Showing 91 - 100 of 123
All he needs is Kill
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2014
» Executioner. Murderer. Killing. Doing his job. The swirl of inner-conflict and the fog of moral dilemma must’ve accompanied Thailand’s “last executioner”, the man whose professional duty was to pull the trigger and dispatch death row convicts. Between 1984 and 2002, Chavoret Jaruboon executed 55 prisoners by gun, before the Thai law changed the execution method to lethal injection.
Reaping what they Sow
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/01/2014
» Rice is what has raised Thailand, but our staple crop hasn't raised many smiles in the Land of Smiles lately. When Uruphong Raksasad set out to make Pleng Khong Khao (The Songs Of Rice) two years ago, he didn't imagine that his documentary would acquire a timely resonance now that the epic mess of the government's rice-pledging scheme has become an escalating imbroglio and national embarrassment. Rice, the filmmaker believes, is the soul of the country, but the song it sings has unfortunately turned into a sad one.
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.
Picture predictions
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 28/02/2014
» The last time the Los Angeles Times checked, the nearly 6,000 Oscar voters were 94% white, 77% male, almost 100% American, with the average age of 62. So much for movies as democracy, so much for art as majoritarianism, because to guess the Oscar winners — the time-honoured and completely useless activity practised around the world — is to guess the taste and preference of these faceless voters.
In the book of exile, Thaksin pens his legacy
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 02/11/2013
» There are exiles that last a lifetime and others that last a weekend. To be exiled, says the self-exiled writer Roberto Bolano, "is not to disappear but to shrink, to slowly or quickly get smaller and smaller until we reach our real height, the true height of the self".
Sci-fi socialism
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/09/2013
» With his previous hit District 9 and now Elysium, South African director Neill Blomkamp has cornered a specific sub-genre: the sci-fi socialist action flick. In the Jo'berg-set debut from 2009, the crustacean-like aliens scavenge garbage piles and live in a filthy shantytown, segregated from the human population. District 9 is an alien film, with spaceships and laser guns, but it's actually a clever allegory about class and institutional discrimination.
Asian elephant in Hollywood's cruel parlour
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 07/09/2013
» Even a tiny speck of Hollywood dust must have weighed like a tonne of gold to movie stars on this side of the Pacific. It must have felt like a validation - no, it is a validation, a passport to a new planet, the one phone call that vindicates all the hard work and years of toiling.
Fasting our way to peace in the South
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/06/2013
» We have dubbed them the "Ramadan Demands", which quickly burst into "Ramadan Row". The Islamic fasting month is two weeks away, but the BRN's 7 + 4 demands have already stoked frustration and impatience from the Thai authorities - "I stand firm the conditions are unacceptable to us," said outgoing Defence Minister Sukumpol Suwanatat - and the word "Ramadan" has in the past week become associated with a range of confused notions, from the continuation of strife to the elusive hope for peace.
Hell's angel
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/07/2013
» With serene conviction, Nicolas Winding Refn baptises Bangkok as the new capital of Hell. In the blood-lusting new movie Only God Forgives, which opens tomorrow, the Danish director transforms our city of lost angels into a delirious nightmare _ even a torture chamber _ as his American characters face the nihilistic retribution of their own making, with a lot of help from Oriental mysticism.
Jesus christ superman
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/06/2013
» Zack Snyder's Man Of Steel takes pride in giving us doom and gloom, and the tale that was one of our most exciting childhood memories has been turned into rather joyless bombast. Keen to insert biblical references, whether they fit or not, and assaulting us with a maximalist visual treatment, Snyder's reboot inherits the stern-faced self-importance of The Dark Knight (it's no coincidence that Christopher Nolan is one of the producers), but lacks the menace and the nihilism that gives rise to Batman's (imagined) existential crisis. Superman is supposed to soar, to fly us to the Moon or, farther afield, to the fantastic nebula where his home planet is, or was _ but the loftiest emotion that Man Of Steel is capable of stimulating _ and I hate to say this _ is indifference.