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  • News & article

    A long crusade against healthcare woes

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/04/2021

    » Colectiv, a Romanian documentary film nominated for two Oscars, watches in terror as the Romanian healthcare system practically collapses before the camera. The film elicits a series of gasps, as one shocking revelation leads to another, and another: procurement frauds, bureaucratic incompetence, corruption, nepotism, murder, mass bribery, healthcare mafia, maggots crawling on the head of a patient -- a living patient -- and finally, an election whose preposterous results ring too many familiar bells.

  • News & article

    Thai TV not yet destined for global love

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/03/2018

    » The soap series Bupphaesannivas (Love Destiny) is all the rage these days in Thailand. I enjoy some parts of it, especially one memorable episode a few weeks back when the female lead, a beautiful vixen in 17th century Ayutthaya, displays her vituperative talent by shouting at her servant, "Shut up or I'll smack your mouth with my piss pot." Neither did we see the piss nor the pot, but we get the picture. There's even a YouTube clip of that.

  • News & article

    'Bad Genius' exception to Thai film rule

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 21/10/2017

    » She cheats because she wants money, and because she believes the system has cheated her first. No politics please! The exciting Thai pop-culture news of the week was the box-office triumph of the Thai film Chalard Games Goeng (Bad Genius in English), an exam-cheating thriller packed with heart-racing set pieces in which bright students orchestrate an elaborate international cheating ring, outsmarting the system on the expense of their moral equanimity. When you're 17, perhaps that's a small price to pay.

  • News & article

    Friends through the years

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/10/2017

    » From the exchanging of envoys to the bond between the two monarchies, from a Thai football star in J-League to a Japanese actor in a major Thai movie, from Thai liquor to Japanese dessert, Japan and Thailand have treasured a relationship that has strengthened, politically and culturally, in recent years.

  • News & article

    The boy wonder of French politics

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 03/07/2017

    » Now that he rules France -- first by winning the presidency and when his party won a majority in the French parliamentary election last month -- Emmanuel Macron has become a subject of close scrutiny. The Netflix documentary Emmanuel Macron: Behind The Rise won't give you deep insight into the remarkable rise of the youngest French president in history; the film works, instead, as a campaign history and a personality sketch of this boyish, industrious, intelligent politician who, at first, seemed surprised by his own ascendancy.

  • News & article

    That precious gold statuette

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/02/2017

    » The Oscars takes place Monday morning Thailand time. We pontificate and prognosticate the results

  • News & article

    Streep, Abe open Tokyo Film Fest

    Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/10/2016

    » Meryl Streep walked down on the red carpet as light drizzle cooled the opening of the 29th Tokyo International Film Festival on Tuesday.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    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.

  • News & article

    Autocratic filmmaking is our forte

    News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/12/2014

    » In the week Sony censored itself and shelved the Christmas Day release of The Interview, a comedy about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, I'm reminded of this slim book on my desk which I sometimes flip to random pages. One has this: "In the capitalist system of filmmaking the director is called 'director' but, in fact, the right of supervision and control over film production is entirely in the hands of the tycoons of the filmmaking industry who have the money, whereas the directors are nothing but their agents."

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