Showing 1 - 10 of 26
The politics of taste in our election season
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/12/2025
» Hell is other people's tastes. Hell is when we passionately hate what people unconditionally love. Hell is when we can't fathom how anyone on the face of the earth can like someone or something we find revolting -- a food, a film, a style, an opening ceremony, a politician, a president.
Cannes 2025: What's on our watch list
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/05/2025
» The 78th edition of Europe's biggest film festival starts today. We take a look at some notable titles across different sections -- Competition, Un Certain Regard, Directors' Fortnight and Critics' Week -- including a Thai film.
The magic of Méliès
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/11/2024
» Among the many museums in Paris, the Musée Méliès may slip through visitors' attention. That should not be the case.
The Silent Film Festival keeps echoing
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/09/2024
» A rocket-bullet plunging into the Moon’s eye, its mouth pursed halfway between a sneer and a smile. You’ve seen it before, but it’s time to witness one of cinema’s most recognisable images from Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) in its colour glory at the 8th Silent Film Festival in Thailand, the annual banquet of early cinema hosted by the Thai Film Archive.
Andalusian dreams
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/02/2024
» Two Middle Eastern tourists looked excited as they held up a phone to an exquisitely carved arabesque in Nasrid Palace at the Alhambra. No, they're not taking photos. They're comparing the Arabic text on their screen with the 8th century stone calligraphy. I hear them mumble in Arabic -- here's the translation:
Coldplay across the universe
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/02/2024
» The latest Coldplay concert in Bangkok was a feat of photogenic spectacles designed to bedazzle, complete with light-blinking wristbands, sci-fi-warped animation on spherical screens, balloons in the shape of planets and exploding fireworks above the roof of Rajamangala National Stadium ("The football field not often used to play football on," as a Thai national squad member noted.)
Time for Asean films to shine
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/12/2021
» The pandemic notwithstanding, it has been a stimulating year for Southeast Asian cinema. Reflective, heartfelt and oddball new titles from Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have won major prizes or become critical favourites at international film festivals throughout 2021. Now, many of these films are coming to the big screen in Thailand as the Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2021 (BAFF) is set to open tonight.
Saint and sensibility
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2019
» A Christian fable or a Marxist allegory? A magical-realist myth or a political cry against neoliberalism (or feudalism, which produces the same catastrophe anyway)?
Mariah carries on
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/11/2018
» Mariah Carey came to town as the final stop on her Asian tour, playing the near-capacity crowd at a hall in Bitec Bangna after the supposedly more dramatic setting of Borobudur. "Mariah Carey Live In Concert" last Friday lasted barely 90 minutes, with a set heavy with her 90s R&B hits and a couple of new songs from her latest album, Caution, which comes out this week. No Christmas songs on the set list, though I'm sure quite a few of us sort of half-hoped there would be.
Bismillah, Freddie will not let us go
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/11/2018
» Freddie Mercury, played with an earnest commitment bordering on fetishism by Rami Malek in the biographical film Bohemian Rhapsody, is a rock star the likes of which we hadn't seen before the 1970s and haven't since: An Asian frontman of a British rock outfit, a four-octave opera lover who sang in leotards and thongs, a proud organiser of orgiastic jamborees, and a gay man who endeared himself to the hard-rock audience that, in all likelihood in those pre-diversity days, either failed to realise that their mustachioed rock-god was out-and-out queer or suppressed their suspicion so completely that they didn't feel any cognitive dissonance in their devotion to Queen. Even the name Freddie gave the band laid it all bare.