GMM Grammy and its blurry Memory Collection

A year has passed since Thai 101 last looked at the significant offerings of older Thai films on DVD. For part 2 of Rikker's Thai Movie Roundup, he looks at the Memory Collection from GMM Grammy.

For this DVD series, Grammy is mining the back catalog of GMM Pictures, made before it merged its film business with studios Tai Entertainment and Hub-Ho-Hin in 2003 to create GMM Tai Hub or GTH.

So we have two vehicles for the then-teen superstar singer Tata Young, 1998's O-Negative and 1999's Red Bike Story. There's also the early 2003 release, Yuthlert Sippapak's New York-based romantic drama February.

February (Khumphaphan), starring Sopitnapa Dabbaransi and Shahkrit Yamnarm was the Memory Collection's first release in January. O-Negative, also co-starring Shahkrit, followed in February, and Red Bike Story, directed by Euthana Mukdasanit, is the latest release in March.

I noticed these titles in my local Boomerang shop, but I paid them no heed because they don't have English subtitles. And, it turns out they don't even have Thai subtitles. Additionally, the image quality appears to be very poor. Here's what Rikker has to say:

My feelings on this series overall is that it's typical Thai cheap-as-possible production, where they don't appear to either realize or consider that many people do care about things like image and sound quality ... So it smarts a little when they do cheap transfers and charge 199 baht for it.

Read Rikker's whole post, which includes links to huge cover art and big screenshots. He also links to the Thai DVD forum, where there are lots of negative comments.

Prices of these DVDs are coming down quickly. They are probably already in the bargain bins, where they can be had for lower and lower prices the longer they are around.

This could have been a great opportunity for Grammy and GTH to give their early films a classy treatment, but things like actual remastering -- not just a label that says "remastered" -- plus added-value things like English subtitles, behind-the-scenes featurettes and commentary tracks cost money. Money that Grammy ain't going to let go of unless it has to. And, because the quality is so poor and the DVDs lack any meaningful features, I won't be parting with any of my money either. Win-win or lose-lose, depending on how you look at it. End of story.

On to other concerns and other films.