Be sure to book your seats in advance for Thailand's film of the year (or is it the decade?) "The Legend of King Naresuan". Crowded early screenings have had people seated right up front, chins to the screen and heads craned achingly back.

Things were expected to improve yesterday, a source said, when all 260 prints were to have been delivered to cinemas, thinning out the crowds.

Just as the producers had been racing to get enough prints distributed, the multiplex operators were frantically rescheduling, and will likely continue doing so for the rest of the year because of "Naresuan".

There are two more episodes coming, one on February 15 - already postponed from the 1st - and the other on December 5. Depending on print availability, the king of Ayutthaya may be bumping Helen Mirren's "The Queen" out of cinemas - or possibly keeping her there longer.

Theatre operators scrambled to fill the first two weeks in February with alternate movies because King Naresuan was late with his second chapter.

But guess what - no one's complaining.

For one thing, "Naresuan" is a sure-fire blockbuster. Not even Hollywood's hottest will be able to compete with it at the Thai box office, as director MC Chatrichalerm "Than Mui" Yukol demonstrated with his last historical epic, "Suriyothai".

Second, Hollywood just doesn't have anything huge at the beginning of the year. As for the movies they have waiting, top studios including UIP, Fox and Buena Vista are keeping a fretful eye on "Naresuan" Part 2 in case its premiere is delayed again - into March, when their big titles are set to come out.

"We're now worrying about our big films scheduled in March," one of the studio's local distributors tells Soopsip. "We praying for the second part to premiere soon so that there's no effect on our films."

So, no pressure, Than Mui, except that everyone from upcountry kids with a school break coming up to Britain's Queen Elizabeth seems to have a stake in your follow-up making it into theatres on time.

How to 'Manage' catastrophe

in the Year of the Pig

If you happen to walk into the Manager Group offices on Bangkok's Phra Arthit Road, you could be forgiven for assuming that the publishers of the daily newspaper Manager and operators of ASTV are cheering for the Democrat Party.

There's a new, almost life-size statue near the entrance of Mother Earth, the goddess long associated with Thailand's oldest political party.

For a supposedly neutral news organisation to display "Grandma Democrat" out front seems a little strange, even if it has been so rabidly anti-Thaksin.

But the statue was installed on December 23 during a big religious ceremony aimed at offloading some of the bad karma perceived in the bombing of that exact spot earlier last year, when the Awk Pai movement was at its most heated.

The goddess replaced a statue of the god Phra Opakut, which has been moved elsewhere on the premises.

Chinese astrologers have predicted that the fire boar - the wild and unruly porker who's in charge of the Year of the Pig once every 60 years - will cause havoc in 2007.

The Manager Group has merely taken an added precaution by invoking the power of the Earth Goddess to guard against any possible harm.

For the rest of you, go easy on the bacon.

There's a sudden

boom in garbage

The New Year's Eve bombings in Bangkok have not only made the capital a more dangerous place but also a dirtier one.

Complaints are mounting about litter in the streets, the result of so many dustbins being removed lest a murderer plant a bomb in them.

One Tesco Lotus staff member actually says her biggest worry these days isn't being blown up but being buried in garbage. "It's so difficult to find a trash can!"

At the Eric Clapton concert last Monday night, fans had no place to dispose of their water bottles and pop cans apart from two large bins in front of each entrance. Even there, though, you had to show your trash to security guards before adding it to the pile.

"No wonder the Impact Arena compound was full of garbage!" said a Clapton fan who'd flown in from Chiang Mai.

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with veen@nationgroup.com