In a few days, many people will probably celebrate their Halloween, especially those Westerners. In Thailand, I guess, we are kind of accepting all traditions, holidays, and customs from many countries and cultures around the world, even Halloween. For me, it does not mean much to me even though when I was in the States. However, in the past couple years, there have been many horror movies being released around this time of year. And I am always waiting for them, of course, the same for this year.
And this Halloween comes two new movies; one is Thai and the other is from the States. The former’s title is “โปรแกรมหน้าวิญญาณอาฆาต” or “Coming Soon” and the latter’s is “Saw V”, which is a sequel of the most wacky and psychosis movie I have ever seen.
I think if I am not too busy this weekend, I may go to see both of them. Horror film is one of my favorite type of movies. When I come to think about it, there are many Thai horror films that I really enjoy watching such as Shutter (ชัตเตอร์ กดติดวิญญาณ), Dorm (เด็กหอ), Body (บอดี้ ศพ #19), Alone (แฝด), and 4BIA (สี่แพร่ง). Well, if you were Thai, you might notice that all those films were produced by the same company, GTH. I am not bias but, in my opinion, there are really no other horror films from other companies as good as ones from GTH.
Shutter was bought by one of the studios in Hollywood to do the remake version and was released earlier this year by the same title. Furthermore,Dorm (เด็กหอ) was awarded 2 prizes from Berlin International Film Festival in 2007; and also received many film awards in Thailand including Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Actress in 2006.Then I found Body (บอดี้ ศพ #19) very entertaining. I really liked the plot and script, even though the performance was not that good.
Alone (แฝด) and 4BIA (สี่แพร่ง) are enjoyable to watch, especially 4BIA, which comprises of a 4-short horror stories, in which I like the first one–Happiness (เหงา), and the third one–In the Middle (คนกลาง). If you haven’t seen it, please take some time off and watch it, and you will know what I mean.
So, if you still don’t know what to do tomorrow, the Halloween day, and want to get scared, you may want to go to the theater to watch those two new released movies or go to your near by VDO shop and rent one of these above horror movies. Well, may you have a spooky night! Happy Halloween! 31 Oct 2008.
Well, finally my long waiting had ended. ปืนใหญ่จอมสลัด (Queen of Langkasuka) was finally released on Thu 23rd and I just got a chance to see it. In general, I am pleased with the movie; and of course there are always rooms for improvement. I think this quote that I heard last night is the best fit with this movie: It does not matter if you would get 100% result; what matters is you give 100% into the process and effort to reach that result.
As I wrote previously that I reserved the book บุหงาปารี (Bu-nga-bari) from the Book Fair and still haven’t received it yet. So I went to see the movie without any bias that I normally have especially for the movie that based upon books or novels. The theater was packed with people and I felt happy with the movie casts and crews.
The opening was grand with a powerful score and beautiful graphics. I felt like I was watching one of the Hollywood movies. In brief, the story was backed 400 years when many lands in the Southern part of Thailand were still independent and ruled by themselves. As always, power was the main subject during the times where the more you expanded your territory, the more power you would be; and Langkasuka, the most flourishing land, was the target of all pirates and other nations. Then a giant powerful cannon, which was meant to be presented to the Queen of Langkasuka as a gift and being used as a weapon to fight against those invaders, was intercepted by pirates called themselved as “E-Ga Dam” (Black Crows) and sunk into the deep sea.
Then the movie laid out all other characters and smoothly took the audience into the fantasy world of Langkasuka. And one of the major character was a man named “Pari”, who was belong to a sea tribe and had a special sense that he could talk and understand sea animals. Learning an ancient art of Du-Lum was one way of retrieving that cannon. However, everything has two sides–good and bad, dark and light even Du-Lum. Pari had to fought with the dark inside his heart due to the wound from murder of his tribal by those E-Ga Dam pirates.
I, especially, liked to see the mix of cultures in the movie–Thai, Langka, Chinese, Japanese, and even European. I never thought that it would so much of cultural diversity. Sometimes it’s funny but sometimes it did make sense. The computer graphic was also comparatively good. Even though the fight continued, there were still love, sacrifice, excitement, and funny along 2 hours that I sat in the theater. Beside the good production, I really enjoy the score. Oh, at the end of the movie, it was justified to end it that way. It did not leave me with some doubtful matters like many movies did.
By the way, if one thing I could learn from Du Lam is that I have to stop everything and explore my heart before I feel emptiness. Emptiness is everything from the beginning to the end.
I just hope that Thai people will go to see this movie and enjoy as much as I am.
First of all, I did not think that I would have time to go to the Book Fair this year, but finally I did it without any planning. Every year, the environment and atmosphere were exactly the same and most of the big publishers had their booths at the same location. Therefore, it was not difficult to go to my regular publishing companies. This time the MRT was not as crowded as last time, which made me surprised. (By the way, I went there on Saturday afternoon.)
My first destination was Bliss Publishing, where I ended up buying about 11 books; all were horror and mystery books but four of them were romance and literature. Most of them were Japanese novels and of course included in my list were Kindaichi Book #13 and #14. I just loved this series.
Another series that I started to follow was the funny investigative story of Haryakawa’s family. This was was the third book in the series. I just hope that each book would be getting better and better. Some other books I bought were The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. I bought it to study the translation approach for my own improvement.
There were many books I bought from Bliss so I guessed I could not talk about all of them. So I just put some covers here in case you might be interested.
In general, I am a big fan of Win Lyovarin’s books so I will not miss out on visiting his booth. At this event, he released two new books and I bought them both. One was a kind of inspirational book and the other was a outgrowth novel from his research for writing a movie script–ปืนใหญ่จอมสลัด (Queens of Langkasuka). The title of the book was “บุหงาปารี“, which was not yet available so I had to order it and would receive it by end of this month. I am kind of looking forward to reading the book and going to see the movie, which will be released in the theaters this coming Thu Oct 23.
My other favorite publishing company is Typhoon, where this time I bought two of their books. One was by Prabda Yoon called “ดนตรีที่มีน้ำตา”; and another one was about traveling experience in Kyushu. I was really enjoy reading this book of Prabda in which he talked about many musicians and singers. One who had music in his heart would enjoy it like me.
Well, adding this pile of books into my old one, I still don’t know when I will be able to finish them all.
Last weekend I went to see a Japanese movie called “Dive” without any expectation. Before going to the movie, I was kind of weighting if I wanted to see it. But there were not many movies to see on that weekend. So, I decided to go with hope that at least it would be as good as the novel. Yep. This movie was based on the bestselling Japanese novel, Dive by Eto Mori.
When I first read the novel (Thai translated version), I really like it a lot. The novel is completed with four books; each with different main theme. In the movie, the director put all of them together and I found it equally enjoyable to watch. Even more so, the cinematography was really great and beautifully shot. I read it somewhere in the newspaper that the production team used a so called “spidercam” to capture all the dives resulting in such exciting shots.
Personally I think this is also one of the inspiration and warmth movies in this year not only in terms of the movie itself but also all the main actors. I learned later that those three main actors had to be trained mentally and physically for this movie. They learned how to dive from the 10 meter height platform themselves which in return made the movie so real. This is just confirmed the concept “practice make perfect”.
For those of you who haven’t had a chance to go to see the movie, you may want to check out the book instead. It’s a good read.
Book 01 introduces the main characters, Tomoki who has a special undiscovered talent, and Yuichi who is the most talented young diver of the association. With a high goal to the Olympic, they have to pay high prices.
Book 02 introduces another main character, Shibuki who looks down diving into the swimming pool. He has to be able to figure out the purpose of diving. Is it for his grandpa, who is an Olympic diving legend, or for himself?
Book 03 takes you along the road to the Olympic with many obstacles to test their strengths. It’s really not an easy path. One of the most important and hardest decision they have to make.
Book 04 is all about competing to be qualified for the Olympic. Each person–Tomoki, Yuichi, and Shibuki–has to his own challenge to overcome. This is just a starting point of their long journey for the victory.
Nothing much. It’s just an coincidence that today is my BD and I go to see a movie “Cyborg She” (僕の彼女はサイボーグ), in which the story begins with the main actor’s BD event. He is spending time alone on his BD just like me. (Well, don’t take me wrong. I am alright and more than ok to be by myself on my BD this year.) Anyhow, I just take this movie to be some sort of a present for me from someone up there. Thank you very much.
This is one of the romantic movies that I have seen this year even though, at first, it’s a bit weird to see a man falling in love with a cyborg. However, the screen writer does have some mercy by sparing the audience’s feeling and end the story with happiness. This time, Kwak Jae Young, the Korean director who has been successful from his previous movies such My Sassy Girl, The Classic, and Windstruck, is still playing around the matter of “time”. It seems like “time” is already his signature. Yet again, he does it well and beautifully delivers the movie although this time he works with the Japanese team.
Along the way, I think that they will not end up together but then there are some twists that at least surprises me. Later when the movie ends, I have a smile on my face seeing Jiro and the girl (the cyborg girl) happy in love. By the way, both actor and actress are cute together.
I love the song being played during the middle of the movie when the cyborg girl takes Jiro time-traveled back to the past. It’s a very cute song but I still cannot find it on the internet. I will keep looking for it. Well, I think I will deliberately take this movie as my BD present that will remind me for many years to come.
Anyway, I am now leaving you with the theme song from this movie. Enjoy.
