“I said I wanted milk with my cookies!”
What does this have anything to do with manga, you say? Abso-fluffin’-lutely nothing. And what can you do about it? Nothing!
I’ve been trying to get my ears used to the thai language (my father thinks it imperative that we embrace our culture and language, and feels it unfair that the only language I speak besides English is broken Japanese with my mother), so for the past few days I’ve been struggling through my sister’s Huk Liam Phra-karn DVD, a lakorn (or thai drama) following a grungy, foul-mouthed undercover cop named Khom (Num Sornram Theppitak) who infiltrates the abode of a very powerful and very influential druglord (Jukkrit Ummarat) in order to expose his drug trafficking scheme. However, against his better judgement, Khom falls in love with the druglord’s vivacious and feisty daughter, Mina (Joy-Rinalee Sripehn), who seems to come equipped by default with a fluffy pomeranian, slapping flip-flop sandals and an array of handbags.
I’m no lesbian, but Joy-Rinalee is an absolute pleasure to watch as the spoiled, naive rich man’s daughter, and so are her petty arguments with Khom:
Mina: ” Would it kill you to just say please for once?”
Khom: ” Can you direct me to where your father is, puhhhh-lease? (pause) Doesn’t look like I’m dead yet. Just didn’t want to say it.”
Num, for as much as I loved his clean-shaven, knotted-cravat, obocchama look in Barn Sai Tong (House of Sand) seems more convincing as a thug with his beard and unbuttoned jacket-sleeves:
Khom (with his beard) and Mina
Anyway – woops! haha – I guess I’ve just given myself away. You’ve probably figured out exactly what had caused me to take my sweet time with this release. I could just sheepishly throw my hands into the air and say, ” Oh, well, too bad for you guys!” and run off, but that would make me a total bully.
So, to make up for lost time, I locked myself in my room after work for a week, deprived myself of tv and sleep, and finished Heart o Uchinomese! Chapter 3.
It really is difficult to learn, sudsong! But my older sis says that it’ll be easier learning how to pronounce things once I learn the thai consonant and vowels, so I hope she’s right. I spent a hefty sum on flashcards and books w/ CD’s.
Huk Liam Phra-karn is so far, so good, though I think it would be asking too much for the show to get rid of the convenient plot devices and/or spoon-feeding the audience things they probably already know/can already guess:
There was a car scene, where Mina had passed out from being too drunk and Num had to drive her to safety. He was trying to wake her, and she grabs his hand and mutters to herself something along the lines of begging her father not to abandon her.
People must always be talking in their sleep and revealing things. When was the last time anyone I know did that? There are so many subtle ways to show that she’s afraid of losing her father, but the director seems to choose the easy way out! D:
I hope there will be more directors around like Wisit Sasanatieng who did Citizen Dog (Mah Nakorn) and Tears of the Black Tiger, and also Pen-ek-Rataruang who did Last Life in the Universe.
I know lakorn directors are different from movie directors, but I’m hopeful that things will change in the drama industry.
Anyway, if you happen to read this, I hope you drop by again soon to give me some lakorn or movie recommendations.
Nice choice. There are a lot terrible lakorns more than I can count. Being Thai myself, I’m glad that the one you are watching is one of the good things out there. I’m glad that you chose Thai language to be familiar with but seriously, I gotta admit that Thai language is so DAMN hard. We have five pitches of sound for you to saperate. Changing the sound will also change the meaning. If you say Khom with normal sound, it can mean something sharp but if you say it with high pitch, it will mean bitter and if you say it with low pitch it will mean taking pressure on someone. Of course there will also be variety of spelling that change the meaning of words. But hey, I’m just glad that someone would like to learn Thai no matter how much. Our language doesn’t have too many people speaking anyway.
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Thank you soo much for this release, keep it up!