Sunday, May 10, 2026
2:16 PM |
Second Chances
I love The Drama for personal reasons, because it gets what has been true in my life: people getting second chances. Emma got a second chance, and in the movie, she gives everyone second chances. We all need second chances. My life has been all about second chances.Labels: film, life, movie log
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Sunday, May 03, 2026
7:47 PM |
The Devil Still Wears Prada
Fans of the old movie will either love this, or be indifferent to it. As someone who once had a phase in my life where I’d wake up every morning by playing the opening sequences of the 2006 film, to the tune of “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall, I am glad to report that I am of the first variety.
I love this film.
It falls short of the perfection of the first one, but who cares? I like that it basically follows the same beats, but explores a sadder [maybe the better phrase is “more serious”?] narrative, particularly the implosion of journalism as we know it, and the takeover of the world by doofusy techbros who want to destroy everything — which is quite reflective of our 2026 realities. I think that for the seriousness of the subject matter, some might find this film a bit off the mark [or a slight disappointment], given the fact that the first one was really a simpler story about a young girl and her post-collegiate coming-of-age surrounded by high fashion.
But I’m glad that this film chose not to delve into similar territory, choosing instead to highlight what bedevils us today, albeit in a lighter way. [I’m sure that if it didn’t, it would attract brickbats about how tone deaf it is to current realities.] But, people, we need to grow up.
But I like that it chose to do this, yet still forges an organic continuity with the older film: previous betrayals find new avenues for redemption, previous anxieties reveal themselves to be analogous to current anxieties [i.e., people never really change, and Andy is still the same Andy], and old comradeships are deepened by astute revelations that do not contradict how the characters were like in the older iteration. [In this instance, it is Stanley Tucci’s Nigel who becomes the film’s heart.]
I love that fashion is very much alive in this film, I love that Emily shouts at Donatella Versace in Italian, and that Lady Gaga hates Miranda. I love that Miranda’s titular devil is purposefully diminished in this movie [she hangs her own robes! she is careful not to say bad words in meetings lest HR intervenes! she flies coach!] — but finally finds a love in a new husband who seems supportive and unfazed by his wife’s power. I love that she still remains wise about how she can survive the demands and the diminishments of the future, that she still remains the vanguard of the beautiful despite the world becoming ugly.
This is a fantastic continuation to an iconic film.
Labels: fashion, film, review
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Monday, March 30, 2026
9:00 AM |
The Return of Silliman Film Open
It has been more than a half a decade since Silliman University—via the College of Mass Communication and the Culture and Arts Council—was able to hold the Silliman Film Open, the university’s festival of student films that used to be the one date every year, usually around February or March, when budding campus filmmakers tried their hand at cinematic storytelling.
Last March 7, we finally unveiled its latest edition—the fifth under its current name. Although if history has to be told, this endeavor started in 2009 as the 61 Film Festival [because it showcased the final film requirements of the students of Communication 61]; and then briefly, beginning in 2012, as the Dumaguete Shorts Festival, where it became a showcase of short films being created by Dumaguete filmmakers [regardless of whether or not they were Sillimanian]; and finally as the Silliman Film Open [or SFO] in 2015, this one designed to be more insular, screening only the works of currently enrolled students. [By then, other schools, like Foundation University, were already offering their own festivals. We had to change course.]
What happened after its fourth iteration sometime in 2018? There were some unfortunate shenanigans I really cannot be bothered to rehash, but ultimately it was really because of the pandemic, which made organizing it an impossibility. Although, truth to tell, COVID-19 had no power over some of SFO’s alumni, the likes of Andrew Alvarez and Ara Mina Amor and Von Adrian Colina, who went on to make fantastic films on their own while the world stood still in quarantine.
I began missing it though.
I missed it the way one would miss a calling. In 2008, I was invited to the Cinemalaya Film Festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines to take part in its Film Congress, and I was there to represent Dumaguete filmmaking. At that time, I’ve only had one short film to my name, and when I was asked in my panel what the best practices of Dumaguete filmmaking were, I could only say one sad thing: there was no such thing as Dumaguete filmmaking.
Granted, we have our very own Eddie Romero, a renowned National Artist for Film. Granted, we have some filmmakers from here, such as Ramon del Prado, Jonah Lim, and Seymour Barros Sanchez. And granted, Dumaguete seems to be a favorite place to shoot for commercial films. But in terms of grassroots filmmaking, at that time, there was nothing. Hence, no best practice.
But I told the audience at the CCP that perhaps we could start some change, however small. When I got back to Dumaguete, and then to my film class at the College of Mass Communication, I had one resolve: to jumpstart filmmaking in this city, by hook or by crook. There are no filmmakers willing to make films? We will move heaven and earth then—and by “moving heaven and earth,” I mean requiring my film class to go beyond just writing film criticism of the movies they saw in my class. I quoted the French director Jean Luc Godard, who once said: “The only way to critique a movie is to make a movie.” Make a movie, I told my classes. They were scared out of their wits, and they were understandably reluctant—but they did manage to turn out films, which to me were minor miracles borne out of sweat, liters of Red Bull, endless coffee, endless bickering among the crew, sleepless nights, panic attacks, and even minor emotional breakdowns. Then again, who said filmmaking was easy? You have to be insane to set out to make a movie, I told them—but the dividends are fantastic.
And what are the dividends so far? We are now on the fifth iteration of the SFO, and many of the films we’ve exhibited in previous editions have gone on to be included at Lutas Film Festival, at the Sine Negrense, and at the Cinema Rehiyon—and one film, Razceljan Salvarita’s I Am Patience, was actually nominated for the Gawad Urian for Best Short Film. The future could bright for Dumaguete film if we actually create an ecosystem where film practice could be established. It is still a fledgling thing—but at least it shows some signs of thriving. Here’s to this batch of student filmmakers, and may they go places indeed.
The filmmakers behind Silliman Film Open 5, with jury members Andrew Alvarez, Tara De Leon, and Renz Torres, festival director Ian Rosales Casocot, and College of Mass Communication Dean Irma Faith Pal [fourth from right]
For the fifth edition, which we dubbed our “comeback season,” we screened only seven short films of varying genres, which included Karisa Marie Barote’s 404: Self Not Found [a science fiction take], Olivia Anne Cabral’s Girls Next Door [a romantic comedy], Jurielle Cornelia’s After the Silence [a domestic thriller], Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim’s Second Best [a crime film that turned out to be campy comedy], Samuel Lagulao Jr.’s Run on Empty [an actioner], Jullan Louise Sido’s Ang Dili Kahulat [a comedy], and Zschaielle Ainsh Tiglao’s When the Wind Blows [a melodrama]. All of them are students of Communication 62, a directing course, and Literature 30, a course on film and literature. [Three other filmmakers, unfortunately, were not able to make the deadline for the festival.]
In the end, the jury composed of local filmmakers Andrew Alvarez, Tara De Leon, and Renz Torres, gave generously and selected a wide swath of titles for awards, including Best Poster to After the Silence; Best Original Song to Le John’s “Naiilang” for Ang Dili Kahulat; Best Production Design to Olivia Cabral’s work in Girls Next Door; Best Make-up Design to Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim and Kessiya Silva for Second Best; Best Cinematography to Ben Guarin, Jeff Jamolod, and Roll Borres for Run on Empty; Best Editing to Angelina Rival for Second Best; and Best Screenplay to Samuel Lagulao Jr. for Run on Empty.
The award for Best Supporting Actress went to Franz Tolentino for Second Best. Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim, who directed that film, won Best Supporting Actor for another film, 404: Self Not Found. That film also garnered Best Actor for Vince Gerard Balbuena, while Best Actress went to Kessiya Silva for Second Best. Jurielle Cornelio was named Best Director for After the Silence, and a Jury Award was given to Zschaielle Ainsh Tiglao’s When the Wind Blows. Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim’s Second Best was finally named Best Film. All in all, a happy ending for a film festival no one thought would make a comeback in 2025!
It was a journey—painstaking and demanding—for all of them.
Samuel Lagulao, for example, is a Creative Writing major, and he had no inkling that the semester that just passed would require him to make a short film. “My fourth year as a graduating student was already heavy with thesis work, my mythology class, and other subjects, but this [film class] was the hardest for me,” he wrote. “The whole experience taught me a great deal, not only about writing itself, but also about the publishing and marketing side of it. Making a film forced me into a different kind of education to what you would normally expect from literary and creative writing classes, one that had less to do with words and more to do with logistics and money and weather and scheduling and accepting the limits of what could actually be done… In film work, [I learned that] talent is important but reliability [on my crew] also matters just as much. A project can survive a lot of limitations, but it struggles when people cannot be there.
He continued: “There were moments when I wanted the camera to hide too much, or the edit to fix problems that should have been solved in the actual shoot, with one scene especially that made that clear when I had wanted to make it look as though a conversation was happening naturally, even though it would really be stitched together from separate footage of people performing against empty space. On paper, that seemed possible. In practice, it was not convincing enough … That was one of the hardest lessons the process taught me. Writing can make almost anything happen because the page is obedient. Film is not. Film depends on bodies, places, light, timing, weather, equipment, and the availability of other people. The actors could not always make it. Some shoots had to be rearranged because one person was free and another was not. One day was cancelled because of the weather. The easiest scene [to shoot] turned out to be the one inside a classroom, probably because it was controlled and contained. Everything else felt exposed to interruption.
“… Now that the film is finished, I remember the strain of it but I also see it more clearly for what it was. It was one of the few times in my student life when I had to move beyond writing something good on paper and face the mess of making something real with other people. … It was tense, expensive, and often frustrating but it also taught me what kind of work filmmaking really is. [But] I am grateful that the process was not smooth since it forced me to understand that a film is never built by imagination alone. It is built through people and limits and corrections and persistence.”
A scene from Samuel Lagulao Jr.'s Run on Empty, which won Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography
For Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim, winner of the top award, joining the festival—and making the film—was a humbling experience. “The most difficult stage was getting the screenplay approved,” he admitted. “… My early drafts were met with strong criticism, [and] at one point, the feedback was direct: the story needed to be rewritten or reframed, because it did not make sense. As someone who was confident in my writing, hearing this was difficult. Each revision felt like going back to the beginning, and the process slowly chipped away at my confidence.”
There were other production challenges, like scheduling the shoot with actors, or even finalizing something as primary as having a cinematographer in place. “But slowly, things began to fall into place,” Ryan said, and then a lot of learning had to be done when shooting commenced. “One moment during filming stood out in particular. While shooting the interrogation scene, the entire team began contributing ideas to improve the sequence. The actors, the videographer, and even I, as the director, experimented with different angles, deliveries, and approaches to the scene. What started as a simple shot turned into a collaborative effort, and that moment reminded me that filmmaking is truly a shared creative process.”
But for him, the real turning point came in the post-production phase. “When my editor, Angelina Rival, sent the first draft of the film, I immediately felt something had changed. The scenes were arranged in a way that matched the vision I had imagined from the beginning. Her work with camera angles, pacing, and sound design brought the story to life in ways I could not have achieved alone. At that moment, the film I had struggled with for weeks finally started to feel real.”
When Ryan’s film was announced as the top winner, he was “genuinely stunned.” He said: “In that moment, it became clear that the victory was never mine alone. It belonged to my actors who poured their energy into every scene, to my editor who shaped the film with remarkable creativity, and to my entire team that helped transform a difficult idea into a finished story. [But] looking back, this entire process taught me the value of humility, perseverance, and openness to criticism. There were times when every correction felt discouraging, and every revision felt like starting over. Yet those moments of struggle slowly revealed an important truth: growth often happens in the most uncomfortable situations. More than anything, I learned that filmmaking is not just about having a vision. It is about trusting the people who help bring that vision to life and allowing yourself to grow through the process.”
A scene from Ryan Rikaz Ibrahim's Second Best, which won Best Film
Filmmaking as a metaphor for processing life. I hope that’s one good lesson instilled with fervor in our current crop of campus filmmakers who made Silliman Film Open 5 happen. Congratulations, everyone!
A scene from Jurielle Cornelia's After the Silence, which won Best Director
A scene from Zschaielle Ainsh Tiglao's When the Wind Blows, which won the Jury Award
Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, film, silliman
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Thursday, February 12, 2026
10:42 PM |
I Love Wuthering Heights!
I absolutely love how Emerald Fennell fucked up this material and made it suit her narrative kinks. We should all take what inspires us and mangle it to form a new kind of beastly beauty. [The rule to follow is really, “Make it work!” and she did!] I love that the film is a thesis on toxicity masquerading as love and horniness, and yet also works hard on making you swoon. I love that our main characters are the most deplorable of the lot and I love that their toxicity almost destroys the partners they chose to marry just to spite each other, and yet still have these partners being strong and very certain even in their debasements. I love that Fennell made a virtual violation scene become a mockery of consent — that was some nimble narrative tinikling!]. I love that I love the supporting characters more than I love Cathy or Heathcliff. [My order of likes: Isabella Linton [her "But I am home" is fantastically delivered] > Mr. Earnshaw [who is an absolute delight!] > Edgar Linton [who is a saint!] > Nelly Dean > Jonathan > Catherine > Heathcliff.] I love Hong Chau’s complicated Oriental. I love the unexpected textures of this film, the marrying of offal pungency with carnal sexuality. I love that this is offending so many people. Snowflakes!Labels: film
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Monday, December 15, 2025
9:36 PM |
Rob Reiner, 1947-2025
What grim madness! One of my favorite film directors, Rob Reiner, who helmed contemporary classics such as When Harry Met Sally..., The Princess Bride, This is Spinal Tap, Misery, A Few Good Men, and The American President, is dead, a victim of homicide. Apparently murdered together with his wife by their own son. What a week! A shooting in Brown University, a shooting in Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, and now this. Rest in peace, Mr. Reiner. Thank you for all the movies.
This tweet says a lot about Mr. Reiner's legacy:
Labels: directors, film, obituary
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Monday, December 08, 2025
9:30 AM |
Seeing Richard Brody Typing on an External Keyboard
I’m watching Marshall Curry’s documentary, The New Yorker at 100, and I see film critic Richard Brody working on an external keyboard because his MacAir keyboard has stopped working. I felt this, hahaha.Labels: criticism, documentaries, film, magazines, new york, people, writers, writing
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Tuesday, October 28, 2025
8:54 PM |
Reading 'Quezon' Between the Lines
Since Jerrold Tarog’s Quezon came to movie screens everywhere last October 15, the debates it has initiated have been fruitful, but also wild. Is the film respectful or disrespectful of its subject matter? Shouldn’t the family have been consulted? Where are the merits of Quezon’s presidency in the film? What’s history and what’s fabulation? Should heroes remain on pedestals, or should they be brought down to our level? The simmering discourse finally erupted when a Quezon descendant took the director and his actor, Jericho Rosales, to task during a recent post-screening Q&A, accused them of being reckless and unfair, and dropped his mic in a dramatic huff. No one has exactly the same take on the film, although everyone has suddenly become an armchair historian.
I do believe most of these questions could be answered if only people bothered to supplement their viewing with the book tie-in published by Anvil Publishing—Quezon: The Story Behind the Film. For example, for those who have penned defenses of Quezon by saying that the film used mostly American colonial sources, here’s a quote from screenwriter Rody Vera from the book: “We decided to use Carlos Quirino’s Quezon: Paladin of Philippine Freedom as our template, which was by far the least hagiographical of [all the books we’ve read for our research] and covers a lot more detail that probably even other books might have referenced.” That’s hardly an American colonial reference.
The book is a small tie-in volume to Tarog’s long-awaited conclusion to his “Bayaniverse” trilogy, but I think it is more than just a supplement; it can create real conversations. Because everything you want to know or have questions about the film—the intent, the quarrels, the historical liberties, the controversies brewing in the echo chambers of Facebook, X, and Reddit—are all here, in the quiet candor of words. Here you will find the story of the film laid bare, and its intentions illustrated—all our myths about heroes, all our compulsions, all our complicities.
The book has nine parts, including an introduction by the historian John Ray B. Ramos; a producer’s notes written by Daphne O. Chiu-Soon; a message from the director which he had sent to every preview screening in the country; a section on movie stills and photos; a timeline of Manuel Quezon’s life, career, and legacy; a list of key references for those who demand historiographical integrity; and a timeline references—all very helpful, of course. But reading the book, I was more drawn to two specific sections of the film’s making: Rody Vera’s screenwriter’s notes, and an extensive interview with Jerrold Tarog, where he lays bare his intentions in making the film, his struggles in crafting it, and his hopes over what audiences might finally get from the story.
Vera’s essay reads like a confession. “Adapting into film the life story of any historical figure requires focus,” he writes. “It’s like confronting a huge slab of stone, the stone being the whole life of the real person, and chiseling away what is irrelevant.” It’s the best image anyone has ever written about screenwriting. You cannot put everything about your subject matter in the film! And as metaphors go, you realize it’s also how nations are made—chiseled, curated, reduced to fit the narrative of convenience.
Quezon, in hindsight, is less the hagiography we were taught in history class [if at all] and more an excavation of the man who shaped the architecture of our political soul. The screenwriter recalls reading Recah Trinidad’s ominous line from Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People: “Quezon laid the groundwork and the precedence for the declaration of Martial Law and the establishment of dictatorship by Ferdinand Marcos in 1972.” That realization, Vera says, became the film’s premise for him—and you can feel the pulse of that realization on every scene.
What the film does quite well, and so with this book, is restore nuance to a figure we have long turned into a statue. In Tarog’s story, Quezon is not just the dashing Commonwealth president of gargantuan monuments and of cities and provinces named after him—he is also the cunning tactician who invented our brand of politics: cronyism as governance, charm as statecraft, charisma as national hypnosis. “It was thrilling,” Vera admits in his essay, “to apprehend that while Filipinos were given the opportunity toward attaining self-rule in a colonial setup, socio-political criticism was never lagging behind.” That observation hums like both celebration and elegy.
Tarog’s own message reads like a director’s meditation on faith—faith in cinema, faith in conversation, faith in the possibility of understanding history through art. “The whole idea behind this trilogy,” he notes, “is the exploration of the concept of Bayani.” Then, in one perfect passage, he writes: “We are removing them from their statues, from the giant monuments erected for them, and we are bringing them down to our level as humans.”
It’s a mission statement that could also describe what this small book achieves. The pages strip Quezon, Luna, and Goyo of their mythic varnish and leave us with the humans underneath—flawed, luminous, sometimes monstrous, always Filipino. Tarog insists: “History is a series of events where good people do good things, good people do bad things, bad people do bad things, and bad people do good things.” That sentence, simple as it is, might be the most honest distillation of the Filipino condition.
And yet, the essays in the book are not content to stay in the archives of the past. They hold a mirror up to our present. “If you read books about Quezon,” Tarog tells Anvil in the interview that rounds off the collection, “it feels like you’re reading about what’s happening now.” It’s true. Every page feels like déjà vu—political strongmen, moral gymnastics, the endless pageant of power and spectacle. When Tarog says, “It’s only a democracy in name, not in practice,” you can almost hear the sigh of an entire country.
The brilliance of film [and book] is that it refuses to simplify. Vera’s notes brim with self-awareness: “Is Quezon’s story therefore an allegory? Allegory, I guess, in this case is pointless. I think the film is more of an ‘origin’ story, that helps us understand why we are what we are as a nation.” To read this is to realize that every nation is, in fact, a genre film—revised, reshot, rebooted by every generation, with the same plot: a people trying to become a people.
The book also delves into the struggles of the film’s making. In Tarog’s interview in the book, you can sense exhaustion in his answers, but also grace. He recalls how “it probably took me a year or more” to compile a timeline of Quezon, Osmeña, and Aguinaldo, threading through “more than fifty books.” He admits the film’s limitations: what had to be cut, what could never fit into two hours of cinema. “Honestly,” he says, “Quezon’s life is very complex to study. Every decade of his life has something interesting, something dramatic that could be turned into a film. So to do justice to Quezon’s story, it would have to be a miniseries.” That miniseries will probably never happen—but we can imagine one with the expanded universe of a national soul, a patient curation of thought and struggle, of humor and disillusionment.
Tarog’s honesty is disarming: “Maybe [Quezon] was the only guy we had back then, or maybe he was the only one who could win over everyone else.” That may also be the secret horror of Philippine history: that our heroes were often just the best players of terrible games.
For those still bracing for controversy—those who suspect Quezon will be accused, as Heneral Luna once was, of reflecting too much of the vagaries of our present politics—the answers are already here. “Viewers will always watch through their own lens,” Tarog reminds us. “Life is messy and complicated.” The film does not impose judgment, especially on its characters; the book reflects this. For Tarog, it simply presents, with startling clarity, the continuum of power we have chosen to inherit.
But what lingers most for me from the book are the quieter insights. Vera muses on the camera itself as a metaphor, since the beginnings of Philippine cinema is a vital touchpoint in Quezon: “[Cinema] is but merely a projection of how its producer wants to be perceived, how he wants the truth to be told.” The line could describe Quezon, or any politician, or any filmmaker, or all of us, caught between image and self. “Who was that Filipino politician,” he asks, “who once said: ‘Perception is real, the truth is not’?”
I like how the book serves as a good footnote to how we have viewed the film. It reminds us that the film is really about us—our appetites for heroes, our addictions to myths, our uneasy laughter in the face of impunity. Tarog writes, “Ideally, our action is in the real world, not in the comments section.” And maybe that’s the invitation the film, and its book, gives us: to step out of the comments section of our history, and into its pages.
Labels: film, heroes, history, philippine cinema, philippine history
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Tuesday, September 16, 2025
9:13 PM |
Robert Redford, 1936–2025
You were lovely, Hubbell. Goodbye. Barefoot in the Park (1967) is actually my favorite Redford.Labels: celebrity, death, film, obituary
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Thursday, August 28, 2025
4:06 PM |
Mike de Leon, 1947-2025
He was my favorite Filipino film director, rightfully seen as our country's Stanley Kubrick for the way he tackled all kinds of genres and made them bear his mark. Kisapmata. Itim. Kakabakaba Ka Ba? Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising. Batch '81. Nahahati ang Langit. Bilanggo sa Dilim. Aliwan Paradise. Sister Stella L. Bayaning Third World. Citizen Jake. All masterpieces, especially the first one. I know he had a reputation for being difficult and ornery, but I wish those things can be transcended and he be given a distinction truly and rightfully his: a National Artist for Cinema. Labels: directors, film, obituary, philippine cinema
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Thursday, July 31, 2025
11:25 PM |
Thank You for 39 Great Years, Chuck!
What a beautiful film Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck is. But for one to get its beauty, the film does demand concentration or attention. It’s disjointed in all the right ways and mysterious in many places. It contains echoes of details you will have to surrender to in order to believe, and limns the sweet without succumbing to the saccharine.
There were chunks of the runtime where I was just smiling like I was nuts — most of it when people onscreen were dancing. The dances! You will love the dances.
It’s about the end of the world, and how everything, even the stars, just goes out in a whimper. It’s about beholding mortality and what you choose to do with your waking moments. It’s about choosing to dance, because the beat of life is just inescapable. It’s about knowing that you are wonderful, that you deserve to be wonderful, and that you contain multitudes.Labels: death, film, life
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Saturday, March 01, 2025
3:47 PM |
Ranking the Best Picture Oscars Nominees
It's the Oscars on March 2. Here is my ranking of the Best Picture nominees, and not a ranking of what I think will win. To be honest, 2-8 all fall into the same slot for me. But I do love
Dune Part 2, and I do
hate Emilia Perez and
Nickel Boys.
Labels: film, oscar
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Friday, February 28, 2025
1:40 PM |
From French Kissers to Small People Adrift
Part 3 of the 2024 Oscar Shorts Considered
It is quite telling that of the fifteen animated short films that were shortlisted for the Oscars last December, the five that eventually made the cut and the nomination—Beautiful Men, In the Shadow of the Cypress, Magic Candies, Wander to Wonder, and Yuck!—only one was in my Top 5. Not that I didn’t like the rest of them. In fact, they are all quite good, and the nominations are totally deserved. I just liked other shortlisted titles better. That is how amazing the animation field—including both the shorts and the features—has been in the past year. As I’ve noted earlier, walang patapon.
I can see why Nicolas Keppens’ Beautiful Men made the cut. It is a beautiful dour, sarcastically funny story about three balding brothers who travel to Istanbul to get a hair transplant, and stuck with each other in a hotel far from home, their insecurities grow faster than their hair. There is always something of this kind of atmosphere in an animated short that makes it a must on the finalist round—as if the animation branch of the Academy feels the need to check themselves and say, “Hey, cartoons are not just for kids.”
But given that, what to make Jean-Sébastien Hamel and Alexandra Myotte’s A Crab in the Pool, which didn’t make the cut? It is a zany and psychedelic French look at puberty and the crushing insecurities and hormonal urges of adolescence, with an equally crushing subterfuge of death and loss, and I fell in love with this short film as soon as I finished it and realized its import: how—in its story of young siblings (an older sister and a younger brother)—we often turn to imagination to make sense of the tiny earthquakes in our lives. And what to make of Torill Kove’s Maybe Elephants, which also didn’t make the cut? It is the story of a globe-trotting family—courtesy of the mother who gets the occasional urge to leave and uproot their lives—and who finally find themselves in Nairobi where their three teenage daughters finally rebel to seek some antidote to restlessness, even as they themselves, as adolescents, find their inner lives turned upside down. It is a mature story about restlessness and roots—with an ending that approximates a kind of peace everyone is looking for.
I can see why Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani’s In the Shadow of the Cypress got the nod. This Iranian short film is about a former captain who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and has chosen to live, with his young daughter, in a humble house by the sea. They live an isolated life together, daily confronting the harsh challenges that come their way—but a gulf remains between them, until an unforeseen event (a whale beaching ashore) somehow changes the course of their lives. The animation of this film is dreamy in its simplicity, and the environmental and psychological story tugs at you because it is rendered so well emotionally.
But what of Tod Polson’s The 21, which didn’t get nominated? Like the war-tinged tale of Cypress, this one is the true story of the twenty-one Coptic men who were martyred by ISIS in Libya in 2015. The animation—produce in the style of Coptic iconography—is beautiful, in perfect contrast to its subject matter, which is horrifying. In the beginning, this short reminded me of the [odious] Chick Tracts I used to read and devour as an evangelical child, which often used the stories of the suffering of Christians in foreign cultures as missionary propaganda—but I also needed to check myself: This story is nevertheless true, and the victims were Coptic Christians under the tyranny of terrorists. In the end I needed to disregard religion and just focus on the basic inhumanity of this story: killing people just because they have a different faith than you is the ultimate inhumanity so far from any divine promise. That goes to adherents of all faiths. And what to make of Iain Gardner’s A Bear Named Wojtek, which also didn’t get nominated? It is another true story about another war—World War II to be exact—about a displaced and orphaned bear who finds itself in the company of a troop of Polish soldiers, forms an inseparable bond with them, and finds itself an unlikely war hero. Unlike 21, this one ends happily—but both remind us about the horrors of war, and the inhumanity it can breed.
I can see why Loïc Espuche’s Yuck! made it to the finals. Adult subject matters may intrude once in a while in the animated short film category, but a cartoon that’s clearly for kids [and the adults who delight in their kiddie charms] will still be a shoo-in for a nomination. This one is a humorous take on kids finding kissing on the mouth—done by gross adults—totally gross. [Kissing in the film is highlighted by the kissers’ lips turning bright and incandescent purple.] It centers on Léo, who laughs at these kissers together with his gross-out friends at a summer camp—but he has a secret he won’t tell his friends: his own mouth has actually begun glistening, and he wants to kiss a friend, who also wants to kiss him back. The humor in this child-centered tale is the magic formula for nomination.
Which might explain why Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi’s Bottle George also didn’t make it. It makes a case for alcoholism and domestic abuse, and it does so by exploring the relationship between George, a man trapped inside a small bottle, and Chako, a young, poor, resilient girl who is scared of her alcoholic father. It has a child at its center—but the subject matter is too dark to be embraced. There is humor too in Goodbye My World [directed by Florian Maurice, Astrid Novais, Estelle Bonnardel, Baptiste Duchamps, Quentin Devred, and Maxime Foltzer]—but it’s about a man dressed in a fish costume, who suddenly finds the world coming to an end—and then he spends the last moments of the world on a wild scooter ride across downtown, crossing the chaos to reach a mysterious tower—to reach his [spoiler]. It’s all warmhearted, but the darkness of the apocalypse might be too much to warrant a nomination.
I can see why Daisuke Nishio’s Magic Candies got nominated. This Japanese short film is a delight! The story follows a boy named Dong-Dong, who never gets invited by the other kids to play—but he does not mind, since he’s fine just playing marbles on his own. Then one day, he buys a bag of colorful candies, which, when eaten, gives him an uncanny ability to see fantastical renderings of things and concepts. It was an enjoyable romp—although it made me think: is this kind of like a pro-drugs allegory? But I might be over-reading.
But what of Don Hertzfeldt’s Me, which is equally surreal as Magic Candies? Hertzfeld has always been one of my favorite animators. His World of Tomorrow and It’s Such a Beautiful Day are both must-sees if you care for animation that is substantive as much as they are fun. In his new film, he creates a more opaque, if tantalizingly non-linear, tale, which he calls “a musical odyssey about trauma and the retreat of humanity into itself.” The film, in its occasional foray into abstraction, is less accessible than his older ones, which might be why he got left off the final list—even if Hertzfeld is a former nominee. Sometimes abstraction can be a hindrance to appreciating a short animated film’s gifts. This is the case of Kei Kanamori’s Origami, which also didn’t get the nomination. Alas, the delightful film can be reduced into being just a playful and abstract romp through the art of paper-folding—even if the animation is topnotch and truly engaging. [But then again, PES got an Oscar nomination in 2012 for Fresh Guacamole, a two-minute abstract Claymation romp about the making of guacamole—not from avocado, but from everyday things found around the house.] Abstraction hindrance is certainly the case for why Anna Samo’s The Wild-Tempered Clavier, my least favorite title of the lot, did not make the cut. The film approaches abstraction in its use of toilet paper as film material, with whatever story there is being painted onto the sheets while the toilet paper is unrolled, like you would a film—all the while using the immortal music of Bach as background. I had no patience for the exercise.
Laura Gonçalves and Alexandra Ramires’ Percebes is an anomaly among all the shortlisted, unnominated titles, because neither is it abstract nor nonlinear. The Portuguese film uses the sea and urban Algarve as backdrop, and in it we follow the complete life cycle of a special shellfish called percebes—the goose barnacle. The animation, while interesting, is a bit off-putting, and the whole film comes off as a dry attempt at a National Geographic documentary. I immediately forgot what it was all about the moment I finished watching it. I understand why it didn’t get the nomination.
This leaves Nina Gantz’s Wander to Wonder, the only film in my Top 5 that also got a nomination. It deserves it, because of its conceit, its style, its humor, and its darkness. A captivating stop-motion animated short that masterfully blends nostalgia with dark humor, it centers on three miniature humanlike characters—Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton—who once starred in a 1980s children’s television program. Following the sudden death of their creator and host, Uncle Gilly, the trio is left isolated in the studio, striving to continue their show amidst growing despair and dwindling resources. Gantz’s direction skillfully juxtaposes the innocent charm of vintage children’s programming with an unsettling atmosphere, creating a unique viewing experience. The meticulous animation pays homage to the era’s aesthetics, while the narrative delves into themes of grief, isolation, and the struggle to find purpose after loss. The characters' attempts to maintain normalcy—such as reading fan letters and producing episodes—are both poignant and darkly comedic.
Wander to Wonder has garnered critical acclaim, winning awards at festivals like Anima Brussels and receiving nominations for prestigious honors, including the BAFTA. Its inventive storytelling and distinctive visual style make it a standout piece in contemporary animation, offering a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection between childhood innocence and the complexities of adult realities. I hope it wins the Oscar for Best Animated Short.
Here is my ranking of all the animated short films, including the unnominated titles:
[1] A Crab in the Pool
[2] Maybe Elephants
[3] Wander to Wonder
[4] The 21
[5] Me
[6]Yuck!
[7] Origami
[8] Magic Candies
[9] Bottle George
[10] Goodbye My World
[11] A Bear Named Wojtek
[12] Beautiful Men
[13] In the Shadow of the Cypress
[14] Percebes
[15] The Wild-Tempered Clavier
Labels: animation, film, life, oscar, short films
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Saturday, February 01, 2025
2:23 AM |
I'm Outta Here
Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here [2024], which is up for Best Picture at the Oscars, is basically the Brazilian Dekada ‘70 [2002], with Fernanda Torres taking on the Vilma Santos role. Torres as Eunice Paiva is a stalwart saint from beginning to end, and while the role is acted to brilliant pieces, it doesn’t make for good characterization, or propulsive storytelling because she has no arc. [And what is up with that ending? Sure, that's Fernando Montenegro, whom I love in Central Station, swapping in for the role with her real-life daughter, but what is that ending?] Meanwhile, Santos’ Amanda Bartolome goes from mousy and uncaring-about-current-events housewife and mother to fierce activist in the course of the film, which actually make for good cinema, and a good arc, enriched in a way only the late Lualhati Bautista could conjure a complex female character. I think I like Chito Roño’s film better. And I wish Philippine cinema had a better PR machine even then to get similar acclaim worldwide.
P.S. I think I will stop watching movies for a few days. I’m just annoyed at everything that I see. September 5 and Nickel Boys were immense disappointments, Conclave and A Complete Unknown were nice but underwhelming. I don’t like Emilia Perez, and I found Anora brilliant and funny but ultimately empty and glib without a real awareness of how the real world works. The only Best Picture nominees I really liked are Dune Part 2, The Substance, and Wicked. I also really love A Real Pain, but they didn’t nominate that one for the big prize. And, no, The Brutalist does not exist. [Is it even out?] The only fantastic category at the Oscars this year is Best Animated Feature. Walang patapon: Flow, The Wild Robot, Memoir of a Snail, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, and Inside Out 2 — and would you believe the last one is the least of them all.
Labels: film
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Monday, January 27, 2025
7:48 PM |
Gloria Romero [1933-2025]
She was probably the one movie legend familiar to most Filipinos, given that her career spanned decades, and she never left the industry, and her face was always up there on our silver screens, beguiling us with her presence. She was probably the first movie star I knew to be a movie star, from my introduction to her through grainy black and white movies shown on the regular on RPN 9 in the 1980s, to her elderly patrician figure in contemporary movies in the years since then. I genuinely wish I was more familiar with her filmography, but most of her earlier films are gone. Labels: film, obituary, people
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Sunday, January 26, 2025
1:17 AM |
From Hives to Death Row
Part 2 of the 2024 Oscar Shorts Considered
The allure of the documentary short is its journalistic fervor demonstrated in brevity. I’ve always preferred nonfiction as a genre to enjoy—these days, the books I read are mostly nonfiction titles [I am drawn towards subjects involving history and the arts, and sometimes biographies], and the films I gravitate to the most are documentaries. And so, when a nonfiction film does its job in a short running time, I consider that a huge win: I learn of true things with societal import, and I did it without whiling away precious time I do not really have given a busy life.
This is why I keep track of documentary short subject films considered annually by the Academy Awards—especially through the short list it puts out in December of every year, which culls into fifteen titles from a list of possible hundreds. This is helpful because one cannot really track and see all the documentary shorts that get produced every year. Who has the time? Fifteen is manageable. I am aware that there are many superior documentary shorts that may be overlooked every year—which is unfortunate, but that is how the system works, and again, fifteen titles are manageable.
For this year, the Oscars nominated the following documentary shorts: Incident [d. Bill Morrison], I Am Ready, Warden [d. Smriti Mundhra], The Only Girl in the Orchestra [d. Molly O’Brien], Death by Numbers [d. Kim A. Snyder], and Instruments of a Beating Heart [d. Ema Ryan Yamazaki].
I have seen all the shortlisted documentary shorts, except for two. Of all the nominated titles, I have yet to see Death by Numbers, which has earned a reputation of late as being a “white whale.” It is about the aftermath of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, and follows the advocacy of one survivor. The film has been rated highly, with one Letterbxd reviewer commenting: “I appreciate the focus on the micro rather than the macro. This isn't an overview or statement on school shootings, but a look at how one person is impacted immediately and going forward.” This sounds like an endorsement, so I will probably like this film.
Among the unnominated films in the short list, I have yet to see Once Upon a Time in Ukraine by Betsy West, a filmmaker whose past documentaries [often in tandem with Julia Cohen] I have enjoyed immensely, including RBG [a 2019 film about the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg which was nominated for Best Documentary in its year] and Julia [a 2021 about Julia Childs]. Would I have enjoyed Once Upon a Time in Ukraine if I had seen it? Most probably, given the director—although I am naturally wary [or perhaps weary?] of war documentaries.
There are three films which I found quite surprising for missing the nomination, simply because they are so powerfully made, with subjects I would have thought would resonate the most with regular Oscar voters. Then again, they also did not nominate Rashida Jones and Will McCormack’s A Swim Lesson, given that one of its directors is a popular actress and the daughter of Quincy Jones, and that its conceit is closely tailored after My Octopus Teacher, a 2020 documentary short which won its category in its Oscar year—but instead of an octopus, the helpful purveyor of life lessons is a Beverly Hills swimming teacher. [I rather prefer the aquatic animal.]
But Hannah Rafkin’s Keeper is a beautiful, essential, emphatic, and restrained work, about a United Nations staffer in New York who moonlights as an urban beekeeper, and who perseveres in his calling despite a bee allergy and a bout of cancer. [It is also a story of the beekeeper’s daughter, a brilliant young woman who deftly balances college life with beekeeping and taking care of her ailing father.] It always pains me to see that bad things [i.e., cancer] can happen to good people, but otherwise it is a hopeful story about a beautiful family, and what they do—beekeeping in a big city—is awesome. It is, however, not nominated for the Oscars this year. Watch it anyway.
Chasing Roo by Skye Fitzgerald [who has been nominated in this category before, with the powerful Hunger Ward], is also another must-watch. It is a deftly handled piece—about wildlife rescue experts in Australia devoting their lives to saving kangaroos, in tension with professional hunters seeking to harvest them for meat—and the film surprises for its balance between tenderness and visceral carnage, and also surprises for its observant humanity. Its score and sound design are also vital aesthetic choices. It doesn’t shy away from showing us the non-tender parts [those dogs attacking that hog and the various scenes of hunting and killing kangaroos will have animal rights activists up in arms], which could be graphic, but I think they are necessary to prove the film’s point. It is, however, not nominated for the Oscars this year. Watch it anyway.
Nadia Gill and Dominic Gill’s Planetwalker is a poignant portrait of John Francis, who is popularly known with the titular moniker. In 1971, he witnessed an oil tanker collision in the San Francisco Bay, and the sight of dead birds on the shoreline, harmed by the oil spill, caused him to give up motorized transport and began walking everywhere. He took another radical move, and vowed not to speak, convinced that listening rather than talking adding fuel to the fire of any issue. This did not stop him from earning graduate credentials, and even becoming a college professor. He didn’t talk and he didn’t use motorized vehicles, but he taught using the simplest hand signals and walked everywhere, even to various parts of the globe which would invite him to “talk” about his environmental advocacy. It is a stirring portrait of a committed man and a gentle soul. It is, however, not nominated for the Oscars this year. Watch it anyway.
The rest of the unnominated films are powerful in their own right, but are flawed in many ways—but that does not stop some films from achieving greatness. I’m not sure these are great, but they are fascinating portraits. Kimberly Reed’s Seat 31 follows Zooey Zephyr, who was expelled from the House of Representatives in Montana for rebuking its members on a prospective bill banning transgender medical care. She later made a nearby bench her “office.” The film follows her struggles, and her triumphs, but is most powerful when it showcases the hate she confronts from the most ordinary of people—like a tribe of housewives taking over her bench, just to piss her off. The film feels necessary, and while it did resonate, I found its subject matter a little too performative for comfort. But I guess you have to be that to be in politics and wanting change. I understand why it was nominated.
Jenifer McShane’s The Quilters—about a group of inmates who turn to quilt-making as a form of rehabilitation—makes for good double screening with Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing [2024], which is also about art-pursuing inmates, this time revolving around theatre, and has produced an Oscar hopeful in Colman Domingo, who is now nominated for Best Actor for the movie. I like how observant The Quilters was, and how appropriately paced. It feels plain, however, and ultimately does not rise to memorable. I understand why it was not nominated.
Julio Palacio’s Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World is about a teenage girl with non-verbal autism, whom the film depicts as someone who “unlocks a joyous world of self-expression as she shares her voice for the first time using a letter board.” That assertion, however—about the effectivity of letter boards as communication medium for those with autism—has proven controversial. And the film did not really move me. I understand why it was not nominated.
Jacqueline Baylon’s Until He’s Back is about a Moroccan father who has learned that his son has died in an attempt to get to Spain as a refugee. He embarks on the difficult task to bring his son’s remains back home—and faces a complicated process of repatriation. The film is important—but to be honest, as soon as I finished watching it, I forgot all about it, which meant it had no resonance. I understand why it was not nominated.
Ömer Sami’s Eternal Father is a strange one. It is about a father and his family—all migrants in Denmark—who have to contend with the fact that the patriarch is intent on defying death, through cryonics. It is interesting when it gets into the family dynamics, but the film lacks any real depth about cryonics itself—Is it a science or a pseudoscience? Is it an inherently capitalist scam that banks on our fear of death and illness? Why is this family giving this man a pass with this hairbrained scheme to live forever? We don’t really get any answers. I understand why it was not nominated.
Of the nominated films, the one that I enjoyed very much without liking its subject at all was Yamazaki’s Instruments of a Beating Heart. It is a simple film about a very young girl in an elementary school in Japan, who is single-minded in her quest to be part of an orchestra who has just been tasked to provide a musical number welcoming new students to the school. Reading through some of the comments about the film, I was astounded by quite a number who voiced such tender concern for the protagonist, Ayame. They cared when she cried. They cared when she bungled her audition to play an instrument. They cared when she was given a bit of a dressing down by her music teacher. And I was like—what is everybody talking about? That girl needed to be taken down a notch, because she is going to grow up like a Japanese versionof Tracy Flick. She is an annoying and assuming kid who does not do well at her tasks, and cries all throughout the film because she doesn’t get what she wants. Then when she gets another chance, and still does badly, she is always late and never practices, and then when gets reprimanded, she cries crocodile tears. As far as I’m concerned that music teacher said what needed to be said. [And the boy Haruka also totally deserved that spot, and I’m with Ide all the way.] I understand why the film is nominated.
I loved Bill Morrison’s Incident—although “loved” might be the wrong word that describes my respect for this short documentary. It is a feat of assemblage, piecing together all sorts of surveillance footage around the incident of a black man shot to death by police. What you see ultimately convinces you about how rigged the system is with regards racial profiling, and the easy escape of denial policemen resort to when they bow to their murderous instincts. I understand why the film is nominated.
I also loved Molly O’Brien’s The Only Girl in the Orchestra, because it is a profile about a talented musician who is playfully wary about being profiled—but is game enough to let the cameras get a peek into her storied life anyway. The thing is, double bassist Orin O’Brien deserves this attention because her life as a member of New York Philarmonic has been truly trailblazing. She was hired by Leonard Bernstein in 1966 as the first female musician in the orchestra, and became the focus of much media interest and fascination because of that. She is now retired, and in her late 80s—but insists no fuss should be made about her, preferring instead to put a spotlight on her family, her students, her friends, and her colleagues. Which makes her doubly worthy of a documentary. I understand why the film is nominated.
Then there is Smriti Mundhra’s I Am Ready, Warden, which follows the last days in a Texas death row for inmate John Henry Ramirez, who robbed a convenience store when he was a young man, and killing its attendant in the process by riddling him with bullets. He soon fled to Mexico, stayed there for many years, but was eventually arrested and sent back to the U.S. to face prosecution, eventually landing him with capital punishment. But the real story is about his “rehabilitation,” and how he would soon seek out forgiveness from the son of the man he killed, and also demonstrably mending his life by becoming a “Christian.” That turn towards the evangelical in the middle was what left me in a lurch, because it left such a bad taste in the mouth—making the entire thing sound like Evangelical Christian propaganda. What a scam. This is probably the worst film in the whole Oscars shortlist for documentary shorts. I don’t understand why the film is nominated.
Here is my ranking of all the documentary short films, including the unnominated titles:
[1] Keeper
[2] Incident
[3] Chasing Roo
[4] The Only Girl in the Orchestra
[5] Planetwalker
[6] Instruments of a Beating Heart
[7] Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr
[8] Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World
[9] The Quilters
[10] Eternal Father
[11] Until He’s Back
[12] A Swim Lesson
[13] I Am Ready, Warden
Unseen by me:
[14] Death by Numbers
[15] Once Upon a Time in Ukraine
Labels: documentaries, film, life, short films
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Saturday, January 25, 2025
10:26 PM |
From Courage to Cicatrice
Part 1 of the 2024 Oscar Shorts Considered
Every time Oscar season comes—this usually starts around November and ends around the time the annual Oscar Awards telecast gets held, which is around early March—I would embark on a months-long movie marathon popularly called the Oscars Death Race.
It’s so-called because all participants—usually cinephiles like me who want some structure around our fervent movie-watching—have to catch all the films anticipated to get some Oscar nominations before that particular announcement rolls around mid-January. [A lot of what we watch don’t even receive any nominations, which leads to a round of griping online—“What do you mean Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers did not receive any nomination, but Jacques Audiard’s execrable Emilia Perez got thirteen?” “What? Nicole Kidman did not get nominated for her best role to date in Babygirl?” “I knew Angelina Jolie was a longshot for a nomination for Maria, but I’m still surprised.” “All We Imagine as Light was robbed!”]
When the nominations finally hit, we embark on catching all the remaining films nominated before the telecast itself, in a fervent race to watch them all, and it’s not always easy, especially if you don’t live in the United States. Every year, there are white whales—which are films that are almost impossible to watch, because their release dates are atrocious, or the filmmakers for some reason just choose to hold on to them without viable distribution. For the 2024-2025 season, that has got to be the full-length documentary Porcelain War, and the documentary short Death by Numbers, which, as far as ordinary cinephiles are concerned, do not really exist. [I have since bought a ticket for an online February screening of Porcelain War, which apparently does exist. And when it was still on the short list, Eno was also something I planned to watch online—because I was intrigued by the idea that it utilized a computer program which selects footage and edits the film so that a different version is shown each time it is screened. But its online distributors did not make it easy to buy a ticket. So when it failed to get a nomination last January 23, I just willingly let it go, even if I am a huge fan of the documentaries of Gary Hustwitt.] Then there are The Brutalist, September 5, Nickel Boys, and I’m Still Here, which are out-of-reach for non-U.S. death racers simply because their distributors are, for a lack of a better term, stupid. So sometimes we make do with so-called “cam” copies of these films, pirated via a camcorder in a movie theater, because once you are on a death race track, you have to do everything you can to get to the finish line. Even watch bad copies of them online.
The release of the Oscars shortlists in early December is our Thanksgiving—and helps narrow the list down, because it trims the number of international films, documentary films, and all the shorts [live action, animated, and documentary] to a manageable fifteen each. The Oscar nomination announcement is our Christmas Day, and the Oscar telecast is our New Year—because that day marks the beginning of another film year for most of us. There’s even a website that tracks all the films you have watched, complete with a leaderboard. [As of this writing, I am at #11 worldwide, with 96% of all nominated films already screened by me.]
Why do I do this? Because I’m a masochist. And because I truly love film. And because without this structure, I would not watch titles that are definitely out of my comfort zone.
Having said all that, I have a particular interest in following all the short films in contention. I like short films. The best ones manage to convey with gravity their themes in ten, or twenty, or thirty minutes—sometimes better than feature-length films which are four or five times longer in terms of running time. For film year 2024, out of the shortlists released last December, I managed to see almost all the titles in the live action and documentary shorts categories, and everything in the animated short category.
The five nominated live action short films are Anuja [d. Adam J. Graves], I’m Not a Robot [d. Victoria Warmerdam], The Last Ranger [d. Cindy Lee], A Lien [d. Sam Cutler-Kreutz and David Cutler-Kreutz], and The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent [d. Nebojša Slijepčević]—a great list for the simple reason that it did not include Dovecote, which was the worst film in the short list, a one-shot mess that starred Zoe Saldana as an inmate in a Venice prison for women that seemed to mistake its cinematographic dexterity with depth. It was awful. [Saldana, alas, stars in two of 2024’s most maligned, but strangely Oscar-considered, movies: this one, and Emilia Perez.]
The other unnominated films run the gamut of excellence deprived of recognition to truly awful exercises of the form. I was very surprised that Àlex Lora Cercos’s The Masterpiece did not get a nomination, given that it has a lot of Parasite vibes to it—including the house the story is set in, and the story revolving around a small clash between the privileged and the poor. I like its conceit that it is a clash over a painting, but whether or not which party gets the painting in the end, this does not matter at all, because the painting is a MacGuffin. The subtext of the film is the story: the contrast in material culture between a rich couple and a couple of scraps men; the posture each camp instinctively take towards the other in terms of “safety”; the lackadaisical way the rich have with their excess and “trash,” which the poor, all intentional, feast on as a source for living; and the power dynamics on display when fighting over what “seems” valuable. What intrigued me about the short film is the way the camera lingers on the younger scraps man as he looks with some befuddlement at the older one, who just made the choice that ended the short film. Was the look in anger? Or relief? I think that’s the invitation the film gifts us to consider its thesis. As for me, I think the right choice was made. [It would be difficult to sell that painting, anyway, without a certificate of its provenance.]
I also liked Dani Feixas’ Paris 70, a tender antidote to most grim Alzheimer’s drama out there—and the short film truly earns it with its pace, its characterization, its story—about a son who finds a way to humor his ailing mother by succumbing to her dreams of traveling to other places. I also liked Portia A. Buckley’s Clodagh, about a nun who discovers a talented young dancer in her congregation, and how it limns the borders of integrity, however small. Where do we draw the line at a lie, especially if it benefits us? Are there small lies and big lies?
The other unnominated films in the live action short list felt mid—if mildly involving in some places, but generally falling flat. The surprising thing about TJ O’Grady-Peyton’s Room Taken, about a homeless man who starts living in the house of a blind woman, is that it is not a horror film at all, but bends over backwards to make its disturbing tale a fable of humanism. Mohammed Almughanni’s An Orange from Jaffa, about an Israeli taxi driver who takes in as fare a Palestinian man who has difficulty crossing a checkpoint, does not really do much with its embedded tension. Jean de Meuron’s Edge of Space—which is a period film set at the height of the US-Soviet space race in the 1960s, and follows an ambitious USAF test pilot who is recruited by NASA for a suborbital mission in an X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft—is strangely cold and uninvolving for a space race story, and the only thing that carries it is the painstaking attention to detail, and to image. The worst of the lot, aside from Marco Perego Saldana’s Dovecote, is Pavel Sýkora and Viktor Horák’s The Compatriot, an ill-conceived drama about a widower at the height of the Nazi occupation of the former Czechoslovakia, who gets an unannounced visit by an SS officer—with the only thing the two having in common being their Sudeten origins. It felt very much like a typical Oscar bait story—except that this time around, the Academy did not bite. There’s also Jens Kevin Georg’s Crust, a very loose adaptation of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” which follows a boy trying to prove his mettle by getting his first scar—something that everyone in his strange family seems to value above all else. Its telling is so offbeat though that I was more repulsed than entertained, and it was actually a relief when it was over. I have not seen Robert Moniot’s The Ice Cream Man, but the reviews online have not been kind—which might be why its filmmakers have chosen not to release the film in a suitable manner.
Of the nominated live action shorts, I did not expect Lee’s The Last Ranger to get the nod—although its depiction of a true story involving the fight against animal poachers in Africa might have swayed liberal-leaning Academy members with its important environmental message. [Sometimes, it’s really about the synopsis.] The story follows a young girl who is introduced to the responsibilities [and even wonder] of a game reserve by the last remaining ranger in their community—but soon the two are ambushed by poachers intent on harming the rhinos in the ranger’s keeping for their horns. During the fateful encounter, the young girl also discovers a terrible secret—a twist I knew was coming from the moment the film began. It’s not a bad film—it just feels like an important story told in a mediocre way.
I appreciated Graves’ Anuja because it felt like a part and parcel of 2024’s cinematic trend of following the travails of Indian women [a list that would include Santosh, All We Imagine as Light, and Laapataa Ladies—all of them unique and involving highlights of Indian cinema last year], but compared to these films, this short one felt like a breath of fresh air, simply because of its optimism. The story centers on two plucky sisters working in a garment factory and living on their own, but both soon face a decision they have to make at film’s end, which would alter their very lives. I make it sound ominous, but it isn’t. It is a film cloaked in hope—and springing from a story that has groundings in truth—and this quality makes it an endearing watch. It doesn’t have much of a punch, truth to tell, and it might even be forgettable, but its heart is in the right place.
Warmerdam’s I’m Not a Robot, on the other hand, is a serio-comic story about a woman who, while listening to music on her computer, discovers the program rebooting. This forces her to accomplish a series of CAPTCHA tests—which, to her chagrin, she fails again and again and again, leading her to entertain the disturbing notion that she might actually be a robot. The short film starts off as a commentary on our increasingly AI-infected lives, but it takes a sharp turn and becomes a rumination on relationships and the things we do to find compatibility in others—a turn that’s not exactly well-handled, but it’s entertaining enough, and the film is a hoot from beginning to end.
Cutler-Kreutz’s A Lien is the film from among the lot that feels like very much like it has been grabbed from the most contemporary headlines. It follows a bi-racial couple and their child as they arrive on the day of their green card interview, but they are soon confronted with a dangerous immigration process that’s actually quite common among agents working for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [or ICE]—the taking into immediate custody, and then deportation, of “illegal aliens” who are, in fact, in the very process of legalizing their stay under the very blessings of immigration authorities. It is slice-of-life story whose tension comes from the unfairness of the situation we behold, and the film’s effectivity comes from the deft handling of that tension.
But the one live action short film that moved and disturbed me the most was Slijepčević’s The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, because its story is one that needed to be told, and because its narrative conceit indicts its viewers about the possibilities of courageous action when confronted with evil. We are told that the story is inspired by the actions of an actual hero from the Bosnian Wars in the early 1990s—that of Tomo Buzov, a passenger on a Belgrade-Bar train, which was stopped in the village of Štrpci in 1993 by the Serbian White Eagles paramilitary group. The paramilitary unit, under the command of Milan Lukić, subsequently pulled away 18 Bosniak Muslims and one Croat from among the passengers, who were then eventually massacred. Buzov was the sole non-Bosniak passenger on the train who tried to stand up against the attackers—and was also taken away to be massacred with the rest. I cannot explain the conceit of the film without taking away its power, but it is very much an experiment in point-of-view, which also asks us a question: you might think you will take a courageous stand in the face of evil—but will you really? As one Letterbxd member puts it, the film is about “the fragile balance of who we want to be and who we [really] are.”
Here is my ranking of all the live action short films, including the unnominated titles:
[1] The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent
[2] A Lien
[3] I’m Not a Robot
[4] The Masterpiece
[5] Paris 70
[6] Clodagh
[7] Anuja
[8] Room Taken
[9] The Last Ranger
[10] An Orange from Jaffa
[11] Edge of Space
[12] Crust
[13] The Compatriot
[14] Dovecote
[15] The Ice Cream Man
Labels: film, life, oscar, short films
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Sunday, January 12, 2025
9:00 AM |
Life Lessons from a Ghost
I have been watching a lot of Japanese movies lately. It is, after all, “Japanuary,” a kind of cinephilic trend which calls for devoting the month of January to screening Japanese films. Of late, I have turned to the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa simply because this is also film awards season, and his latest film, Cloud, was the Japanese official entry to the International Feature category of the Oscar Awards. [Last year, he also gifted us with a truly horrifying short film, Chime.]
I do not ordinarily get my life lessons from the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The Japanese auteur, who burst to international fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s with his uncanny contributions to what we now call as “J-Horror,” is known for exploring in his films themes of existential dread, isolation and the fraught relationship between individuals and society, the dour impact of technology in our lives, and the fragility of memory—often giving his stories a supernatural bent involving ghosts, which are often malevolent and vengeful.
In his seminal Cure [1997], we follow a police procedural involving a series of grisly murders which seem to be connected—because all the victims have the mark “X” carved into their necks. But as the story unfolds, we learn that the murders are being committed by disparate individuals who have no memory of what they have done, nor have any motives for doing them. The clues soon lead to a mysterious figure named Mamiya whose presence evoke a profound sense of alienation that he causes otherwise ordinary people to succumb to their violent impulses, challenging the idea that identity and morality are stable constructs. In Pulse [2001], we gradually learn that the dead have begun infiltrating the living world through the Internet, causing people to succumb to despair and vanish, leaving behind only dark, shadowy marks.
Not exactly films to take away endearing life lessons from.
In 2015, Kurosawa released Journey to the Shore, which from the get-go already presents itself as a ghost story. We meet Mizuki, a piano teacher for children, whose melancholy is evident from the way she goes about her daily routines. She has reasons to be sad: her husband Yusuke has been missing for three years, and presumed dead. She misses him, and still grieves. One day, after her piano lessons, she comes home to find the ghost of her husband in her living room. But the ghost of Yusuke also inhabits a corporeal reality the movie never questions—he is truly a ghost, but he can also be touched, and he can be seen by other people. He even eats and sleeps. Sometimes, however, he disappears into thin air.
Yusuke informs Mizuki that he drowned at sea—and his body has already been eaten by crabs. But somehow he found himself entering the living world, interacting with people, some of them living and some dead—ghosts who are exactly like him. He has been traveling and meeting people since passing away, and now, to finally say goodbye, he wants to take Mizuki with him to meet all the individuals who have been part of his life these past three years, so that she, too, can see, touch, and feel what Yusuki did while he was gone. She packs her bag without question, and goes on this journey with her ghost husband, sometimes taking the train, sometimes the bus. The movie proceeds on an episodic structure, with each visit becoming Kurosawa’s way of instructing us about the relationships between people and their ghosts, about remembering and forgetting, about forgiving and longing.
In the penultimate “episode,” Yusuke, with Mizuki in tow, returns to a farm he worked in, where the community of farmers has learned to gravitate towards him as a kind of philosopher and storyteller. He was known to give the farm folk the occasional capsule lectures about varied things, like Physics, in their small community hall, and sometimes strings these educational talks with poignant observations about life. One such talk begins soon after Yusuke’s return to town. He begins to discuss the matter of light as both a particle and as a wave:
“Light is both a wave and a particle,” Yusuke begins. “A light particle has zero mass. Light, as its name implies, travels at the speed of light. If you apply Einstein’s equation, anything traveling at the speed of light should have infinite mass. But a tiny particle of light couldn’t possibly have infinite mass. The only solution is for it to have zero mass. A particle of light must have zero mass. But can you say that something of zero mass even exists? What is this particle which is like a lot of nothing? And remember, light is also a wave. It has a wavelength, which is like the wave’s width. But if you keep reducing this wavelength, is there a point where it becomes zero? If it’s a zero, that’s not a wave. However tiny it is, a wave has a wavelength. So the smallest wavelength of a wave of light also has a quantity of zero.”
He continues: “The thing is, in the world of the very small, zero does have a width. In other words, zero isn’t zero. The whole universe is filled with an infinite number of zeroes. Zero is the basis of everything. So nothingness isn’t the same as meaninglessness. Nothingness is the foundation of everything. Mountains and rivers, the earth and human beings. Everything is composed of combinations of this nothingness. This would seem to be a true representation of the world.”
Truly, this whole monologue does not seem to come from a typical Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie.
And I’m glad.
Yusuke made me think. What does it mean to live a life that matters? Perhaps the answer lies not in grand proclamations but in the tension between light and shadow, between the tangible and the ineffable. Yusuke makes a point that the universe itself—both vast and microscopic—offers us a metaphor for this paradox, to consider light—a force that is both particle and wave, both zero and infinite. It is something and nothing all at once, the very essence of the contradictory truths that define existence.
This duality of light captures the enigmatic foundation of reality.
We wake each morning with an unspoken hope: to find clarity, joy, or purpose in the hours ahead. Yet life often undercuts these expectations. The coffee spills; the news disappoints. But even in the mundane—in the routine of commuting, working, returning—there lies an unspoken wonder. The banality of the everyday is not meaningless; it is an intricate dance of forces seen and unseen, much like light itself. Fleeting and fragile, life compels us to create, to love, to leave a mark. It is as if we are each a beam of light, our trajectory immeasurable yet undeniable.
Take, for example, the quiet courage of a mother waking early to prepare her child for school. Or the rhythmic precision of a farmer tending his crops under the rising sun. Or the solitary writer chasing words that might outlast time. These acts, so ordinary they often escape notice, are like photons scattering through space. They are small, yet they illuminate. They are fleeting, yet they shape the world.
Perhaps meaning is not found in answers but in the act of seeking. Meaning is a mosaic of personal truths: the way sunlight pools on a wooden floor, the laughter shared among friends, the feeling of holding a book that feels like an old companion. It is in the particulars that we discover the infinite—the zero that is not zero.
But life is not only light. It is shadow. Loss, grief, and suffering carve through our days with an unrelenting hand. Yet these shadows sharpen our perception of what truly matters. Consider those who have endured unimaginable loss and emerged with a greater capacity for love, for connection. In their lives, we see a profound truth: that even in the void, there is creation; even in absence, there is presence.
And so, we circle back to the question: what is the meaning of life? It is perhaps a flawed question, for it assumes meaning to be a fixed point, a destination. But what if meaning is found in the journey? What if it is the striving, the questioning, the living that gives life its shape?
This reminds me of a story about a fisherman who spent his days casting nets into the ocean, watching the tides. One day, a scholar asked him, “What do you see out there?” The fisherman, gazing at the horizon, replied, “Possibility.” The scholar pressed on. “But what does it mean to you?” The fisherman laughed. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he said. “It just is.”
There is wisdom in the fisherman’s humility, an acceptance of the universe’s enigmatic nature. To search for meaning is not to find a definitive answer but to grow through the seeking. It is to recognize that we are participants in an infinite dance, a constellation of lives intertwined by joys and sorrows, by light and shadow.
Perhaps the meaning of life is not a puzzle to solve but a question to live. It is as vast and unknowable as the ocean the fisherman watched, as fundamental and paradoxical as the light that travels through it. And when the end comes—as it must—the measure of a meaningful life will not be the monuments we’ve built or the accolades we’ve received. It will be the ripples we leave in the hearts of others, the moments of light we shared in their shadows, the quiet assurance that, for a while, we were here. We loved, we wondered, we lived. And in that fragile, infinite dance, perhaps we were enough.
Labels: film, life, physics
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Monday, September 09, 2024
And I feel a bit sad. Yesterday was the last exhibition day of the
EDDIE ROMERO MEMORABILIA EXHIBIT, which I curated for the National Museum of the Philippines, with F Jordan Carnice.
It was an honor to work for this exhibit, and we have so many people to be thankful for: the
Romero family, especially,
Joey Romero; everyone at the
National Commission for Culture and the Arts, especially
Lou Izabelle Danganan; everyone at the
Robert and Metta Silliman University Library, especially
Sarah Angiela Ragay; everyone at the
Dumaguete City Tourism Office, especially
Katherine Aguilar; and last but not the least, everyone at the
National Museum of the Philippines Dumaguete, especially
Shi Mei Estimada [and a huge shoutout to
Mark Anthony Singson who assembled all the panels!].
Thank you to everybody who came to see the exhibit!
Labels: dumaguete, exhibits, film, people, thanksgiving
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Friday, July 26, 2024
1:12 PM |
Cheng Pei Pei, 1946-2024
I did not know this kung fu movie legend passed on a few days ago. I was introduced to Cheng Pei Pei in Ang Lee's
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which became my portal to her Hong Kong movies,
Come Drink With Me (1966) being my favorite. Rest in peace, Queen of Swords.
More
here.
Labels: celebrity, film, obituary
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Sunday, July 07, 2024
9:00 AM |
Eddie Romero: A Life
Today, July 7, is the 100th birth anniversary of Dumaguete filmmaker and National Artist for Cinema and Broadcast Arts Eddie Romero. In celebration of this milestone, Dumaguete City has geared up for a series of events—including lectures and film screenings, and by the afternoon of Sunday, also an unveiling of his bust at the Old Presidencia grounds and an exhibit of his memorabilia. The commemoration is sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, together with the Dumaguete City Tourism Office, Silliman University Culture and Arts Council, Robert and Metta Silliman University Library, Foundation University, Society of Filipino Archivists for Film, FPJ Archives, ABS-CBN Sagip Pelikula, and the National Museum of the Philippines–Dumaguete.
Edgar Sinco Romero, better known as the filmmaker Eddie Romero, was born on 7 July 1924 in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental. He was the only child born to José E. Romero, a congressman, Secretary of Education, and the first Philippine Ambassador to the Court of St. James in the United Kingdom, to his first wife Pilar Guzman Sinco, a school teacher, who died in childbirth in 1927. His father would later have seven other children with his second wife Elisa Zuñiga Villanueva.
Romero grew up in a family that valued education, public service, and cultural enrichment, and in a city which provided a rich cultural environment that would deeply influence Romero’s artistic vision. Romero’s early education at the Dumaguete Elementary School and at Silliman University High School proved to be formative. Silliman University, known for fostering intellectual and artistic growth, was where Romero first encountered the diverse cultural influences that would shape his worldview. The vibrant academic and cultural community of Dumaguete, with its emphasis on literature, arts, and progressive ideas, left an indelible mark on the young Romero.
He began writing stories as early as seven or eight years old, and published his first short story at the age of twelve. One of his better-known short stories, “Oh, Johnny, Oh,” published in the 25 May 1940 issue of the Philippines Free Press, when he was only sixteen years old, revealed a young man reveling under the grit and thrill of film noir—and helped garner attention to his storytelling abilities by the film director Gerardo de Leon, who would also become National Artist for Cinema.
In his adult years, Romero’s life experiences instilled in him a profound understanding of conflict, resilience, and the human condition—themes that would later permeate his films, from the golden age of Philippine cinema in the 1940s and 1950s, to the Hollywood B-movie heydays in the 1960s and 1970s, and to the second golden age of Philippine cinema in the 1970s and 1980s.
According to IMDB, he directed 65 titles, wrote 49, and produced 23. His career spanned more than six decades, leaving an indelible mark on the Philippine and international cinema. His first foray into filmmaking was a script he wrote for the film Ang Maestra, directed by Gerardo de Leon in 1941. Anecdotally, he wrote the screenplay in English—considering his upbringing and education at Silliman University in Dumaguete—with the production translating his text to Tagalog.
After World War II, he helmed his first film, Ang Kamay ng Diyos in 1947, and soon emerged as a versatile filmmaker, adept at both commercial and critically acclaimed productions, and was particularly known for directing films starring the popular tandem of Pancho Magalona and Tita Duran, including Always: Kay Ganda Mo and Sa Piling Mo, both released in 1949.
That same year, his father was appointed as the first Philippine Ambassador to the Court of St. James in the United Kingdom by President Elpidio Quirino, and the young Eddie took the opportunity to join his family in London, apparently abandoning what was already a fast-rising career as a film director. In his recollections, he would consider these years as his “lost years,” when he grappled existentially with the possibility of pursuing further a career in the movie industry. But he also used these years in London to educate himself in world cinema, making acquaintances with such directors as David Lean, Karel Reisz, and Roberto Rossellini, and becoming familiar with the work of Yasujiro Ozu, whose film techniques he admired.
After he returned to the Philippines in 1951, Romero went on to direct films for Sampaguita and Lebran. He began directing mainstream films once more, including several adaptations of popular komiks such as Barbaro (1952) and El Indio (1953). He helmed two more Pancho Magalona and Tita Duran films, Kasintahan sa Pangarap (1951) and Ang Ating Pag-ibig (1953), and then directed the first Filipino movie to win an award at the Asian Film Festival, Ang Asawa Kong Americana (1953). He also produced and directed Buhay Alamang (1952), which he adapted from a stage play by his mentor Gerardo de Leon.
By the end of the 1950s, he would enter his second chapter as a filmmaker. He set his eyes on international productions, sensing seismic changes in the local film industry that would see most of its major studios closing shop by the 1960s. He began directing B-movies, mostly action fares and World War II extravaganzas, for Hollywood. This includes Day of the Trumpet (1957), Man on the Run (1958), Terror is a Man (1959), Raiders of Leyte Gulf (1962), Lost Battalion (1961), The Walls of Hell (1964, co-directed with Gerardo de Leon), and Manila: Open City (1968).
Romero would later venture to the more profitable horror genre, starting in 1964 with Moro Witch Doctor, and continued with Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1968), Beast of Blood (1970), Beast of the Yellow Night (1971), The Twilight People (1972), and Savage Sisters (1974). He produced many of these for his own outfit, Hemisphere Pictures, including the “Blood Island” series, which he would later describe as “the worst things I ever did.” Some of these films were made in collaboration with Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, which was known for its commercially successful run of Hollywood B-movies. Romero’s Black Mama, White Mama (1973), a blaxtaploitation/women-in-chains film starring Pam Grier, has since become a cult classic favorite. He also worked with Jack Nicholson, who starred in the films Flight to Fury and Back Door to Hell, both of which he produced in 1964.
His 1966 film The Passionate Strangers, produced by the American actor Michael Parsons and co-written with fellow Sillimanians Cesar Jalandoni Amigo and Reuben Canoy, was Romero’s first film to use Negros Oriental as a backdrop. The film noir-tinged drama, about murder and labor unrest in a small Filipino town with an American-owned factory at the center of it all, uses Dumaguete and nearby towns as significant settings for the story. This experience would lead him to film the entirety of his pre-colonial epic fantasy Kamakalawa in Negros Oriental in 1981.
Kamakalawa would come after a string of critically-acclaimed films he made starting in the mid-1970s, when he transitioned once more from his focus on international productions to a new focus on Filipino stories, challenged by the cinematic fare that directors such as Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal were bringing to the world stage. He was also increasingly conscious of his legacy as a Filipino filmmaker, and thus made an effort to return to artier fare. He began this pivotal period by writing and directing Ganito Kami Noon...Paano Kayo Ngayon? (1976), following a young man confronted with the idea of being a Filipino, an epic that remains one of his most celebrated works. The film, set against the backdrop of the Philippine Revolution against Spain, showcased Romero’s ability to blend historical context with personal stories and national yearnings, earning him the prestigious FAMAS Award for Best Director.
While he would direct two more films for the B-market in Hollywood, and famously was part of the production of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now in 1980, this part in his filmmaking career allowed him to pursue more serious and artistic fares, including such personal films as Sinong Kapiling? Sinong Kasiping? (1977), Banta ng Kahapon (1977), and Hari sa Hari, Lahi sa Lahi (1987). But many critics consider his crowning achievement to be Aguila (1980), an epic that traverses several generations of a Filipino family through several socio-political upheavals in the country, and starring the legendary Fernando Poe Jr. In the later years of his career, Romero turned to television and gave the world the critically-acclaimed adaptation of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, a major television series that aired in 1993.
Romero’s immense contributions to Philippine cinema and broadcast arts have been recognized by many award-giving bodies, including the Luna Awards of the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP), the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences (FAMAS), Gawad Urian, the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), the Catholic Mass Media Awards (CMMA), among several others.
In 2003, Eddie Romero was conferred the award of the Order of National Artists, the highest national recognition given to Filipino individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of Philippine arts. This accolade was a fitting tribute to a career marked by innovation, dedication, and an unwavering commitment to storytelling. Romero’s films are characterized by their rich narratives, complex characters, and a profound understanding of the human condition. Throughout his career, Romero remained a visionary, constantly evolving and adapting to the changing cinematic landscape.
He married Carolina Gonzalez of Pangasinan in 1948. He had three children: Jose “Joey" Romero IV, Ancel Edgar, and Leo John. Joey Romero would later follow in his father’s footsteps, becoming a noted filmmaker in his own right.
His passing on 28 May 2013, at the age of 88, marked the end of an era in Philippine cinema, but his legacy continues to inspire. Romero was not just a filmmaker but a storyteller of unparalleled depth, whose life and work remain a testament not only to the entertainment industry but also to the rich cultural heritage of the Philippines. [With contribution from F. Jordan Carnice]
Labels: art and culture, dumaguete, film, people, philippine cinema
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