Naresuan's like a visiting uncle you can't get rid of

Director MC Chatrichalerm “Than Mui” Yukol must have decided at some point that he’s hopelessly crazy about elephants and there’s nothing he can do about it except keep making more episodes about the warrior-king and his armour-plated tuskers.
Evidently 12 years of effort doesn’t quite qualify the cinema saga as a “life’s work” for Than Mui, so he’s now working on Part 6. He swears this will be the last one. Frankly we no longer believe him, but what the heck, the franchise is terrific.
Than Mui explained on Pantip.com this week that he didn’t want to make any excuses for what viewers saw as imperfections in Part 5. There have been complaints about the computer-generated effects, the music score, the editing and even the storytelling.
A sizeable segment of the audience thought the post-production was completely botched, and Than Mui can’t be blamed for that because he was barred from being involved in it. We hear the budget was getting too excessive for the studio and it wanted to get the movie finished in a hurry. Than Mui suffers a genetic disability that prevents him from hurrying.
“So now I’ve taken back full authority and I’m doing the final part properly,” he says.
The core cast members confirm they’re on call for shoots, even Thakasa-orn Techanarong, who’s pregnant. (Fortunately her character, Maneechan, is pregnant too, so she won’t need a stand-in belly.)
Lt Colonel Wanchana Sawasdee, who plays the title monarch, seemed a little miffed at a recent press event that Part 5 was hacked to just 90 minutes. The upside, though, is that they’re using the trimmed bits in Part 6. “So it won’t take as long to finish as the earlier episodes,” he said. “Perhaps we will see it in a few months.”
Cynics came right out and asked Wanchana whether there would be Parts 7, 8, 9, etc, etc, but he truly doubts it. He’s seen the script and it’s actually titled “The Legend of King Naresuan: The Final Part”.
Sure, sure.


Celebrity mating

You’ll recall Hollywood director James Gunn spending time with Thai fans while holidaying here in August after promoting his latest sci-fi blockbuster, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, in Singapore.
The funny thing was that a lot of the pictures he posted on Instagram and Facebook at the time had singer Pakamon “Lookpong” Boonyapooti in them, including on his visits to Phuket, a floating market and a tiger refuge.
Now Lookpong has spoken up about their relationship. She says they met in Singapore when she interviewed him about “Guardians” and he later got hold of her phone number. She was at his side in Thailand, including at the special screening of his movie for fans and, yes, that jaunt to Phuket. Lookpong then visited Gunn in the US after he’d flown home.
But, three months on, she says it’s still too early to call him a “boyfriend” – they need more time to get to know one another. “For now he’s sincere about our relationship, but I can’t tell you how far it might go!”