News roundup about Pen-ek, Wisit

As I head out today to finally watch Invisible Waves, I offer a bunch of cool links to stories about Thai film from Twitch and Kaiju Shakedown:

• Pen-ek will direct a segment of this year's Digital Short Films From Three Filmmakers series at the Jeonju Film Festival along with Kazakhstan's Darezhan Omirbayev and Singapore's Erik Khoo. If you remember, another Thai director, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, participated in last year's Digital Short Films, making a short called Worldly Desires. Shinya Tsukamoto from Japan offered the deeply disturbing scarring Haze and Il-gon Song from Korea had Magician(s).
• The Film Factory is a commercial production company in Bangkok where Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Wisit Sasanatieng made television commercials as they prepped for their first feature films and continued to work between features. Now, thanks to Twitch, you can visit the site and download the commercials by Wisit (his nickname is "Sid"), Pen-ek (or "Tom") and two other award-winning directors at Film Factory, Pongpaiboon Siddhigu and Michael Warr. The clips include Wisit's Wrangler commercial, which I recently saw at the Bangkok International Film Festival screening of Tears of the Black Tiger, as well as my favorite commercial for my favorite suki chain, MK, another by Wisit. Another plus: the clips are subtitled in English.
• Wisit's Citizen Dog played at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, Twitch reports, and a review is here.
• Looks like a good year for this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, Kaiju Shakedown reports. It'll be showing Invisible waves, as well as a killer tribute to action choreographers that inclues Dirty Ho (Lau Kar Leung), The Blade, A Touch of Zen (Sammo Hung), The Magic Blade, The Young Master, Martial Club, Fong Sai Yuk (The Legend) (Corey and Tak Yuen) and Once Upon a Time in China II (Xin Xin Xiong and Yuen Wo Ping). Johnnie To's Election 2 opens the festival (Election is showing as well), and there will also be a parody of the industry called Film Surprise, outdoor screenings of Masked Rider the First and I Not Stupid Too, a followup to Jack Neo's Singapore schoolboys hit, I Not Stupid.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)