Showing 1 - 10 of 10
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.
A vintage year for Thai cinema?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/12/2023
» There were cheers of jubilation and gasps of disbelief as Thai cinema found itself awash with excitement in 2023. This has been the most successful year for mainstream Thai movies in a decade, a box-office triumph far exceeding all expectations. To many, the 2023 coup de theatre calls for celebration. "We are back!" cried optimistic pundits. But also: "Really? Is it just a one-time cinema party and can we keep the ball rolling?"
The afterlife of Mitr Chaibancha
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/10/2023
» In an abrupt moment of life's brutal script, Mitr Chaibancha fell to his death from a helicopter ladder on Oct 8, 1970. He was filming Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), playing an anti-communist masked hero, when he slipped from the rung and plunged to the ground in Pattaya. That same evening, his body was transported to Wat Kae Nang Loeng. Thousands of people, unable to believe that Thailand's most famous actor was really, tragically dead, amassed impromptu at the temple and demanded that his corpse be raised from the coffin and shown to the public.
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)?
Two grainy fists for resurrection
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/10/2018
» Shot mostly in Thai prison, with a fair number of ex-cons as extras, A Prayer Before Dawn dives headfirst into the unfiltered squalor of prison life -- not the sociological or political dimension of state incarceration, but the physical, uncooked-meat kind of life in jail, particularly the Thai jail.
Beauties and the beasts of coup regime
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/04/2018
» It's just too rich to pass up, too weird and symbolic to ignore. The summit of the week between members of the girl group BNK48 and Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was the moment when politics met pop-culture, when new met old, when cuties met coupmaker, when teens met tank, when beauty met … whatever.
Young at heart
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/04/2018
» On some afternoons, Thep Kengvinit would walk to Central Pinklao, sit down at an electric piano in an electronics store, and play random songs from the 1960s. "I walk because it helps loosen my joints," said the 74-year-old grandfather, "and I play because it's relaxing".
Religious fervour serves no god well
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2018
» Aformer rock musician has embraced the role of online preacher and denounced, above other things, rock music. In fact, he objects to most kinds of music, deeming it against Islam. Weerachon "Toh" Sattaying, once the high-pitched frontman of the band Silly Fools (love the name), has over the past six years quit his former lifestyle and became a born-again Muslim. Bearded, skull-capped, fiery-eyed and charismatic, Weerachon runs a dry-aged beef business and hosts an online religious programme that has cultivated quite a following.
Spoken crime tells the tale of two singers
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/03/2018
» In a rare ruling, on Thursday the Criminal Court acquitted firebrand and former-singer Tom Dundee in a lese majeste case. He actually pleaded guilty, but in a legal paradox that is as baffling as it is mitigating, the court said it could not rule against the defendant despite his guilty plea since the prosecution failed to provide substantial evidence.
Familiar faces or rogues gallery?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/02/2018
» The entire wall is covered with faces -- a zoo of faces, if you will, each of them caged by a square frame. Naturally, upon entering Artist+Run Gallery visitors engage in a guess-who game: these are familiar faces of politicians, celebrities, athletes, monks and coupmakers, and yet some of them aren't instantly identifiable. Is that the government spokesman? From which coup? Who's that pretty face? Is that reddish thing Thaksin Shinawatra? That's easy -- it's Aung San Suu Kyi.