Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Journalism is the first victim in a conflict
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/07/2025
» In times of chaos, to call for calm seems naïve. "Imagine there's no countries." Sure, John, I know your utopianism was well-intended, but try telling that to the blood-hounding jingoists running rampant online in Cambodia and Thailand.
Coppola's Megalopolis leaves Cannes scratching its head
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/05/2024
» Every year the Cannes Film Festival has its hottest gig -- a film so breathlessly anticipated and a justification of the festival's raison d'être. This year, that honour belongs to Megalopolis. Or, to be completely faithful according to the plaque flashed up on the screen, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis: A Fable.
Apichatpong's memory of the world
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/06/2021
» It begins with a bang. Maybe the Big Bang, a culmination of cosmic murmur and subterranean hum that explodes like a burst of revelation, a sonic release of the weight of all human pain. In Apichatpong Weerasethakul's new film Memoria, a woman wakes up one morning in Bogota jolted by a mysterious sound -- a metallic, visceral, bottom-of-the-well bang. The woman, orchid farm owner Jessica (played by Tilda Swinton), wanders the Colombian capital in a daze, haunted by the unshakable aural echo, then leaves the city and heads to the mountains, where the phantom of the bang shadows her.
The true nature of the beast?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/11/2020
» 'Happy families are all alike," said Tolstoy, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Outstanding films of 2018
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/12/2018
» From the spiritual to the scary, many genres had quality offerings.
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.
Prayut can't control lens of history
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/04/2018
» He came to drain the swamp, but the swamp has reclaimed him. He came to purge politicians, but politicians have found him. He came to rewrite history, and we wonder how history will remember him.
Italian legend Vinicio Capossela in Bangkok
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/03/2018
» One of the best-known Italian artists is coming to town next week.
Devil on the doorstep
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/02/2018
» You go into a Lav Diaz's movie as if you were going into a church, or a trench war, or an ultra-marathon: you prepare for the epic length, the brutal transcendentalism and the implacable burden of history that hit you like a blow.