Beautiful BoxerThe film has won awards at film festivals around the world.
Based on true story.
Beautiful Boxer, a film based on famed transsexual kickboxer Nong Toom, has been a huge success in its native Thailand and is now set to be released in the UK. Beautiful Boxer tells a story so odd it has to be true. Parinya Charoenphol (also Kiatbusaba) was born a poor nomad who spent much of his early life in a monastery. Realizing he had a flair for kickboxing, he became a master at Muay Thai, the most traditional and revered form of the ancient martial art. Feared by his opponents for his swooping kicks and devastating elbow blows, he became one of Thailand's best-known boxers - and its most controversial.
For Charoenphol, or Nong Toom as he became known, was a transsexual who wore make-up in the ring and dreamed of saving enough money for a sex change operation. "For me, Nong Toom is like a walking paradox," says Ekachai Uekrongtham, the Thai-born director of Beautiful Boxer. "He set out to master something that is totally masculine in order to become totally feminine." Nong Toom would eventually realise his dream, having gender reassignment surgery in 1999 at the age of 17. Forbidden to return to the ring - Thai women are not allowed to kickbox professionally - she now lives as an actress and model in Bangkok.
Below are pictures of real-life Parinya or Nong Toom.
Movie Trailer --->
Watch the entire movie online now
Tom Yum GoongHaving been talk of the town and gained great attention at the moment, “Tom-Yum-Goong”, the Thai action film from the same production team of “Ong-Bak” hopes to recreate the great phenomenon again, and it must be greater success at this time. Especially, this is the second film in life of Tony Jaa, whose famous slogan is “No sling, no stunt man, and definitely no CG”
Elephant, Ancient Thai Boxing and Tony Jaa”, is the first three ingredients that will be officially introduced in TYG These three elements are the most significant parts in “Tom-Yum-Goong”, the Thai finest menu that is said to be worth 300 million baths. In “Ong-Bak”, Prachya Pinkaew communicates to people worldwide to truly understand the culture, believe, and way of Buddhism practice of the Thais. He makes clear to the world that the head of Buddha statue is not a decoration, but the highest faith in Buddhism for Thai people.
Movie Trailer---->
Ong-Bak
On August 30, 2005, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior on DVD in an ass-kicking special edition DVD. In addition to widescreen presentation of the film itself, the disc will include a music video featuring Tony Jaa, the making of the music video, The 8 Movements of Muay Thai, behind-the-scenes stunt footage, two live Tony Jaa performances at a French screening and an NBA game, a promotional video featuring Wu-Tang Clan member RZA, the theatrical trailer featuring RZA, and a handful of additional trailers. The DVD also offers audio presentation of the film with the original Thai-language track and a dubbed EnglishSpanish-language subtitles for the hearing impaired. The disc will release with a MSRP of $27.98.
Movie Trailer---->
The Overture (Hoam Rong)
This fascinating film, inspired by the life of legendary Thai musician Luang Pradith Phairao, offers interesting twists on the conventional biopic. Sorn (Anuchit Sapanpong), raised in a family of musicians, displays early natural talent and is being groomed to carry on the family tradition. Sorn's instrument is the ranard-ek, the traditional Thai wooden xylophone, played with fluid wrist movements meant to evoke the natural sounds of wind, water and leaves.
The unique and lovely sounds of this instrument form the soul of this film, which follows Sorn's quest to become both a great musician and an inspiration to his people.
Using both meticulous period detail and thrilling musical sequences, Wichailak departs from the conventions of the biopic by making the music itself central to his film. He devotes long sequences to the performances, allowing us to fully appreciate the beauty and intricacies of Thai music. Sorn's life is constructed as a parallel chronology---from his rebellious, arrogant youth to his later years as a foil to the military government's attempts to eradicate "outdated" traditional Thai culture in the '40s and '50s.
The Overture. Watch this clip and you will agree with me that Thai music is very beautiful!!! ---->
Watch the entire movie online now
My Girl
A collaboration of six young film students, My Girl is a nostalgic look at life in a small Thai town during the 1970's when life was simple and the girl next door was your best friend.
Girls will be girls, and boys will be… well, boys. Jaeb (Chawin Chitsomboon) has just received a wedding invitation from his best childhood friend Noinah, after not hearing from her for more than 15 years. She was his one true friend, he remembers, "my first love – only I didn’t recognize it at the time." Driving back to his small Thai hometown, he reminisces about the joys of his childhood. Girls gracefully mastering their rubber string jumping skills, while boys voraciously compete in bike-racing or their rubber band flipping games. The girls would pretend to bake cupcakes while the boys pretend to be kung-fu fighters.
Movie Trailer---->
I can't help adding another clip here. It's too cute!!!
A must-watch Kung-Fu fighting.---->
Baytong Tum, a monk in the northeast of Thailand, must leave for Baytong, a remote town in the south of Thailand to take care of his 5 year old niece Maria after his sister dies in a terrorist explosion.
Tum (Puwarit Poompuang) is a monk who has been living a life of seclusion and meditation for most of his 27 years on the planet. His day consists of eating, praying, and learning Buddhist philosophy, so when his sister is killed in a terrorist explosion on a train, the call to ditch the temple and come look after his niece is one that looks certain to change his life forever. And his wardrobe. Once in the city, Tum has to learn everything from scratch. Living above his sister's hair salon, which is filled to the roof with shrieking women who are only interested in one thing, the solemn new man of the house is confronted with a world he knows nothing about. Cell phones, drinking, this strange hard feeling between his legs, the fact that you don't need a driver's license to ride a bike... and then there's how to deal with a small child who wants to hug him, something a Buddhist priest never does.
But, for a western audience, it's the cultural side of the equation that really makes Baytong worth watching. It's amazing to watch a people from the other side of the world, with such a rich history and an incredible homeland, essentially imitating our own culture in their pursuit of sex, gadgets, good times and ego. There were several times during Baytong that I actually felt lost along with Tum, only to realize that what I was seeing on the screen was what I would be seeing when Ieft the theater, right outside.
At a time when the world is plunging headlong into war for no other reason than profit and ego, perhaps it takes a Buddhist priest from the other side of the planet to show us exactly what we have become. Tum does exactly that, and filmmaker Nonzee Minibutr and screenwriter Siripak Paoboonkerd can be thanked and applauded for giving life to him.
Movie Trailer---->
Crying TigersCrying Tigers will be the first Thai documentary to ever be shown in theatres, and it almost didn't get released.
The title is telling; Sua Rong Hai literally means "crying tigers" (its namesake also means a dish of Isan-style grilled beef). In this tragi-comic doc, four Northeastern migrants to Bangkok battle their fates like fierce tigers, only to weep their hearts out when despair and homesickness strike. Likewise, despair visited Santi, the director, when he realized that the path to making a small, unusual film like this was strewn with complications he hardly believed could ever be surmounted.
I-San Special
A rickety bus leaves Bangkok for an overnight journey to a small town in northeastern Thailand (Isan), carrying a group of seemingly ordinary passengers. But once the journey gets underway the passengers, as if possessed, begin enacting a real Thai soap opera, speaking to each other with borrowed voices (dubbed by the actual soap stars). A young woman becomes Phenprapah, a once-wealthy model conned by her sleazy landlord into retrieving an incriminating tape recording from a hotel owner. However, when the bus comes to a stop to refuel or to repair a flat tire‹the passengers step out of the story and regain their own voices, revealing a harsh reality that shares some surprising elements with the "fictional" melodrama. Blurring the border between fiction and reality in ways reminiscent of Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty, I-San Special showcases Thailand's new cinematic creative energy in a wildly imaginative and enjoyable journey. In Thai with English subtitles.
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