Thursday, March 20, 2008

12:55 AM | Paul Scofield, 86

Death these days seem too much eager for harvest, isn't he? We were still reeling from the shock and taking stock of Anthony Minghella's passing (which made me seek out an old copy of The Talented Mr. Ripley...) and then Arthur C. Clarke (which made me reread some of his old short stories, including "Rescue Party," his first one, which also is a blueprint for most of the themes in his later works). And now, the actor Paul Scofield, too? (The New York Times story here.) Most of you will probably not know him since the classically-trained actor chose his roles very sparingly. His last two films were involvements of various sorts in documentaries, and his last acting role was in The Crucible from 1997. But those who managed to see Robert Redford's Quiz Show (from 1994) will remember him playing Ralph Fiennes' character's father, the intellectual Mark Van Doren. That scene when son and father tries to talk to each other in the light of the controversies the film chronicles is a masterclass in acting in miniature. CNN writes: "Actor Richard Burton, once regarded as the natural heir to Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud at the summit of British theater, said it was Scofield who deserved that place. 'Of the 10 greatest moments in the theater, eight are Scofield's,' he said." (More here.) Much too sad that we will never get to see more of that talent... I have yet to see Mr. Scofield in his Oscar-winning performance in A Man For All Seasons, where he plays Sir Thomas More. I have a DVD copy somewhere in the shelf where all my old movies are. This is going to be a strange Holy Week. All alone at home, catching up on reading and the movies, all to bid farewell to ghosts.

UPDATE:

Dusted off my DVD copy of Fred Zinnemann's A Man for All Seasons this afternoon and watched it as day turned to dusk -- and you're right, Ichi, Paul Scofield was brilliant. The historical Sir Thomas More was a man of principle, but also of complex compulsions: we know he isn't entirely the saint that playwright Robert Bolt painted him to be (he is said to have taken "excessively delight in torturing Lutherans and other heretics," as this recent appraisal of Scofield's legacy in The New York Times asserts) -- but as embodied by Scofield, the character was towering even without really trying. In that final scene where Scofield as More faces the charges of high treason and gives his final word, the camera curiously chooses to film Scofield from afar, from the distance of the spectators in the balcony: even then, Scofield's performance was overpowering. He dominated the film entirely. His Oscar win as Best Actor for the role is well-earned.

Labels: celebrity, film, obituary, people, showbiz

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

6:13 PM | Hong Kong Sex Scandal!

Of course you remember those assorted geographically-specific porn flicks -- jumpstarted by the Dumaguete Sex Scandal video -- that made the rounds of our favorite pirates' DVD hoards a while back... Apparently, the whole phenomenon has jumped the South China Sea and is now wrecking havoc in our neighbors up north. I feel completely out of the loop -- been too busy minding other things that I forgot to keep track of showbiz gossip, and I didn't even know about this until I read a news bulletin in CNN.com, of all places: Edison Chen, the wildly popular Hong Kong film star (he was in The Grudge 2 and in Infernal Affairs, in a role that Matt Damon took in Martin Scorsese's The Departed) apparently has taken 1,300 pictures of prominent Hong Kong showbiz personalities in poses of various sexual acts with him. He had his laptop repaired, and unknowingly unleashed the scandal which is now rocking (and titillating) the showbiz world of Hong Kong and Taiwan. And the photos are frankly shameless. (The Hollywood Grind blog has the updates and the full photo collection .) Although, in fairness to him, they do show him in full, umm, glory.

Poor Edison then quickly hid to escape the pressure, and has only now emerged to apologize. (The female partners -- all of them prominent showbiz personalities -- have been hit hard by the scandal. One was just handed divorce papers, and another had her engagement nullified.) Edison has since announced his semi-retirement from the entertainment industry: "I admit that most of the photos being circulated on the Internet were taken by me. But these photos are very private and have not been shown to people and are never intended to be shown to anyone.... During my time away, I have made an important decision. I will whole-heartedly fulfill all commitments that I have to date. But after that, I decided to step away from the Hong Kong entertainment industry."

Labels: film, gossip, issues, people, scandal, showbiz

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Sunday, February 25, 2007

9:35 AM | And Now, For a Little Showbiz Gossip

But Kris Aquino always had bad choices in men. The first time she went trophying around this weird-faced James Yap basketball guy, he looked like trouble from the get-go. That's another Philip Salvador and Joey Marquez, I thought -- and not too deeply: nobody thinks too deeply about showbiz shenanigans.

But why do we even bother watching this latest soap opera about our one-time Laban-yellow princess?

I'll attempt some answers. Because, as a kid, she was a dramatic bellwether of our political hopes in turbulent times, embodying Ninoy's charm when Ninoy was already gone. Because she appealed to our sense of rooting for the underdog when, seemingly without any hard-core show-business talent (can she sing? can she dance? can she act?), she went on to become a TV drama anthology queen and then a surprise movie star, even managing to secure acting awards -- and, goodness me, deserving ones at that -- against all odds. (It proved the theory that nobody really has to have talent in Philippine showbiz to have staying power: all one has to do is to be a magnificent manipulator of being a tabloid fodder without seeming to be -- and none of that lightning-quick scandals and spats variety either.) Because she is joyfully tactless in her reign as TV's local Oprah, but in a grudgingly admirable way -- while we shake our heads in embarrassed surprise every time she does another brazen interview, we all know that those are the questions we want to ask ourselves, if we were a little more shameless. Because, in a culture where saving face is paramount, she has the guts to say "I have VD" on national TV. Because, with all those billboards and print ads and TV ads blurring our everyday landscape, we breathe Kris Aquino whether we like it or not: she has become the imp in our subconscious, and we read about her latest commiserations to satisfy that imp in our heads. Because she mirrors our own sense of emotional vulnerability, and in her hopping from one bad man to another, we see our own circles of hell that we gravitate to despite our earnest efforts to do better, and to decide better. Because in her, we see the truism: breeding doesn't account for shit. Because in her, we see the embodiment of the caricature of the Philippine status quo: she is both showbiz and politics, and all our lives have fallen prey into that circus that is the very depths of hell.

And so, as we fall deeper into the abyss that is our lives in this God-forsaken country, we might as well get entertained by all its vicious gossip. And what gossip is better than about the figure that more or less defines our trying times.

Don't pity Kris Aquino. This showbiz "monster" -- and I mean that in the Frankenstein sense, the Mary Shelley way and not the Hollywood way -- will always bounce back.

Labels: issues, people, showbiz

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