Last year's award-winning romantic comedy, Hormones (Pid Term Yai Huajai Wawun, ปิดเทอมใหญ่ หัวใจว้าวุ่น) has been released on DVD in Taiwan. Correction: But no English subtitles.Directed by Songyos Sugmakanan (Dorm, Fan Chan), GTH's ensemble romance intertwines four stories about young lovers over the summer school holiday.
- A pair of hyper-competitive schoolboys (Charlie Trairat and Michael Sirachuch Chienthaworn) race to win a girl's phone number.
- A sensitive geek (Ratchu Surajaras) makes a play for the campus queen (Chutima Theepanat).
- A teenybopper (Focus Jirakul) is crazy about a Taiwanese pop star (Lu Ting Wei).
- A slacker college guy (Chanthavit Sunasewee) has his faithfulness to his long-time sweetheart tested when he impulsively accompanies a bikini-clad Japanese tourist (former AV star Sora Aoi) to the Full Moon party.
Hormones picked up several awards, including a Jury Prize at last year's Asian Marine Film Festival in Japan, and Focus Jirakul swept Thailand's film awards for best supporting actress, including trophies for the Subhanahongsa, the Bangkok Critics and Kom Chad Luek awards.
The DVD is NTSC and Region 3 encoded. It's available at YesAsia.
(Thanks Logboy!)
Nothing on the YesAsia product description suggests that the DVD has English subtitles. It only lists Traditional Chinese subtitles.
ReplyDeleteI e-mailed YesAsia and they looked into it. Confirmed, no English subtitles. Here's hoping for a Hong Kong release that does have English subtitles.
ReplyDeleteThanks for checking into that Kevin. Too bad! I've amended the post to reflect there's no English subs.
ReplyDeleteI'm back. And I found a site that sold an English subtitled version of the movie. After viewing the movie myself, I suspect it is legit as Golden Screen Cinemas is the company that GMM Tai Hub sold the distribution rights to in Malaysia.
ReplyDeletehttp://sensasian.com/product.php/en/V20019H-D/
Confirm something for me, seeing as you saw the movie theatrical, I suspect with English subtitles. Did the subtitles you read seem to go out of their way to make certain jokes, such as language-specific puns (which this movie certainly had a lot of), have English equivalents? Even if the translation is blatantly incorrect? That's what happened with the subtitles here. I don't mind if the intent is to make sure humor is preserved, but it might support the belief that this is a legitimate release and not a bootleg as DVDs from Malaysia are notorious for.
While my experience with the site was relatively good (fast response to customer inquiries for the most part), based on testimony, it seems other people have had less favorable experiences. And a few products they have are clearly bootlegs (especially their selection of anime), even though I'm pretty certain Hormones DVD is not.
The product was also initially misrepresented on the site, where it was listed as PAL rather than NTSC, which I suspect is really Golden Screen Cinema's fault because the back of the DVD case lists it as NTSC, but it is really PAL and I only got it to work on my computer.
A major annoyance of course, but one that I'm going to have to continue dealing with if I'm going to keep looking toward Asia for movies to watch. What to do about that Japanese movie Departures that I really want to see...I swear this whole Region Coding/NTSC vs PAL thing is a global corporate conspiracy...
I've been meaning to post an update about this. You can also get it from Singapore at MovieXclusive, which I've dealt with in the past and I've met some of the guys involved with it, so I trust them.
ReplyDeleteEnglish subtitles will never be perfect. For culturally specific things, they might totally miss the point. One example I can think of is when band names are mentioned in a movie, like a Thai band like Asanee-Wasan, but instead of directly translating that, the subtitle writer will opt to use an inapproporiate American band name, so Asanee-Wasan becomes Red Hot Chili Peppers. What?
The whole PAL/NTSC thing makes my head hurt. In Thailand, it doesn't matter. TVs and DVD players are equipped to deal with both kinds of encoding.