Showing 31 - 38 of 38
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.
When the O2 is impure, breathe CO2
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/06/2015
» Congratulations. Peace prevails. Silence is golden. Reform is at full throttle. Reconciliation will glue the cracked golden axe into one shiny piece. Politicians can grow mushrooms. Generals can play golf. Elections are overrated. Democracy is a dream. Only the road map is real. Love is in the air. Citizens can stop worrying and learn how to love the bomb. Everything will be all right. Why worry? Why complain? Why think?
Force-fed film belongs deep in dark vaults
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/12/2014
» Strange things have happened at the cinemas. First, Hitler showed up in a Thai short film sponsored by the government (meaning by taxpayers), the radioactive gatecrasher into a party of virtuous citizens. Second, another Thai film featuring, among other things, a joke about the anal cleft — it's funny as long as it's not your anal cleft — is raking in a huge amount of money at the multiplexes, likely surpassing the 100-million-baht mark as you're reading this, which is after just four days of release. Cinema enlightens, even in the dark forest of swastikas and bodily bergschrunds.
Suthep's rickety ark is going to sink us all
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 11/01/2014
» The season of non-reason continues, like the polar vortex that deep-freezes the cerebrum, icing out Bangkok from its Ratchadamnoen core.
Mandela let us see we're all so very human
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/12/2013
» On Tuesday night I caught the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom at a screening in Dubai, where I was attending a film festival. On that same day, South Africa bid adieu to Nelson Mandela, the man, the fighter, the prisoner, the township hero who became a global idol for peace, the towering personality whose stature and courage were so formidable that no movie could ever match.
Learning from the glorious US election circus
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/09/2012
» Naturally, I can't vote either for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. I have no stakes, at least not a direct, constitutional one, in the upcoming US presidential election. I don't play stocks (that's the verb right, "to play"?) so the number of new jobs created in the US that gets reported sometimes with panic and sometimes with relief has nothing to do with my financial well-being. I never lived in the US _ the longest stretch I spent in that country was a seven-day work trip. In short, American politics and especially American elections shouldn't have concerned me.
Life imitates farce as Chuvit steals the show
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/07/2012
» No one, not even Tom Cruise, exploits the media as shrewdly as Chuvit Kamolvisit. Moustache twitching, his neck veins throbbing as he went on TV to relate the stormy episode when he exposed a gambling den on Phetchaburi Road, which entailed callow pushing-and-shoving as photographers snapped and cameramen videoed it all. He led the reporters into the soi and phoned the police. When they were late in arriving, he grumbled, then sat down on a folded chair (how did that materialise?) sipping iced coffee as onlookers, journalists, children and toughs formed a circle around him.
Finding Freedom
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/06/2012
» Eighty years ago, on June 24, 1932, the People's Party seized power and transformed Siam from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional democracy. A film crew recorded the historic revolution of that day on 35mm film, and the "movie" went on tour around Bangkok cinemas.