Showing 11 - 20 of 41
Fed up to our eyeballs of the aqua-calypse
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/06/2016
» When storm clouds loom and thunder strikes, we think of one person. When the monsoon hits and water falls from Bangkok skies, his face appears in our dreams: Lord Mayor of Bangkok, wading the knee-deep floods of Ratchadaphisek Road like a horseman of the aqua-calypse, having come straight from his 16-million-baht office which, until recently, overlooked a 39-million-baht lighting décor.
Rage against Wall Street
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/05/2016
» Jodie Foster's Money Monster touches on two topical subjects. First, Wall Street's greed and how its casino logic can destroy lives; second, the obscene realism of live broadcast and how the producers and audience are both complicit in turning private lives into public spectacle. Big social issues, both of them, and with George Clooney and Julia Roberts in the lead and Foster directing, we expected a smart blast.
Clowning around is no joke anymore
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/04/2016
» When humour is outlawed, what's left? When humorists, satirists and clowns are not safe from dictatorial fury, who is? Mockers jailed, jokers scolded, caricaturists threatened, sometimes by words, sometimes by pre-dawn commando raids, without warrants, as if they were hunting armed terrorists. That's how 10 people were carried off by uniformed officers on Wednesday, a few of them guilty of running a satirical Facebook page spoofing the PM. Yesterday, the military court denied them bail.
'Superheroes' fail to rescue democracy
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/03/2016
» We thought it would be Batman v Superman: Yawn of Justice. But it turned out to be a cut-rate spectacle performed on a sidewalk by inept actors. We thought it would be a bout between the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) and the Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC), a contest of will and superpower. But then it revealed itself to be a badly scripted soap opera executed by elderly actors who read their lines without a wink.
Popping the question of hero or killer
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/03/2016
» A hero to some is a murderer to others — how I wish the world were less tortuous.
The Lobster is a love story like no other
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/11/2015
» The strangest movie of the year opens this week in Bangkok. The Lobster imagines a future world where single people are ostracised, then shipped off to "The Hotel", a clinically, sinisterly beautiful resort where they have to find a romantic partner within the deadline of 45 days. If they fail to find a "compatible" mate from among the singles herded there, they will be transformed into an animal of their choice and banished into the wild. Colin Farrell, glum and potbellied, plays David, who states that he wishes to become a lobster when his time comes.
Lessons from the hitmaker
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/11/2015
» Surprise, shock and awe greeted the news that GTH, Thailand's most commercially successful movie studio, will close shop at the end of the year.
Web warriors unite for an F5 rebellion
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/10/2015
» This past week ultra-royalists converged at the US Embassy while ultra-malcontents converged on the F5 button. How the world has changed, and how sad that some people are still stuck in a medieval fortress, trying to fend off invaders with hot oil and poisoned arrows?
The horror of our inhumanity
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/09/2015
» Historical films, when they stare into the abyss, are always horror films, and none attests to that with a greater conviction than German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. This is probably the most frightening documentary ever filmed, the sheer scope of inhumanity shown in it almost beyond belief if we didn't know that everything was indeed true. A very difficult film to watch, and certainly not for the faint-hearted and Holocaust deniers (not an endangered species here), this is one of the most important accounts of the event whose ramifications remain relevant 70 years after World War II ended.
Past actions lead to sense of numbness
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2015
» The date is June 18, 2026, and this is a diary from the future. Thailand in 2026 feels like 2015 in many ways, except it’s worse, despite the half-finished high-speed rail to Chiang Mai — the budget bloated from three trillion baht to five trillion baht in 2020 — and the half-finished Pak Bara deep-sea port — the budget didn’t bloat, but the government shifted its priority to buying nuclear submarines.