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16 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Mak and Nak are an unbearably clean-cut young couple, about to be married, who are looking for their first house. They seem to find a perfect fit in a hundred-year-old starter home; it needs a little work, but the price is right. They fix it up and move in, unaware that their every move is being watched by a couple of thieves who are out to rob them when the time is right.
Immediately weird shit starts to happen. Mak hears a ghostly female voice beckoning him from inside the house, and the real estate agent who sold them the joint dies in a horrible subway accident. Mak sees a spectral female figure inside the house; oddly enough-or not- she’s identical to a creepy woman who’s been showing up in his nightmares. At the same time, an old boyfriend starts stalking Nak, trying to make her call off the wedding. Doesn’t work; they’re duly married (in a combination Thai/Western wedding), but on their wedding night Mak wakes up with another nightmare. Then the thieves strike, and Mak is hit by their getaway van. Mak is in a coma! But he wakes up long enough to tell Nak that she has to find Mae Nak, whoever she is…
Nak’s ancient grandma tells her the story of Mae Nak, a young bride who died while her husband was at war, but showed up as a ghost when he came back (a very convincing ghost, since he didn’t notice she was dead for a while). Mae Nak placed a curse on the villagers who’d told her husband the truth, but an exorcism laid her to rest. OR DID IT?!
Meanwhile, the thieves are killed by the same creepy woman from Mak’s dream. Nak finds out that their old house is…the place where Mae Nak used to live (da da DAAAA!). Nak then discovers that Mae Nak wasn’t exactly exorcised, but her spirit was trapped in a necklace made of bone taken from Mae Nak’s body…a necklace that has, coincidentally, fallen into Nak’s possession. The fortune teller’s assistant tries to swindle Nak out of the necklace, and promptly dies in a horrible manner.
Intuition or divine guidance or whatever tells Nak exactly where to go and what to do to set Mae Nak’s spirit free. Nak talks some friends into helping dig up Mae Nak so the piece of bone can be reunited with the rest of her skeleton. While she’s working on that, an operation is performed on Mak to keep his brain from exploding or something. Nak gets the necklace back with the skeleton, but Mak doesn’t come out of his coma. So his parents do the logical (well, it may really be logical for Buddhists) thing and ship him off to a monastery to be exorcised.
Nak’s ancient grandma hauls her off to a medium (and automatic writer, which is kind of cool), who says Mae Nak STILL isn’t at peace, the needy bitch, and the damned movie still isn’t over. So now Nak has to stop the exorcism, which the medium says is really bad for Mak, and figure out what’s up with Mae Nak. Which is totally predictable, so I’m not sure why she had to hit up a medium for advice. But this is an Asian horror movie, so it has to be one of the cool kids and have the The End…no, not really! twist.
If you thought that summary was long and boring, it’s nothing compared to actually watching Ghost of Mae Nak. Sure, newlyweds are going to be all googly-eyed all over each other, but it’s no fun to watch for long, long, loooooong minutes.
The way the thieves are killed is unintentionally hilarious; one is crushed into a cube when his van is scrapped, and the other falls into a vat of hot oil and, flailing in agony, crashes onto a grill, where he is barbequed to death. Also hilarious is the way a fortune teller goes into convulsions when he sees the necklace containing Mae Nak’s spirit, and the way his assistant is somehow sliced in half by a falling pane of glass…if Ghost of Mae Nak didn’t take itself so seriously, it would be a pretty decent horror/comedy. Horromedy.
Nothing about this movie is scary. Nothing. After your first look at Mae Nak, you get used to her, and since she’s the only ghost popping up, there’s nothing else to look forward to. It’s repetitive, what with her killing people over and over.
I will say, in sharp contrast to most Asian horror movies, the hospital is not completely dark and creepy and decrepit. It actually looks like a decent modern hospital, with no leaking water pipes or dark corridors. So that’s a nice change, I guess.
The Verdict: I’ve already seen it. But spare yourselves.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: ghost of mae nak, movie review, thailand |
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9 Feb
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Posted by Musashi
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Thailand being the only country in the world which flaunts its’ love of transsexual men, it only seems natural that Thai airline PC Air should be the first to recruit ladyboy flight attendants.
Fledgling airline PC Air has already recruited six crew of the “third sex” and boss Peter Chan said recruitment, driven by a belief in equal rights, would continue.
“I think these people can have many careers, not just in the entertainment business, and many of them have a dream to be an air hostess. I just made their dream come true,” he said.
I say go for it! Thai ladyboys have been catering to the whims of rich Westerners for years, so why not let them do it 25,000 feet in the air? One you’ve finished reading the article, be sure to check out this piece at MSNBC’s photo blog.
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3 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Here’s your downer for the day: a documentary about the sex trade in Thailand. The worst part? It’s not even that good.
In 2005, Canadian filmmaker Jordan Clark returned to Bangkok to make a documentary about the sex tourism industry there. It might be the butt of many jokes (some of which I’ve repeated myself), but prostitution in Thailand, motivated by the hordes of Western tourists who come looking for the country’s exotically beautiful women, is a deadly serious (and seriously deadly) issue. The result in Bangkok Girl.
Clark (who narrates the documentary in singularly lackluster fashion) claims he had trouble finding a woman who would talk to him about the sex trade, but that he finally ran into Pla, a 19-year-old bar girl (bartender) in a joint called Checkpoint Charlie’s that catered to falang (a word denoting a foreigner, particularly a white tourist). Pla is beautiful and vivacious, with a sweet smile. She claims to have been working as a bartender since her compulsory schooling ended when she was 13, and that, while she’s never sold her body, she knows many others who have. Clark persuades her to tell her story, which is sadly common: her parents divorced when she was young, abuse by her stepmother resulted in the loss of part of one of her hands, and while she doesn’t want to work at the bar all her life, she doesn’t have the education or opportunity to find something better. In her interviews, Pla seems to hint that maybe she isn’t telling the entire truth about her lack of involvement in the sex trade, a suspicion that appears to be proven when she inexplicably disappears for two days. She returns, but Clark reports that only a week after he left Thailand, Pla was found dead (an unfortunately unsurprising twist). The Thai police apparently ruled her death a result of heart failure, which according to Clark is a convenient cop-out when they don’t want to investigate further (the corruption of Thai police comes up several times, including once when Clark claims his camera was confiscated because he didn’t have a filming permit, and only returned once he pays a hefty ‘fee’).
Interspersed with Pla’s interviews are clips of pimps and madams offering girls to Clark, shots of bustling Bangkok streets, footage of falang escorting young Thai women around, and several clips of a regular customer at Pla’s bar, a drunken English lout who invites a kick to the nuts as soon as he opens his vile mouth.
The problem with Bangkok Girl is that Clark provides little context for much of his footage. While one madam is pretty explicit in what she’s offering, many of the ‘pimps’ are merely men naming prices- for girls, or for mangos? One sequence showing man after man walking out of a bar with an endless stream of lovely Thai girls is edited, so we can’t tell if this is a continuous shot, or taken over several days. One night Clark goes out to film some ‘ladyboys’, transvestites or transsexuals who prowl for customers after the bars close. There is an ‘interview’ with a transsexual which consists mainly of the ‘ladyboy’ looking around impatiently for johns and making inane comments in (very good) English. There’s no further information about Pla’s death; which, admittedly, could be hard to access, but I have the feeling Clark maybe should have waited to finish Bangkok Girl until he knew more.
Bangkok Girl ignited a bit of a tempest in a teacup, at least on the IMDB forums, with posters variously claiming that Pla was killed due to her involvement in the documentary, that everyone Jordan Clark ‘interviewed’ were actually actors he hired, and that Pla is still alive, married (possibly to a falang) and living in Northern Thailand (or Europe). Is any of this true? Honestly, I have no idea. In a developing country like Thailand, misidentification and deception are relatively easy to pull off. It would be nice to think this was all a set-up, and Pla was not in fact the trapped little bar girl she portrayed, but a skilled actress. I will say this: the situation in Bangkok Girl is all too plausible; I don’t know if it was scripted or not, but if it was, it was very, very realistic.
The documentary footage is all definitely amateur, about the same quality I could take on my little digital Panasonic. The subtitles are tiny and hard to read. Clark’s narration is emotionless and boring. And at only 40 minutes, Bangkok Girl only skims the surface of a very deep problem.
Criticism aside, Bangkok Girl did get my attention. Pla’s story is unfortunately common among young women in Bangkok. It’s not a great documentary, but it will stir your curiosity.
The Verdict: Short enough to be interesting, not long enough to cover everything.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: bangkok girl, dosumentary, sex trade, thailand |
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5 Oct
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Posted by Musashi
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This looks mighty awesome – it’s Red Eagle, a Thai superhero movie. He’s like Batman, except without all that pussy ‘won’t kill people’ stuff.
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16 Aug
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Posted by Musashi
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Thai authorites are on the lookout for Lee Aldhouse, a British professional kickboxer who knifed an American tourist to death one week ago. Aldhouse, who seems to have quite the reputation as a violent douchebag, provoked a fight with 23-year-old ex-Marine Dashawn Longfellow at a Phuket bar before following Longfellow back to his hotel and stabbing him to death.
Aldhouse, who trained in Thai kickboxing or Muay Thai, was known for “getting drunk and picking fights and bragging that he’s invincible,” Anukul told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Authorities believe Aldhouse is still in Phuket, NBC News reported, and they are working with Immigration officials to intercept him if he attempts to leave from Phuket or Bangkok airports. So far, there is no record of him leaving Phuket via the airport.
According to NBC News, police have set up checkpoints in and out of Phuket and local police have been briefed about Aldhouse in case he attempts to escape by land. There is only one bridge leading off the island.
A man who identified himself as a manager at the Yanui Paradise Resort declined to disclose details, saying he was only speaking to the U.S. Embassy. The embassy could not immediately be reached for comment.
Longfellow had served in the Marines and was a machine gunner for the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Matt Gronbach, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, who was in the same unit with Longfellow, said.
| Category: News | Tag: crime, douchebags, kickboxing, sad, thailand |
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12 Mar
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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I love tattoos. I don’t have any myself (It’s not that I’m a baby about pain- trust me, after labor and a c-section I cannot be fazed, pain-wise- it’s just that I have other things I would rather spend my money on) but I like to look at other people’s. And if you tell people you like their tat, they will usually tell you why they got it and what it means to them, which is usually interesting.
But in Thailand, tattoos are more than body art…they can make you rich, get you laid and possess you.
And of course anytime celebrities see something pretty and cultural they have to get in on it, so Angelina Jolie has some. I’m not that impressed since this is the same woman who walked around with a vial of her then-husband’s blood around her neck. Her tattoo must have the power to attract children since she has about 10 or so now.
| Category: Uncategorized | Tag: body art, CNN, thailand, yan tattoos |
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23 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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- I’m under your bed, licking your floor
I’ll be out of town until Monday afternoon, but next week will be packed with the last six reviews I need to complete my goal. Also, like I did last year, I’ll be posting a ghost story every day in the week leading up to Halloween!
The Unborn (Thailand, 2003)
I hope I never have to go to a hospital in Thailand. According to The Unborn, they are grimy, cramped, have iron bedsteads (no reclining beds?), have staff who apparently go home as soon as it gets dark, and are crawling with vengeful ghosts. Even the bathrooms in The Unborn look like they haven’t been cleaned in months, and every time the heroine needs help, the corridors are suddenly deserted. And the doctors and nurses are narrow-minded bullies to boot.
The main character in this one is a little edgier than usually Asian horror heroine: Por is a party girl bartender who makes extra cash by selling drugs for a brutal dealer. When she tries to cheat him, he drags her off to a swamp, beats the crap out of her, then tries to drown her. She’s rescued by an unspecified someone and taken to the aforementioned creepy hospital, where she’s shocked to discover she’s ten weeks pregnant. A kindly doctor counsels her to get off the drugs and keep the baby; a nurse refuses to give Por the abortion she wants (!).
While she’s in the hospital, Por starts seeing the apparition of a long-haired, heavily pregnant woman. Is she a symptom of PTSD? Of course not. She’s the ghost of a woman found drowned in the same swamp where Por nearly died, and she seems to want something from Por. She even follows Por home from the hospital. Por sets out to discover what the woman wants, and to give her some peace. The quest takes Por and her best friend and her anti-drug counselor into a nasty case of sorcery and superstition and plain old sordidness. And even after the resolution of the dead woman’s case, the movie keeps going, because there just has to be a twist.
The Unborn indulges in every cliché known to Asian horror: long-haired ghost lady, grimy bathrooms with exposed pipes (not only in the hospital, but in Por’s otherwise nice apartment too), the deserted hospital, the spectral quest for vengeance, the plot twist that’s pretty obvious. There are a couple stylish scenes, as when Por has a hallucination of drowning in the hospital bathroom. But in the horror category The Unborn is nothing we haven’t seen before. There’s not much in the way of gore or special effects, but also not many good old-fashioned scares.
At least it’s nice to see a main female character who’s not a boring good girl who starts seeing ghosts and ends up with the male side character who helps her out. Por is a tough kid, a drug addict with a hip haircut and slutty clothes. I suppose I should have been heart-warmed by her journey from bad girl to loving mommy, but I was actually just sort of disappointed in her. Intira Jaroenpura is very good as Por, but none of the other characters have enough depth to be interesting, not even the ghost, whose story is standard horror fare.
The movie is paced fairly quickly, but is too long and drawn-out; it might have worked as a short film but at nearly two hours, the viewer begins to get bored, especially since the plot is rather predictable. I actually groaned inwardly when the ‘end’ proved not to be the end, making way for the inevitable plot twist. The music is quite well-done, but the creepy atmosphere it creates can’t hold up against the lackluster story and characters.
Recommend-o-meter: If you want a really unnerving Thai horror movie, try Shutter. The Unborn isn’t anything new or special.
| Category: DVD Reviews | Tag: horror, Movie, review, thailand, the unborn |
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9 Oct
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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3 down…10 more to go!
Dorm (Thailand, 2004)
Dorm has a lot in common with Guillermo del Toro’s 2001 movie The Devil’s Backbone. Both are set in a boys’ school. In both, the characters are haunted by the death of a fellow student, and both films rely heavily on atmosphere rather than outright scares. And, as in del Toro’s film, Dorm ends up not being a horror movie at all, despite appearances.
Ton is a lanky twelve-year-old. He’s obsessed with watching television and is slacking in his studies. His father uses this as an excuse to ship him off to boarding school, but the real reason for Ton’s banishment is that he caught his dad doing the horizontal tango with a woman who isn’t Ton’s mom.
Boarding school is tough and lonely, especially since Ton is already feeling bitter and resentful. His first night there he’s accosted by the school’s resident misfits, who regale him with stories of a veritable army of ghosts that haunt the place. They leave Ton so spooked that he wets the bed, which only makes his situation worse.
Things get better when Ton meets Vichien, who befriends him. But in one startling moment Ton discovers that only one of the ghost stories he heard is true – Vichien is the ghost of a boy who committed suicide by drowning himself in the school’s old swimming pool. This doesn’t prove a barrier to their friendship, however. Ton spends most of his free time apparently alone, but really hanging out with Vichien, who is as active and mischievous as any live boy. They play video games, sneak out, and ogle a cute cafeteria worker. Vichien even shows Ton where he hit his stash of porn when he was alive. But he won’t reveal the particulars of how he died or why, or what connection his death has to the school’s creepy headmistress.
But as much as Ton enjoys his time with his new friend, he knows Vichien’s spirit belongs in the afterlife. On the advice of an occult-minded classmate, Ton undertakes a dangerous ritual to find out what really happened, and to help his friend find peace. The ending is a bit neat, with Ton helping Vichien and the headmistress, reconciling with his father, befriending the outcasts and deciding he really likes school.
At first, Dorm has all the hallmarks of a horror movie: empty corridors, doors that slam and lock on their own, a chorus of stray dogs that howl outside a certain window every night. Ton has a serious oversleeping problem, which leads to very creepy scenes of him running out of the vast, empty bunk room, or washing alone in the echoing bathroom (some of the scenes, however, attempt to be creepy by being so dimly lit you can’t tell what’s going on). The film is drained of color, with a grimy feel that is becoming more and more popular in horror movies.
But the horror dissipates as soon as the ghost reveals himself. Vichien isn’t out for revenge, as so many Asian ghosts are. He just wants a buddy. And that’s the real story of Dorm: a tale of boyhood friendship and childish devotion. The scenes with Ton and Vichien hanging out, doing kid stuff, are touching and enjoyable (and afford me a glimpse of Gohan’s future years).
The child actors are about as good as you can expect; Chintara Sukapatana as the disturbed headmistress floats through the movie looking pale and tragic.
Recommend-o-meter: If you’re in the mood for a straight-up horror movie, skip this one. Otherwise, Dorm is worth a look.
| Category: DVD Reviews | Tag: cinema, dorm, horror, thailand |
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29 Sep
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Thailand’s had a rough year- governments settling in only to be booted out, angry mobs (wielding torches and farm implements?…one can hope) and tons of unrest. So some of the residents of ‘The Land of Smiles’ have forgotten how to smile. Especially cops, who probably have a really stressful job even in peaceful years.
But there is a solution in sight: cop smiley masks!
People in America may not smile as much as the Thais, but we can take comfort in the fact that the current Thai prime minister is frightened of our cops:
“The police are not that scary,” he said. “When I was in the United States, their highway police seemed to be more fierce than Thai police. I was scared of them.”
| Category: Uncategorized | Tag: odd, police, smile, thailand |
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1 Jul
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Posted by Musashi
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Netflix just added a handful of goodies to their Instant Watch service, including The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police, and the Thai horror flick Art of the Devil II (Art of the Devil I has been up there for a while, I think…).
Here are a few trailers in case you want to see what you’re getting into…
| Category: News | Tag: film, japan, netflix, thailand, the machine girl, tokyo gore police |
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27 May
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Posted by Musashi
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A cute little panda was born in a Thai zoo, which will probably please Panda consumption proponent Chris Packham.
Table for one, then Chris?
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
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27 Apr
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Buddhist monastaries in Thailand are implementing new guidelines for how their monks behave in public. Apparently, these guys are total boors in public.
Especially the gay ones.
Senior monk Phra Maha Wudhijaya Vajiramedhi told the BBC he would address issues like smoking, drinking alcohol, walking and going to the toilet properly, which are all detailed in the traditional 75 Dharma principles of Buddhism, and the 227 precepts for monks.
He was especially concerned, he said, by the flamboyant behaviour of gay and transgender monks, who can often be seen wearing revealingly tight robes, carrying pink purses and having effeminately-shaped eyebrows.
I’m a little surprised that there is a proper way to use the toilet. On second thought, in my retail career I have cleaned shit off the floor, the toilet and even the walls in the store’s public restroom. We need to have guidelines for those fucktards on properly using the toilet.
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24 Mar
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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In Thailand, an autistic kid climbed out onto a third-story window ledge on the first day at his new school (I bet his parents are really eager to send him for a second day, now), only to be rescued by….SPIDER-MAN!
A fireman dressed as the kid’s favorite superhero coaxed him down rom the ledge. A fireman who just happened to keep a Spider-man costume in his locker.
But a remark by his mother about his passion for comic superheroes prompted fireman Somchai Yoosabai to rush back to the station, where he kept a Spider-Man costume in his locker.
The article states that he uses the costume to ‘liven up fire drills at schools’ but I bet that’s not all he uses it for. You could pick up tons of chicks with that thing.
After all, what woman hasn’t dreamedof sexing it up with a superhero (**coughcough**The Punisher**coughcough**)?
Or is it just me?
| Category: Uncategorized | Tag: autism, firemen, rescue, spider-man, superheroes, thailand |
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26 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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A British guy in Thailand hooked a stingray that was roughly 7″ by 7″ and weighed 55 stone- in normal language, that’s 770 pounds!
Once on Iron Chef the secret ingredient was stingray meat from the ‘wings’…and that shit looked disgusting. It was all gray and greasy. Fortunately, this giant ray was saved from a fate of being tasted by Japanese B-list celebrities because the British guy was just out to tag them. It was released into the Mekong River, where fisherman will now be looking over their shoulders every five minutes in mortal terror for their lives.
| Category: News | Tag: animals, environment, mekong river, stong ray, thailand |
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2 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Actually this is F-Cup Cake, but I guess the concept is the same
What’s not to like? Delicious cookies that make your boobs bigger. Of course, by the time you eat enough cookies to become an F-cup, your ass is also enormous.
The Japanese manufacturer of the cookies says it has never claimed that its product actual causes breasts to grow larger, and that it is merely a dietary supplement
Yeah, obviously the packaging makes no such implication…hey, if you’re dumb enough to buy it, that’s your problem.
| Category: Uncategorized, Video | Tag: f-cup cookies, japan, scam, thailand, video |
