Wonderful Town playing in Phuket

Wonderful Town has finally opened in cinemas near where it was filmed.

The Phuket channel of the Thai government's public relations TV network, NBT, caught up with director Aditya Assarat at the screening last Friday. The reporter was apparently at the disadvantage of never having seen the film, like most people in Thailand, I think.

But Aditya, or Juke as his friends call him, is patient with the guy and he tells the whole story of the film's progress from the festival circuit, to its limited release last year in Bangkok to its winning the national awards that finally got the Thai mainstream media to pay attention.

The report is helpful as it zeroes in the location of the setting of Wonderful Town -- isolated Takua Pa, which Aditya quite frankly says is "boring". Hemmed in by the sea on one side and mountains on the other, Takua Pa is actually in neighboring Phang Nga Province, not Phuket Province as I've been stating all along. And nobody's ever corrected me on that.

The National News Bureau has the NBT report embedded on a page. I had to download the clip and play it on my desktop to get it work. It's in English.

Pop Pictures' blog also covers the Phuket premiere of Wonderful Town, saying it played to a full house on opening night and had a Q&A session afterward that went on for an hour.

Additionally the film's four motorcycle gangsters -- actually local young men from Takua Pa -- were present. "They were on their best behavior and didn’t terrorize anybody," the Pop Pictures blog says. "They did however fall asleep ten minutes into the movie."

Wonderful Town is playing until Thursday (March 18) at SF Cinemas at Central Phuket, and it then heads over to SF Cinemas at Jungceylon in Patong Beach for one more week from March 19 to 25. After that, I understand it will be playing in Pattaya for two weeks.