Bangkok Traffic (Love) Story is it

Like Bangkok's streets, it's gridlock at the top of the Thai box-office chart, with GTH's Bangkok Traffic (Love) Story (Rot Fai Faa ... Maha Na Ter) stuck at No. 1 for a third consecutive week. Surprisingly, it tops Michael Jackson's This Is It, which is the No. 1 movie worldwide, except in Thailand.

That's according to this past weekend's box-office chart at movie-website Nangdee.com, which reports earnings of 14.3 million baht for BT(L)S against 5.5 million baht for the Michael Jackson farewell documentary.

Perhaps Thai audiences stayed away from This Is It, fearing big crowds or sold-out shows, or didn't realize it's playing with regular showtimes at most cinemas? Maybe it will come on stronger in its second week, as more hype builds, thanks to the film's US$101-million worldwide haul. And it looks like This Is It will be extended for up the three weeks beyond its planned two-week limited run, though it's unknown whether that will be the case in Thailand.

The Bruce Willis robot thriller Surrogates remained at No. 3 from the week before while the Sahamongkol horror anthology Maha'lai Sayong Kwan (Haunted Universities) dropped from second to fourth.

The Catherine Zeta-Jones romantic comedy The Rebound debuted in fifth place, knocking off the Five Star crime thriller Slice (Cheun).

This coming week has three new releases scheduled: Sahamongkol's girls-with-guns-and-swords spy thriller Suay ... Samurai (Vanquisher), the Cameron Diaz thriller The Box and a limited release for The Brothers Bloom, in addition to the 7th World Film Festival of Bangkok at Paragon Cineplex.