Bangkok Dangerous gets Hollywood treatment

According to this news report, Nicolas Cage will star in the Hollywood remake of the Pang Bros' Bangkok Dangerous. Umm, but the protagonist won't be a mute assassin. It'll be a talking Nicolas Cage.

Oxide and Danny Pang will direct the remake and are to start shooting in Bangkok in August, the AP report says, citing the South China Morning Post.

The brothers will inject new elements into the remake and may also cast Thai, South Korean and Hong Kong actors, Oxide Pang was quoted as saying at the Cannes Film Festival.

Wonder where this fits in with the other projects mentioned? Ah, who knows?

Twitch, meanwhile, has glimpses at solo projects, Danny Pang's Diary and Oxide's Forest of Death.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

Another kids' movie from Prachya

Twitch has another glimpse at an upcoming Thai film: Power Kids, by Prachya Pinkaew, and starring Narawan Techaratanaprasert, among other youngsters.

It's a sort-of Spy Kids-type adventure and is in addition to Chocolate.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

Some upcoming Thai films that might not suck so bad

Twitch has some glimpses of promotional images from Cannes for three Thai films - Chocolate, Tabunfire and 13.

You'll have to go there to look at them, and read the reader comments while you're there.

Their description of Chocolate is a hell of a lot cooler than it sounded when the movie was first described in another post about Tony Jaa directing Ong Bak 2. Then, it was described as a children's movie. But now, it's about about kick-ass kid in a martial-arts revenge flick that they are comparing to Danny the Dog.

Tabunfire stars Dan Chupong, from Born to Fight (and, supposedly the upcoming Nonzee Nimibutr film, Queens of Pattani), and Panna Rittikrai, the martial-arts choreographer on Ong Bak, Tom Yum Goong, The Bodyguard, director of Born to Fight and director of dozens of Thai B-movie action movies. It marks his return to the screen for the first time in quite some time. It involves buffalo rustlers, black magic and the menstrual blood of a virgin.

13 is a thriller starring Krissada Terrence of Bangkok Loco, and looks to be quite a bit different than that bit of candy-colored mayhem.

(Cross-poublished at Rotten Tomatoes)

Peter Chan talks Eye sequel, while Pangs eye wuxia

Peter Chan was back in Bangkok recently to promote his Perhaps Love and talk about other upcoming projects, among them another sequel to The Eye, an Asian horror franchise that he's produced and is directed by the Pang Brothers. The first film is being remade by Hollywood.

He told The Nation's Soopsip column that the title of the sequel will either be The Eye 3 or The Eye 11 (if you remember, the third Eye movie was variously called Eye 10 or Eye Infinity) and shooting could begin before the end of this year.

Oxide Pang denies everything. Danny and Oxide, like Peter Chan, are Hong Kong directors, but they have worked extensively in Thailand.

"We don't have any plans to do a sequel of The Eye right now," Oxide was quoted as saying by Soopsip.

However they are interested in making a wuxia film.

"We want to make a sword movie," Oxide said. "It can be either a Chinese-Thai sword movie or a Thai sword movie."

Soopsip then goes on to wonder about the future of the Tony Jaa sword flick, Daab Atamas, which is on hold while Tony makes Ong-Bak 2 and director Prachya Pinkaew is busy with other projects.

If the Pang Bros make their sword flick first, will Tony Jaa's get made? Who knows? Heck, why can't they both get made. Even better, how about the Pangs direct Tony Jaa? But that's just me musing. It's all conjecture at this point.

The Pangs, meanwhile, have had their latest film, Re-Cycle, showing at Cannes. It's a Hong Kong/Thai co-production. A review calls it "imaginative but exhausting".

Back to Peter Chan. Besides a possible Eye sequel, he also has martial arts on his mind. Soopsip says he's planning to remake the 1973 Shaw Bros epic, Blood Brothers, with shooting to start in September.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

Weinsteins have a new DVD label and a new name for Tom Yum Goong

Twitch and Kaiju Shakedown are reporting the launch of a new martial arts boutique DVD label by The Weinstein Company and Quentin Tarantino. It'll be called Dragon Dynasty and will feature the upcoming Ong-Bak 2 and something called The Protector, the new U.S. title for Tom Yum Goong.

Born to Fight will also get a Dragon Dynasty release (though it'll be hard to beat the Madman version I just picked up), as well as Sha Po Lang (SPL) (huh, the HK two-disc version is already excellent), Seven Swords and Dragon Squad. Other titles on the label will include 43 movies from Hong Kong's Fortune Star. Like Police Story? Maybe some Sammo Hung stuff as well? Anyway, I have it already.

There's some John Woo stuff: The Killer, Hardboiled, Bullet in the Head and A Better Tomorrow.

And some Jet Li action, including Fist of Legend and Tai Chi Master.

Oh, and now we see what they're doing with the Shaw Brothers titles they optioned, including Lau Kar Leung's 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Eight Diagram Pole Fighter and Heroes of the East, all starring Gordon Liu, Martial Arts of Shaolin, with Lau Kar Leung directing Jet Li, and one of Shaw's best movies of all, King Hu's Come Drink With Me, starring Cheng Pei-pei. And don't forget King Boxer, the movie that started the kung-fu craze in America back in the '70s.

"Each Dragon Dynasty DVD will possess a unique and carefully crafted identity, and will include many groundbreaking, informative and exclusive special bonus features such as rare behind-the- scenes footage, deleted scenes, out-takes, and specially commissioned documentaries and interviews featuring cast members, filmmakers and celebrity enthusiasts of Asian film," says somebody.

I'd be pretty excited if I didn't already own a lot of the titles already and wasn't wise to the tricks that the Weinsteins pull with Asian releases, like re-editing them, dubbing them and re-scoring them.

However, if they do anything with the Shaw Brothers titles, I hope they eliminate the ambient bird noises that Celestial added to their releases. Tweet.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

Wisit's third project: The Unseeable

More news has come forth about Wisit Sasanatieng's third film. It's called The Unseeable, and will be produced by Five Star Production.

ThaiCinema.org, Kung Fu Cult Cinema and Twitch all have details about the film, which were announced over the weekend in Cannes.

It'll be a horror film and will have a script by one of the team from Art of the Devil 2, leaving Wisit to pay sole attention to the visual aspects. It'll be the first time Wisit has directed a film he hasn't had a hand in writing.

ThaiCinema offers a synopsis:

Flashback to the year of 1946, a young pregnant rural girl enters the city of Bangkok to find her lost husband. She rents a boarding house where she meets several strange incidents, especially the widow who is the owner of the house. It has been rumoured that she still sleeps with her dead husband. In seeking of her husband, the desperate girl finds the connection between the widow's husband and her. In the discovery of the truth, she has to encounter something unseeable.

The reports cite Screen Daily, which says the budget is US$2 million, or about 80 million baht. Shooting has already been started and we can look forward to a release around October.

For my money, it's a winning combination -- Wisit's visual style and the script by whoever it is from Art of the Devil 2, a film I didn't pay much attention to when it came out but has since gone on to win awards and gain attention in the West. It's playing at the New York Asian Film Festival.

Meanwhile, Wisit has the Thai historical epic Nam Prix, to be co-produced by Luc Besson's EuropaCorp and Five Star Production and Armful, the martial-arts picture planned by Singapore's One Ton Cinema. But both Nam Prix and Armful are slow to get off the ground, because international funding is involved.

So The Unseeable will keep Wisit's visual style in front of everyone's eyes for the time being.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

Thai horror roundup

I will continue to underestimate the power of horror films and the interest people have in them, and it will be my downfall.

Ghost of Mae Nak has been picked up by Tartan for sale in the UK and US.

This is just part of a roundup of Thai horror film news that Kung Fu Cult Cinema has been reporting in recent days.

Twitch also has a review of Ghost of Mae Nak.

A Thai film, directed by British writer-director Mark Duffield, Ghost of Mae Nak is about a young couple in Bangkok who are haunted by the legendary ghost, most famously depicted in Nang Nak by Nonzee Nimibutr and in nearly two dozen other Thai films over the years. Nak is a woman who died in childbirth while her husband was off fighting a war. He returns home to his loving wife and bouncing baby boy and senses nothing wrong at first, but then the reality of the situation becomes clear. To drive out the spirits, a revered Buddhist monk knocked a hole in the forehead of Nak's corpse and kept the relic as a talisman.

KFC Cinema also has news about Alone and Body, a couple of upcoming horror flicks from GMM Tai Hub. The website of Thai film studio GTH (Shutter, Dorm) has updated with a couple of posters and synopses for a couple of their upcoming films alone (from the same director of Shutter) and Body. Both are set for late 2006/early 2007 releases.

The story of a long-lost Siamese twin, Alone is directed by the Shutter duo, Parkpoom Wongpoom and Banjong Pisanthanakun and stars Marsha Watanapanich.

Then there's Body, which somehow involves a murderer trying to dispose of a body by cutting it up with a surgical scalpel and flushing it down the toilet. This resembles an actual case here in Thailand a few years ago, when a prominent doctor was convicted and sentenced to death for dismembering his wife, who was also a physician. In Body, directed by Paween Purijitpanya, a man sees the crime happening in his dreams and comes to believe that the dead woman is sending him messages that speak of revenge: "I am still here."

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

In memoriam: Cherd Songsri

Thai director, screenwriter and producer Cherd Songsri passed away on May 20, 2006 in Ramathibodi Hospital in Bangkok. He had battled cancer for the past four years.

Both The Nation and the Bangkok Post had obituaries. MovieSeer has a profile and interview done in 2001, when he made his last film, Behind the Painting.

He got his start carving shadow puppets from animal skins. He was also a schoolteacher and a magazine editor, as well as a writer of television and radio shows. His first picture was called Norah. It was made in 1966 on 16mm, and was one of the biggest hits of the 16mm era in Thailand.

Cherd was a staunchly independent director. When it's said that he was a director, screenwriter and producer, it really means it -- he did all those tasks on all his pictures. So I guess that makes him the godfather of the Thai indie film movement.

He was also the first Thai director to make movies with international audiences in mind. He got the idea to make films about his idealized vision of Thai culture from the olden days after he went to film school at UCLA and thought it would be great to show old Siam to the world.

Among his films was Plae Chow (The Old Scar), from 1977, which is a fondly remembered classic tale of doomed lovers in rural Thailand. It won a prize at the Three Continents Festival at Nantes, France in 1981.

I'd have to see it again, but I think Adirek "Uncle" Watleela managed to get Cherd on set for a brief appearance in last year's Ghost Variety, in which just about every Thai director or producer made an appearance.

He's written a book about his cancer fight, A Diary of Death.

Cherd is said to have been elusive about his age, saying he stopped counting birthdays when he was 28. But The Nation said he was 75.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

Thai Night at Cannes

Rotten Tomatoes' Jen Yamato and the rest of her crew continue their coverage of the Cannes Film Festival, and the parties. They hit Thai night!

Soon enough it was time to head to another party, this time to the Bangkok Film Festival party held at the Carlton. Thai appetizers, oodles of noodles, and an open bar: cool. Bottles of Thai Coca-Cola? Super cool! Oh yeah, and [Princess Ubol Rattana] was in attendance to greet the revelers and endorse her nation's cinema.

Of course, the 100,000 euro event was set up to announce the dates for the Bangkok International Film Festival. Mark your calendars. It will be held January 26 to February 5, 2007.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)

More from Criticine

In an earlier post about Criticine, I missed another Thai-related article: An interview with Suparp Rimtheparthip and Thida Plitpholkarnpim, the editors of Bioscope magazine, a Thai-language cinema magazine that's been a supporter of the indie film movement in Thailand.

They have some things to say, like this:

The problem with Thailand is that it does not see film as part of culture. We think that culture is khon traditional dancing or prohibiting spaghetti straps. The government is trying, but when they do, they only view it in terms of sustainable economics. The film festival is therefore organized by the Tourism Authority of Thailand. Making use of Thailand as a film location for foreigners is seen only in financial dimensions, in terms of how much money it will rake in. We never understand how film is culture.

(Cross-published at Rotten Tomatoes)