• LIFE

  Pandemonium

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2022

  » The first shot of Athena will be discussed in every writing about the film. A bravura choreography of movement that begins with an intimate close-up of a face and ends, after 10 blood-rushing minutes, with an explosion of revolutionary rage -- a la Les Miserables and Do You Hear The People Sing? transported to a predominantly-Muslim Paris suburb -- that opening shot is so hypnotising and immersive in its non-stop kineticism that we're led to forgive that it's also an earnest show-off, a proud enshrinement of style and attitude over everything else. Romain Gavras, a filmmaker known for making music videos for Jay Z and M.I.A, will cement that approach with many similar shots throughout the film -- long, seemingly uninterrupted shots with parkour camerawork full of angry bodies -- more than enough for aspiring filmmakers of the world to slobber over.

• 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.

• OPINION

  Armed to the teeth, with no battle to fight

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/07/2017

  » When everyone else is dead, the arms dealers will sip champagne and cuddle Playboy bunnies. Why? "Because everyone else will be busy killing each other," said Yuri Orlov, the arms dealer in Lord of War as portrayed by Nicolas Cage. When his client orders him a shipment of machine guns used in Rambo, Mr Orlov, an award-winning salesperson, asks, "Rambo part 1, 2 or 3?"

• OPINION

  'Double-tap' evil mustn't conquer hope

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/05/2017

  » In Pattani, the checkpoints are frequent, more frequent than Islamic prayers. Every few turns, your van goes through one. Sometimes the driver is asked to lower the window, other times the armed soldiers just peer inside and wave the vehicle onward.

• LIFE

  Humanity!

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 13/01/2017

  » Mankind is doomed. We're hard-wired to be selfish, paranoid, prone to violence. We like war, among us humans or with the alien. What may redeem us, however, is compassion, generosity, language, love, grace, and so on -- all those teary-eyed emotions that is sometimes called "lyrical" in a movie. Or simpler, what may save us is a last-act manipulation of time and plot points, a wily trick nonetheless pulled off smoothly through the moving performance by Amy Adams.

• OPINION

  Overhauling our Newspeak vocabulary

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/03/2016

  » Since we’ll be stuck with the regime for another 20 months or so (a conservative guesstimate) it’s time to update our glossary of post-coup Newspeak. From “mafia” to “public broadcaster” and “Patriotic pop culture”, almost every day we see an exciting addition to the dictionary of surreal meanings in our life under the marvellous junta.

• OPINION

  Taking down Sorrayuth no graft panacea

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 05/03/2016

  » Bring me the head of Sorrayuth. Bring me the severed head of the anchorman/briber, newscaster/corrupter, interviewer/public villain No.1. The hero became the anti-hero, and Sorrayuth Suthassanachinda had his head served on a silver platter after the collective wrath of graft-haters smoked him out of his chair. Corruption must be combatted, cheaters must be called out and shamed. Yes, we beat him, we beat corruption! And our weapons in this war are something equally disturbing, such as hatred, polemics and swift, satisfying anger.

• LIFE

  Snowden under siege

  Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/03/2015

  » The Oscar-winning Citizenfour has opened in Bangkok. An opportune cinema experience here in our land of 99.9% democracy where the contentious Cyber Security Bills are being revised, the so-called Edward Snowden documentary seethes with unsettling power. Its civic outrage is strong, but the cool-headed storytelling gives it gravity. The immediacy of the issue at its heart is also the debate of the early 21st century. And if the film lets us know from the start that it's taking the side of the whistle-blower, all the better.  

• OPINION

  South doesn't need any more gun-slingers

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 08/11/2014

  » When you have cowboys and gun-slingers running the circus, it's likely to be all bang-bang. An eye for an eye, a rifle for a rifle, a kill for a kill, and as the Apache warriors storm the citadels of the new frontiers, the sheriffs are prodded to become trigger-happy.

• OPINION

  All we can do is learn from Gaza's grief

  News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 19/07/2014

  » ‘This twilight war involved two entire communities, two peoples, two tribes, two nations, fighting each other without a frontline, neither one really made any distinction between civilians and soldiers… Relations between Israelis and Palestinians became so thoroughly politicised that after a while, there was no such thing as a crime between them, and there was no such thing as an accident between them — there were only acts of war.”

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