Bizarre promo for Chocolate ahead of The Warlords

On Sunday there was a premiere of The Warlords at SF World Cinema at CentralWorld in Bangkok. The place was a madhouse, with Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshiro Kaneshiro and Peter Chan present, making for the biggest movie premiere event ever in Thailand.

I wasn't given the secret handshake for press access to the celebs, and I was too freaked out by the massive, impenetrable crowds, red carpet cordoned off by steel fencing and a legion of black T-shirted bodyguards to snap any photos. But I managed to score a ticket to the film, so my day wasn't a total waste.

Ahead of the film, there was a bizarre new extended promo for Chocolate, the upcoming martial arts film directed by Ong-Bak/Tom Yum Goong helmer Prachya Pinkeaw.

At first, I thought maybe it was a trailer for a documentary about autism, as it featured a couple of Westerner autistic people, showing off the type of superhuman mathematics skills that were played up so hugely in Rain Main.

After a couple of minutes of that, they then switched so some footage from Chocolate. I guess the intent of the new trailer is to cast autism in a positive light, and make the comment that while some autistic people have uncanny maths skills, Chocolate's autistic female protagonist (Nitcharee Wismitanant) possesses crazy martal arts abilities.

I searched high and low for an online link to this trailer, but couldn't find one, though I did find this one. But given the amount of attention this film is getting, it won't be long before one surfaces somewhere.

Chocolate is due for release on February 86.