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

Email: icasocot(at)gmail.com

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Thursday, August 12, 2021

entry arrow4:32 PM | A Sandy Andolong Appreciation Post



Every time I love a film from the Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema [roughly the 1970s to the early 1980s], Sandy Andolong seems to be in it. I love her. Her beautiful face perfectly encapsulates the era. And her acting has always been superb and well-modulated, although she remains underrated compared to her peers of that era, which include Charo Santos, Nora Aunor, Rio Locsin, Amy Austria, Vilma Santos, Hilda Koronel, Laurice Guillen, Alma Moreno, Gina Alajar, Lorna Tolentino, and Cheri Gil. She’s exceptional in Moral and Oro Plata Mata, and a scene stealer in almost everything else she was in [even her cameo in Bad Bananas sa Puting Tabing].

This is why I’m grateful for the current spate of restoring our film heritage, which we were on the verge of losing forever — thanks mostly to ABS-CBN Film Restoration and the efforts of Mike de Leon and other bodies. Now we can truly appreciate the lushness of our cinematic storytelling [and the faces of our movie stars] which for so long remained in the shadows of faded print, mold-eaten copies, and low fidelity bootleg. [That this government endangered that effort by shutting down ABS-CBN is one of biggest crimes against our cultural patrimony.]

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[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich



Tuesday, August 08, 2017

entry arrow12:27 AM | Fascism in Living Color!

Word has it that Mike de Leon's Batch '81 (1982) -- his searing look into the world of fascism and fraternities -- has been restored by Italy's L’Immagine Ritrovata and Singapore's Asian Film Archive, and is currently scheduled for screening as part of the Venice Classics section of the coming 74th Venice International Film Festival. It will be presented in an lineup that includes Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976), Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964), Milos Forman’s Black Peter (1963), Claude Chabrol’s The Third Lover (1962), Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

Read more here.



I'm quite happy that a significant number of our film classics are being restored. It's quite a boon to be able to teach/show these restored films in classes and screenings without straining people's imaginations to make them somehow "see" what made them great in the first place. You don't have to explain too much anymore these days: they see the full glory of the restored images and sound, and they respond with enthusiasm. Talk about finding new audiences!

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[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich



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