Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic crime fiction and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
Who Killed Chae Vichea is now available as a DVD in The US. This gripping 55 minute feature is a roller-coaster investigative journey into a tragic political killing and by extension, a story about a country ruled by impunity. And just to prove that a film maker’s work can still have an impact on governments [...]
Joel Brinkley’s book Cambodia’s Curse – The Modern History of a Troubled Land is the first book to examine the venality of Cambodia’s current government. Ever since Vietnamese withdrawal (Vietnam liberated the country from the genocidal yoke of the Khmer Rouge in 1979) in 1989, Prime Minister Hun Sen and an assortment of allied and [...]
The Most Secret Place on Earth – The CIA’s Covert War in Laos, directed by Marc Eberle and written by Marc Eberle and Tom Vater has just been broadcast on the History Channel. The film traces the origin and development of the largest clandestine CIA operation to date (at least as far as the agency [...]
William Young, the CIA agent who is credited with allegedly discovering Long Cheng in northern Laos, a remote valley which became a top secret CIA air base in 1965 – and soon after the busiest airport in the world – shot himself in Chiang Mai, Thailand a few days ago. During the making of the [...]
Every day, we appear to be moving a little closer to a state of affairs where governments could become obsolete. Large parts of the world have always been ruled by people who don’t really qualify as governments, but in recent years, perfectly respectable rulers have also shown signs (not for the first time) that they [...]
Tura Satana, the trash queen of the 1960s, the star of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, the only film Russ Meyer made that did not contain nudity, died on February 4th, aged 72. In Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Satana played Varla, the leader of a trio of thrill-seeking go-go dancers who kills a man with her [...]
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The Most Secret Place on Earth – The CIA’s Covert War in Laos will be shown as part of the Lifescapes Film Festival in Chiang Mai this week. The screeing is on Sunday, February 6th at 14.30. For further details, please visit the Festival Website. For an enlightened and accurate telling of the CIA´secret history [...]
The Most Secret Place on Earth premiered in Australia on ABC1 television on January 24th at 9.30pm. Ironically, The Most Secret Place on Earth competed with Generation Kill, showing on ABC2 at the same time, a seven-part war mini-series about a Rolling Stone reporter embedded with US troops in Iraq. About the film: For a [...]