Category Archive for: pelikula

kultura

Failing the figurative, a review of Bwaya

Fiction based on real stories – and especially ones that are of recent events – can easily fall into the trap of being like a cheap TV reenactment that seeks to teach the public a lesson or two about daily living. It also has to deal with an audience that has seen the same story unfold via sensationalist media, the kind that asks a mother who has lost a daughter to a freak accident: Ano pong pakiramdam ninyo ngayon?

All these come into play in watching “Bwaya” (written and directed by Francis Xavier Pasion). What surprises is that it seems oblivious to this dynamic, interweaving the documentary with the fiction. So it has interviews with the parents of the girl eaten by the crocodile Lolong in the Agusan Marsh, as well as footage of the exhumation and burial of the girl’s body. This was paralleled with a fictionalized representation of the same story.  (more…)

kultura

CinemalayaX: the year of self-indulgent film and creative conceit

I had started watching CinemalayaX with Carlitos Siguion Reyna’s Hari Ng Tondo, Joseph Alterejos’s Kasal, and Roderick Cabrido’s Children’s Show. It was two good movies out of three, and I thought it was portents of things to come for the rest of the week’s movie viewing frenzy.

After watching all 15 full length films, I realize I had it good that first day. It was downhill from there.

Click here to read the rest of it over at Vera Files.

 

kultura

not everyone can make a rom-com: a realization from watching Starting Over Again

There is standard that Star Cinema has set when it comes to the romantic-comedy as a genre, and it’s a standard that has since re-set the formula for the effective rom-com, where effectivity is proven by both a movie’s creation of it’s own cult following and box office success. (more…)

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Dolphy, national artist*

It’s difficult to imagine childhood without Dolphy, even when all he was to me was the image of a father on television, even as who I identified with was Maricel Soriano or Claudine Barretto playing his daughters in two different sitcoms, across two different generations. At some point this father image became interwoven with that of Enteng Kabisote, father to Aiza.

The images are real to me, the characterization of fatherhood that was protective but had difficulty providing, that was faced with the rich mother-in-law who disapproved, that struggled financially but had a posse who depended on him, underground as the economy was that they all created and fueled. (more…)

kultura

kim chews their heads off

in truth i was so happy for Kim Chiu, showing us all how she is human — a smart one at that — who knows what she owes showbiz reporters and what she doesn’t. it’s the same joy i had about Anne Curtis going crazy in a club, where her sense of self is revealed for all the world to see, and oh yes! there is bite in the sweetie-pie image after all!

the latter is why i think these moments are utter and absolute successes for the women who watch local popular culture. these are limited successes yes, but successes nevertheless. because in this age of manufactured perfection for our celebrities, these moments reveal to us how they are in fact human. they are not the dolls that local showbiz makes them to be; they are not stupid girls who know not what they are doing. this is not a simple case of a management company investing in them and controlling them: they are individuals who know exactly what they are doing, and what they are in the limelight for. they know what aspects of their persons are not captured by that camera at all.   (more…)