Forgot to put it in my previous entry.
Recall an early 90s Pinoy film titled Machete, an early Cesar Montano vehicle about a sculptress(Rita Avila) carving a statue of a native warrior out of a huge block of wood. The statue then awakens into human form on certain nights,with Buboy looking like a Native American brave armed with a tomahawk. Of course,this provokes jealousy among his creator and her best friend. There was a famous scene where Rita actually performs sex with Machete in his original form,and Vivian on waking up and discovering Machete has reverted back to wood,screams in terror,after having slept with him the night before.
Sounds like a revisiting of the legend of Pygmalion and Galatea.
There was Machete 2 soon after,with Gardo Verzosa and Rosanna Roces replacing Buboy and Rita.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Friday, September 7, 2007
black
One of the accusations leveled against Hindi films is that it is relatively easy to spot obvious ripoffs from Western literary and Hollywood cinematic sources. My first encounter with a commercial Indian film was when I saw a flick in Delhi called Nishabd,an affair between an 18-year old Non-Resident Indian woman(Jiah Khan) holidaying in Kerala, and a married 60-year old photographer(the legendary Amitabh Bachchan).
If Vladimir Nabokov's novel-subsequently-turned-Stanley Kubrick film Lolita comes to mind, then you are absolutely right.
Fast-forward months later,in Fr.Nick Cruz's Asian Film class. Immediately after winding up the second part of Lagaan, another film from India is fed into the DVD player. The first scenes unfolding in the big screen are not Lagaan's parched, sun-baked deserts of Gujarat and Rajasthan but in the old British hill station of Simla,where the skies are slate-gray and winter falls intermittenly. Mr.Debraj(Big B again)is an alcoholic, iconoclastic teacher of the deaf and blind with unconventional views on authority and convention. One day,an Anglo-Indian couple, the McNallys, approach him with an unusual problem. Their daughter, 8-year old Michelle,was an uncontrollable, accident-prone blind,deaf-mute inches away from being sent to an insane asylum.
Debraj proposes a drastic solution. After an unpleasant first encounter with the McNallys, Debraj forsakes his salary and other privileges,and isolates an uncooperative Michelle in order to teach her proper manners and table etiquette. Breaking in Michelle recalls the heartrendering education of Helen Keller(to whom Black is dedicated to in the film's preface),depicted in the 1962 film The Miracle Worker starring Anne Bancroft in her Academy-Award winning role as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as the young Keller.
Just as our class was absorbing the scene at the water fountain, the film was stopped midway,just like in Lagaan.
If Vladimir Nabokov's novel-subsequently-turned-Stanley Kubrick film Lolita comes to mind, then you are absolutely right.
Fast-forward months later,in Fr.Nick Cruz's Asian Film class. Immediately after winding up the second part of Lagaan, another film from India is fed into the DVD player. The first scenes unfolding in the big screen are not Lagaan's parched, sun-baked deserts of Gujarat and Rajasthan but in the old British hill station of Simla,where the skies are slate-gray and winter falls intermittenly. Mr.Debraj(Big B again)is an alcoholic, iconoclastic teacher of the deaf and blind with unconventional views on authority and convention. One day,an Anglo-Indian couple, the McNallys, approach him with an unusual problem. Their daughter, 8-year old Michelle,was an uncontrollable, accident-prone blind,deaf-mute inches away from being sent to an insane asylum.
Debraj proposes a drastic solution. After an unpleasant first encounter with the McNallys, Debraj forsakes his salary and other privileges,and isolates an uncooperative Michelle in order to teach her proper manners and table etiquette. Breaking in Michelle recalls the heartrendering education of Helen Keller(to whom Black is dedicated to in the film's preface),depicted in the 1962 film The Miracle Worker starring Anne Bancroft in her Academy-Award winning role as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as the young Keller.
Just as our class was absorbing the scene at the water fountain, the film was stopped midway,just like in Lagaan.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
lady untouchable
Does this 1968 film still exist in reasonably good condition?
One of those films shown in the early 80s on Channel 13 during afternoon matinee hours. The eponymous lead character was played by Magna Gonzales,sister of the great Roberto Gonzales. By day, she is Magna,a typical young woman of middle-class background,being driven around town by a chauffeur named Tisoy. At night, she is Lady Untouchable, masked,black-clad crimefighter with deadly hands skilled in unarmed combat. During the course of the movie, her fiancee was shot,and the next thing we know it, his corpse ended up sitting at the dining room where Magna discovers him. The rest ofLady Untouchable is devoted to avenging his death.remember fight scenes with goons dressed like Parisian mimes-berets,tights and striped t-shirts.
One of those films shown in the early 80s on Channel 13 during afternoon matinee hours. The eponymous lead character was played by Magna Gonzales,sister of the great Roberto Gonzales. By day, she is Magna,a typical young woman of middle-class background,being driven around town by a chauffeur named Tisoy. At night, she is Lady Untouchable, masked,black-clad crimefighter with deadly hands skilled in unarmed combat. During the course of the movie, her fiancee was shot,and the next thing we know it, his corpse ended up sitting at the dining room where Magna discovers him. The rest ofLady Untouchable is devoted to avenging his death.remember fight scenes with goons dressed like Parisian mimes-berets,tights and striped t-shirts.
ramon zamora
I learned of his death on TV a more than a week ago...can't believe that he was five years older than that of his cinematic role model Bruce Lee.
While Bruce Lee died at 32 at the height of his powers as a martial artist and actor, 'Ang Dragon' saw his career go into a slow fade as the 70s turned into the 80s,as the demand for martial arts flicks declined. Zamora,until his demise at 72, found himself playing bit parts in films and on TV that were a shadow of his former heyday.
As a kid, I used to religiously see his TV series Dragon Force. Whenever it was time for him to rip off his shirt in the climactic showdown, I ignored the constant 'time for dinner'calls from downstairs,tothe consternation of my family. Then there's this old black-and-white film on TV(color TV sets was still a novelty in those days),where he plays a lame young man on crutches,magically transforming himself as Sprakenheit, a superhero with a Hitler mustache,SS uniform, a telescopic swagger stick and his faux-German shout-speak dispatching his opponents with a fiery display of martial arts.
Another film I used to see him is with Lotis Key,and the fight scenes in this flick were very violent--In one sequence,he ambushes his enemies bathing naked in a stream,and interrogates one of them by bashing his head repeatedly into a large rock until he dies. The final fight sequence was set in a desert. He blinds a goon by thrusting two fingers into his eyes. He wins of course,but he dies at the end as well.
Later on, he was paired with another martial arts rival Rey Malonzo,master of the 'Yaw-Yan' as well as then-child star Nino Muhlach. As time went by, he shed his Bruce Lee persona and took on supporting roles in the action genre,such as a member of a commando force operating behind enemy lines or an old master teaching a disciple kung fu,a la Gordon Liu. In the early 80s,he starred in an action film called Dalmacio Armas,where he was shown in the trailer and in the poster in a menacing stance wearing and holding a variety of weapons from daggers,to arrows,with a gun in one hand and a spear in another.
While watching a YouTube video on his life,he was covered by a TV camera crew outside his Antipolo house,built with a little financial assistance from FPJ...unlike FPJ,Erap and a few other 70s action superstars, Zamora, like others in show business,ended up on hard times,and had to continue playing soldier in the entertainment industry just to pay the bills. In aMr.Shooli movie in the early 90s,he reprised his Sprakenheit character who was brought in as an adviser to Manhik Manaog and his goons on election time.
When he died more than a week ago, part of my childhood memories died with him too.
While Bruce Lee died at 32 at the height of his powers as a martial artist and actor, 'Ang Dragon' saw his career go into a slow fade as the 70s turned into the 80s,as the demand for martial arts flicks declined. Zamora,until his demise at 72, found himself playing bit parts in films and on TV that were a shadow of his former heyday.
As a kid, I used to religiously see his TV series Dragon Force. Whenever it was time for him to rip off his shirt in the climactic showdown, I ignored the constant 'time for dinner'calls from downstairs,tothe consternation of my family. Then there's this old black-and-white film on TV(color TV sets was still a novelty in those days),where he plays a lame young man on crutches,magically transforming himself as Sprakenheit, a superhero with a Hitler mustache,SS uniform, a telescopic swagger stick and his faux-German shout-speak dispatching his opponents with a fiery display of martial arts.
Another film I used to see him is with Lotis Key,and the fight scenes in this flick were very violent--In one sequence,he ambushes his enemies bathing naked in a stream,and interrogates one of them by bashing his head repeatedly into a large rock until he dies. The final fight sequence was set in a desert. He blinds a goon by thrusting two fingers into his eyes. He wins of course,but he dies at the end as well.
Later on, he was paired with another martial arts rival Rey Malonzo,master of the 'Yaw-Yan' as well as then-child star Nino Muhlach. As time went by, he shed his Bruce Lee persona and took on supporting roles in the action genre,such as a member of a commando force operating behind enemy lines or an old master teaching a disciple kung fu,a la Gordon Liu. In the early 80s,he starred in an action film called Dalmacio Armas,where he was shown in the trailer and in the poster in a menacing stance wearing and holding a variety of weapons from daggers,to arrows,with a gun in one hand and a spear in another.
While watching a YouTube video on his life,he was covered by a TV camera crew outside his Antipolo house,built with a little financial assistance from FPJ...unlike FPJ,Erap and a few other 70s action superstars, Zamora, like others in show business,ended up on hard times,and had to continue playing soldier in the entertainment industry just to pay the bills. In aMr.Shooli movie in the early 90s,he reprised his Sprakenheit character who was brought in as an adviser to Manhik Manaog and his goons on election time.
When he died more than a week ago, part of my childhood memories died with him too.
tribu
Saw this during the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival more than two weeks ago in Gateway Malls, Araneta Center.
Tribu begins with a religious festival and ends with a payback killing.
TV journalist Jim Libiran's experience covering conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan for ABC5, as well as his memories growing up in Tondo, popularly considered to be Manila's 'fifth circle of hell' prepared him for his first foray into commercial moviemaking. His creation, which exploded into instant fame upon winning Cinemalaya's highest honors in July, is a visual stew of Italian neorealism, guerrilla documentary technique and occasionally wry humor vaguely recalls Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' City of God, detailing a similar milieu in the slums of Rio.
But what differentiates Meirelles and Libiran, is that the latter made heavy use of hiphop music composed in situ by the lead actors themselves,who were total amateurs as well as authentic gang members when they signed up for the Tribu's principal shoot.
Most striking of all is the director's homage to the past masters of Pinoy cinema. The establishing shot of Tondo's skyline seen from the Pasig River vaguely recalls Lino Brocka's opening shot of Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag. The initiation sequence of a blindfolded young man and woman is lifted straight out of Mike de Leon's Batch '81. When they are not engaged in internecine fighting in Tondo's sidestreets and alleys,they could be seen in their natural surroundings: making love, sleeping, eating, quarrelling with their loved ones,doing drugs,attending funeral wakes among other things. But the most interesting,albeit fleeting bits are those involving a hapless collector of electric bills and the philosophical lament of a street food seller regarding his clientele's debts.
For an urban slum like Tondo,it is quite startling to see well-fed, overweight people move around the screen, compared to films set in Rio,Mumbai or any other Third World hellhole,where the stereotypical cast member resembles a walking skeleton. Except for the occasional pistol, the choice of weapons used in Tribu are those time-tested,full-contact standbys: bladed implements and blunt objects graphically illustrated in Scorsese's Gangs of New York,aided by homemade pillbox grenades made to be flung at the enemy from a reasonably safe distance.
Again,the journalist in Libiran comes into play: to spare the audience the sight of ugly wounds and copious amounts of blood flowing, pitched battles are staged at night,as well as handheld camera and editing techniques ensure that the violence is kept to a minimum. When steel actually bites into flesh, Tribu barely skips a beat and jumps to another sequence.
Tribu begins with a religious festival and ends with a payback killing.
TV journalist Jim Libiran's experience covering conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan for ABC5, as well as his memories growing up in Tondo, popularly considered to be Manila's 'fifth circle of hell' prepared him for his first foray into commercial moviemaking. His creation, which exploded into instant fame upon winning Cinemalaya's highest honors in July, is a visual stew of Italian neorealism, guerrilla documentary technique and occasionally wry humor vaguely recalls Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' City of God, detailing a similar milieu in the slums of Rio.
But what differentiates Meirelles and Libiran, is that the latter made heavy use of hiphop music composed in situ by the lead actors themselves,who were total amateurs as well as authentic gang members when they signed up for the Tribu's principal shoot.
Most striking of all is the director's homage to the past masters of Pinoy cinema. The establishing shot of Tondo's skyline seen from the Pasig River vaguely recalls Lino Brocka's opening shot of Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag. The initiation sequence of a blindfolded young man and woman is lifted straight out of Mike de Leon's Batch '81. When they are not engaged in internecine fighting in Tondo's sidestreets and alleys,they could be seen in their natural surroundings: making love, sleeping, eating, quarrelling with their loved ones,doing drugs,attending funeral wakes among other things. But the most interesting,albeit fleeting bits are those involving a hapless collector of electric bills and the philosophical lament of a street food seller regarding his clientele's debts.
For an urban slum like Tondo,it is quite startling to see well-fed, overweight people move around the screen, compared to films set in Rio,Mumbai or any other Third World hellhole,where the stereotypical cast member resembles a walking skeleton. Except for the occasional pistol, the choice of weapons used in Tribu are those time-tested,full-contact standbys: bladed implements and blunt objects graphically illustrated in Scorsese's Gangs of New York,aided by homemade pillbox grenades made to be flung at the enemy from a reasonably safe distance.
Again,the journalist in Libiran comes into play: to spare the audience the sight of ugly wounds and copious amounts of blood flowing, pitched battles are staged at night,as well as handheld camera and editing techniques ensure that the violence is kept to a minimum. When steel actually bites into flesh, Tribu barely skips a beat and jumps to another sequence.
lagaan
Just finished the nearly 4-hour Lagaan in Asian film class this afternoon. Great Bollywood film, nice set designs of the British cantonment and the nearby village, colorful dance sequences, but these are secondary to the main plot of a poverty-stricken 19th century Indian village overcoming their religious differences(Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Untouchable unite to form a united front) as well as their pompous British masters in cricket, a generation before the nonviolent independence movement took the struggle to a higher level, culminating in August 1947.
Interestingly, Elizabeth(Rachel Shelley), the sister of Lagaan's villain, Captain Andrew Russell, instead of cheering on her compatriots, goes over to the other side and teaches Bhuvan(Aamir Khan--his surname denotes his Muslim faith--Bollywood's rules allow the intermingling of people with different religions without resorting to communal violence)the rudiments of the arcane sport. I wonder how a woman dressed in Victorian finery can move about the hot Indian countryside without breaking a sweat.
The setpiece of Lagaan, the 3-day cricket match is straight out of the Rocky films, or even Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer--amateurish underdogs taking a lot of punishment before defying the odds and winning in a close contest. The playing styles of Bhuvan's team are very unorthodox--one member has a windmill pitching style, while another player favors a full-frontal batting stance shouting fearsome yells and another man uses his cricket bat to obscure the pitcher's view of his opponent's wickets--meaning the three vertically-positioned sticks behind.
The period setting of Lagaan was dated 1893-the same year Mahatma Gandhi, who was then a newly-qualified barrister, went to South Africa to practice law and eventually fine-tune his pacific campaign to oust the British from the subcontinent.
Interestingly, Elizabeth(Rachel Shelley), the sister of Lagaan's villain, Captain Andrew Russell, instead of cheering on her compatriots, goes over to the other side and teaches Bhuvan(Aamir Khan--his surname denotes his Muslim faith--Bollywood's rules allow the intermingling of people with different religions without resorting to communal violence)the rudiments of the arcane sport. I wonder how a woman dressed in Victorian finery can move about the hot Indian countryside without breaking a sweat.
The setpiece of Lagaan, the 3-day cricket match is straight out of the Rocky films, or even Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer--amateurish underdogs taking a lot of punishment before defying the odds and winning in a close contest. The playing styles of Bhuvan's team are very unorthodox--one member has a windmill pitching style, while another player favors a full-frontal batting stance shouting fearsome yells and another man uses his cricket bat to obscure the pitcher's view of his opponent's wickets--meaning the three vertically-positioned sticks behind.
The period setting of Lagaan was dated 1893-the same year Mahatma Gandhi, who was then a newly-qualified barrister, went to South Africa to practice law and eventually fine-tune his pacific campaign to oust the British from the subcontinent.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
nick nicholson
More than a week ago, emailed a cult figure in the Philippine film industry, whose involvement in filmmaking stretched all the way back in the 70s, immediately after being discharged from the U.S.Navy...Nick Nicholson has been there,done that, the good,the bad and the totally ugly when it came to movies shot in Hollywood-friendly Philippines from cameo roles in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now to Oliver Stone's Platoon and in B-films done by the legendary Cirio Santiago and the venerable Eddie Romero.
In his informative but incomplete website at http://nicknicholson.250free.com, he promises to release an insider's point-of-view book called 'Fish Heads and Rice' about the secret history of Hollywood/Filipino film coproduction. But the book han't seen the light of day as of present time.
While researching Filipino pulp cinema of the 70s and 80s, I learned that he has virtually retired from the film business since 1997,when he started to have heart problems. This month, he will undergo the surgeon's knife after being diagnosed with cancer and he's doubtful if he would survive the operation. Nick as already delegated the task of publishing his manuscript to someone else.
In his informative but incomplete website at http://nicknicholson.250free.com, he promises to release an insider's point-of-view book called 'Fish Heads and Rice' about the secret history of Hollywood/Filipino film coproduction. But the book han't seen the light of day as of present time.
While researching Filipino pulp cinema of the 70s and 80s, I learned that he has virtually retired from the film business since 1997,when he started to have heart problems. This month, he will undergo the surgeon's knife after being diagnosed with cancer and he's doubtful if he would survive the operation. Nick as already delegated the task of publishing his manuscript to someone else.
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