off from the acting: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix holding court, while Amy Adams, gentle yet febrile, lighting a fire of neurosis and mystery from the fringe.
Take good care of Mr Bean's right to insult
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/11/2012
» Without a wink, Mr Bean is asking for the right to insult. At Westminster, the King of Caustic Put-Downs and (sometimes, like at the Olympics) the Grand Duke of Fart Jokes, launched a campaign to object to a section of the Public Order Act that, he says, has fostered intolerance and advanced "the creeping culture of censoriousness" by outlawing insults. Startling - for Mr Bean operates in England, the fertile hotbed of sardonic wit, televised mockery and creative foul-mouthedness. Try Southeast Asia, my Duke, my Blackadder, my Johnny English - and you'll choke and churn, roil and run riot. Do less than what you've been doing, and here you'd meet a fate much worse than an Elizabethan dungeon in the Tower of London.
Never mind nipples, the law is an ass
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/09/2012
» The debate on free speech is heating up around the world, from the tumult of the anti-Islam video to the US boycott of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's UN speech and the tyranny of extremism laid bare in Salman Rushdie's newly published memoir.