kultura

Beyond the horror

I’m a sucker for the Pinoy horror film formula: a scary setting, well-done sound design, the gulat factor. I’m the person in the cinema who will scream first, and the loudest, the person who is so ready to be scared.

But of course the fear factor is only one of many aspects of the horror film, and one realizes given the effort that is put into a movie like Seklusyon (directed by Erik Matti, written by Anton C. Santamaria), that there is more to doing good horror than just getting an audience scared shitless. And certainly the cinematography, the context, the narrative itself of Seklusyon is enough to warrant some of the awards it has won: it speaks of the evil within us, the fears that haunt us, given the lives we live. It speaks of how in a Catholic country like the Philippines, the good is trumped by what is easy, and it is the false saviors that might be biggest enemy. (more…)

komentaryo

The noise of 2016: lessons for 2017

It could’ve been the fact that it was election year, but there was little reprieve from noise generated by social media all of 2016. It was like we turned a corner and didn’t know how to turn back.

Probably most distressing is that so many have fallen into the trap of celebrating Facebook likes and shares, equating this with relevant engagement, and insisting that this is “critical mass” and “public opinion.” Fake news sites are built on this premise, asserting relevance by producing un-sourced and un-bylined articles about issues that pro-government Facebook pages, personal and otherwise, are talking about.

These sites are of course shared with abandon, sold as a statement against the biases of mainstream media, and yet so obviously skewed to serve only the President and the government, like they can do no wrong. The push back of mainstream media and its supporters is just as noisy, asserting a moral high ground and insisting on policing the public, invoking protection from “hate” and “lies.” (more…)

kultura

Attempted rape as teenage dream?

At the onset, having a light romance / romantic-comedy as part of the Metro Manila Film Festival’s self-proclaimed “change” and “revolution” was a good thing: it tells us that they weren’t deciding against certain genres just because these are considered “pop” and “therefore shallow” — it is after all easy to presume that all love stories are about the happy endings, and one can spot the formula from a mile away.

But even formula has allowed for an amount of creativity in the rom-com through the years (1) and it is with this sense of how the genre has evolved that one was hopeful about Vince And Kath And James (directed by Theodore Boborol, written by Daisy G. Cayanan, Kim R. Noromor, Anjanette M. Haw), because there is so much more to the rom-com now than just lead stars with chemistry: there is good writing and well-threshed out situations, the specificity of social class and gender politics. (more…)

kultura

The septic tank as critique

Ang Babae Sa Septic Tank 2 #ForeverIsNotEnough is probably the most fun I’ve had in a local film since … well, the first Ang Babae Sa Septic Tank.

It’s not that I do not find commercialized comedies funny — the ones that fall back on formula, the hilarious banter of every Vice Ganda movie character, even Sosy Problems from so many MMFFs ago. But there is a layer of intelligence that ABSST demands of itself, an ability at self-reflexivity that it demands of its audience, but also a sense of the archetypes and stereotypes that we inevitably create in the course of unthinkingly insisting on what is “new” and “different.” (more…)

kultura

Film, art in a time of change

AFTER a good seven years of doing the arts and culture beat, writing reviews, doing cultural assessments, I have surprised even myself that my interest seems to have dwindled.

It’s not that nothing’s going on, as it all just seems secondary to the state of the nation, the urgencies of which cannot be overstated at this point in time. When you don’t have a government that delivers credible information, and no opposition that provides an alternative ideological viewpoint, and all you have is social/media caught up in troll discourse, trends, and hashtags, there is little energy left for arts and culture.

Until you realize that it is exactly the chaotic, confusing, out-of-control state of the nation that highlights as well the state of the arts–its crises of patronage politics and parochialism included. (more…)