The Thai title of the upcoming slasher-horror Meat Grinder has undergone a change.This torture-porn thriller with a culinary twist is about a noodle-shop lady who serves up a special meat with her dishes. When it was first promoted it was called ก๋วยเตี๋ยว เนื้อ คน or Guay-dteow neua kon, literally "human meat noodles", like Soylent Green.
The powers that be decided that title, however accurate, was a little too explicit, so the new posters say เชือด ก่อน ชิม, or Cheuat gon chim or roughly, "carve before tasting", which still gets the point across but isn't so in your face, even if the posters and trailers are all very graphic.
Meat Grinder stars perennial villainess Mai Charoenpura, and it's directed by Thiwa Meyathaisong, and his Bangkok Love Story partner Poj Arnon is producing it for release by Phranakorn Film. The release date is March 19.
Deknang has a page of images, the old posters are on Popcornmag, and Twitch is serving the trailers. Watch them if you dare.
Actually, that's "carve before tasting"...
ReplyDelete... or something like that. Thanks Bong!
ReplyDeleteFound via @bact on Twitter: The reason behind the title change.
ReplyDeleteIt's in Thai, but the gist is that in an interview with FILMAX magazine(?), someone from the Censor Board said that this movie didn't pass review because it affects national security, in that it will cause all the noodle soup (ก๋วยเตี๋ยว) shops to lose business.
Egads. The censors have an appallingly low opinion of Thai people's intelligence.
Apparently, in all they made the filmmakers re-edit the film four times before they approved it, under threat of ban of course.
The rest is the author's rant about the stupidity of the censors' logic. And magnificently stupid it is.
Thanks! I wondered how they got a film like this to the screen, given how the censors blurred and pixellated Watchmen and last year's Sweeney Todd. Dr. Manhattan's blue johnson also must be a threat to Thai national security.
ReplyDeleteRidiculous!
There was a Cantonese movie from Hong Kong starring Anthony Wong called Yan Yuk Char Siew Pau (or Ren Rou Cha Shao Bao in Mandarin) or The Untold Story with a similar story line. I've got to catch this one though I hope there's English subtitles since I don't understand very much Thai.
ReplyDeleteIt's Thai cinemas now, and most multiplexes in Bangkok will have English subs.
ReplyDeleteIt has been picked up for distribution in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well, so I'm hopeful for an eventual English-subbed DVD from either of those territories.
Thanks for the info, WiseKwai. Unfortunately, I live in Sweden at the moment. Hope to order a dvd later.
ReplyDelete(WiseKwai, I accidentally posted under another name I don't use to post comments. I would be grateful if you could please remove my previous comment. Thanks.)