• OPINION

  'Bob' Halliday gone, but his light lives on

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/06/2017

  » Bob told me many stories from a time when I hadn't even been born: During the Oct 14, 1973 student uprising, the authorities suspected he was a spy. When the Oct 6, 1976 massacre took place and the stench of blood was still fresh at Thammasat University, he surveyed the wreckage and bemoaned the state of the country he had adopted as his new home. Some evenings he reminisced on how he had lived through several dictators and prime ministers, hijacked or elected, overthrown or incapacitated -- he talked about Richard Nixon, Thanom Kittikachorn, Tanin Kraivixien, Thaksin Shinawatra, Prayut Chan-o-cha, etc. It didn't matter what happened, he'd say, as long as he could prowl produce markets in search of the perfect durian -- the caramelised Holy Grail of the fruit he adored above all else, the fruit that, as he'd say, made him "slobber like a mastiff".

• OPINION

  Religious fervour serves no god well

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/04/2018

  » Aformer rock musician has embraced the role of online preacher and denounced, above other things, rock music. In fact, he objects to most kinds of music, deeming it against Islam. Weerachon "Toh" Sattaying, once the high-pitched frontman of the band Silly Fools (love the name), has over the past six years quit his former lifestyle and became a born-again Muslim. Bearded, skull-capped, fiery-eyed and charismatic, Weerachon runs a dry-aged beef business and hosts an online religious programme that has cultivated quite a following.

• OPINION

  Knives are out in death penalty row

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/06/2018

  » To execute or not to execute, the question weighed on Thai society in the past week with the force of righteous anger. It is a tough question, one that lays bare the complex intersection of morality, law, religion, belief, value, and even the position of the country on the spectrum along which the international norm is moving.

• OPINION

  In fighting IS, don't mimic its evil ways

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/02/2015

  » It was a sad week, a week of satanic beheadings, then the barbarous immolation, executed and filmed by that godless bunch as if in mockery of Hollywood war movies. A week of moral anger and global blood lust, from Amman to Tokyo by way of Iraq. A week of sadness that quickly morphed into something like vengeance, as war cries sounded over the medieval fortresses of Jordan and Egypt and echoed to the South China Sea.   

• LIFE

  Deep in the paradox

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/05/2022

  » In Cairo, a religious student at the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University is recruited by secret police to infiltrate a Muslim Brotherhood cell. In Mashad, a holy city in Iran, a serial killer prowls a seedy suburb and strangles head-scarfed prostitutes. In the first film, bloodlust officials torture dissidents with abandon. In the second film, religion is evoked and the name of God is cited as a justification for murder. This begs the obvious question: Will Boy From Heaven be banned in Egypt, and Holy Spider Iran?

• LIFE

  Asean on screen

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/09/2020

  » Ahead of the BAFF featuring Southeast Asian movies plus Chinese and Japanese titles, Life spoke with two filmmakers about their work

• LIFE

  The late, late show

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/06/2016

  » Normally prime time for television is 8-11pm or thereabouts, the period when the family gathers to watch news and series while having dinner. So it will come as a surprise to many that for Muslim audiences during this month of Ramadan, prime time for television is closer to a graveyard shift -- 3-4.30am, deep in the night while most people are asleep -- as families wake up for the pre-dawn meal before a full day of fasting.

• LIFE

  Documenting Southeast Asian diversity

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/03/2015

  » Now in its fifth edition, Salaya International Documentary Film Festival brings you real-world immediacy and reflection that covers a wide gamut of subjects — from the aftermath of the communist purge in 1960s Indonesia to the housing woes in Singapore, from the ferry tragedy in Korea to a grand tour of the National Gallery in London. The festival (better known as Salaya Doc) begins tomorrow and runs until Mar 28 at the Film Archive in Salaya and the auditorium of Bangkok Art and Culture Centre in Pathumwan (BACC). Admission is free.

• LIFE

  The human condition, from a distance

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/12/2017

  » Ai Weiwei's Human Flow is a film that spans the latitudes of a mural painting, vast and long, covering one end of the Earth to the other, many times with a top-down view. This documentary about forcibly displaced people around the world -- from Syria and Iraq, from Eritrea to Mexico -- plays out in the broad scope of Refugee 101, and it works as a (very long) campaign presentation of United Nations High Commission of Human Rights (UNHCR).

• LIFE

  Life before death

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 01/12/2017

  » With the Thai film Die Tomorrow, writer-director Nawapol Thamronrattanarit tries to capture that rarefied feeling of the eternal fleetingness of life. Presented as vignettes in which the viewer (though not necessarily the characters) knows that someone on the screen is going to die, the film aches to be a melancholic contemplation of perhaps death's greatest power -- its unpredictability.

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