One Hundred Years of Solitude (Cien Anos de Soledad, Alex Garcia Lopez, Laura Mora, 2024)

One hundred years of telenovela

I remember the first time I opened Gabriel Garcia Marquez's celebrated novel and read the sentence "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." It was an intriguing opening line and I was hooked, but for some reason never made it past the second page. I put the book aside, and didn't bothered touching it again for two years.

Then sitting in a beach-- in the shade, away from that ridiculous scorching sun,  while friends were in the water enjoying themselves-- I had no other choice but to pick up the book again, and this time (I think it was when Jose Arcadio, Colonel Aureliano's father, after many intricate calculations, announced to his wife that the world was round like an orange) I was well and truly hooked. I read till the sun gave up its plan to burn me and sank back into the sea to bide its time; read deep while the moon rose and kept me company; read till the moon gave up and bade farewell and sank back down and the cocks started to crow; read till there was nothing left to read, and when I put the volume aside saw my old nemesis peeking out from over the ocean's edge with a spark in its eye, fresh and ready for another round. 

Three Years Without God, in depth, in black and white

Three Years Without God, in depth, in black and white

(The film will have special screenings to be announced, and will be streaming in IWant TFC (The Filipino Channel))

(WARNING: Plot and dramatic high points in the story discussed in close and explicit detail)

I first saw Mario O'Hara's Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, 1976) in the '90s in a fading magenta print, then saw it again-- partially restored to its former glory by L'Immagine Ritrovata-- in 2016. Earlier this week I finally saw it regraded to black-and-white by ABS CBN' s Film Restoration Project-- not necessarily meant to supplant the original colored copy but to stand alongside, as an experiment meant to address the fading colors by eliminating them.

Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024)

Cat and friends

Forget The Wild Robot or Inside Out 2; the animated film of the year has to be Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis' Flow, an eighty-five minute feature notable for what it doesn't have as for what it does. No anthropomorphic animals-- these creatures don't quip or sass back, only express what sounds can be expected of them in the natural world; no strong narrative, mainly the random events that can occur to cat in its attempts to survive a flooded world; and no gag-a-minute pacing, the standard-issue sop Pixar or Disney throws its kiddie audiences to keep their presumably ADHD buttocks glued to their seats. 

Wicked Part 1 (Jon M Chu, 2024)

Icked

I suppose we should start with the positives: Jon M. Chu's Wicked, part 1 of his $150 million adaptation of Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman's Broadway hit adaptation of Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel of the same name, itself a prequel to L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the 1939 film adaptation of the same name-- pause for breath-- boasts of a pair of fine performances, Cynthia Erivo's sensitive interpretation of Elphaba Thropp, and Ariana Grande's deliciously wicked take on Galinda Upland.

Oz the Great and Powerful, Valhalla Rising, Volver, Story of GI Joe

By Popular Demand

Never had much use for boxoffice figures; never thought the approval of the moviegoing public was all that important, or an indicator of a film's quality, or relative lack of.

Once in a while, though I find myself in the embarrassing position of agreeing with everyone else. In which case I plead pure coincidence, and point to that old adage-- how does it go again? A stopped clock is right twice a day? 

Well, maybe not that one. But I do suspect that public opinion is smarter than the critical establishment is willing to admit. 

Case in point: Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful. Critics describe it as not "knowing its own mind," or "visually overcrammed, empty mega-spectacle"-- which is funny, because Raimi has never been known for sticking to one genre, even in his own movies, and was never a believer in visual restraint. The man likes over-the-top comic-book action, and unlike some filmmakers I can think of who can't even do that properly, he is superb at it.