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  • LIFE

    The afterlife of Mitr Chaibancha

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/10/2023

    » In an abrupt moment of life's brutal script, Mitr Chaibancha fell to his death from a helicopter ladder on Oct 8, 1970. He was filming Insee Thong (Golden Eagle), playing an anti-communist masked hero, when he slipped from the rung and plunged to the ground in Pattaya. That same evening, his body was transported to Wat Kae Nang Loeng. Thousands of people, unable to believe that Thailand's most famous actor was really, tragically dead, amassed impromptu at the temple and demanded that his corpse be raised from the coffin and shown to the public.

  • LIFE

    Eyes wide open

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/05/2020

    » The literature about modern Thai politics is not abundant, and by this I mean a narrative that grounds its characters in the double-whammy of coup d'etat and street protest that characterised the mid-2000s to mid-2010s. The period, plus a few years earlier when Thaksin Shinawatra rose to power, contains some of the most convulsive and era-defining moments that continue to shape the visible and invisible dimensions of Thai society in the present time, and it's astonishing that not more writers find it a rich wellspring of artistic expression (on the contrary, visual artists and theatre artists seem more responsive to the political currents of the same period).

  • LIFE

    The force is strong with this one

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/12/2015

    » This Thursday, the sequel of Star Wars will monopolise cinemas around the world. According to most predictions by box office pundits, the space opera conceived nearly 40 years ago will be the year's biggest blockbuster, not to mention a perpetuation of one of pop culture's greatest mythologies.

  • OPINION

    Paper-thin alibi for kids' day gun play

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/01/2018

    » The irony must have been lost on him and on everyone around him. This Children's Day -- the day of machine guns, tanks and rocket launchers -- Thai kids will also get to take pictures with our cardboard prime minister, 10 standees in fact, in various poses and costumes deployed around Government House as special attractions.

  • LIFE

    In search of the next hit

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 26/06/2015

    » A string of box-office failures, an absence of hits, an onslaught of Hollywood blockbusters, an economic slump, the vacillating, unpredictable taste of audiences — all of this has plunged the Thai film industry into a gloom in the first half of 2015. Home-grown cinema can barely compete with the American juggernauts, but the past six months have been particularly wounding. Usually, Thai films take around 25% of the ticket sales, with Hollywood gobbling up the rest (the total box office value was around 4.5 billion in last year). This year, so far, local movies took a paltry 10%, according to industry analysts.

  • LIFE

    The Wolf's spectacular folly

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 31/01/2014

    » Propelled by manic energy, Martin Scorsese's The Wolf Of Wall Street zips through a dollar-fuelled bacchanalia and raunchy pool parties (there are so many pool parties) with train-wrecking velocity. It's as if the filmmakers and their cast are popping speed pills or knocking back a succession of Red Bulls. You watch the film with exhilaration and dread, a dread that the entire narrative accelerating, over the top and almost unstoppable is going to veer over the precipice and crash, leaving Leonardo DiCaprio smiling goofily in the rubble. But it's not; this is tightly controlled filmmaking in the guise of something running amok, and it's actually that sense of dread, risk and danger that fires us up and keeps us on edge. Scorsese is 72 and yet, hats off to him, this film feels like a young man plunging into an all-night orgy while managing to somehow stay sober amidst the threat of overkill.

  • OPINION

    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.

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