Showing 41 - 50 of 99
'Bad Genius' exception to Thai film rule
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/10/2017
» She cheats because she wants money, and because she believes the system has cheated her first. No politics please! The exciting Thai pop-culture news of the week was the box-office triumph of the Thai film Chalard Games Goeng (Bad Genius in English), an exam-cheating thriller packed with heart-racing set pieces in which bright students orchestrate an elaborate international cheating ring, outsmarting the system on the expense of their moral equanimity. When you're 17, perhaps that's a small price to pay.
Sex, truth & politics
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/09/2017
» In Uthis Haemamool's new novel, the protagonist's erotic adventure runs parallel to Thailand's political education. A man's carnal quests and sexual outbursts become, in a way, an allegory of a larger social context as the country goes through three coups d'etat and several convulsive protests in the past 25 years. The awakening of the loin as a metaphor for political orgasm, physical penetration as an analogy for abuses of power -- <i>Rang Haeng Pratana</i> (Silhouette Of Desire) is a novel that, Uthis admits, presents him with many risks as a writer.
Cinema paradiso no more
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 18/08/2017
» Everything changes. It changes in its own time.Cells die. Cells grow. Death and birth happen all the time.Like the mind, it's gone before you even know. Like when I project a movie, a reel of film rotating at high speed looks like a still image.
Headlocking beneath the ivory towers
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/08/2017
» A headlock says it all.
Armed to the teeth, with no battle to fight
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/07/2017
» When everyone else is dead, the arms dealers will sip champagne and cuddle Playboy bunnies. Why? "Because everyone else will be busy killing each other," said Yuri Orlov, the arms dealer in Lord of War as portrayed by Nicolas Cage. When his client orders him a shipment of machine guns used in Rambo, Mr Orlov, an award-winning salesperson, asks, "Rambo part 1, 2 or 3?"
Our newest mission is to love the bomb
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/07/2017
» Like all soap addicts, I caught glimpses of the debut episode of the television series Love Missions last week. Not a strand of hair misplaced despite his dangerous expedition, Capt Purich (played by Sukollawat Kanarot) enters a red zone to battle terrorists after they've abducted foreign delegates from a conference in Bangkok. "This act of terrorism has a big boss behind it," intones the captain.
Starting with the script
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/06/2017
» Script development is key to successful movies, and good scripts are what filmmakers in Southeast Asia need. The first Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab (or Seafic) has been conceived for the purpose of strengthening the quality of feature-length fiction films from the region, and after eight months, the programme is reaching its climax this weekend in Bangkok.
On the road, with the elephant
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/06/2017
» Like all roads, this one promises redemption. Like most journeys, the destination is often where one starts off. Pop Aye, a road movie about a man and his elephant on a long trip to the Northeast, is a story of middle-class disillusionment (that's what the middle-class exists for) and the siren call of the rural -- the ambiguous call ringing in the ear of those who feel betrayed by the city.
Dissecting a nation
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/06/2017
» Pasuk Phongpaichit's and Chris Baker's house is a verdant abode at the end of a maze in an Ekamai sub-soi. The garden at the back has tall trees and a small, tea-coloured pond. The whole area used to be a swamp, said Baker. The couple, both highly respected scholars in Thai studies, have been living there since 1987, or in their lexicon, "just before the boom" -- the high-flying economic expansion whose seismic shifts forever transformed Thailand in the early 1990s. Had they wanted to purchase the plot slightly later than they actually did -- after the boom had set in -- they wouldn't have been able to. "We came just before the high-rises."
'Bob' Halliday gone, but his light lives on
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/06/2017
» Bob told me many stories from a time when I hadn't even been born: During the Oct 14, 1973 student uprising, the authorities suspected he was a spy. When the Oct 6, 1976 massacre took place and the stench of blood was still fresh at Thammasat University, he surveyed the wreckage and bemoaned the state of the country he had adopted as his new home. Some evenings he reminisced on how he had lived through several dictators and prime ministers, hijacked or elected, overthrown or incapacitated -- he talked about Richard Nixon, Thanom Kittikachorn, Tanin Kraivixien, Thaksin Shinawatra, Prayut Chan-o-cha, etc. It didn't matter what happened, he'd say, as long as he could prowl produce markets in search of the perfect durian -- the caramelised Holy Grail of the fruit he adored above all else, the fruit that, as he'd say, made him "slobber like a mastiff".