Cannes 2010: GTH presells Shutter director's solo bow

Banjong Pisanthanakun (บรรจง ปิสัญธนะกูล), half of the duo of directors who made studio GTH's hit horror thrillers Shutter (ชัตเตอร์ กดติดวิญญาณ) and Alone (แฝด), has completed filming his solo feature debut.

The movie is called Knowing Me, Knowing You, and is a travel romance shot in South Korea. It marks a new direction for Banjong, who co-directed the thrillers Shutter and Alone with Parkpoom Wongpoom and helmed the horror-comedy segments of the Phobia and Phobia 2 horror-short anthologies.

Screen Daily's Liz Shackleton is reporting from the Cannes Film Market that Knowing Me, Knowing You had a distribution pre-sale to Queen Film in Indonesia.

The movie comes out at the end of July or early August, says Screen Daily.

Also in the works for studio GTH: a Hindi remake to Alone, the story of a woman haunted by her twin sister, and a Mandarin remake of BTS: Bangkok Traffic (Love) Story, about a single 30-year-old woman's fleeting romance with a skytrain maintenance engineer.

Cannes 2010: What are Uncle Boonmee's chances?

The Cannes Film Festival is over. Except for the awards in the main Palme d'Or competition, which are given out tonight.

According to pundits, a strong contender for the Palme d'Or emerged with Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึก ชาติ, Lung Boonmee Raleuk Chat).

Pundits also say there's no strong winner as there was last year when Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon took the Palme d'Or. Which films will the jury headed by Tim Burton like?

Movieline has a cheeky look at the odds.

The Thai filmmaker ... is a critics’ darling, in the same camp as Hou Hsiao-Hsien. In fact, the more pretentious the critic, the more he or she will usually champion Joe’s films. That aside, this film is by far his most coherent and accessible — though not coherent enough for me to even begin to plot it out successfully. Amid some excellent scenes — Monkey Ghosts with piercing red laser eyes; a catfish who performs cunnilingus on a princess swimming in a creek — the film (kind of) tells the tale of a dying man living in a remote forest who’s visited by a series of ghosts. Weerasethakul probably had Tim Burton at Monkey Ghosts. That mixed with critical adulation is looking like gold.
ODDS: 3 to 2.

If Twitter buzz is anything to go by, then Uncle Boonmee seems like a good bet.

Says Cédric Succivalli as On The Croisette:

And for the record my Palme d'or goes to Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I was flabbergasted by it.

Critical reception is mixed though. Adding to the two earlier roundups of reviews, here's one more from Film Business Asia's Derek Elley:

Compared with many films connected to art projects or installations, Boonmee is relatively accessible, though with Weerasethakul "accessible" is a relative term. For general viewers and the unconverted, Boonmee is fractionally less jejeune and less borderline silly than Tropical Malady and actually more abstruse than his last movie, Syndromes and a Century. It deserves to be seen on screens rather than hung in art galleries but will not convince those outside Weerasethakul's tiny international fan club that he is in any way a major filmmaker, however many prizes he wins at festivals.

What time are the awards handed out? I'll check back later.

(AFP photo by Yahoo! News)

Cannes 2010: Joei hits red carpet for Uncle Boonmee premiere

Apichatpong Weerasethakul hit the red carpet at the Lumière Cinema in Cannes last night for the world premiere of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึก ชาติ, Lung Boonmee Raleuk Chat).

With actress Wallapa Mongolprasert on his arm, Joei (or Joe as he's known in West) cut a dashing figure in a white tuxedo jacket and black trousers. The actress, who stars in Uncle Boonmee was dressed in, a strapless, floor length evening gown. I guess you call it lavender? Anyway, she looked nice too and was obviously thrilled to be there.

Continuing from my earlier round of updates about the film, more reviews and reactions are pouring in, tipping the Palme d'Or competition entry for a possible award on Sunday night.

France 24 reports:

A late-competition dark horse emerged Friday with Thai film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives ... Weerasethakul's new film is, like his previous Cannes entry Tropical Malady (which took home the third-place Jury Prize in 2004), a work of voluptuous imagination and teasing humour. Uncle Boonmee infuses its examination of love, loss and spirituality with strong supernatural currents as well as cheeky, vaguely Lynchian touches of horror and science fiction.

The Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu:

At last, in what has been a rather tepid Competition year at Cannes, a film to inspire: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives ... is a fabulous weave of magic. It’s barely a film; more a floating world. To watch it is to feel many things – balmed, seduced, amused, mystified. It’s to feel that one is encountering a distinctive metaphysics far removed from that on display in most contemporary cinema. Weerasethakul has not only drawn on the themes, landscapes and mood-states he tapped in Blissfully Yours, Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century, films that extended the imaginative and emotional grammar of arthouse cinema over the last decade; he has refined them to create his most accessible and most enchanted film to date.

TimeOut's Geoff Andrew takes it down a notch:

Many sequences have a brooding lyrical beauty, the film’s rhythms are at once elastic and mesmerising, and the narrative features disconcerting shifts that may mystify viewers unfamiliar with his earlier work. But at the same time one does perhaps wonder why so many admirers of Joe’s work are quite so unbridled in their enthusiasm. I myself see no reason to be any more indulgent towards a Buddhist belief in reincarnation than I am towards similar Western superstitions, so my interest in monkey ghosts and talking catfish is constrained by my feelings that such characters are simply implausible, especially when the former – black hairy things with gleaming red eyes – look as if they’ve strayed in from a Star Wars picture.

The talking catfish has Digital Spy's Simon Reynolds in a mood. He uses words like "beguiling, frequently baffling and frustrating", "slow-moving and lethargic" and "challenging watch".

Meanwhile, there is negative press for Thailand, from statements made by the director during the press conference, in which he slammed the Thai government's censorship of films and reflected on the deadly political violence of the past week in Bangkok. AFP quotes him as saying: "Thailand is a violent country. It's controlled by a group of mafia."

Reuters has more, with Apichatpong reflecting on the unpredictability of the situation and the fact He said:

I hope for the best. Personally I think this kind of thing was bound to happen because of the gap between the poor and underprivileged and the rich. Our governments, present and past have been such a mess."

There's also a round-up at Awards Daily.

(Reuters photo via Yahoo! News)

Cannes 2010: Apichatpong makes it

Look who turned up at the Cannes Film Festival.

After worried speculation earlier in the week that he wouldn't be able to travel to France because his passport was trapped in a closed British Embassy and surrounded by red-shirt political protesters, Apichatpong Weerasethakul made it to Cannes to promote his film in the Palme d'Or competition, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึก ชาติ, Lung Boonmee Raleuk Chat)

He appears relaxed and happy in an afternoon photocall. Joining him were actress Wallapa Mongkolprasert, producers Michael Weber, Keith Griffith, Simon Field, Charles de Meaux and Luis Minarro.

There was a press screening on Friday morning and the official premiere is on Friday night at the Lumière Cinema.

Reviews are starting to trickle in. Here's one from Screen Daily chief film critic Mark Adams, who writes:

The film is a beautifully assembled affair, with certain scenes staged with painterly composure, and also increasingly moving as the subtle story develops. Apichatpong Weerasethakul is not afraid of adding in moments of surreal humour – often laugh-out-loud moments for that – which helps the pacing of the film.

On Facebook and in the media, Uncle Boonmee is gaining buzz as a strong contender for the top Palme d’Or prize when the awards are announced on Sunday.

France 24 has an English-language video report from Eve Jackson, who say: "Only in Cannes could a director whose name is completely unpronouncable be the director with most of the buzz."

It's not that hard: Aphicha-tpong Wi-ra-setha-kun.

I will probably update this entry throughout the evening and into the early hours as I find more material.

Update 1: Sight & Sound tweets: Uncle Boonmee a gorgeous, funny and mysterious meditation on how death is received by a shaman in a jungle —NJ."

Update 2: Artforum has Apichatpong's thoughts on Phantoms of Nabua (at BFI Southbank London until July 3) and the political unrest in Thailand. There will be "Apichatpong Weerasethakul in Conversation" on Tuesday, May 25, at the BFI Southbank. So he gets to go to the UK too!

Update 3: Matthew Noller writes on Slant: "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is not just the best film of the festival; it makes everything else in competition—even the good stuff—look slapdash, lazy, hollow." Earlier he tweeted: "The more I think about it, the more convinced I am UNCLE BOONMEE is a masterpiece. Really hoping to see it again tomorrow." And earlier it was: "Uncle Boonmee (Weerasethakul A): Holy. Fucking. Shit. Will need another viewing (or several) to fully grasp, but: Holy. Fucking. Shit."

Update 4: IndieWire's Eric Kohn:

Weerasethakul’s titular character is a middle-aged man living in the forest and dying from an illness. One evening, during a visit from his nephew, Boonmee also gets met by the ghost of his long-dead wife and missing son, that aforementioned monkey man. They discuss the sense of displacement that death brings them, marrying the strange tone to seriously lyrical observations of mortality. But Weerasethakul doesn’t take the scene any more seriously than we do: Another living person joins the table and takes in the eclectic group, concluding, "I feel like I’m the strange one here."

The magic of Uncle Boonmee is that it makes all viewers feel like the strange ones.

Update 5: PictureHouse tweets: "Uncle Boonmee is exquisite, odd, fairytale on death/life with man-monkies, ghosts and was that catfish sex?"

Update 6: Explosive stuff in the Cannes press conference with Apichatpong:

I almost couldn’t come here because my passport was in the city centre and it was too dangerous to go to get it, so I had a special passport issued. Before leaving I could see the smoke coming up the streets. I had the impression of being in a film; it’s very sad. It is the most extreme and violent situation we have had in our history. I think that it had to happen; there is such a gap between the rich and the poor. I hope that these events will end up by bringing the country together. But the worst thing is, you cannot make a film about it because it would be forbidden by the censorship. They block any film that “threatens national security” but they can put just about anything under this heading.

Update 7: A video interview at Cannes (12:17).

Update 8: Wildgrounds rounds up more reviews, including one from the Onion AV Club.

Update 9: Mubi (formerly The Auteurs) has another roundup. It links to AV Club critic Mike D'Angelo, who as Gemko tweets: "Guys, I'm gonna need some time (and a 2nd viewing) to decide whether UNCLE BOONMEE is just sort of awesome or totally mindblowingly awesome." And then: "This solidifies [Joe] as the greatest director in the world right now" -- Robert Koehler (who thankfully doesn't know what I look like)."

Update 10: Kong Rithdee, posting on Facebook through a friend because the Bangkok Post's blogs are apparently down, says in part: "Round the last corner of Cannes Film Festival, or in other words, after nine days of crap, we saw the film of the festival: Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. My friends, finally something that opens our eyes and makes us believe in cinema (again)."

(Reuters photo via Yahoo! News)

3 comedy yarns in Sam Yan

The first project from RS Promotion's new film-production shingle Film R Us is a comedy collaboration by three directors: Yuthlert Sippapak, Ping Lumprapleung and Jaroenporn “Kotee Aramboy” Onlamai.

Sam Yan (สามย่าน) is one of at least six projects the busy and prolific filmmaker Yuthlert has going like spinning plates on poles. Comedian Ping has previously directed Dreamaholic and Loveaholic and the ubiquitous comic Kohtee previously helmed his own picture, the 2008 horror comedy Headless Family.

Opened yesterday, the three stories of Sam Yan, take place the Sam Yan neighborhood of Bangkok.

One has comedian Kom Chuanchuen as a bus driver who finds a dead body on his coach and tries to dispose of it. Another is about two hapless thieves (Kiatisak Udomnak and Thongphoom Siripipat) on the run from a hitman after a failed robbery.

And the third has Kotee has a director making a film with a famous but troubled actor, portrayed by Sompong Kunaprathom, better known as Eed from the Ponglang Sa-on folk-music-and-comedy troupe. His bandmates Lulu and Lala are there for support.

Other supporting actors include Adirek "Uncle" Wattleela, again playing a policeman as he's done in many movies, but this time, sadly, he's a solo act.

"Giftza" Piya Pongkulapa also stars, following her Girly Berry bandmate Gybzy into the film world.

The trailer is at YouTube and it's embedded below.

Power Kids, Raging Phoenix in New York Asian Film Festival

Thai action is back at the New York Asian Film Festival, with pint-sized warriors dishing up big servings of elbow blows and flying double knee drops in Power Kids and Raging Phoenix.

In a press release, Grady Hendrix and the Subway Cinema crew describe Power Kids thusly:

Do you like to see children thrown face-first through plate glass windows? We do! Johnny Nguyen (The Rebel) plays a terrorist who takes over a hospital. The only people who can stop him? A team of tykes with killer Muay Thai skills. Like a Hong Kong movie from 1988, it's totally reckless, the action is breathless and child labor laws are completely ignored.

Presented as part of the Midnights @ IFC line-up, Power Kids (5 หัวใจฮีโร่, Haa Huajai Heroes), is directed by Krissanapong Rachata with action supervision by Panna Rittikrai. It features young fighters Nantawooti Boonrapsap and "Kat" Sasisa Jindamanee along with young comedian Paytaai Wongkumlao (son of Mum Jokmok) and Narawan Techaratanaprasert.

On to Raging Phoenix:

Jeeja Yanin, Thailand's only female action star, burst onto the scene with Chocolate and now she's back in this flick where she learns how to combine Muay Thai beatdowns with sick B-boy moves. Truly jaw-dropping, it's full of high impact kicks, lethal breakdancing and the discovery that the greatest martial art of all is "Drunken Muay Thai." Come drunk!

It's the New York premiere for Jeeja/Jija's sophomore action effort. Raging Phoenix (จีจ้า ดื้อสวยดุ, Jija Deu Suay Du) earlier premiered alongside Power Kids at the inaugural ActionFest.

Other highlights at NYAFF include the Star Asia Awards, which will be given out to Chinese actor Huang Bo, whose latest Crazy Racer will be shown; Sim Yam with Echoes of the Rainbow, Storm Warriors and Bodyguards & Assassins; and a lifetime achievement award for Sammo Hung, with two of his classics, Kung Fu Chefs and possibly the greatest Vietnam war movie ever made, Eastern Condors.

The opening film is IP MAN 2 featuring a great fight scene with Donnie Yen and Sammo, but both are SEVERELY BEATEN BY AN OBNOXIOUS YELLING BRITISH BOXER NAMED TWISTER. Simon Yam reprises his role from the first Ip Man, which is also showing. You'll get why I'm shouting when you see the movie.

The fest runs from June 25 to July 8 at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, July 1 to 4 at the Japan Society and midnights on June 25-26 and July 2-3 at the IFC Center.

The Siam Theatre is burned

With Wednesday's crackdown on the red-shirt political protest and the subsequent deaths, mayhem and arson that took place afterward, I'm saddened by the loss of the Siam Theatre in Siam Square. But I am also happy to report that the sister cinemas, the Lido and the crown jewel of Siam Square, the Scala, are apparently unharmed, according to man-on-the-scene Richard Barrow.

The Siam, a 44-year-old 800-seat single-screen cinema of the Apex chain, was torched by arsonists in fires that erupted around Bangkok after an army crackdown forced the collapse of the red-shirt anti-government protests. For more than a month, the red-shirts had occupied central Bangkok's Rajprasong intersection and shut down the area's shopping malls and hotels.

The burning down of the old movie theater is insignificant in comparison to the loss of life -- the Erawan Emergency Medical Center reported seven killed and 81 injured on May 19, with a total of 52 deaths and 399 injured in clashes between protesters and troops since May 14.

And as BobThailand pointed out on Twitter, building new shopping malls and movie theaters will be much easier than trying to rebuild Thai society. There are wide divisions that became even greater with Wednesday's violence.

But the Siam Theatre contributed greatly to the culture of Bangkok movie-going and will be missed. Along with the Lido and the Scala, the Siam played an eclectic mix of first-run Hollywood movies as well as independent features that couldn't be found anywhere else. The Siam was a particularly good place to catch the latest hit movie from Japan, as well as Korean, Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese movies. I especially appreciate the Apex cinemas for running "foreign language" movies with the original soundtrack and English and Thai subtitles.

So many good memories. I think the last movie I saw at the Siam was Bodyguards and Assassins -- Hong Kong martial-arts and drama. A great memory of a grand theater.

Also lost is the SF World multiplex at the CentralWorld shopping center, which was also torched by arsonists in Wednesday's mayhem. Film Business Asia talked to SF Cinema City boss Suvannee Chinchiewchan about what it means for Thailand's film industry and the Bangkok International Film Fetival.

Bangkok's biggest multiplex with 15 screens, the loss of the SFW will be inconvenient, but it can be rebuilt.

However, the Siam is an irreplaceable loss. Cinemas like that one are no longer built.

More photos and thoughts about the Siam are at the Southeast Asian Movie Theater Project.

Update: The Nation says farewell to "our beloved Siam Theatre" and notes the area was "up for demolition next year ... according to the master plan ... to be replaced by a modern shopping complex."

Update 2: Film critic Kong Rithdee comes to bury the Siam in the obituary in the Bangkok Post, remembering the theater for its "cavernous foyer, manual ticketing, dank concession stand and heavy, possibly unwashed curtains guarded by yellow-jacketed ushers as ancient as the place itself."

(Cross-published at Bangkok Cinema Scene; photo cross-published at the Wikimedia Commons)

Cannes 2010: Derek Elley reviews Ong-Bak 3

Asian-film expert Derek Elley, among the critics told by Variety bosses to take their way or the highway, has recently started his new gig: Chief movie reviewer at Film Business Asia, a fledgling enterprise built by ex-Variety Asia honcho Patrick Frater with Stephen Cremin and Gurjeet Chima. The whole crew is at Cannes, covering the Asian cinema scene like it's never been covered before.

Elley already has a bunch of reviews posted at FilmBiz.Asia. For his latest, he caught a market screening of Ong-Bak 3 (องค์บาก 3), Tony Jaa's much-anticipated follow-up to the cliff-hanger ending of Ong-Bak 2. Here's a bit of what Elley has to say:

Following directly on from the ending of Ong-Bak 2, Ong-Bak 3 is more of an extended finale than a real movie in its own right. (Both 97-minute films could easily be cut together into a single 2 1/2-hour picture.) More than half of Ong-Bak 3 is taken up simply with our hero's gruelling physical torture and agonisingly slow recovery - shown with a blend of masochism and narcissism extreme even by actor Tony Jaa's standards.

Read the rest. It's a to-the-point assessment.

Cannes 2010: Van Damme promotes Muay Thai bout, takes beating over Eagle Path

The Muscles from Brussels, Jean-Claude Van Damme, is at the Cannes Film Festival, promoting his latest film, The Eagle Path, as well as his upcoming kickboxing match with Somluck Kamsing and talking about his reality-TV series.

The boxing match, originally announced back in January, will see JCVD get in the ring with Somluck, Thailand's first Olympic gold medalist. The fight is set for October, in either Las Vegas or Dallas.

Somluck won the gold in the 1996 Summer Olympics in the men's featherweight category. Since then, he has appeared in movies and even made a pop album. He co-starred in Panna Rittikrai's Born to Fight, in which a village of national athletes from various sports take on a Burmese druglord's army. Somluck also appeared in Jet Li's Fearless in a scene that was originally omitted from the international release but restored for the director's cut. And he's in Soi Cowboy, playing a gangster.

He's also run a barbecue restaurant that left him with "only burnt ribs", The Nation's Soopsip gossip column says today.

According the Somluck, there'll be no elbows thrown.

“They don’t want [Van Damme's] face to get bruised,” he told Siam Sports, according to Soopsip.

In Cannes, Van Damme appeared at the Marché du Film to push The Eagle Path, an action drama he filmed a year or more ago in Bangkok. The story is set in a seedy non-descript east Asian city that isn't Bangkok. Van Damme plays a taxi driver haunted by his past.

The Wrap has a look at what happened at the Cannes Film Market screening, which had "programmers and buyers scratching their heads". Anyone who wanted to leave before it was over couldn't, because Van Damme blocked the doors. Pundits say Van Damme has wasted the goodwill and critical acclaim he built up with his self-deprecating action drama JCVD.

(Photo via Canoe)

Cannes 2010: Will Apichatpong be there?

By now Apichatpong Weerasethakul's new feature Uncle Boonmee Who Can Remember His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ, Lung Boonmee Raleuk Chat) has had its first screening in Cannes.

It was actually an invitation-only, no-press-allowed market screening. Another is set for Thursday morning. The press gets their first look on Thursday night at 7 and 10. There's one for the public at noon at the Lumière and then the official premiere is on Friday night at 10.30.

Unfortunately, it appears Apichatpong likely won't be in attendance.

The Nation's Soopsip column today says the filmmaker had also hoped to visit England after attending the Cannes Film Festival. His passport is at the British Embassy in Bangkok, which is closed because of the deadly violence that has broken out between the red-shirt political protesters and the Thai military.

The embassy is right on the edge of the war zone. Bullets, grenades and Molotov cocktails are flying and smoke from burning tires fills the air.

Meanwhile, there's a poster for Uncle Boonmee to feast your eyes on. It's drawn by an artist named Phim Umari. I hope to someday see the poster (and the film) in the wild, up close and huge.

Update: A bit more coverage here. Says Apichatpong about his main character: "I was thinking he must be a masochist because he always reborn in the northeast, where it’s arid and politically unstable."

Update 2: Jonathan Landreth interviews Apichatpong for The Hollywood Reporter. It's a wide-ranging piece, addressing the film, Bangkok's troubles, the media crackdown, film funding and his personal life.