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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Sunday, July 25, 2004

entry arrow9:44 PM | Why Pinoy Cinema Flounders

This is another one of those "Philippine cinema is dying" articles. I subscribe more to Ed Cabagnot Jr.'s more provocative claim: "It is, in fact, dead." From the Manila Times, we get:



While others are just waiting for the industry to just die, at least one living national artist is hopeful that the local film industry would catch up. Movie director Eddie Romero insists that the industry can make it, for as long as the government supports it. "We are the most heavily taxed film industry in the world," he says. "It's very expensive to produce a movie these days. We need tax incentives for the raw materials needed to make a movie. If I were to make Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon today, it would cost the producer P40 million. He would have a hard time getting his investment back. Taxes would reduce any profit he might make."


True, true. But I also blame another thing: the sheer incestuousness of the Philippine film industry, which has people becoming movie or TV stars mostly not out of sheer talent, but for the fact that he or she is the son or daughter or niece or nephew or what-not of this and that. Try tracing the family tree and sex lives between our local celebrities -- what an interesting, crisscrossing web you will make.



The incestuousness does not even stop at the familial. It goes on to the creative level: meaning to say people in the industry has a habit of lionizing mediocre talent, just because.



Take director Joel Lamangan, the most inept, boring, talentless director in the history of film. (And take note, I'm not just talking Philippine film.)



Why does anybody even think he's good? His movies are soooooo bad they're like celluloid tissue paper meant solely for shit. And yet so many movie people consider him the incarnation of Lino Brocka!



Huff, huff...


[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich




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