08/22/2006: "How Awesome/Awful Will This Be"

Apple posted the trailer for The Protector, formerly known as Tom Yung Goon (yes, the spicy Thai soup). While Ong Bak wasn't exactly Kickboxer or Bloodsport story-line awesome, the action sequences were some of the best I had seen up to that point (sorry, Lionheart). My friends who've seen it are saying it's awful, but I'm hoping Harvey Scissorhands has worked his Cinema Paradiso magic on this one. From the trailer, I can tell that this one is really trying to outdo the awesomeness that was Ong Bak (best line I've used to describe that film "He's just trying to get (the) head").

Funny story - when I was in Thailand working on Journey From the Fall, one of the people I had to interact with on a daily basis was the Thai lab runner, a guy named Noom. He spoke no English, so we mostly communicated thru my Thai liason via mobile phones. At other times, when we met in person we simply nodded at each other as we exchanged dailies tapes and I would always offer him something to eat as he always caught me during my breakfast/lunch. Noom later had to leave the set to work on another job and it was then that our Thai producer told me that he hired Noom because he was the only guy he could trust with the negative. He also mentioned that Noom was the line producer for Ong Bak, which made a lot of sense because most of his apparel consisted of Ong Bak t-shirts.

And all that time I thought he was just a huge fan.