Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Corona and the death of cinema (again)
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/03/2020
» "Cinema is an invention without a future," said Louis Lumiere who, along with his brother Auguste, invented the Cinematographe in 1895. From its birth, cinema was convinced of its own death. From the very beginning, cinema predicted its own eventual demise. And that was before the two world wars, the advent of home video, laser disc, DVDs, Blu-rays, terrorism, mass shootings, Netflix, and now the coronavirus, the latest scourge that has sealed shut cinema houses around the world.
Stop the tall tales about election dates
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/05/2018
» There's no way round it and there's no time for subtlety: The past four years have been a sham, a false dream stage-managed by false prophets.
New political bloods meet baptism of fire
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/03/2018
» The right is thrown into panic, like a sick man visited by an apparition of death. Sealed in a cage of obliviousness, they fear the galloping sound of apocalyptic horsemen. Or in their mind, the barbarians at the gate, rattling the rusty chain of power.
Going S44 cold turkey is going to hurt
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/08/2016
» There's a Thai phrase, fon lai chang, the rain that chases out the elephant. But the heavy rain on Wednesday night managed to chase out something bigger than an elephant: the Bangkok governor. I hear people popping champagne corks.
Spirits run deep
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/03/2016
» Downstairs: a vintage Fiat, a vintage Austin Mini, a few Mercedes. Upstairs: a wild museum of spiritual imagery, Brahmin, Buddhism, animism -- tall effigies of leopard-striped hermits and beautiful Buddha statues, talismanic scrolls of occult origins and prints of Khmer calligraphy.
Our state of indefinite transition
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/02/2016
» We feel like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, a man stuck in a long transit, and not just any long transit but a perpetual transit in a storm-whipped airport, our boarding pass torn to shreds and our destination — is this destiny? — marked with the sign “indefinite delay”.
Going mad in March, with fear of tragedy
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/03/2015
» The March heat is driving people crazy. Each week, news headlines just get weirder, as if we were madmen who subscribe to the newsletter of our madhouse. Don’t tell me you never experience that moment when a headline is so absurd, so improbable that you believe − I mean, really believe for many seconds or minutes — that you’re reading one of those satirical publications or websites that peddles mockery and exaggeration. Only it’s not. It’s real. And if madness is defined by the inability to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fantastical, we’re all going down that path, led by the smiling Pied Piper in uniform.
Force-fed film belongs deep in dark vaults
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/12/2014
» Strange things have happened at the cinemas. First, Hitler showed up in a Thai short film sponsored by the government (meaning by taxpayers), the radioactive gatecrasher into a party of virtuous citizens. Second, another Thai film featuring, among other things, a joke about the anal cleft — it's funny as long as it's not your anal cleft — is raking in a huge amount of money at the multiplexes, likely surpassing the 100-million-baht mark as you're reading this, which is after just four days of release. Cinema enlightens, even in the dark forest of swastikas and bodily bergschrunds.
It's really best when you say nothing at all
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/09/2014
» Dear diary, it is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt, as Mark Twain said. How charming my mouth has been in the past week. If it had been Yingluck Shinawatra saying those things, I'm sure a riot would've broken out and the sound of a million whistles would've shattered your eardrums. But it's me, so it's different. It's not the action but the man. How could those pettifogging critics interpret my speech as avuncular nonsense, when in fact they're pieces of wisdom worthy of being chronicled in the national archives and inscribed onto monuments?
The art of war
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/02/2014
» The best and wittiest joke about the relationship between art and World War II — a strange and imaginary relationship — is in a short story by Roberto Bolano. In it, a Spanish soldier had been sent by mistake to an SS battalion that was later quashed by a Russian troop. Suspected of being a Nazi, the Spaniard was captured and tortured by having his tongue pulled, and in the throes of pain, he cursed in his language cono!, an equivalent of the c-word expletive in English. The Russian torturer, who knew a few German words, stopped in his track. He thought the soldier, whose pronunciation was twisted because his tongue was being pulled, was yelling kunst, kunst, kunst — meaning art in German. Cono became kunst, and the Russian assumed that the Spaniard wasn’t SS but an artist. He was set free. In the midst of war, art, “which soothes the savage beast”, saved his life.