tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-173986922024-03-07T00:13:03.293-08:00KOREAN BUGThor Beehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06878840824838222815noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-11050888155283574012014-11-02T07:19:00.001-08:002014-11-02T07:19:09.226-08:00Orient Pearls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Hong Kong was the first kiss in my eventual, and undying, romance with all cinemas Asian. I call it a romance because that’s precisely what it is, a love affair. And because, well, there are women involved. I’m talking about movie star women, of course, opulent peacocks, dream girls on parade. My first movie star crush was Nora Miao, whom I’ve only seen in the Bruce Lee film <b>Return of the Dragon</b> and nowhere else. I should’ve known that was the start of something. Much later, there was Joey Wong and Shu Qui and Zhao Wei and Karen Mok and Gigi Leung and Miriam Yeung and Jo Kuk and Kelly Chen. There was Sammi Cheng bustling through the Johnnie To/Wai Kai Fai office rom-com <b>Needing You</b>. And Cecilia Cheung grieving her way back to love in Derek Yee’s tearjerky <b>Lost In Time</b>. Some of them were ghosts, as all women you love eventually become. Some of them could take me in a fight. Some of them melt you with a gaze. And some of them flew.<br />
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Brigitte Lin did a lot of transgender flying, and fighting, in Tsui Hark’s hectic and wondrous 1986 <i>wu xia</i> inversion <b>Peking Opera Blues</b>. When <b>Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon</b> emerged in 2000, it all but brokered the mainstreaming of <i>wu xia</i> cinema outside of Asia and the cinephile fringes, but you only thought hoary old paradigms of the Asian leading lady shifted in its wake. That was really nothing more than the flex and fallout of American hegemony. Brigitte, and really, Michelle Yeoh, among many others, had, at this point, been doing it for years. Ang Lee himself was merely riffing off King Hu’s 1966 masterpiece <b>Come Drink With Me</b>, going as far as casting its feisty leading lady Chang Pei-Pei as Jade Fox. China, and HK, and really Japan and South Korea and the Philippines, have long-standing traditions when it came to the prominence of their leading ladies, a lot of their films tend to be centered by women as a result. <b>Peking Opera Blues</b> had no less than three.<br />
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Before she retired, in a canny bit of stunt casting, Brigitte Lin gleefully subverted her own image as HK showbiz royalty, by putting on a trashy blonde wig and an even trashier raincoat straight out of John Cassavetes’ <b>Gloria</b> for Wong Kar Wai. It was an iconic last bow. But<b> Chungking Express</b>, if you press me to a corner, was all about Faye Wong, whose character, also named Faye and arguably the prototype for Sinitta Boonyasak’s Noy <b> </b>and Apinya Sakujaroensuk’s Ploy in Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s <b>Last Life In The Universe</b> and <b>Ploy</b>, respectively,<b> </b>as well as Jun Ji Hyun’s nameless girl in Jae-young Kwak’s <b>My Sassy Girl</b>, was every bit the Manic Pixie Dream Girl before Hollywood coined the term and claimed it for their own. Only none of them had the self-aware affectation that makes it such a grating trope. Faye, hair shorn to that of a boy and making pink gloves sexy as she sneaks into heartbroken cop Tony Leung’s apartment and stealthily insinuates herself in the <i>minutiae </i>of his life before turning it on its head, was, aside from being almost intolerably cute, effortless and unfussy and fresh.<br />
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You could tease a meta throb from the casting of Brigitte Lin and Faye Wong as two halves of a diptych, a sense of a torch being passed perhaps, with Brigitte being the last of her generation of leading ladies and Faye being the first of hers. When Joseph Campbell said the condition of a movie star is also the condition of a deity, he was mostly talking about Hollywood movie stars and how they can exist in several places at once, that is, on the screen and in real life. But he was also talking about this heightened, almost otherworldly, glamour you associate with them, how they were larger than life abstracts. Asian movie stars were, by refreshing contrast, life-sized. I’m not just talking about Faye here, of course, or for that matter, Hong Kong, but also of Japan’s Chiyaki Kuriyama and Taiwan’s Chieng Shiang Chyi and Korea’s Lee Young Ae and Yunjin Kim and our own Angeli Bayani and Alessandra De Rossi. These are women with presence, stars with wattage, but with a girl next door vulnerability and naturalism.<br />
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Even Gong Li and Maggie Cheung had this earthy quality. These two, were, for a time, the Western embodiment of the Asian leading lady. Gong Li’s work with Zhang Ymou and Chen Kaige were world cinema game-changers. And Maggie Cheung had her own formidable arthouse cachet with Stanley Kwan’s <b>Actress</b>, Peter Chan’s <b>Comrades: Almost A Love Story</b> and, more prominently, Wong Kar Wai’s <b>In The Mood for Love</b>. Despite the profile and the overtures, Maggie never succumbed to the Hollywood cross-over that all but dismantles the careers of Asian filmmakers and actors, with the possible exception of Ang Lee. She did make one Hollywood art film with Gong, Wayne Wang’s middling <b>Chinese Box</b>, but that was as far as she got. Gong Li, too, had said no to Michael Mann the first time. She said no, in fact, to <b>Heat</b>, because she didn’t want to be a prop, which may come off a little harsh, except she totally would’ve been one. She did eventually say yes, to Mann’s reboot of his own <b>Miami Vice</b>, and to a part that was more fulsome, had more consequence. The film was thoroughly excellent if sadly misunderstood, but her dalliance with the refurbished Crockett and Tubbs was unnecessary. The only thing it proved, apart from the impeccable taste Mann has in actresses, was that she didn’t need Hollywood. None of them ever did.<br />
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1. <b>Faye Wong</b> : I’m biased. And tremendously so.<b> Chungking Express</b> happens to be my favorite film. Of all time. Oh, but Faye is so puckish and adorable here as to be almost indelible. She was last seen in 2046 and has since focused more on her music than on films, realizing perhaps that she can never outshine this with any other film role. Even one that’s directed by Wong Kar Wai.<br />
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2. <b>Sammi Cheng</b> : Sammi’s acumen for screwball makes her a shoo-in for rom-coms. That’s her winning streak, all those Johnnie To comedies, of which <b>Love On A Diet</b>, where she acted through a fat suit, was the funniest, and <b>Romancing In Thin Air</b>, from just a couple of years ago, the most sublime.<br />
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3. <b>Angeli Bayani</b> and 4. <b>Alessandra De Rossi</b> : The only time they were together was in <b>Ka Oryang</b> playing embattled activists. But they’ve cut their own respective swaths through domestic independent cinema on their own, not to mention laid claim to serious Cannes pedigrees: Alessandra, significantly, in Raya Martin’s <b>Independencia</b> and Auraeus Solito’s <b>Busong</b>, and Angeli, as a semi-regular member of Lav Diaz’s rotating ensemble last seen at the center of his exuberantly-praised Cannes film <b>Norte</b>.<br />
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5. <b>Cecilia Cheung</b> : For my money, HK cinema’s prettiest face. That she has the acting chops, too, seals it. Her work in the Korean drama <b>Failan</b> was her calling card to the world. But I’m a huger fan of her heartbroken single mother in <b>Lost in Time</b>.<br />
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6. <b>Chen Shiang Chyi</b> : Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl flies to Paris. Boy starts changing all the clocks in Taiwan to Paris time. <b>What Time Is It There?</b> is another lifelong favorite. Which is to say I’m tremendously biased here, too. But she’s only been in nearly every film by Tsai Ming Liang, and one with Edward Yang. Tough to argue with credentials like that.<br />
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7. <b>Jun Jy Hyun</b>: Last time we see her was part of the massive all-star ensemble of <b>The Thieves</b> but sometimes all it takes is one iconic role to seal your fate. She had two: <b>My Sassy Girl</b> and <b>Il Mare</b>, classics of modern Korean cinema made more essential by the dreadful American remakes.<br />
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8. <b>Chiyaki Kuriyama</b> : As Go Go Yibari, she was <b>Kill Bill</b>'s entire surfeit of cool. But you’re really better off going to Sion Sono’s <b>Exte Hair Extensions</b>, Takashi Miike's <b>The Great Yokai War </b>and Kinji Fukasaku’s <b>Battle Royale</b>.<br />
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9 .<b>Maggie Cheung</b> and 10. <b>Gong Li</b> : Before she wore all those opulent <i>cheongsams</i> in<b> In The Mood For Love</b>, I succumbed to Maggie Cheung when she walked on the rooftops of Paris dressed as the cat burglar <b>Irma Vep</b>. And much as Zhang Ymou had a hand in it, Gong Li converted me to Chinese period drama as the longsuffering wife in <b>To Live.</b> A little predictable to name-check them, perhaps, but ultimately foolish to omit.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">*Originally published in </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Vault</span></b><br />
<br />dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-89350908211921669092012-12-06T19:48:00.001-08:002012-12-06T22:12:18.980-08:00Cinema One 2012: The Lowdown<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Aberya</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> (Christian Linaban): Difficult as it is to dismiss how jacked up with promise this is and how its reach has balls, only one of the four separate lives that inevitably intertwine here has juice: a drug dealer experimenting with ways to travel through time using narcotic cocktails. The rest, which include a boxer and a whore and a wannabe socialite, lose me a little and most of this loses to my issues with the post-postmodern aesthetic Linaban favors, dangerously verging on either MTV sensory overload or hipster self-awareness but both of which, to his immense credit, he rejects falling back on. </span></b><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Anak Ara</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">w (Gym Lumbera): Despite its undertow of melancholia, and its fragmented structure, it's not difficult to parse the ethnographic schisms at play here, the yearning for the bucolic and the pull of the urban, schisms that obviously preoccupy Gym. Like </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Taglish</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, language is a metaphorical stand-in and its duplicities, not to mention the entropies visited on it, illuminate his own duplicities and entropies. But where </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Taglish</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> is the darker, more sombre film, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Anak Araw</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> is almost intolerably light-hearted and shot through with whimsy and tenderness. The way the song that plays near the end gives the piece its necessary emotional uplift and at the same time elucidates the conceptual point of everything is quite the feat.</span></b></div>
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<b>EDSA XXX</b> (Khavn de la Cruz): It's a film freighted with many things, not least of which is Alexis Tioseco's portentous wish to see it come to fruition, and the irony that the perpetually independent and self-sufficient Khavn's dream project turns out to be his first under a corporate aegis, his first that he doesn't own rights to, acquires a special underlayer of subtext. Khavn's reaction to the emptiness the revolutions we celebrate have come to represent is to laugh at its absurdities and lay in a delightful array of music under it, veering from girl group doo-wop to quasi-flamenco to smoldering swamp-blues. A work-in-progress sustained in its current form by the propulsion from the joyous racket it makes and shaping up to be his most hopeful work yet.</div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Mamay Umeng </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(Dwein Baltazar): Mamay Umeng is in his 80s and has nothing left to live for except dying, only he's in the pink of health and death has been everything but cooperative. The risk you run with a film about tedium, a film that's ultimately about the lack of anything happening, the slow action of life going on and on and on, needs no elaboration, but in drawing out the <i>minutiae</i> of the old man's waiting, often with dollops of funny, and not to mention a couple of tiny and poignant semiotic gestures, it proves sound the premise behind slow cinema</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> that stillness is conducive for stumbling on epiphanies. </span></b></div>
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<b>Mariposa Sa Hawla Ng Gabi</b> (Richard V. Somes): It's saying a lot to pin this down as hitting some ceiling with regards to how visually sumptuous it is, as every Richard Somes film looks good enough almost to eat. His alternate universe re-imagining of Manila as a gaudy <i>noir</i> carnival of color and grime, through which a feisty young country woman tries to get to the bottom of her sister's brutal murder not to mention her mysterious body modifications, smacks of equal parts Fellini and Sion Sono, and does gain the relentless, fucked-up weirdness that implies.</div>
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<b>Mater Dolorosa </b>(Adolf Borinaga Alix Jr.): Granted, it trawls over little that's new, but then again, every big-boned post-<b>Godfather</b> gangster saga, from <b>Election</b> to <b>We Own The Night</b>, doesn't necessarily trawl over anything new either, all being essentially iterations of the politics of family, Shakespearean being the go-to qualifier, meaning they're knotty and messy and operatic. Only here, everything is subdued to the point of nonchalance, even its colors are muted to the brink of gray you assume is the moral tenor of its characters, achieving a sense of the equilibrium you also assume is how you give yourself over to this sort of life.<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>Ang Paglalakbay Ng Bituin Sa Gabing Madilim </b>(Arnel Mardoquio): It boils the intricacies of the Bangsamoro conflict down into the plight of a lesbian rebel couple and the suddenly orphaned nephew of one of them, still reeling from the murder of his parents and whose backpack is bursting with ransom money, as they make a break for friendlier territory and evade the soldiers bearing down on them. Not so much minimalist as it is almost graceful in its restraint, it slows the chase film down into a road movie and achieves, in the subtle shifting of tones from urgency to languor, a dreamlike reverie that poeticizes their own futile yearnings to free themselves from the strictures of both their revolution and their religion.</span></b></span></b></div>
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<b>Pascalina</b> (Pam Miras): Here are the things you don't notice when seen through the bland prism of the everyday: how your self-absorbed sisters are grotesque harpies, how distant and arrogant your boyfriend is, how the only person who has the courage to say she loves you is dying and probably a monster. But the opaque sheen that comes from shooting on a Digital Harinezumi not only gives everything a timbre of often intoxicating ambivalence but lathers the hellish melodrama in which the eponymous stumblebum is embroiled in, until the soup gets so oppressive, it makes her eventual descent into the secret monstrosity languishing under her well-meaning social deficiency feel more like a transcendence, into a shadow life that's perversely more promising.</div>
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dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-91901738903140333352012-08-05T09:50:00.001-07:002012-08-08T21:16:05.522-07:00Tha Animals/ Ang Nawawala (What Isn't There)(<br />
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<i>Directed by Gino Santos</i></div>
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<i>Written by Gino Santos and Jeff Stelton</i></div>
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<b>Ang Nawawala</b> <b>(What Isn't There)</b></div>
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<i>Directed by Marie Jamora </i></div>
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<i>Written by Marie Jamora and Ramon De Veyra</i></div>
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At home he's a tourist. Gibson (Dominic Roco), that is. After seeing his twin brother Jamie fall to his death, he has spoken to no one, except, that is, for Jamie (Felix Roco), who's all grown up and smokes as much pot as he does but is probably a ghost and most likely a hallucination, and is what the title of <b>Ang Nawawala</b> may be referring to. What isn't there, right. He's the void in Gibson's life. He's the void, too, in the lives of his left-behind parents. His father (Buboy Garovillo, underused) has taken to sleeping in his room. And his mother (Dawn Zulueta, radiant) regards everything with an icy remove, particularly Gibson, who is the wrong son who died the way Timothy Hutton was in <b>Ordinary People</b>, only he mitigates his pathos not by slashing his wrists, but immersing himself, much like everyone his age tends to do as a default, in the comfort zones of his bohemia.</div>
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The film takes after him, swaddling itself in often intoxicating artifice: from the gregarious color schemes and hyper-stylized dress codes to the endless parade of scenester gigs and haunts to the first world problems we wish most of us would have and the reliance on such fashionable youth film tropes as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Pixie_Dream_Girl">MPDG</a>s. All this reinforces its candied, faintly self-reflexive <i>milieu</i>, its characters defined by their totems, their longings charted in their denials. This is how we shield ourselves from having to deal with the real world sometimes. And it's as if the film were itself daunted, like Gibson, to confront the anxieties at its core without protective covering. But no matter how festive and bright and exuberant its young noise gets, the sense that it will eventually lose to the ennui it's trying to stave off, to the emptiness it's trying to fill, tinges everything with a gauzy melancholia. This push-pull between how empowering those totems we exalt in our youth are and how transient that power can be is, of course, the shared tension of all youth films and the most crucial thing <b>Ang Nawawala </b>shares with <b>The Animals</b>.</div>
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The class divide is as rampant in this country as the poverty our cinema is fond of making porn from. But it rarely gets tackled full-bore that it counts as one-up for these two films that they do, and with such an assured verve at that. The farthest <b>Ang Nawawala</b> goes in approaching the schism, though, is a montage of people on the streets celebrating New Year's Eve seen from the back seat of a car on its way to a posh party. It's gaze is detached, curious at best. <b> The Animals </b>is more brazen about it, more arrogant, more without remorse. And it comes to a troubling boil when it hangs the most corrosive burst of aggression on an economically-challenged outsider, which might be better read as a cop-out than a measure of its worldview, even if it makes contextual sense if the latter is what it is.</div>
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<b>The Animals</b> is not about wistful hipsters, after all, but rather their diametric opposite, a strain of upper-crust youth with no pop cultural co-dependencies for shaping their selves.What music they have is faceless to the point of anonymous, their fashion extravagant but off the rack. The future bores them, the present is just time that needs killing, debauchery and violence are just things to do. Their cocksure hedonism feeds off their privilege and knowing how high it makes their place in the pecking order and how this is some license to get away with almost anything.</div>
</div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-1013421018071500012012-07-15T04:56:00.002-07:002012-07-15T04:57:29.929-07:00MNL 143<i>Directed by Emerson Reyes </i><br />
<i>written by Emerson Reyes and Ade Perilla</i><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">*Note: an FX, for those who aren't aware, is one of the staples of public transportation in Manila and is, essentially. a mash up of a cab and a very small midibus.</span><br />
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The bigger fish fried, with regards to Emerson Reyes' <b>MNL 143</b>, a loose-jointed portmanteau pivoting around an FX* driver's fruitless search for his longlost love, has to do with how its brief but tremulous history has brought to harsh light what has become the quintessential discourse of Philippine cinema in the noughties: when is an independent film truly independent? Cinemalaya has long basked in a glory that has re-purposed what was really a confluence of media muscle and high-impact branding, that name being a particular stroke of genius for coinage and connotation, into its highly arguable equity as the layman end-all be-all of independent cinema. At least up until it disqualified Emerson and his film over, of all things, casting issues. At least, for a brief time, back then.<br />
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At the gregarious height of the very public furor, even before a single frame was shot, <b>MNL 143 </b>had become provisionally known as the film that outed Cinemalaya for misrepresenting itself as a grant-giving body, and the sovereign one at that, when its dynamic and philosophy was closer to a boutique studio, beholden as it was to the show business caprices of its selection committee and the purse strings of its benefactor. Predictably enough, now that the festival is fast approaching, status quos have been restored and not a rustle heard about the scandal. <b>MNL 143</b> will always be a cautionary both of what happened and what may be happening still, but on its shoulders now unfairly rests a tremendous amount of polemic that it shouldn't bear, at least not anymore, as it unwittingly hangs its failure or success on the wrong things. And the irony is that, for something so freighted, it's an almost diametrically modest work: plotless, lackadaisical, blithe.<br />
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<b>MNL 143</b> sidelines its diffident Romeo, and his ordeal, for the parade of strangers who flit in and out of his cab, casting the same laconic, slightly curious but mostly transient eye on them, as those of us who've ridden cabs like these day after day have. The effect is like watching someone else channel-surf. And if nothing sticks perhaps that's out of how nothing is really meant to. This temporal, claustrophobic, often uneventful, and familiar pocket universe of our lives as commuters is the universe of the film, and one suffused with the random, from the banal to the amusing to the touching but never the truly momentous. Even when things actually start to happen, and despite the satisfying surge of endorphin near the end, they happen with a peculiar lack of fanfare, as if to say that the love of your life is just another fare who gets on your cab and gets out at her stop, another unfinished story, another interrupted arc, another brief life with no closure. It's also Emerson's canny way of throwing us off the film's scent.<br />
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But there is a scene halfway through, where the lovelorn cabbie (Allan Paule), who is the film’s center of gravity or rather its disarming lack of it, turns on the radio and breaks down to a lovesick ballad. Granted, it’s a reined-in breakdown, overwhelmed yet understated, but even as it smacks, at first, of something plucked out of a glossed-up studio rom-com, it slowly and inexorably becomes discomfiting as it lingers longer than it should and even longer than that, until the ickiness spills over from mushy verging on mawkish to something approaching poignancy. It is the first and only time in the film he confronts how much of a cross his longing has become, how much it bristles with deep-seated regret, but it's enough to reveal its hand. The unmistakable emotional timbre of <b>MNL 143</b> really draws from the kitschy jukebox pop you hear when it opens, thusly distilled as country music by way of 50s balladry by way of unguarded sentimentality by way of shameless corn, which is how we also dismiss our feelings when we wear our hearts on our sleeve, perhaps for fear of giving ourselves over to the harm that comes from doing so.<br />
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We are a people who not only succumb to mawk when no one's looking but whose reflex action after we've cried our hearts out is to shrug. And the nonchalance that makes <b>MNL 143</b> so breezy, so amiable, is really this casual, perhaps even endemic, optimism we conduct our lives with, the passive belief that everything will turn out OK and even if it doesn’t, well, that’s OK, too. It’s a sentiment that dovetails neatly into the real-life backstory of the film, which almost never got made but eventually was, under duress and with less than a quarter of the original budget, and becoming, too, in the process, a <i>de facto</i> figurehead against the artistic repression we had foolishly thought we were rid of. The making of <b>MNL 143</b> may be a lofty achievement but the film itself is a triumph of under-reach.dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-84648681334717721702012-05-31T01:52:00.003-07:002012-05-31T01:52:49.606-07:00American Horror Story<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh60cWqXdKeTwU5EkSf_3Yy87PWCZ0uNEDbhsQOeGDS6el74k5w6RNyPGujHNglqlNcqPk5LgyFTPenqV5-bvyxL00LSN1jNbjBLPZMcKqOg-PggxfA6oo0Xri6yakZCiWiwn_idA/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-09+at+1.07.03+AM.png"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677723591989625282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh60cWqXdKeTwU5EkSf_3Yy87PWCZ0uNEDbhsQOeGDS6el74k5w6RNyPGujHNglqlNcqPk5LgyFTPenqV5-bvyxL00LSN1jNbjBLPZMcKqOg-PggxfA6oo0Xri6yakZCiWiwn_idA/s400/Screen+shot+2011-01-09+at+1.07.03+AM.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 222px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
There is a glint in Victor Pearson’s eye, a boyish one but also a devilish one, as all glints tend to be at some point, mischievous, smarmy. It’s why filmmaking cohorts Monster Jimenez and Mario Cornejo invoke the same catch-all <i>caveat</i> about the subject of their documentary <b>Kano: An American And His Harem</b>. <i>“You have to meet him.”</i>, they tell me on separate occasions. I sense a slither of faint awe under the revulsion and I get it. Pearson is the expatriate American who maintained his own private harem of wives, and who languishes now in a country jail under the weight of 80 counts of alleged rape, all of which he vehemently denies. If it doesn’t exactly plumb the same depths of malevolence as, say, Charles Manson, what he does exude is a similarly dangerous ambivalence: charismatic and diabolical in equal measure. And it leaks into the movie, irradiating it almost. The part where he sings <i>Love Potion #9</i> smacks of both the quaint and the sinister, and not merely out of how creepy the subtext of the song gets, no. One second he’s your boisterous uncle with one too many drinks in him hogging the family <i>videoke</i>, the next he’s Dean Stockwell in <b>Blue Velvet</b>. He is, in many ways, the quintessential pervert. He is also the perfect documentary subject.<br />
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Monster, who directed, and Mario, who produced, amassed a nosebleed of interview footage to sift through: interviews with the plaintiffs, with the parents of the plaintiffs who insist the plaintiffs were lying, with the women who stayed loyal to this day, with Pearson’s estranged sister, rumors of deviant activities that threw political figures into the mix, which videotapes that have since gone missing allegedly bear out, of tiny conspiracies between the cracks. In the time it took for the film to reveal its shape, as documentaries are wont to do with this one taking five years, a tremendous amount of sides to the story emerged. Monster and Mario simply felt it would be unfair not to show all. Trouble is, Pearson seems to demand nothing smaller than a burst of indignation, his right to a fair shake long since waived. You go soft on someone as notorious and you’re at best an apologist , at worst a conspirator. Two women have gone so far as letting Monster know they wanted to throttle her after watching the film, for allegedly casting Pearson in a sympathetic light. It does no such thing, of course.<br />
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<b>Kano</b> is more than just watchable, though. It can be, and often is, terribly and compulsively entertaining, and it’s not from making light of matters but from how funny some of the people in it can be, it’s that levity with which we confront everything, endemic to us, peculiar to others. But at no point does the film slavishly demonize Pearson, at no point does it need to either. That’s the bone to pick for many. Only its gut-punch, both as film and as argument, really gets its brunt from resisting the urge to editorialize, leveling everything past the point of being about one man’s guilt to being more about an entire nation’s cultural psyche. How deep our resident subservience to the white man runs. How every moral choice tends to boil down to money changing hands. How money is our enabler, our prosthetic, our elixir, our atonement. And more than that, how the beloved infidel may well be our prevailing icon of machismo. Pearson doesn’t faze us too much, perhaps, because he is, in many ways, nothing new. He is every domestic action star who ever played a real-life philandering family man slash cop hero and spread the gospel of the other woman as a badge of manliness. And that he’s a war hero, too, makes the embodiment even more perverse. Those two women have every right to their shock and vitriol, of course, and to its ferocity. It’s worth noting, though, that they’re both foreigners. Obviously they’ve never seen a Bong Revilla film.<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;">*Originally Published at</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><b><a href="http://lagarista.com/">Lagarista</a></b>.</span>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-69183287863612239152012-05-31T01:52:00.001-07:002012-05-31T01:52:04.836-07:00Mondomanila<b>Mondomanila</b><br />
<i>Directed by Khavn De La Cruz</i><br />
<i>Written by Khavn De La Cruz and Norman Wilwayco</i><br />
<i>Based on the Novel by Norman Wilwayco</i><br />
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It had me with the thalidomide anti-drug hip-hop number and there was no doubling back after that. Nearly every Khavn (not a) film draws a non-negotiable line in the sand, either you’re in or you’re out and half-assed gets you nowhere. And this is the one with the outsize myth. The one that gestated anxiously for five years, which, for someone like Khavn, counts as a lifetime, given how the unifying mean of his diverse, divisive <i>ouevre</i> is its velocity and volume and how they tend to exhaust both the word and paradigm of prolific. M<b>ondomanila</b> is the one, really, that almost got away.<br />
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Blame the vagaries of fate, as these things happen. But who knows if fate was pulling a few strings in its favor, given how the sense that Khavn's deceptively brash and reckless filmography was building up precisely to this point becomes tougher and tougher to ignore, not so much in the way that it feels like everything he’s done before while also feeling nothing like it, but more in its sense of culmination, in its vibrant throwing down of favorite tropes: the sociopolitical rebuke, the blackly-comic ultraviolence, the freaks on parade, the unabashed sentimentality, the deviant sex, that would be the dwarf orgy and goose porn, the bubbly pop sing-a-longs, particularly its climactic production number. Even the magisterial last bow of Palito feels serendipitous if not orchestrated.<br />
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This is not the first time Khavn has staked out Everyslum, of course, except that in severely condensing the dense sprawl of its source code, Norman Wilwayco’s prize-winning cult novel, everything gets heightened even more than <b>Squatterpunk</b>, heightened into polemic, into poetry, into opera, into shock-pop, coming on like some exploded depression musical slash dysfunctional family comedy, obnoxious and color-mad and surreal. And the more it reaches its own boiling points of surrealism, the more it one-ups the earnest social realism of the poverty porn you can mistake it for at first blush, uncannily nailing, too, the genuine throb of its <i>milieu</i>, which has nothing to do with the exoticized despair that has become a haggard trope but this lust for life anyone who’s been to Anyslum can parse off the bat, and will recognize through the cartoon sheen. It's a joyful defiance almost, or a defiant joy if you will, the sort that comes from living a life with nothing to lose.dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-31383026098958881902012-05-31T01:50:00.002-07:002012-05-31T01:50:28.150-07:00Lawas Kan Pinabli (Forever Loved)<b>Lawas Kan Pinabli (Forever Loved)</b><br />
<i>Directed and Written by Christopher Gozum</i><br />
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That melancholia of displacement running like a hum of current through <b>Lawas Kan Pinabli (Forever Loved)</b> poeticizes the OFW experience partially as a maddeningly obtuse but gorgeously dreamlike reverie of transience and separation anxiety and the longing that comes from it: a man, nameless and fictional, searches aimlessly, possibly fruitlessly, for his missing OFW wife in a foreign country tellingly fraught with secret perils, the very same foreign country, it turns out, that Christopher Gozum has been working in all these years as an OFW.<br />
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Rising above one’s station is the aspirational default of the Filipino have-not, and working abroad their go-to golden ticket, the Middle East their Canaan. And the way we ritually valorize OFWs as unsung, working class heroes is not just out of how they significantly boost the economy like a periodic sugar rush but also, and mostly, for the backstory of tremendous sacrifice they go through to get where they are. Rags-to-riches is the true opiate of the masses and everybody loves a melodrama of struggle that pays off in dividends.<br />
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The bruising subversion here is in the way it dispiritingly, and shockingly, lays bare how steep the cost of that sacrifice can get, and how they often are each other’s worst enemies. It's not all blight, no. The sequence with the transplanted rockhound is, if nothing else, soothing. And there is a bracing loveliness to everything. But, give or take one or two, the real-life OFWs in the numbing, revealing interviews that intersperse the cul-de-sac detective story, and meld ghostly narrative with brooding documentary until the joins dissolve into each other, are, in varying degrees, victims: of workplace mishap, of mistaken identity, of abandonment, of treachery, of the malfunctions in our cultural psyche. This is not the public face of the OFW-as-hero, with his head held high all robust with hope and friends with the future, but rather its evil twin, slinking in the shadows, looking away if you gaze at it too closely. Diaspora is such a lonely word and<b> Lawas Kan Pinabli</b> is at turns a begrudging valentine to that loneliness. Diaspora is also a necessary evil, or at least an evil we have made necessary. And the ruination of these OFWs, as well as their desperation in the face of it, is the horribly disfigured face it refuses to show the world.dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-47082563876660238972012-04-06T13:33:00.001-07:002012-04-06T13:33:49.751-07:00Tickled Pink<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbvyk3vI5YqRxvFplQA8tt0IqBgQJ4RoFRWFaioX9RAsBP5JyfR2uFaDUpjqMr86o0EgTdJyaEM6Ai2f_i4kg5xI2bjD-3jfMWIb_fLseWCYNcsVAdsTpsVtGMK9XlDH79G__KA/s1600/protectedimage.php.jpeg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5693521001279477746" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbbvyk3vI5YqRxvFplQA8tt0IqBgQJ4RoFRWFaioX9RAsBP5JyfR2uFaDUpjqMr86o0EgTdJyaEM6Ai2f_i4kg5xI2bjD-3jfMWIb_fLseWCYNcsVAdsTpsVtGMK9XlDH79G__KA/s320/protectedimage.php.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 172px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
I have a confession to make, and in making it, I could well be painting a target on my forehead: I don’t believe I’ve seen a single Gay Film. Oh, I’ve seen Aureus Solito’s <b>Ang Pagdadalaga Ni Maximo Oliveros</b>. I’ve seen Raya Martin’s <b>Next Attraction</b>. But I’m not exactly sure they’re what I meant. I’m not sure if I meant Charliebebs Gohetia’s <b>The Thank You Girls</b> either. Or Brillante Mendoza’s <b>Masahista</b>. Or, indeed, Wong Kar Wai’s <b>Happy Together</b> and Andy Warhol’s <b>Blowjob</b>. Or New Queer Cinema - - -that was a genuine movement of 90s American independent cinema, as aesthetically diverse as the French New Wave, sure, having counted Derek Jarman and Gregg Araki and Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant among its proprietors, but unified by an explicit sociopolitical schema: to tackle the permutations of queer culture explicitly, intimately, from the inside looking out.<br />
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The Gay Film I mean is its own odd, unique phenomenon. It is, in many ways, a permutation of Queer Cinema philosophies and aesthetics, but in the thick of the whole domestic independent cinema boom, the Gay Film detonated into a boom of its own, sprouting like haywire mushrooms and with such a maddening profusion that it was a task to be oblivious to them. And, perhaps as fallout from the push and pull of supply and demand, or perhaps from the incontrovertible fact that these things did moderately brisk business , or perhaps through sheer ubiquity, or perhaps because laymen tend to be shortsighted and tremendously lazy about fact-checking things they don’t give a shit about, or perhaps all of the above, the Gay Film has become the <i>de facto</i> definition of what an indie film is, or rather what indie film is full stop.<br />
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It isn’t, of course, but what exactly is an indie film? The coinage isn’t ours,mind. It’s mostly American, and you know they have this hard-on for coinage. Indie films, back then, meant films made outside the rigid studio system, meaning films made with far less money and no kowtow to formula at all, meaning films with more aesthetic wiggle room, meaning films with more experimental nerve, meaning that other superfluous coinage: art films. But as is its wont, the mainstream co-opted and housebroke the indie film into its own bland make and model, mutating them into little more than slightly edgy mainstream films. Where Jim Jarmusch’s <b>Stranger Than Paradise</b> used to be the working definition of what an indie film is, these days, that would be Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ <b>Little Miss Sunshine</b>, or worse, Marc Webb’s <b>500 Days of Summer</b>.<br />
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Given how much we share with Hollywood, particularly the rigid studio system, our indie boom, facilitated and democratized by cheapjack technology, underwent the same thing. But rather than studio indies, which do abound but not as much anymore, the default make and model of indie film is a lot more robust and enduring than it seems. Cris Pablo, easily the most prolific director of Gay Films thinks <i>“Indie is associated with gay films perhaps because the gay audience has the stronger voice in the independent scene.”</i> He also notes that with the rapid emergence and growing profile of independent films such as those by Brillante Mendoza and Lav Diaz that are making the international festival rounds and getting the media mileage, the associations are starting to blur and divide. “<i>Still, it’s the gay films that are making the mark.”</i> Pablo remarks. Having never seen anything longer than a random trailer, I have no idea if it has an aesthetic stance and I shall go by wild rumor and conspiracy theory and hearsay and reputation here. The Gay Film I’m talking about, the Gay Film as we know it, the Gay Film that people equate with indie films, is unified by the same sociopolitical schema as Queer Cinema ,sure, but more than that by tawdry production values, samey soapy plots, horrible acting, excessive and explicit and unnecessary sex scenes. Allegedly. That,and a palpable exploitative fervor.<br />
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This exploitative fervor has to do with the alleged roping in of young, often talentless, nubile male hopefuls psycho for the blare of the spotlight or the mere promise of bathing in it for a living, whose only credentials are their physiques and willingness to show it off. All it takes sometimes is a minute of trailer to tell that the vacuum of talent is not so alleged. Everything else,though, is conjecture, although sometimes you can tell that from the trailers,too. Pablo makes his films with all the rigidity and stricture of a business deal, leaving very little room for its participants to be exploited unwittingly. <i>“There will be members of the team who go overboard and there are actors who do things you don't ask them to. I always advise them to be very careful and to never do anything they do not want to do.”</i> But he doesn’t discount the possibility that exploitation does occur.<br />
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Which is to say that all of this, in and of itself, is nothing far-fetched nor new nor shocking. The unholy communion between cinema and exploitation is a longstanding one. Before there was such a thing as independent cinema, anything made outside the studio system , anything made with no money and all the freedom to do whatever the hell it pleased, gravitated to sex and violence but mostly sex. And if looked at one way, the current vogue of Gay Films has very little to distinguish it from the Japanese Pink films of the 60s, or really, the local bold movie explosion of the 70s and 80s, and if you push it a little, has little to distinguish it either from Kerry Fox giving Mark Rylance a real oncam blowjob in Patrice Cheareau’s <b>Intimacy</b> or the unsimulated sex that make up two-thirds of Michael Winterbottom’s <b>Nine Songs</b>, unless you factor in aesthetics and philosophy and taste and ratchet the noise to a whole new platform of discourse.<br />
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I liken it more myself to the Blaxploitation films of the 70s, which refracted the African-American experience through a sieve of transposed genre films. It’s the more promising, and really, more apt parallel, in terms ,at the very least, of its bullish, insulated sense of community. And it is a community under siege. Targets of ire and revulsion and mostly of internet twats with no lives and no balls who like to lob insults online anonymously. The fans have been stalwart in their defense. A friend of mine who watched Pablo’s <b>Duda</b> remembers how fervent the audience was in their love for the film. Like the Blaxploitation films, the Gay Films are similarly transposed (only by gender) pop films. But more than that, they are a society unto themselves upheld by a die-hard and often fiercely protective constituency. More than you can say for the rest of the fractured, factionalized indie community.<br />
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<br />
But do Gay Films really, truly deserve the vitriol? And if so, why? For misrepresenting independent cinema? For exploiting their actors? For being little more than softcore porn in disguise? For having an overly sensitive fan base? For being annoying? These are all valid complaints. And yeah, I do find some of those trailers annoying. But many many films and filmmakers and film producers have been guilty of all of these at some point then and now. Not having seen a single Gay Film, of course, means I have no place defending it nor condemning it. But, in the end, if all the piss and vinegar is out of how these films are just flat-out horrible, isn’t it all just a little . . . meh? <i>“TV exploits. Radio exploits. Print exploits. So does film. So does independent cinema. So why point a finger?”</i> Pablo says and he has a point. Do we really need to isolate an entire subgenre with a genuine cult to feed, just to take potshots at bad cinema that’s successful? Don’t we have Michael Bay films for that? And Star Cinema?<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">*Originally published in</span> <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Monday</span></b>.</div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-38436759025148034272012-01-01T00:31:00.001-08:002012-01-01T03:45:10.804-08:00Zero Degrees of Separation: My 2011 At The MoviesI am still, it turns out, terribly susceptible to the delirium of festival fever, and in 2011, the temperature cranked past even my own thresholds, with the demented overlap in the last quarter making matters even more grueling. At the end of that week and a half, I was down with a particularly vicious strain of influenza.<br /><br />Cinemanila was still the sovereign colossus, as domestic festivals go, Cinema One Originals the squirrely daredevil, Cinemalaya the tasteful prude, although they seem to have grown an extra set of balls to let films like <b><a href="http://pelikulangsingkit.blogspot.com/2011/07/anok.html">Amok</a></b> slip through. All three had a robust year. And, despite the persistent and exasperating lament that local cinema is on a downward spiral, and despite bully tactics from the big studios, who got their ass handed back to them at one point, and by a delightful<a href="http://pelikula.blogspot.com/2011/07/zombadings-1-patayin-sa-shokot-si.html"> </a><a href="http://pelikulangsingkit.blogspot.com/2011/07/zombadings-1patayin-sa-shokot-si.html">indie zombie film</a> at that, things have settled into a groove of comfortable productivity. The year was copious with moments, still not enough perhaps, as it never always is. But at least now there's an envelope to push.<br /><br />I flew to <a href="http://www.hkiff.org.hk/en/index.php">HKIFF</a> just as the year begun and co-programmed the <a href="http://movfest.org/">4th .MOV</a> a little after half of it had come to pass. And these were the twin piths of my festival year, the latter slightly moreso. I also curated an exhibit for it, designed posters, translated parts of the poetry anthology we launched, had a hand in marketing, got wrung through the logistical brouhaha, was as privvy, in as hands-on a manner as possible for someone a few jurisdictions away from the main team, to the exhaustion, and exhilaration, of running even a festival as small as ours, not to mention the spate of Club.MOV screenings leading up to it, abolished by default with the sudden, saddening foreclosure of Mogwai Cinematheque. After this, I vowed to never again grumble over another festival's snafus and glitches. But I'd do it all over again in a snap. And three years from now, if the world doesn't end as scheduled, I will be.<br /><br />Movie-going, the communal experience of going out to a screening and watching a film with people, remained my advocacy. And I try, as much as I can, to disqualify torrents and DVDs from my list, charitably allotting one slot for it, with this year going to a film I almost saw in a theater. I did cheat a little with a couple of films I saw publicly, albeit in another country, but the rest of the list are films shown in Manila, never mind the nature of its run, never mind if it even had a run. As long as it wasn't at home on my TV, or worse, on my laptop. I did see a lot of films that way, and I imagine a few could've possibly made the cut. But with or without these rules, I suspect the list won't be too far off from this one.<br /><br />I did miss Lav's <b>Century of Birthing</b>. I missed Adolf's <b>Isda (Fable of the Fish)</b>, too. I missed Teng Mangansakan's <b>Cartas De La Soledad</b>. I missed Victor Villanueva's <b>My Paranormal Romance</b>. I missed Regiben Romana's<b> Sakay Sa Hangin (Windblown)</b>. I missed Jewel Maranan's <b>Tundong Magiliw</b>. These are some of my sins of omission, if you will, prey to my usual deficiencies of stamina and time and resources and singled out because they're filmmakers I like. I did get to see nearly all the locally shown foreign product, arthouse staples and commercial tentpoles both, which ran the usual gamut of odious to tepid to fits of spunk here and there that tended to dissipate the further away you got from the works, with only Terence Malick's<b> The Tree of Life, </b>Wim Wenders' <b>Pina</b>, Justin Lin's <b>Fast Five</b>, Gore Verbinski's <b>Rango</b> and Tarsem's <b>Immortals </b>having sufficient traction and exuberance to deserve a shout-out, not to mention Todd Haynes' foray into longform TV, <b>Mildred Pierce</b>. I liked them all, sure. I liked a tremendous amount of films this year, mostly local. But for my 2011 list, anything less than love I had little room for.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 148px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWAbv8MZvd5p71umL1ox8YzuS8ODeQHQx6GMAR4jnPaxywcFDp2ysuSKtieapgjL92Cw3kWCf93NvF084LgQtNvcdRWzTw2zpXEQTcYKMdApCv-ok7JvaRJJxbSojWOAKOaZbTXg/s320/Editors-Pick-Twenty-Cigarettes.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688076778347575234" /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>1. <b>20 Cigarettes</b> (James Benning, USA, HKIFF): <i>James Benning asks 20 of his friends to smoke in their respective environments and films what happens to them in the time it takes to finish a stick. </i><i>His first work that has to do with people rather than landscapes or architecture, has a strand of voyeurism that can't be helped but is also partially the point.</i><i> As knotty to parse and even knottier to push, this, like all his films, behaves like an installation but it's the conditions of a theater that are conducive to what it ultimately asks of us: the acute observation of duration in stillness.</i></div><div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUxLzJukWMnhzvUfgezOeK6aslcCDoQrFEodsHNnFYQyf4_tDRiwnNXkTjp9D2GamKWUdp1fhUoWBRygDEMZ39L1xaEIt-0kT2HZnySNrI8QV8nL9snDBySdJgIEsPQYPDT6N8Qw/s1600/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Anatolia-224557335-large.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 234px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUxLzJukWMnhzvUfgezOeK6aslcCDoQrFEodsHNnFYQyf4_tDRiwnNXkTjp9D2GamKWUdp1fhUoWBRygDEMZ39L1xaEIt-0kT2HZnySNrI8QV8nL9snDBySdJgIEsPQYPDT6N8Qw/s320/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Anatolia-224557335-large.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688073952624104130" /></a><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>2. <b>Once Upon A Time In Anatolia</b> (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, Cinemanila): <i>As disingenuous, and as lazy, as it is to invoke the word "magical" for something shot through with secrets and lies and regrets and deaths and the banality of the everyday, regardless of how wryly funny it can sometimes get, no other word feels more apt, even if it's only to describe what random lightning turns the otherwise barren Turkish countryside into. </i><i>The search for a dead body becomes</i><i>, for a posse of crusty and haggard civil servants, </i><i>a night, and eventually a day, of going round in circles, of straying off paths, o</i><i>f detours, th</i><i>e oddest and loveliest being a small village they repair to where the lights go out and an angel appears to serve them coffee.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfBrGTdN9Uv0mAdDVdrFIsrlNQqQrF1r8uBpNtPhsvzkA74NiMJO3q0h9GYn2dzEPjHIEdfBYgUYDTYJK3fNR2SinWz2BKSRYFxsTBuSzZwzH-txPELHTI2ICf3ptH-5VYvTiiA/s1600/La+quattro+volte-poster.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 225px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfBrGTdN9Uv0mAdDVdrFIsrlNQqQrF1r8uBpNtPhsvzkA74NiMJO3q0h9GYn2dzEPjHIEdfBYgUYDTYJK3fNR2SinWz2BKSRYFxsTBuSzZwzH-txPELHTI2ICf3ptH-5VYvTiiA/s320/La+quattro+volte-poster.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688073832247307154" /></a><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>3. <b>Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times)</b> (Michelangelo Frammartino, Italy, HKIFF): <i>Later on, when the nature of its metaphysics becomes apparent, you tend to marvel at the purity with which it was poeticized, not least with that single take everybody who's seen it is frothing in the mouth about, and rightly so, and with what is hands down the finest goat acting in the history of cinema. The four times of the title refers to the four lives that supposedly live within us and that we go through during rebirth: man, animal, vegetable, mineral. It is also, incidentally, the cast list.</i></div><div><i><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ9xT_Z5pbnt-lh1Y1jCxgQXsPpFG1mAy4WrcM9oBjpIUIFupUAAXHZryVb_XLx_HvAW54qKGR2Rv9xy7ntKIAF6LcHCnUnqz7SL72df7weSZ_1ZFexGCFF3rPxMruz9RH9A_vQw/s1600/breather.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 227px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ9xT_Z5pbnt-lh1Y1jCxgQXsPpFG1mAy4WrcM9oBjpIUIFupUAAXHZryVb_XLx_HvAW54qKGR2Rv9xy7ntKIAF6LcHCnUnqz7SL72df7weSZ_1ZFexGCFF3rPxMruz9RH9A_vQw/s320/breather.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688073409052004482" /></a></i></div><i><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">4. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Breather</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> (</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Pahinga</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">) (Khavn De La Cruz, Philippines, .MOV) :</span> <i>The cancer diary it started out as became something more after Khavn's father passed away during the editing, something closer to exorcism, to</i><i> magical thinking, but not to eulogy, as it's loss is not so much given over to the part of nostalgia that aches but more to the part that exhilarates. A</i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i> love letter, really, </i></span></i><i>as much to the filmmaker confronting his own mortality as to the parent who left a hole when he succumbed to his, but also to that brief and immortal time they both spent in the shadow of their longest goodbye.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM4iMyOf23wqPE_tNbABf9P8ZjxntFLFC1pN-ZxJqMrc_-TJCz4QEnRJxaU6lbUq2IqkyCY5F9XWvN4j1gxitoX3t-k7ZINA4MiQ3SxmwXNsmTy9aNc6d_stqMg13S18I3Xv2vyQ/s320/13assassins_poster-560x812.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690177723035779890" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 221px; height: 320px; " /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">5. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">13 Assassins</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> (Takashi Miike, Japan, Cinemanila): </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Having long parted ways with</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> <b>Seven Samurai </b></span><span class="Apple-style-span">as both my Kurosawa and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_cinema">jidaigeki</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> touchstone, here, then, is my substitute, itself a remake but enthusiastically so. The density of the nihilism with which the enemy here is fleshed out demands such an outsize catharsis in his climactic taking down, that no less than half an hour of glorious comeuppance would seem to suffice. Miike knows this. And gives us 45 feral, bloody minutes of it.</span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></div></i></div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0SmhBSKgut6ajA-gXk1Uh4cafBZCodi3-OdwN-o_tYWI8sudNmo2lb-HiQPShskvvZCKn102W0yFPJn02Ka_lHKGNQ0yS-ODuyooCF-mddDBIf9gKWU1WJAppYUm5C151XrQUw/s1600/big+boy+poster+%2528400+x+566%2529.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX0SmhBSKgut6ajA-gXk1Uh4cafBZCodi3-OdwN-o_tYWI8sudNmo2lb-HiQPShskvvZCKn102W0yFPJn02Ka_lHKGNQ0yS-ODuyooCF-mddDBIf9gKWU1WJAppYUm5C151XrQUw/s320/big+boy+poster+%2528400+x+566%2529.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688073619661523314" /></a><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">6. </span><b><a href="http://pelikulangsingkit.blogspot.com/2011/12/big-boy.html">Big Boy</a></b> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Shireen Seno, Philippines, Cinema One Originals): </span><i> A certain warm and often lovely </i><i>and also familiar</i><i> strangeness runs through here, as it's not only a film that's both about memory and like a memory, in the way it looks and feels and sounds and threatens to recede or disperse, but also about how every generation's experience of growing up has connective tissues that make them all kindred. </i></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6zXVUt2nHzUyfPjMHv6cl3Sbxmi9Fo6mDRBA6BSM4QGoicYtDwYsfMgKW7tRqF7lCkqhSBG0m3bYp7_eIKNi2NO4WWhozoz8IRP9KifzaADxQSBgD-43CsRiSYcKT-CCBvFZVTA/s1600/mgaanino.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 184px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6zXVUt2nHzUyfPjMHv6cl3Sbxmi9Fo6mDRBA6BSM4QGoicYtDwYsfMgKW7tRqF7lCkqhSBG0m3bYp7_eIKNi2NO4WWhozoz8IRP9KifzaADxQSBgD-43CsRiSYcKT-CCBvFZVTA/s200/mgaanino.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5689194997108672898" /></a><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">7.</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> Mga Anino Sa Tanghaling Tapat</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Ivy Universe Baldoza, Philippines, Cinema One Originals): </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>Three girls grapple with the thorny changes their bodies undergo, </i></span></span><i>as ghosts and portents pool in the luxuriant and poisonous forest around them. Ivy's polarizing but undervalued rumination on sex and death re-imagines the carnal processes of brutal youth as a </i><i>creepily erotic , </i><i>maddeningly obtuse horror movie.</i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><i><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3dZs7exKBb8N3hgJnE9KIPCUHzkdyv-yUPrUysjnboXZ8xWk45Jb-jUecaq1zzqrUL_mJdCYDjE0DMwFTNjG33B0-L6e6p_huUbEmCpEPVILFhGcGn-cZyiBv4sy11jwc4x9C0A/s1600/Contagion+Marion+Cotillard.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 219px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3dZs7exKBb8N3hgJnE9KIPCUHzkdyv-yUPrUysjnboXZ8xWk45Jb-jUecaq1zzqrUL_mJdCYDjE0DMwFTNjG33B0-L6e6p_huUbEmCpEPVILFhGcGn-cZyiBv4sy11jwc4x9C0A/s320/Contagion+Marion+Cotillard.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688880397163004610" /></a><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">8. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Contagion</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> (Steven Soderbergh, USA, Domestic Release): </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i>Pitched below the requisite volume of panic and spectacle, of course it's going to go over many heads spoiling for crackle, for racing against time and eleventh hour salvation. But its' grim, procedural sobriety has that low hum of unease and exposure. </i><i>It starts with a cough in the dark, disembodied and nearby, as if saying here is your doom in small, the littlest of things you can't see, loosed now in a world that connects like a network of veins at the speed of god. </i><i>If none of this makes you very nervous, you really ought to be.</i></div></i></span></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh63O03bu6C58dJ0MGSDniS4KY3NlRLK1lwPmjfiAAnwP-elm8qqYRw03LpMeZwPMDJVEGFZRNXxn4Wy5EDpCo89KrKiZx-nWu-wlPVNim1sganDqo4qqZiIMsggImOOVNh7bZDEA/s1600/6degrees.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 210px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh63O03bu6C58dJ0MGSDniS4KY3NlRLK1lwPmjfiAAnwP-elm8qqYRw03LpMeZwPMDJVEGFZRNXxn4Wy5EDpCo89KrKiZx-nWu-wlPVNim1sganDqo4qqZiIMsggImOOVNh7bZDEA/s320/6degrees.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688074535696532834" /></a><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">9. </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Six Degrees of Separation From Lillia Cuntapay </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> (Antoinette Jadaone, Philippines, Cinema One Originals): </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span">If nothing else, for not being the one trick pony I always felt it was prone to becoming, at least on paper, cynical </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span">as I was </span></div></i></span></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></span></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span">a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span">t first about how deep the cachet of its subject ran and if it could sustain more than a couple of gags. Antoinette calls this a mockumentary but it veers closer to that freak overlap of documentary and fiction,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span"> and in exalting </span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span">Lillia Cuntapay, the iconic bit player, certainly a phenomenon unique to us, it </span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span">subtly lambasts how stuck-up the showbiz industry is and how intolerably embarrassing, and distressing, our thrall to it remains regardless. That, and it's also a hoot.</span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg85mlOlYdQIuhv7pv0JypGr06RDza0ZMDc9or9jFLwo7ei7KuBBekVlcYob4zHgs0phB4C3Csac7fPHO2MpU6XE6HAmFxF_t-NSP79wlC7AR23Q9nR5YMPryy6b2oXgHsCHbKFHQ/s320/nino.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688879595970620530" /><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">10. <b><a href="http://pelikulangsingkit.blogspot.com/2011/11/nino.html">Niño</a></b> (Loy Arcenas, </span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Philippines, Cinemalaya):</span> </span></b></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">Time's a goon, it's been said, and it is, and sometimes it wins. </span></span></b></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Emptied-out desperate things palpitate against</span></span></b></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "> obsolescence and all its useless beauties</span></span></b></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, not least being the centrifugal matriarch whose opera star has faded but also the religious finery leeched of their divinities but for the wild hope she hangs on it. </span></span></b></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span></div></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div></div></div></i></span></div></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></b></div></div></i></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 224px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH8za0pTrVfk9UHDpnoYIKBAajWtcoWTOy-_lHpbPv8Dkl8RoI_lZmZxowevj8_imGKvzhVU0U0RXhVj-QkFMZS0YS2VLJClTigkChVejGlt69BQTSYVxPOKY0hyphenhyphen_gHPrhVNOVhw/s320/buenas+noches+espana+poster+%2528400+x+572%2529.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5690174651278887074" /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Buenas Noches España</span></b></span><b></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Raya Martin, Philippines-Spain, Spanish Film Festival):</span> <i>Raya's experimental opiate is a bit of a quandary for me, hence its position, as I do like the form, but I like the idea of the form even more, and absolutely love the idea of the form in the context of where his</i> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">ouevre</span> <i>stands, on the cusp of either repeating himself into perpetuity or going so far out on a limb it's likely to wind a lot of people up, which it did, which it should. Painters and musicians get to color outside the lines the way he does here, sometimes to fanfare, sometimes to indifference, but filmmakers are routinely frowned upon, often by other filmmakers, for merely being curious as to what's on the peripheries of the three-act narrative convention we box the medium in, and are all but lynched when they act on that curiosity. This is also where our national cinema stands at the moment, trying to figure out what it is, and slowly fitting itself into safe absolutes in the attempt, when what it needs to do is to maybe wind a few people up. Cinema is the youngest art, and Philippine Cinema even younger. Too young, in fact, to get all wussy about going out on limbs.</i></div></div></i>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-90386262698371956932011-12-31T03:47:00.000-08:002012-01-01T03:48:12.500-08:00Shake Rattle And Roll 13<span style="font-weight:bold;">Shake Rattle & Roll 13</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Directed by Richard Somes, Jerrold Tarog and Chris Martinez<br />Written by Richard Somes and Aloy Adlawan, Maribel Ilag and Jerrold Tarog and Roselle Monteverde-Teo, Jerry Gracio</span><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPF3I5fcdcnT72TdxebYBy6ET5jJlGScjh5CMbZMmc1Pn6DwhusewT8HCtx1Qpi27c8PKdp2tPM9eBeU98UmHmu-3yK75sk7WswdQDRvJcrz2eGGIhn8SQllfVRJfaWvN1yquJfQ/s1600/tamawo.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 217px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPF3I5fcdcnT72TdxebYBy6ET5jJlGScjh5CMbZMmc1Pn6DwhusewT8HCtx1Qpi27c8PKdp2tPM9eBeU98UmHmu-3yK75sk7WswdQDRvJcrz2eGGIhn8SQllfVRJfaWvN1yquJfQ/s400/tamawo.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5691267526544380978" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br />Part of the fun, and the frustration, in watching a studio tent-pole taken over, in the loosest sense, by someone outside its rank and file of yes men hacks is second-guessing where the <i>auteur</i> ends and the studio head begins. That’s three times the fun, and the frustration, when it comes to what is being roundly exalted as the last of the <b>Shake Rattle And Roll</b> milking cows, <b>13</b>.<br /><br />But, restraint having never been a prominent facet of Chris Martinez’ aesthetic, and much less so the literal <i>sturm and drang</i> of his episode, <i>Rain Rain Go Away</i>, it gets tough to tease him from all this grim J-Horror slow burn, or slow damp if you will, tougher when his muse Eugene Domingo reins in all her funny, too. Tough, and not a little disorienting, at least at first. But this may be the most cohesive of all three, and the one with the least signs of interference. It uses for grist the collateral damage of Ondoy, a tragedy that’s possibly freighted with as dreadful a resonance for us as 911 has for Americans, and certainly weighs heavily on the characters. And there’s a meta eeriness to having it come out in the fresh aftermath of a similar catastrophe. You can see where it’s going almost from the get-go, but it’s not so much the reveal here as it is the languid gloom with which we get there.<br /><br />Richard Somes is really the one with the most vivid auteurist imprint, if only because it’s more immediate and apparent by dint of being largely visual. His <i>Tamawo</i> is anorexic, falters in the telling, and takes its time to finish, but there’s an energy unique to him at work here, a feral, pulpy vigor. Returned to the familiar terrain of his <i>aswang</i> inversion <b>Yanggaw</b>, with some of its supple expressionistic sexiness, as well as that mixture of the brutish and the maudlin that leavens his sense of drama and takes getting used to, you can tell it’s the knotty dynamics of the fractured family that he’d rather tap into, but settles for a siege film in which Maricar Reyes is a young mother whose ramshackle house in the jungle is surrounded by monsters. She also happens to be blind. And it’s a trope that Richard gets to exploit brilliantly once, in a scene that amounts to your bang for the buck in hardcore creepout.<br /><br />Creepier still, and possibly more terrifying than water ghosts and albino monsters, in real life as it is here, is the ferocious boil riled-up estrogen can come to. This is what Jerrold Tarog buttresses <i>Parola</i> with. It does bear some of the strain from all the shape-shifting the script was likely made to undergo, apparent not least from how the eponymous haunted lighthouse has become incidental to the point of extraneous, buckling here and there from its multiple tiers of subtext lacking enough running time to layer cohesively. But it gets palpably malevolent when it reverts to its high school setting, and Kathryn Bernardo and Louise De Los Reyes get to play out their protracted supernatural catfight, with all that heightened and pent-up spite and malice and venom that leak out when best friends turn archenemies. Voodoo plus hormones, yeah. That’s not only a log line for a tween horror movie, that’s also the quintessence of what it’s like to be a girl.<br /><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">*Originally published in</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span><span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://lagarista.com/site/entry/the_last_horror_show_shake_rattle_and_roll_13_review"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Lagarista</span></a></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">as</span> <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Last Horror Show</span></span></div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-3085512649404117892011-12-25T03:40:00.000-08:002012-01-01T03:41:19.359-08:00Big Boy<span style="font-weight:bold;">Big Boy</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Directed and Written by Shireen Seno</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3HpP2eujfams9KN6Wfqfu2m-qiggErVo0p7KM6Pv5Yx2VBc18Dy1BjVjQWDsqeWPQFhWMm1gPGtfX4d86Sv8TR5cHV6302ohNIZ687mq4Uo2C69e0Fv6KVUyGhVkADwZjAXIvEA/s1600/bigboy.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3HpP2eujfams9KN6Wfqfu2m-qiggErVo0p7KM6Pv5Yx2VBc18Dy1BjVjQWDsqeWPQFhWMm1gPGtfX4d86Sv8TR5cHV6302ohNIZ687mq4Uo2C69e0Fv6KVUyGhVkADwZjAXIvEA/s400/bigboy.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673815691604019362" /></a><br /><div><br /><br /><br />Shireen Seno isn’t joking, or being flippant, when she says <b>Big Boy</b> is about the tonic wonders of cod liver oil, as it sort of is. And she herself can vouch for its efficacies, having been made to drink it every day while growing up. She is now the tallest of her brothers and sisters. She is also the youngest. Her father underwent a similar regime and a similar surge of growth and is, in fact, the eponymous character. And if it comes on all gauzy and fugitive, the way memories do, it’s out of how that’s what it ostensibly is. An entire hope chest of them, really, strung together as if like pearls, or family heirlooms if you will, in this case Shireen’s, and more particularly, her father’s.<br /><br />Memories of his life as a boy living with his parents and siblings in the sticks of postwar Mindoro, where every sun-baked day seemed to vibrate with the potential for benign incursions of the magical to occur, and time and again did. Memories, too, of the blissed-out inertia that occurs between transitions. Of the anxieties in finding your place as your country recuperates from its own brush with chaos and navigates its own displacement. And, more than anything else, of growing comfortable inside your own body even as it grows faster than you thought it would, leaving the rest of you behind as it does. Her father had always found his way into her work before but only here is his presence this specific, this situated. Rather than wander into one of his daughter’s stories, she’s wandered this time into his.<br /><br />And she’d been, in fact, foraging in there for years. These are a mere handful of the fragments she’d been curating of her family’s oral history. But in nearly every one of them, childhood being eerily consensual, is a flicker of recognition, deepening resonances, brokering empathies. <b>Big Boy</b> does have a wobbly rope of plot if you get queasy from the lack of a graspable shape but it’s from the irrational un-structure that all its cathartic voltage emits. It’s not so much about memories as it is about the way memories behave and the way they look and feel and also the way they sometimes blur into their own autonomous dream soup. And much as the period detail has a severity of precision that often belies its minimalism, it gains from it, ironically enough, not a sense of historical accuracy, but an atemporal disconnect, as if we were watching home movies from some parallel world past, undercutting the homespun intimacies of the Super8 footage, not with a surge of nostalgia, as you might expect from the way it evokes at first blush the lulling voyeurism of Jonas Mekas but rather with a low hum of otherness, at turns spooky and beatific, which evokes not so much Mekas anymore but, well, Shireen’s own similarly haunted short work, all furtive rhythms with the consistency of ghosts.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Originally published at</span> <b><a href="http://lagarista.com/site/entry/mysterious_objects_at_noon_big_boy_review"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Lagarista</span></a></b> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">as</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Mysterious Objects At Noon.</span></b></div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-80704451857525713312011-11-29T06:24:00.000-08:002012-01-03T00:47:18.842-08:00Di Ingon Nato (Not Like Us)<b>Di Ingon Nato (Not Like Us)</b><br /><i>Directed and Written by Ivan Zaldarriaga and Brandon Relucio</i><div><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjft09bMam7wlIwHNeVGfaynjG_2qwPdSvQYP3dOefdp9uWWsBRScHI65sAn8pz7dXRSqirfi4U77LUpVLeroeoVn_OOiqYUnr0o0HID-bXbCjcKOzQrhPiQ3walGX5uXDfTErOgw/s1600/tumblr_lufnk7PDTw1qax3ido1_500.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjft09bMam7wlIwHNeVGfaynjG_2qwPdSvQYP3dOefdp9uWWsBRScHI65sAn8pz7dXRSqirfi4U77LUpVLeroeoVn_OOiqYUnr0o0HID-bXbCjcKOzQrhPiQ3walGX5uXDfTErOgw/s400/tumblr_lufnk7PDTw1qax3ido1_500.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5680272313961337298" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Pretty much everything you can say through the mouthpiece of zombies, George Romero has: consumerist satire, dystopian nihilism, anti-science screed, first person shooter stress relief. You have oddments like Robin Campillo's terrific <b>Les Revenants (They Came Back)</b> that pass the trope through a sieve of melancholia, becoming instead a meditation on the dynamics of grief, but nearly everything else is a haggard riff of some law Romero's laid down, no matter how vibrant, how agog, how beloved. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Di Ingon Nato </b><b>(Not Like Us) </b>is a riff, too, but one that gets escape velocity from transposing its doomy sense of isolation to a rural <i>milieu</i>, and rural here means our far-flung Third World boondocks, where people get around on rickety diesel mopeds and beatup pickups, what passes for a hospital is an undermanned and under-equipped clinic, combat-readiness boils down to jungle knives and single-shot rifles, and no one is as steeped in the lore enough to know that head shots save bullets and buys time. And the zombies here are not the undead of legend, the sort these folks have names for and dispatch with magic, but rather the ones borne of unfathomable contagion and go viral at cheetah speeds. No social realist indie for miles has tapped into, as this has, the backward conditions and fatal ill-preparedness of half the country for any sort of calamity.</div><div><br /></div><div>But its second half, set in a nameless town, where all this panic and vulnerability is meant to curdle into a delicious hysteria, is a badly-acted gruesomely-imagined crudely-staged shambling lack of anywhere to go. Granted, the version I saw was a work-in-progress, and you could snipe a volatile shape in all that meander and confusion, but many darlings need to be killed, and the editing prudent to the point of unmerciful, if any of this were to cohere, let alone survive its first half hour or so. Set in a nearby forest, where a farmer and his wife and their son eke out what meager life they can from the land, and an interloper darkness creeps in to upset their fragile balance, that half-hour is a gumbo of bucolic desolation shading inexorably into apocalyptic dread. It's an amazing, fearsome mixture. And a zombie riff with legs. Just too bad they had to go to town without it.</div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-55101715138039103962011-11-25T22:42:00.000-08:002011-11-26T02:43:29.424-08:00Niño<span style="font-weight:bold;">Niño</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Directed by Loy Arcenas<br />Written by Rody Vera</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRpH5_1W4Cve6mGbIHHGZxOghxGXpCe69jI5s0q320yu39_FUPKxrWQm3q-bcjZMrHdXKkDjBpKH5ALL05wLC7SHcIBCCBoXU62w_9qtXzYAosl1pBaqxln_id_nb0DUAPF8hSJw/s1600/Ni%25C3%25B1o.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 269px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRpH5_1W4Cve6mGbIHHGZxOghxGXpCe69jI5s0q320yu39_FUPKxrWQm3q-bcjZMrHdXKkDjBpKH5ALL05wLC7SHcIBCCBoXU62w_9qtXzYAosl1pBaqxln_id_nb0DUAPF8hSJw/s400/Ni%25C3%25B1o.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632249427147170098" /></a><br /><div><br /><br /></div><div><br />Shutting yourself off from the world swings both ways, and one man's idyll can be another's cabin fever. These are the defenses built, the lines drawn, when the future gets bleak and the present starts corroding the past, and the question that bears down on the Lopez-Aranda family is how much of their corroded past should they give up and what bleak future will they get for it? There's a lot at stake with the question because the past in question has to do with the massive, crumbling house they live in and whether they can keep doing so, and the past tends to get pushier if it's as verdant as theirs. The gravely ill <i>paterfamilias</i>, in his own advanced stages of molt, used to be a congressman. And his sister, often lost in a cloud of her own making, a rock star among opera singers.</div><div><br /></div><div>She's the whirlpool around whom everything and everyone revolves and bounces off : her brother who owns the house she now runs as if she did, the reckless son in partial has-been rot even before he becomes an also-ran but who remains her favorite, the grandson in whom she sees the most fervent of hopes not least when he puts on a Sto. Niño cape and crown as if it were a superhero costume and refuses to take it off, the ignored daughter who only wants a little more of her mother's love than she's getting, the niece returned from abroad determined to move on and sell the house that hovers over everything like a ghostly weight. Fides Cuyugan-Asensio is indomitable as the lapsed diva and her temperament becomes the film’s: skittish, fractious, wistful, elegant, and just the tiniest bit cuckoo.</div><div><br /></div><div>Cut from the same genteel cloth as Ang Lee at the height of his infatuation with no-round-limit cross-generational family wrestling matches, but reined in to frustrate the demands of melodrama, <b>Niño</b> hones in on something more delicate, averse to bluster and way naughtier and funnier, hardly vacating the premises, but never letting the air stultify or thicken into must, finding rather a phantom power in the way the forward motion of youth and the luxuriant torpor of old age stare each other down to the same uneasy truce that is the emotional stalemate of the film's tangle of estrangements, bequeathing an impasse that you can see coming, resolves nothing, but gets unexpectedly magical anyway.</div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-6706096342723917122011-11-17T23:19:00.001-08:002011-11-17T23:19:53.886-08:00Aswang<b>Aswang</b><div><i>Directed by Jerrold Tarog</i></div><div><i>Written by Aloy Adlawan and Jerrold Taro</i>g</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhBeILNGReUhPY9BHDFR_QeCaqr0rNpcm2A9j5wPzTfMzf_d4wefjhqcj0QVZOH5qwIq5bu0rBDhCMEqzr8wR0N0SlVsD8ES6JxHlsWA1Rr2yXI7HBTYXDa6dbzXgynDvCdx2jsg/s1600/Lovi-Poe-as-Aswang.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhBeILNGReUhPY9BHDFR_QeCaqr0rNpcm2A9j5wPzTfMzf_d4wefjhqcj0QVZOH5qwIq5bu0rBDhCMEqzr8wR0N0SlVsD8ES6JxHlsWA1Rr2yXI7HBTYXDa6dbzXgynDvCdx2jsg/s400/Lovi-Poe-as-Aswang.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673164795323153378" /></a><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>If you go by the way he juiced up last year’s edition of the haggard<b> Shake Rattle & Roll</b> franchise with <b>Punerarya</b>, and also by the pop vibrancy of his independent non-genre work, Jerrold Tarog seems to have enough pedigree for remixing the beloved Peque Gallaga-Lore Reyes chestnut. And <b>Aswang</b> is ostensibly a monster movie, but it’s one that seems more interested in things other than its monsters: in the way revenge can transform you into the object of your violence, for one, in the imperatives of a species determined to arrest its extinction, in a small town living perpetually under threat, and above all, in the dissonances between the urban and the rural, the modern and the ancient, the natural and the supernatural, and the point when the lines between them blur.<br /><br />It pivots on a teenage boy and his baby sister witnessing the cold-blooded massacre of their household. And having your parents murdered violently before your eyes turns out to be the shared tragedy of its principal characters, and also the tragedy that cracks everything open for a potentially bloodier, more mean-spirited sequel. But it’s a subtext that goes neither viral or nova, simmering rather under the skin of the piece, a trauma that never gets enough room to fester and seethe, nor gets to go anywhere really, as everyone is too busy running for their lives, if not from hired assassins, then inevitably from monsters, who shapeshift into crows, burrow under the ground like moles, sprout nasty fangs, eat live flesh. <b>Aswang</b> is also from Regal, after all. And it wants its monster movie to be interested in its monsters.<br /><br />It doesn’t take a genius anymore, these days, or much intel for that matter, to second-guess the processes that transpire when a studio makes a film, much more one meant to be a tentpole. And <b>Aswang</b> is beset by the sort of push-pull that occurs when you wring a filmmaker used to being left to his own devices, or a filmmaker who simply has his own devices period, through the knotty caprices of our studio matriarchies, as auteurist sensibility and studio directive constantly arm-wrestle for dominance. And it can be its own bit of fun trying to figure out which is which.<br /><br />That dream slash love sequence does smack of pure Regal. And the stable newbies as well as the not-so-newbies are perhaps why the affectless, effortless performances that have enlivened every single one of Jerrold’s films before this is alarmingly nowhere to be found and nearly breaks the back of the piece in its absence. The bristling attack by the river does spasm with Jerrold’s skittish vigor. And much as I can’t figure out why they bother when they can fly anyway, the burrowing under the ground to catch prey is a splendid effect that accounts for at least one breathtaking money shot. But it’s not so much the jittery brio of <b>Confessional</b> that <b>Aswang</b> taps into, but rather the meditative languor of the underrated <b>Mangatyanan</b>. And there’s a gravity to <b>Aswang</b> that slows it down some, possibly slower than it should be, but thickens the mood, too, until it gains, particularly in the sequences at the abandoned ranch where the monsters hole up, this weird, pungent density.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">*Originally Published in</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://lagarista.com/site/entry/awang_review">Lagarista</a> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">as</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"> <b>Tropical Maladies</b>.</span><br /><br /></div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-20860245313049991162011-10-29T06:35:00.000-07:002011-10-29T06:36:07.704-07:00The Salvage Detectives<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIHMItehgwRNsyw4Pw9vwNhAiy-vJY5oEKNRSwVUwIumiGG9TpwddBdv_YXjs_Byd0on429Zx8iuY2s0Ef4Fn2SD_k784zGpOtdsUWmUtMojwGTaFnVE1NfafYxiQJzZuDEztZqA/s1600/40465_499321269128_34906814128_6932041_1001673_n.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIHMItehgwRNsyw4Pw9vwNhAiy-vJY5oEKNRSwVUwIumiGG9TpwddBdv_YXjs_Byd0on429Zx8iuY2s0Ef4Fn2SD_k784zGpOtdsUWmUtMojwGTaFnVE1NfafYxiQJzZuDEztZqA/s400/40465_499321269128_34906814128_6932041_1001673_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5661707667232284082" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Rumor has it that there’s a lost Martin Scorsese film out there, a crime film shot on the cheap from before <b>Mean Streets</b>, that exists in the form of a grimy bootleg VHS. Lost films are the yeti footprints of film geeks, our ghost stories, our fuzzy UFO photographs, our obscure objects of desire. And there certainly is a touch of the arcane to the notion of an under the radar film few have seen, tenuously held together by the duct tape of failing memory, its potentially vital cultural data hostage to the processes of decay. Exotica like this is the vitamin of geeks. But Scorsese hasn’t gone on record to confirm or deny the film nor has anyone bothered picking up its trail. It’s not as if the world is in desperate need for any more Scorsese films, anyway. We have too much as it is, if you ask me. And it’s not as if we’re talking about <b>Citizen Kane</b> either.<br /><br />But what if we were? Or something of similar exaltation? The few people who’ve seen Gerry De Leon’s lost film <b>Daigdig Ng Mga Api</b> have unanimously proclaimed its magnificence. It had me with that title, sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it lives up to it and turns out be our <b>Citizen Kane</b> after all. Except we might never know. Just as we might never know, too, if Manuel Conde’s <b>Juan Tamad</b> films deserve the legend they’re freighted with. Or if Ishmael Bernal’s <b>Scotch on the Rocks To Forget, Black Coffee To Remember</b> is anywhere near as tantalizing as its title. No prints have survived. No copies exist. Not even on tape. The number of films we’ve apparently lost out of neglect and indifference is a gut punch that can make even the most stalwart of resolves buckle at the knees. And folded into the context of our film history, the stakes are raised and our lost films become more than mere esoterica, gaining instead a sheen of minor tragedy. And, if anyone from SOFIA could have their way, a throb of emergency, too.<br /><br />Founded by the late Hammy Sotto and a handful of like-minded colleagues in 1993, SOFIA is the Society of Filipino Archivists for Film, a non-profit task force of volunteers whose station is to salvage whatever lost films of ours they can. It’s not yet too late but time is running out. Entire strains of history are literally and inexorably turning to vinegar. There are piles of films past the point of rescue, and there are piles more getting there even as you read this. SOFIA is not exactly bereft of trophies, counting among their triumphs the rediscovery and restoration of films like <b>Giliw Ko</b>, <b>Noli Me Tangere</b>, <b>Tunay Na Ina</b>, <b>Sanda Wong</b>, <b>Kundiman Ng Lahi</b>, and <b>White Slavery</b>. But this, their members will be the first to tell you, barely scratch the surface. And the work that needs to be done is regularly curtailed as SOFIA are continually beset by troubles that swing from the usual lack of funding to the crippling vacuum of a National Film Archive that should exist but doesn’t. Help does come from all sides. Foreign organizations have lent a hand in restoring some films. Even film producers and branches of government are weighing in. But it’s a precarious situation, all told. Still, never say never is their default mantra. <b>Daigdig Ng Mga Api</b> is SOFIA’s Holy Grail. But so were Gerry de Leon's <b>The Moises Padilla Story</b> and Lino Brocka’s <b>Wanted Perfect Mother</b>, both thought forever lost in any format. And if these films can resurface, as they have, suddenly anything is possible.<br /><br />A few months back, after years of basking curiously in its outsize myth, I at last saw Mario O’Hara’s previously lost <i>noir</i> <b>Bagong Hari</b> for the first time, as part of SOFIA’s Overlooked Films Underrated Filmmakers series of screenings. Cobbled from grungy U-Matic elements, its condition was far from pristine but this was probably the best the film has looked in years. More to the point, though, it surged with energy, felt thrillingly alive - - -dense, ballsy, vigorous. Direk Mario was there and so were the film’s stars Dan Alvaro, Robert Arevalo, Perla Bautista. This was the first of the screenings I attended, and regret missing Jun Raquiza’s <b>Krimen</b> and Danny Zialcita’s <b>Masquerade</b>, regret missing nearly every screening, really. This was how it was each time, I’ve been told. An unsung film retrieved from the fringes, a relatively fervid audience, its director and stars rekindling glory days and meeting new generations of admirers. It’s terribly encouraging. And it makes sense that a generous amount of SOFIA’s energies are now being poured into them.<br /><br />We are largely a culture who has routinely trivialized, neglected, ignored and vilified our own cinema, elevating our revulsion to a class schism even, while kissing the ground foreign cinema treads. This flippant, often disgruntled, apathy has been more or less crucial to the state our cinema is in now. But, in its own modest way, these screenings embody the almost violent tidal shift in attitude and enthusiasm. And it’s tough not to feel even the tiniest glimmer of hope. The mash-up archaeologist detective mercenaries of SOFIA will not shirk from their first mission , sure. The lost films need to be found and restored. But these screenings are, in and themselves, restorations, too, of the very things that bought SOFIA , and those of us who champion their efforts, here in the first place: the jubilant obsession, the keening passion, the relentless love.<br /><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">Originally published at</span> <a href="http://lagarista.com/site/entry/sofia_the_salvage_detectives">Lagarista</a>.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">Picture courtesy of</span> SOFIA.</div></div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-56513653232010818462011-10-09T19:38:00.000-07:002011-11-17T23:18:56.962-08:00San Lazaro<span style="font-weight:bold;">San Lazaro</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Directed and Written by Wincy Aquino Ong</span><div><span></span><i><br /></i><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUSeqPMBLG40hvuwvLpjRnqvokJ-Szc3KTZ32DHbItziFdmTvnW959Ii-sZxSUlB0o7rX4RHEcQBeJek9sNYA6cz8v01p1YXf7_jC7k0ZydgmooHx9mbGRUl3Zae6X_ufmPLJiZA/s1600/sanlazaro2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUSeqPMBLG40hvuwvLpjRnqvokJ-Szc3KTZ32DHbItziFdmTvnW959Ii-sZxSUlB0o7rX4RHEcQBeJek9sNYA6cz8v01p1YXf7_jC7k0ZydgmooHx9mbGRUl3Zae6X_ufmPLJiZA/s400/sanlazaro2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5643855684920584898" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><br />Wincy Ong’s first film feels like one all right, but not in the sense that it comes together crudely as if under the nervy thumb of some self-entitled film school amateur groping sloppily for a clue and passing it off as style. He’s put in the hours, Wincy, directing a tonnage of music videos and a television show before this. And all that toil shows in the restraint and temperament, in the shape and sheen, of the film.<br /><br />No, it’s more in the way it seems to be organized around the twin notions of this being something he’d been waiting and wanting to do for so long and that the next one may not be as easy to come by, and the way he leaves nothing out, throwing in what feels like the entire filmography he's already shot and dubbed out in his head, as if they’ve been pent-up and gestating all these years and maybe they have, as if he might never get the chance and who knows if he will. But by cleverly parsing them out as flashbacks, flashbacks that frankly have far more vigor and crackle and weirdness than the one-note present-day through-line it all hangs on and feeds, he calms down the tendency of everything to violently shift tones. It does still buckle a little here and there, but mostly it fills out the characters and the piece, giving both density and cartilage.<br /><br /><b>San Lazaro</b> is a no-brainer: a horror slash road movie slash buddy comedy. Pitched somewhere between Chito Rono and Edgar Wright, albeit with little of the former’s visual acumen but thankfully even less of the latter’s slavish and annoying geekiness. And prone as these things are to the self-referential hubris of such geeky impulses, it’s first grace note is in how all of that is reined in to zero, how it takes the time to build its own universe, contains everything there, and not nod to some pop-cultural in-joke for comfort every time things get iffy - - -even Ely Buendia’s too-brief cameo is sharply hewn, doesn’t feel extraneous nor like a wink, probably could fork off into a subplot with more legs than the plot on top.<br /><br />It’s a spindly one, such as it is, that plot on top, with Wincy himself multitasking as a flighty slacker roped in to help old high school classmate Ramon Bautista drive his possibly demonically possessed brother to the eponymous small town of the title. Ramon and Wincy do play their odd coupling, the wacky lout and stoic foil respectively, with all the chemistry and dynamics, the thrust and parry if you will, of the stalwart comedy duos, from the Dolphy and Panchitos to the Maverick and Ariels, if not as given over to the funny as you’d want, the volume never cranking up above room tone, the repartee never getting as spry nor as gregarious. If nothing else, though, this measure of sobriety does make the twist it all boils down to more lancing, gives it brunt. But there's an even more piercing but far subtler twist in the epilogue that might shark under your radar if you so much as blink. <b>San Lazaro</b> is not much but not bad, a genre mashup with much pop torque and a load of fun, but that last line has a creepy poignancy that gets under my skin a bit more.</div><div><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">*Originally published in</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;">Philippine Free Press</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:78%;">as</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Devils You Know</span>.</span></div></div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-14888835683187260122011-07-30T04:01:00.001-07:002011-12-02T07:34:04.289-08:00Zombadings 1:Patayin Sa Shokot Si Remington<span style="font-weight:bold;">Zombadings 1: Patayin Sa Shokot Si Remington</span><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Directed by Jade Castro<br />Written by Raymond Lee, Jade Castro and Michiko Yama</span>moto<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOMpr7WcNrpCyDYUDq8BrEZWOwYZWdX_kOXnJ-wJVd9cJlDoERtA2-5AulIYY5-JWP1bzktc0l6CrhJ_XN71dZFG9hkQ4nAIbS1zk-wpN3GO77_qkumrSC48EWajqzrt_-i62ifw/s1600/shokot.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 303px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOMpr7WcNrpCyDYUDq8BrEZWOwYZWdX_kOXnJ-wJVd9cJlDoERtA2-5AulIYY5-JWP1bzktc0l6CrhJ_XN71dZFG9hkQ4nAIbS1zk-wpN3GO77_qkumrSC48EWajqzrt_-i62ifw/s400/shokot.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632648694559689218" /></a><b></b><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Zombie screwball should cover it if you feel the need to wrap a code around <b>Zombadings 1: Patayin Sa Shokot Si Remington</b>, the way it runs on the same odd tracks as both the lowbrow tomfoolery of Chiquito movies and the affectionate B movie crudities of Sam Raimi and all the self-aware postmodernism such a mashup implies makes it so spot-on it's as if that was the actual log-line Jade organized his film around, except it only really turns zombie on us in its final third and is more a werewolf film up until then, in which our eponymous homophobe falls under a hex that gradually turns him gay even as a serial killer is picking off everyone in town who is. </div><div><br /></div><div>Homosexuality as a curse can be misconstrued as demeaning and actually has, as the off-point and far-fetched outrage flung this way bears out. But the germ that feeds it is that old andold-fashioned Frank Capra trope</div><div> - - - the comeuppance and enlightenment that comes from walking in the shoes of what you abhor, and more than anything, it's really subverting the very stereotypes it only seems to condone, much as it's hard to tell sometimes from the breathless velocity of the gags and the caricatural swish and swagger of gay argot and affectation it relies on to make it fly. The character actor stalwarts, from Janice De Belen to John Regala with his game face on to the mighty but under-used Odette Khan, buttress the superstructure to prop up what they can of the third act sag that besets it. And for the shapeshifting by degrees at the heart of matters, Martin Escudero is like some one-man army of goofy, a bravura act of pitch. But it's Eugene Domingo who detonates every scene she's in with surreal delight. And Roderick Paulate is stunt-casting that's both preordained and genius. The queer act he's made his <i>metier</i> by rights should've gone stale after all this time but somehow it's even gained nuance and range. It's a shtick, sure, but it's a shtick that never ever gets old.</div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-41119510833775034842011-07-22T23:07:00.000-07:002011-07-30T04:03:34.190-07:00Amok<b>Amok</b><div><i>Directed by Lawrence Fajardo</i></div><div><i>Written by John Bedia</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Z5059D2_PVATdJUvzTvIHHsW1UD4KUdLeRvY-Qg58E5KtnHZuuWdc7aqYN8h3QdExCau8jsTGknLzkJqlJ5AQ-ouh1EqqWhX4AHTBDbMRaYMO3LOfyznDuOvd_JHuz2TiSUWng/s400/Cinemalaya-Amok-Image3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5631275332140791506" /></div><br /><br /><div><i>"What,like a bullet, can undeceive?"</i> (Herman Melville)</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Amok</b> is well-oiled tumult, a chaos mechanism of wrong place-wrong time dynamics fed through a <i>portmanteau</i> that has everybody looking to Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu as point of reference, if only for how both hew to similar tropes of threading a line through disconnected lives suddenly thrown in the glare of blood and harm. But where Inarritu gets overwrought in preaching a grand design, not to mention a troubling hard-on for closure, <b>Amok</b> is more haphazard, has little to say that hasn't been said before, but so much to say it with, neither overreaching nor belaboring. If nothing else, it's a technical feat, of logistics and guerilla tactics and cutting. It's rigorous, precise.</div><div><br /></div><div>The bustling intersection where it all comes down is both <i>milieu</i> and metaphor, and the one thing shared by the motley ensemble of has-beens and also-rans it corrals: they all just happen to be in the area. The cocky cop on the walkway waiting to rendezvous with an asset (Efren Reyes Jr., funny), the faded stuntman living alone with his rancid nostalgia and a rent girl sleeping in his bed (Mark Gil, funnier), the put-upon brother driving his cranky sister around and stuck in traffic (Archi Adamos), the ex-cop with a baby on the way and a chip on his shoulder (Dido De La Paz, a walking <i>tour de force</i>). If it wobbles here and there, it's mostly from spasms of bad acting and the <i>patois</i> ringing false. But in never lingering on one character longer than it should, it blurs the chinks into forgiveness. Brief snatches are all we get to see of these brief lives, not so much arcs as they never get to complete any. It's the point of everything here: how our stories don't so much end but are cut short halfway through the telling and often in a random blast of doom. There's a weariness to its nihilism that's more wounding for being so resigned. The world is a clusterfuck. And God is a bullet. </div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-9972443486173443462011-02-08T08:29:00.001-08:002011-10-09T20:43:49.894-07:00Tisoy Vs. The Punks: On MTV, Philippine Cinema And You Can Dance If You Want To<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh33w5oiUNfDbTJxqxepE0nGlsq7otBtwY9CCsWmTYHoTLFWuLlJQe6D6EkqPGwLdtDh-CpPNcJm7nNTT80RRDk0gGeGpxeqN_jKKxi2LhugxOQK19IwlSwWL6l7FF-0gW-YYr4VQ/s1600/Tisoy-77-Ishmael+Bernal-small+file.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 241px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh33w5oiUNfDbTJxqxepE0nGlsq7otBtwY9CCsWmTYHoTLFWuLlJQe6D6EkqPGwLdtDh-CpPNcJm7nNTT80RRDk0gGeGpxeqN_jKKxi2LhugxOQK19IwlSwWL6l7FF-0gW-YYr4VQ/s400/Tisoy-77-Ishmael+Bernal-small+file.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571335589672351138" /></a><br />Google “music video” and you can trace its origins as a practice as far back as the late 1800s. Oh, it was performance footage for the most part, but isolated pockets were going out on limbs, laying in the ramparts. Jean Luc Godard had an indirect hand in matters, about as much as the direct hand Richard Lester had with his <b>Help!</b>. That entire syntax he came up with in <em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">A Bout De Souffle</em>, the shakycam and the jump cutting and the whiplash rhythms, it was all prescient without knowing it, virtually the cloth from which music videos would be cut. You go to it and you go to films like Bob Rafelson’s <b>Head</b> and Nicholas Roeg’s <b>Performance</b> and to little oddments like Dylan’s iconic <i>Subterranean Homesick Blues</i> and the Who’s <i>Happy Jack</i> and the Beatles’ <i>Strawberry Fields Forever</i> and to the lab experiments Todd Rundgren and Devo were conducting. You go to these not just for the DNA signatures, though. You go to these for having the bright idea that you can make little movies from songs without having to pick through Hollywood musicals for surplus or training a camera on some guy and having him sing to it.<br /><br />They were all taking from other, myriad strains of cinema instead, or even other, myriad strains of culture in general, and in many ways, were pushing the form even before they had a name for it, and really, even before they were even aware there was a form to push. Pushing it closer to short film, to experimental narrative, to conceptual piece, closer to the music video as we know it today, notwithstanding all the excesses it accrued. Boiled down, all those primordial music videos name-checked back there, among others, were borne out of the need of independent filmmakers (D.A. Pennebaker, Peter Goldman) to do something and bored rock stars to feed blood back into their pulses, tiny little spurts of experimentation to while away the time waiting for the zeitgeist that would detonate all of what they were doing to calcify, blissfully unaware of the footprints they were making.<br /><br />The task at hand here is to find, if any, similar overlaps between Philippine pop cinema and Philippine music videos, the bearing of one on the evolution of the other. But I’m not sure if I can say some parallel evolution took place. Ever since the local music industry appropriated the form, there has been a steady increase in production values and with the outbreak of the digital revolution, a proliferation of music video careerists, the music video becoming a refuge for Filipino film school graduates with nothing to film and, down the line, for anyone with a digital camera. Oh, there was already an active independent experimental cinema in the country lining the fringes back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when MTV first broke, our own Pennebakers and Goldmans if you will, in Raymond Red (<b>Manila Skies</b>) and Joey Agbayani (<b>Lola</b>) and later in Aureus Solito (<b>The Blossoming of Maximo Olivero</b>), but by the time they became the emergent bands’ go-to men, the music video had more or less become the global music marketing parlance it is, meaning the template was set, the laws laid down, leaving no room for a learning curve.<br /><br />Not that any was needed, the short film being the métier of nearly every independent filmmaker recruited to make a music video—and something like Aureus’ longform video for the Eraserheads’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lajnSJZpI34" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration: none; "><b>Ang Huling El Bimbo</b></a> (aka <b>The Last El Bimbo</b>) almost instinctively went against the grain anyway. For the most part, there were catalogues of tropes to nick, styles to mimic, concepts to retro-fit, rules to break and unbreak. A learning curve would only amount to a lot of fuss you didn’t need, moreso when the form practically came with an instruction manual. All you had to do was crack it open and dig in. Other than the most rudimentary transfer of energies, there really was little significant overlap between cinema and music video. Go to Maryo J.De Los Reyes’ iconic but crummy <b>Bagets</b> (1984), though, and the argument turns a slightly different shade. Its gaudy colors, its editing rhythms and its incessant fondness for montage was a template in and of itself for the local youth comedies of the ’80s, that misbegotten horde, whose most beloved trope was the tendency to suddenly break into elaborate song and dance at the oddest moments and not in the culturally endemic manner of Bollywood, would count among its vile ranks such epics of trash as <b>Hotshots</b> and <b>Campus Beat</b>and the almighty <b>The Punks</b> among many, many, far more misbegotten others. <b>Bagets</b> and the rest of its sort seemed suspiciously and terribly influenced by MTV.<br /><br />Not to dismiss leakages and osmosis, not to mention how slavish appropriation of whatever’s working for the West has always been domestic mainstream studio-made cinema’s particular brand of <em>kung fu</em>, but there’s a sudden breaking into elaborate song and dance too, in Ishmael Bernal’s (<b>Himala</b>) postmodern-before-there-even-was-such-a-thing-as-postmodern <b>Tisoy!</b>(1977). But it comes in at an even odder time, just after the title credits, so it’s not as if you’re ready and it’s not as if he throws a rope before plunging us into it but there you go—street sweepers in full-on Busby Berkeley mode! It’s nowhere near as well-oiled as the Busby Berkeley invocation would suggest, sure, there’s another proto-MTV sequence involving a traffic jam that’s more wittingly and precisely realized, but it’s a ballsy move even for someone who has built a career on ballsy moves. It throws you on enough of a loop so you start expecting that nothing here will settle into a groove you can see coming. And it doesn’t.<br /><br />Nobody talks much about <b>Tisoy!</b>. Not when they talk about Bernal, not when they talk about the heights of ’70s comedy, not when they talk about ahead-of-its-time. Which is a bit of a shame. Rather, and rightly so, everybody talks about Mike De Leon’s <b>Kakaba-Kaba Ka Ba?</b> (1980), which starred Christopher De Leon and Jay Ilagan too, and came three years later and has the same subversive energy and has one or two dance numbers as well but feels a lot less anarchic and a lot less funny and a lot less fun put up against this.My aunt remembers <b>Tisoy</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "> from college, back in the late ’60s, in all its iterations: the Nonoy Marcelo comic strip, the play that came out of it, the eventual TV show, the Lauro Pacheco movie with Jimmy Morato and Pilar Pilapil, all that. </span><b>Tisoy</b> was their youth cult, their generational totem, their <b>Scott Pilgrim</b>. Their <b>Bagets</b>, if you will. But even she hadn’t heard of this. And even if she did, it’s possible she wouldn’t recognize it. Nonoy Marcelo wrote the script for this one, sure, and roped in his comedy titan cousin Bert Marcelo, who has been the constant through all the versions. But the Bernal <b>Tisoy!</b>was not so much a remake as a turning on its head. It’s a relic of its time—it’s near-topical in jokes, mostly pivoting on local cinema at that time, only working after some digging into, for one—but I saw it just a few weeks ago, some 33 years too late, and it’s temperament is weirdly fresh, weirdly now.<br /><br />I bring it up and <b>Kakaba-Kaba Ka Ba?</b>, too, because they both predate MTV but both too are uncannily possessed of a grasp for its rhythms and energies and language, as if they were as prescient without knowing it as Godard was. And who knows if maybe they are. That something as arch and irreverent and out-there as <b>Tisoy!</b> would have bearing on something as safe as milk and dull as bathwater as <b>Bagets</b> and the rest of its sort may be a little too much to suggest but the membranes that connect them make sense. It’s something far older than MTV here. And might have its roots in something embedded in our cultural psyche and in the psyche too of Philippine popular cinema of the ’50s and ’60s and even the ’70s, in the vaudeville aesthetic it sucked at the teat of, in the belief of entertainment as being everything to everyone, in that urge to put on a show… right now.There is something oddly, sweetly, wondrously intrusive every time someone dances in a movie that isn’t a musical and it’s done right or even if it isn’t but feels like it was or even if it plain isn’t. A breaking of the fourth wall almost, a spinning off into another planet, even the ones that enmesh themselves in the action through a sieve of logic, like the Madison bit from Godard’s <em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; "><b>Band of Outsiders</b></em> or when John Leguizamo and Mira Sorvino dance to Marvin Gaye in Spike Lee’s <b>Summer of Sam</b>; but more so when it doesn’t, like the exhilarating coda to the Takeshi Kitano <b>Zatoichi</b> and that lovely bit near the end of Quark Henares’ <b>Keka</b> that feels kindred with the dancing in <b>Tisoy!</b> and <b>Kakaba-Kaba Ka Ba?</b>. They’re all digs, sure. But you can parse a hum of affection coursing through it. Not obviously and, really, I’m mostly just guessing. And possibly projecting my own peculiar affection on it, itself most likely colored by an idiot love for crap and a tinge of nostalgia for it. Oh, it’s silly and naïve but it’s this naïve silliness, this utter disregard for everything, that counts for its untrammeled enthusiasm, for the purity of its unwitting anarchy, and for my screwy fondness for it.<p></p><br /><br /><br />Originally published at <a href="http://www.cinelogue.com/spotlight/tisoy-vs-the-punks-on-mtv-philippine-cinema-and-you-can-dance-if-you-want-to">Cinelogue</a>.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">*Image taken from</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span><a href="http://video48.blogspot.com/2008/02/nonoy-marcelos-tisoy.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Video 48</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></div><div><br /></div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-51562819487797998692011-01-12T19:44:00.000-08:002011-01-12T19:47:52.376-08:00Past Lives And The Beauties Summoned: My 2010 At The Movies<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware the beauty is summoning him."</span></span> - Andrei Tarkovsky<br /><br />In a way, a catalogue of downfalls, having missed out on most of the Cinema One Originals and Cinemalaya and the "indie" section of the MMFF and some of Cinemanila and the stray Star Cinema fluke or two, and on the polar opposite, having seen nearly everything Hollywood saw fit to dump on us save for <b>Skyline</b> but I doubt if that counts as a sin of omission. Not that this <i>caveat</i> is anything <a href="http://pelikula.blogspot.com/2007/06/hollywood-is-dead-my-2006-at-movies.html">new</a>. As this is more of an indulgence than a civic duty and isn't really a job, it's perpetually been at the mercy of things like sloth and not having the time and the making of money and the getting of a life. <div><br /></div><div><b>Mondomanila</b>, it must be said, comes on like some Makavejevian depression musical only Khavn can hallucinate. I champion it heartily even as I hold back from placing it on my list out of my involvement in it and the implied nepotism that comes with picking something you were a part of. Also, I liked at least three other foreign films enough</div><div>- - -<b>Unstoppable</b>, <b>The Ghostwriter</b> and <b><a href="http://www.thepoc.net/thepoc-features/metakritiko/film/10110-the-social-network.html">The Social Network</a> </b><b> </b> - - - to honorably mention them. The rest of 2010's domestic and foreign cinephile fad gadgets remain unseen to me, until 2011 at least, when these things tend to remedy itself.</div><div><br />Geography has a bearing on my imperfect system, such as it is. 70% of the list must have been publicly screened in Manila during the year, regardless of screening venue or nature of run or if it even had a run, as long as it was in country and in public. The other 30% will be given over to 2010 films that weren’t screened nor released domestically regardless of format, with enough room for that stray 2009 film my radar picked up a little too late. The only criterion I uphold is love and that got me as far as 20 this year, making it a 14:6 ratio. This year, I also tried ranking. It’s a superfluous business, all told, but not without its moments. Still, I might consider going back to alphabetical next year. This is in descending order, but if you're the type who's prone to obsessing on rank, know that I urge you to watch all these with equal fervor, if only because you really owe it to yourself to bite into something more nutritious from time to time before you go back to making do with Jon Favreau tentpoles and Katherine Heigl rom-coms.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKrgLrkOlRGpii94juJZegaRWIGxYIjRzFiO5wykHiFRwSeo4xDQmUvR93yYGHLHoO2HOEzQOeNOVcAPuIK4AbmhHW_Y4wB1EEB1p1heixuDuL7zCz9SWlpoKnKgyZGa3Pmvw69g/s1600/mirror-street1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKrgLrkOlRGpii94juJZegaRWIGxYIjRzFiO5wykHiFRwSeo4xDQmUvR93yYGHLHoO2HOEzQOeNOVcAPuIK4AbmhHW_Y4wB1EEB1p1heixuDuL7zCz9SWlpoKnKgyZGa3Pmvw69g/s320/mirror-street1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561205659334672978" /></a><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>The Mirror</b> (Andrei Tarkovsky, Russia, Russian Film Festival) : <i>A bit of a cheat but we can cut Andrei some slack here, can't we? This was, after all, a film event, if not </i><b>the</b><i> film event of the year. Certainly was for me if only for how, after being inundated with 3D and HD and IMAX, none of it was still half as glorious as watching Tarkovsky - - - specifically </i><b>this</b> <i>Tarkovsky - - - in 35mm.</i></div><div><div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7LweDu3SKhuM3DAIFhXQ9CswjNEJSbV_QAsH1fbieL4v7PjQxJTTNg9YmLZGkEkT8UzMbI1FUs67caH1hBwAuz9dv-yvOhxFLLZZIqgPcGu2QKTJdPDmhRvLWLPH8AT7Isjpffw/s1600/10.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 174px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7LweDu3SKhuM3DAIFhXQ9CswjNEJSbV_QAsH1fbieL4v7PjQxJTTNg9YmLZGkEkT8UzMbI1FUs67caH1hBwAuz9dv-yvOhxFLLZZIqgPcGu2QKTJdPDmhRvLWLPH8AT7Isjpffw/s320/10.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561205994572734530" /></a><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</b> (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand): <i> All the serene arcana we've come to expect of Joe is </i><i>here, of course, </i><i>gorgeous and charged in the ways they usually are and also in ways that they usually aren't. An epistle but not so much to death but to the grace you find in dying right.</i></div><div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoZlryquFbvT8AVkouYJ_cHf4AMcubo2DhLeX5ZD8Bh1kCLuDYt6Dm3rur_8XA_snhwS8FogSscPCEs_YZAyOFZRPVsUqXEiLC8SKZpzfq5PeShx5foykk2IF0l2PSMDmh3RGWaw/s1600/Eleuterrial-1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoZlryquFbvT8AVkouYJ_cHf4AMcubo2DhLeX5ZD8Bh1kCLuDYt6Dm3rur_8XA_snhwS8FogSscPCEs_YZAyOFZRPVsUqXEiLC8SKZpzfq5PeShx5foykk2IF0l2PSMDmh3RGWaw/s320/Eleuterrial-1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561206305974091010" /></a><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Ang Damgo Ni Eleuteria</b> (Remton Suazola, Philippines,Cinema One Originals/Cinemanila):<i> The single take technique counts as insanity, and as a plus given how insanity gets factored in less and less in films these days, but it doesn't show off so much as gives the piece buoyancy and in doing so attaches a sensation to the nonchalance with which we shrug off </i><i>in real life </i><i>the social malaise - - or any social malaise for that matter - - - at its heart. Plus, it's funny as all hell.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhztD39oKG8tX-1AK6iE6GndTdRt775gk113hJYIjGLwZB6PnCjNwt2ltFIRkzKyzgIc2SFnN62ug-wYAVEaxrbnA-bVAtMxG1ZMSTXQbK79nZ_9QDSPb7fFJ4vxiTgr9_BF578qA/s320/utopia.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561206790327861618" /><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Agrarian Utopia (Sawan Banna)</b> (Urupong Raksasad, Thailand): <i> Of course, the title's meant to be ironic. These peasant families will toil the land until they're no longer able but will never attain the heavenly home in the fields the film's Thai title literally translates into. </i><i>Like some Third World </i><b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlZDsMCW0U4">Days of Heaven</a> </b><i>and every bit as ravishingly envisioned.</i></div><div><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn1hSFfAop2RT7rXvKhxzB30gZAyq0vTLDMLNMT2pS3khIT7ksxFCGthSQeOfSdpVmo8NU9AeGnQGwUQb0_0z75_COekqcYRfi6kcapHrqwNa-HGnOSElHN_tSepXhso_wzBm-Iw/s320/summer-hours-l-heure-d-ete-3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561207382026044210" /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Summer Hours</b> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">(Olivier Assayas, France, French Film Festival): </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">In which the divvying up of a family inheritance turns into a </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">consensual dissolution of mundane history and </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">every single member an accesory to their own obsolescence. </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">If anything, an epitaph to the impermanence of things and the eternal hold they have on us.</span></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"></span><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgilhOpjigg6gWDCPk7XbrWP1xayKUppQ1nVnIfq4Lm8tkze_ZC85TF8cD1fR9-IIOJCj0UNINgu5fxQXhTIYE3eGwcSxosAn6uQ9cReF2lDEbn7DDTP_5KkiZ_WttytKgyuzcQfQ/s320/ang.ninanais.still.window.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561208022876728722" /></i><br /><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Ang Ninanais : Refrains Happen Like Revolutions In A Song</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> (John Torres,Philippines, Tioseco-Bohinc Film Series, Netpac/Cinemanila): </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">After twisting a tongue he neither speaks nor understands until it's nothing but pure sound , John Torres proceeds to feed his elusive, sometimes poignant, often lovely, terribly mysterious object through its badly broken codes.</span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"></span><br /></i><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzj-FswmOM_MbMEDYy3h94O6Bqr6ZcH7u0H267UBWF2uqleE0wTqRFINhBJAtwWimJyQlcR9YOJvicoNz6WnQPTyX72henVhpbHz3DbPwAzZNpjdjT6qt3SqgYlHHhRKcuu-eMdw/s320/sketches-of-kaitan-city-trailer.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561208393458593554" /></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Sketches </b><b>of Kaitan City</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> (Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, Japan, Cinemanila): </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Starved of levity as these </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">bleak</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "> tales of ordinary sadness are, there's something in its wintry air that keeps everything gauzy and afloat, a metaphysical helium perhaps, that at points almost passes for hope. Almost.</span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVWD8OpVvnB4gq-6Qe7Y1fGRb0RyZvjHNqDek7vPxteDD4kTXvpqZeTYPROQDUej82hqPXT4BSzjsq89kFNYcFSbYj4NOgwbOemMb5sF10AwV1fEP-d6uWjBLyYUtjw1IO_GVo3A/s320/Screen+shot+2011-01-09+at+1.07.03+AM.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561209164742867938" /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Kano: An American and His Harem</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> (Monster Jimenez, Philippines, Cinemanila): </span><i>There is that implied metaphor on how we as a country have always been beholden to the smarmy wiles of America but this is almost an anatomy lesson in the machismo that is often flown like a flag of male virtue here. The fiendishly charismatic Victor Pearson may have struck a lot of people as virtually diabolical, and enraged a few enough to want to do the filmmakers bodily harm, but in some circles, he could well be some kind of hero. </i></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZW1se0PZt6xFfLCExZ2FshXzY6Yz2APfkn-1WAlRFPMgqBz6lnzesSjvaQ5YZ7uR5LpHImIP_6FjpKthB5qkClSWyUa9A8Cp0ETUWcrWUr9neTwH5K4CN6ujof6twW0Dm6hHStQ/s320/cameroon.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561210808655734146" /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Cameroon L</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">ov</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">e Letter (For Solo Piano)</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Khavn de la Cruz, Philippines/Africa, Tioseco-Bohinc Film Series):</span> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Every word like a dagger drawing blood, every complaint freighted with loss</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">, every memory leaking toxins, every line of worst fit, all tangled up in blue and threaded by that mournful, gorgeous piano fugue</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">. Funny how you can't tell a breakup letter from a suicide note sometimes.</span></i></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVN5FZb_D6xams9b0YBSX1PStzryUIITRoALglWNISlyHnRU1bAghUU1zVRUUJs-qWVfEKqcQC1m1UxiQYpAQM7nN749dtWAE_VYjh-YgtrKD7xvAy8Motj7J62_-zZ3hxlQ3byg/s320/305487_2010070417030167.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561214223940275394" /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Vox Populi </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Dennis Marasigan, Philippines, Cinemalaya):</span></span> <i>The naysayers weren't being merely pissy when they said this looked ugly and tacky, it </i>is<i> ugly and tacky, but then that's a function of the </i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">milieu</span> <i>and also the whole point. Ugly and tacky as our cities can get, they're even uglier and tackier during elections. But in nailing the Philippine condition on a surfeit of comic energy and without exoticizing anything, it pays the price by disappearing into an obscurity it doesn't deserve.</i></div><i><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; "><i></i><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT6wWWz8c-r0oGPOo5-xROcECovvPRYedqwwKU9VKNh4ZSIzPbL57ISvStpCdUKFhesSSTVMlMzTLLF2lYuPMbuhVNFJcmzIfcg68LuDjqDjs6s5rbE3hUPie-AtSCNxSXha0Bcw/s1600/305487_2010070417030167.jpg"> </a></span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJU8AhOMFgGywdU6KXRS_NGh2QuL_LFwHA29MtiH-VNXVTcnjjwThR2Go7salGl5HYYITwOYKTztqM2gcljIy05pU6gdHFcIXZzuivJAbt4LrR3KQSExLLmUaN1sQc2FLGBqAX7A/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-01-07+at+2.48.31+PM.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 180px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJU8AhOMFgGywdU6KXRS_NGh2QuL_LFwHA29MtiH-VNXVTcnjjwThR2Go7salGl5HYYITwOYKTztqM2gcljIy05pU6gdHFcIXZzuivJAbt4LrR3KQSExLLmUaN1sQc2FLGBqAX7A/s320/Screen+shot+2011-01-07+at+2.48.31+PM.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561213734804879778" /></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Summer Wars</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Mamoru Hosoda, Japan): </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Turns out Jens Lekman got it wrong </span></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span">- - -the end of the world is </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">not</span><span class="Apple-style-span"> bigger than love. Anime video game endorphin for sating my inner geek the way </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><b>Scott Pilgrim</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span"> can't quite do anymore.</span></span></div></i></span></div><div><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 184px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLpR7IJNBGp-J_IqketcJ-lkaCgv7HxuREJs5-EhfGrnZmwgPI_uw_esIi1emFtudsFMNOppzPgu__CI-wRaEi7vL_dr12A2HxyGNgTWa5UDaLjqRVyhGIkTyMavfIXnShwbCOBQ/s320/madeo-mother.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561215210531845602" /></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Madeo (Mother)</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Bong Joon-Ho, Korea, Cinemanila):</span> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> Essentially a returning to the territories Bong covered in </span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><a href="http://pelikula.blogspot.com/2007/02/host.html">The Host</a></span></b></i></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i>- - -the tensile strength of family members and the loosing of monsters on a placid community, only this time the family member and the monster is one and and the same.</i></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><br /></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbfL2zlSxD1z3MheCwF9TEqusGpa8ukiavA06PdUf_fSqeLNKxQtAs5pkKdHnkhvypXPVP4ou3_3MFzCOfH0USYd-nEyzDfH72WC5xkSm9PY8ayqvwyCFOYkBHXovQgQGacCLbpQ/s320/122309police718.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561217002192516882" /></div><div><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Police Adjective!</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Corneliu </span></span><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Porumboiu, Romania):</span> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">A police procedural that delights more in the tedium of procedure and where every conversation - - - be it abo</span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">ut the lyrics of an inane pop song or the moral fallout from arresting a teenager for breaking a law that will most likely not be one soon - - - blows up into a discourse with equal degrees of gravity and consequence.</span></i></div></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><i><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 226px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhntKp30b73A0Azb0cUvHaD6G5H1T2rUQz1h-zo9RIPZwUOwjS59QZ5Ih3E53e5HS-zGT4p7phBz4vKz0zr6agQHj-eU0_c5mxo4srzStiNgpdQs8nNGrZNeWrxEECSXQlIEiERkw/s320/Screen+shot+2011-01-10+at+12.07.19+PM.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561215787300755170" /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">A Prophet</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Jacques Audiard, France, Cinemanila):</span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span">It's a bit like</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> <b>The Wire</b> </span><span class="Apple-style-span">transposed to the French penal system, that is,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span">if you go by how the overlapping ethnicities bear heavy on the power struggles of the underworld and also if you go by the ferocious dispersal of energy in charting the apotheosis of a crime lord from the ground up.</span></span></i></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 151px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGnMmIa_bL6nqpOYN9Fp5ZrJNGuqwOgMvlAlcuhPyUsN0Ec_OlkndaRh8qeyHyT6xQrZl-L9rb90u4QzhcPJeLKfq7UUguUqaJfIocShYHL8kGd6S4xCv0cAEV98OYB59jwi1gyQ/s320/Screen+shot+2011-01-12+at+4.45.42+PM.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561218219918384146" /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></i></div></i></span></i></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></i></div></i></span></i></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></i></div></i></span></i></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Detective Dee And The Mystery of the Phantom Flame</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Tsui Hark, Hong Kong):</span> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> Just when you think all the chaos and opulence couldn't get any more berserk and contaminated, there's Andy Lau doing martial arts battle with magic deer. Oh boy. Sure is nice to have you back, Mr.Hark. Please don't go off and make things like <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><b>Missing</b></span> anymore. Or anything with Jean Claude Van Damme in it.</span></i></i></div></i></span></i></div></i></span></div><div><i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"></span></i><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 101px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDh9zMw7hPhEY90BdiT71GVq7ddEjv0QGczl9vmRfjOOp6unTvvFef3kD5mmAdJrEsy7BAtaWtLu2pBe9jx-b42xnVSdKNrZbUNUJVQqW82qdTUZZGdUaG-xmyJCK7jOD-bFnp6w/s320/love-puff-3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561233035183904834" /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-weight:bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Love In A Puff </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Pang Ho-Cheung, Hong Kong): </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style: italic; ">Boy meets girl during their smoking breaks - - -</span></i></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></span></i></div></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style: italic; ">now there's a rom-com high concept with universal appeal that it seems only Asians can pull off , as it's the lack of hurry and the lack of the need to rub everything in and the insistence on actuality as a style that make this warm and lithe and</span></i></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></span></i></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style:italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style: italic; "> swoony. The </span></i></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></span></i></div></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.kamera.co.uk/features/comedies_and_proverbs_an_eric_rohmer_retrospective.php">Rohmer</a> vein a lot of people insist it taps isn't just for </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style:italic;">the way Miriam Yeung and Shawn Yue talk in circles but also, and more so, for</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span style="font-style:italic;"> the sensual causality of their brief encounters.</span></i></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div></i></span></div><div><i><span style="font-style:italic;"><br /></span></i></div><div><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 173px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsXpmYzoYcUDKSR4QOteka0JlS68jTz5SAaMn1vOckMBcXYppTuTHUDs29rQlhpYhhVdn-dJzaMnauvHLPj-eB88f7zQjizXjICSq34FsYUkHeCXZ1v1XePVH4drzbvk1c70_oFQ/s320/Screen+shot+2011-01-07+at+3.05.00+PM.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561219264649954130" /></div><div><i><br /><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></i></div><div><i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Senior Year</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Jerrold Tarog, Philippines, MMFF): </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The effect is less of rekindling that rarefied and possibly false sense of magic we inflate our </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">high school </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">memories with but more like observing the social dynamics of a species seemingly removed from us yet somehow not. Were we ever this impetuous in our youth, this oblivious? Jerrold is actually saying we still are.</span></span></i></div><i><i><div><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 173px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeWkO1CQup5_s0zDVJ5qlkrGnyyxwTDJVSmsiGQdplBC5BbYXieTiYkiHdBa8TsMqovBMUt4TLUUXLtn-KzQRryujUkuEX4c6KdsoP1DKuAJKLk-pU5UnW88hiKy8Q4pInt-NDvQ/s320/gareth-edwards-monsters.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561219806426949394" /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">Monsters</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> (Gareth Edwards, USA, Domestic Release):</span> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Either the lack of resources forced its hand or there really is an aesthetic </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">at work here that warrants </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">looking out for as Gareth Edwards may turn out to be that rare thing in Hollywood, an ex-FX man familiar and possibly even infatuated with the virtues of restraint. More than the </span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">dreamy and</span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> shapeless and awkward languor of his lo-fi sci-fic love story, it's really the world </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">that </span></i></div></b></span></span></i></div></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">he builds from parts of ours and parts of something else, and of which he only shows us the parts made of rustle and shadow, that makes this such an immersive trip.</span></i><br /><br /><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUuECwfkp5yqi5wmlqSrcdqfmPioKz4I99eJb1FPi7xwJRkvRUn9cMGtTmJuuPDBZg4RHaXXByQ-e48K2VzRs1nWeiIbto7uXVb3xMKu63kCKORvNL8h3zurmeRWrKCbh5LVGWig/s320/3d_thumb.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561220158197642562" /></div></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></b></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Piranha 3D</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Alexander Aja , USA, Domestic Release):</span> The dismembered penis scene towers above all but then again I haven't seen </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Jackass 3D</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> yet. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Alexander Aja pees in Hollywood's punch. </span></i></div></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">Lap it up, fanboys. </span></i></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></span></i></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></span></i></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">Anarchic, almost.</span></i></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></span></i></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><br /></div></b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWOhJPDrX18fnXt2bh3f-9BE1O34BcHGMAwc6zuowvY39oQXlRs9F9niCt7-CbeU22ynmNUTuDUoKpfGdMiSccaLFwM4dbp5vpkvrF79tR_etAjejbf5FlN00SuhmTu9jhMfqCkQ/s320/artandcopy.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561220510255926002" /></div></b></span></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><i><i><i><div style="display: inline !important; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b><div style="display: inline !important; "><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Art & Copy</span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(Doug Pray, USA, Special Screening): </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The making of scam ads is like masturbating in front of a mirror pretending that noodle in your hand is bigger than it really is, only more deluded because you also pretend you're a genius when you're really just another sad wanker. No sad wankers here.</span></i></div></b></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></span></div></i></i></i></div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-89954521563704429302010-12-27T03:36:00.000-08:002011-01-11T10:25:36.779-08:00The Korean Bug Year That Was In Asian CinemaMy official yearend list has 20 films in them. Since I measure all (feature-length) films with the same stick as God intended, these are merely the Asian ones, ranked in order, but prone to changing, and under one <i>caveat</i>: that 75% should have been shown in public in 2010, regardless of screening venue or nature of run as long as it was in Manila. <div><br /></div><div>Annotations forthcoming. If it's the last thing I do.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5rgkaGmrFrnK6Lp6o4ObDnk0H4uExXZgn_N_iNOOm0Z-Vy9MkvqSojPzIpRSWpRiFnjmsK0w3lqLSCJK6g5C8e_W_rnDE5EW3d3pg1cXSXBpmK4BED8NVqNjL0zk2XWZb88yHtg/s1600/bonmee.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5rgkaGmrFrnK6Lp6o4ObDnk0H4uExXZgn_N_iNOOm0Z-Vy9MkvqSojPzIpRSWpRiFnjmsK0w3lqLSCJK6g5C8e_W_rnDE5EW3d3pg1cXSXBpmK4BED8NVqNjL0zk2XWZb88yHtg/s400/bonmee.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555325027722426466" /></a>1. <b>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</b> (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)<br /><div><br /></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5I_mELcV3rLxtLdkuVjSAYZPsGs8ieSLtw4WhRcjNX6aDTGL26N9JxjHJXW1VGTnhQcMHBXI61YmtW3pGEwVLcb_qOj335EoUp0YyUo-Pww1-xipfZWAnQTHBNq88fmLGGI_Og/s1600/Damgo+ni+Eleuteria.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho5I_mELcV3rLxtLdkuVjSAYZPsGs8ieSLtw4WhRcjNX6aDTGL26N9JxjHJXW1VGTnhQcMHBXI61YmtW3pGEwVLcb_qOj335EoUp0YyUo-Pww1-xipfZWAnQTHBNq88fmLGGI_Og/s400/Damgo+ni+Eleuteria.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555325029454862130" /></a>2. <b>Ang Damgo Ni Eleuteria</b> (Remton Zuasola,Philippines, Cinema One Originals/Cinemanila)</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOuA9O6YNyduwywupxlQdGWaDOVk5EbaObLDEmEGNn9U5Q2SXPxTliDPdPdEAliQ8u0zMnFhNDsvpTxNtzTps0YDs9hV4tEjr4assup-edMh7k4gKuSeFUj-UUuga6rLGIzlBM8A/s1600/agrarian.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 286px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOuA9O6YNyduwywupxlQdGWaDOVk5EbaObLDEmEGNn9U5Q2SXPxTliDPdPdEAliQ8u0zMnFhNDsvpTxNtzTps0YDs9hV4tEjr4assup-edMh7k4gKuSeFUj-UUuga6rLGIzlBM8A/s400/agrarian.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555325033777055250" /></a>3. <b>Agrarian Utopia</b> (Urupong Raksasad, Thailand)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvX8XxA33lixcnN_uOtpVGUw-QSwH_UnbUSLPY3uKHMnaQyTgRrgtdyARLQvLGTZcKUeFLyrXkRKwH2edIE91IbVw9ZVdoanAezWAcKLF9qKBvf3CLu0vid_oUmVrb54GpUnNNFQ/s1600/top_main.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 310px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvX8XxA33lixcnN_uOtpVGUw-QSwH_UnbUSLPY3uKHMnaQyTgRrgtdyARLQvLGTZcKUeFLyrXkRKwH2edIE91IbVw9ZVdoanAezWAcKLF9qKBvf3CLu0vid_oUmVrb54GpUnNNFQ/s400/top_main.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555330129266487922" /></a>4. <b>Sketches of Kaitan City</b> (Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, Japan, Cinemanila)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG7mkkb46XmJMCjG8hhzcrxIe01LVfm7dKrfW5n11qtGxU86AxBU2N12KDLUlrP6JX_LQQv4rSc0U0e2LUh9jxprELMG-kDdJ2CN0EtKaBJbEtxdvi6pndReJbajJMxJ9vzL5hrA/s1600/ang_ninanais.jpg"></a></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG7mkkb46XmJMCjG8hhzcrxIe01LVfm7dKrfW5n11qtGxU86AxBU2N12KDLUlrP6JX_LQQv4rSc0U0e2LUh9jxprELMG-kDdJ2CN0EtKaBJbEtxdvi6pndReJbajJMxJ9vzL5hrA/s1600/ang_ninanais.jpg"><img style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 265px; height: 400px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG7mkkb46XmJMCjG8hhzcrxIe01LVfm7dKrfW5n11qtGxU86AxBU2N12KDLUlrP6JX_LQQv4rSc0U0e2LUh9jxprELMG-kDdJ2CN0EtKaBJbEtxdvi6pndReJbajJMxJ9vzL5hrA/s400/ang_ninanais.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555326024567545746" /></a>5. <b>Ang Ninanais:Refrains Happen Like Revolutions In A Song</b> (John Torres, Philippines, Tioseco-Bohinc Film Series/Cinemalaya/Cinemanila)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmkBK2K9skg2FJqs7F1ffljhmrt8kjEehG8uYoJ3lI8RL_xOWP8LrKci7bE0Yrj18R7LBP83zbrpsi4tYrbiufPGxrhGplNqwihJPF6iTg85oSQP5qZ9Ge-VOhYpyS1W9yaXUqtg/s1600/updated-kano-flier-idfa31.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 346px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmkBK2K9skg2FJqs7F1ffljhmrt8kjEehG8uYoJ3lI8RL_xOWP8LrKci7bE0Yrj18R7LBP83zbrpsi4tYrbiufPGxrhGplNqwihJPF6iTg85oSQP5qZ9Ge-VOhYpyS1W9yaXUqtg/s400/updated-kano-flier-idfa31.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555326028519344594" /></a></div><div>6. <b>Kano</b> (Monster Jimenez, Philippines, Cinemanila)<br /><br /><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSE07k49mrm8sm4W5XS0NL0qOWuvmmSMq9hoqwRee1EKvAre2mRiEKyp03A3t1bPlrZt7glg5ST6u10V6MbUsAlO8xu4Zkq3gT7ABC8RUQTFN-py3K9LeFXkIj6y8e9lTTQuSu1w/s400/cameroon1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555326022506557906" /><div style="text-align: center;">7. <b>Cameroon Love Letter (For Solo Piano)</b> (Khavn de la Cruz, Philippines/Africa, Tioseco-Bohinc Film Series)</div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY3rEzpLJ8QmqwEivIb8PBphdMYtxgS-1eCf6kerKKznGDh_pFg58OCgb7VYnpt0e-xpLT9BP-UaTxlIfkQ0CHGDmUNiF8eTi9AuOajkp6mpKfx2fkbIe_2Jq0kU2rpCtxFVa3iQ/s1600/vox+populi.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 269px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY3rEzpLJ8QmqwEivIb8PBphdMYtxgS-1eCf6kerKKznGDh_pFg58OCgb7VYnpt0e-xpLT9BP-UaTxlIfkQ0CHGDmUNiF8eTi9AuOajkp6mpKfx2fkbIe_2Jq0kU2rpCtxFVa3iQ/s400/vox+populi.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555327182539895442" /></a>8. <b>Vox Populi</b> (Dennis Marasigan,Philippines, Cinemalaya)</div><div><br /><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji9JI-H4GN4jYOfnVk98T12oGzN7gfjOu_5mcx6pJPxuSMj7n2o7A-MnGH7_jFqzuFqC3JTWk9AIiT7-_-JKrML9T9Ow7c8xmRKDksvswGFmzgxoD5XhWAGsAIuUxq-tLEvtF6_Q/s400/summer+wars.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555327187917315250" /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>9. <b>Summer Wars</b> (Mamoru Hosoda, Japan)</div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRxq4X0Emv9xf66PwLHayh3xajEKKQ_IuZ9dYPVGfY64M5T6N2AErEIsPnC9kdoXKrn5X-TT_hORNkQyXvB5dgi_nUHSgAVW55X2xhI-jvfeIze_5keAr8h58B4IqHTkT-ZepWFQ/s1600/madeo.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRxq4X0Emv9xf66PwLHayh3xajEKKQ_IuZ9dYPVGfY64M5T6N2AErEIsPnC9kdoXKrn5X-TT_hORNkQyXvB5dgi_nUHSgAVW55X2xhI-jvfeIze_5keAr8h58B4IqHTkT-ZepWFQ/s400/madeo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555331094684264034" /></a>10. <b>Mother</b> (Bong Jun-Hoo,Korea, Cinemanila)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiW4Lmf6CEu_-vjmqq0uJoZ3xl17ds3lRt_iyFxCVoba8MfXmZOrOf9CgW2ymcT0MaurUhiFGOKXCL-yM2xTx0ZSgfdlgOT57kQUqWIKEW_mfdHLYtIvz032S9HF1wWb80l-UZhw/s1600/dee.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 285px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiW4Lmf6CEu_-vjmqq0uJoZ3xl17ds3lRt_iyFxCVoba8MfXmZOrOf9CgW2ymcT0MaurUhiFGOKXCL-yM2xTx0ZSgfdlgOT57kQUqWIKEW_mfdHLYtIvz032S9HF1wWb80l-UZhw/s400/dee.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555329120723375810" /></a>11. <b>Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame</b> (Tsui Hark, Hong Kong)</div><div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrx5YDjEfC8S2Wg0HXimRti4n1V06B2s21X72cwDE__bjuw5qcZyW6yeSx6e8eFkHETRNpn9a16MQ1sV3GS-egFGRzxsh_fULGr36jjAyp6jdd2O71O4K7psjOJzPBlKIgmDdmYw/s1600/LoveInAPuff3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrx5YDjEfC8S2Wg0HXimRti4n1V06B2s21X72cwDE__bjuw5qcZyW6yeSx6e8eFkHETRNpn9a16MQ1sV3GS-egFGRzxsh_fULGr36jjAyp6jdd2O71O4K7psjOJzPBlKIgmDdmYw/s400/LoveInAPuff3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5560972594529920706" /></a><br />12. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Love In A Puff</span> (Pang Ho-Cheung, Hong Kong)<br /><br /><img style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px; " src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GEoEi7bpO49vYqebzea1b1YDctUcV6ElGO5ecOmgKhFApU44fMS3nPVeEO5RA960kwVtdaCQo0kTArVSK5gV_o_l4xXEo11QAZKm_w5OyG4jNci5DoNnYrzH4yVbLZqLbKod2Q/s400/Senior+Year+by+Jerrold+Tarog.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555329113872557362" /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_GEoEi7bpO49vYqebzea1b1YDctUcV6ElGO5ecOmgKhFApU44fMS3nPVeEO5RA960kwVtdaCQo0kTArVSK5gV_o_l4xXEo11QAZKm_w5OyG4jNci5DoNnYrzH4yVbLZqLbKod2Q/s1600/Senior+Year+by+Jerrold+Tarog.jpg"></a></div><div>13. <span style="font-weight:bold;">Senior Year</span> (Jerrold Tarog, Philippines, Metro Manila Film Festival)</div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-27467902728747993912010-09-04T08:04:00.000-07:002011-02-08T08:28:53.247-08:00Halaw<b>Halaw (Ways of the Sea)</b><br /><i>Directed and Written by Sheron Dayoc</i><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiITRlz341jvPrameOoDleCkoMoYd3gef4aUAPSqw-wSWgSfmpw6w55xn3aXHjdAypgD5RBH2JTkkIkwBFToRFDGN4oZhjxM4WcRR7EqMqSKHLG7N2tVXsZNzlmk-iBLOzKzxU7bQ/s1600/halawstillstwo.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiITRlz341jvPrameOoDleCkoMoYd3gef4aUAPSqw-wSWgSfmpw6w55xn3aXHjdAypgD5RBH2JTkkIkwBFToRFDGN4oZhjxM4WcRR7EqMqSKHLG7N2tVXsZNzlmk-iBLOzKzxU7bQ/s400/halawstillstwo.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5498959217485743250" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>It's a sort of porn, too, the valorizing that domestic cinema makes OFWs undergo, much like the way they valorize the poor. Let's truss it up, then, and pelt it with ridicule like we do poverty porn, but then again let's not as that's petty and a bore. Not to say that there's nothing to exalt about OFWs but when a demographic becomes too profitable to upset, the patronizing tends to get laid on a little too thick even for melodramas. And as a trope, all those films - - - <b>Caregiver</b> and <b>Anak </b>and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Dubai<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">- - -<b> </b>say little about working away from your family in another country other than that it takes a tremendous sacrifice and that it can get terribly lonely and that it's heroic almost. Sheron Dayoc's <b>Halaw <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">taps a bleaker, richer vein. The grist that feeds his film<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "> may be the rampant people smuggling that sneaks out of Zamboanga and into the back door of Sabah, but it's really about the desperation and banality of the Faustian bargains that are as much at the heart of the OFW experience as the heroism and the melancholia. And how deep they run into the systemic malfunction of a country that fails time and again to sustain its workforce and into the seductive glamor of anywhere but here.</span></b></span></b></span></span></div><div><div><br /></div><div>Following a ragtag group of stragglers that include a returning and bejeweled middle-aged whore (Maria Isabel Lopez, hilarious), a brother and sister (Arnalyn Ismael, a little pushy but a grace note regardless) hoping to reunite with their mother <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">and John Arcilla, who threatens to center a piece that doesn't want for one but calms his trademark seethe down <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">into a fitful languor before he does, </span>Halaw</b> only looks like an ensemble piece but doesn't behave like one. Working abroad under any conditions, but moreso under these conditions, is a last resort without coordinates. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">And it is this<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "> random and aimless meander to the way </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Halaw </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">denies its characters any room to bond into a group dynamic nor milks them for anything more than a passing empathy and to the way it picks<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "> up strands of plot and subplot it doesn't pursue and parses </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">everything in loose ends and half-measures, that nails the interior rhythm of what every OFW goes through, the numbing tedium of waiting under which anxiously simmers threat. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">Less than a third of the way in, though, as night falls and the rickety outrigger sets out to sea, <b>Halaw</b> lapses into montage - - - anxious faces, blackened tides, maudlin ballad playing over it all. It's wistful,sure, but not a little at odds tonally and also not a little corny and not a little phony, too. It's a freak burst of weakness and a mere nit I wouldn't have picked if the suspiscion that the film has been cut against its will didn't get more and more persistent after this. If there's anything <b>Halaw</b> needs, it's at least another half-hour to breathe, not to have more room for more things to happen but rather to have more room for more things <i>not to</i> happen. Tedium and threat, right. And much as every scene seems determined to acquiesce to this necessary torpor, something curtails it before it gets to do so, cuts it short, hurries it up, hews it to a shape. Its unfortunate English title (<b>Ways of The Sea</b>) may come off like some drab tourism AVP but <b>Halaw</b> does benefit from <i>not </i>having the temperament of your average Cinemalaya film: that would be earnest and cushy and prudent and no coloring outside the lines. And I wouldn't necessarily mind truncation if it didn't have the worrying nag that much of it is done to fold the film into the weary comfort zones of the Cinemalaya house style it's been evading and doing a valiant job of it,too. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>But it's the last shot nearly everyone piles on,though - - -the outrigger disappearing into a dark grove and the series of expository title cards telling us nothing, at least nothing the literal translation of the title (deportee) hadn't told us already. It's the loosest of loose ends, all unease and displacement and with the severity of a stump where a hand should be. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">I have no idea if the </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Halaw</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "> we have is a Faustian bargain struck with the forces that be, right down to the terrible subtitling, all I go by is how<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "> tough it is to shake the sense that the ending came out of some reverting back to <i>carte blanche</i>. Not only is it the film's most triumphan<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; ">t moment, aesthetically, but as a singular, damning epitome of the pointlessness in it all, it is also its truest. <b>* * *</b></span></span></span></b></span></span></div></div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-55539406532108948212010-08-15T00:21:00.000-07:002010-09-04T08:04:07.345-07:00Possible Lovers<b>Possible Lovers</b><div><i>Directed by Raya Martin<br />Sound Design by Teresa Barozzo</i></div><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi18eUTRQsO5K2k4cEHQBVG8NKKqa4KXrJOOGcj5a86Y4arPzcKW70Gopy5EIOG7aRVuoy0sa_n_g0orGfOQGz1lQFhM-ws-JYOHlzO3N_0iHB90q8JObhB6v3rjCp8HOWQn6mBTA/s1600/2765496973_a8bd7fb7e4-1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 375px; height: 253px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi18eUTRQsO5K2k4cEHQBVG8NKKqa4KXrJOOGcj5a86Y4arPzcKW70Gopy5EIOG7aRVuoy0sa_n_g0orGfOQGz1lQFhM-ws-JYOHlzO3N_0iHB90q8JObhB6v3rjCp8HOWQn6mBTA/s400/2765496973_a8bd7fb7e4-1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5502519608540980466" /></a><br /><br /><br />There's almost only one shot in the whole of <b>Possible Lovers</b>. That shot is a static single take of a young man staring longingly at another fast asleep on a couch. They are dressed semiotically, commoner and <i>bourgeoise</i>. You come to that from the found footage of 1919 Manila that came before it, as if grasping for echoes, or straws. It is not acting they do, these two on the couch, not really. It's performance art, almost. It's an endurance test, certainly. <b>Possible Lovers</b> is an experimental film. It's even more experimental than Raya's <b>Next Attraction</b>. But it's not bullish about its experimentalism, Raya's experimental films never really are. The label on the tape says, cheekily, <b>Autohystoria 2</b>. And like <b>Autohystoria</b>, there is an inertia and passivity about it. Unlike <b>Autohystoria</b>, it doesn't build up to anything but rather folds in on its own inertia and passivity. That can be terribly frustating for most people. It's the way an installation piece behaves and at first, it makes sense to come to it as if it were one, but not really. It fails as video art in that, notwithstanding a disregard for structuralist rigor, it's like a James Benning landscape film, and sound is where what little story it's telling is being told, making it co-dependent on the immersive properties of the cinema setting, demanding at some point that you close your eyes and prick up your ears. That may seem like a peculiar demand for a movie to make but it's not as if it hasn't been asked before. There are five ways you can react to <b>Possible Lovers</b>. You can be bored. You can be pissed. You can be at a loss. You can be heartbroken. You can be spellbound. You can go through all five, like I did. You have 95 minutes. There's enough time to run the gamut and back again. Every reaction is valid. Every reaction is correct. It is, in varying degrees, both conceptual hubris and avant mindfuck. It is also a love letter, not a valentine as the love is unrequited, and like all love letters, only one copy of it exists. That copy is on a haggard MiniDV. Every time it gets played, the image remains pristine as it can be but the sound goes to seed. This is the third time it's been played. And the rot is already a lot more profuse. The dropouts and glitches, they're almost like atmospheric conditions, ghosts. Break the title down and that's what this is about. The finitude of love and the cruel ecstasy of possibility and all the ghosts that flit in and out of that dreadful suspension between the two. I wonder how many more times the film will get played. And I think about how one day there will be almost no sound left at all. Almost no story, no love, no possibility. Only that pristine image of longing. And the empty, futile stasis that comes with it. <b>* * * </b>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-75162542220088653462010-07-12T22:40:00.000-07:002010-07-14T04:50:39.424-07:00The Trial of Mr. Serapio<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL7LgkvfrJSp3G5ego02KWNeyocLIuJUk70hSCmFu9OJN0YSbjvTEFeu42rVa_73_W_VAcKhvHKFWxcWWC3qIZ1F5q5LndrZ9j60TTU_wVaAX5dLG7NK5GMbpcWRTxXZinyimhAw/s1600/serapio.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL7LgkvfrJSp3G5ego02KWNeyocLIuJUk70hSCmFu9OJN0YSbjvTEFeu42rVa_73_W_VAcKhvHKFWxcWWC3qIZ1F5q5LndrZ9j60TTU_wVaAX5dLG7NK5GMbpcWRTxXZinyimhAw/s400/serapio.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5493272359479315874" /></a><br /><br /><br />Filmless Films Presents This Is Not A Film by Khavn<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Trial of Mr. Serapio (Ang Palilitis Ni Mang Serapio)</span><br /><br /><span>with</span><span style="font-style:italic;"> Teo Antonio, Mike Coroza, Vim Nadera </span><span>and </span><span style="font-style:italic;">Jess Santiago</span><span> as</span><span style="font-style:italic;"> Serapio<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Directed Written and Produced by</span> Khavn De La Cruz </span><div><span>Based on the Play by</span><span style="font-style:italic;"> Paul Dumol<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Edited by</span> Lawrence Ang<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Director of Photography</span> Albert Banzon<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Music</span> Jess Santiago<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Production Designer</span> Lena Cobangbang<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Production Manager</span> Kristine Kintana<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Sound Design</span> Arvie Bartolome<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Stills</span> Allan Balberona</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">A beggar is put to trial for taking an orphan girl under his wing. Paul Dumol's beloved classic one act play, considered by many as the first modernist play, may be more than 40 years old but in its inevitable transition to film in the hands one of its most ardent fans, filmmaker Khavn De La Cruz, its meditations on justice and equality remain disturbingly, eerily relevant.<span style="font-weight:bold;"></span></span><br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2ePg7gFTFNU&hl=en_US&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess"></object><br /><br /><br />July 15, Thursday 9PM CCP Little Theatre (Tanghalan Aurelio Tolentino).</div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17398692.post-20990079108731471632010-07-12T22:16:00.000-07:002010-09-04T08:06:04.336-07:00A Shared Love And A Shared Art We Are Complicit In<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRh75BITC1HxuySwofpwIdZ8zlUfKCbzKjI2Vvjrwko4BBXOusT4q_-hMOJPsmsrWYjsEmNrOybuG8SyuGHjXe7aDpIrd-O-KLOSdWs3WC75AIi7Vqs66hvVIJc34PspnO2nSBrQ/s1600/4758286000_f8654f8beb_b.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 227px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRh75BITC1HxuySwofpwIdZ8zlUfKCbzKjI2Vvjrwko4BBXOusT4q_-hMOJPsmsrWYjsEmNrOybuG8SyuGHjXe7aDpIrd-O-KLOSdWs3WC75AIi7Vqs66hvVIJc34PspnO2nSBrQ/s400/4758286000_f8654f8beb_b.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489878919329331906" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO9TKmpaepjXR_pCFJh0SHqXY2JVbt5wqS-wy0GMyy-Sbavxnn-i9__SVJs3Vep9CixCYgMfiBnaaEXq3L8k9EM33TGg2zMO5SsUNAUgMHnpG3BHlBg6p6UPtLSDg50tTgQUU3rw/s1600/4758286002_2dbeaa6b9c_b.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 227px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO9TKmpaepjXR_pCFJh0SHqXY2JVbt5wqS-wy0GMyy-Sbavxnn-i9__SVJs3Vep9CixCYgMfiBnaaEXq3L8k9EM33TGg2zMO5SsUNAUgMHnpG3BHlBg6p6UPtLSDg50tTgQUU3rw/s400/4758286002_2dbeaa6b9c_b.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5489878400967500434" /></a><br /><br /><b>PHILIPPINE NEW WAVE: This Is Not A Film Movement</b><br /><br /><i>Edited by Khavn De La Cruz with Dodo Dayao & Mabie Alagbate<br />Introduction by Bienvenido Lumbera<br />Profiles by Chard Bolisay, Oggs Cruz, & Dodo Dayao<br />Published by Noel Ferrer, Instamatic Writings, & MovFest<br />Book Design & Layout by Gerard Lico</i><div><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"I just need to say THANK YOU for making this! It's a major read for me as we share similar cinematic visions and, among others, political instability. Your book is gold."</span> — Apichatpong Weerasethakul<br /><br /><b><i>"The most prominent internationally-acclaimed and wildly divergent digital filmmakers from the Philippines answer questions on filmmaking and beyond: from humble beginnings, to first adventures and unforgettable experiences, to influences and philosophy and process, to what the power of film is, to the true meaning of independence, to what the future holds for cinema, locally and worldwide.<br /><br />Filmmaker and festival director Khavn De La Cruz throws the questions at them, and gamely answers them himself. The results are at turns informative and insightful, inspirational and illuminating, revealing how diverse the landscape of Philippine Cinema has become, and how much of it is a shared love and a shared art in which you are complicit in."</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>EDIT: Book launch will be on <b>July 20 Tuesday, 4 pm at the CCP Little Theater</b>. And yes, you will be there.</div>dodo dayaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287196617019639716noreply@blogger.com0