Present Confusion

Cinemalaya 2011: Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa, Bisperas, Shorts A

2011-07-21T06:33:00.000-07:00

Cinemalaya 2011 continues with fancy prancy dancing, a robbery, and several other things.

Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa (The Dance of Two Left Feet)

It's Interpretative Dance: The Movie!

If you remember one of my reviews from last year (the midnight screening, forgot the title) that particular movie had a part where this interpretative dance segment comes out from nowhere and punches you in the face. It was artsy fartsy, it was pretentious, and it didn't work. It is hard to integrate concepts like that into film, and often the result is a confusing and obscure mess. But leave it to this New Breed entry to prove me wrong.

The title itself makes itself clear: this is a film that has a lot of dancers and dancing. But that's only the most superficial level of the film. This is basically a love story, expressed through dance and song. Surprisingly, it works really well.

Marlon is in love with his literature teacher (Jean Garcia,) who also happens to teach a dance class on the side. Dennis is one of the tutors in the teacher's class, and Marlon asks him to teach him some dance moves. Thing is, Dennis kind of has a thing for Marlon as well. Yeah, this is a rare Male ---> Male ---> (older) Female love triangle.

Intense feelings of love and longing are described in the many scenes of dialogue and debate, infusing each scene with layered meaning. The tension between the three characters, sexual or not, is so thick you can cut it with a knife. And yet, even as we wait for something to actually be done, we realize that this is not a film about getting the guy or the girl, it is about the process of loving itself, rather futilely.

Strikingly, one of the scenes describes the act of reminiscing a past love, or a love lost, as something like sex itself - that when one recalls memories of the people he or she loves, they inhabit that body's memory, becoming one with the memory itself. This idea of love unreachable or unrequited (same sex or not) is the central theme of the film. It all heads off into a dance fueled climax based on a creative reinterpretation of Humadapnon's part of the Ilonggo Hinilawod epic.

The FEU Dance Troupe helped in doing many of the dancing scenes in this film (the film itself takes place in the university.) All three leads are competent and believable as dancers as well (the credits section shows them along with the dance troupe practicing together.) Everything from traditional Filipino dances to Western dances like tango are covered in the film.

The soundtrack is also quite capable, with songs often accompanied by solo dances, especially during key scenes. It's gripping and quite intriguing to watch. Also, it doesn't just come out of the blue.

Give it a watch. I came in with low expectations and it exceeded all of them. 8 pirouettes out of 10.

Bisperas

This time, let's take a look at one of the entries for the Director's showcase category. Jeffrey Jeturian's Bisperas takes place on Christmas Eve. It begins with a procession, eventually showing the family whose lives we will see unravel in the next hour and a half. There's the patriarch (Tirso Cruz III), his wife (Raquel Villavicencio), and their three children: Balikbayan Dianne (Jennifer Sevilla) and her daughter Steph, frank and blunt Ara (Julia Clarete) and youngest son Mio. After robbers burglarize their home, deep-seated sentiments among them all begin to unravel, exposing old wounds and opening new ones.

Although most of the movie takes place in one place (the family's house,) this character-driven drama delivers from start to finish. While at first the family seems at peace with each other, each one of them has their own set of problems and hang-ups, leading to inevitable conflict. The robbery itself does not matter, but it serves as a force of nature that catalyzes the rest of the events in the movie. I won't spoil any of these conflicts because they add to the overall enjoyment of the film as a whole.

I am not entirely sure if the makers of the film were drawing parallels to what is going right now with scandals involving religious authority (the director himself said something to this effect during the gala premiere, but I'm not too sure as to the context of the statement) but one could interpret its relevance as such.

The acting is quite solid in all respects, and in character driven pieces like this it makes all the difference. Julia Clarete was my favorite in the film; her character interacts the most with all the other members and seems to bridge communication between some of them.

The end of the film closes out the story in an almost Christian fashion. Well, this is Christmas after all.

8 stolen items over 10.

Shorts A: Un Diutay Mundo, Samarito, Walang Katapusang Kwarto, Every Other Time, Nino Bonito

Un Diutay Mundo

An abstract short about a boy who is trapped forever in a room with no contact from the outside world. This was made by students of Ateneo de Zamboanga University (the movie is narrated in its entirety in Chavacano.) Like his namesake's stories depict, Kafka (the boy)'s circumstances are never clearly explained. At no point do we clearly know why he is in there, the nature of the girl, etc etc. Not really my cup of tea, but I guess its decent enough in its own right. 2.5 feral boys over 5.

Samarito

...Samaroon. Just kidding. Simple enough in concept, an unlikely person becomes an unlikely Samaritan because of unlikely circumstances. Just watch it and form your own opinion. Technically decent and executed well. There was a bit too much shaky cam at the end for my taste, however. 3 crowbars over 5.

Walang Katapusang Kwarto

If you think about it, this short is basically two people talking. It's a very simple concept but the two leads manage to pull it off really well. It ends up paced just right and doesn't overstay its welcome (too much) thanks to well placed jokes and clever dialogue. Plus the little twist at the end really tops it off. 4.5 witty retorts over 5.

Every Other Time

This short was made by students of the College of Saint Benilde. Another simple concept film that has this cute payoff in the end. Compared with the other shorts in the repertoire it is quite average but it tells its story effectively and pretty much gets to the point. 3 cellphones over 5.

Nino Bonito

I like Milo Tolentino's short films. They all involve kids (non-actors to boot), they mostly take place in impoverished settings, and all are invariably funny and entertaining. Although not his best, this one is quite cute when not in its 'the world is a soulless and relentless place' mode. It is innocence versus its inevitable loss - fittingly represented in this film by the Santo Nino. Not his best effort, but still above average. 3.5 religious icons over 5.

Cinemalaya 2011: Amok, Shorts B

2011-07-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

Truth. Despair. Freedom. Terror. Splendor. Memory. Passion. The seventh Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival is underway, and it's about time for some movie watching. I don't think anything can match the sheer volume of content I reviewed last time, but I'll try to do what I can with the time I have.

AMOK

There seems to be something about Pasay Rotonda that makes it an attractive setting for movies like this. With its sprawling walkways and chaotic hustle and bustle it becomes a character of its own. In recent memory I can recall the film Rotonda, which bears a passing similarity to this entry in the New Breed Category, Lawrence Fajardo's Amok.

Amok is an interconnected tale weaving together the lives of several people and how their actions affect each other. While some are simply living their lives as normally as they can, some enter the Rotonda at a distinct turning point in their lives. As the film draws into its inevitable climax (the "Amok" hinted by the title) this single event will send ripples through all of the characters, changing them either for better or worse.

An experienced ensemble cast including Mark Gil, Dido Delapaz, Garry Lim, and Archi Adamos (among many, many others) play the various characters that inhabit the setting of this film. They all bring their characters to life, making us sympathize with at least some of them in the limited time they have with their respective vignettes.

And it is the cast of characters that serves as the central pillar that holds the film up: from washed-up actors to dirty enforcers to a proud father and son, all of these characters have one thing in common: they are either the perpetrators or the recipients of an "injustice." Some try to cheat the system already in place. Some try to cheat others, offering them hollow prizes in exchange for their souls. And that is one of the central themes of the film; screenwriter John Bedia describes this injustice (and I paraphrase here) as the "source" of the characters' "anger" (translated as 'init') that compels them to do the things they do. Ironically the man who perpetrates the 'Amok' that sets up the climax seems to be the only person who acts on this injustice, albeit with violence.

Last year, when I reviewed Astig, I saw many cliches that were beginning to eat away at the artistic integrity of films with similar concepts and settings (cliches that would eventually get parodied in one of the other films in this year's festival, but that's for another review.) Astig taught me that a film could be technically excellent but lacking in other things, when concepts are regurgitated again and again so as to seem artificial in themselves.

Luckily this film avoids these pitfalls and uses the Rotonda as a canvas with which to paint this interesting tale, using poverty and social injustice as matters of fact instead of emphasizing them, almost to the point of blatant exploitation. The movie is NOT about how people are sooooooo poor. The movie shows us what IS, and that is to me, true art.

One thing though, and this is something of a nitpick... given a revolver with six bullets, how the heck do you reload and where do you get those bullets...?

7.5 headshots out of 10.

Amok Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-ppXJETZQM

Shorts B: Hanapbuhay, Oliver's Apartment, Immanuel, Debut, Hazard

Hanapbuhay

The punchline of this story is important, so I'm not spoiling anything. The point of the film is, even when times are rough, deep inside, true men have integrity - and that may be the most important thing of all. Excellent comedic timing, well paced, technically sound, what can I say. Best short of the festival. 5 broken bottles out of 5.

Oliver's Apartment

Oliver is a man with severe OCD and germophobia. A postcard then sends things spiraling out of control. Although technically sound and done with no dialogue at all, this particular short sends its message decently. However there is a bit of confusion if the girl and the postcard sender are the same person. The film kind of spent a bit too much time on Oliver instead, which I guess was sort of the point, but it left some things confusing in the process. 3 neatly arranged pills out of 5.

Immanuel

This short is unique in that it is a science fiction film; in five years of going to this festival, I have never seen a sci-fi film in Cinemalaya before. The film portrays a dystopic future where oxygen is of such limited supply that it is rationed to workers very strictly. No work, no air. And having extra children (especially if they're not regulated) sucks too. Say what you want about the concepts of the film and its parallels to current issues on reproductive health and population control, there's lots to debate about here. The film is presented gorgeously with stark contrasting colors and shadows, cool hues of blue and silver and gray giving off an appearance/effect similar to that of film treated with a bleach bypass process. 3.5 O2 crystals out of 5.

Debut

Rather than telling you about the plot of this rather simple film, we had a little debate about the nature of this film as a cleverly disguised metaphor or not. One of my friends noted that the emphasis on the money received kind of made us see the movie as is, instead of as a metaphor or abstract representation of something else. Still, something to think about when watching this really short film. 3 ribbons out of 5.

Hazard

Mikhail Red's film last year, Harang, was one of my favorite shorts in recent years. This new effort, a simple looking father and son story that soon spirals wildly out of control, is a whole different monster entirely. It took a while after watching the film that it is basically exactly like what the father said - that the son knows nothing about how the world works, and in the end, the father is the one who is held accountable for his son's mistakes. It's just that this film takes it to the maximum extreme level that it can take the concept. 4 dead bodies out of 5.

The Tree of Life

2011-06-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

I was a bit excited when I learned that Terrence Malick's film The Tree of Life won the Palm D'Or at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. A film several years, if not decades, in the making, it was full of ambition and seemed to offer something unique. Given Malick's previous stints at directing, those films tended to be technically superior films, but lacking in something else.

After seeing the film for myself, I can understand why the film received such a polarized response from moviegoers and critics. The Tree of Life is not an easy film to digest.

Jack O' Brien (Sean Penn) as he deals with everyday life as an architect. Around him the concrete walls of the city trap him, with corridors seemingly stretching out for miles, jungles of stone and steel. He begins to remember back to the time when he was still a boy growing up in the suburban America of the 20th century. He recalls his life with his two other brothers, his mother (Jessica Chastain) and his troubled relationship with his father (Brad Pitt.)

But to say that the paragraph above is the 'story' does not do justice to what really goes on. The Tree of Life is more an experience, a compilation of feelings and emotions and dreamscapes and memories. As such, the structure of the film is not linear; from one moment we see ourselves in the characters in the present - and in another we see the creation of the universe itself. A large portion of the film is bereft of dialogue, and we are left to bask in images and sound. Maybe Malick is channeling his own inner Kubrick here, ala 2001. Either way, he's not a director who likes to use dialogue too much in his films.

Some viewers have drawn religious undertones to the film, and indeed the music of the film is patterned like a prayer from start to finish. Others have likened it to a person's mental process in understanding the world or life itself. People have drawn other conclusions from the film, and that is, in my humble opinion, is what makes this film work - the sense that it draws a spectrum of reactions from different people. That is film as art, in its pure form.

It is quite surprising that some of the more impressive special effects in the film are NOT generated by computers. Douglas Trumbull, who did the special effects in iconic visual feasts like 2001, Blade Runner and the first Star Trek Movie was responsible for the effects in this film.

Then again, the film has its shortcomings. It demands a lot from its viewers, leaving others wanting. This is definitely not a film that anyone can watch. Junkies waiting for the next boob or explosion need to look elsewhere (and there's nothing wrong with that.) The existential angst piles up almost to the point of pretension. Whether it crosses the line by being too heavy handed, I leave it to your own personal interpretation. Again, that's the beauty of this film - people may love it or hate it, but they will have an opinion of it, good or bad.

Towards the end of the film, one may ask oneself: have I come to terms with my own life? What about the people I've left behind? The film may not give any concrete answers to life, the universe and everything, but that's because there really are no concrete, generalized answers for any of us. So maybe the scenes of cosmic birth and destruction means that our lives are infinitesimal in comparison to the rest of the universe. So then, what gives our lives meaning? Is it love?

Now excuse me while I watch some boobs and explosions.

Sucker Punched

2011-03-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

You have to hand it to Zack Snyder. After directing a slew of music videos and car commercials in the nineties, he moved on to making feature films. He was pretty successful with 300, based on the Frank Miller comic book series, and made works based on other franchises like Dawn of the Dead, or Watchmen (one of this reviewer's personal favorites.)

But that's the thing.

Prior to this movie, we really haven't seen Zack Snyder do anything that wasn't a remake or an adaptation of (admittedly awesome) source material. He has only existed as a shadow or extension of his previous job - to present something that already exists, package it and present it with style. The film-as-concept then evolves into something completely different, a commercial, a picture that tells no words other than accounts of its own beauty. Pictures worth no words. Who would have ever thought?

This brings us to his latest film, Sucker Punch. It's his first film that is original, not based on a comic book, a book or an old movie. I won't talk that much about the movie because a multitude of people have already shared their views on it: it's weird, it's brainless action, the plot is obtuse, it explains nothing, it's slow and awkward whenever the hot girls aren't blowing up zeppelins or robot samurai.

Instead, I offer this: what constitutes a 'director?' Is it simply someone who handles the technical presentation of the film? A film does not exist on style alone; plot and characterization are two important things filmmakers seem to be forgetting these days. With a glossy exterior we get films like the new Star Wars Trilogy, lush fantasy worlds populated by cardboard cutouts and paper thin plots. With rich and deep plots and fleshed out characters the movie that emerges from it far outshines its hollow kin.

Somewhere along the line, something went wrong with this movie. Perhaps it was the screenwriters explaining too much, or the other way around. Zack Snyder wants us to read between the lines in an film that promised us brainless action. Between serious drama and eye candy explosion fests, the film transforms into something that is neither one - ultimately alienating the audiences of both.

I wish I could tell you how badass the sequences are. They are indeed, but that alone constitutes not a true movie. You could edit out the rest of the parts and still see something probably worth watching on Youtube. One could praise the visual and musical flair taken in the presentation of the product, featuring absurd amounts of detail and songs from the Pixies all the way to Bjork. But again, the gift is only as good as what's inside - not the wrapping that covers it.

Zack Snyder has yet to prove to audiences that he is a true director - someone who not only gives us the pretty packaging, but tells us the story behind it. Unfortunately we may not be able to know just yet; his next project is a reboot of the Superman series.

A Presently Confusing Decade: The Worst

2010-12-29T08:21:00.000-08:00

When it comes to reviewing films, I'm pretty lenient. I usually give positive points to even the most ridiculously plotted, cheap, pathetic films ever made. But there are times when even my own patience cannot save a film. They are truly, BAD films.

There are bad movies that are so bad that they are actually good. If drunk or with equally wasted friends, movies like these can be ridiculed to death. And it's fun. You will have gotten your money's worth by shamelessly excoriating these bad films.

Then there are the bad films that are so bad they are just.... bad. They are films that leave a sour taste in your mouth. They are films that you wish you had pirated instead. They are abominations beyond human understanding.

I'd include a few Uwe Boll films here, but his oeuvre belongs in a category all its own.

My least favorite films of the past 10 (+1) years are:

Tekken

What could have been - THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME MOVIE EV4R!!!!11oneone punching people into the sky, buildings exploding due to punch shockwaves, Brian Fury fucking up an entire army. Because. He. Is. The. Man.

What actually happened - Where are the fights? Where's Kazuya's spine? Why is it always dark? What the fuck is going on!?

My Take - The latest in a long line of bad videogame adaptations. It does everything wrong and pisses all over the source material as if it were that large piece of shit that you want to break apart with your stream of piss. Or something like that.

X3: The Last Stand

What could have been - A movie based on the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix saga, one of the greatest (if not the greatest) story arcs of X-men in the history of the comic. Last two movies, X-Men and X2 were pretty good. That's all I really have to say.

What actually happened - The cinematic equivalent if X-men were a comic book written on yellow pad paper by a 6 year-old.

My Take - There are bad superhero movies, and there is X3: The Last Stand. With plot holes the size of goatse's anus and a patched-together plot that stinks like the aforementioned anus, X3 is as exciting as watching paint dry. It was either this or Spiderman 3, and that one also sucked, but this one took the cake. It also took the plate, the table, the knife and fork, and the room the cake came in.

Pamahiin

What could have been - Decent Asian Horror. With fanservice from Iya Villania of course.

What actually happened - A non-intentional comedy, with non-intentional fanservice from Iya Villania.

My Take - Granted, I've spared myself the horror of watching shitty horror movies from the Philippines (Feng Shui being one of the few halfway decent movies) so I can't say this is the worst, but halfway through the movie I thought this was more a comedy than a horror film. The first half delves into this motif of superstitions, but then in the second half it suddenly transforms into this cheap mishmash of 'possessed' films that Filipinos seemed to love in the late 80's or 90's or something.

Catwoman

What could have been - an epic comic book film about one of Batman's more interesting villains.

What actually happened - an epic failure.

My Take - oh, speaking of bad superhero movies, there's this pile of shit. If I were a cat, I'd probably lose 8 of my 9 lives watching this disaster. Don't blame Halle Berry, it wasn't her fault.

Enteng Kabisote 4

What could have been - to be fair, I really wasn't expecting anything.

What actually happened - 90 minutes of nostalgic cameos, cheap special effects and product placement. Plot? What is this... plot you speak of?

My Take - Take everything you absolutely hate about Philippine cinema. An array celebrities appearing just for the lulz? check. Product placements so frequent it almost feels like corporate masturbation? check. "Special" effects covering for a story that was made by a dozen monkeys typing randomly on a dozen typewriters? check. Corny jokes that were 'in' during the early 1960's? check. This movie fits all the criteria and then some. If there were a bottom of the movie barrel, this would probably be somewhere beyond the bottom of the barrel and somewhere closer to hell.

That's it! That's all I have. I've only watched 1 film in the past 10 days, and it wasn't planet shakingly awesome (it was just ok) so I probably won't be doing a pahabol segment. That's it for 2010. See you guys next year, and have a great time.

Till then, stay presently confused~!

A Presently Confusing Decade: The Rest of the World and Documentaries

2010-12-27T06:29:00.000-08:00

Rounding up our round-up (heh) are notable films from the rest of the world that I couldn't classify, and documentaries.

Notables from the Rest of the World

Amelie (France) - it's fun, quirky, and it introduced the mainstream world to Audrey Tautou. Definitely a must watch.

City of God (Brazil) - this cinematic bildungsroman of a man's struggle during tumultuous times in Rio di Janeiro's slums offers us an alternative look at the place, far removed from outsider's eyes: roving gangs of child killers, gangs, drugs, sex and alcohol.

Day Watch (Russia) - this Russian supernatural epic is the most polished of the two films that came out (hello Hollywood, still waiting on that third one...) with great special effects and a complex story with interesting characters to boot.

Banlieue 13 (France) - probably not the best plotted film out there, but this film and its sequel were hella fun to watch. Kept me on my toes from start to finish.

Y tu mama tambien (Mexico) - A coming of age tale between two dudes and an older woman as they travel across the countryside to some mythical place. Plus, boobies. Gotta have those boobies.

As for documentaries, they've been on the uptake this decade too. This decade saw all 5 of the top 5 grossing documentaries get shown. Most of them are by controversial documentary director Michael Moore, whose filmmaking style mixing gonzo journalism, sarcastic humor, and honest truth made his movies great to watch.

Docu

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - As one of the people in this film remarks: This is not a tale about ridiculously complex financial transactions. This is a tale about people, and how their hubris and delusions of grandeur brought down a billion-dollar company into bankruptcy within a matter of days.

The King of Kong - It's a man vs. the world story, in the background of the golden age of arcade video games. It's silly, and at times you wonder about these men and their motivations, but you will be rooting for Steve Wiebe by the end.

Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade - Having (re)introduced yourself to the era of arcade video games, this documentary takes the material and explores it in a different manner, showing us the perspective of a number of guys who were the best in the world at a particular video game, and how they lived with that notion.

Apocalypse: The Second World War - using colorized footage of the second world war, this six-part series is a tale of the world's most horrifying war - and a stark reminder that such things must not be repeated again.

Fahrenheit 9/11 - the status of this film as 'documentary' is debateable, but out of Michael Moore's films during this decade, this one may have actually changed a few minds about the war and its implications to the US and the world at large.

Other Notable Documentaries: Food, Inc., The Corporation, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, The Bridge, I Got Next, Frag and sooooooo many others.

And Next Up: Finally, what good is a favorites list without the non-favorites list? John T lists his worst movies of the past decade (+1.)

A Presently Confusing Decade: Hollywood

2010-12-25T08:03:00.000-08:00

Ah, Hollywood, the center of the movie universe. Hollywood blockbusters made gazillions of dollars over the past ten years, but here were the biggest earners of that time.

Large Scale Epics - nothing would dazzle the imagination more than grand sweeping epic films filled with huge battles, drama and pathos. Special effects were fast becoming part of the picture itself rather than a supplement to it. At some points, special effects were all that were there, replacing any traditional scenery, action or what have you. The new Star Wars trilogy is probably the most heinous offender. With its all SFX backgrounds, you tend to lose sight of the personal issues and forget what the movie should really be all about.

Sequels, sequels and more sequels - nothing fueled the industry more than continuing the plots of films that didn't need sequels. Riding on movies that were classics in their own right, films continued stories that needed no continuation; indeed, few could be considered as classics of the caliber of the original. Some sequels were decades apart; feeding on the nostalgia of the moviegoers' populace.

Living on the 80s - And nostalgia was the biggest draw of this decade. How many 70s or 80s TV shows did you see on the screen? Hollywood did its best to sap on the creativity of the past, while offering nothing new but wrapping old material in a glossy new package.

Heroics on Film - The Superhero film. Comics were soon recognized as a legitimate source of inspiration, thanks to their fantastic and deep storylines, interesting characters, and the ability of special effects to do this allowed us to see some great and some not so great films.

But despite this, the imaginations of some filmmakers shined through this decade with their uncompromising visions. American independent cinema had visions of its own, far removed from the popular trends in mainstream Hollywood. Uncompromising films like The Limits of Control or Synecdoche, New York would challenge moviegoing audiences and critics alike.

My favorite Hollywood films of the last 10 +1 years are:

Inception - Christopher Nolan struck gold twice in the past 2 years. I think he has learned from his previous films and made a thinking man's blockbuster. Dreams within dreams within dreams, and a world bound only by one's imagination - makes for a very engaging film. The ending left its mark by sparking a wave of discussion long after the movie had ended.

The Dark Knight - the 2000s gave birth to (or resurrected?) a different genre of films that catered to the newly emerging comic book generation: The Superhero Movie. Although it led to the production of a lot of mediocre adaptations, a couple of good ones, and some considerable garbage, this one stands along as a film that transcends the superhero genre and becomes its own. The unbelievable performance by the late Heath Ledger is once in a lifetime, and his passing was truly a tragic one.

Broken Flowers - One of Bill Murray's standout films this decade, pairing him with director Jim Jarmusch. It's a man's search for his own self through his past loves.

Waking Life - Richard Linklater has made his share of films this decade. Some were sequels (Before Sunset) some were mainstream fare (School of Rock) and some were misguided at best (Fast Food Nation.) This rotoscoped animated film, released in 2001, was my favorite of them all. It's just a couple of dudes talking about stuff, but it is never boring. He would follow this one up with A Scanner Darkly, based on the Philip K. Dick story.

Lost in Translation - Yeah, Bill Murray. Movies like this make me forget that he did shit like Garfield a Tale of Two Kitties. Yep. This movie also made me notice Scarlett Johansson for the first time. That qualifies it for awesomeness immediately. But add a great story about two people meeting by chance and finding each other's friendship in an alien land and you have a winner.

The Lord of the Rings - this movie redefined the definition of Epic for this decade. I have to lump the three movies together as they really only function cohesively as one film (except maybe the first, which can stand on its own.) Peter Jackson pulls out all the stops to recreate the world of Middle-earth on the big screen.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - few films have the visual panache as this one has, interpreting dreamscapes through the quirky mind of Michel Gondry. But beyond the lush visuals is the deconstruction of a relationship in reverse - tracing its events from the breakup and back to happy times. And yet, there is the bittersweet notion that depsite all the things that went on, the end result will forever be the same.

Kill Bill - I think Quentin Tarantino and I would have a lot to say if we got into a room together. A big chunk of what we would say would probably be about the awesome movies we've seen. Tarantino has a penchant of taking the stuff that he likes from various movies and genres and mashing them together to form something of a tribute to these films. With Kill Bill, he takes Wuxia, Chambara, Exploitation films, grindhouse films, Spaghetti Westerns, Japanese splatterfests and whatever thing he can get his hands on and takes them all together to make a pretty good film.

Punch Drunk Love - Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the more exciting American directors of recent times. With this film he made Adam Sandler experience a depth of acting that few knew existed, while exploring the themes of loneliness and belonging in a strange world that not all of us will easily understand.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - It's hyper like an ADHD riddled child, but it's the perfect film to encapsulate the period of the last ten to fifteen years. With Edgar Wright's frenzied directing, the videogame-like setting and the mingling of fantasy and reality, this is a film that sadly flopped at the box office, but for those who did see it, were treated to their money's worth.

Noteworthy: Before Sunset, Hard Candy, Cypher, Babel, A Scanner Darkly, Juno

A Presently Confusing Decade: Anime

2010-12-23T23:44:00.000-08:00

It's no secret that I love anime, so I'm making a separate section and treating it like the independent genre that it is.

The 2000's was an interesting decade for anime. Films like Ghost in the Shell and series like Cowboy Bebop had introduced anime for more mainstream fans. Shows like Pokemon and Yugioh targeted kids; and the scene exploded.

Increasing strides in technology allowed for easy sharing of anime, spawning a substantial subtitling community. Gone were the days when you had to wait months for anime to be released in your country (if at all;) now, the latest episodes of the most popular anime could be viewed days or even hours after the original Japanese airing. Streaming sites like Youtube also facilitated the spread of anime throughout the world. This was no longer a Japanese thing; anime fans were beginning to form a large international community the nineties could never have imagined.

Anime studios like Gainax would rehash their old series or make new ones. Anime creators would also show their hand in Hollywood productions, like in the Animatrix, or the sequence in Kill Bill. Genres would also shift; the harem anime of the nineties began to fade away. Ero-game adaptations would surface, as standards on late night TV began to loosen, shows would tend to show even more. Josei anime would find their niche in the noitaminA block on television.

The Shounen genre would find itself a cornerstone of the industry with the "Big Three" Shounen Anime: Bleach, Naruto and One Piece. These new shows would gain large fanbases of their own and push anime even further into the mainstream.

Aside from manga, light novels would also become a source of anime adaptation. Shows like Haruhi Suzumiya and Toradora! would find their beginnings as light novels, then become adapted as highly popular anime. Still, anime creators would find time to make original productions of their own, making some of the best creative works of the decade.

And so, without further ado, my favorite anime of the past ten (+1) years:

Paranoia Agent - one of the most unique anime series to come out of Japan, and one of the late Satoshi Kon's masterpieces. As with most of his works, the series tackles the issues of dreams, perceptions and reality and brings them to life in a way only an animated film can.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - it has to be said that this anime epitomizes the meaning of "epic." Virtually a distillation of every hot-blooded mecha anime series into its purest, most pristine form. As it outdoes itself in over the top shenanigans with every episode, it never fails to deliver. Except probably for Garlock, although the movies correct this a bit.

Death Note - Although fans are divided over the second, lesser half of the series, the first half of Death Note is nothing short of awesome: a pure battle of wits between two supremely clever individuals. It really isn't about the notebook anymore; it's about the rivalry between these two men over their difference in ideology.

Honey and Clover - this series perfectly captured college life for me: the friends, the transcience, the pain, the happiness, the memories. You may notice the rest of the series in this list are either shounen or seinen series. This is the only title that even comes close to being shoujo (it's actually a Josei title) and there's a pretty fucking good reason why: because it kicks ass. Honey and Clover Sandwhiches, that's all I'm going to say about that.

Samurai Champloo - I would include Cowboy Bebop, but that was in 1998 so I can't lol. But this series, a fusion of hip-hop and jidaigeki/chambara culture, creates a great mishmash of both. References to samurai films of old and pop culture in general abound, but one could say the interactions between the three main characters between themselves and with others solidify what is a great series.

Akagi/Kaiji - I'd like to lump these two series by Nobuyuki Fukumoto together. Although not brimming with explosions or over the top mecha battles, these two series erupt with sheer manliness from start to finish. While Kaiji is the kind of poor bastard you'd want to buy a drink, Akagi is the kind of person that you'd cheer on for the sheer reason that the man is freaking insane. For some reason, these two gambling series have a strong (implied?) anti-gambling message. Or maybe it's just me.

Mushishi - Bar none the best anime series of the decade for me. Each tale tells of the human condition through strange creatures neither animal nor human. The show itself feels like some vibrant, quiet organism, thrumming with life. A show that deserved as many seasons that it could get, but settled for 26 amazing episodes.

Genshiken - an anime about anime (and a manga about manga... and I guess about anime too.) Like its spiritual predecessor Otaku no Video, Genshiken is an anime about anime and manga fans. Like me! (and probably you?) But take away the anime and manga, and this show is about a group of people engaging in a hobby that they love, a hobby that is a fundamental part of their lives.

Monster - What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a good person? What does it mean to be evil? Naoki Urasawa delivers with a rich and complex tale layered with interesting characters and questions that burn through to your moral center. THe awesome thing is, minor characters or not, each one has a story behind them, influencing their actions. Would you agree with Dr. Tenma's actions? Would you agree with Johan's?

Code Geass - Despite the second season, which most deemed a flaming trainwreck, this anime, a sort of bildungsroman of one's ascent from obscurity to total world domination, is pretty engrossing from start to over-the-top finish. One might think of the ascent of emperors or great conquerors while viewing the entirety of the show. Oh, and it has robots on roller skates. ROLLER SKATES.

Special Mention: Rebuild of Evangelion - The original series made such a huge impact on my teenage life that I still consider it a major influence in my tastes and likes today. The revamp of the series, helmed by a more mature (and slightly less depressed) Hideaki Anno, reflects on how I have changed from an angsty teen into a slightly less angsty young adult. lol

Honorable mentions: Eureka 7, Eden of the East

Next: Hollywood!

A Presently Confusing Decade: Rest of Asia

2010-12-21T18:10:00.000-08:00

The rest of Asia headed into the new decade quite unsure of itself. Reeling from the Asian financial crisis of the late nineties, the movie industry was not exactly in tip top shape. While the movie industries of South Korea flourished, old established titans of the Asian movie scene were beginning to crumble. The unfortunate casualty of the decade of the new milennium was Hong Kong. A steady decline in production from the mid nineties, combined with overproduction of films, piracy and the threat of Hollywood dealt a blow that sent the industry reeling. By 2003, the Hong Kong movie industry was on life support.

Directors then went to mainland China where they found a new home in the burgeoning economy, although strict government censorship would hinder their expression. In China, directors from there would make large scale epics of their own, but most indie directors would turn to small productions. Documentary films would find a trend among filmmakers in this decade.

Thai Cinema would also experience a kind of resurgence during this decade. The Pang Brothers made a couple of great films in the country, including The Eye and Bangkok Dangerous. (They would continue making films in the country as brothers or as solo directors.) Thailand also rode the Asian Horror wave with films like Bangkok Haunted or Shutter. Tony Jaa introduced a kinetic style of film with Ong Bak, starting a string of films showcasing Muay Thai and the skills and bravery of Thai Stuntmen.

Aside from mainstream fare, Thai New Wave directors gained acclaim in the international film circuit. Rataranuang's Invisible Waves and Last Life in the Universe were astounding films, as well as Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century and Uncle Boomee, the latter of which won big at Cannes.

The Philippines continued to languish a bit into the 2000s; but the rise of digital film made it possible for independent directors to gain a voice. While the Metro Manila Film Festival remained the sole hallmark of the commercial side of the film industry, independent filmmakers founded the Cinemalaya Film Festival as a showcase of their own creative work.

Malaysia would find talented directors and interesting films like Sepet, Indonesia would continue on its own, from horror fare to superhero films to sex comedies with sex symbols like Maria Ozawa. India would continue chugging along its huge movie industry; slick production values (and better choreography?) would improve movie quality. Vietnam, while mostly in the shadows, would gain notice with films like Muoi, a co-production with Korea. And the list goes on.

My personal favorites from Asia in the past decade (+1) were:

Green Tea - A little-known romantic movie from mainland China. Gorgeous to look at (thanks to Christopher Doyle,) great performances from the actors. Surprisingly it's one of my all-time favorites.

In the Mood for Love - You don't see him that much these days, but Wong Kar Wai's best is arguably this film, a quiet treatise on love that expresses its intense emotions beneath a seemingly placid exterior.

Hero - another mainland Chinese film that stars Hong Kong actors (sadly after HK cinema started to decline.) It started a wave of similar big budgeted Chinese epics, directed by both Hong Kong and Chinese directors and starring both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese actors, like House of Flying Daggers, The Promise and Red Cliff.

2046 - Although a lesser film than its predecessor, this follow-up to In the Mood for Love echoes the themes and sentiments of his previous films up to that point. He would direct only one more full film, My Blueberry Nights, before taking years on his latest film, The Master, based on the life story of Ip Man.

Last Life in the Universe - Thai cinema has been experiencing something of a resurgence this past decade. Pen-ek Rataranuang's offering, Last Life in the Universe is a strange and quirky film about how two people end up completing each other in more ways than one.

Infernal Affairs (Trilogy) - In the muck that was Hong Kong Cinema in the first decade of the millennium, a few movies stood out and proved to be classics of the genre. This trilogy was definitely one of the crowning works of that time. While the first is definitely the lynchpin of the series, it is the second film that expands upon the universe established by the first and gives it a whole new level of depth.

Shaolin Soccer - Stephen Chow has always made comedy movies in his long career. It's this one, however, that placed the international eye on him. His later, successful followup, Kung Fu Hustle, was also a big hit in Asia.

Ong Bak - Yeah yeah I know, this film has an overly simplistic plot that meanders too much (at least in the original Thai release,) and nothing much going on in the acting department. But DAMN my friend, it delivers action in spades and made Tony Jaa a star. That is, until the stresses of making Ong Bak 2 and 3 pushed him into monasticism. No joke. Will he make a comeback once everything is sorted out? and will the world remember him upon his return?

Engkwentro - I've seen my share of Filipino movies over the past ten years, and with all the mainstream dreck, indie stuff and miscellaneous gunk we produce, this movie stood out in particular for me. Clever editing, and superb acting from actors and non-actors alike make this film what it is.

special mention: Sha Po Lang, Ip Man, Tribu

A Presently Confusing Decade: South Korea

2010-12-20T12:35:00.000-08:00

South Korea had a very productive decade with its movie industry. It came off with big earners like Shiri and JSA. With rapidly improving film quality and the advent of digital video and DVD media, Korean movies had a boom in the early 2000s. Like other Asian countries, Korea also tried to ride the Asian horror bandwagon with productions of its own, such as 2002's Phone and 2003's A Tale of Two Sisters.

Korea also made waves with its Romantic Comedies. Films like My Sassy Girl, Windstruck and Sex is Zero were screened in across Asia. Some films were picked up by Hollywood for remake purposes, but were relatively unsuccessful compared to their counterparts. Along with TV series (arguably one of South Korea's largest media exports to Asia,) music and what have you, this began what constituted the Hallyu, or Korean Wave.

Korea would continue to break its own domestic box office records year after year. Nationalistic war epics like Taegukgi and Silmido, historical films like The King and the Clown, monster films like the Host, and grand spectacles like Tsunami and D-War would dominate the box office. This would continue well into 2009, but by this time, Korean cinema had its own share of troubles.

With the global recession, less people were going to cinemas. The screen quota system, having regulated the showing of non-domestic films on Korean screens, saw its power reduced to allow for more Hollywood films to be shown. Low sales of DVDs had almost killed that industry. Although there were still a lot of good films during the latter parts of the decade, the volume of productions lessened. TV dramas had more pull, and were more profitable in the long run due to its format.

Korean film gained international popularity, with major wins at major film festivals. Of note was Jeon Do-yeon's much deserved win at Cannes, as with Oldboy's win at the same film festival. Many others would win accolades in Venice and Berlin. The country's own Pusan film festival would become a major film event in the region over this decade.

The end of the decade saw a shift in Korean film production and contemporary Korean film. Although the occasional blockbuster or genre film will still be there, more and more directors are taking fresh and inventive approaches to the art, and more creative films from this powerhouse in the Asian film community are in the wings, waiting to be made.

For this decade (+1,) my favorite films are:

Oldboy - Although all great films I had to pick only one of Park Chan-wook's vengeance trilogy to leave space for the others, and I think this one is the film representative of this body of work. Oldboy is a fantastic film that punches you in the face the first time you see it.

My Sassy Girl - This film is the definitive example of a wave of Asian romantic comedies that swept through asia for much of the early decade. Director Kwak Jae-yong liked this film so much, he would spend the rest of the decade making nothing but similar films to this one, ranging from more serious fare (The Classic) to rehashes of his original story (Windstruck and Cyborg She) to adaptations of other similar works (My Girl and I.)

Failan - speaaaking of romance, how do you make a love story about two people who have never met in person, ever? The fact that people's lives are affected by others in such simple and profound ways is the point of this film, and is heartbreaking in its final result.

Il Mare - not really a standout film, but one of my favorite non-comedy romantic films from Korea of the decade. The music, the story, the chemistry between the characters, it was perfect. I guess it just came at the right time in my life. Remade in Hollywood as The Lake House.

Memories of Murder - a police procedural that takes in all of the societal issues and bureaucracies of the day. Based on a true story.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring - Kim Ki-duk has made a lot of movies this decade, with almost one movie a year until tapering off around 2008. This one remains one of his simplest films, with almost no dialogue. The cyclical story that was based upon Buddhism is still universal. Life, unto death.

The Chaser - If Oldboy was like a punch to the face, this film is like a hot girl kicking you in the balls. The Chaser brings equal heaps of suspense and pathos thanks to Kim Yoon-wook, who gives the performance of his life in this film.

Welcome to Dongmakgol - numerous films have been made regrarding the tensions between North and South Korea, who are still technically at war after more than fifty years. This film, lighthearted and whimsical as it is, paints a picture of a simple, naive world full of innocence, and how war changes everything.

The Host - not your ordinary monster movie. Again Jong Boon-ho gives us a relatively entertaining mainstream story, while still addressing societal issues. The true enemy in the Host is not the monster that stalks in the shadows; we are.

Cruel Winter Blues - This is a finely acted film that like Il Mare will probably not be remembered by many, but came to me at just the right time. It's a lonely story of disconnection and the desire to reach out to someone. A real hard luck tale, but worth the watch.

Honorable mentions: A Tale of Two Sisters, 3-iron, This Charming Girl, the rest of the Vengeance Trilogy, Thirst, JSA

I Wish I Could Have Seen: Secret Sunshine, Mother (I'll get to this ASAP hehe)

A Presently Confusing Decade: Japan

2010-12-19T11:48:00.000-08:00

In the past decade Japan has had something of a resurgence in productivity. Japanese Horror came in the decade strong, riding on the heels of the massive successes of Ring (1998) and The Grudge. This would taper off as the decade progressed, but it would open new doors for J-cinema and the world.

Over the next ten years, manga and anime would serve as both a source and an inspiration for subsequent cinematic productions, including mind blowing anime movies like Paprika and Ghost in the Shell Innocence, stalwart animated films from Ghibli like Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke, and adaptations of manga and anime, including but not limited to Nana and the Death Note trilogy. Some of the best Japanese box office performers were adaptations of manga or anime and would serve to spur the industry into looking into these sources for inspiration.

Tie-ins with TV series, or doramas, would also prove to be popular; movie versions or "finale" versions of J-dramas would enjoy a resurgence, especially in the last five years of the decade. The movie versions of Rookies (itself based on a manga) and Bayside Shakedown would rake in cash like never before.

Japan also received its share of accolades from the international film community, most recently last year's Okuribito (Departures,) which won the best foreign film Oscar for 2009. Japanese actors would also gain acclaim, with Yuya Yagira winning a best actor prize in Cannes for Nobody Knows, and Rinko Kikuchi getting a nomination for her role in Inarritu's Babel.

With even more anime adaptations next year, Japanese cinema seems to be riding the wave of success it has been riding this decade. The future looks bright. And so, my favorite Japanese films of the past ten (+1) years:

Kisaragi - it's just five guys in a room. Granted films like this have been done before (like for example, Chinese Dinner), but none have layered their plot revelations as well as this one. One watch made me an instant fan.
All About Lily Chou-chou - Being a fan of Shunji Iwai, I had to pick one of his films from the past decade, and it was this one that caught my eye the most. A layered, complex depiction of alienation among Japanese youth, it was also one of the first to be captured on high grade digital film. It also launched the careers of some of Japan's top young actors and actresses, like Yu Aoi and Hayato Ichihara, whose performances made the film.

Tony Takitani - putting a Haruki Murakami anything into film is hard to do. But this film by the late Jun Ichikawa captures the essence of the original short story and doesn't resort to cheap theatrics.
The Happiness of the Katakuris - It's part horror, comedy, family drama. And it's a freaking musical? Proof that in between the gorefests (Ichi the Killer), the remarkably mainstream fare (Crows Zero) and the downright 'whoa' films (Visitor Q) Takashi Miike is still responsible for delightfully insane films like this.

Zatoichi - There have been at least three adaptations or approaches to the Zatoichi story in the past decade, including a female version by the Ping Pong director and that 'Final' movie that had a member of SMAP in it. But leave it to Takeshi Kitano to make the definitive remake of the film series with a pomp and swagger that the original films had in spades.

Honorable mentions: 20th Century Boys Trilogy (ambitious!) Yoji Yamada's Samurai Trilogy
Next up: South Korea and the Korean Wave Cinema of the past decade

A Presently Confusing Decade: Favorites from the Past Ten Years of Cinema

2010-12-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

2010 is ending, and after 5 years of doing this blog, I guess it would be fun to make a list of all the films from the last ten or so years (2000-2009) that I really, really liked. As a bonus I'm including 2010 too, because what the hell, right?

The films themselves aren't necessarily the most critically acclaimed, nor will they probably be the ones people remember. But the reason I'm making this is because I just freaking like em. Be it the story, the characters, the actors, or just some minor trivial thing that sold the movie to me, it doesn't really matter.

Since they are so many, a top ___ would not suffice. So I'm rearranging this into categories:

Japan
South Korea
Rest of Asia (China, Southeast Asia, and so on)
Anime
Hollywood
The rest of the world (that is, not Asia or Hollywood)
Documentaries
The Worst of the Decade

Click the links to go to the respective posts. Enjoy!!

My Sassy Cyborg

2010-12-05T07:19:00.000-08:00

A lot of you probably remember the 2001 romantic movie My Sassy Girl (and hopefully not the recent disaster of a Hollywood remake.) Although the film tended to meander in places, it was funny, fresh, and very romantic in its own way.

The film had this magic that made it one of the bigger box office draws in Asia, and one of the triggers of the Korean Wave that spread out in the 2000s. To say it was because of the formidable chemistry between the two leads, the story itself, the comedy, or the melodramatic latter half that would become a staple of later Korean romantic comedies, one could not truly say. But director Kwak jae-yong would then try to recapture lightning in a bottle using all the elements I described, with varying results.

One of his latter efforts, My Girlfriend is a Cyborg (Cyborg She being the alternate title) heavily borrows from a plot within a plot in My Sassy Girl - there is some similarity between the plot of this film and one of the scripts the Girl writes.

But (luckily?) unlike the mishmash of the script that was in My Sassy Girl, this film manages to tighten up the story and focus on the love story without deviating too much from anything else. After 8 years of trying, Kwak Jae-yong is perfecting his storytelling technique. Does it measure up to the original film? And, does it stand up as its own film?

Jiro (Keisuke Koide) is a single college student who is celebrating his birthday. As it happens, he comes across a very eccentric but lively girl (Haruka Ayase) where Jiro has the time of his life. Unfortunately, she disappears as the night ends. Jiro then resigns himself to the normal life until a year later when someone who looks exactly like that one girl (Also Haruka Ayase) arrives. but this time, she's a cyborg from the future. Apparently she's been sent by Jiro's future self to prevent certain things from happening to him. At the same time, Jiro has to teach her what it means to be human.

The success of a movie like this depends largely on the chemistry between the two actors. Keisuke Koide, who has a lot of TV and movie experience, is a perfect choice for a male lead in a MSG-esque film; like most of the other male protagonists in Kwak's films, Jiro is a lonely twentysomething, an everyman we can all easily sympathize with, continuously weirded out but endlessly patient towards the girl. Haruka Ayase, who has found herself among Japan's rising stars in acting, does an effective performance as the nameless Girl, having to go through a spectrum of emotions (and non-emotions) as she transforms from emotionless cyborg to cyborg with a heart. Her impulsiveness in the first few minutes almost reminds me of Jun Ji-hyun when she starred in My Sassy Girl, with its own flavor. Indeed, 2008 was Ayase's year, having starring roles in four films in such a short period.

Despite being a Japanese film starring Japanese actors, Kwak's message shines through the film, proving that his story transcends cultural barriers. While it does borrow a lot of elements from his previous films, his style gets more polished as time goes on. It also lays off some elements that might be considered cliche after years of repetition: the melodrama doesn't really weigh as heavily as the other films (which feels weird considering the scope of the second to last act of the film.) With it goes some of the sentimentality that made the original film so fun to watch, but at the same time your dose of warm and fuzzy will probably come with the last act that brings a final twist to the story that comes mostly unexpected and brings the film to a circular sense of closure.

And I guess avoiding cliches is one of the points of this article: after this movie, will Kwak try the same formula again? And how long will it be before even the freshest-looking rehash of his landmark film starts to become stale?

In any case, this film is a very enjoyable film in itself, and should be enjoyed as is. It's not perfect, but it's a very polished version of a story that Kwak Jae-yong has been trying to tell us for the past decade. Go out and give it a try.

MARVELLLAAAAHHHHHHH

2010-11-27T14:48:00.000-08:00

Supaidaman. I have to talk about this guy.

Back in '78, Marvel Comics made a deal with Toei. They basically said "you can use our characters in any way you want for four years." Lord only knows what the stipulations were on Toei's end. Maybe Godzilla comics?

But anyway, the deal was made, and one of the characters that Toei would use would be Spiderman. Originally the producers wanted the show to be faithful to the comic, but then Bandai showed up and started making demands. Demands that, to the face of any fan of the original comic, would be terribly horrifying (or mildly insane.)

With a heavy heart, the producers and writers reneged. Supaidaman was born.

And the world was better for it.

~~Peter Parker~~ Yamashiro Takuya is a motorcycle enthusiast who has a scientist for a father. For some unexplicable reason, his father detects something approaching at high speed. It is actually a giant transforming leopard shaped spaceship called Marveller (get it?) that changes into a robot called Leopardon. ...yeah. Leopards, spiders... nothing's clicking in my brain here.

Anyway, his father gets mixed up in weird shit with the Iron Cross Army, led by Professor Monster and his sidekick Amazoness. For some reason, Amazoness looks like a 35 year old Yuko Oshima, so I tended to refer to her as Yuko Oshima whenever I saw her in the series.

Spiderman then battles hordes of minions (after posing stylistically several times,) that in the history of sentai have to be the most idiotic henchmen EVER. Spiderman dispatches of them by throwing them to one side or climbing in inaccessible areas a few feet above their head. Apparently the Iron Cross training manual didn't include punching upwards or throwing weapons.

"He's climbed the wall! Now we'll NEVER catch him!!"

He then fights the monster of the week, called Monster Bems, patterned after some kind of animal. He does this usually in two phases: one during normal size, and another where the Monster Bem turns into a giant version of itself. Supaidaman then calls upon Marveller using his bracelet, but treats his bracelet as if it were a hearing impaired 70 year old woman, because instead of a perfectly acceptable "Marveller!" we get

"MAHHHHVELAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!111"

Which honestly sounded like he was being stabbed by a serial killer and was screaming his lungs off.

Now this is the awesome part: for all the cheapness and drama, the giant battles in Supaidaman are (dare I say) the most realistic. Why? Because once Leopardon transforms, it immediately uses its finishing attack. Sometimes it doesn't even have to transform and pummels the poor monster to death. THIS is the answer to all the rational beings that have asked, "why doesn't the hero just use the finishing attack at the beginning of the fight instead of stalling for five minutes, THEN doing it?"

Why? Because sometime around episode 8, someone STOLE the Leopardon costume. What motivations a man might have to steal a foam costume that has no other practical use is baffling. Compounded with the fact that the special effects budget of the show ran out around this time as well, and you have a problem. Thus, they had to use stock footage and edit in reaction shots of the monster exploding. That is why Leopardon's finishing attack with its huge ass sword does not involve him doing any stabbing or slashing. The fucker literally hurls his sword at the enemy, exploding in the monster's face and ending the fight. However two wrongs made a right: big monster battles were short and practical, and the wirework that Supaidaman used was better off in the later part of the series anyway.

pictured: sword throwing action

In a series where the main character tends to climb whatever he can lay his hands on, you have to make a convincing special "climbing on walls" effect for our hero. In all fairness, for something that was made in the late seventies the effects are pretty decent. Sometimes though you can see where the SFX people spliced the film to hide the wires that were holding Spidey (Supaidi? hehe) in place. Astute observers will note one or two episodes where you can see the wire/rope holding our webslinger aloft thanks to reflections in building windows.

Speaking of "webslinger," Spidey's webs don't come organically from Spiderman himself. He fires it from his all-purpose bracelet. His "webs" are more like twine rope nets, and his Tarzan like swinging web is obviously a white rope. In fact the Spiderman costume shoots out of this bracelet and covers Takuya instantly, leaving him to zip the head part himself. The costume itself is hilarious if only for one simple fact: the tight spandex means you can see Spidey's crotch bulge. It's not a cup, it's not underwear. It disturbs me to no end. I'm scarred for life.

For an evil organization, the Iron Cross Army is pretty up there on the evil scale. Unlike totally harmless organizations (like those dudes from Shaider, whose existence seems to revolve around trolling little kids) the Iron Cross Army does have some pretty decent ideas of world domination (going along regular sentai standards, of course.) In fact, if there was an adult in an episode of Supaidaman, and he was not a main character, there's a good chance that by the end of the episode he or she will be dead, and Supaidaman would end the episode swearing revenge against the Iron Cross Army. The adult casualty rate is quite astounding, even compared to the sentai of the 80's, which is pretty "dark" to begin with.

That doesn't mean the Iron Cross Army comes up with brilliant ideas all the time; at times, the organization comes up with really stupid ideas, in others, the ideas are quite frankly quite ridiculous. One episode involved an illegal gambling ring where the gambling games are things you would see five year olds play, like racing bunnies and chicks.

HOT GAMING ACTION RIGHT HERE

A series of episodes featured the Kids Detective Group - a group of kids that stick their nosy noses in places they shouldn't stick em into. They basically do little more than serve as bait or cannon fodder, occasionally giving our spidery hero a clue or two in his investigation. Thankfully (or not?) none of the kids are in any real danger of death, as kids get special immunity from the grim reaper in Supaidaman.

The bad guys are pretty fruity as bad guys come. As previously stated, most of the bad guys are animals or plants given monstrous appearances. But other bad guys include masked shapeshifting magicians, gaijin amazonesses and even the devil himself.

The weirdness also didn't come only from the bad guys: some guest stars of Supaidaman are completely fucking ridiculous. One boy annoys the fuck out of everyone for collecting cockroaches. Another character is a down and out wrestler. Another is a shrine girl whose powers include kicking Spiderman's ass. Another, a gun-toting cowboy-like detective scares a bunch of people by throwing a stick of dynamite inside a room full of people.

You think I'm fucking kidding?

And one of the crowning moments of the series happens in that episode. Our cowboy muses on the circumstances of his son, who has lost his memory thanks to the death of his mother. While that happens, Freddie Aguilar's Anak plays in the background. I'm not fucking kidding.

Supaidaman left a lasting legacy on the world of Tokusatsu. Along with Battle Fever J, it was the grandfather of the Super Sentai genre. Most of the conventions it introduced into the genre (2 - tier fighting, transforming robots) endure to this day in the latest Super Sentai effort, Goseiger (which finishes early next year.) Despite the camp and the cheap special effects, it's one of those shows that you just have to watch.

GET READY FOR THE NEXT FAIL

2010-08-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

Tekken.

You know where this is going.

I'm a fan of the game series and an amateur player at the same time. I also like movies. Normally when you put together two things that you like, the result is often good. Take Peanut Butter and Jelly, burgers and fries, chocolate and ice cream.

But then again, I like chocolate and ketchup, but fuck if I would eat the two together (hmm... gives me ideas.) Time and again I've seen video game movie adaptations and they're mostly in a bad genre of their own. When you have a fighting game, you usually go three routes.

1) HAM IT LIKE HELL, AND MAKE IT UP AS YOU GO

Street Fighter and Van Damme. What resulted was a bad movie, but a hugely hilarious cult classic. I don't know about you, but Raul Julia stole this show. He managed to raise the level of this movie to epic status by delivering his lines with the panache and balls only a true man like Raul Julia could.

".... it was Tuesday." DAAAMMMNNNNNN

The Chinese elevate this hamminess to ridiculous heights by releasing their own Street Fighter adaptation, which somehow manages to include killing Bison by nuclear bomb to the stomach, convenience stores blowing up, Hong Kong Schoolgirl panties, even Goku at the end. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

2)TRY TO STICK TO THE ORIGINAL AS MUCH AS YOU CAN, AND JUST TRY TO MAKE IT GOOD

Mortal Kombat. It's kind of a mix of an Asian action film, fantasy film and martial arts film. It was actually halfway decent, which in fighting video game terms makes it more or less the Citizen Kane of the genre. Plus that techno theme is catchy as hell.

3) TRY TO BE AT LEAST SOMEWHAT BADASS

This is supposed to be a given, right? I mean, we are making a movie based on a game where people BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER. Dead or Alive tried to do this, and compensated by providing the ample babeage. But alas it doesn't work. At least not that much...

So here we have Tekken. Remember that scene in Tekken 6 where Jin and Kazuya try to punch each other and missed, and STILL it broke the shit out of all the windows in the building by creating a huge ass shockwave? This is a game with boxing kangaroos, midget dinosaurs, fighting trees, giant freaking ogre demons and what have you. This movie should be so extremely badass. Make it about a huge tournament by the Mishima Zaibatsu givng away a billion dollars. A number of diverse people, for their own reasons, decides to join the tournament. They fight a couple of badass action sequences, shit goes down, the end. 90 enjoyable minutes of turn-your-brain-off shenanigans.

But in every aspect this movie just fails. You could do either of the three options above to at least try to have some semblance of a good movie. But what occurs puts fear into the most hardy of moviegoers: a movie that isn't good, and isn't bad enough to be laughably bad. It's a movie that wallows in mediocrity.

Tekken takes a fourth route in adapting shit to the big screen:

4) GRIM IT UP

The world of the video game Tekken is one much like ours, albeit in a slightly more advanced level of technology. Everyone is relatively happy. Even the most hardass of characters have their comedic moments.

But things begin to form a more dystopic picture in Tekken the movie: the world is controlled by a number of megacorporations. The Tekken corporation (what the fuck!?) controls most of America. People look like ragged shit straight out of Mad Max or something. Jin Kazama goes stealing things from soldiers that for some reason only speak Japanese.

Now wait just a fucking minute. Isn't this America? In the future, are the Japanese outsourcing their labor like we are now? Why's everyone speaking in Japanese? Why not just get some hicks for lower pay? And what's up with the name of the corporation? Why not call it the Mishima Corporation? Why change the name?

So Jin does his Robin Hood act and gets surrounded by these three dudes that say they want him to join in the Iron Fist Tournament. Now we aren't really given a reason WHY the megacorporations hold this tournament once a year. Is it for kicks? Is it to decide leadership? Who the fuck really knows. At least in the games its for some esoteric reason.

"hey Jin, wanna join the Iron Fist Tournament?"
"Why?"
"For the lulz"

Jin declines their offer and goes home to someone practicing Tai Chi or something. His master? She looks kinda young OH IT'S HIS MOM. I didn't hear the part where he called her mom so it took me a while before I realized that this was Jun Kazama. They share a few tidbits before Jin leaves and makes out with his totally hot girlfriend. However, dudes raid the place, then Jun's house, looking for Jin. The leader of these raiding dudes: why it's Kazuya Mishima.

It will soon become clear that this Kazuya is NOTHING like his video game incarnation. In the video games this was a man who would not hesitate throwing his father and son into a volcano/blasting them into the sun/etc etc. But HERE, for most of the movie, he whines like a little girl how daddy doesn't want to give him the company. And when he DOES do something, it is sooooo half assed that it isn't even worth mentioning. Congratulations filmmakers, you've turned one of the most badass men in the game into a girl scout.

You know who would make an awesome Kazuya? Mark fucking Dacascos. That man is hardcore.

never has introducing food been so epic.

So Jin runs back only to run into his exploding house. Jun dies and Jin cries. He then decides to enter the Iron Fist tournament to kill the people who presumably did this to his mother. He beats Law (who looks like some shmuck that happened to wear Law's pants) and goes on as a wild card in the tournament. Along the way, he meets some dude named Steve Fox who I guess acts kinda like his manager.

Meanwhile Kazuya is totally making out with what I assume are Anna and Nina Williams. This seems ridiculously out of place with the rest of the movie. What ensues would probably not seem out of place in a skinemax movie. But you know, I don't care. I don't want to see Kazuya boning some chicks. I definitely don't want to see Kazuya boning some chicks while being outrageously emo about how his dad's cockblocking him. This is an action movie, I want to see Kazuya punching the brains out of someone. If I wanted to see dudes boning chicks, I'd watch porn instead.

But still...

Kazuya: "Incest? more like WINcest! harharhar"

So we cut to the Mishima building. Inside, Kazuya (in name only) is STILL whining about how he's playing second fiddle to his dad Heihachi. Asian pinups seem to be stuck to the walls, which probably provides ample entertainment for Kazuya when he's alone. *wink wink* On the other hand, considering that there's a woman lying down on the couch, he probably won't be using that pic anytime soon. Or maybe he needs some help getting it up. I have no idea what the production designer was thinking to be honest.

PICTURED: visual stimulation on wall, wasted woman on couch.
NOT PICTURED: us not giving a shit

So we are now introduced to the fighters. Bryan Fury, Raven, Eddy Gordo, Dragunov, Christie Montero, the Williams sisters, Miguel (who doesn't even look like Miguel) Since we get a lingering shot of Christie, we somehow get the idea that this is a major character and possible love interest.

But wait, what about hot girlfriend from the slums? Or is Jin just as flirty as his dad? So anyway, after a bit of banter, the matches begin in the central Tekken Arena. Apparently whoever was playing liked using the random select option. Haha.

Note that 90% of the rest of the fights in this movie will take place in this arena. All they will do is change the scenery a bit by adding plants and shit. I guess they spent all their production design money on the Asian pinups.

Jin wins his match and goes out with Christie, where they do some dirty dancing, completely forgetting about his girlfriend back in the slums. In the next episode of Cheaters, girl suspects her martial artist boyfriend is engaging in "multiple combos" with hot piece of ass.

even Kim Jong Il approves.

Now that Jin is officially cheating on his girlfriend (not that he could probably help it) he goes back to his room where he is promptly attacked by the Williams sisters. His hands end up bloody, which stay that way for the rest of the film.

Despite Jin and company calling shenanigans, the matches go on. Christie fights Nina, Jin fights Yoshimitsu. Both end up being quite disappointing. Christie doesn't fight capoeira like in the games, she's more of a mixed fighter here. Yoshi doesn't teleport or do weird shit. He just ends up being a guy in a weird costume. At around this time Kazuya FINALLY decides to do something and take Heihachi away, but it ends up being lame and anticlimactic.

Jin and co. Are captured, escape, then Heihachi tells Jin a bit about what really happened back then. Of course after that Kazuya comes and has Heihachi killed by his Japanese speaking soldiers, which ends up being totally lame for Kazuya, while being really badass for Heihachi.

Soon, disregarding all of the other matches (why didn't Anna fight? what the hell happened to the semis?) Jin fights Bryan Fury for the final title. It's okay, but hell, by this point you just want it to end. Jin wins, but then Kazuya comes to fight. As expected, Jin beats him like the sissy he is.

Jin walks off to the sunset, conveniently treats his tryst with Christie as a fling, and becomes... something. At least the Japanese dudes are saluting him now for some reason, which is totally weird since no one knows he's Kazuya's son except for the ones WHO JUST DIED, and the prize of the Iron Fist tournament was not properly explained in the first place.

THE END.

In the end, I guess it would be safe to say watch this movie when you're stoned, drunk or both. At least then you really won't care either way.

A Tale of Three Cities 2: Paris, je t'aime

2010-08-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

Our next film in the "omnibus films about a city" series is this one, part of the "Cities of Love" series. The entire movie comprises 18 short vignettes about life and love in Paris, based on 18 of the city's 20 arrondissements (districts.) As each of the segments are barely more than 5 minutes long, I'll just chime in my random thoughts instead of giving a full review.

Montmartre
Dir: Bruno Podalydes
Apt enough as the first film of the collection. The parallel parking thing seems to reflect the main character's own being stuck as a single man. He does find love in a weird way, however.

Quais de Seine
Dir: Gurinder Chadha (Bend it Like Beckham)
A young man who is hanging out with his two friends, who taunt women who pass by the street, befriends a young Muslim woman. A cute, short film. It also touches on Muslim women's views on hijab (that cloth that you see that covers women's heads) and so on and so forth.

Le Marais
Dir: Gus Van Sant (Elephant)
During a visit to a print shop, a man approaches one of the male employees, saying that (for some reason) he is his soulmate. But he doesn't know that the employee doesn't understand a word he's saying. The ending is interesting. Marianne Faithfull has a short cameo in the film.

Tuileries
Dir: Coen Brothers (No Country for Old Men, Fargo)
A Tourist (Steve Buscemi) gets involved in a fight with a couple after he eyeballs the girl in the Paris Metro station. This one was pretty funny; I'm sure one time or another we've all been in a situation like this before.

Loin du 16e
Dir: Daniela Thomas, Walter Salles
I'll let you figure out the plot for yourself. A reference on how we are all equal/unequal? A reference to longing and substitution of one person for another? Really nice, despite the time limit. Viewers may recognize the main actress, Catalina Sandino Moreno, from the award winning Maria Full of Grace, and on a lesser note, from Twilight: Eclipse.

AWWWWWWW YOU DIDN'T JUST MAKE A REFERENCE TO THAT CESSPOOL OF A FILM JOHN T. NO YOU DIDN'TTTTTT

Porte de Choisy
Dir: Christopher Doyle
A salesman of beauty products tries to sell his wares in Paris' Chinatown (there's a Chinatown in Paris? I'm surprised) to this lady who... well just watch the film. It starts off innocently enough, but it reaches newer heights of weirdness by the end. I'm almost tempted to use the word 'screwball' to describe it. You may know Christopher Doyle more as a cinematographer than as a director, with his award winning work with Wong Kar-Wai on classics like In the Mood for Love.

Bastille
Dir: Isabel Coixet
A man plans to separate from his wife, but some unexpected news changes everything. Some of the scenes are comedic, but there is a tragicomic tint to the whole thing. Simple, yet very nice.

Place des Victoires
Dir: Nobuhiro Suwa
A woman (Juliette Binoche) is trying to cope with the loss of her son. I like this film for some reason. Willem Dafoe is also in this film, but I'm not gonna tell who he is. You probably won't believe me anyways if I told you (if you haven't seen the movie before, of course)

Tour Eiffel
Dir: Sylvain Chomet
A young boy relates the story of how his father, a mime, fell in love. As with most animation directors, the visual style for this one is really interesting. Plus it's quite lighthearted. I can see this being lengthened into something feature-film-ish.

Parc Monceau
Dir: Alfonso Cuaron (Y tu Mama Tambien, among others)
An old man (Nick Nolte) and a young woman (Ludivine Sagnier) talk about a meeting with a third person, Gaspard, while walking through the streets of Paris. The entire film was done in one take. Quirky, and a nice twist at the end. The 'shoutouts' to the fellow directors of the omnibus is also a nice touch.

Quartier des Enfants Rouges
Dir: Oliver Assayas (dude, it's Oliver Assayas. c'mon brah)
An American actress (Maggie Gyllenhaal) gets some hashish from this other guy. It's clear at the end of the film that they like each other, but neither one of them knows that. I was impressed by Maggie Gyllenhaal's French. She's good. Also, that line at the end... so many different meanings to it. I like it.

Place des fetes
Dir: Oliver Schmitz
A Nigerian man lies dying at the Place des fetes. EMTs arrive to save him, and he says that he knows one of the EMTs from somewhere. But how? This was a nice film, and you can't help but feel for the guy. Dude got the short stick I guess.

Pigalle
Dir: Richard LaGravenese
An old couple try to 'act out' an argument to spice up their old relationship, even throwing a prostitute in the fictitious play. But soon the fake argument turns into a real one. This one stars British actor Bob Hoskins and French actress Fanny Ardant. Now Bob Hoskins has a lot of distinguished acting awards, but in the same vein that you may have recognized Catalina Sandino Moreno from Eclipse, you may have seen this guy in Super Mario Bros. The Movie. Yeah.

Quartier de la Madeleine
Dir: Vincenzo Natali (Cube, Cypher)
A backpacker (Elijah Wood) meets a vampire (Olga Kurylenko.) I like Natali's sci-fi, and he tries a little fantasy here. His throwback to those old B-horror movies is nice with the exaggerated blood and so on. The ending is ridiculous, but for a vampire movie, it kinda makes goofy sense.

Pere Lachaise
Dir: Wes Craven (uhhh. hello? Scream?)
In the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, a young couple engaged to get married get into a fight, until the matter is settled by the ghost of Oscar Wilde. No, it's not as horror as it seems. It's actually kinda cute and funny. No mad killers here either.

Faubourg Saint-Denis
Dir: Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run)
Tomas, a blind man, suddenly gets a call from his girlfriend, a struggling actress (Natalie Portman.) Is she breaking up with him? As he mulls over that phone call, he looks back at his relationship along with its ups and downs. This one's a nice film. The fast time lapse thing kinda makes it feel like the world is spinning around this couple.

Quartier Latin
Dir: Gerard Depardieu and Frederic Aubertin
An elderly couple (Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara) sit down and have one last dinner/drink together... before they divorce. This one resonated with me for some reason. Rowlands wrote this film, and Depardieu even appears as a supporting actor.

14e arrondisement
Dir: Alexander Payne (Sideways)
An American letter carrier narrates in awkward French her experience in Paris and the joys and realizations that it brought her. It's a good ending to a great omnibus film (although there is the short segment after this one that wraps everything up and connects some of the stories.)

All in all, this one kept more with its theme of love and Paris as a city. You can actually feel the city itself in the film. So give this one a watch.

A Tale of Three Cities 1: Tokyo!

2010-07-28T16:59:00.000-07:00

For this little segment, we're going to be talking about omnibus films/anthologies revolving around cities. First up on the list: Tokyo.

Tokyo! is a collection of three films helmed by non-Japanese directors. The Tokyo connection is not as solid as you think, some of the pictures deal with universal themes of isolation, identity and longing.

Interior Design is directed by Michel Gondry, of such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Be Kind Rewind. Akira (Ryo Kase) is an aspiring filmmaker who moves to Tokyo along with his girlfriend Hiroko (Ayako Fujitani.) They crash in their mutual friend Akemi's (Ayumi Ito) apartment while hunting for an apartment of their own. As the days plod on, Hiroko finds herself disconnected from her life. She asks herself, 'what is my purpose in life?' Soon she realizes the answer to this question as the movie takes a sudden, surreal turn.

Interior Design is based on the comic "Cecil and Jordan in New York" by Gabrielle Bell. Of course the setting is changed to Tokyo, but the themes in this movie are still as relevant (probably even more so) in the Japanese setting.

Gondry uses his manipulation of visuals to depict the surreal aspects of the film; I won't spoil it for you, but the part at the end with the camera tricks and CG is quite fun to see. Add that to the usual visual flair: Akemi's apartment is cramped, especially with 3-4 people living in it at one time. The apartments Hiroko and Akira look at also are weird and unique in their own way.

The acting is solid. Kase is (as usual) good, and Fujitani shows her chops in more ways than one. The scenes themselves are funny, and the movie Akira screens may be a bit of a jab at the artsy fartsy-ness of some people. (Did that last sentence even make sense?)

What do you really want in life? The answer to that question, this movie says, may be different than the answer to 'what are you doing right now?' And, it seems, that is all the difference one needs.

Merde is directed by Leos Carax, a French filmmaker known for Lovers on the Bridge and Pola X. The titular character of the film (Denis Lavant) is a weird unkempt man who emerges from the sewers and wreaks havoc in the streets of Tokyo. At first he is merely an annoyance, but soon he begins to wreak death and destruction when he discovers a cache of old WWII grenades. He is captured and brought to trial.

The film itself is very abstract and open to interpretation, with messages on terrorism, media scrutiny (and parallels to media's intense voyeurism influencing the public) war, peace and the overall human condition. But for now lets settle on one of the most obvious parallels the film makes: Godzilla.

The Godzilla theme trumpets along the beginning of the film. Merde (French for 'shit') is more a force of nature than an actual person; both Godzilla and Merde are born by some fault of the people they terrorize. The acts he does are heinous, and it is hard to empathize with him in any way. His motivations are also driven by an almost one dimensional hate - whether that hate is justified or not does not justify his actions, but still this motivation exists.

Yet Godzilla is something of a cultural icon now, and, comparably, in the movie - some people actually sympathize with this wild man. So you have to wonder, what does Merde stand for now? What does he represent? Or, arguably, he may just simply be?

Anyway, nice film, an interesting cameo from Julie Dreyfus (Kill Bill) at the end too. At times, stuff does get a bit heavy handed, sometimes browbeating messages and symbolism to the viewer, and some scenes come off as a bit tedious. As the film is open to any interpretation, its a bit of a challenge to try to understand. But the overall product is okay, at the very least.

Shaking Tokyo is directed by Korean Bong Joon-ho, known for his films Mother, Memories of Murder and probably most popularly, The Host. The movie focuses on a hikkikomori, or shut-in played by Teruyuki Kagawa (Kisaragi, among others) who has completely shut himself out of the world and all social contact. His life is a regimen of regularity that he considers his perfect world. One day, he meets a pizza girl (Yu Aoi) and his perfect world begins to crumble.

I've mentioned the phenomenon of hikkikomori in earlier posts: people who, due to a collection of societal and psychological factors, decide to shut themselves off from the world, and stay that way because of how society is put together. In this case, Japanese society, with its aggressive school culture of getting to top universities, entrance exams, etc etc, plus the intrusion of technology, plus the slumping job market in the face of recession, plus the ever increasing cost of living all contribute to the phenomenon, so much so that government has acknowledged it to be a national problem. This sense of despair or failure that drives them to isolate themselves is something I am familiar with myself (although as you can see, I'm not a shut in lol)

Teruyuki Kagawa is superb as the main character. This dude is everywhere these days - TV, movies, what have you. Yu Aoi once again proves why she is one of the top actresses of her generation in Japan (and my personal favorite haha) despite having little screen time in the movie.

The movie has a cute sci-fi flavor to it that complements the story nicely. Some of the shots are amazing, and I mean that in a logistical manner too - how the heck did Bong Joon-ho get these shots? The repetition of elements in some shots also complements the notion of this empty yet "perfect" world.

This film is my favorite of the omnibus. It's simple but works well, and it captures the essence of the themes it explores while not being too heavy handed about it.

Overall Tokyo! is a mixed bag, but one worth seeing.

Five Guys and a Room

2010-07-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

Five Guys, One Room. That's almost the whole premise of Kisaragi, a 2007 movie by Yuichi Sato. Under any other circumstance this kind of movie is a total bust. It almost sounds like theater on film. If you know me as a moviegoer, I hate theater on film. But excellent plotting and storytelling makes this a standout movie.

Iemoto, OdaYuuji, Snake, Yasuo and StrawberryGirl are five hardcore fans of the D-list idol Miki Kisaragi. They've come for a get-together in a small rented apartment for a reason: to remember and celebrate their favorite idol. You see, Miki Kisaragi died of apparent suicide a year ago under mysterious circumstances. Now one of the fans suspects that she was actually murdered, and thinks that one of the other four is the real killer...

I won't spoil anything else about the film, but what I can tell is you is that no one is what they seem at first to be. The joy of watching the film comes from each shocking revelation that takes place about either one of the five fans or Kisaragi herself. This layered plotting works superbly well and makes you want to learn want to learn every new thing that comes up. The most clever thing the filmmakers did is make the secret knowable seconds before it is actually revealed. You get chills down your spine every time you realize who is who.

The Japanese Idol phenomenon has been going on for more or less forty years, and it is a phenomenon that has its own Japanese flavor. Many aspiring young ladies (and young men too) enter the entertainment industry as Idols to hopefully break in and transition into acting, singing, modeling or some other field. While some are successful, others die out and fizzle into obscurity. Such is the fickle world of showbusiness.

In the movie you can see the fans' diehard obsession with the object of their dreams collecting their CDs, taking pictures, or keeping ultra-rare Shashinshuu (photobooks) not to mention other things that would be called stalker-ish behavior in some other country. As creepy as it sounds... well it probably is to you and me, the movie takes a heartwarming turn with it later in the movie. And for some reason, it works.

The actors are what make the movie succeed other than the excellent plot. Shun Oguri (Crows Zero,) Yusuke Santamaria (Doppleganger,) Keisuke Koide (Surely Someday,) Tsukaji Muga (lots of TV stuff) and Teruyuki Kagawa (whew. name your pick) round out the all-star cast. All of them succeed in their roles, transforming with every revelation.

All in all, just watch it. It does with five guys and a room stuff that billion dollar SFX extravaganzas can barely pull off.

One Man's Ongoing Cinematic Oddysey: Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl

2010-07-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

The following took place as the author tried to write a review of Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl. But little did the author know, that the story in making such a review is filled with many horrors...

This is that story.

Place: The writing studio of Present Confusion
Time: 1am

(studio? is this even a studio?)

Well, the title basically says it all. I mean, what else are you going to expect when I tell you that the movie is freaking called Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl? It's not as if Violent Cop was about human rights activists in Tibet. I mean, come on. If you saw a movie like this and there were no vampires or Frankenstein's monsters, I'd ask for my fucking money back.

*sigh* deletes

Time: 2:30am

So basically Monami Arukado (Arukado = Alucard. Get it? Wahahahahaha I'm so clever. Harharrrrr!)

erm...

*sigh* deletes

Time: 3:00am

Based on a manga by Shungiku Uchida, Monami (gravure idol Yukie Kawamura) is a vampire. She likes this guy Mizushima (Takumi Saito, Boys Love.) But he already belongs to Keiko (Eri Otoguro, Oneechambara.) So they... wait a minute. I'm actually trying to discuss the plot... of a movie... called Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl? What the fuck?

*sigh* deletes

Time: 3:10am

Basically the movie is a splattergore fest in the vein of recent movies such as Tokyo Gore Police, Machine Girl and so on. All of them unsurprisingly had gravure idols somewhere in there. It must be the "talent."

Time: 3:15am

Yukie Kawamura. Yes, I can see that "talent" overflowing know what I mean? hee hee. Seriously though she was okay and is overall an OK actress, with roles in Ultraman and a few other horror movies. The movie was pretty much THIS but with blood all over her.

Eh, might as well show Eri Otoguro too.
YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Time: 3:20

...so the movie has these little segments parodying people who cut their wrists. There's even a contest in there. They even put in actress/makeup artist turned fake U-15 turned chaku-ero turned JAV actress Maki Mizui to portray the wrist cutting champion. Thing is, if you've seen her JAV or chaku-ero, she really has a ton of cutting scars on her left arm. I'm dead fucking serious.

Uhh... therapist?

*sigh* deletes

Time 3:30

...and moving on, in one of the segments Ganguro subculture is portrayed in an even MORE over the top manner that it just breaks my brain in half. Run like Joyner sistahhhh. I think blackface has reached a whole new level.

Time: 3:32

CHANGE! CHANGE! CHANGE! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!

...

*sigh* deletes

Time: 3:40

Oh, man. Fuck. I was about to tell you about... pfff what the hell man? How do reviewers keep a straight face when talking about the cinematography, themes and crap of a magnificent film like Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl?

"Oh, those shots when this dude cuts up that other dude was so sick, reminiscent of stuff blah blah blah. I have never seen such a well done 'skeleton impaled on the Tokyo Tower' scene before. Mainly because there has never been one before in the HISTORY OF CINEMA."

*sigh* deletes

Time: 4:00

So I was walking down the street minding my own business and this guy approaches me, and he says, "dude, have you seen that new movie Inception? It's like super awesome" and I was like "pfffffhhhh who cares, fucking Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl is on"

*sigh* deletes

Time: 4:10

Diggity damn fuck face sparkly vampire shit. When I see vampires, I want my vampires to suck blood and chew my eyeballs, not sparkle and whine like sissies. If there's only one vampire movie about a dysfunctional love triangle that you have to see in this decade, let it be fucking Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl.

How many Frankenstein's monsters has the tobacco smoking power of a Chinese man, and can helicopter-fly with a v-shaped rotor? How do those aerodynamics work anyway?

Time: 5:00

This is your classic B-grade Japanese 'extreme gore' movie. Ridiculously stupid, but that's what makes it fun.

Time: 5:01

CHANGE! CHANGE! CHANGE! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!

Vampire Obama wants YOU!

*sigh* deletes

THE END

The Power of Dreams

2010-07-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a dream so powerful it affected you in reality? Have you ever experienced something in a dream so vivid, that you could swear it was actually real?

Christopher Nolan's latest offering, Inception, is a treatise on dreams and reality. Nolan himself has always been curious with the nature of reality. He explored this in the context of memories in his film Memento. Here he explores this concept in the context of dreams and dream-space.

Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio) is an extractor, a man who intrudes into the dreams of others to steal personal information. He mainly uses this for corporate espionage. During one such attempt, corporate executive Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers him a deal: perform the act of inception: planting an idea into someone else's mind instead of stealing it. This is way harder than it sounds, but Saito offers Cobb the chance to return home to his family in exchange for success. He assembles a team to undertake this near impossible mission, but it soon becomes clear that in the process of undertaking this mission, he must confront a secret from his past.

The visual style of the film joins other contemporary films in their depiction of the manipulation of dream-space, such as Michel Gondry's the Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and the Japanese animated film Paprika. But in this film, with the exception of Paprika, the ways people change the dream reality looks quite impressive thanks to breathtaking visual effects. Streets blow up, trains rampage through city streets, gravity-less corridors shake and tumble.

Hans Zimmer does the soundtrack and it is reminiscent of his work with Nolan's The Dark Knight, with deep and epic tones that accentuate the movie well. I watched the movie in a 3D cinema with booming sounds that thundered with every shake and explosion, which was nice (the last time I had an experience like this was while watching The Matrix in a foreign theater.)

The movie is rounded out by an all-star cast that includes Ellen Page (Juno, Red Candy) Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Sunshine) Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) and Marion Cotillard (La vie En Rose - the song in Inception that plays that signals the 'kick' is sung by Edith Piaf, whom Cottilard portrayed in La vie En Rose) They all do their job capably, although except for Di Caprio's character, the other characters are not given as much emotional scenes in the first place. Let me just say for the record again that Ellen Page is one of my favorite actresses of this generation, and her role as Ariadne/the Architect is solid.

The layered structure of the second half of the movie looks complicated on paper, but is quite simple to understand as compared to Memento, whose structure was most challenging. As long as you know which dream belongs to which, you'll do fine. In any case, trying to figure out the structure of the layered dreams was quite fun.

The premise of the entire movie lends itself to interpretation and the ending leaves open many possibilities. As for what I think, see below:

SPOILERS

The film can be structured as that of Cobb's own journey towards his own catharsis (instead of just Fisher's.) Whether all these events were played out by either Mal in a higher state (a true reality) or Cobb himself, making the whole thing actually a dream, or making these events play out as a result of his recent experiences with his team, we may never know. For all we know, Cobb himself was the one being given an Inception - that he should get over the death of his wife, etc, etc.

By killing the dream version of his wife (or having her killed by someone else lol), Cobb has decided to move on. So does the spinning top stop? For Cobb, it doesn't really matter. I believe that's the point of the whole scene. It was designed to involve the viewer in making a point - that reality is subjective.

If you're an optimist, the top will stop. If you're a pessimist, the top will go on. But for Cobb, none of that matters - notice that he went to see his kids without seeing if the top stopped or not. By electing to look at his kids' faces, he is letting go of all the reservations he has for doubting this reality. He has stopped his obsession or preoccupation with whether things are real or not. He has accepted this, (whatever it is) as this reality.

Being an optimist, my interpretation is that he has indeed returned to reality. Ariadne did say that he will be fine, and him dragging Saito out of the next dream level would have made no sense. He mentioned to Saito that to return to the base reality would make them young again, to make them live life without regrets. In the last scene he does just that - without bothering to check, he no longer feels that regret he had for the death of his wife.

Ultimately, like I have previously mentioned, the movie was Cobb's emotional journey into his own personal catharsis - his reconciliation with his past and his regrets. This is in line with my posited premise of the film itself - that through dreams, people can change, either because of others or because of their own selves.

END SPOILERS

It's the best 2 hours and 30 minutes I've spent in a theater in recent days. Never a boring moment and like all good movies, it sparks discussion like crazy, making the audience an intimate part of the film viewing process. Easily one of the best of the year.

Here's an interesting site where the author compares the main characters to Jungian archetypes in dream analysis:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/What-If-Inception-Were-Analyzed-By-Dream-Experts-19638.html

Cinemalaya 2010: Shorts B, Rekruit and final thoughts

2010-07-18T03:23:00.000-07:00

The festival is finally over. What an awesome lineup. 9 films from the new generation, five from the veterans, and ten short films. I missed one New Breed film (Limbunan,) but that's the only one. Here are the last movies I watched in the dwindling hours in the festival. Were they worth it? Absolutely.

SHORT FILMS CATEGORY - SHORTS B

Harang

My favorite short of the entire competition. I was blown away to be perfectly honest. In Evolutionary Biology there is what we call the Price Equation. It can be used in any kind of natural selection process, but if used in relation to altruism, it has some serious implications on the evolution of kindness itself. The implications are that altruism in itself may actually be selfish, and that as much as the genetic tendency to be kind can evolve to be dominant, The reverse can happen: opposite self serving behaviors like inter-racial strife or doing harm - the opposite of kindness, may also become the norm. These realizations led the man who came up with the equation to a life of radical charity, destitution and eventual suicide.

The characters in this short all are given an opportunity to give help, and they are placed in situations in which to seek it. Some do not help at all, expressing true selfish behavior. Others help but only to a certain extent - where he or she would not be affected by his or her choice. Ironically none of the characters help each other out of true altruism at all.

Man is a selfish creature; even in the facade of helping, man is trying to do so for someone else's collective benefit, which would translate into his own. It's a sobering thought. What are the barriers between two strangers? What are the barriers that prevents him from helping or not?

Well, rant over. That just shows how awesome this movie is. 5 roadblocks over 5.

Hay Pinhod Oh Ya Scooter

The presence of a narrator was strange but made absolute sense in the end. The non-actors chosen for their roles were mostly speaking out their lines, which made scenes unnatural - although in the context of what the film eventually would become, it might be intentional. Technically the film is sound. The short makes focus on how people can slowly lose their cultural roots in the face of globalization.

3.5 scooters out of 5.

Lola

Short animated film about a couple of movie making dudes hiring a ghost for their horror film. It's okay. Nothing much of note. 2.5 scary lolas out of 5.

P

Again, another really fun story from Milo Tolentino. I'm not going to tell you anything about the plot so as not to spoil anything. Figure out what P means for yourself; it means a lot of things. Very very entertaining and quite well done. 4.5 N95 Masks over 5.

Wag Kang Titingin

A very simple story with a twist ending. I recommend this one. 4 compasses over 5.

NEW BREED CATEGORY

Rekruit

Jamir and Lando are both part of a group of soldiers that will undergo special training for an as-yet unknown mission. The group is composed mainly of Muslims who join the training to provide for their families via the stipend that was promised if they joined, and an automatic inclusion into the Philippine Armed Forces if they completed the training.

The training is hard and physically draining, but through it all the recruits bond and form a close brotherhood. But soon things do not appear as they seem and the soldiers have to decide between their loyalty and honor to their desire not to do harm.

Rekruit is based on the Jabidah massacre, a horrible event that had its beginnings in the Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand Marcos presidencies. The repercussions of the massacre led to the emergence of radical Moro insurgencies and the later appearance of the MNLF, later MILF. As a member of the same ethnic tribe as those involved in the massacre, this fact resonated personally during my viewing of the movie.

It then seems rather ironic that this movie was a story of brotherhood that crosses religious borders. In the dramatization of the ultimate act of betrayal of people of different faiths, there is an advocacy for a desire for peace and kindness to all.

The film seems to have been captured on two kinds of cameras; one that brings a clear film-worthy picture, and another brings a sharper, TV-quality picture. Since scenes intercut with those taken on either camera, the effect is sometimes jarring. The cinematography itself is excellent. All the actors deliver noteworthy performances; by the end of the film you will feel as if you were with these people during their training, sharing their pains and experiences.

One of the best of the festival. Now give me 9 push ups over ten on the double!

NOTES:

Links on the Jabidah massacre:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabidah_massacre (compare with the events of the film)
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20080318-125522/Lone-survivor-recalls-Jabidah-Massacre

In the massacre, only one person survived the carnage, managing to escape by holding on to a piece of driftwood and swimming all the way to Cavite.

Final thoughts on the Festival

Overall the festival was a success. Attendance was over the top, with many screenings sold out. Unfortunately, other than that one midnight screening, I was unable to watch any non-competition entries. Priorities I guess. Stars came out in droves to support their films and the film industry. With the participation of veteran directors, the festival has gained another level of credibility.

I was glad to see the audience engaging with the people involved in the making of the film. Cinema as an artform is composed of the filmmakers, the film itself, and the people who watch the film. What worth is a film if no one watches it? To the directors and actors involved, continue engaging with the filmgoer.

My favorite Cinemalaya years were 08 and 09. This one maintains the overall high quality, but there wasn't really one film that totally blew me away. That's just a subjective thing however, and I'm sure others must have loved some films like I did the old ones. And that doesn't mean that any of the films were bad in any way, none were.

My thoughts on who will win? The old guard of intellectual cineastes from the era of the 70s and 80s Golden Era of Cinema will probably lap up movies like Sigwa and Ang Paglilitis... The younger film student or casual movie goers will go for an entertaining, 'kwela' film.

My personal favorites were Sampaguita, The Leaving and Rekruit. Two Funerals was the most fun full length movie for me in the whole competition. Mayohan was the prettiest (and cutest.) The shorts this year were quite amazing, a big leap from 09. Harang is my absolute favorite movie over the past 2 or 3 years.

I look forward to knowing the winners of this year's festival. I'm pretty sure my tastes will clash with the people who decide the winners (I chose Engkwentro last year and it won like nothing, at least in the festival. It did win in Venice, so revenge for me there haha.)

What will the future bring? God willing I'll be back in 2011, and hopefully there will be more stories, more experiences, more amazing films.

Cinemalaya 2010: Si Techie, Si Technoboy at Si Juana B, and Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio

2010-07-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

The Festival is winding down, but the movies aren't finished yet. Here we have yet another entry from the New Breed, and probably the most curious from the Director's showcase.

NEW BREED CATEGORY

Si Techie, Si Technoboy at Si Juana B

Techie and Jay are both OFWs about to get married. They return to the Philippines to do just that. Along the way she comes to meet her best friend Juana B. An aspiring filmmaker drifting in and out of jobs, Juana is a bit of a weirdo and a dreamer. Unlike her friend Techie, who constantly uses her laptop to surf the net, chat or visit social networking sites, Juana does her stuff the old fashioned way, using an old cellphone for contact and taking notes instead of using Microsoft Word or something.

In the last 15 or so years, we have seen a huge shift in the way we communicate with each other. With the advent of computers and technology, the distance between people seem shorter, and neither distance nor time matter that much anymore. The life has become so convenient due to these technological advancements that people can live almost completely off the internet. People have staged year long experiments subsisting on almost nothing but online shopping.

But at what price?

This film takes the old narrative conflict of Man vs. Technology and subverts it, making man and technology allies against other men. In addition, the concept of human relationships are mixed into the whole thing. The Machine/Technology as an entity now acts as a surrogate for other people or as a middleman. Want to hook up with friends? Facebook or Twitter. Want to speak with someone? There's chat. Want to bone some hot chick? Cybersex.

Yes, technology helps facilitate relationships, but on the other hand this interference of technology corrodes the way we make relationships with other people. There are so many moments in the movie that punctuate this point. While Techie fails to meet up with Teknoboy, Juana B instantly gets a man in a hilarious way. In another scene, Juana and Techie are literally sitting beside each other - yet Techie uses a cell phone as a surrogate or middle man to talk to her friend. That was probably the most telling for me. In extremes, technology causes us to lose our sight of the world around us, making the convenience of technology feed back, causing increasing social isolation. We see it all the time in the socially disillusioned of Japan, the hikkikomori, where technology in the setting of social pressures and disillusionment makes isolation far easier.

There's one problem, though. The presentation of the concept doesn't work as well as I would have wanted it to. The moments themselves work far better than the dialogue, with some lines feeling like they were forced or shoehorned into the scene. Although a kinky comedy, some scenes struck me as more corny than anything else. The best dialogue if you can call it that is during the end credits. It's an interesting summation of the things we've experienced during the film plus a few more points.

The rest of the film is decent enough to at least make the viewer reflect on that very concept, although with a bit better material and some good execution it would have worked a whole lot better. 7 black dildos over 10.

Ang Paglilitis ni Andres Bonifacio

Andres Bonifacio is one of our national heroes, leader of the Katipunan, and one of the fathers of the Philippine Revolution. I didn't really know much other than that until my college days, when I found that his last days were intertwined with what seems like a turf war between the Magdalo and the Magdiwang factions, culminating in his death.

Seeing the trailers for this movie made me squirm. It looked exactly like a Theater Play on Film. Theater productions have their place, in my humble opinion, and Film has its own place in the cavalcade of the arts. Acting in film is more subtle, the dialogue less blatant or descriptive. I honestly didn't think this would work in any way, and I was prepared to hate it.

I didn't hate it at all. And although I didn't exactly like the total end result, what I did see was quite interesting.

The film is based on accounts, transcriptions and reports on the events of Andres Bonifacio's arrest on account of treason against the newly formed Revolutionary Government. The incident that sparked this is not shown; thus we do not know what really happened. We, as the viewers, are left to judge guilt on innocence based only on the testimonies presented, leaving us in the shoes of judge and jury.

After learning what had happened to Bonifacio, including the Magdalo's betrayal of his faction, I pretty much viewed the film with a bias towards him. But the film itself seems to at least try to take a balanced view on the matter, as it does not portray Aguinaldo explicitly ordering the death of his colleague. Again, the film leaves it to us to decide who really made the final decision.

Again, I must state that this is basically a Theater Play on Film. Thoughts and inner feelings are shown in abstract sequences, replacing the setting with a stage filled with symbolism. It kinda reminds me of the Zarzuelas with their combination of song and stage performance. The usage of camera makes it possible to capture emotions that might not be possible to percieve on stage.

We are provided with a narrator to help us through the film. Designed to be an androgynous, omnipresent force in the film's development, he/she/it serves as our guide, occasionally feeding us some thoughts on the characters and their futures. At times the narrator is neutral. At other times it taunts the other characters, even seemingly antagonizing them.

The film makes allusions to the structure of this story to the mythology of Ibong Adarna. Bonifacio himself, taking the role of Juan, seeks the mythical bird in certain sequences, perhaps a metaphor for whatever he truly wanted for the Philippines (peace? unity? to cleanse his name?) But here there are no happy endings like the myth. Ultimately he fails to achieve his goal (although we know through history that others will achieve it for him) and is lost forever.

The acting is solid for Alfred Vargas and whoever played the narrator. Dona Gregoria was okay, but the rest of the actors were forgettable. That would probably be affected by the fact that they acted this as if they were in a play, exaggerating some scenes. Again, the theater =/= film thing rears its ugly head here. There were some anachronisms in the sets, but nothing too noticeable.

All in all, I was surprised with this film. It shows you how an accomplished director can transform what seems like a hopelessly bad concept into something that actually works stylistically. 7 national heroes over 10.

Cinemalaya 2010: Shorts A, Halaw, The Leaving, Pink Halo-Halo + Midnight Extra

2010-07-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Okay. Hoo boy. This day was a frenzy of movie watching. This is going to be a lot of stuff. Here we go...

SHORT FILMS CATEGORY - SHORTS A

Boca

Unfortunately, we only caught the credits of the film. Regrettable, since this was the one short film I was anticipating.

So, uhh... I guess the credits were, uh... good? 5000 awesome credits/?

Breakfast with Lolo

Short and simple. Based on what looks like a true story. A lolo and his grandson share some bonding time together. That's it. It's the little things in life that seem to strike us most profoundly. Those memories stick in your mind forever, and you are all the better for experiencing it.

TL;DR version: seize the day. It's cute. 3.5 pancakes/5

Dalaw

A woman (Che Ramos) visits her elderly grandmother. You have to kind of read between the lines to understand what's going on. It soon becomes clear her introspection reflects on her grandmother's own experiences. Excellently shot with good attention to shot composition and detail. My only complaint would be the audio. Sometimes you can barely hear any dialogue, so thank goodness for subtitles. 4 pinwheels /5

Despedida

Michael is a man who looks after his terminally ill parents. He then meets a cute girl (Angel Aquino) who totally talks to him out of the blue. This was a fun short, I'm sure the lot of you will get it midway. Great dialogue, straight to the point, pretty clever storywise. Solid. 3.5 tombstones/5

Faculty

Two college professors clash over conflicting beliefs regarding the education of students. For the record, I believe that participating in rallies is a choice and should not be forced upon students. True immersion in true participation takes a change in base attitudes. So I'm taking a middle ground between the two extremes presented in the film. I just don't fully agree with either prof. 3.5 shot glasses/5

NEW BREED CATEGORY

Halaw

A number of years ago, when I spent my vacation in Labuan, a small island in Sabah, Malaysia, I came across a small riverside 'town-on-stilts,' much like the seaside communities of the Badjao in many parts of Mindanao. Not surprisingly, most of the inhabitants of that community was comprised of illegal immigrants from the Philippines, some of them probably distant relatives of mine. My uncle then told me that such things were commonplace here; people engage in trafficking persons inside Malaysia from the Philippines (and sometimes even vice versa,) as the distance between the two countries by sea isn't that far at all. Since then I've heard that the community was torn down by Malaysian authorities.

So this year's offering by Sherwin Dayoc, Halaw, hits me deeply in a personal way, because I have seen this activity before. The setting is Tawi-Tawi (although it can be any of the island provinces in Western Mindanao/ARMM) where Jahid and his daughter (according to the pamphlet anyway, but IIRC from the dialogue she was his sister) Daying are preparing to make the trip to Sabah on boat. The movie gives us hints that the mother has already made the trip, and the two are preparing to join her there.

The person responsible for their trip is Hernand, a kind of fixer responsible for white slavery to and from Malaysia. Although he seems reassuring towards his clients, it's obvious that part of this recruitment has something to do with some illegal sex trade ring, and he's exactly not after the best interests of the people he approaches.

Along with other people who embark on the trip on dreams of their own, in order to escape a life where they see no future, they chug along the precarious seas to the nearest Malaysian island.

Around 70 percent of the dialog is in Tausug. There are subtitles to accompany the spoken dialogue, but it is not a line by line translation. The subs capture the gist of the dialogue but some people may wonder why the subtitles look inconsistent. I can understand the a good chunk of the language so I hardly needed the subs anyway, but I wonder how it went for the other moviegoers that didn't understand the language.

The acting is solid, with accomplished actors and non-actors joining the fray. Nothing looks manufactured or artificial, as the acting is more or less natural and flows well with the story.

The movie looks gorgeous in its own unique way. In contrast with Mayohan which used vibrant colors and saturation of light, Halaw is filmed mostly at night, with a darker palette; some even taking place in near total darkness. Yet still, the shots are well made, overcoming technical limitations with digital video and darkness, much as Mayohan did with scenes during the night. This is thanks to clever lighting and possibly filming close to dawn or dusk when a little sunlight accentuates the seascape.

Halaw is a prime example of film as a voice for social issues at large. Being a documentary filmmaker, Sherwin Dayoc uses this story to tell us about the issue of illegal human trafficking in Mindanao. That is the point of the movie itself; using these characters and their stories to point to a reality that few of us know. And in it, the sea itself takes a curious role as a player in this film, being a vast barrier to an uncertain future, meaning both life and death to many.

Definitely one of the most unique movies I've seen in the festival to date. 7.5 illegal immigrants over 10.

The Leaving

A man begins to leave his old life to start over from scratch. An illicit affair spirals into destruction. A wife struggles with the nuances and difficulties of married life.

The Leaving is hard to categorize. It is part Asian horror movie, part love story, part drama. Set in the backdrop of the Chinese Ghost Festival, or Spirit Day, where spirits of loved ones come out from the lower realms, The Leaving is composed of three different interrelated stories occuring in the same time frame (as one segment finishes, the other loops back to the beginning of this time frame, but from a different perspective) revealing a piece of the whole picture one at a time.

The matryoshka doll-like structure of the film appeals to me a great deal, as aspects of scenes from the first part of the film make more sense in the second part, and even more sense by the end. It's such an engaging experience to unravel another part of the story. The Simpsons had an episode like this, IIRC, and (in a way) so did the 2004 movie Primer (see my review of Primer in my blog entry for the Alfred Sloan Prize winners)

The first segment reminds me a bit of the "expired pineapple" Chungking Express segment, with its themes of loneliness and the inability to move on. Oh, and there's horror. It's not too jarring, and the spirits that Martin sees seem to be natural here. One would expect a garbled mishmash of genres at the end, but for some reason it works. I can't exactly explain why.

The second segment amps up the horror a bit. It explains a few peculiar things during our first 'run through' of the whole story. As the first tells us of the impact the lack of love brings to one's life, this part tells us that love is destructive. And if I didn't make it clear before, there's MORE horror.

The third segment wraps it up, tying both the first and second segments neatly, returning to the Wong Kar-wai-ish themes of transcience, loneliness and longing that punctuated the first. There is a seeming impermanence in the world by the actions of the characters and the apartment complex-as-living-organism. And by the way, there's EVEN MORE horror.

The film's characters are all Tsinoys in one form or another, and the film is a reflection on Filipino-Chinese cultural values. Martin admits that he hasn't gone to temples that much anymore. His parents have migrated to the US. I find it interesting that I didn't realize that some characters were Tsinoys at all; in a way a loss of cultural identity.

On the other hand, some aspects of the culture don't change at all - more a fault of human nature than anything else. Marriages break down and concubines run aplenty, and the wife is still expected to be obedient to the husband. Most telling is the part where one character, after telling her mother of her husband's infidelity, is scolded by that same mother to be a dutiful wife, saying that all this is the wife's fault. Now the wife is beginning to stray from cultural norms (I'm not an expert on Chinese culture so feel free to correct me) but does that justify staying to the old cultural roots?

The movie for me would have been perfect if not for the audio. I'm just going to spit it out: I'm not sure if it's because of a technical problem at the time of screening, but the audio was terrible. Some scenes have characters talking so faintly that you could not hear them (and I was seated near the speakers) either drowned out by something else, or something's screwed up with the levels. Subtitles helped salvage that. Another problem with the audio is it makes transitions and/or scare moments obvious, since you can audibly hear the audio track or whatever changing - making key scenes easily read by the audience.

All in all I think we have a winner here people. This was a film that surprised me with its unique plot structure and mix of themes. Go ahead and watch it. And tell me if there was really a problem with the audio. I'm giving this 9 hungry ghosts out of 10, minus 0.5 for the poor audio.

DIRECTOR'S SHOWCASE CATEGORY

Pink Halo-Halo

The life of a soldier is a hard one; he constantly faces death in the eye away form his loved ones, a short vacation his only respite. It's a lonely life, but one filled with honor. To those that lose their lives for their country, however, the pain for the ones that they leave behind is all too real. This film, directed by Joselito Altarejos, is dedicated to (presumably) his father, a 2nd Lieutenant who died in the seventies. In essence, the film's purpose is similar to the short Breakfast with Lolo (see above.)

Natoy is just like any other kid; he fights mock gun battles with his friends, he goes to school like any other kid. In this film he acts as a persona or reflection of the director himself. He has a close relationship with his father, a corporal in the Philippine Army. Natoy does not like the fact that his father has to go to all these places and risk his life as it makes his mother sad.

There isn't much more to say as the message of the film is very simple. At the same time, the film is a statement in itself about war and the damage it causes not only to the people directly involved, but with collateral damage along the way. Natoy's brother participates in a play detailing the war between Moros and Christians; movies glorifying war are strewn all over the local cineplex; the shooting games the boys play also figure into the overall picture.

The images are clear and crisp, captured in glorious HD. There are a lot of yellow and orange hues especially in the Halo-Halo store. The acting is great on all sides; the kid who played Natoy was pretty good.

So take a peek at this film. It's okay by me. 7 wooden guns over 10.

EXTRA! MIDNIGHT SHOW

This one isn't in the competition, but since I watched it, what the hell, right?

Ben & Sam

Ben is a film student who plays basketball and stuff. Sam is also a film student who happens to be gay. You know where this is going, right? Come on.

Unfortunately, the film comes off as overindulgent, and tries too hard to be artsy. There is lavish attention to detail (more on that later) but with no extras many scenes look weird. It's as if the college they were attending had a total of 15 students.

Cinematography and set design are quite good. Good use of the camera on some scenes, but again, some shots are just overindulgent. The acting is okay. The lady who play's Ben's slightly off kilter mother steals the show with her weird dialogue and actions. The lady who plays Ben's girlfriend is a love or hate thing. She will either annoy you or entertain you with her histrionics.

The apple becomes a cinematic motif, signifying the forbidden fruit. They really love those apples though, and I mean that in more ways than one. See what I did there? Another thing I noticed is that considering the taboo nature of this relationship in our society today, people in relative authority (parents and coaches and whatnot) in this film tend to approve the relationship of the titular characters. Which is something I felt a bit off.

Well enough about that. The most interesting parts of the film to me are the debates about film that are in essence reflective of this very film. The debates talk about the depiction of truth; yet in this film, at first, the truth is something none of the characters seem to accept. The debates talk about how the depiction of an unconventional relationship and how it evolves, and in this film that's exactly what we see.

Finally, the debates talk about gay films themselves. Perhaps an appeal to legitimacy? I've seen that some people tend to stereotype independent films with gay films. Now look back at all the films I've reviewed this week. How many of them are gay films other than this one? I'll wait. Are you back yet? The answer is zero, right? Others seem to reject the film a priori based only on the concept that it is a gay film. As far as I'm concerned, if the movie it's good, it's good. I really don't care what it is about. I hope the genre doesn't become a cliche, and I fear it already might have done so.

That, however, is the problem with this film. I'll be frank and say it wasn't that good. It offers nothing new, and instead of making the viewer involved, via an emotional connection, it decides to fanservice and tittilate (at least for some people out there.) Sone scenes don't flow smoothly and exist only to establish something, or don't have a point at all. And conversely, some scenes linger too much on the subject, pressing the point over and over again. Case in point: we GET it, you're super sad about (end of the film.) On to the credits please.

Do yourself a favor and skip this one. If you're still interested I'm not going to stop you, but there are far more interesting films both in same genre and tackling the same concepts, done in a more satisfying way.

Plus, interpretative dance? oooookaaayyyy....

Cinemalaya 2010: Magkakapatid, Two Funerals

2010-07-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

This time, one from the new breed, one from an established director.

NEW BREED CATEGORY

Magkakapatid

Disclaimer: Thanks to traffic, I missed a good 20 minute chunk from the start of the film, so my thoughts on this one are incomplete.

I'm an only child, so I have not experienced what it feels like to have a brother or sister.The closest I ever got was through my cousins, and even that is nothing compared to the real thing. That said, bonds between brothers and sisters are strong. But as some people say, the stronger the bond, the more catastrophic it's going to be once things fall apart.

Magkakapatid is a drama that focuses on these dynamics. Three threads intertwine together with the theme of family bonds: Julio Diaz plays a barangay captain who falls into conflict with his daughters; he cannot let go of a daughter who plans to marry. Meanwhile his sister (in law?) Maring, is married to a rich dude who cheated on her. Even after her husband's death, Maring's daughter could not forgive her father for what he had done. And finally, older sister Adeling's (Ces Quesada) two sons face conflicts of their own: the elder brother is cruel and torments his younger brother Caloy, who has a history of mental problems, including multiple personalities.

Unfortunately, I was unable to see the film in its entirety and managed only to view the midpoint to the resolutions of these conflicts; eventually in a weird way these conflicts would bring the whole family together again.

The acting is solid on all fronts, no technical problems here. Archie Adamos plays an effective comic foil. The ending was a bit rushed, but that's only my perspective, given that the missing first part that I didn't watch could still tie up the ending better.

It would be unfair to give a rating to the movie since I didn't watch it yet, so instead of over ten, this one's going to be over five.

3.5 bloody corpses/5 plus or minus whatever was supposed to be in the establishing part. Nice film overall.

DIRECTOR'S SHOWCASE CATEGORY

Two Funerals

At around the time of Holy Week, a freak accident with a bus and 18-wheeler claims many lives, including Charm, a youth leader and daughter of Pilar (Tessie Tomas) the usual drama ensues, but it soon becomes clear that there's been some sort of a mishap: the body inside the coffin isn't that of her daughter at all.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometers away, a jueteng dealer learns of his elder brother's death (from the same accident as above) when the dead body is brought to his house. The elder brother in question, Dodong, was not the nicest of persons; by all accounts he was pretty much the evil bastard. With no money for a funeral, the jueteng dealer decides to use the barangay chairman's hatred of his brother to finance the funeral. After all, knowing of his death is a bit of satisfaction to the captain. However, things don't go as smoothly as planned as the dealer realizes that the body of a young woman is in the coffin...

As things become clear, Pilar and Gerry (Xian Lim), Charm's boyfriend, make the long trek towards Sorsogon where Charm's body presumably lies. Through their trek though the heart of the Philippines, more details are revealed about Charm's life and the impact she left on the people she left behind.

Oh, and did I forget to tell you this was a comedy? And somehow, seemingly against all odds, it works?

Two Funerals uses the backdrop of the Holy Week as a comparison to the events in the film. As Pilar and Gerry trek go through their road trip they are finding for redemption, perhaps for their own issues in life. As the world tried in vain to find salvation through the dude on the cross during Black Saturday, Pilar is finding for her own salvation or closure to the tragedy that befell her family.

Not much is revealed about Dodong, the other dead body involved in the swap; all we know is that he was a bad guy, an assassin and a rapist. But at the same time the film gives us the notion that forgiveness for him is not in our hands but with a higher Power. The smaller focus on him makes the story incomplete in a way, but then again, focusing on both parties might have made the film ridiculously long. It was then probably necessary to focus on the more interesting story.

Two Funerals is mainly a road movie; road movies typically correlate the physical journey the characters take to their own personal, emotional journeys. In this case the story does not dwell too deeply on the latter part; or arguably there is only so much to discuss under such circumstances. The story of this journey is then filled up with a number of sidetracks along the way. Although some are a mini-treatise on the concept of sin and the sinner, for the most part they can ultimately be removed from the film with little impact to the whole. But as it is, and considering that this is a comedy after all, the occasional funny yet relevant skit is just fine.

Let me say this now: Tessie Tomas should get some sort of award. As it is, it's a close match between herself and Irma Adlawan for best actress. Pilar's character mostly spends the movie troubled, yet composed. As the movie reaches its climax and Pilar finally reaches her goal, her emotional barriers come crashing down. Tessie Tomas does this transformation so well and so convincingly that the packed theater literally burst into applause. It's that good.

Visually, as one would expect from established directors, the work is solid and polished. The Director of Photography makes the best of the "road trip through the Philippines" scenario to show us fascinating landmarks along the road to Sorsogon.

All in all, I'd give the movie 8 coffins out of 10. I may not yet be able to say that this is the best film of its category, but I can definitely say, gauging from my own reactions and the audience's, that it is most probably the most fun.

Cinemalaya 2010: Sampaguita, Vox Populi

2010-07-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

This Tuesday, I managed to see two movies from the new breed category. Now I'm of the opinion that overall the new breed films are better than the director's showcase films. Will that opinion change? Who knows...

Sampaguita
This film was the first film to be shown in the Nicanor Abelardo theater, and thus it was national anthem time. When the film began we were asked to sing the national anthem again. Now I didn't know what the hell was going on, as the film began to portray various national symbols in ironic black humor that is in itself Filipino.

Sampaguita is a film that tracks the lives of several street children, with the sampaguita flower being their common link. Some of the children pick sampaguita, and some sell them. In documentary style moments, an unseen interviewer asks them questions about their lives, their inner thoughts, and their dreams.

After the film, I found one movie goer (dunno who he is, was probably one of the directors or something of some other film) taking the perspective of the film as a documentary as a result of these moments. As such, he felt the film's scenes seemed manufactured. Now that would only hold if this was truly meant to be a documentary. I saw it as a sort of pseudo-cinema verite style thing, and I had no problems with the presentation.

To say anything more about the plot would ruin your enjoyment of it. Francis Pasion uses non-actors for the roles of the children. This is of course very precarious ground, as the acting must be natural and convincing to maket he movie work. Make a few inexperienced kids just say out their lines and the whole movie fails. Thankfully, that doesn't happen as for the most part, the children are superb.

Technically the film is sound. Most of the movie was taken during night or in relative darkness, but I guess digital film technology has indeed improved, as HD makes dark scenes less grainy than it used to. Neil Daza makes use of his expertise for some breathtaking shots, some even taking place in near complete darkness (the 'candles' scene in the beginning being a trademark example.) The soundtrack of the movie is simple yet amazingly appropriate. The main theme is a piano based variation of the National Anthem (National Historical Commission, you listening?) that floats in and out of key emotional scenes.

The issue of street children has been addressed time and time again. In one symbolic scene, a character covers a dead bird with sampaguita petals to make it smell better. Perhaps this could signify how society tries to ignore or hide the existence of these children. Later in the film, people give them things out of charity: food, money, possessions, and these are welcome gifts, sources of temporary happiness. But longer term happiness is much harder to achieve. Sooner or later, like the symbolic sampaguita covering that dead bird, the sampaguita smell will fade away. By the time the food or the money has run out, nothing remains.

Sampaguita is a film about life. It's a film about hopes and dreams. The film indeed tries end on an optimistic note, giving the kids one last time to relate their hopes and dreams for the future. But at the same time, the film ends with an ironic twist that links back to the beginning of the film, making all things come full circle.

A lot of people were touched by the end (unless they had colds or something, it was sniff-o-rama inside the theater) and I was touched too. It's reflective and poignant and leaves the answers for you to decide. I'd give it 8.5 wilted flowers over 10.

Vox Populi

The Philippine Political System, with all the nuances of Filipino culture woven into it, is such a ridiculously complicated thing that it would probably seem absurd to an outsider. Allegiances to family and friends, religious involvement in political avenues, 'utang ng loob,' the 'pakikisama' system - while it's not all exclusively Filipino, there's a definite Filipino flavor to politics in this land.

Nothing brings out the most out of this system than Election time. As all Filipinos know, the election period (and the Campaign season that precedes it) is a lavish carnival of gimmicks, campaign rhetoric, pretty words, and asking favors. Candidates' faces are strewn all over the city, with regular visits to barangays and other places to gain support.

Connie di Gracia (Irma Adlawan) is one of those candidates. Her late father was the mayor of the town of San Cristobal for a very long time, having benefited from the lack of elections since Martial Law. Since then, power has shifted to other people. Now, however, she is pitted against Resty Zarate, the incumbent mayor, for the position.

The movie unfolds during the last day of campaigning before the elections begin. Connie has a tentative lead over her rival, but suddenly one of the other candidates steps down - intending to switch his followers to Zarate. Connie's political adviser, Tony (Julio Diaz) and her brother Ricky (Bobby Andrews) then tell Connie that she must make a last ditch effort to solidify her win, even if it means pandering to religious groups (a dig at groups like El Shaddai or what have you) abusive employers, or creepy gambling lords. Connie is a woman of principle - at least in what we see of her. She doesn't believe in the pretty words or the rhetoric. She's practical in her platform and straight to the letter. This makes her efforts all the more harder. She tries to fulfill her promises to the best of her ability, but in her own words, she hasn't been elected yet and she already owes much to a ton of people.

The dialogue seems to tell us that Zarate is doing every dirty trick in the book to sabotage them, but we never really get to see what kind of a person Zarate really is, unless we take the dialogue at face value and ignore the lack of an alternate viewpoint. This is, after all, Connie's story.

I have few complaints regarding the technical aspects of the film; some of the shots are done in the handheld "shakycam" style which is quite jarring at times.

There's no doubt that Irma Adlawan steals the show; on the other hand, the show belonged to her from the start. The movie is about Connie, and like a proverbial Atlas she carries the weight of the movie from start to finish. Remarkably, it is not in the spoken dialogue that she shines - some of the lines are suited for theater, but unfortunately not for film - it is in the short silences, the times when Connie reflects on what she has done, and whether she has done the right thing or not where her acting chops show themselves in full force. She expresses so many emotions and inner thoughts without saying a single word, with each circumstance being different. Had a lesser actress done the same thing you would simply see a blank stare. But with Adlawan a thousand turbulent thoughts swirl with that look in her eyes.

I am left a bit ambivalent about the ending; although it is understandable. The film is not about what Connie plans to do after the election, nor is it about how justifiable or feasible Connie's platform is. Although things look optimistic in the end, we never really see who wins. It's about the nature of politics itself, the alliances that politicians form to gain support, even when ethical or moral lines seem to be crossed. The voice of the people is the voice of God, as the namesake of this movie describes. To get the popular vote, you have to sway people's hearts and minds - and there are many ways of doing so.

I give it 7.5 voters out of 10. Plus or minus maybe 0.5 for that damn catchy election jingle.

Cinemalaya 2010: Sigwa, Donor, Mayohan

2010-07-12T19:46:00.000-07:00

Cinemalaya 2010 features films by independent film directors, and a new (?) section featuring established directors in the spotlight. I'm not going to go in depth here so I'll just give you a brief overview, and my thoughts.

DIRECTOR'S SHOWCASE FILMS

Sigwa

Joel Lamangan's entry centers on Dolly (Dawn Zulueta, Megan Young). She's returned to the Philippines after more than 30 years to know more about the daughter she left in the care of one of her friends. They were friends, however, in the most turbulent of circumstances: the first few years of Martial Law. including the infamous First Quarter Storm. Plus they were all political activists, which is kinda bad for you if you don't want to be detained/tortured/etc. In her quest to search for the truth for her daughter, she revisits the friends she left behind: Oliver (Tirso Cruz), who became allied with the government, Cita (Zsazsa Padilla), who remained a communist rebel, and Azon (Gina Alajar), who gave up the revolutionary lifestyle to take care of her daughter (and Dolly's as well.)

I'm not really a fan of Marxist philosphy, nor do I support student activism of such a radical level, because of my opinion that such systems are doomed to fail. Does the movie itself take a stance on this philosophy? I'm more inclined to say that the film at least says that people who tolerate social injustice are not so different than the people who are behind them. The film gives a few winks in our direction with regards to that.

The movie is professionally made, slick and polished, although with some weird script dialogue, e.g. "when did you do a 360 degree turn [with your ideas?]" (Uhhh... that will just take you back to the start) and firing on the ground ftw. Digital media has come far since the first Cinemalaya, and it's showing in spades here with a high definition picture and a clear and solid image. The production designer even made the effort of making props, sets and even softdrink bottles appropriate to the era.

The acting is decent, although you will see your share of "sampalan" scenes taken almost out of a telenovela, but that's Joel Lamangan for you. The young version of the casts delivers, adequately filling their respective roles.

My one problem with this film is that the last 20 or so minutes seem incredibly rushed. A major conflict between characters seems resolved minutes after it is established, and after that, the movie wraps itself up.

All in all, it's a nice film to watch, but is brought down by the ending. I'd give it 6.5 activists over 10.

Donor

The issue of abuses and planned changes in the system of Organ Donation in this country is such a large ethical clusterfuck that it would take me ten times as long if I wanted to write about it. (Too long didn't read version of my opinion: 0) Organ Donation is good in itself and an awesome effective treatment, but 1) the planned changes make the system even more open to exploitation, 2) our current system cannot feasibly prevent abuses as we suck at implementation 3) I think tightening restrictions to already existing limitations can help prevent abuses to the system as much as loosening those restrictions and "trying" to regulate them and 4) if the system is passed, we should make damn well sure that issues of informed consent and compensation are treated with as much respect to ethics as possible.)

*takes deep breath*

Mark Meily's entry focuses on Lizette (Meryll Soriano,) a seller of Pirated DVDs who lives with her live in partner Danny (Baron Geisler). Earning money is hard due to a lack of job opportunities and constant raids screwing over her business. One day she is given a remarkable opportunity: sell her kidney to a wealthy Jordainian businessman with kidney failure (as an aside he didn't look like he had CKD to me lol) for 100,000 pesos. At this time donation of organs by strangers/foreigners is illegal, but there is a way, as Emperor Palpatine would say, to "make it legal." That is, they get married, so that Lizette can legally give her kidney to her 'husband.'

At first she rejects the offer, but the time comes when she really needs the money. Plus it isn't helping any that Danny is a huge dick and periodically borrows or steals her money. So she decides to take the plunge. But soon, the repercussions of her actions make themselves clear as everything begins spiraling into a shocking finale.

In an impromptu Q and A after the movie with the director, myself and a couple other moviegoers, the director said that the movie was his way of saying "How much of a price can you put on life?" 100,000 for a kidney, 20,000 to kill an unwanted child (and they haggle too!) 9000 pesos to snuff out a life in an instant? But what do those prices mean? The value we put on our own lives is decided only by ourselves. Or perhaps at the same time, human life transcends value because life should not be sold or traded for any sort of monetary value. Director Meily noted the recent events regarding Organ Donation and noted the ethical issues present in the movie, creating the juxtaposition of death and self-destruction in the final scene.

In the movie, although Lizette technically does the legal thing (which is arguable, because during their exchange of vows they did not disclose certain ethical, legal or moral issues that would prevent them from getting married) she crosses all sorts of ethical lines by agreeing to do this. In fact, characters in this movie transgress the boundaries of what is legal or ethical for their own benefit: Lizette sells pirated DVDs, in itself unethical, but at the same time does it for her own survival; the doctor knows that there is something seriously screwy going on with this organ donation but does it anyway for his patient and his own pocket; and Danny illegally tries to obtain a gun for his own protection.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn't cover everything. The topic of Informed Consent was only implied to have taken place sometime in the movie, but it is one of the most important aspects of the Organ Donation process.

Technically the movie is professional and polished, but one little nitpick I have was the overuse of the fade in - fade out transitions. I think these transitions have their place and the common fade in - fade out makes the movie a bit segmented for me, making the movie seem like a collection of various scenes, rather than making the whole thing seamless. The acting is spot on, Meryll Soriano and Baron Geisler showing their acting chops.

In the end, I'd say put this on your 'watch' list. I'd give it 8 kidneys over 10. Plus let me know what you think of the ending. I kinda liked it lol.

NEW BREED CATEGORY FILMS

Mayohan

Nino (Elijah Castillo, from Pisay the movie) is a 15-year old boy who comes to Infanta, Quezon to visit his grandmother. With a limp that came from a horrific accident that claimed both his parents, Nino starts the film a bit withdrawn, an outsider to this alien place. Soon though, he starts to acclimate himself to rural life. As it happens, May is festival time in this place, culminating into a dance festival (Pasayaw) at the end. Slowly, he begins to start a friendship with Lilibeth (Lovi Poe,) who wishes to break away from this life due to issues of her own.

First things first, when they said that this movie was in HD, they weren't kidding. This movie is gorgeous to look at. Shots saturated with light and color, effective use of lighting and maybe filters, offsetting that problem we always see with darkness or shadows and digital movies. Add that to the fact that the setting is scenic and pretty. Props to the production design, cinematography and post production people.

The movie is a story of youth, a relationship in transcience, yet still a friendship worth keeping. Both actors are capable in their respective roles, but the accents sometimes seem off. I have no major qualms about the story as everything presents itself in a deliberate pace. The little moments between these two characters fit the film well, and the chemistry between the two accentuates this.

This is a really sweet film which kinda touched the hopeless romantic in me. If this is any indication for the quality of the rest of the films in this year's competition, I think I'm going to be in for a treat. 8 bottles of lambanog over 10.

Downfall

2010-07-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder where those "Angry Hitler" clips came from? If you're not in the know, it's from a 2004 German movie called "The Downfall," chronicling the last few days of Hitler and the Third Reich.

It's 1945, and the Red Army has surrounded Berlin. The Allies are closing in as well, and the German Army is close to total defeat. Inside the fuhrerbunker, Adolf Hitler enacts Operation Clausewitz, making Berlin a frontline city. Many, including civilians and military personnel, evacuate the city as it is laid to ruin. Hitler himself, however, opts to stay and make his last stand here. And wary of what happened to his ally Mussolini, he begins to consider suicide.

The movie was constructed from interviews and accounts of people inside the bunker and published accounts of Hitler's last days. Indeed, the film itself is viewed through the perspective of Hitler's last secretary, Traudl Junge, who appears before and after the film an interview segment. The movie also speculates on a number of unclear events: who killed the Goebbels children, when Hitler wrote his last will and testament, how Magda Goebbels was killed, and so on.

The acting by Bruno Ganz deserves note. His performance as the fuhrer himself, switching between gentlemanly and incandescent rage, is spellbinding. Yet portraying Hitler is a human rather than this vague icon of evil does not make him any less evil; his rants about racial purity and his indifference to the German people as they faced annihilation make it clear that despite his situation, this is still the same despicable man hated by many.

The film is appropriately filled with a sense of dread. In the chaos of the invasion, people either hide in fear or celebrate in parties. But the sound of the Russian artillery is always there, a reminder and a harbinger of the destruction that will befall them. This is, after all a story about defeat; about the end of a horrible regime that consumed the world in flames. It also offers us a little glimpse into who these people were.

Alfred P. Sloan in your FACEEEEEE

2010-06-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

What is the Alfred P. Sloan Prize? It's a prize at the Sundance Film Festival that awards a film that focuses on science or technology as a theme or has a scientist as a main character. After seeing good reviews of a few films that happen to be winners of this prize, I decided to review some of them.

1. Primer (2004)
Aaron (Shane Carruth, who also directed the film) and Abe (David Sullivan) are two engineers who work for a large corporation during the day and have an invention workshop during off hours. Inadvertently, they manage to make a time machine while messing around with a device to reduce the mass of objects. At first they use the machine to manipulate the stock market, but soon they start to abuse their new powers, crossing ethical and moral lines to change the course of their lives.
The plot has an experimental structure, given the whole time travel conceit, but is still relatively easy to understand once you get what is going on. It will probably take a viewer a couple of times or more to grasp everything that goes on in the film. What is amazing is that all this is made by a small group of people, but looks so refined and professional. Carruth uses his background in mathematics and engineering to ground the film in reality; documenting the minutiae of tedious scientific research, including the trial and error associated with it. He also uses muted colors and ambience to create an atmosphere of both sterility and dread.

As the film goes on the tension mounts, but at 70-odd minutes does not seem as adequate as it would seem in developing this tension into a climax. Nevertheless, Primer is an accomplished sci-fi film that I think will become a cult classic.

2. Grizzly Man (2005)
For thirteen years Timothy Treadwell lived his summers along with Grizzly Bears in Katmai National Park in Alaska until his life was cut short in 2003, killed by the very bears he swore to 'protect.' This documentary by Werner Herzog is a little portrait into Treadwell's own experiences with the bears, and the events that eventually led to his death. Most of the film is framed within Herzog's own perspective on Treadwell, in his capacity describing Treadwell as both an actor and filmmaker. Thus Herzog himself narrates the entire movie. It takes a bit getting used to as he sounds like a 70 year old Arnold Schwarzenegger (imagine hiring Arnie to narrate your film) but seeing as this is Herzog's message and opinion on the man, it's understandable.

At points the film portrays Treadwell as a kind and gentle man who loves nature and the animals and wildlife he protected and research every year. On the other hand, through his own films we see a Treadwell who was paranoid, interfered with the bears more than he 'helped' them, had this skewed idealization of nature, and openly shunned humanity and civilization while at the same time craving attention, perhaps treating his ventures into Katmai as a sort of self therapy for his own inner demons. Although one could say that he was foolhardy enough to dare to do this with the bears, he did survive 13 years with them with nary an incident. And the circumstances behind his death did push towards a scenario where he would be more likely be attacked than normal. He knew the risks. He knew that he would be killed, either by his own pragmatism or an inner self-destructive urge.

If anything, the film made me want to know more about the real man behind all the hoopla, so in a way, this documentary did its job. Read here for some points about his life and death.

3. Sleep Dealer (2008)
Alex Rivera directs a film that, although being science fiction, deals with problems the world is facing even today.

Memo (Jacob Vargas) lives in Santa Ana Del Rio, a small town in rural Mexico. He dreams of making it big somewhere in the city and uses a homemade transmitter to listen in on conversations of people from far away. Unforunately, this leads to the US government, depicted here as an isolationist and imperial state, attacking his home. Memo now heads to Tijuana where he begins his work as a Sleep Dealer, a sort of virtual laborer, doing the dirty jobs without the problem of immigration.

The commodification of the human soul, cheap outsourcing of labor, water politics (as opposed to energy politics) and increasing corporate and state imperialism are all topics that are valid and as feasible today, but at the same time they are discussed in this movie. Memo and his father Memo goes to a reservoir to get water that should rightfully be theirs; they are asked at gunpoint to pay or face the consequences. Later, Memo delivers money to his family back in Santa Ana del Rio; after taxes and other fees are deducted, only 2/3 of the original amount is given.

The issues raised in the film are quite powerful, but the presentation falls short quite a bit. Some come off as cheap or cartoony; a fight sequence at the end was unnecessary. The characterization was also a bit off the mark, as characters such as Luz and Rudy are given scant screen time, so we don't get to know them as much as we do Memo, making the full product seem incomplete.

Sleep Dealer is a flawed film, but that does not make the issues it raises any less important. In the end, it is worth watching to gain perspectives of things that might be happening to us not in the future, but in the here and now.

Japanese Medical Drama Roundup

2010-06-04T17:37:00.000-07:00

I'm a doctor by profession, and I watch J-dramas. No brainer here.

Code Blue
Starring: Tomohisa Yamashita, Erika Toda, Yui Aragaki
Synopsis: Four doctors undergo training in emergency medicine. With helicopters.
Bad Guy: just some regular disasters/accidents.
Drama: 8/10. Each character has their own dramatic thing going on and will try to milk you hard for tears. Most of it is patient related and they are usually nice people, so you feel sorry for them. The drama ratches itself up near the end. Medical Accuracy: 3.5/5. I guess your disbelief will depend more on whether the actors/actresses were convincing to you. The cases themselves are understandable. As for that thing in the special, well...
Overall: 8/10. Again, a fun drama.

Nurse Aoi
Starring: Satomi Ishihara
Synopsis: A really good nurse is recruited into a hospital where the doctors mostly really suck. She fights off her emotional baggage and tries to make the hospital a better place.
Bad Guy: Tadokoro, a doctor who wants to transform the hospital into a health-for-profit place. And he sucks.
Drama: 8.5/10. Aoi treats all her patients like family, and is really a nice person. The one good doctor in the hospital is also a nice dude, and the episode that involves him was good drama. Medical Accuracy: 3/5. I dunno what the laws for nurses are in Japan, but are they allowed to perform at least needle thoracotomies, at least under supervision? The iffy translation made understanding the actual diseases harder, but throwing out a diagnosis of sick sinus syndrome just like that?
Overall: 7.5/10. It sucks when the nurse is better than most of the doctors in the hospital lol. But still a good drama.

Iryu: Team Medical Dragon
Starring: Kenji Sakaguchi, Asami Mizukawa, Teppei Koike
Synopsis: A super genius surgeon goes to a hospital, to perform a super hard heart surgery (season 1) and to revitalize a dying hospital (season 2.) Over the top drama ensues.
Bad Guy: Noguchi, an evil medical director who wants to make the hospital into a health-for-profit institution.
Drama: sdbjgfk/10. This series is sometimes so over the top its crazy. Surgery without electricity? Check. But with regards to scenes that mine those tears from your eyes, it's just okay.
Medical Accuracy: 2.5/5. Given that most of the medical scenarios in this series are ridiculously over the top (albeit possible) it's hard to say that it can happen in real life. A new Batista technique? Fictional. A thoracotomy using a ballpen case? Well...
Overall: 8/10. It's fun if you don't take it that seriously.

VOICE
Starring: Eita, Ikuta Toma, Satomi Ishihara
Synopsis: Four medical students undergo a special elective class... in forensic pathology.
Bad Guy: Whatever or whoever killed the dead person of the week.
Drama: 9/10. The drama focuses on each person who died and their intentions and reasons for dying. Most of it is thankfully really really good.
Medical Accuracy: 3.5/5. Actually the medicine takes a backseat to the drama in this searies, but what medicine does exist is more or less spot on with a few exceptions.
Overall: 8.5/10. Fun drama by itself. As a medical drama, don't expect too much.

Tomorrow
Starring: Miho Kanno, Yutaka Takenouchi
Synopsis: A disgraced surgeon turned government worker is tasked to help rejuvenate a dying community hospital. Bad Guy: The dudes who want to close the hospital down and make the resort, or the Neurosurgeon who wants to make the hospital into a for-profit specialty hospital.
Drama: 10/10. I was impressed by the quality of the drama in this series. It is character driven and a bit manipulative, but it works overall.
Medical Accuracy: 3/5. A lot of the medicine here is okay, but some of it is just plain weird. Some take the medicine with some liberties (near instant recovery after a cranial hematoma evacuation? lolwut) What makes this drama different is that it tackes some important topics (DNR, right to live, living wills, 'monster patients,' overstaying patients, malpractice) that every health practitioner has encountered in their lifetime.
Overall: 9/10. Quite a good drama actually.

God Hand Teru
Starring: Junpei Mizobata, Asami Mizukawa Synopsis: The son of a super genius surgeon who died in a plane crash is recruited by a super prestigious hospital full of excellent surgeons. BUT, he's actually just a newbie. If he's in a bind, on the other hand, he summons the strength of his dead father and gains super genius surgeon powers.
Bad Guy: some evil corporation that wants the hospital to be for-profit. Are we beginning to see a trend here?
Drama: 7/10. Standard j-drama fare. What makes this different from Iryu is this isn't over the top enough. So it's not that fun.
Medical Accuracy: 2.5/5. Again, the outlandishness of some of the medical scenarios makes them hardly believable. Normal people would die with such grave conditions. But since our protagonist has super awesome surgeon powers, it's okay.
Overall: 7.5/10. Still fun, but not as fun as Iryu.

A whole new ball game

2010-05-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

I first watched Evangelion way back in the late nineties. For some reason, the introspection and angst resonated with me. I was then a teen, angry at the world, angry at everything. In comparison, back then, Eva's creator, Hideaki Anno, was suffering from a deep clinical depression - Eva was in a way his method of self-therapy. Thus went 26 episodes and one movie's worth of psychological and emotional issues. Every character in Eva had this deep-seated emotional flaw that was potentially self-destructive - and self destruct the characters did, in one completely awesome display of mindfuck ever. Even now people debate about what really happened in the end of the series. Even now people debate if it was really all worth it.

Almost ten years later, the new series of Evangelion movies came. Time passed and things changed for me. No longer was I an angry teen, I was a young adult, whose viewpoints in life had changed since that time. With the second movie of the Rebuild of Evangelion series, we finally see that even Anno himself has changed. After a self imposed hiatus with anime and a segway into live action fora, he's now "grown" in both his directorial style and his viewpoints on the world.
The first movie was almost a complete retread of the first few episodes, redone in high definition glory. There was something about the characters that was strangely off. The second movie shares some similar elements with its respective part of the TV series, but as its title (which translates into "division") indicates, this is a whole new Evangelion.

The characters themselves have shown different facets of themselves compared to the TV series. Shinji actually has a spine in this movie, and he's no longer talking about whether to run away from unpleasant things (at least, not all the time) or not. Instead, we see someone wanting to be accepted by his father, his peers, and the people that he loves. Rei shifts from an impenetrable mysterious character trying to learn her own individuality to someone who also strives for acceptance and recognition in the world, and is growing increasingly frustrated by the fact that she isn't exactly living a normal life. Misato is still beset by her need to be with someone, anyone - but isn't projecting herself unto others as much as she used to. Asuka's insecurities becomes determined individualism as she has learned not to depend on anyone - but even this crumbles in the presence of true friends. Gendo seems less distant from his son, and we see him as someone bound to the past in ways that we are only beginning to (re) understand.

As for the new character, Mari, she's still a bit of a mystery to me. At times she was channeling a bit of Guren Lagann in the way she goes about in her devil-may-care way, but whether that is merely a facade covering something else, or her true personality is something we do not know yet.

But all these changes are not an indication that this has turned into a cutesy-pie moe fest with fanservice. The movie still has bouts of both emotional and psychological violence, and the subtle irony between what you see and what you hear still rears its head here. It's tragic in a way that will only be apparent as the movie goes on (I won't spoil you.)

I think Justin Sevakis, in his review of this movie, says it best when he says: "this film is not about happy endings, it's about setbacks. Violent, horrible, rage-inducing setbacks. They are terrifying, they are raw, and they are devastating." We can't always expect life to be a free ride, and there are times when nothing goes your way at all. But instead of running away, Anno seems to tell us, we can strive to fight for what we truly want. Maybe for ourselves, maybe for somebody else.

Anno definitely shows a more refined directorial style in this movie, and he uses some of the tricks he learned from his subsequent live action movies and anime productions. The long static shots that punctuated some of the memorable TV series moments are gone. Some fanservice shots and odd camera angles remind me of Love and Pop, and his visual flair has this flavor of Shiki-jitsu in it with vibrant reds. The introspective parts of the movie has shades of Kare Kano and the last part of Cutie Honey along with Eva. (Indeed, astute listeners will no doubt recognize musical cues from Kare Kano used in some of the more quiet scenes.) Shiro Sagisu has infused a bit of his experience with orchestrating Bleach in making the soundtrack of this movie, with more vocals and swelling orchestral sounds. Whether we will go back to the trippiness of Komm Susser Tod or the R&B stylings of Thanatos is up in the air.

The visuals are absolutely perfect. The Angels and Evas are rendered in CGI and they look amazing. The AT fields and cross explosion effects benefit from the nearly 15 year technology leap from the series to the new movies.

Eva 2.0 brings us an older, world weary, mature Anno, both as a director and in his vision- remarkably in sync with myself. Again the movie has resonated much with what I am thinking and going through right now. Now that nothing is guaranteed, now that the plot of the movie has radically diverged from the original, how will it all end? We're going to have to wait for Eva 3.0 and 4.0 to know, and it's going to be one hell of a wait.

Point Point Point

2010-05-18T13:28:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, when we were playing together with my cousins, I always wanted to be the "villain." I loved making up diabolical plots to derail the other guy (whoever it was) and make their day miserable. Of course in the end I would lose, but it would be a glorious death. With a defiant "I will not be defeateeeeeeeeeed" my persona in the game would die... only to show up the next time with an even more diabolical plan.

The first impression I got from role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons were that they were "evil"and somehow bad for me. But as time went on, I realized that these games were merely an extension of what my childhood play was. There wasn't really a difference between the two except that this was more structured.

There are some people who take this to another level; Live Action Role Playing games, or LARPs, make the player take the role of their character and play them out in real life. In parks and soccer fields they engage in battle over a fictional world. In real life they may be your usual dude, but in this fantasy world they could be Borgania the Dark Elf of Highward or something. The possibilities are endless.

The Documentary film Darkon chronicles the tribulations of one such organization dedicated to LARP. The movie opens much like you would see a fantasy film, with grand sweeping shots of the landscape. Immediately you are immersed in the world of these roleplayers. Juxtaposed with these scenes are scenes from the other side of their lives: a stay-at-home dad, a mom working her way up, a lonely teenager wanting to fit in somewhere.

The camera accentuates the action and political intrigue of the events of the role-playing scenario and are given a stylized treatment by the camerawork, immersing you in the role-play itself, as if you are part of it.

The documentary casts no aspersions or makes any judgements on any of the people involved - it merely portrays them as they are - which is to me, a group of people hanging out and totally having fun. Ultimately, the film asks, (or perhaps, you ask yourself) what's wrong with that?

From start to finish, the film engrosses you and doesn't let you go until the 90 minutes are over. I highly recommend it.

17 Documentaries, 17 Stories

2010-01-25T01:13:00.000-08:00

Documentaries are a peculiar species in the kingdom of cinema, placing a camera as an eyewitness to events, places and people that are all too real. Over the past week, here are a few great documentaries I've watched.

Boxing

Tyson - His words flow out like poetry… or a flurry of jabs. Mike Tyson recalls, in his own words, his journey from troubled, violent teen to heavyweight champion of the world, to troubled, violent heavyweight champion of the world, to troubled adult. James Toback, a longtime director friend of Tyson’s, captures the man we rarely see, someone behind the ear biting and the random threats of violence – a man living closely with fear - all his life. The movie was well received at several film festivals.

When We Were Kings - Held in production limbo for years, this documentary recalls the events surrounding what is probably the greatest boxing match of all time – the legendary bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire, the Rumble in the Jungle. When We Were Kings takes us back to a time when blacks were still struggling for their own freedom and identity, showing the world what they were capable of on the stage of their ancestry. This is about much more than the match itself (the coverage of bout takes less than 1/3^rd of the movie); this is about the two men involved, notably Ali, whose mout was as fast as his fists, and whose charisma captivated a generation. The movie won the Academy Award for best documentary. Ali himself, suffering from Parkinson’s, received the award, accompanied by his now-friend Foreman.

Corporate America
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - The downfall of one of the largest and (at the time, seemingly) most successful companies in the world is, as this documentary tells us, a tragedy: a story of really smart guys who thought they could get away with anything until they lived completely in a fantasy world of their own making. Soon, they considered fantasy reality, even though the opposite was true. And once that world began to crumble, down was the only place to go. It also reflects one of the most savage yet enduring human traits – that of pure, unadulterated greed. And at the other side of this tragedy is the working man, whose money invested over the years in a company they believed in disappeared like smoke.

Capitalism: A Love Story - From Michael Moore’s first film to his latest, I can say that the man’s style has not changed much in 20 years. The film tries to tackle the downfall of capitalism, and how the Heartless Corporation takes advantage of the lives of many hardworking Americans for profit, since in Capitalism, Profit is God. Again using his guerrila style gonzo journalism and his sarcastic, darkly humorous wit, Moore shapes a vision of America and tells us that change is something America desperately needs.

Roger & Me - Michael Moore’s first documentary, Roger and Me tells of the GM (General Motors) plant closing in Flint, Michigan, Moore’s hometown and a place he visits in later films as a testament to America’s eroding social structure. Moore repeatedly tries (and fails) to contact Roger Smith, the CEO of GM, to join him and see Flint as it is – a deteriorating, poverty stricken place whose life has been sapped by corporate downsizing and outsourcing.

Fun and Games

Wordplay - Although Sudoku has supplanted some of its fans, the crossword puzzle still remains a touchstone of man’s sheer inclination to solve something, to literally fill in an empty space. Wordplay takes us to the Americal Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where the best crossword players in the country compete. But beyond the tournament itself, the crossword puzzle community has become a family in the best sense of the world, gathering complete strangers from wildly varying fields into an event that celebrates their singular passion. Along with this, interviews with celebrity crossword puzzle solvers such as funnyman Jon Stewart and former president Bill Clinton give us some insight into this often overlooked activity.

Spellbound - We’ve all seen it on ESPN, right? The Spelling Bee still remains one of the most esteemed American Institutions, which is interesting for a language that is, in this writer’s honest opinion, one of the most contradictory and screwy languages around. Spellbound takes us into the lives of 8 kids from various parts of America, each with their own story to tell, as they aspire to be the champion for that years Scripps National Spelling Bee. Weird kids, outsiders, city kids, kids from the countryside, even normal kids like we used to be, they are a reflection of the American Dream. Even if you can’t spell opsimath or banns or chthonous, give it a try.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - For more than 20 years, “Video Game Player of the Century” Billy Mitchell held the highest score in the arcade game Donkey Kong, the hardest and most challenging classic arcade game of the 80s. But then, a airplane engineer turned teacher named Steve Wiebe got an even higher score, starting a race and a rivalry to determine who is the true King of Kong. More than the actual game itself, the King of Kong is a story of one guy going against The Man – a story we all can relate to, even if we’ve never jumped a barrel or dodged a fireball in our lives. (My personal Donkey Kong High Score – 31,900 points.)

Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade - If you’re as old as I am (or more) you might have played at least one of these classic games at the local arcade or home console: Pac-man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, or whatever. Chasing Ghosts tracks down the participants in a 1982 Life Magazine photoshoot featuring the best players in the world, in a time when the Video Game Craze of the eighties (before the notorious crash of 1983) was at its peak. But more than the games themselves, the movie paints a portrait of the often interesting people who played them, and the lives they led after the arcades started to cater to a new and different generation of players.

I Got Next (Short Cut) - This independent project is about the professional fighting game scene. While not as prominent as the e-sports scene with first person shooters or real time strategy games, the North American community is large, with tournament attendance numbering in the hundreds. It was taken in the time when Street Fighter IV was released, which caused a resurgence in an old East Coast – West Coast rivalry that has been going on since Street Fighter II was released many many years ago. I Got Next takes us into the various tournaments of Street Fighter and the players that go there, revealing their views, hopes and dreams. A longer cut of the movie is expected sometime this year.

Tetris: From Russia With Love – We know it as the Brick Game. We’ve played it for hours and hours on end. But the story behind this highly addictive puzzle game is quite interesting – a story of corporate one-upsmanship and capitalism vs. socialism, in an era where Soviet Russia was still one big scary place behind an Iron Curtain. And at the bottom of it all is Alexei Pazhitnov, a very humble and down to earth guy who happened to make one of the simplest, yet most addictive games of our time.

Political Stuff

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Covering the events of a Coup d’etat that threatened to unseat Venezuelan President (for life!) Hugo Chavez, this documentary reveals how media has the power to influence minds and change history. It also paints an eerily familiar picture of a class struggle between the masses and the middle and upper social classes, a popular revolt instigated by the latter (and supported by the military), and a counter revolt instigated by the former. Sound familiar? I think we had a few of them here in this country…

Outfoxed - If you haven’t noticed the seeming bias of Fox News towards a certain political inclination, then this movie paints quite the damning portrait of it. Personally I didn’t think the channel was that bad before the 9/11 attacks, but that seemed to change as time went on. Media is a powerful thing, and its use and abuse can change events in a big way, making lies look like the truth.

Your Mommy Kills Animals - You ever notice those guys protesting against zoos and whatnot? Yup. This documentary is about the animal rights movement. As it differentiates the animal rights people from the animal welfare people (guys who run shelters or sanctuaries for animals abandoned or lost) It also presents a spectrum of people involved in the rights movement itself, from your normal run of the mill advocate for animal rights, to the guy who insults you for wearing fur on the street to the people who commit acts of vandalism and/or harrassment and violence against people who either indirectly or directly use animals (for example, medical research) or abuse them – with such acts making them the number 1 domestic terrorist group in the US today. Ironically it shows us, despite man’s great compassion, a little glimpse of man’s inhumanity to man.

Other Stuff

Super High Me - Super Size Me, but instead of junk food, we have pot. That’s right. Comedian Doug Benson undergoes an experiment where, after 30 days of not smoking pot, he smokes pot continuously for 30 days. The documentary tackles the issue of the use of Marijuana for medical purposes (in California, a proposition was passed making this legal within the state, although federal laws still have it as illegal) and the various people using pot to relax or ease their pain or whatever. While not as focused in its presentation as Super Size Me was, it does make you think a bit about it.

Trekkies 2 - The Star Trek Fandom is one of the most quirky, yet enduring fanbases in the world, even today. While the first Trekkies focused more on the American Fans, this film tackles the huge international fanbase, where the biggest conventions are held. From Italy to Germany to Serbia, we see fans talking and relishing their love for a science fiction TV show that has been here for (at most) 40 years. We also get a glimpse of some of the people who were featured in the first film, proving mostly that yes, these people do have a life.

My Kid Could Paint That - Marla Olmstead looks, talks and acts like a normal 4 year old kid. But her paintings of abstract art fetch thousands of dollars a piece. The documentary was originally a piece about modern art, where we are asked, what is truly “art?” and who can authoritatively tell us that a piece of shit on a canvas is art or just a piece of shit? But then, things change. Marla’s family is accused of coaching or helping the kid finish her paintings. Once the second part of the movie kicks in, it evolves into this piece where the questions on art apply to the documentary filmmaking process as a whole. As for whether the kid really did it herself or not, the movie leaves it to us to decide for ourselves.

Cinemalaya 2009: Engkwentro

2009-07-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

Engkwentro trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUqdDeXmdCQ

My classmate and I had the pleasure of watching the premiere of Pepe Diokno's movie, Engkwentro, in glorious hi definition. And we totally did need that hi def, given the visuals the film was going to deliver. So, was it good? Was it bad? Let's find out.

The movie centers on the topic of organized death squads - bands of vigilantes supposedly authorized by local governments to go and kill dissidents, petty criminals, gang members and even street children. Since the justice system is as impotent as a 90 year old man with syphillis, people tolerate it or even accept it as a viable solution. If the justice system makes you think vigilantism is ok, something is terribly wrong with the justice system.

Richard (Felix Roco) is one such gang member. Before the movie begins, he is targeted by the death squads for some unknown reason (other than... well... he's a gangster.) He plots to leave his house along with his prostitute girlfriend Jenny-Jane (Eda Nolan) for his mother who makes a living in Manila. At the same time, Raymond, (Daniel Medrana) Richard's younger brother, skips school and hangs out with tambays, eventually joining a gang named "Batang Dilim." Unfortunately, Batang Dilim is one of Richard's rival gangs, and as the night drags on, things get more complicated as the gang leader orders Raymond to kill his older brother.

The whole movie takes place in a seaside shanty community that could easily exist in either Visayas or Mindanao, where allegedly most of the death squads exist (the movie was actually shot in three locations near Manila, then cleverly edited together to make it convincing.) As someone who actually has gone to such seaside communities, the look is pretty authentic. The dialogue is also mostly in Bisaya, with a couple of lines in Tagalog. The film makes use of natural lighting, which is nice in the day scenes, but in the night scenes is very dark (hence the convenience of having whatever detail remains shown in hi def.) Now unlike the previous movies I reviewed that use darkness as either a motif or try to portray actions in this background. It didn't work that well in those movies. Here I am glad to say the use of darkness was strategic, it left many things to the imagination, and were not to long as to cause impatience or boredom. Flashes of light punctuate a nervous face or fists flying. Overall I'm impressed.

me with Eda Nolan, who plays Jenny-Jane in the movie.
I consider myself a lucky bastard. hehe.

The camera technique is pretty much handheld 'shaky cam,' which gives you the impression that you are actually there walking with the characters and joining in their scenes as silent observers. It's a love or hate thing, and it's been used in many films, most notable in the D-day sequence in Saving Private Ryan. The technique is most memorably panned in a review of Gaspar Noe's Irreversible, where the reviewer describes the technique, and I paraphrase because I forget the actual words, as someone furiously jacking off while holding the camera. It's understandable, since the shaky cam was deliberately used in that movie to make you nauseous. Personally I don't mind the camera handling, and even though in some scenes it does get me a bit queasy and make some action scenes hard to decipher, it's effective.

The director of Engkwentro, Pepe Diokno, and myself,
talking about the film and stuff. As he's explaining his
use of the single take effect, I'm pointing out the large zit on my chin.

Also, the movie flows very smoothly. To the unaided eye it seems to be one long continuous take in the style of films like Sokurov's Russian Ark or in one real time series of takes like Kim Ki-duk's Real Fiction. However, there are cuts, but the are seamlessly edited together and you probably won't notice them unless you were really actively looking for them... which my friend and I found pretty impressive.

Acting wise the cast does their job excellently. You really feel as if they are their characters. (The whole setting does help, of course.) One very awesome addition is Celso Ad Castillo, who plays Mayor Danilo Suarez. Although you do not see his character in the flesh, his voice is heard in the entire film, an all pervading 'Voice of God' who talks about peace in the same vein as killing. His schizophrenic speech brings about a feeling of dread throughout the whole film. Also, Jim Libiran (Director of Tribu, another similar movie that deals with gang violence, but in another way and in a different location) has a very important cameo at the end.

The most corrupible aspect of an impoverished, morally ambiguous society is its youth. Vulnerable and stripped of hope even at a young age, these guys are easy targets for violence and crime. Of course, poverty and a lack of education is what brings people do crime, and even now, no one seems to have learned their lessons from history.

The plot never drags or slows down, and it inexorably draws us toward the inevitable ending that punctuates the film with a sense of reservation about the future. Is the reality we face today truly acceptable? And even if we do not, can we really do anything about it?

All in all, a good film, and in my opinion one of the best of the festival entries so far. You owe yourself to see this film; you shouldn't miss it.

Cinemalaya 2009: ASTIG

2009-07-20T00:42:00.000-07:00

Lego blocks are awesome. I had a lot of them as a kid, and extorted every OFW relative I had for a new set every time they came home. (For the record, I love those guys) So anyway, this stuff called Megablocks comes in. They were compatible with the Lego stuff, and had their own range of toy sets. They looked like Lego blocks, played similar to Lego blocks, and so on. But the thing is, they weren't Lego blocks. So, I didn't bother to buy em. The point of this story? I'll explain later.

Even before this year's festival began, there was one film that was being hyped as good. It was co-produced by Boy Abunda and has a number of respectable stars, including Glaiza de Castro, who if you remember from Still Life was amazing. The premise was okay: an interwoven story of four men living in the streets of Manila and their respective tales of survival. It was clear that the production value was going to be high, and the talent involved was going to be good. So on my only available day I set off to watch it.

I really, really wanted to like this film.

I'm a bit sorry to say I thought it really wasn't that good. It wasn't bad or anything, it was just mediocre.

So let's get to the film. The narrative moves back and forth in time over all four characters' stories, sometimes scenes overlap with each other, and some scenes reveal motivations of characters from other acts, which is kind of clever from a storytelling standpoint.

One person (Dennis Trillo) works as a male prostitute and as a counterfeiter, your all-purpose conman. He has no remorse for the victims he cons until he meets Elgine (Glaiza De Castro,) a student that he meets in a net cafe. Bada-boom, romance occurs (weirdly enough with little time to grow or develop,) but things are more complicated than they seem, and sooner or later shit hits the fan.

The second story focuses on a newly married man with a young pregnant wife. To keep things going and to earn more for his wife he sells shampoo and other kinds of goods, runs a little gambling thing on the side, and has a lot of other rackets going. However, the money is never enough (hospital stays cost a ton of cash) and he's soon grasping at straws. Soon, however he learns the big cash cow is this relatively rich gay man who gives money for blowjobs. He is then left with no viable alternative and does what he must for his wife.

The third story is about this guy who is of mixed Chinese and Filipino heritage (his mom's from Zamboanga city and there is some dialogue in Chavacano) who comes to the city to sell the one inheritance his father left him - a decrepit piece of shit building. It seems as if his father didn't give a damn about his son, but the son seems to genuinely love his father and wants to reconnect with his half siblings from the father's Chinese wife. He tries to sell the land, which is virtually unsellable, until this one guy (Gardo Versoza) offers him a deal he cannot resist.

The fourth and last story centers on Elgine's brother (Sid Lucero) who studies as a marine engineer to try to get a decent job to support his family. The doleouts from his OFW father have stopped coming and the family is in serious financial trouble. On top of that, he's not really that good in school and is in danger of failing his subjects again. His only consolation is his siblings, all of whom he protects fiercely from potential suitors, all to avoid the fate of his older sister who married a bum husband after getting pregnant.

Out of the four stories, the second was my favorite. It told the story in not many words, and made its point rather subtly. There was also a nice juxtaposition of sex scenes in a movie house in the second part. The scene being shown in the movie is a rape (was it from Ang Pinakamagandang Hayop sa Balat ng Lupa?) While the scene going on in the movie house was technically consensual, but you know it was forced by something else. Very nice. The first story feels incomplete (until the last part), the third story was a bit weird, and the fourth story was merely okay.

Production value-wise, the film is a slick production, from the rap music in the opening scene, mostly crisp visual presentation and good editing.

Now on to the stuff I didn't like. Remember that paragraph I wrote at the beginning? This encapsulates everything I felt about the movie. The whole thing feels too manufactured, as they took all of the things that people liked about a movie and mashed it together, without putting any new spin on things. The slice of life scenario, the interconnecting story, the curse-laden natural sounding dialogue, the soundtrack, you've seen it all before in some other movie screened in this festival before. Now by itself it isn't bad (it's actually good,) but the way it's all put together makes the movie exactly the sum of its parts, which shouldn't be the case.

The movie has many sex scenes, and although some are needed, there are some scenes that are questionable. Especially in the third act, where Gardo Versoza is involved. Although it makes his character (I'll talk about the acting later) more creepy, it was totally unnecessary and made the consequent scenes a little contrived. It comes out like they had an ending in mind and fit scenes to match that ending. It feels extremely awkward to watch the plot develop in that manner.

Now to the acting. Given the limited material, the actors have not much to work on, but they all do the best they can. Honors go out to Gardo Versoza for portraying a truly creepy character in the landlord, and the lady who played Sid Lucero's mother (can't remember her name at the moment) who was very convincing given the material. Glaiza de Castro was underused as her character wasn't given much to do except to fawn over Dennis Trillo and get depressed. There's something about Dennis Trillo that makes him very likeable; even if he did all the things he did in the movie I found it hard not to shun the good boy image he projects. Anyhow, good on him to act against stereotype, even though the stereotype still held somewhat in my final assessment of him. The other actors played their parts rather well, as the production is full of excellent talent. It's just that not even the great Billy Mays can pitch us a cleaner that doesn't clean anything.

Speaking of actors, there was a ton of cameos from various personalities from ABS-CBN and even from Boy Abunda himself in one very short scene. (Watch Ai-ai delas Alas without makeup in one scene, some of the theater goers didn't recognize her until the last moment) If they had one cameo, it's amusing; two and it's still okay. Three, and you're saying, 'well, they worked for next to nothing, I appreciate the effort they made in appearing.' Ten times and it gets annoying. There were at least ten cameos. Even Kuya Kim Atienza joined in on the fun.

My friend found some faults in lighting in the last scene, that it was too dark, that he could not see anything. Somehow I think it could have worked, but ultimately it didn't. I thought that the last scene could work if there was some more emotion in it. Then, that last scene would have worked even in total darkness. I noticed the same thing in the last scene of "Three Days of Darkness," which had appropriate emotion, but dragged on too long and had too much dialogue. There must be a perfect mix of emotion in the scene for it to work.

In the end, Astig is to Megablocks as every winner in this competition is to Legos. It's a combination of the best of the latter, but it isn't the latter at all. A laudable yet disappointing offering for this year's festival.

Cinemalaya 2009: Ang Nerseri

2009-07-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

If you were watching TV a few months ago you might have heard of that family all possessing some kind of mental illness. They were locked up in these cages and stuff due to poverty as they could not afford medical care, but thanks to some intervention, they were sent to a mental institution.

This concept of a family faced with mental illness, and the dysfunction that it causes, is used by the makers of the latest Cinemalaya offering Ang Nerseri (the Nursery.) Although the film is about a family whose members all suffer some sort of mental illness, it really is a nice little character piece that is surprisingly good.

The film centers around Cocoy, a 12 year old kid whose has siblings that are mentally unstable. Almost all have histories of repeated and prolonged confinement at mental hospitals or had all undergone some sort of treatment.

The family is entirely dysfunctional; the father has died, and has thus robbed the family of a father figure; the elder brothers have their own problems, as one has left the family to live by himself, and two are hopelessly addicted to drugs. One is sent to a rehab center at the beginning of the film, and the other is Dean. He is supposed to be the replacement father figure (numerous times in the film he asserts his age superiority over his younger brother and bosses around his mother and younger sister) but he ultimately does nothing but threaten and do drugs, surrounded by his paranoid delusions. The mother, played by Jacklyn Jose, asserts little to no authority over her children but protects them fiercely. She lies about her children's status to her friends so as to save face, but in the end, there is a sense of loss of control coming from her. The daugher Lyn tries to live a normal life, but she is ridiculed in college, has no friends, and has fifficulty in her studies despite constantly reading books and stuff in her spare time.

Based on my experiences with relatives of mentally ill patients I find that they exhibit a spectrum of either spoiling the children and giving them their every whim, tolerance or clear contempt, so it is understandable how Jacklyn Jose's character acts in the film, given her situation. It is, however, not a situation that can easily be dealt with.

And so we get to Cocoy, the center of the film. When the mother leaves (I have the nagging feeling that she actually goes insane before or after this time, never to return, but that is only speculation) he, seemingly the only sane member of the household left, is given the task to hold the house together, something that is way too much for a twelve year old to bear. Soon he begins to fight his own sanity as he faces his problems at home, at school, and all the other crap one goes through during the turbulent adolescent period.

During this time, he protects his older sister by fighting her bullies and bringing her to the mental hospital for ECT (the thing where you strap stuff on your head and deliver electric shocks) and fights with his older brother who wants to pawn his typewriter, the only thing left from his deceased father. The typewriter itself serves as a metaphor for the father figure itself in the film; once Cocoy does decide to sell it, he seems to have decided to assume the "father" role. Faced with this burden, he seeks comfort and emotional support from many people. He befriends his schoolmate, explores his sexuality through his neighbor, "calls" his mother over the telephone and even 'consults' his father by visiting him regularly in the cemetery.

Soon however, the promised two weeks become a month, and the burdens begin to overwhelm them. Money and food become problems as both run out, and without money, there is no medication. The battle for his sanity reaches a new level.

One thing noticeable about the film is that after the first scene which is saturated in colors, the rest of the film's visual palette is noticeably bland, with the picture mostly grayscale with only blue and green colored in. This loss of color is meant to signify depression or a loss of deriving pleasure from things, something you can see in depressed individuals.

The abandonment theme is similar to Kore-eda's Nobody Knows, but approaches it in a different aspect, and centers on one character's psyche and his psychic evolution more than anything else.

As far as acting goes, as someone who has experience in helping treat mentally ill patients in a hospital and non-hospital setting, the acting is okay. Mentally ill people more or less behave just as normally as we do, even if their thought processes are slightly off mark. Some exhibit a flat affect (lack of emotion in the face) or tend to ramble on having a flight of ideas (not really heard in the dialogue in this case) but on the whole it's mostly okay.

Cocoy's behavior is interesting. Most of the behavior he seeks can either be attributed to his adolescence, or due to an emerging psychosis. He lies constantly about his status in school, perhaps part of an effort to put emphasis away from his own problems. On the other hand, they could be delusions of grandeur. His methods of seeking pleasure and repeated instances of self gratification may be due to raging teen hormones. Or, he could be hypersexual, again a trait of people with mental illness. At this stage it's hard to tell. At the end, however, he does experience auditory hallucinations that is a feature of mental illness, but his previous behavior is either hit or miss.

In the end, the Orchid nursery in the film parallels the condition of the household, with the opening scene representative of the essence of the film and the basis of the plot. After taking care of the seedlings, Jacklyn Jose's character decides to leave and let them grow by themselves. It is interesting to note that orchids are one of the most hardy of plants; able to weather the greatest of stresses. Given the ambiguous ending, could that fact be a clue to Cocoy's ultimate fate, or an ironic, tragic note at the end? The ending may be interpreted in different ways and the director leaves that up to you. All in all, a very imaginative effort by all involved.

Trekstravaganza 2009: Season 1

2009-07-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the latest Star Trek film, I wanted to revisit the original series, the 79 episode beast that started it all (80 if you include the pilot) and give a taste of what made the series so interesting to so many people. I’m going to use these three marks to denote what a particular episode has.

Of course I won’t be covering all of the episodes, just those where I have something to say.

Denotes a well-known Trek episode, the kind Tom Hanks blurts out during interviews at late night talk shows, or parodied in shows like Family Guy.

Denotes a favorite episode of mine. Doesn’t have to be the best in everyone’s eyes.

Denotes a weirdass episode. Full of the psychedelic shit of the 1960’s.

Season 1

Season 1 of Star Trek was Trek trying to find its groove. Characters shifted around, people’s jobs were shifting around like Sulu, and there were a number of inconsistencies from episode to episode. Despite that, a lot of classic episodes came out of the series, including the episode considered as the series’ best.

Episode #3: Where no Man has Gone Before

Kirk and company pass through the Great Barrier, which totally mindfucks one (and later two) of his crewmembers, turning them into really, really powerful beings. Unfortunately, their EQ isn’t up to par for being able to make mindbullets, so Kirk faces them down. What a badass.

Essentially the second episode created for the series, this episode has a smiling Spock (maybe he was just smug) old uniforms and mention of ESP among Starfleet personnel. They didn’t revisit that in later series IIRC, unless there was some kind of Section 31 shit that I didn’t know about.

Episode #4: The Naked Time

Kirk and company get a virus that makes them act like a bunch of drunk or high teenagers. Shit ensues. Oh, and Sulu is fencing. I originally saw that as kind of lame. Being asian, I wanted him to weirld at least an asian sword, going batshit around the Enterprise with a katana. They did manage to do that in the new movie, however, so it’s all good.

Episode #5: The Enemy Within

Kirk gets split into goody goody Kirk which is like Jean Luc Picard with slightly less spine, and 100% Bad Kirk. (note bad, not badass.) He totally makes out with the girl and shit. The moral lesson of this? We are the sum total of our good and bad selves and one cannot exist without the other. Not bad.

Oh, and what was up with that “alien?” It was a dog dressed in pink fur with a plastic horn. I mean what the fuck.

Episode #7: What are Little Girls Made of?

Kirk and company go to this planet where Nurse Chapel’s fiancee is stationed. They go in and realize that they are all ROBOTS. Most notable is Kirk’s babe of the week, Sherry Jackson, who shows up as pleasure robot Andrea. Lol Roger Korby is cheating on Nurse Chapel hahaha.

Anyway, Korby is actually batshit insane and kills himself, Kirk makes out with the babe of the week and all is right with the world.

Episode #8: Miri

Kirk comes across a near duplicate of earth where kids are the only surviving individuals. Star Trek will revisit this parallel earth scenario again and again throughout the series. IMO it’s infinitesimally rare to have a parallel earth but the episodes with parallel earths usually had a point to it, especially as a mirror to our own contemporary culture. Here it was about growing up and the divide between generations. In the 1960s the people who grew up with WW2 and this growing peaceful generation that would later have this peace revolution hippie shit was experiencing such a divide.

Oh, and Kirk’s babe of the week is either Janice “I always wanted you to look at my legs but not now, deadly pathogenic organism causing skin lesions kthxbye” Rand or Miri, who is like 13 years old. Granted, it’s not technically so but. DUDE. Kirk hitting on a 13 year old. Chris Hansen would be all over his ass now.

Episode #9: Dagger of the Mind

Kirk has a stowaway from a prison, returns said stowaway, shit hits fan. Anyway the only person I wanted to talk about in this episode was Kirk’s babe of the week, which IMO was one of the best babes of the week in the first season. She was Marianna Hill, who played Dr. Helen Noel. She was cool in that she was not only Kirk’s kissing target, she also hauled ass and kicked it just as well as the captain. Damn it, Kirk gets the best girls.

Episode #10: The Corbomite Maneuver.

Basically this is just a long drawn out game of bluff, which is what the “Corbomite Maneuver” was. Kirk was like totally shouting loud within the Fesarius’ ears, “Okay, destroy us, but we got this really powerful weapon that does over 9000 damage everytime we get hit. So yeah, go ahead. Not like we care.” What a badass. Of course now that would only be loled at, but this is the 23^rd century we’re talking about.

Episode #13: The Conscience of the King

It’s Shakespeare in space! Surprisingly without Klingons! Also throw in some sort of good old murder mystery. Not much to say here, because it would spoil it. The lines at the end are pretty apropos considering the circumstances of the ending and the parallels to Shakespeare.

Episode #14: Balance of Terror

One of the best Trek Episodes, Kirk gets into a submarine type tussle with the Romulans, headed by Mark Lenard, who we all know as Spock’s father Sarek. Although the recent style of fast paced Star Wars fighting is being considered more positively, the slow Wrath of Khan type battle was always a favorite of mine. These ships I consider as capital ships, the Galaxy class of their day. What’s nice about the episode is that it portrays both parties not as stereotypes, but as opposite sides, both with good and bad, fighting a war.

Episode #15: Shore Leave

After one of the best, follows one of the trippiest Trek Episodes. Hopping people in bunny suits, assholes named Finnegan (lol at “Jimmy Boy “ being a total nerd before becoming the galaxy’s greatest badass) and Samurai. Fuckitty fuck shit, this was certainly high on the weirdo scale.

Episode #18: Arena

KIRK VS. THE FUCKING GORN, BABY. It eclipses the rest of the episode, literally. Who cares about the fucking “Metrons” and the other shit that was destroyed when the Gorn attacked? This was all about Kirk vs. the Gorn. He beat the Gorn with a makeshift rifle out of bamboo and some chemicals. Kirk was fucking channeling McGyver even before there was a McGyver. That’s how badass he was.

I guess there was something in the episode about how war was bad, and how conflicts can be borne out of misunderstanding, and how people should look at both sides of a confliWHAT THE FUCK, LOOK AT THAT, KIRK VS. THE FUCKING GORN

Episode #19: Tomorrow is Yesterday

Kirk and company accidentally go back in time and screw up the timeline. Eventually they make everything right again. Notable are the action scenes in this film, as we see the origins of the patented Kirk jump kick. Also we see the warping around the sun time travel thingy that we will see reused in a Season 2 episode and in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home.

Episode #20: Court Martial

I always find Star Trek court based episodes very interesting. This one implicates Captain Kirk in an administrative complaint that claims the life of his crew. He meets a lawyer who stays true to the method of reading law books instead of keeping those books all inside one computer. The lawyer is pretty badass too. While Kirk is getting pwned by the prosecution (who turns out to be the requisite Kirk babe of the week - damn, this guy is more prolific than Wilt Chamberlain) Spock, his bestest friend in the world is… playing… 3D chess. Don’t worry, there’s a reason.

The mystery is pretty nice and the payoff was pretty unexpected. All in all good shit.

Episode #21: Return of the Archons

At first I thought that this was one of the crappy episodes, but it turned out to be one of my favorites. So I have to give a rundown of everything I find awesome about this. Basically, Kirk and co. come across a planet whose history and/or architecture parallels (again with the parallel earths WTF) depression-era America or something like that. The people are unreasonably catatonic, but once the bell rings, people go totally apeshit into an uncontrolled orgy of violence, sex, fistfucking and probably gerbils. They learn that Landru, some computer thing, is controlling the civilization as logically and soullessly as possible, for peace. Kirk no likey, so Kirk decides to totally fuck Landru up and bust a cap in its ass.

Now, generally, under the Prime Directive, since this is a primitive, non-warp capable civilization, the Federation shouldn’t be fucking with this society. In later series, all the captains would probably go, “okay, let’s not interfere, let’s just go to Something IV, warp seven engage.” Or at least they should tiptoe around the planet, interfering with the civilization as little as possible, if there was prior interference. The TNG Episode ‘Who Watches the Watchers’ is an example. Picard and co. may not always like the Prime Directive, but it was a Directive they would not fuck with. That’s why it was Starfleet general order number one.

But Kirk? Fuck no. He’s too badass for the fucking Prime Directive. I paraphrase this exchange between Kirk and Spock.

Spock: Captain, I must remind you of the non interference directive…

Kirk: Fuck Prime Directive! Onward hooooooooooo!

This also starts one of the Kirk vs. Computer scenes seen everywhere in the series, where Kirk totally fucks up a computer and causes it to go into error just by arguing with it in a brilliant display of logic. The producers may have thought it meant that man has the passion and the drive over any computer, no matter the superior mental processing power. I just think it’s badass.

Kirk – 1 Computer – 0 bitches.

Episode #22: Space Seed

No, the title does not imply bukkake in space.

Here we see Khan (the late, great, buff Ricardo Montalban) for the first time. He begins to out-badass Kirk himself, by stealing what was supposed to be Kirk’s babe of the week and claiming it as his own, and taking the entire Enterprise and claiming it as his own. But Kirk manages to outwit him enough and end up offering him his own kingdom. Of course, we all know what happened after that.

I wonder if Kirk knew what would happen. Like if Spock told him Ceti Alpha VI would explode but he care to tell Khan because he stole his babe of the week and tried to kill him/take over his ship.

Episode #23: A Taste of Armageddon

Alien guy: We have this great simulated war! Real casualties though.

Kirk: *Destroys computers*

Alien guy: WTF did you do? Now there will be war for real!

Kirk: lol

That’s pretty much it.

Episode #24: This Side of Paradise

Kirk and co. comes to this planet that turns everyone into pussies except Kirk, who is too badass to be turned into a pussy. Disturbed that everyone in the Enterprise has deserted him, even the redshirts, he calls up Spock to the Enterprise and totally flames him.

Spock lashes out at the trolling Kirk and realizes that strong emotions break the pussyfying agent. So they all return to normal. Happy ending for all.

Episode #25: Devil in the Dark

One of my favorite episodes, without spoiling the plot, I think this episode stresses the importance of understanding between two individuals or groups of individuals. To understand something or someone, one must look at their motivations. You can argue that it doesn’t excuse the action itself, but that’s a debate we can talk about another day.

Also, brownie points to McCoy for curing anything, probably even a rainy day.

Episode #26: Errand of Mercy

Klingons: WAR!

Federation: WAR!

Organians: we’re a bunch of cockblockers. Therefore, NO WAR!

HAPPY END

It was nice to see old school Klingons in TOS. Interesting to note that in the series that chronologically follows this, I have not seen any planet under Klingon rule. There have been Klingon colonies or settlements populated by Klingons, but planets populated by another alien species, ruled by Klingons? None. Feel free to correct me though.

Episode #28: The City on the Edge of Forever

Best episode of the series, according to many critics and fans of the series. It defines high quality Space Opera in a time when Sci fi was generally treated with stereotypes of little green men and B-movies. You really have to watch the episode by itself. Kirk and co. happen upon the Guardian of Forever, and McCoy accidentally goes back in time and changes history. So Kirk and Spock go after him but find that it isn’t as easy as they think.

Episode #29: Operation: Annihilate!

It’s Kirk vs. Space Pancakes! When I was a kid I was awed at the sight of futuristic looking buildings. There weren’t a lot of people though (even though the episode points out millions of colonists inhabiting the planet… maybe they just stayed in the shadows.) Great drama ensues when Sam Kirk and his wife fall victim to the attack. I always wondered what happened to Kirk’s nephew afterwards. Oh well. One question though, where was Sam Kirk when Kodos the Executioner did his shit in Tarsus IV? I’ll have to look that up.

So it turns out UV light kills the Space pancakes, and so Kirk and co. go on an ecstasy fueled rave into the night. Just kidding.

That pretty much wraps up my thoughts on the season. All in all a good season. Don’t worry, the shit only gets better from here – the second season improves by beginning to focus on the ensemble cast as well.

In a nutshell: Blood the Last Vampire

2009-06-14T03:42:00.000-07:00

Saw this movie in the theater today. As I cannot form coherent thoughts right now... this will have to do.

Overall, disappointed... ridiculous plot, especially after running out of material after the first half of the film. The second half was particulary bad, and the ending was really weird as it barely made any sense and explained nothing.
BTW, this was based on the short 30 minute anime feature, not Blood+ or the manga.
Jun Ji-hyun's english was excellent. So was everything else about her. Hehe. Okay her Japanese may not have been the best, but that's okay since she's Korean. It also helped me understand the Japanese in some of the dialogue, because -
THERE WERE NO SUBTITLES DURING THE JAPANESE SPEAKING PARTS! Since I knew at least a little Japanese, I more or less understood the dialogue, but imagine being a non Japanese speaker and going through this. Maybe it was a problem with the film print that was distributed. And there were like three separate scenes like this. Speaking of the film print...
The censors or whoever cut out a lot of scenes for the movie. The cuts actually ruined the first major fight scene, making it barely understandable. And in this film, knowing that the plot may be crap, all I have to look forward to are the action scenes. The action scenes are the backbone. And they broke this backbone like a wrestler's knee from the top turnbuckle! I'm not sure if this happened in your country, but it happened to mine (Philippines.)
Whatever fight scenes are left are either boring or cut to death. The only one I really liked was the one with the old guy, and even that fight scene had a few trims here and there. I would rather watch an uncut R version of this movie that have it PG13 or something like that to have to film mangled this horribly. I have to see the uncut version of this film. Thanks, censors. You've managed to convince me to support the pirates. LOL.
I like Koyuki as an actress. Her english is admittedly not the best. Maybe it would have been better in Japanese, but then again, there may have been no subs for that given the poor way the print was handled. Her character was severely underdeveloped and I wanted to see more of her kicking ass and a more epic battle in the end.
Not enough "council." We don't even see them for the entire film other than that one old guy reading manga.
Editing too fast and messy for me, ruining the fight scenes. There's "good" fast editing, and there's "jumbled mess" editing. It might be partly due to the cuts though, so I won't totally pass judgement on it.
The rest of the actors are forgettable.

All in all, it would have been a nice action movie had there been no cuts and with cleaner editing and choreography. Too bad though. Still Jun Ji-hyun rocks and I look forward to seeing her in more, hopefully better international movies.

To boldly go... again

2009-05-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

I am a Star Trek Fan.

To what level? I've watched all of the original series, most of the later series (TNG, DS9, Voyager) but not much of Enterprise. There was a time when I can tell you the name of any TNG episode just by seeing the first 5 minutes. I've watched all of the movies, and for the first ten movies I can tell you I've watched them at least 10 times each to the point where I could recite the lines from memory. If I had the chance I would go to a convention, in uniform even. And although I can't carry on a decent Klingon conversation, I can still say at least one word in Klingon.

After the tenth film the franchise died down for me. It was getting old, and the creative talent that had driven the series from that time grew stale. This is why I was skeptical upon hearing that a new Trek movie was being made, with new characters and a new continuity. A reboot. An alternate take on the franchise. They had this idea way back in the early nineties when the studio producers were thinking of a Starfleet Academy type movie showing young Kirk and Spock with a new fresh cast. It didn't take off then, but now the idea was revisited.

For the movie to work for me, it had to be 1) good as a Trek movie, 2) good as a movie in itself and 3) pay homage to the franchise it is rebooting. So I watched the movie today.

Let's just say the movie blew away my expectations.

I'm sure there are a lot of reviews that talk about the plot in detail, but for this review I won't dwell much on it. Instead, I'll just give you a few thoughts on the movie.

The Kirk-Spock relationship - pretty much the core of the film. The movie explores Kirk and Spock's development's as individuals struggling to make it or fit in their respective worlds. Kirk is someone who lacks direction in life. He had no one to guide him in his life and went on his way living a life with reckless abandon, with no fear, something that shaped him as a captain. Spock on the other hand, is wrestling with his humanity (as much as we saw it in Star Trek IV) In essence the two are similar. Together they complement each other. Of course this would not effectively work without...

The New Crew - I am particularly impressed with the casting for the new crew of the Enterprise. Chris Pike shows a Kirk that is exactly what I envisioned of him from his younger years, but giving respect to the man who made the role, William Shatner. Zachary Quinto is spot on as the younger Spock, seemingly controlled yet with emotions boiled up inside. Karl Urban was perfect as Bones, bringing the much needed wit to the triumvirate that forms the center of the ensemble. Rounding up the rest of the cast - Simon Pegg had his moments as Scotty, with the perfunctory "It canna take any more!" line, John Cho who also had his moments as Sulu, Zoe Saldana as a strong willed Uhura and Anton Yelchin giving a decent performance as Chekov.

The Old Spock - Old Spock plays a large role in the film, and other than the Kirk-Spock relationship, his presence is the key to tying the old and the new continuities together. Leonard Nimoy never ceases to impress me. But after all, the man has been playing Spock for 40 years, so the role comes naturally to him. In a way this is a chance to pass the baton over to the new cast and crew. His presence improves the film tenfold for me. It's also nice to see what Spock has been up to since his last appearance in the Next Generation two parter "Unification."

The New Enterprise - kind of a mix between the original series Enterprise and the Refit Enterprise/Enterprise-A they made for the movies. The warp effects are more Star Warsy now with no flash at the end (well, the flash was originally intended to cover inconsistencies in the effects, but anyway.) The new bridge looks cool and upgraded from its 1960's look. The engineering deck has been given a total redesign, although from the original series you can tell that something like that was implied. Plus there are like 9000 new phaser arrays for the Enterprise (although there are still like 2 torpedo bays. Go figure.)

The effects - top notch. Great contrast between the Enterprise and the Narada interiors. The phaser, transporter and beam effects were also good. Interesting use of those lens flares. J.J. Abrams (or one of the other guys) was talking about how it represented the brighter more positive tomorrow Star Trek was supposed to represent.

The Homages - made me squeal in fanboy delight. The Vulcan learning thingy from Star Trek IV. Spock's lines from TOS and STVI. Scotty getting a taste of his own medicine ala STIV. The shuttlepods from ST:TMP. The cruel fact about Red Shirts from TOS. Plus that little line done in blatant reference to "The Naked Time."

The Trek-ness of the film - here is where many a Star Trek fan will cry out in Nerd Rage. "The film isn't CANON!" or "it's an action movie!" The theme of the movie may not have that sociopolitical/philosophical context that some of the TOS episodes or movies may have, but it can't be helped in a film that is basically made to establish the new continuity. It's the only gripe I have with the film but then again you can only do too much.

So in the end? Star Trek is a action packed thrill ride. Does it work as a Trek Movie? Yes, it belongs safely in my top five Trek Movies (as #4, guess what the others are.) Does it work as a movie, period? Yes, I believe it does, as I enjoyed it immensely. Does it pay respect to the series it was based upon? Yes.

So what are you waiting for? Go and watch it now!

Zatoichi-fest 2009!! A.K.A. "In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king"

2009-04-19T04:32:00.000-07:00

Zatoichi, mildly put, is a story about a blind masseur who turns out to be a master swordsman who kicks many different levels of ass for the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed and for great justice. I just had to put in that last line.

Perhaps you’ve already watched the 2003 remake with Takeshi Kitano, and that one was quite a good film with swordplay, cross-dressing geisha and tapdancing! A jidaigeki film with tapdancing!? WTF, right? Many people might not have seen the other films, including a 26 movie series starring the legendary Shintaro Katsu, so I offer to you a few short reviews of a number of the original Katsu films, a 2008 remake and something a little extra.

1) The Tale of Zatoichi (Zatoichi Monogatari)

Scenario: The blind masseur Zatoichi is embroiled in a struggle between two warring factions. He wants nothing of it, of course, but fate conspires to entangle him in the conflict, as another strong ronin arrives at the village with motives of his own.

Comments: This is the first Zatoichi movie, and it is quite different in tone from the other movies. However, this movie establishes most of the plot devices seen in the other films: Zatoichi winning a ton at gambling due to his superhuman senses, him helping out the local townsfolk with their respective problems, and a climactic battle at the end. The action may not be as frenzied as the other movies (and here, there are only two real fighting/action sequences) the real draw of the movie comes from the character Ichi himself. As much as this movie pays attention to the other background characters, this movie is about Ichi himself (we’ll talk about this later in the other films.) This is a man who has acquired unrivaled skills, but does not want to use his skills for killing. The tone is quite serious compared to the other films as well as most of the drama going on.

Stuff: There’s no “swish” sound effect as Zatoichi cuts through his enemies. This is something that gets added on in the later movies of the series. That still doesn’t take away from the fact that he moves so fast sometimes that in the blink of an eye the sword is back in the sheath. Pretty kick-ass.

Rating: I’ll give this one 3.5/5 Katsus

2) Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold (Zatoichi Senryo-kubi)

Scenario: After paying his respects to a man he killed (not really his fault,) Zatoichi comes to a town whose townspeople are celebrating because they just paid their taxes. However, thugs then steal said taxes, throwing the said town into one big SNAFU of epic proportions. Of course they blame the blind guy for it. Add a samurai with a whip (!!!) and some other yakuza who want to kill Ichi, and we have this movie.

Comments: This is an entertaining entry in the Zatoichi series, filled with the lightheartedness, kickassery and general frenzy that accompanies the best of the entries in the series. Here, Zatoichi is more a force of nature that passes by the village, and the real focus is in the characters that he meets and changes (or kills.) There isn’t a lot of development for Ichi himself, other than that he is a kind, honorable soul that only hates injustice. The intro sequence is pretty awesome too.

Stuff: Jushiro, the aforementioned whip bearing samurai, is none other than Tomisaburo Wakayama, Shintaro Katsu’s real life brother and star of the later Lone Wolf and Cub films. There was one point in the film when he fights with a katana that I could have sworn he was channeling a little Ogami Itto in there.

Rating: I’ll give this one 3.5/5 Katsus too.

3) Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword (Zatoichi Abare Tako)

Scenario: After being shot by some unscrupulous gentleman, Zatoichi is saved and cared for at an inn, with all expenses paid for by a mysterious benefactor. He decides to repay this person’s kindness by… er… living in this person’s house and doing stuff for them. Turns out this benefactor is the daughter of a local kind yakuza boss, whose river transport business is in danger of being taken over by a stuttering evil yakuza boss. Eventually, another SNAFU of epic proportions ensues. Throw in some fireworks at the end too.

Comments: This is one of the more action packed, plot-light Zatoichi movies. Again this portrays Ichi as a destructive force of nature and the focus is placed on the secondary characters and their individual motivations, although action is the focus of this one. Ichi may seem harmless, but when he kicks ass, he kicks ass. It also features a great fight scene at the end with excellent use of lighting as Zatoichi fights his way like through 50 men in a darkened hallway. IMO one of his best fight scenes at this point in time.

Stuff: It must have been a doozy transporting people by lifting them over your shoulders…

Rating: For the Action alone, I’ll give this one 4/5 Katsus.

4) Fight, Zatoichi, Fight

Scenario: Assassins are after Zatoichi. During one of their assassination attempts, a woman is killed in Ichi’s place, leaving behind a young boy. In her memory, Zatoichi then decides to take the boy to his father in a far province, while killing his assassins around. A pickpocket then joins in the fun at the middle, and at the end, everything is not what it seems to be as everything heads toward a great finale.

Comments: IMO one of the best Zatoichi movies. This movie is more a character study of Ichi himself. At points in the film a procession of the blind reminds us that Zatoichi’s journey is like a pilgrimage, although the intent and the destination are unknown, if any exists at all. Here the focus is on Ichi with a little on the pickpocket he saves. For the first time he is given the temptation of living a more normal life, or at least someone tangible to love in the form of the little boy. He seriously contemplates this at many points in the film, but in the end he realizes that his pilgrimage is one that he must make alone. These scenes, rife with symbolism, make it awesome for me. Aside from the usual Zatoichi staples, the movie diverts a little from the usual formula, along with a few twists towards the end. Add a number of really kick-ass action sequences (changing diapers and killing assassins at the same time? Is there anything more rife with kickassery?) and it makes for one of Ichi’s best adventures of the 26 movie series.

Stuff: This movie was directed by Kenji Misumi, who directed the first film.

Rating: This one deserves 5/5 Katsus.

5) Ichi (2008)

Scenario: Ichi, a blind shamisen player, comes upon a town in search of her father, a certain blind swordmaster (wink.) She then comes across two warring factions of thugs/yakuza, a ronin who cannot draw his sword, and other shenanigans.

Comments: First of all, let’s get something out of our chest.

Ayase Haruka.

Mmmmmmm. Okay. Take it in slowly. Now back to the comments. Wait, no. Let’s look at that a bit longer.

Okay. Ichi, directed by Ping Pong’s Fumihiko Sori, can either be considered a remake or a spiritual sequel to Zatoichi, this time using a cute girl as the titular ass kicking blind swordfighter. The movie contains the usual Zatoichi staples (gambling, helping people, SNAFU at the end) but inherently, compared to the Kitano remake and the Katsu film series, this film is more similar to the very first movie of the series (see above.) Some shots and scenes are very similar to the first film, and the serious/tragic atmosphere lacks the general wackiness/fun of the later Katsu films or the Kitano remake. Instead, the film is more of a meditation on the Zatoichi mythos as it is a reconstruction of it. Here is a young soul who is conflicted between good and evil, and torn between being apathetic to the world around her and finding a friend.

Lots of Ping Pong alums return to the film including a wildly overacting Shido Nakamura (the villain guy, forgot his name) to Yosuke Kubozuka (Peco), who plays the leader of one of the factions. Ayase Haruka does well as a cool yet conflicted, silent Ichi, nothing at all like the bumbling, he’s-humble-but-can-cut-off-your-head Ichi, which may be a plus or minus to you. Plus she’s cute. Nothing beats that.

Standing by itself, Ichi remains a decent film that I’d recommend, but compared to the many films of the series, it lacks a certain warmth the other films have.

Stuff: Ayase Haruka. Yep.

Rating: Compared to the others, I’ll give this one 3/5 Katsus.

6) Zato Duling: The adventures of the cross-eyed swordsman

LOL!!!!! No, this isn’t a joke. This was a Filipino spoof movie made in the 60’s. (They made tons of those I reckon.) Although I’ve only seen parts of it, it is (IIRC) the origin of the old joke about the Japanese Samurai, the American Samurai and the Filipino samurai. The fly cutting thing that the joke was based upon may have been inspired by a sequence in Zatoichi’s Flashing Sword. You might come upon this somewhere in Cinema One or something. Watch it I guess.

I'll give this one square root of -1 Katsus just for the LOLZ.

And that wraps it up for Zatoichi-fest 2009! Will there be a sequel? Knowing me, probably not, but who knows?

Sailor Moon Memories

2008-12-21T05:52:00.001-08:00

Upon revisiting the first season of Sailor Moon in the original Japanese, I wanted to write about some aspects of the series that I remember from my childhood. Being a 17 year old anime, I was surprised that it still held up after all these years.

Intro

My experience with this series started sometime in late 1994 (or was it early 1995?) when I started seeing commercials for this show on ABC. At the time, Anime was a new thing for me, and in the Philippines, it was only beginning to show signs of increasing popularity after a long slumber (no doubt the limitations for showing certain TV shows at the time was part of its dormant phase in the early nineties/late eighties, although one can argue that Voltes V and numerous anime adaptations like Princess Sarah or Peter Pan were big in their day.)

I didn't care about seeing the anime at first, but my cousin recommended it to me (and it was part of a huge Sunday afternoon cartoon block on Channel 5 - then a fledgeling new channel - which had a number of good shows on it)

I watched the first episode. Funny as hell. Since then, for the next season and a half I fell in love with it. Mostly because it was funny as hell, a break from all the doom and gloom battles of Dragonball Z. And the ending was killer. I actually called ABC 5 a few times to ask when the next new episode was coming up (and I bet a lot of operators were befuddled when loads of phone calls came in asking for new episodes.) I 'broke up' with the series after a long dry spell, as the second season was notorious for reruns. Since then I've never quite looked at the series long and hard enough.

Sailor Moon finished airing its last season (Stars) in the Philippines a number of years ago, after a long run. Again, its last gasp was buried in the current deluge of anime coming here from Japan.

So... my thoughts on Sailor Moon.

The Tagalog Dub was Awesome

It might be part bias since I grew up with it, but the Tagalog dub was Awesome.

I consider Channel 5 and 13's dubs to have the best tagalog dubs of its time. Sure Channel 2 had their high production values, Channel 9 had this English oriented dub team with shows Dragonball, Saint Tail and Dragonball Z, and Channel 7... well Channel 7 had its days, but 5 and 13 had the best dubs.

(Of course, there was the fact that most of these channel's anime were dubbed by the same people. Heh.)

The Tagalog dub had a Filipino version of the main theme (Moonlight Densetsu) and some scenes edited out, such as the opening intro thingy which I realize was in almost every episode. And yet, the Tagalog Dub did one thing that I will always appreciate, and that was to make an already funny show funnier. Let me explain.

For the Sailor Moon Anime, veteran voice actors and actresses were recruited to do the job of bringing these characters to life. If you listen to AM radio, you might have already heard some of them over at DZRH (666 AM.) Voice Actors or Dubbers here in the Philippines are terribly underappreciated, as they get less pay, don't get the same public attention or appreciation as some other people and are virtually invisible in this industry. But these guys are pros. It is hard changing your voice and keeping it that way for at least 20-30 minutes. And these guys voice your favorite anime/telenovela/koreanovela/radio show! Respect.

For Sailor Moon it was Olie De Guzman and Vilma Borromeo as Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars respectively which made the classic first season of the series shine. Even in the original Japanese Sailor Moon started getting interesting the time Sailor Mars was introduced. At that episode (episode 10,) there as a full fledged team instead of just one or two individuals. Plus, the third member (Rei) was one whose personality clashed with the klutzy and incompetent Usagi, and the two bickered, often leading into hilarious situations.

De Guzman and Borromeo for some reason injected fresh chemistry into this pair. I don't know if they adlibbed, it was part of a great translated script or something like that, but when they fought, it was manic and hilarious. They had experience, as in Princess Sarah, they were also cast in two roles against each other (Lavinia and the titular Sarah, but with the tormentor/tormented positions reversed.) I will explore this in a later part of this writeup, but I have this to say.

To Miss De Guzman and Miss Borromeo, who dubbed Sailor Moon and Sailor Mars for the first season of SM, if there is still some sort of Star Awards for Television or FAMAS or some shit, you both deserve some sort of award. Best Actress Pair or something like that. If I had the money I'd pay to make a trophy for you two. I feel you both deserve some kind of accolade a million times more than some talentless shit getting a best Actress award just for looking cute and shedding a few tears. Voice Acting is HARD, yo.

Moving on, as the season went on towards the more dramatic/epic episodes, everyone started speaking Taglish. I have never seen this work on any other show except this one. (No, Initial D Fourth Stage, it didn't work that well for you.) This was, of course, awesome to see. Remember when Bobby (or was it Phil) Cruz as Neflite/Nephrite started talking about eating Chocolate Ice Cream? Epic shit right there boss. Or Kunzite was speaking in Taglish about how he will never be defeated or something like that?

They have to show this series again one day in Tagalog in HERO or some other channel, even just for the first season. And DON'T redub it. The first one was perfect.

Funniest Episodes Ever

Episode 11 -Usagi vs Rei? A Nightmare in Dreamland

This was an awesomely funny episode, in Tagalog or English. Usagi and Rei go to an amusement park and fight over absolutely everything, even a poor child who managed to get between the two. In the Tagalog version is enhanced by the comedy that ensues between the two and the chemistry the two actresses have.

In another sequence, Sailor Moon and Mars are both hypnotized and run around following what seems to be Tuxedo Mask, when in fact they are riding brooms (and looking like idiots.)

This was the first episode that explored Moon and Mars' bickering, and the episode had a lot of comedy in it. Fun to watch after many viewings.

Episode 31 - Loved and Chased! Luna's Worst Day Ever

This was a Luna-centric episode, and one of the funniest of the series. Most of the episode is actually from or inspired by Gone With The Wind. Luna is being chased by some cats when suddenly a fishbone stops them ala Tuxedo Mask's Rose. It is actually a fat cat who is apparently attracted to Luna (and his name is Rhett Butler.) A lot of comedic subplots occur, including:

* Rei Hino can't get a date
* Sailor Moon in her usual hijinks
* Zoisite tries to find the something-the rainbow crystal, leading him to the girl who is the owner of Rhett Butler, but he realizes that the cat is the monster. He goes to the sewer much to his disgust, and upon reaching a tunnel, he finds that it is covered in rats, and he releases what is the gayest anime character scream ever made.

You have to hear it to believe me.

The Ending was Epic

The last few episodes of the series were amazing, as at the time I was watching it, 1) I had never seen a conclusion to ANY animated series, 2) none had shown most of the protagonists end up severely screwed and 3) none had come up with a satisfying ending to the series that made one want even more.

There were almost tears in my eyes as the events of the last episodes unfolded on Philippine TV. I was but 10 or so years old back then. Note that those were almost tears. I would never be so emotionally moved by an anime until, maybe, Honey and Clover.

The Similarities to Sentai

I've been reintroduced to Sentai in the past few months and it's clear that Sailor Moon was intended as a fusion of shoujo and this genre. The Stock Footage, the monster a week formula, the adviser character, even the transformations and the upgrade at the middle of the series are all there. All it didn't have was the giant robots.

In Conclusion

There are a lot more things to discuss, but hell, I guess I can stop here. The show still remains a cornerstone of the Magical Girl Genre and in itself an anime classic for years to come.

Fly High, Aviators!

2008-07-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Chojin Sentai Jetman is THE greatest Super Sentai Series ever created. EVER.

I have had a lasting nostalgia for Tokusatsu productions from Japan as a kid, back when I knew them as these shows with people in plastic and spandex suits fighting guys in rubber monster suits. The special effects astounded me everytime, even if it was just the same stock footage over and over again, and I remember the cryptic text in Japanese, "tsuzuku" (to be continued) at the end of every episode.

From dramatic fare such as Maskman (a show that until recently had been my top contender for favorite Super Sentai,) and Bioman (considered by many Filipino Tokusatsu fans to be a cherished nostalgic classic) to weird campy fare like Shaider, and total children's fluff like Machine Man (who could forget the car driven by lying down, the flying baseball, or the cape made of a tablemat?) I devoured tokusatsu in my childhood.

Ironically, I had 'grown out' of Tokusatsu and Super Sentai when Jetman first aired on Philippine TV on RPN Channel 9. I had dismissed it, along with the other series that had been showing (IBC-13's Turbo Ranger, ABC-5's Goggle V and Fiveman, as well as a load of other series) as not as good as the classics I had watched in my childhood.

How wrong I was.

So why is Jetman the greatest Super Sentai? Let me say the reasons why:

1. It has all the good Super Sentai cliches - Like Maskman, it has the "my loved one is an enemy" cliche (expanded into no less than TWO love polygons by near series end,) there's the part where the robot gets pwned at the series half, only to be helped by another new robot (yay for new toys to buy) the villains get a major upgrade near the end, and there's this meddling new bad guy that you see near the series' end. Plus the climactic battle at the end.

2. It doesn't fall into the monster a week pattern - despite the cliches, the series does a good job of avoiding the boring monster a week pattern of previous series (monster causes trouble, heroes stop them and defeat monster, heroes fight and defeat giant version of monster, everyone is happy.) In one instance the heroes don't want to fight the monster; leading to a situation where no finishing move is done and the monster actually surrenders. Other episodes don't even go to the "fighting the giant monster" stage, or there is no monster for that episode/week, giving way to (gasp!) actual characterization and damn good writing for a Super Sentai.

3. Even the silly episodes are entertaining - in one episode Ako (Blue Swallow) is shown to have a sempai who is a ramen freak (no doubt this episode was sponsored by Nissin or something like that) who collects vintage ramen. Suddenly this ramen beast thing named God Ramen (WTF!!!) appears and helps him make the perfect ramen which he calls Ako-chan, where he promotes this by dressing up in ridiculously fake glasses and beard ala Groucho Marx, singing double entendres about how he wants to "eat" Ako-chan. WTF!!!!!!!!!!

In another episode a dimensional monster tries to live good because he is too nice to defeat the Jetmen (in one case he almost causes the total defeat of the Jetmen but fails due to a random act of kindness) and becomes an assistant at a hair salon. WTF!!!!!

4. Great writing, even if you have to suspend your disbelief sometimes - there are some great standalone episodes, like the one where two of the Jetmen are trapped in the bus where strange murders occur in the bus whenever it comes through a tunnel. Everyone suspects everyone else, when it turns out that the bus itself was the culprit! Pretty clever stuff for a Super Sentai.

5. The enemies were just too badass - 70% of the episodes, you see the Jetmen's ass getting kicked royally, with most of them turned into chess pieces, trapped inside pictures, that kind of crazy shit. Gray was an example of "cool" badass, a cyborg who enjoys fine arts and listening to classical piano music (not making this up!) Emperor Tranza, who appears later in the show, demonstrates his powers disguised as a human by outperforming all of the Jetmen in their respective talents (beating the Yellow Jetman in an eating competition!) and making great plans to ruin the Jetmen's day. Radiguet is one of the baddest villains EV4R and you want to see him bite the dust because he is so evil.

At one point even the home base of the Jetmen are attacked. Villains actually entering the HOME BASE, which is like their heaven. It's like if Dr. Man went inside the Biodragon and attacked the Biomen in their own turf. Of course, the Jetmen retaliate by attacking the Villains' home base, the Vyrock.

Also, the mechas, as invincible as they seemed in previous installments, are raped pretty bad this time around. No simple burying in the ground like Maskman's Great Five Robo, no way boss. Instead the robots get their arms chopped off, their stomachs disemboweled. Even the finishing attack of the Jetmen's Jet Icarus, the Birdonic Sabre, gets defeated and chopped in half, at least TWO times in the series.

6. the Red guy was not the coolest one in the block - As much as we, as kids, wanted to be Red One or Red Mask in our little playdates, Gai Yuuki (Black Condor) will forever be the true coolest Jetman. Going his own way always and not really caring at first for world peace, he strikes a friendly rivalry with the less cool Red Hawk. Their heads butt frequently throughout the first part of the series, culminating into a flat out brawl near the series midpoint. In one instance he singlehandedly kills one enemy monster, transforming while walking in the middle of explosions. Badass.

7. MECHAS OMG WTF - there were not two, but THREE mecha in this series. Two of which combined into a bigger, more gianter (hehe, "gianter") robot (who STILL got beat up by the enemy) and the third, annoying ADHD robot turned into a cannon that served as the gianter robot's weapon. All three got their asses kicked in the end.

8. WEAPONS OMG WTF - they had these cool swords that you could attack to their blasters, and later in the series, they even had new blasters that they could lock into their old blasters, forming new, powerful, BIGGER blasters. Oh, and they had this car that turned into their cannon (which was also destroyed by the enemy - see, this enemy is really badass, or the Jetmen are wimps)

9. The Evil Plans were actually working - often you just laugh at the incompetence of the villains in making any sensible, concrete plans for world domination/world destruction/killing the heroes. Here, their plans were sensible, often worked to an extent, and would cause the Jetmen serious damage. Made me kind of admire the villains for what they did.

10. The Characters - ALL of the characters had their own feelings, nuances, likes and dislikes, even the villains. Each of the Jetmen (and each of the Villains) had at least one episode to tell their story. At the center of this are complex love polygons within the Jetmen (Red, Black, Yellow and Pink) outside the Jetmen (Gray, Red, and Maria and a little Black) which makes for very interesting characters. It also makes you sad when a major villain or character bites the dust.

This led to the series having the best developed characters in Super Sentai.

11. The ending - I can't say anything about the ending, but IMO it's one of the most surprising, shocking endings of a Super Sentai yet. Fortunately for fans of the series, the story is continued in a (probably non-canon, but meh) manga that resolves all of the hanging plot threads.

Give Jetman a try and see if you think it's the best Super Sentai Ever. Like me.

Cinemalaya 2007 Catchup: Ligaw Liham

2008-07-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

Back in the day, we didn't have mobile phones or the internet. Sometimes we didn't have phones at all. I could remember in my childhood, before the days of PLDT's Zero Backlog program, of going to the PLDT center in Alabang (a 20-30 minute drive from home) just to make a call to my grandparents in Bulacan. Connecting to others was difficult, and often the only way one could communicate to another through long distances was through letters.

This theme of connection is mixed in with a man's first love in the independent film Ligaw (na) Liham. Set sometine in the 70s, in a place where letter writing may be the only line for people to communicate with the outside world, Nor is a man who is in control of this system when it suddenly stops working for one reason or another. Although placed in an outsider role in the community (he is considered the village idiot or something to that effect) he uses his power over the letter writing system to write letters to a village lass, Karen, in the place of her husband. Soon the exchange of letters makes him fall in love with the girl. The usual complications stemming from this unlikely correspondence ensues.

The film is one of the examples of increasing film production quality in recent Cinemalaya entries. Although technically there are no problems (and the film deserves some merit in terms of cinematography, editing and music,) and there are solid performances from both leads, the film may strike some as paced too slowly or overlong.

There isn't much else I can say about the film but it explores its themes adequately and gives a good, if slightly flawed, story of a first love.

Cinemalaya 2007 Catchup: The Shorts

2008-07-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Like the films I will be reviewing, I'll just make the reviews as short as I can. Some spoilers may follow.

Doble Vista - Only saw 30% of this one. Too bad, since it was promoting itself as a noir. Being a fan of noir, I wanted to see if this really was what it was. From what I saw... maybe.

Durog - Interesting film. A hallucinogenic look into the destruction of one man's psyche, all because he wanted a fix. Well, he got a fix alright. OK performances from Baron Geisler and Roxanne Barcelo, good camerawork and solid plot.

Gabon - My friend never "got" what this film is all about. To me, it is a reflection of the cultural traditions we have regarding family. A little girl wants to follow her parents so much, she dutifully goes to school to finish her schoolwork even though she is already dead. Good performances from the non-actors.

Liwanag sa Dilim - a bit abstract, but quite intriguing from start to finish. A interesting take on Man vs. Himself. Go go Mark Gil.

Maikling Kwento - quiet slice of life film. I kinda noticed that this took place in the 80's during the waning years of Marcos' regime, although it didn't really have to do anything about that.

Misteryo ng Hapis - Too angsty for my taste. It was dripping with it and left me with a slightly sour impression. My friend liked this though, so it might just be me.

Nineball - probably the funniest short of the lot, and the least serious. Watch out for a cameo from Efren Reyes.

Rolyo - a look into a child's dreams for a better future as she collects film reels. Here she sees a world that seems alien to her, a world that she wants to reach. At least, that's how I saw it. Nice.

Tagapagligtas - one of the more serious films. Seeing that I encounter people like these everyday in the hospital, it has a personal touch to it for me. Should we judge these people for what they have done to themselves and to others? Good production values and acting.

To Ni- as a kid who often played alone, this kinda touched me a bit. OK acting from the child actor/s.

That about wraps it up for the shorts. Told you the reviews were short.

Cinemalaya 2007 Catchup: Still Life

2008-07-10T07:41:00.000-07:00

Yo.

It's been a while, hasn't it? Gearing up for posts regarding Cinemalaya 2008, let's first finish what we started last year (has it already been a year?) and get some reviews in.

Still Life

One of my favorites from last year, it details the story about a painter who, after discovering that he is suffering from a debilitating condition, seeks refuge in a remote seaside location. Here he meets a mysterious woman with her own story to tell and the two forge a peculiar bond.

See that picture above? Absolutely fantastic composition and choice of location. Great cinematography from Dan Villegas. Musicwise I have no complaints, and the production value, like the other competition films this year, has gone up a notch.

The story is quite entertaining, as it is one of the few Filipino movies that tells of a love not quite romantic, not quite platonic. Tired of the slew of sugary sweet rom-coms that have dominated Philippine Cinema since the turn of the millenium, this is fresh as fresh can come for me. Both leads deliver a brilliant performance and their on-screen chemistry is perfect. Glaiza de Castro deserves some merit as Emma, and gives a nuanced, natural performance. I look forward to seeing her in more, similar (or not so similar) productions. Watch for a cameo by John Lloyd Cruz in the beginning!

One of the few complaints I heard about the story is that it did not need the sudden twist at the end (and the twist is indeed something major that I will not spoil it here.) It works perfectly as two people meeting each other transiently in a remote place and saving each other by means of their new friendship. In some ways it draws parallels to another interesting movie that I enjoyed, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation. Personally it could work either way, and ending the movie before and after the twist did not have any detrimental effect of my enjoyment of the film.

There was many a teary eye in the cinema in the closing moments of the film, and there were some sniffles present too. Ultimately the film strikes me as a clever little not-quite-romantic drama that deserves its place among the greats of Philippine indie cinema.

Three Days of (Too Much) Darkness

2007-12-15T03:37:00.000-08:00

Soothsayers say that sometime in the future, the world will be enveloped in what is called the three days of darkness. In this period, the sun will not shine and demons will be given free reign to roam over the earth. Anyone who is caught outdoors will immediately die. Anyone indoors will only find protection in the light of a candle and prayers. This will signify a great sifting of the believers and the unbelievers in this world.

This is the background of a recent independent film by Khavn Dela Cruz, entitled Tatlong Araw ng Kadiliman (Literally, Three Days of Darkness.) As ambitious as it was, in this honest blogger's opinion it ends up a bit short in delivering the atmosphere that it tries to establish. What ensues is a slightly entertaining mess that leaves you sauntering in the dark.

Precious Adona (who has now probably entered the public consciousness for her FHM cover appearance) Katya Santos and Gwen Garci are three women/halfies(didn't know this until I researched stuff about the film!)/friends who happen to stumble upon the apocalypse. Although the three nights of darkness figures prominently in the film, the film is actually more of a study of these characters and their convictions, their relationships with each other and with life.

It is portrayed early on that these three are sinners; each of them has their own personal conflicts and displays (or hides) their angst in their own personal way. I won't spoil you any of their issues, since the fun in watching this movie is in the discovery of these things.

(In a metaphorical way, you could say that the three women each represent the a certain point in time in our country with respect to our colonizers, with each one having their own sins and problems in this light. Try watching the film from this perspective and see if you can notice a connection.)

As a horror film the film does not deliver, because the atmosphere does not work as well as it could (and it could.) Digital films tend to capture darker images, and with minimal lights and the right sounds you get a convincing atmosphere of darkness. For most of the movie it works to an extent, but nothing scary or climactic ever does happen and it ends up being boring (until the climax does appear, and in this case it is too late.) A good portion of the end takes place in complete darkness, and I thought that the implied horror of what goes on in that darkness could work. Unfortunately the scene lingers far too long inside the darkness and you are left checking your watch (that glows in the dark) waiting to see how long it has taken.

Another aspect touted by the movie is its "extreme" factor, in one instance showing its rating by the cinema ratings board for scenes of extreme violence and sex. To be honest, this movie is pretty tame in comparison to many other films of its kind, made by Miike or some of the Category III movies of Hong Kong (and as Miike can show, dread can be expressed minimally through silence and well-paced scenes) Many strange scenes abound but they are more bizarre than scary or 'violent.'

There is sex, but the titillating factor is kinda taken away (how can you see sex in the dark?) and the sex is used as a plot and characterization device, but like the scene with the total darkness, it tends to be overlong. This is considering that I enjoy the occasional random sex scene.

At the end of the world, instead of repenting, the three characters each succumb to their sins and suffer the consequences. In a way it tends to be a reflection of our own selves, and as flawed as it is, this film serves as a big mirror reflecting us.

If the world would end today, would you be ready?

Cinejapan Interlude: Tony Takitani

2007-07-31T04:44:00.001-07:00

Let's take a short break from Philippine cinema to take a look at this short simple film. Don't worry, we'll go back to the filmfest coverage... hopefully :p

Ever since I read one of Haruki Murakami's novels or short stories, I've always been entranced by the way his story unfolds. There is a recurring theme of alienation, of lost love, the emptiness of a material world, and the utterly surreal. He's one of the authors that can make moping around for months on end terribly interesting.

The complexity of his works means that a film adaptation (or any adaptation for that matter) is a daunting task. How can one capture the essence of his works? Thankfully, in this Jun Ichikawa-directed adaptation of his work Tony Takitani, whatever spark or element that makes Murakami's stories shine comes out here.

Tony Takitani (Issei Ogata) is a lonely illustrator with a peculiar name. He draws amazing depictions of machines, but his drawings are emotionless and have no life. Due to his name he is a shy and introverted person, and has few people he would call friends. However, one day he meets a woman (Rie Miyazawa) who becomes his life. For the first time his life seems fulfilling, and warmth enters his life. However, her obsessive shopping habits begin to bother him, and even a small decision turns out to impact their lives forever.

From start to finish, the movie is narrated by an omnipresent voice, as if one is reading the story to us. The dialogue slides back and forth between his narration and the character's own dialogue, which is a nice, surprising touch. Normally I would not like continuous narration in a film, but we must remember that this is a story more than anything else, a book come to life. This is also evident in the panning transition shots in between scenes, which lazily slide by as if turning the pages of a book.

The shots themselves are exquisite despite being simple; lonely hues permeate the screen as one screen goes to another. Attention is placed on Rie Miyazawa's lithe, elegant figure (and her feet!) as she waltzes up the stairs of the department store to buy another batch of designer clothes. There is great use of slow motion and close-ups to create a minimalist feel.

The acting is quite good, but spotty at parts. The film basically consists of only two actors playing multiple roles. Rie Miyazawa is great, but some scenes seem forced. Issey Ogata is great as both Tony Takitani and his jazz musician father.

The music is from Ryuichi Sakamoto, and is in its own right minimalist, yet appropriate. Using a single piano is perfect for evoking the emotions that show in both the story and the film. His piano clusters echo out at the right times, punctuating feelings and hopes struggling to break the surface.

In the end the film is a great little gem that most fans of Murakami should watch; and even if you are not a fan of Murakami and don't mind slow paced movies, this is for you.

Cinemalaya 2007: Pisay

2007-07-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

Pisay Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuXGrIWDZ5I

On the night of my elementary graduation, the mother of one of my classmates asked my mother on the way to the parking lot: is your son going to Philippine Science High School? Since I was attached to my old school, having studied there for eight years already, and because PSHS was an hour and a half trip away, two hours considering traffic, I didn't want to go there and opted to stay in my school for four more years, two of which proved to be the two most miserable years of my life.

But I digress.

After I entered college I heard about what the school is: a school composed of some of the Philippines' best and brightest students, subjected to subsidized, advanced education in the hopes that one day they will become leaders in the fields of science and technology. They took Physics in the first year! That was a fourth year subject for us.

I also encountered many students and alumni from the school and some are good friends of mine. So when I found out that there was a film depicting the lives of students from this school, I wanted to watch it, to at least gain a perspective on how they lived their high school lives. What came out is a great and heartfelt film by well-known filmmaker Aureus Solito, of Maximo Oliveros fame.

Pisay (the contracted slang form of the school's name) tells of the lives of eight high school students studying in the university. The film itself is divided into four parts, each representing one of the four school years of high school education. The film is set in the early to mid 1980's - smack dab in the middle of the social upheavals that surrounded the last years of the Marcos regime and the birth of a new Philippines under Cory Aquino.

Freshman year details the story of Rom, a brilliant student from a less off family whose father is an OFW and whose mother works in the market, and Wena, who comes from a wealthy family from Negros. Almost as soon as he enters the clasroom sparks fly and first love is born. But the things expected of the country's finest students soon get in the way of their romance. Also in this segment, the trials of being newbies at the school are explored. This chapter may be considered as introductory, and the various scenes between the two characters are nice. Kudos to the scriptwriter for not forcing Wena's actress to speak Tagalog lines all the time. It's really weird in, say TV when I hear actors like Sam Milby try (and I emphasize TRY) to speak all Tagalog lines.

Sophomore year revolves around Mat, whose life at the school is anything but stellar. He's faltering in one subject (Math,) he has trouble adjusting to dorm life, including being bullied by his dorm-mates and he is homesick. Add to the fact that he was the best in his old school, the dramatic shift in his life takes a toll. His only comforts are his friends, especially his bright and inquisitive friend Minggoy, and his Math teacher, who seems genuinely concerned about him.

I like this part of the story because I identify with the main character. I feel what he feels when he struggles with his new position, and I like how he faced his conflicts and how his teacher's advice really helped him - that it's all about being a big fish in a vast ocean - you're still a big fish, but you're still in a damn big ocean.

Junior year is my favorite - it focuses on Andy, who applies for the school's version of the Officer's Training Corps for CAT, and Liway, the socially minded daughter of activists and union leaders. As the chaos of the last year of the Martial Law era approaches, the two evolve from indifferent project partners to genuine friends. Plus there's some of that ol' social relevance in there as well.

Finally, Senior year tells the story of Euri, a boy with a predilection for the performance arts - which isn't a good thing, since the school stipulates that for the education to remain free - one has to pick a science related course or pay the entire expense of education at the school. As this part unfolds he is in conflict with what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

Nostalgia. If I were to express my thoughts about the film in one word, that would be it. Every High school student would relate to the events of the film - their first high school romance, their experiences with CAT, dealing with academic or other problems. You don't have to be a genius to have these problems - and that is where this film derives one of its strengths - that you don't have to be from the school to "get" the film. Everyone who experienced high school and all of its ups and downs can sit down, appreciate it, and be entertained.

The cinematography of the film is good, as one would expect. Film quality seems to have improved since Maximo and Tuli. The soundtrack is quite amazing, composed of songs from the period and some original songs. Buy the soundtrack if you can, it's good. There are no problems in editing or scene selection. Another amazing thing is the amount of cooperation the people from Philippine Science had in having locations for filming - most of the spots in the campus are featured in the school. As much as it was a labor of love from the crew, it was also a gift of love for the people in the campus to let them film.

The greatest strength of the film is in its ensemble cast, as these talented child actors deliver a remarkable performance as their respective characters. No hammed up or contrived lines (as I see in some child actors today and in the past) just natural, honest to goodness acting. Thank God for these people. The adult cast is not bad either, specially a great performance from the person who played the Science Teacher (whose name escapes me at the moment) in giving life to a teacher who, as a classmate related, is someone all of us have had in the course of our high school lives. If I could give all of these people acting awards, I would.

The film was made through the stories of the alumni of the school. In the theatre, I could see all of the appreciation the students and alumni had for this film - the theatre was jampacked with PSHS alumni and students, probably even faculty, and everyone showed that appreciation with wild, enthusiastic applause. Of all the four shorts, the fourth one seems to be a reflection of the director's own self, having been (if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I am!) an alumnus of the school.

Pisay is a film that deserves a wider audience. It is a heartwarming tale of youth and the joys and pains of an adolescent life. Despite its independent status it is a film that gains a lot of mainstream appeal (and indeed, it was voted as the most popular pick at the end of the festival) and is something that does not feel manufactured, but something heartfelt. It is, in my opinion, the director's most refined work to date, and also his most personal.

Cinemalaya 2007: Gamot sa Pagkabagot

2007-07-29T03:31:00.000-07:00

Wednesday saw the world premiere of Ato Bautista's Gamot sa Pagkabagot. He is the director of another well known film in the indie scene, Ang Aking Pagkagising Mula sa Kamulatan (a film that, despite three opportunities, I have not seen.) Shot in murky DV, the opening of a film is screens of pure color interchanging in the background of strange music.

The film can be divided into three parts. The first deals with a woman being pressured by her companion into having a sexual experience. As this part goes on, we see that she has a dark past that she does not want to talk about. The second part deals with a boy who is being abused by his teacher. With no one to turn to or to vent his anger, he quietly fills himself up with hate, bound to explode, and the third and final half deals with a person who repeats a chilling yet mysterious mantra - Di ako mamamatay tao, Hindi ako mamamatay tao (I'm not a murderer, I'm not a murderer....)

To say more would be to spoil the whole film, so I'll leave that to some spoiler space later. The story is tightly written and is pretty straightforward, even though it might not seem that way at first. The acting is ok, especially the three (well, four) main characters (although there are other standouts in the supporting cast, especially the boy's boss in the second part of the film.)

Editing is okay in some parts but some of the editing in the other parts are, at the very least, strange choices. I attribute it to some technical error in whatever was used to edit the film. There are also a few continuity errors near the last part (hint: watch for T-shirts) but that happens in most films and is barely noticeable anyway. Sound tends to get repetitive at times but wraps up nicely at the end, and for the record, the best parts in the film sound wise in my opinion were during the transition sequences. Nice touch.

Being a DV film, the quality of the movie is decidedly not as high quality as the other choices, but that may also have been a directorial decision considering the topic of the movie. There are some nice shots composition wise, notably several scenes in the second half which give a picturesque quality to the scene being shot. The movie paces itself quite well and never drags or bores.

Overall, the film was quite good and a pleasant surprise to watch. After seeing this, I'm now really curious to how good Ato Bautista's other film is. I definitely have to see that one someday.

SPOILERS FOLLOW... don't read if you haven't watched the film

The three main characters in the film seem to all have one thing in common - they are denying something basic about themselves to the point that it drives them mad - the woman and her sexual inhibitions, the boy and his many, many issues, the murderer and his past. Each one manages to resolve this internal conflict, but only through some sort of process.

The girl does this by self-examination through a second personality, the boy does this by talking to his apathetic boss and the murderer does it by caring for a woman stuck in his home. The results are all strikingly different, but are definite resolutions: The woman ultimately integrates her second personality, and ultimately, dies in the process, (and ironically at that,) the boy lashes out at his parents who seemingly do nothing but ignore and abuse him, and the man returns to his old home and lets go of his past.

In this movie's case, the story is cyclical, and all the stories are connected. At first I didn't realize this, thinking the film to be an omnibus. But the way the three stories are intertwined is quite clever, and can leave the casual viewer a bit confused, but thankfully, not too much, thanks to the storytelling skills of the scriptwriter/director.

While thinking about the film, I thought about something interesting (albeit something probably completely unrelated) about the film. If you place the characters in the context of our society, the results are interesting. The woman could represent Philippine women in general, and the way their sexual expression is inhibited by the pitfalls of society. The boy could represent our youth, abused by society and often ignored when they need help. And what about the man? Does it represent us as a whole? Even more, what does that imply when we take that in the context of what ultimately happened?

I like the movie... it makes me think. I guess it really is a cure for boredom.

Cinemalaya 2007: Introduction

2007-07-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

July 20-29 marked a special occasion in the Philippine independent cinema scene, the 2007 Cinemalaya Film festival. From all around the Philippines, the best talent in independent filmmaking gather together and share their works to the world. Nine full length films and ten short films have been selected for competition. The full length films are:

Ligaw Liham, a drama about interrupted lives set in Negros;

Pisay, a slice of life drama comedy about students of the Philippine Science High School;

Tribu, a movie about street gangs in Tondo;

Still Life, an offbeat lovestory;

Tukso, a Rashomon like village tale,

Kadin, a simple story about children living in Basilan;

Gulong, the life of a boy and a bicycle;

Endo, with love stories and contract jobs;

and Sinungaling na Buwan, a movie about the "end of the affair" for three couples.

In addition to the above films, they'll be showing a load of other films, mostly films and shorts from previous festivals and world premieres of other films. I'll try to cover as much as I can in the next few posts...