Tony Jaa, star of action movies Tom Yum Goong and Ong Bak, mysteriously disappeared for two months during the filming of the hotly anticipated sequel to Ong Bak.

Tony, a notorious perfectionist, apparently became disgruntled over problems with the budget and working conditions for the movie.

As filming neared competition, Tony vanished, leading to Sahamongkol, the film company behind the project, pleading with Tony to return, promising not to sue the actor for the 250 million baht in damages that he had caused. Tony reportedly turned his phone off and was unreachable, with about 20% of the movie left to shoot.

Bizarrely, Tony’s father went on record suggesting that Tony may have been kidnapped.

After two months AWOL, Tony resurfaced and said that he had been chilling out and meditating in his home province of Surin. He also requested an extra 55 million baht and made a bunch of outrageous demands to finish the movie.

After saying he would disappear forever if his demands were unmet, Tony reportedly ended up in a police station saying he was being followed. A guy from Sahamongkol then showed up and the two sides resolved their differences.

Filming got back underway recently and the movie should be finished by the end of November. Whether any other production company will want to work with Tony Jaa in the future remains to be seen.

In other Tony Jaa news, the actor has reportedly landed a small part in the upcoming King Naresuan movie.

Some info from twitchfilm.net

Christian Bale is John Connor. I love that they are focussing on the John Connor character rather than the machines. This will be fantastic.

There is one Thai overseas who is single-handedly flying her country’s flag for her brothers and sisters. She is a 1.5-meter tall bundle of platform-boot-wearing character. She is currently the 13/8 favourite, according to Ladbrokes, to win the UK’s ninth series of Big Brother.

I don’t want to say that Kathreya “Kat” Kasisopa is weird or anything, but she is perhaps a few cookies short of a jar — literally. Big Brother UK’s first Thai housemate has a kind of obsession with cookies, as she demonstrates here in this rather terrifying dialog with Big Brother.

I feel exhausted just from watching her speak. I haven’t been following Big Brother in great detail, but I’ve been keeping up with Kat’s antics from time to time. Here she is getting lost in the Big Brother house — a feat no mere mortal could achieve. This may explain her desire to be reincarnated as Pokemon. Is she real?

There are more clips of Kat on YouTube than I could ever sit through. She is something of a phenomenon in the UK. I find her a bit awkward to watch, but evidently she has captured the hearts of the UK’s television-watching general public.

Thais: are you proud? Brits: can you watch for more than five minutes without starting to twitch nervously?

After the fuss that has been made about the Sex and the City movie, I made a decision that I would not watch it. I stood corrected when I had a ticket bought for me, which led to a cinema outing with about 10 girls, all of whom were very excited.

I disliked Sex and the City very much. It isn’t just that the movie wasn’t made for me; I thought the whole thing was utterly pointless and a pain to watch. I have no interest in shoes, fashion labels, New York, whatever – but I enjoyed the TV series. The movie, however, was more than two hours of surprise reunions of characters who had been together on screen less than one minute previously. Throw in some rather dull storylines and you have the movie summed up.

The writing was sharp, the characters believable, but it just didn’t work – for me. Nobody in the movie had anything interesting to say. I think this movie is currently polarizing opinions. I’m glad I saw it, because otherwise I would have hated something I hadn’t even watched, but this was the only movie I have watched in a cinema that made me feel angry for its existence. I can’t really explain why.

I’m sure many of you have seen it, so I’m curious to hear your thoughts. The movie had the biggest opening ever for a romantic comedy.

Firstly, if you haven’t watched Zeitgeist, do it now. It’s a low-budget, controversial movie that explores Jesus Christ, Christianity, 9/11, US banking, war and so on. You can find torrents for it all over the Internet.

Zeitgeist was released in 2007, but it’s only in the past few months that the movie has received massive attention from the online community. The movie is, apparently, “The Truth”, and its purpose is to open our eyes to a world that we are all ignorant of thanks to television and the global media.

Jesus Christ did not exist, his character is based on mythological elements that have been around for thousands of years, 9/11 was a US-government concocted conspiracy, the banks control the world, wars are waged for profit and we are heading to a one-world government and currency – unless we open our eyes.

The claims of the movie are bold, but ultimately they all fall down. The great irony of Zeitgeist is that by applying those same principles to the movie that we are told to apply to our own lives, we uncover a whole new truth within – that the movie is based on lies, misquotes, half-truths, misinterpretations.

What first struck me about the movie is the very basic approach taken to proving that Jesus did not exist. I have no problem with the concept that Jesus did not exist, but it’s impossible to take Zeigeist seriously when the movie constantly tries to mislead its audience. On a very basic level, the movie makes a connection between the Son of God actually being the “sun” of God, meaning that the Jesus character is a personification of the sun, whose traits can be found in the traits of other characters before him. Sure, in English, “son” and “sun” sounds similar and saying the two words in a certain tone is amusing, but what’s the point?

It is nonsense. The literature cited as sources for the section on Jesus is about as credible as a conspiracy theory website. There are so many holes in the movie. People have gone to great lengths to debunk the claims made in Zeitgeist and there is some extremely interesting reading out there.

The sad fact is that a great numbers of the movie’s claims can only be attributed to conspiracy theorist website and not scholarly works. The ideas about 9/11 are captivating to an extent, but ultimately hold little weight. And this is treading old ground.

Zeitgeist is nothing more than an extension of the claims found on ill-informed conspiracy theory websites. But the movie makes people think and in that respect it is worth watching. The film lacks academic credibility, however, and therefore it cannot be taken seriously. Many of the film’s claims have already been discussed and disproved.

There is further reading all over the Internet. Go here and here.

What are people’s thought on this movie? Has anybody seen it?