Review and news hub for movies, music and video games

3926 guests and 25 members online

Magnolia Pictures has acquired the North American rights for kickass Thai film Chocolate. I've hyped this movie before and I can't wait to see it (lucky attendees of the Toronto International Film Festival and Austin's Fantastic Fest apparently loved the film), so waiting until 2009 feels very suck right now.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that The Weinstein Company had gotten the rights for it (for their Dragon Dynasty DVD line, no doubt), but for some reason nothing came out of it. Now Magnolia has it for their Magnet Releasing line and will actually release the film in theaters next year. Good news, because I'm getting sick of Dragon Dynasty's bullshit when it comes to Asian films.

Chocolate director Prachya Pinkaew's previous film, Tom Yum Goong, was released in the US by Dragon Dynasty as The Protector, and it was an abomination if you've seen the full uncut version (bootleggers have their uses, on some occasions). A whopping 25 minutes of the movie were taken out, including parts of the fight scenes (WTF!). I usually dig RZA's scores, but not when it's haphazardly playing over fight scenes, ruining the impact of the bone-breaking sound design in the movie. Then there's the use of dubbing to change the plot of the movie... The Protector added in a fact that Tony Jaa's father was murdered, making his whole quest a revenge trip rather than just rescuing the elephant, and it also took out references to the main villain being a transsexual (Political Correctness? Who knows).

And then, of course, there's the titling. Dragon Dynasty is notorious for giving Asian movies a different title that makes no friggin' sense, like their renaming of Feng Xiaogang's Hamlet re-imagining The Banquet to the trite-sounding Legend of the Black Scorpion. Legend of the--What? What does that even mean? I can't even begin to imagine what the new title for Chocolate would be. Lady Ong Bak?

In other words, better not follow Dragon Dynasty's footsteps, Magnet. Chocolate looks too cool to be tinkered with. Exhibit A:

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Name

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

Add Comment Preview