Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
[84th of 100]. If I must remain truthful to this list as a very personal take on movies with impact, I cannot be prudish and excise from it films of more ... salacious fare. Take it from the co-author of Don't Tell Anyone: Literary Smut. It's hard to write sex scenes in fiction well, and I'm sure depicting it for film is even more challenging. Sex in film has always been a fascination -- not just because it makes the pulse race but also because it is so difficult to capture and still make the film ... artistic, that is to say, more than "mere pornography." And yet there are so many good films out there which transgress that line, things like Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses or Peque Gallaga's Scorpio Nights or Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris or Gaspar Noe's Love or Lars Von Trier's Nymphonamiac or Alain Guiraudie's Stranger By the Lake or Frank Ripploh's Taxi zum Klo, all of which are brazen and do not apologise for the explicit or unsimulated copulations they have. And yet they remain undeniably artistic. Maybe its depth, maybe its context, maybe its form informing the show and action of genitalia -- but films of this kind somehow do not make me feel ashamed for wanting to see them, because there is so much more in the film than just a focus on lovemaking. The carnal content becomes a metaphor, and you cannot strip away the boldness of its depictions without marring the intent and the wholeness of the material. They're necessary, in other words. One of my favorite sex films is John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus, which revolves around a sexually diverse ensemble of New Yorkers desperate for connection, often meeting in an artistic, sexual salon in Brooklyn, where they make sense of their neuroses while getting their kicks. I love this film, I love specifically the gay threesome in it that involves a spirited rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." It is the most heartfelt film I have ever seen with a lot of sex going on in it, and I do believe it should be on Netflix for everyone to see. Which gave me the idea that beholding frank carnality onscreen does not have to be a clandestine endeavor. It can be enjoyed openly as artistic expression the same way we can't our secret trips to PornHub or alter Twitter. Which brings me to this anime from 2003, rightfully a gay hentai or sexually explicit Japanese animation, with no director to its name but with a writing credit going to Ashika Sakura, a popular [female] Japanese manga writer known for her yaoi and shotacon stories. The film itself is short, only 30 minutes long, and even with that slim running time, it is divided into two episodes. The first part details a developing affair between two manga artists, derailed slightly by rumours of past infidelities -- generally giving us a humorous, romantic story about trust and the irresistibility of pure attraction. The second part gives us a more challenging fare: a college student goes to do his parttime job as a pet-sitter for a rabbit, only to find out that said "pet" is really a naked boy tied up in a closet in an ongoing BDSM game -- and then something clicks between them. Needless to say both episodes contain acts of explicit sex that it can be amusing to see it all displayed in animated form, if not for the genuineness of the surprise and affection we get from the characters. The second episode for example limns a darker and very disturbing side to sexuality, but the unfolding interaction between "pet" and "pet-sitter" shows a complexity I probably would not get if this was a live action film. The sex is indeed hot in this film, but what remains with me are the humanity of the characters of this OVA. It's -- in the long and short of it -- quite unexpectedly sweet and complex, and you don't get to say that about a lot of porn, or even plain ordinary films, out there. What's the film?
[75th of 100]. There is so much to like in Pixar's splendid catalogue of animated films, which may be because of their sworn fidelity to the primacy of "story" over any other considerations. It has not been an entirely flawless output -- [insert your Pixar disappointment here] -- but the fantastic of the heap overwhelms the also-rans, and for me, the best of them all has got to be this unlikely 2007 tale of a rat that becomes Paris' best chef. First there is the sheer audaciousness of the conception. Think about the pitch that was somehow given the green light by Pixar executives: "We're doing a story about a rat surrounded by a family of garbage-dwelling rodents, whose marked difference is his uncanny sense of smell and taste, which become the foundation by which he envisions himself a chef. But he's still a rat right through the end." A rat. That disease-carrying denizen of sewers, whose very presence is indicative of waste and dirtiness. A rat. A rat in the kitchen, making food. Pitch approved! The very idea is ludicrous, no? Which may be why the artists behind the film, in coming up with the finished and acceptable concept art of Remy, our unlikely gastronomic hero, [1] have rendered his fur in a cute, unthreatening shade of purplish blue, [2] have made him a biped [ostensibly to keep his front paws clean enough to handle ingredients], and [3] have made his eyes big enough to trick us into "baby-facing" him, ensuring our perception of cuteness. But everything works, and the film -- having made us identify with a cute rodent with big dreams and singular talents -- takes us into a roller-coaster ride from the countrysides of France into the heart of Paris. In the fine dining capital of the world, we start charting Remy's climb into gastronomic heights with the help of a buffoonish young man named Alfredo Linguini, and with some challenges thrown their way by the jealous and suspicious head chef Skinner. The pratfalls of the story aside, the film enchants us with its showcase of culinary feasts -- this is one of the best food films there is -- and finally with its degustation of the artistic theme: anyone can cook, the film proclaims, but only the fearless can be great. The film very much defines for me the search by an artist of his artistry, an often fraught journey that is riddled with gauntlets, misgivings, and the uncharitability of those who proclaim themselves gatekeepers. But given that, it also ends with a prescription for criticism, voiced by Anton Ego, the fearsome food critic turned unlikely champion: "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the 'new.' The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new: an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, 'Anyone can cook.' But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere." That has always guided me in the pursuit of my art, as well as my criticism. Which is why, if you don't find me writing in my column about a concert, or a play, or an exhibit, or a restaurant, or a film in Dumaguete, only three things are possibilities: [1] I wasn't there, and didn't see it; [2] I was involved, which forfeits the writing of a critique, but not a press release [of course!]; or [3] I didn't like it. But to champion the groundbreaking and the marvelous when it comes? I'll be there. What's the film?
[45th of 100]. Sometimes I love a film for the place it evokes. When I dream of paradise, for example, I do not think of sun-kissed beaches dotted with palm trees, blue-green waters all around, the sky a clear azure. [You could chalk up that indifference to me growing up an island boy where this was not paradise, it was -- and is -- just my regular, ordinary neighborhood.] My idea of paradise has a name: Koriko, the setting for Studio Ghibli's perfectly realized tale of a girl witch coming of age, and coming into her powers, complete with flying broom and talking cat. She stumbles upon Koriko, an island city patterned after Stockholm and Visby in Sweden, and decides to stay in the city to practice whatever witchcraft skill she develops, mostly because, like us, she has fallen for Koriko's charms. And what's not to like about a place teeming with Romanesque architecture, and trees and parks, and streetcars? But the way Hayao Miyazaki has captured it makes you believe that a good story can be enormously strengthened if it has a strong sense of place. I think this is a major reason why I return to this film now and again, to behold how Miyazaki can create a colourful, beautiful, pulsating place with the medium of animation -- and I realize all of his films have this sheer quality of "place-sense" [the jungles of Princess Mononoke, the fantastical spa of Spirited Away, the castle in the sky in Laputa, the farmhouse in My Neighbour Totoro, the safflower fields in Only Yesterday] that is very much a part of the appeal of Studio Ghibli's catalogue. Kiki's story also charms, of course, and it is always refreshing to behold a story where the conflict does not come with a seething antagonist [perhaps an evil witch out to usurp Kiki's place!] but is channeled through a narrative of finding your place, finding your strength, and staying true to who you are. What's the film?
[40th of 100]. The first time I watched this anime, I was unprepared for its power and its towering impact. At the end of it, when we finally got the certainty of Seita's and Setsuko's fates, I was a mess, I think I actually muttered something like, "How dare an animated film make me cry this much!" It wasn't the first time an animated film moved me: there was the trauma of Bambi's mother's death in my childhood, and there was exhilarating joy when I stumbled upon The Little Mermaid in high school. And it wasn't as if the week in 2001 when I saw this movie there were no other animated films that also moved me. It was the third day of Eiga Sai, the annual Japanese film festival which was marking a leg of a nationwide tour in Dumaguete with the year's theme being Japanese anime, and we had just screened Akira on Monday and Barefoot Gen on Tuesday. [This was the first time anime were being screened in a film festival in Dumaguete, and we were drawing SRO crowds at every screening. I was the local organizer.] When the lights came up on this Isao Takahata contemporary classic, there were no dry eyes in the house -- and the applause was electrifying. It was so well-received that we had to hastily arrange another screening of the film because of the instant demand. In the years hence, I'd recommend this film once in a while to anyone who'd opine to me that animated films -- "kinengkoy" in the local parlance -- were for kids only and shouldn't be taken seriously. To watch these people's faces slowly crumple into tearful grimaces under the weight of the movie's emotional force is a joy to behold. [I've encountered one or two who feel nothing -- and frankly speaking, these people scare me.] I fully understand the impact of the movie. It's a carefully constructed anti-war drama with two winsome children trying to make do with the increasing hardships of war realities in Japan, the narrative a slowly tightening screw that never hesitates to dip into horror and despair. And the Studio Ghibli touches are evocative. I still remember a scene from earlier in the movie when Seita, the older brother of the girl Setsuko, just received devastating news he has no way of breaking to his sister. He finds her in the playground, and somehow the girl intuits the unsaid, and the film decides to stay with their silence, the girl playing quietly on the sand, the boy sitting pensively on the ground in front of a forlorn jungle jim. The tiny details are awesome to behold: a small breeze blows, their tiny bodies twitch, the tears fall -- and everything is suspended in such painful tension we actually feel the ache of the scene. The film taught me to take animation seriously; sometimes the medium can best channel the depths of humanity not even reality captured on film can show. What's the film?
3:00 PM |
Short Takes on the Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films, 2019
In Daria Kashcheeva's contemplative Dcera [Daughter], the titular character watches over her father who has been taken ill, and slowly her mind wanders through scattered memories of life with him which are not always bright and sunny, painting her father as someone who was not always there for her. But the short film's more than this; it's poetic and complex, and does not give easy answers -- which makes this the best of the lot among the nominees.
We meet a painter and his wife in Bruno Collet's wonderfully affecting Mémorable. He is slowly suffering through the effects of dementia, and she struggles to keep up with the challenges that come with her husband's condition. That we see his struggle rendered in painterly, impressionistic mode makes this tale transcend its grounding sadness.
Song Siqi's Sister is told in stark greyscale that reminds you immediately it is in the territory of retrieved memory, and it is: it is a man's recollection of growing up in a Korean home, with a younger sister who was born to exasperate him. Except that the sister takes on a surreal existence, and the film backtracks with its revelation in Joker-mode, which is frankly disappointing.
In Rosana Sullivan's Kitbull, a cantankerous kitten finds a home in a junky backyard, only to realize she is sharing it with a downtrodden bulldog. Enemies soon turn friends, giving us a film that finds comfort in its utter mediocrity.
In Matthew A. Cherry and Everett Downing Jr.'s Hair Love, a very young African-American girl tries to deal with the everyday challenge of her natural hair, and enlists her clueless father in the task. Hijinks ensues -- but it's so blandly told, it's quite forgettable. And then there's that twist of an ending that's so on the nose with its sentimentality, it's pretty much eye-rolling.
VERDICT: In order of preference, Dcera (Daughter) > Memorable > Sister > Kitbull > Hair Love
12:59 PM |
Short Takes on the Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
Bobby Pontillas and Andrew Chesworth's One Small Step (2018) is basically the prologue of Up + the prologue of Contact + the epilogue of Cinema Paradiso repurposed to become a tale of a girl who dreams of becoming an astronaut.
Psychotherapy becomes animal business in Alison Snowden and David Fine's Animal Behaviour (2018), a good enough effort that metaphorizes through animal stereotypes our quirks and neuroses. Doesn't offer anything else, but funny in places.
How do you animate dementia in old age? Louise Bagnall's Late Afternoon (2017) tries, and comes up with a stream-of-consciousness style of animation that feels just right. And yet it is also strangely detached even if it strives to make us cry.
In Domee Shi's Bao (2018), we get a strange mix of culinary and empty-nest drama. It's cute in many places, but also sometimes creepy in its narrative choices. [She eats her "son"!] Props for occasional Pixar weirdness.
Trevor Jimenez's Weekends (2018) is so painterly it sometimes distracts from its story of a boy shuffling in-between the houses of divorcing parents. Gorgeous and sad, at the same time.
VERDICT: In order of preference, Weekends > One Small Step > Bao > Animal Behaviour > Late Afternoon.
In a kinder world, you give a grade of A for effort. But the world is often exacting, and as much as I enjoyed, to a degree, Avid Liongoren’s Saving Sally (2016) [trailer here], it fails as a compelling piece of cinema for me. I was suitably entertained, but it never moved me.
Yes, we’ve heard the story of its 10-year inception — a story of an artistic struggle that manages to tug our hearts. Yes, the animation is stupendous and imaginative. Yes, we should marvel at the filmmakers’ ability to create magic out of a shoestring budget. But the story also bears much of what has become awkward, narrative-wise, since 2006. It’s much too twee for example in an age where “putang ina” has become presidential speech. Its sensibility is perfectly a throwback, especially to a time when the phenomenon of the “manic pixie dream girl” was a beloved cinematic trope, since then much-maligned. But I do give credit to the filmmakers for giving the type a narrative arc deeper than the usual superficial display of interesting quirks.
The girl in question is the titular Sally (played with exceeding charm by Rhian Ramos). Her best friend is the introverted comic book artist Marty (Enzo Marcos), who pines quietly for her, but has no courage whatsoever to reveal his real feelings. Excuses abound, you see, centering mostly on the fact that Sally’s adoptive parents are monstrous people who regularly abuse her and keep her in check with their rigorous rules and overbearing Christian piety. For Marty, Sally needs, well, saving … and the proper loving only he could give.
That Sally comes off as a quirky fashionista girl with a hunger for the bizarre and the unusual, and a talent for literal inventions, is one plot point that remains psychologically suspect — but I suspend my disbelief, of course. Because I want to like the movie. And I do, with some effort, and as long as I remain blind to the holes in the narrative, and a third act that seems completely unnecessary.
However, the fundamental unease that I felt over my immediate critical consideration of the film upon exiting the cinema was this: why did this have to be a mix of live action and animation? The animation didn’t feel integral to the story at all. It remained for me a filmmaking conceit that, while executed quite impressively, didn’t feel organic to the narrative. It would have been a completely different story had it been produced without any live-action. But we do follow characters who mostly remain human throughout, existing in a world that is a fantasy of illustration art — but the two planes intersect without a convincing explanation why this has to be so. In the most famous example of this technique — Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit? — we do get a clear effort at worldling, that humans do in fact live alongside cartoon characters who mostly come from an adjacent “neighbourhood” called Toontown. The clear premise sets us to accept without question that humans and cartoons do interact in the frame of the film. I don’t believe for once Saving Sally’s “explanation” that the animated parts we see are merely constructs of Marty’s inventive imagination, his unique perspective and rendering of the much-too-real world around him. Because the animation does overwhelm the live-action in the space of the film, and no sane person could be so overwhelmingly consistent and unceasing in that rendition of the real to the cartoonish. (Unless you’re crazy, and you have a lola like Imelda.)
And also this: despite overwhelming much of the frame, the animation remains ironically “background material.” It is more or less glorified wallpaper for the live actors to play on. One could also fault the film for its use of English as the main mode for dialogue, even if particular scenes felt like they called for the use of the native language — but I feel I have nitpicked too much a product that has been made, for so long by its creatives with the best of intentions: to create an animated feature film with art that’s very impressive, given the legendary limitations the film’s publicity machine has earnestly profiled.
A for effort then. Mostly definitely a C for story. But also most definitely an A+ for the film’s brazenness to put a giant penis on screen.
5:52 PM |
Amazing Gay Dads in Children's Literature
Happy Father's Day, everyone! The celebration for fatherhood today got me thinking about same-sex dads in children's literature -- a topic that is fairly controversial and not quite common in publishing, although a significant number of titles have sprouted over the years. (The blog Books for Kids in Gay Families has a very good selection of gay-themed children's books from the world over, here.)
I still remember for example the nasty furor that descended on Singapore upon the discovery of a copy of Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson's And Tango Makes Three in the national library in 2014, which then decided to pulp it. This was horrifying and sad because the book truly celebrates love -- and it is in fact based on two true-to-life male chinstrap penguins in New York's Central Park Zoo who did raise a little penguin on their own. That book [buy it in Amazon] should be celebrated, so here's a video of a reading of that book...
Another favourite children's book that celebrates gay dads is Lesléa Newman's Daddy, Papa, and Me from 2009. It is altogether a different book: a very simple story of a young boy who narrates how his two fathers -- Daddy and Papa -- make generous time playing with him, despite what for adults reading the book see as the underlying context of two men being quite busy, and tired, with their adult lives. But they pursue these games anyway with imagination and flair.
Hiromasa Yonebayashi's When Marnie Was There (2014) -- which might be the last offering we get from legendary Studio Ghibli, which has announced a "temporary" stoppage to film production -- is a wonderful, albeit small, film. It is a dialling back from the epic reaches of Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises (2013) and Isao Takahata's The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013), and which actually has much in common, spiritually speaking, with Takahata's Only Yesterday (1991).
Like that film, we follow a female protagonist in an almost accidental search for self in serene, laid-back Japanese countryside. In Marnie's case, however, we get not a mature woman but a socially awkward pubescent orphan named Anna, who would rather be alone and draw in her sketch book than deal with the curious interactions of other people. Life for Anna is compromised and painful, but then she meets Marnie in a seemingly abandoned mansion by the marsh. The blond young girl is gregarious and enchanting, and becomes Anna's first real friend -- but is she real, or is she a ghost? Or worse, is she merely the imagined projection of Anna's tortured wishes for a connection?
There are all these twists in the plot, borrowed from the book by Joan G. Robinson, but the whimsy of their unfolding, while interesting and beautifully rendered in animation in that signature Studio Ghibli eye for sparkling detail and minute movements, is not what hooked me. I was prepared to pronounce this as Studio Ghibli's subtle nod towards queer representation -- the relationship between Anna and Marnie skirts towards levels of intimacy that cannot be just friendship -- but its final turn somehow nullifies that possible reading, much to my disappointment. As is, the film's choices and conclusion become too much of a comfortable cliche in terms of a narrative twist. But then again we cannot fault a film for not becoming what it does not set out to be.
But I like the film. I like its quiet moments, those scenes where Anna longs to get lost in the woods or in the middle of a lake, with only herself as company. It reminded me of my own childhood, where my nightmares were all about having to deal with other people, and the true antidote to all that sociable connecteness was being alone, entertaining myself with my little games, or reading, or sketching the afternoons away in a kind of daydream. Being alone was less lonely than being in the middle of a crowd. I was Anna.
[First posted on 11 April 2014.] The first Studio Ghibli film I saw was Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies, and I’ve been hooked to the wonderful films of this Japanese animation studio ever since. Here is a rundown of what I have seen, and what I have yet to see...
[✓] Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] Castle in the Sky (1986), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] Grave of the Fireflies (1988), directed by Isao Takahata
[✓] My Neighbor Totoro (1988), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] Only Yesterday (1991), directed by Isao Takahata
[✓] Porco Rosso (1992), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] Ocean Waves (1993), directed by Tomomi Mochizuki
[✓] Pom Poko (1994), directed by Isao Takahata
[✓] Whisper of the Heart (1995), directed by Yoshifumi Kondō
[✓] Princess Mononoke (1997), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999), directed by Isao Takahata
[✓] Spirited Away (2001), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] The Cat Returns (2002), directed by Hiroyuki Morita
[✓] Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] Tales From Earthsea (2006), directed by Gorō Miyazaki
[✓] Ponyo (2008), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] Arriety (2010), directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
[✓] From Up on Poppy Hill (2011), directed by Gorō Miyazaki
[✓] The Wind Rises (2013), directed by Hayao Miyazaki
[✓] The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013), directed by Isao Takahata
[✓] When Marnie Was There (2014), directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi
10:00 AM |
The Film Meme No. 84
