Friday, May 15, 2020
1:26 PM |
The Film Meme No. 21
[21st of 100]. I have a soft heart for [often] impenetrable movies with very strong, very intoxicating visual styles, and I take to them like they are poems where you have to surrender the need for prosaic logic, and embrace instead the symphony of images and the surreal headiness of the experience. This is why I love Leos Carax's
Holy Motors (2012), and Darren Aronofsky's
mother! (2017), and the phantasmagoria of Tarsem Singh [2000's
The Cell above all] -- which I really think comes from my initial orgasmic responses to Dimitri Kirsanoff's
Ménilmontant (1926), Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's
Un Chien Andalou (1929), Dziga Vertov's
Man with a Movie Camera (1929), and Maya Deren's
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), as well as the dazzling documentaries by Godfrey Reggio [the
Qatsi trilogy] and Ron Fricke [
Baraka and
Samsara]. They come off to me as pure cinema, unburdened by a literal story [or at least adhering to the usual demands of narrative], but magnifying the primacy of the image in telling a story. For this list, I could have chosen any of above titles as representative of personal impact in the regard I am discussing them, but one title kept coming back to me: this strange 1969 "biography" of the great 18th century Armenian poet and musician Armenian poet Sayat-Nova. It doesn't waste time telling a straightforward story, opting instead to settle for shots that mimic Armenian miniature paintings and medieval manuscripts, every image an allegory and metaphor. Needless to say, the movie is certainly not for everyone, certainly not those demanding coherence or structure. I would even agree I have not seen this film in the best way possible -- my laptop screen can only do so much, and there is no way to surrender fully to the movie's lushness and idiosyncrasy if it is not magnified majestically on a wide screen. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Thursday, May 14, 2020
10:25 AM |
The Film Meme No. 20
[20th of 100]. Whenever I see a sprawling adventure epic that has a huge cast and employs small but pivotal segments that take place in countless [often exotic] places, I see the fingerprint of this movie all over them. This movie's breathtaking stitching together of incidents that point to a mystery -- airport controllers noting reports of a UFO, scientists arriving in the deserts of Mexico to examine the sudden appearance of long lost World War II airplanes and being told by an old witness that the "sun sang," the same scientists arriving in India to be told by a mass gathering of people that the fantastical music they heard came from the skies, a mother and her toddler in Indiana suddenly being terrorized by mysterious lights -- made for a sweeping prologue that was breathtaking for its scope. It is such an influential narrative shorthand, we see it now in movies hoping to achieve the same feel for worldwidish scope, including
2012 or
The Core or
Godzilla. This movie also signalled the filmmaker's thorough handling of its story. And then to have that epic scope suddenly be dialled down to the singular tale of a troubled family man haunted by visions he cannot understand -- that shift was amazing. I never saw anything like this narrative when I first saw it on videotape in the early 1990s. It was my introduction to the filmmaker's work, and it is certainly an excellent primer to his cinematic vision, his conceits of storytelling, his directorial ticks. I was so taken by it, I even devoured the excellent novelization of it. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Wednesday, May 13, 2020
12:03 PM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 20.
Labels: poetry
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8:23 AM |
The Film Meme No. 19
[19th of 100]. The ease with which movie lovers become what they are today impresses me: Netflix and other streaming devices abound, as well as torrents in the more illegal shade of things. You want to see an obscure French silent film from 1926 that apparently is über film critic Pauline Kael's favorite of all the movies that she has seen? Dimitri Kirsanoff's
Menilmontant is on YouTube in all its restored glory, readily available in just a few short strokes of the keyboard. I envy, sort of. This is so starkly different from becoming a cineaste in the mid-1990s, which for me was an occupation of diligent passion. It was hard work that entailed three things: hearsay, scholarship, and a kind of archaeology. Hearsay, because someone else could only regale you with descriptions of a great movie you haven't seen, you conjuring images in your head helped along with movie stills printed in books and magazines. [I remember my film classes with Jonah Lim where he would lecture about film history describing specific scenes to illustrate a point about the elements of film. When it was my turn to teach that class many years later, description gave way to the actual clips I got from YouTube.] Scholarship, because the lack of the actual films only spurred you to read film history books, as well as biographies of film artists. [In high school and college, I devoured books about Ingrid Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Lino Brocka, and so many others, as well as published screenplays.] And archaeology, because the 1990s was the height of the video boom -- Betamax giving way to VHS, and laser disks giving way to VCD and DVD. If you wanted a good film education, you had to have the best suki video store in town which could give you titles swimming in the ocean of commercial films you were not interested in. Finding the masters was a matter of looking, looking, looking, digging in. [I was lucky that a retail store near the Dumaguete marketplace named Good Luck Store kept a video collection of the most surprising cinematic taste: for some reason, it had in its inventory the earliest Ang Lee, Wong Kar Wai, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, Gregg Araki, as well as a plethora of the classics. When Cinema One came around, I learned to record with my first VHS machine their endless array of Filipino classics.] It was really hard work; the 1990s was the decade Dumaguete began losing its movie theaters. I'm writing all of these because it was in this context with which I came to know this film I'm writing about for today's meme. Every single film history book I read declared it "the best film achievement of all time."
Sight & Sound Magazine placed it at the top spot for several decades in its once-in-a-decade survey of film artists and scholars. So I read books about its making, books about its influence, books about its director. I never saw the film itself. Until I found, around 1997, a semi-moldy Betamax copy of it in the dusty shelves of Silliman University's School of Communication in Guy Hall. I eagerly borrowed it to FINALLY watch it -- and when I did, I was profoundly ... bored. And the questions came: What was that all about? How is this "the greatest film ever made"? All of my earnest study of film in the 1990s -- which, in hindsight, really was inchoate -- gave way to this unsettling disappointment. But a voice at the back of my head kept insisting: "Give it time. You're not ready." I watched it again sometime later, and still the disappointment remained. And still the voice came: "Give it time. You're not ready." The third time, the fourth time, the fifth time, all disappointments ... but along the way I learned more about film history, film theory, and film production. By the sixth time [this was already in the early 2000s], something clicked. Every thing I had learned thus far about film suddenly became clear in this epic story of a newspaper magnate in the examination of the terrific highs and terrible lows of his large life: the crisp and formal structure of the screenplay, the manipulation of time, the ingenious mise-en-scene and production design, the deep focus photography. I saw the genius, finally, which my contemporary eye had obscured for a long time. This certainly was a film so far ahead of its time, and I had to reckon that it had led a revolution, and that many of the things I love now about cinema started with this one. [This is the mindset with which I have also learned to appreciate the films of Georges Méliès, D.W. Griffith, Edwin S. Porter, and Sergei Eisenstein -- films which would look crude and old to the undiscerning contemporary eye, but are really like the first modest stars that burned brightly after the Big Bang, so to speak.] I love this film now, and I watch it at least once a year, sometimes with a commentary track. [The best is Roger Ebert's.] This film taught me patience, and taught me that the best kind of appreciation comes from study, from being suspicious of boredom, from equipping oneself with the necessary tools to navigate art you sometimes have no map for. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Tuesday, May 12, 2020
8:54 AM |
The Film Meme No. 18
[18th of 100]. The first image we see in this wonderful Iranian film from 1997 is that of a battered pair of pink shoes being repaired, an extensive shot going over the opening credits that soon pulls out to reveal the shop and a boy waiting for the shoeman to finish. Those shoes, which will soon be lost, will be a recurring motif, the McGuffin so to speak, for us to observe the ordinary lives in all their big and small dramas of a poor Tehran family -- the boy's, and his little sister [who owns those shoes] and their mother and father. It is a heartbreaking, heartening film that will immediately remind you of De Sica's
Bicycle Thieves or the more recent
Capernaum, the Lebanese film by Nadine Labaki. What is it about lost things and the hapless children that look for them that allow us uncompromising peeks into troubled societies but with strong humanist agenda? How do lost shoes upend the lives of ordinary people? Films like this in the hands of a lesser filmmaker would be maudlin and manipulative, but Majid Majidi defies that by insisting on a story so earthbound and so culturally specific. I discovered this film in college, my first Iranian film actually, and was so moved by it that I actually made it the centerpiece of an Asian film festival I immediately programmed for our campus film society then. [I got into trouble with school authorities because I also included Chen Kaige's
Farewell My Concubinee, which somebody protested as pornographic.] What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Monday, May 11, 2020
3:10 PM |
Nostalgia Tunes
Listening to the Eraserheads’ Sabado/1995, a two-song album they released in 2014 via Esquire Magazine. Haven’t listened to these tracks in ages because CD. [Buti na lang I still have my CD drive accessory for my Air.]Labels: music
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8:36 AM |
The Film Meme No. 17
[17th of 100]. Perfection is often both orchestrated and accidental. You can readily see the workman polish exhibited in this film by a director steeped in the culture and aesthetics of the old studio system. But from what we know now of its production, almost nothing seemed ready or certain in the filming, from a contentious script that was being finished while scenes were being filmed, to cardboards and fog that made for a lack of real airplane. But it all somehow came together, winning audiences and accolades in the end -- with the film now very much a testament of Hollywood magic. The lines are still memorable [and endlessly quotable, if often misquoted], the various mise-en-scene still being studied for their genius, the chemistry of its actors still being held up as exemplars of stardom. I love this movie. It grows and glows with each screening. From Morocco to France, we follow a doomed love story that somehow also lends to uplift in the end, while still touching on themes such as patriotism and betrayal, friendships and the consideration of enemies, and love and sacrifice above all else. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Sunday, May 10, 2020
9:36 AM |
The Film Meme No. 16
[16th of 100]. There are many fantastic films about the heroism of journalism in the face of assorted peril [
All The President's Men, The Paper, Spotlight, The Post] and even some about its frailties [
Absence of Malice, Shattered Glass, Ace in the Hole, Network] -- but the one that seemed to get under its skin the most is this film. It follows three broadcast journalists working for a major network -- a brilliant but prickly reporter, an ace producer, and a charming but unproven anchor -- and not only give us a kind of love triangle, but also a brilliant observation on the mechanics of the work, and what people would do to get the story and tell it well for the public good. It is also an incisive comedy of manners, and I think the film played a major part in my late teen's new dream to pursue journalism. And taking the film's cue, sometimes I just cry for no reason just to breathe. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film, journalism
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Saturday, May 09, 2020
6:27 AM |
The Film Meme No. 15
[15th of 100]. No one will claim this film to be an exercise in stark realism. Truman Capote, the author of the novella that this film is based on, reportedly threw a hissy fit when the actress he imagined the role of Holly Golightly for -- Marilyn Monroe -- was passed over for Audrey Hepburn, who before she was cast in this film embodied women of youthful innocence and quiet elegance. There is no quiet elegance in a dark comedy about a New York call girl! Nonetheless, the film that subsequently happened has since passed on to popular culture as a high mark in the waning days of Old Hollywood, and yes, also an unlikely primer for quiet elegance, alas. Those opening scenes of Holly Golightly demonstrating the titular morning meal clad in the now iconic little black dress, coupled with the melancholic tune of that everlasting Henry Mancini score, is indeed a cinematic sequence of no equal. This was grit, old Hollywood style, and for some reason it worked. The film is certainly not a commentary on social ills the way Capote probably wanted it to be, but it is a triumph of tone. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Friday, May 08, 2020
3:43 AM |
The Film Meme No. 14
[14th of 100]. An American remake is never usually a good thing. The cinematic landscape is littered with the carcasses of misbegotten ventures, from
The Vanishing [1993] to
Vanilla Sky [2001] to
The Wicker Man [2006] to
Old Boy [2013] to
Downhill [2020], give or take some relative success that still pale in comparison to their non-American original. But there's something about this remake that stands equal to its French inspiration. The bright South Beach, Florida colors? The confident direction? The scintillating screenplay by Elaine May? The mainstream visibility of drag queens pre-
RuPaul's Drag Race? The glorious cast who embodied their roles and infused them with the magnetism of their individual actorly schtick? I say all of the above. Some of the sexual politics may no longer be as sharp in our contemporary sense of things, but the humor has withstood the withering/weathering demands of time. I still laugh at every joke, every pratfall. In the heart of it all is the dynamism of Robin Williams gilded by the gift that is Nathan Lane. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Thursday, May 07, 2020
2:38 PM |
Peque Gallaga, 1943-2020
I'm devastated, what a loss this is. Oro Plata Mata meant so much to me as a cineaste in the 1990s. I loved
Scorpio Nights, Virgin Forest, Magic Temple, Aswang, and
Sonata, too. You know how much regard I had for Peque Gallaga? This is my evidence: having a picture with him, basically fanboying. Look at my face. People who know me know I do not like having pictures taken with me and any celebrity or VIP. [And I've met so many. Not even Pres. Gerald Ford when he came to Dumaguete!] So when I do, that means something.
Philippine cinema has lost a giant today. Peque Gallaga was born in Manila on 25 August 1943 as Maurice Claudio Luis Ruiz de Luzuriaga Gallaga, finishing his elementary and secondary education at De La Salle University. But his roots -- and where he would eventually make his home [as well as muse] -- was Bacolod, Negros Occidental. Here, he earned his bachelor's degree in commerce and liberal arts at the University of St. La Salle. Moving back to Manila after graduation, he found himself working on television musicals, and eventually co-directed the film
Binhi with Butch Perez in 1973. He did the production design with Laida Lim-Pérez for Eddie Romero’s
Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon? in 1976, as well as for Ishmael Bernal’s
Manila By Night in 1980, winning the Urian for both. His second film, coming ten years later in 1982, would be acknowledged by many as his masterpiece.
Oro Plata Mata, produced by the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, would see him return to Negros to film the saga of two families of sugar aristocracy and their friends as they endure the hellishness of World War II. The film was an ambitious work of singular beauty, and won the 1982 Gawad Urian awards for Best Picture, as well as awards for its direction, cinematography, production design, musical score, and sound. It also won the Luna Awards for production design and for best supporting actress for Liza Lorena. Gallaga quickly proved that the genius he displayed in
Oro Plata Mata was not a fluke. In the 1980s, he churned out critically acclaimed films such as
Virgin Forest [1985],
Scorpio Nights [1985], and
Unfaithful Wife [1986], and even helmed episodes of the first three
Shake, Rattle & Roll movies. In 1986, he also started co-directing films with Lore Reyes. Of his other films,
Magic Temple [1996] would be considered a highlight, including
Gangland [1998],
Pinoy/Blonde [2005], and
Sonata [2013], which was written by his son Wanggo, and which was set in the very same ancestral house that figured prominently in
Oro Plata Mata. Making Bacolod his base, he became artist-in-residence of the University of St. La Salle in 2000, and soon mentored a new generation of local filmmaking talents, which would later become Bacollywood. He won the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining in 2004, and was Honorary Awardee for Pioneering Efforts in Independent Cinema at the 8th Cinema One Originals Film Festival 2012.
Labels: film, life, obituary, people, philippine cinema
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6:11 AM |
The Film Meme No. 13
[13th of 100]. My first introduction to Italian neorealism was this wrenching drama about a father and a son in the margins of post-war Italy, trying to make ends meet and finding luck that they could bear the burden of manual work because of a bicycle. And then of course that bicycle gets stolen. This sets off the story as the melancholy pair searches all over the city for the bicycle, each encounter a gradual descent into hell. The social message is stark but incredibly not heavy handed. No pitying speeches here about class inequality -- just the eloquence of eyes deepening in despair. This is the film to break your heart. This is the film to teach you that art must mean something, must be a commentary on the society it comes from, and this is the film to teach you that you can attain that with restraint, with an eye for beauty, with a knowing quiet rage about the unfair world we live in. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Wednesday, May 06, 2020
10:35 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 19.
Labels: philippine literature, poetry
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7:01 AM |
The Film Meme No. 12
[12th of 100]. The second film from this popular trilogy spoke most to me. And why not? It is a golden hour stroll through the lovely byways of Paris while the two protagonists trip through the trilogy's signature conversation fest, talking about books, art, philosophy, love, life, recriminations, memory, longing. I'm of an age that is well within the neighborhood of Celine's and Jesse's ages, and I've always thought of these films as corollaries to my own life, mirroring my own generation's hopes and frustrations, and of course the kind of love we try to pursue. When they were in Vienna, I was also young and naive and exuberant with my own unfettered youth, thinking of the future as this grand adventure without a map that feels so exciting and endless. [That's the only explanation I can muster why two people in love would not even bother getting each other's last names and contact information before their leavetaking, tossing it all to fate and the future.] When they were in Pylos, Greece, they were no longer so young, and the harsh realities of a lived-in life together have taken their toll on the romance of so long ago. And while I felt their disappointments and recriminations, for the first time in my own relationship with this trilogy, I felt a little distance: unlike them, I am not married, and have no idea what it means to have a relationship when you occupy the same domestic space, with children. When they were in Paris then is my most emotional link to these films: it is a film of the quarter-life years, when youth is at its last bloom, and we have been tempered by life but are still hopeful enough to embark on another grand adventure, even love with the one that got away. The second film strips down the braggadocio of youth in the first film, and without yet the stewing bitterness of the third. If this series was a dance, this film is the glorious ballerina on pointe, reaching out to the lights, standing on tiptoes -- beautifully, precariously. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film, life
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Tuesday, May 05, 2020
I’ve never felt this much despair. And knowing full well that it is not just me, it’s also coming from so many people. It’s a world heaving in hopelessness. We are stewing in the sweat and stir craziness of our quarantine, but the world—inept leaders mostly—still manages to make us scream. The raging summer heat we feel now is no longer just weather, it feels like the suffocation of an existential pressure cooker—and any minute now we will burst.Labels: coronavirus, life, news, politics
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7:04 AM |
The Film Meme No. 11
[11th of 100]. This film has to be the peak of the filmmaker's singular vision -- before that vision became a tick, sometimes working [
Batman Returns and
Edward Scissorhands], and often not [
Big Eyes and
Alice in Wonderland]. But you cannot deny the personality behind it: idiosyncratic, macabre, humorous. This is my favorite of the bunch, a perfect explosion of hijinks told in the story of a goth girl smothered by a family who are not in her wavelength, and finding family among the ghosts that haunt their countryside mansion. [And I haven't even tackled the title character!] Still, it is so much more than that drab description can encapsulate. I loved this film for its quirk and for its loving embrace of the weird and the strange: it taught me that not all that is lovely comes with bright sunshine and blooming flowers. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Monday, May 04, 2020
9:20 AM |
The Film Meme No. 10
[10th of 100]. I tend to stay away from combat films, the blood and machismo of war cinema never really my cup of tea. Which is to say it took me a while to be convinced to watch this film, finally compelled only by the argument of its reputation: that its documentary approach to depicting urban warfare is so spot-on it is even used as a training film of sorts for soldiers [and rebels]. I needed to know why -- and did not expect to be immediately sucked in into its narrative, its action set pieces, its sense of outrage. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Sunday, May 03, 2020
6:54 AM |
The Film Meme No. 9
[9th of 100]. Japanese horror gained an instant classic in this truly unsettling, truly terrifying film that also blindsides us by being a completely different movie in its first hour. It starts off as a domestic drama about a TV executive putting on a fake audition in an actual search for a mate, and then, and then... And then there are suddenly bodies in boxes and bags wrigggling to get out. Then there are strange mutilations and dismemberments. And then there is that eternally horrifying sound of "Kriii-kriii-kriiii..." you will never ever get out of your head. The less said about the plot the better the shock. And the shock is delicious and unforgettable. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Saturday, May 02, 2020
8:34 AM |
The Film Meme No. 8
[8th of 100]. Comedy got a major transformation in this film, something that gobsmacked me with its possibilities and conceits: time jumps, subtitles underlining the unsaid, neurotic New York intellectuals, fourth wall breaking, reimagined Snow White cartoons. I never saw anything like it before, and as an introduction to the filmmaker's work, this was quite an education. It also gave us the most iconic Diane Keaton in cinema. "La-dee-daa. La-dee-daa. La-laa." What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
Labels: film
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Friday, May 01, 2020
6:04 AM |
The Film Meme No. 7
[7th of 100]. Stylistic audacity in film can be a make-or-break matter not even cinematic geniuses can always pull off. When it works, it works, like Jacques Tati's
Playtime (1967) or Jerry Lewis's
The Ladies Man (1961) or Lars von Trier's
Dogville (2003). When it doesn't quite work -- think Rainer Werner Fassbinder's
Querelle (1982) or Francis Ford Coppola's
One From the Heart (also 1982) -- you can admire the filmmaker's chutzpah while also marvelling over the ruins of the disaster. Then here comes this 2012 adaptation of one of the most complex classic of Russian literature with a style that blows away all the rest of the them. A straight-forward adaptation would have been the normal approach considering the original novel's thematic demands and epic breadth. But what we get instead is a complete reimagining of the story as an endless stage piece, all set in a theatre, with incidents and scenes unfolding as if we are spectator to a long, very involving play. And it works! It taught me the value of going for broke with regards a singular vision, and tells me all creative pursuits are risks you have to be willing to make. What's the film?
For the introduction to this meme, read
here.
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