Showing 1 - 6 of 6
A long crusade against healthcare woes
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/04/2021
» Colectiv, a Romanian documentary film nominated for two Oscars, watches in terror as the Romanian healthcare system practically collapses before the camera. The film elicits a series of gasps, as one shocking revelation leads to another, and another: procurement frauds, bureaucratic incompetence, corruption, nepotism, murder, mass bribery, healthcare mafia, maggots crawling on the head of a patient -- a living patient -- and finally, an election whose preposterous results ring too many familiar bells.
Les Miserables: The simmering rage of Paris
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/05/2019
» Cannes Day 2 witnesses the rage of Paris -- not the yellow wrath of gilets jaunes, but the brown-and-black anger of rundown suburbs that makes up the complex social structure of modern France.
The skin I live in
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/01/2019
» The body is a temple. But it can also be a torture chamber, from which escape, while possible, is soul-crushing. Lukas Dhont's Girl is an emphatic, moving story about Lara (Victor Polster), a Belgian trans teen at an elite ballet school who's going through male-to-female gender reassignment. That she has to contend with her own hormones and pre-assigned biological specifics, as well as the fact that her chosen career mandates extreme rigour in how the body should bend and behave, Lara's fight is nothing short of heroic. And in that vein, the film is as well.
Some Southeast Asian picks from the Busan International Film Festival
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/10/2018
» How do Aceh and Japan, two places that seem unrelated, separated by a vast distance of land and sea, connect on the personal and historical level?
A not-so-mundane history
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/06/2018
» A lampshade, elegant and shiny, bears a distinct image of the Siamese constitution over the map of Thailand. A nielloware cigarette box, in solemn brass and black, also features an engraving of the constitution -- the emblematic figure of a folded scripture on a tray. Next to it are matchbox labels, pins, a glass bottle, a bowl, a water jar, an ashtray, a vinyl record. All of them carry the symbolism of the seismic transformation that took place 86 years ago.
Hear her roar!
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/04/2018
» Katy Perry, pixie-haired and ever ebullient, roared through her second appearance in Bangkok on Tuesday night with professionalism, humour and ease. This pop-spectacle is as much a visual experience as it is an aural one -- in fact, the visual overwhelmed our attention for the most parts of the 120-minute gig. The stage -- and wardrobe -- dripped with red at one point, shimmered with silver at another, and Perry's team deployed a full arsenal of wacky props, girlish delight and zany sight gags. We even had a fart joke at one point, perhaps the first I ever heard live on the stage from Impact Arena. Perry's appeal cuts a broad swathe across the demographic, and we had a rainbow of humanity thronging the hall: office types, teenagers, party animals, hipsters, Cosplay queens, the LGBT camp, celebrities, people who think they're celebrities, girls in candy-coloured wigs, parents and children -- I mean, first-graders and stuff, lots of them in fact, arriving in cheerful anticipation and looking tired when the proceedings advanced past 11pm. In all, it looked like a cross section between the crowd at a Madonna gig and Disney On Ice. Such is the strange pull of Perry.