'First Love' is everyone's love
There's now a director's cut of last year's award-winning film "First Love", aka "A Little Thing Called Love", maybe because it had two directors, Puttipong Promsaka Na Sakonnakorn and Wasin Pokpong.
And the new version of the romantic comedy is poised to set a record in China – it’s going to hit 6,000 screens simultaneously. Sahamongkol Film vice-chairman Chomsajee techarattanaprasert says no movie has ever had that wide an opening. Distributor SMG Picture urged the producers to go for the record even though it’s already been released online.
Major credit goes to the stars, Mario Maurer and Pimchanok Luevisadpaibul, who have a huge following in the country, built up by personal visits.
SMG believes the film will repeat its success there, just as it did in Thailand and elsewhere. It was so popular in the Philippines that it was dubbed and shown on free daytime TV last June. It stole the ratings.
For China, the movie’s been trimmed from 118 to 100 minutes and fitted with local songs. There are dubbed and subtitled versions. A blockbuster is surely in the making.
Thaksin tourism
Speaking of records, Panthongtae “Oak” Shinawatra claims his old man got more Thais to cross the Cambodian border in one day than ever before.
“There were 38,000 people crossing the border that day to meet my dad and wish him well for Songkran,” Oak tweeted. “If my dad was still in power, having that many people around him all the time wouldn’t be a big deal.”
Oak, who was the only Shinawatra offspring to join the pilgrimage to Siem Reap, said Cambodian security was so tight that even he found it hard getting near Thaksin. But then he found out how to say, “He’s my father!” in Khmer.
Oak said he was delighted with the reunion but definitely doesn’t want another one abroad. “If I can make one wish, I want to celebrate Songkran next year with my dad at home,” he tweeted to his sisters, cc to Papa.
