Showing 1-10 of 10 results
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Hoping to take the top prize East
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/05/2018
» Asian filmmakers have so far fielded a strong force at the 71st Cannes Film Festival, and when the Palme d'Or is decided on Saturday by the Cate Blanchett-led jury there's a real chance that the top prize might go to one of the Asian titles -- after a Turkish film in 2014 (Winter Sleep) and a Thai film back in 2010 (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives).
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'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".
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A new vision on Siam's enduring symbol
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/04/2017
» The elephant and the man, walking down the road to redemption and encountering the wounded and the marginalised, the madmen and the prostitutes. In the film Pop Aye, which will kick off Bangkok Asean Film Festival 2017 this evening (see sidebar), the fine-tusked beast accompanies the lost soul as the duo find their way home from Bangkok to the Northeast.
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King still with us, in photos and memories
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 22/10/2016
» On the screen we see the King in his Land Rover sluicing through mud in rough terrain. Again on the screen, he is a wiry young man in dark sunglasses and saffron robe, walking barefoot in a royal temple. Next, His Majesty King Bhumibol in dinner jacket -- the footage slightly scratchy -- is deep in a jam session with Western musicians sometime in the last century. Then we see the monarch in full regalia, captured on a Kodak motion picture film, as he proceeds down the street in the opulent pomp of Coronation Day in 1950.
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Remember the King in all our complexities
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/10/2016
» We knew it would happen but when it did the blow was grave. We thought we could prepare for the eventuality, for the implacable force of mortality to exert its power, and yet all our mental preparation was swept aside, like a wave of fate's hand, when the announcement of His Majesty King Bhumibol's death was televised on Thursday evening.
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Breaking into song on the big vote day
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/08/2016
» Tomorrow is the day. Are you ready? Really, are you ready?Keep calm, get dressed, put on your Sunday smile, and head out to … No, not the referendum booth, or maybe later. First you really must go to the Scala Theatre in Siam Square, where for the first time in Thailand in decades, The Sound of Music will play on the big cinema screen with its historic overflowing of saccharine -- and with one of the strangest anti-dictatorship sentiments ever shown on film.
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Proustian questions for our leaders
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/12/2015
» What is your idea of perfect happiness? When 99.5% of respondents in a government-sponsored poll think that the government is the best thing that ever happened for this country. Or maybe in the all of the universe, because such figures are even higher than God's rating.
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Flag turns the national into factional
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/02/2014
» Red, white and blue. The tricolour Thai national flag has never been this omnipresent.
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Rebels of the neon god
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/05/2013
» Vithaya Pansringam has the honour of beating Ryan Gosling into a sorry mess. "I feel privileged!" says the 54-year-old kendo expert, ballet school administrator and now first-bill actor of the film Only God Forgives. "Usually, Ryan beats people into a pulp _ did you see Drive? Well, this time he got it, and I got away!"
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