I wrote this morning that the Asean summit is due to be held in Phuket on June 13 and 14. What I had forgotten is that the Phuket Film Fest is slated for June 4 to 11.

What with the possibility of the army pretty much running the security show during the Asean summit in Phuket, there's a wave of panic on the island that the streets are going to be lined with troops, which would obviously not be a good look for an international film festival.

I received an email from I don't know who about the festival. From the email:

5,000+ troops are being brought on to the island and road blocks, soldiers and tanks will be on display. Film makers view the world in terms of images and even though the actual meeting takes place after the film festival, troops will be deployed days before the actual ASEAN Event.

Gus Van Sant is supposed to be attending this year. I recently watched Elephant and thought it was an interesting movie. [SPOILERS] I was a little confused by the motives of the shooters, . The homosexual relationship was also out of the blue and the fact that the main kid shot his lover at the end bemused me. [/SPOLIERS]

Anyway, the people behind the Phuket Film Fest are apparently lacking in support from the likes of TAT.

Please email and get your friends, neighbors and work mates to email the following at TAT and tell them to pay more attention to Phuket. And if you have a fax machine – fax Khun Weerasak 02-250-0628.

sethaphan.buddhani at tat.or.th,

prdiv3 at tat.or.th,

juthaporn.rerngronasa at tat.or.th,

tatphket at tat.or.th,

prdiv1 at tat.or.th

kaneungnit.cho at tat.or.th,

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.