Showing 11 - 20 of 35
Enter the dark side
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/01/2017
» Joan Cornellà wants to make you laugh and cringe. The Spanish artist's comic strips are bright in colour and black in mood -- irreverent humour of people smiling while hurting each other, for instance, or an armless man offering free hugs. Always without a caption, the jokes point at the casual cruelty of human nature, thus they're true and disturbing.
The non-Hollywood contenders
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 09/12/2016
» Thailand has submitted the monk drama Arpatti to compete with 84 other countries in the Oscar race for best foreign-language film. Here we look at some highlights from around the world before the nominations are announced on Jan 24.
Stephen Chow's latest is fantastically foolish
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/04/2016
» The Chinese comedy The Mermaid became the biggest-grossing film ever in China when it came out during Chinese New Year, raking in US$417 million (14.6 billion baht), surpassing last year's hit Monster Hunt and Fast And Furious 7. Even without the hype, fans of Stephen Chow -- and there's plenty of them in Thailand -- have been looking forward to his latest madcap escapade, this time with the story of a pretty mermaid who falls in love with an ocean-destroying, banknote-burning real estate tycoon who's also her target.
The fire still burning
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/03/2016
» It was never business as usual for Santana, despite this being his sixth visit to Bangkok. On Monday night, we got what we're always happy to get from Carlos and his band -- thrilling musicianship, fiery Latin polyrhythms, passionate guitar solos, tribal percussive beats, a message of joy and love, and of course the 1,001st performance of Black Magic Woman and other classics. Carlos Santana, 68, continues to work his guitar hard as he put fire in the old melodies (he's probably the only performer of the 1969 Woodstock who's still touring inexhaustibly), and although the guitar-based Latin rock is hardly coursing the vein of the 21st-century soundscape, he never tires of making it authentic and fun.
Trying too hard
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/02/2016
» A controlled plunging into the abyss, Son Of Saul is a Hungarian film set in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. Or precisely, it is largely set in the horrific slaughterhouse of the gas chambers in which Jewish prisoners are horded by the trainload. What sets this film apart — what makes it one of the most acclaimed and yet divisive films of last year, as well as a front-runner at the Oscar on Sunday — is the visual strategy and conceptual representation of that European tragedy.
A view from the gas chamber
Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/01/2016
» A Holocaust movie surprisingly becomes a topical subject in Thailand, after the highly publicised, highly embarrassing incident of a Thai aristocrat's grand denial of that historical tragedy (and a subsequent rebuttal by an Israeli ambassador).
Voices of hate louder than the majority
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/11/2015
» After Paris, it has been a week of heartbreak. Not again, the godless killings, the barbarians at the gate! It has also been a week of blanket accusations, of Islam-bashing, and of frantic apologies from 1.5 billion peaceful people who’re told that what they’ve believed all their lives is making them inherently evil, only they don’t know it yet (the accusers know it).
Our blood runs cold in a burning sun
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/11/2015
» In Truman Capote’s true-crime book, In Cold Blood, a rural town in Kansas was rattled by brutal murders. Four people killed in their own home, late at night, three shot point-blank in the face, the other had his throat slit, then shot in the head. It was a robbery turned massacre. The morning after committing the crime, the book reports, one of the two killers, Dick Hickock, went back to his house and had toast for breakfast with his family, laughing, unperturbed, as if nothing so inhuman had happened just hours before.
Smoke gets in your eyes, and it's fine
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/10/2015
» Some countries in Southeast Asia have been covered in haze. For over a month, people in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia have found their visibility reduced by the thin veil of smog, the grey mist of infinitesimal particles that blankets their skies and streets. The cause is the illegal burning to clear farmland for palm oil plantations; the effect is a health hazard, an environmental threat and a political dent, especially for Joko Widodo.
Sorry seems to be history’s hardest word
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/10/2015
» It doesn’t take much to say sorry, and yet sorry seems to be the hardest word. Ask world leaders, or just Dear Leaders everywhere. It takes a lot, politically, legally and morally, to admit mistakes, misjudgments, errors, arrogance, cruelty and guilt, especially when the consequences of such errors are the loss of so many human lives.