Five Blogs That Make You

In response to being tagged by The Self-Styled Siren, Gibbs Cadiz, and Last Night With Riviera--five blogs that make me think:

Rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

That was that! Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking! It is the first time I am starting something with my blog so I hope it doesn't come back to haunt me.

(Well, leaving out the "duh!" factor--blogs so essential (if you're at all interested in what I find interesting) that you have to include them: Chicago Reader blog (mainly for Jonathan Rosenbaum); Dave Kehr; girish (for practically being at the center of where it's at, filmwise) ; Observations on Film Art (David Bordwell).

Then there are the blogs that add enough color and flavor to the blogverse that I'd definitely miss not having them around to dip in, like a jarful of Halloween treats: Conversations with Ghibli (for the links and for sincerely detailed discussion of all things Ghibli); Elusive Lucidity; The Evening Class; Like Anna Karina's Sweater (partly for the weekly photo quizzes which at times can be fiendishly difficult); Quiet Bubble; Strictly Film School; the Shamus' (aka The Little Round-Headed Boy) Bad for the Glass; and The House Next Door (mainly for the scrappy commentaries in response to the articles), among many others I've probably forgotten or overlooked.

It's a big world out there. To add to the confusion, here are five (okay, six, and two of them have little if any relation to cinema--but I've never been one to follow rules exactly) I'd personally like to spotlight:

1. concentrated nonsense.

Alexis Tioseco's arguably the most intelligent and film-literate film critic residing in the Philippines at the moment; his is one of the rare blogs that paid tribute to the passing of both Edward Yang and Joey Gosiengfiao and keeps tabs on what a Thai film critic has to say about Lav Diaz's Heremias (yes, these links go to his old blog. His new blog can be found in the link above). He also runs Criticine, which I believe is one of the most important websites on Southeast Asian cinema (well, I have a few articles there too so I'm hardly objective--but I stand by my statement).

2. Designing Intimacy (not work friendly, not to everyone's taste, and definitely not for kids)

And sometimes it isn't only about films, or even about ideas. Chris Hall mentioned this site in his blog (not active right now, for some reason), and I've been reading it ever since. Not just for the sex (though yes, that's a good part of why I read it); it's the casual, fluid recording of thoughts, feelings, likes and dislikes--by turns intimate and thoughtful and goofy--of a sexually and emotionally aware young woman. Not a sophisticated prose stylist, much less a literate one far as I can tell, but her voice is so distinctly hers I'm fascinated anyway. Like lying in bed right after lovemaking, listening to a modern-day Scheherazade recount her thousand and one days and nights to you, day after day, night after night. Narcissistic, yes; fascinating--that, too, I submit.

3. The Phil Nugent Experience

I've known the guy for somewhere up to seven years (I think), and never even seen his face. We could walk past each other on the streets of New York and never recognize each other, but let me read one paragraph of his distinct voice on paper (or screen, or whatever) and I suspect I will recognize it immediately. Strange situation.

What isn't strange is how compulsively I can toss down his blog posts, like peanuts. They're either sharp political rants (like this takedown of The New York Times), or intense bits of film criticism (like this assessment of Herzog's Rescue Dawn), or simply hilarious humor pieces (like this imagining of what it must be like to listen to President Bush seek advice).

4. Piling-Piling Pelikula (rough translation: Cream-of-the-crop cinema)

Dodo Dayao's thoughts on films usually come in short, paragraph-length increments--which doesn't necessarily mean they're short on thinking, or insight. He's written about everything from Jean-Pierre Melville to The Transformers to Lav Diaz's Hesus Rebolusyunaryo (Jesus the Revolutionary) and done so with a laser-sharp prose and perceptive mind.

5. Pinoy Penman

Jose 'Butch' Dalisay is a wonderful fiction writer, a memorable dramatist (I remember helping stage his play Pagsabog ng Liwanag (rough translation: Burst of Dawn) years ago, back in college), a very good scriptwriter (the late Filipino film critic Augustin Sotto once cited Ina Ka ng Anak Mo (You're the Mother of Your Child, which Butch wrote) as his favorite Lino Brocka film) in roughly that order--and I've barely scratched his resume.

Once in a blue moon he'll write about films, but mostly he'll do a gem of an article, like this one on written tributes to the city of Manila.

6. Sari-Saring Sineng Pinoy (All Kinds of Filipino Films)

If you ever wondered what sites I visit to learn more about Filipino films, this is one of em. Jojo de Vera is a diehard Noranian and avid film enthusiast who has seen more 70s and 80s era Filipino films (and remembers more details about them) than anyone I know; he also singlehandedly discovered the one and only existing copy of Lino Brocka's first significant gay film Tubog sa Ginto (Dipped in Gold, 1972), the discovery and content of which I briefly discuss (begging your indulgence, it's a few paragraphs in the middle of a very long post; that said, I like to think it's a fairly interesting long post).

The blog is written entirely in Tagalog, which is a pity, but if you want an essential site on Philippine cinema, I think this comes closest to being it.

Eight little things

I've been tagged by Walter at Quiet Bubble and Bob at Forward to Yesterday for a meme about eight things about me people (online, I assume) don't know. Rules are as follows:

I have to post these rules before I give you the facts

I have to start with eight random facts/habits about myself

People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules

At the end of this post, I need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Coming up with things people don't know isn't the problem, actually; it's stopping at eight.

But anyway:

1) I'm Roman Catholic. Well, I grew up Roman Catholic, then lost my faith (don't ask) for some, oh, eleven years. Recently got provoked into believing again in the face of burgeoning Christina extremism (not so much that they converted me back into Christianity, as they're so fucking annoying I backed into my Catholicism out of sheer need to freak them out--Christian wingnuts, it seems are almost as suspicious of Catholics as they are of Muslims). Less than noble motives, but it's been such a comfortable fit since I wonder why I ever left.

Not that I agree with the church on everything. They have a neanderthal policy towards homosexuals, and while I personally think abortion is a sad and often avoidable act, with often grevious consequences towards the mother, I don't think the government has a duty to force a woman not to go through with it (Guiliani has a similar stance, I know--what can I say? Man knows how to steal from the best). Plus I think Ratzinger is an inept dolt.

2) I'm left handed. Yep, I'm sinister, sinistra, siniestra, gauche, balfacan, canhoto, cack-handed, what-have-you. We southpaws are supposedly more creative--well, you be the judge.

3) I hate clothes. More, I hate shopping for clothes; I hate it that you have to compare prices, hate it that you're suppose to buy different textiles of different textures, and match them not just to different colors, but also to the weather. I hate it that most clothing stores don't have chairs to sit on (which is why shoe stores are marginally better--you can at least sit. My problem with them is that there's no good reading material onhand to amuse you, unless you're desperate enough to pick up a shoebox). I'm one of the few peole I know who's a fan of Altman's Pret-a-Porter; if it's a stupid, pointless film with plenty of mean caricatures (and I only halfway agree with that--I do love the ending)--I think it's the kind of film the fashion industry deserves. I'd rather walk around naked too, but I'm afraid of being arrested.

4) I nearly died once. Was in a religious drama where I played a demon, and the production went on tour of cities in the Philippines. In one city the theater was on the fourth floor; I had the crazy idea that I'd make my demonic entrance through a window. I looked out, and the ledge was some six inches wide. I needed some kind of safety device, I thought, so I tied a rope on the window sill.

Fifteen minutes before my entrance, I climbed out the window holding on to the rope. When I was outside, I pulled on the rope and it snapped; I lost my balance and fell four stories. I survived (of course), but broke several teeth and had at least one dislocation. Haven't been the same since, physically speaking (not that I was a jocky hunk before the accident).

5) I've had not one, but two freak car accidents. The first one was in Makati, when I was tied up in a traffic jam outside a nightclub. Ahead of me, someone in a van was arguing with someone on the street--the club's doorman, I assumed. I heard three shots; I decided to make a u-turn and head back the way I came. I was two cars away from the intersection, waiting for the green light when this huge collision lifted the rear of my car up in the air. When I look back, the van at the nightclub had rearended my vehicle; the van reversed, roared forward again this time swerving to the right, climbed up to the sidewalk, and ground itself to a halt against a building wall.

I later parked and walked back to the shooting site, and asked a few questions. Turns out the man who drove the van was dead, shot several times through the head. The van was still there, front wheels on the sidewalk, a thick pool of blood with bits of--something--by the driver's door.

The second accident happened when I was driving home one day. The road rose uphill, and I was making my way up the incline when this car suddenly cut across me. I braked, waiting for it to stop, but it didn't; it just mashed my right headlight, and crashed into a parked car to my right. When we (meaning everyone who got hit) looked inside, the car was empty; no one was driving it.

Turns out the car's owner had left the car on parking brake, the brake had given way, and the car had rolled merrily downhill till it plowed through three vehicles. Thankfully no one was hurt, but you can imagine what it felt like, being hit by a driverless car.

6) My dormitory roommate once held a knife to my throat. He was the nicest, most easygoing guy you can imagine, but he drank too much, and he filled the shoe closet with beer bottles (we once carted them all down to the nearest Kroger's, and the total deposite money came to sixty dollars).

One night he seemed upset; I asked him what was the matter. He told me that he'd had news from his hometown in Madras that his entire family had been killed in a bus accident; they had gone out on a family outing and the bus had crashed--not an entirely uncommon occurence in India; I'd read news reports about similar accidents there.

He went back into his own room, and for hours I heard him pacing; at one point I walked into his room and he was standing on his chair, trying to fix a rope to the ceiling lamp; I backed out of the room quick. I keep listening in, wondering what he was going to do, when he called me inside, and asked for sleeping pills. I said I didn't have any; he insisted. Third time I refused him, he pulled out this serrated knife and held it to my throat. Strangely enough, I wasn't scared; I simply pushed down the hand and said "don't be stupid," and left the room.

I could still hear him pacing inside. The incident had a delayed effect on me, or I felt I didn't want to be responsible for what happened next, so I took all the kitchen knives out of the drawers and hid them, then left the apartment to sleep somewhere else (the bedroom doors had no lock).

When I came in the next morning, he acted as if nothing had happened. Word had gone around campus about his family though, and a collection had been made to help him buy a ticket to go home. I went into his room, fished out a phone bill, and called Madras. Turns out his family was just fine.

Never told him what I found out, or told anyone else about it. I never found out why he did it, or what he did with the money (which came up to several hundred dollars, I heard).

7) One of my ex-girlfriends used to model. She's no ditz, though--she's one of the few people I know that I know is smarter than I am (her IQ she once told me (and I believe her) is 158). That was a short and sweet relationship that ended rather badly (basically because I was in Michigan and she was in New York).

Met her again recently, in New York, and we talked a little over coffee. She's gone into theater, has done voiceovers, even has a small part in a daytime soap.

One bit of advice I gave her--try out for Filipino-American films. There are more of them nowadays, she's perfect for the part, and some of them (Lav Diaz, Sari Dalena, Keith Sicat, Neill Dela Llana, Ian Gamazon) are some of the most interesting filmmakers around. It's hard to be remembered, I argued, acting for theater, now more than ever; probably even worse for voiceovers or for modelling (about which I admitted to her I knew next to nothing). With film all you need is one good part, in one good film, and you're immortal.

8) My other ex-girlfriend wrote poetry. Good stuff, too, or so I thought (and a few people thought enough of them to publish them back in Manila). Another sweet relationship that ended badly (basically, I took her for granted).

I'll say one more thing about it--a woman (the last person I expect to know anything about it) walked up to me while I was busy writing a film article and asked me about her. "I heard something about the two of you," this woman said; "I heard you were something of an, well, an asshole to her."

"I was. I admit it. It was completely my fault," I said, and went back to writing. That seemed to take the woman aback, she just walked away after a while, without saying another word.

Last I heard my ex gave up poetry, which is a pity--I really thought her work was good. I believe in what I said about making that one good film, but with literature all you really need is a novel, a short story, a poem, even a just a memorable pair of verses. Unlike with my New Yorker, I haven't talked to her since.

Come to think of it, though, there's different ways of being remembered. When I last saw her, she had very short hair; turns out she had shaved her head, to prove a point. She's teaching a class of high school students, and--I don't remember why, something to do with self-image and the will to do something for the sake of principle or something (I forget the details)--but she showed up one day for class with her head shaven clean, and shocked her students (and the entire school, I'm sure).

The details are hazy, but what I felt about it wasn't; surprise, and not a little awe. She'd always been the quiet, intense type, and while I never thought she'd do anything like this, I also didn't think looking back that doing something like this was beyond her. Scary, but in a way I loved her for doing it. I suspect her students did, too.

I tag (with the proviso that they're under no obligation to do anything whatsoever with my tagging 'em) the following blogs: Brain Freeze, Conversations on Ghibli, Film Experience, Gibbs Cadiz, Tom Sutpen's If Charlie Parker was a Slugger..., Jose Dalisay's Pinoy Penman, Quark Henares' Intrigero, Sari-saring Sineng Pinoy (Different Kinds of Filipino Films).

Coming of age films

I've been tagged by Andy Horbal (on his birthday no less) for this Coming of Age movie meme (along with bloggers Matt Riviera and Teresa).

1. What are 3 movies that exemplify the Coming-of-Age movie genre?

I'm not a big fan of the genre, and I doubt if I'd know what would constitute an "exemplary" coming-of-age film, but if it's youths growing up you want…

Nathan Lopez, Ang Pagdadalaga Ni Maximo Oliveros

Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, 2005) probably comes closest to being "typical" of the genre in this short list of examples, but even then, how many 'blossoming' films do you know feature a gay boy, and how many films show said gay boy living with such a nurturing family, in such an unfussy film? Maximo (Nathan Lopez, in a wonderful performance) acts as surrogate mother to a testosterone-stuffed family of sneak thieves, made up of a widowed father and Maxie's two straight older brothers. The film presents his situation (not as unusual in the Philippine where, despite its fervent Catholicism, homosexuals are accepted to a startling degree--we even have an openly gay senator) as being the most natural thing in the world, and that's the beauty of it. Despite being about a youth, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros is a delightfully adult film, in the sense that it assumes the fairly best, and procceds to demonstrate that even this fairly happy condition isn't enough to guarantee perfect happpiness. There's more to gay life, the film seems to say, than having to contend with homophobia--first love, for one; the anguish of choosing between family and friend; and the pain of brute disillusionment.

Lolita Rodriguez (Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang)

Lino Brocka's Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (You Were Weighed But Found Wanting, 1974) seems inspired by several sources: Federico Fellini's 1953 I Vitelloni, for one (the sensitive youth who leaves town to come back a celebrated artist), and Peter Bogdanovich's 1971 The Last Picture Show (the mysterious older man who turns out to be the catalyst and mentor for the youth's transformation into manhood). Two other sources I should cite: Jose Rizal's social-reform novel Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not), which is the source for the the mother (driven insane by the loss of her child) and her leprous husband, and Brocka's own life--the town where he shot the film was the same one he lived in as a bastard child; he seems to feel no regret in leaving the town nor, apparently, does he feel any coming back to paint such a witheringly satiric portrait of its people.

Actually, I never thought the coming-of-age storyline or the Brocka surrogate at the middle of it (the sensitive youth self-rightously poised to judge the entire community) was very interesting; more memorable is the story of the crazed homeless mother and her disfigured husband--the two lowest figures in the town's heirarchy, presuming to teach (via the example of their humble lives) one of the town's crown princes (the aforementioned youth) a lesson in love and tolerance.

Hilda Koronel, Insiang

Filmmaker Tikoy Aguiluz noted that almost all of Philippine cinema has chosen for its theme the self-sacrificing mother and the importance of the family; Lino Brocka's masterpice Insiang is the rare exception. The eponymous character lives in the slums of Tondo, and what her mother, her mother's lover, and the slum itself has to teach her would not be found in any self-respecting parenting textbook: hate, cynicism, the art of betrayal, and the even subtler art of manipulating people's desires to get what you want from them.

The irony of it is that Insiang learns her lesson too well; she turns into a young, beautiful monster, and sets out to destroy all around her. Brocka presents a world upside down where mothers abuse their children, children respond with bloody revenge, and the audience is left feeling sorrier for the rapist than for the rape victim. It's a great film, but for the sake of our sense of self-worth and relative peace of mind I, for one, am happy it's the only one of its kind.

2. What is your favorite coming of age movie and why?

Lilia Cuntapay, Pangarap ng Puso

Easy--Mario O'Hara's Pangarap ng Puso (Demons, 2000). About a pair of children who grow up near the Negros' enchanted rain forests, fall in love, and are pulled into the tumultuous currents of history. Their growth can be seen in the evolving ways in which the two lovers view the magical creatures that dance about them--as a child's metaphor for the wide, unknown world; as a pubescent's metaphor for emerging sexuality; as a young adult's metaphor for the demonic impulses that drive terrorists and military fascists alike, locked in a never ending cycle of violence and revenge.

And it's more, so much more; the girl's mother (Hilda Koronel) recites Florentino Collantes' "The Gift," part of which I translated (very roughly):

Our love is like the heaven and earth
like the union of mountain and sea.
Too close together to be clearly seen
drinking bitter tears.
I remember my lifelong love
and how he lay ailing
and how I said that if he ever died
I would quickly follow

The daughter would inherit this love of poetry as she grows up. But the times being as troubled as they are, she is drawn to darker, more unsettling fare, such as Amado Hernandez's fiery lines about political prisoners (again, very roughly translated): 

Bright as lightning the guardian’s eye 
on this locked and forbidding gate; 
the convict in the next cell howls 
an animal trapped in a cave. 

Each day passes like a chain dragged 
along the floor by bloody feet 
each night is a mourning shroud draped 
on my place of entombment. 

Sometimes someone's furtive feet pass, 
clink of shackles marking passage; 
the sallow sun blinks, reveals 
countless wraiths spewing from the dark. 

Sometimes the night's peace is shattered 
by alarm--an escape!--gunfire; 
sometimes the old church bell tolls 
and in the courtyard someone dies--

The girl grows up, faces her demons, conquers them (but not entirely; as we shall see in the film, not entirely); she becomes involved in the region's violent politics, though not as deeply as her childhood sweetheart, who has a bounty worth thousands of pesos on his head. Her speeches are admirably progressive, but--in what I find to be a curious reaction to the young man's rebellion, her poetry is more personal than radical (these lines written not by a famous Filipino poet, but by O'Hara's niece--again, a rough and probably incompetent translation):

At the graveside of childhood
in this tract of red-stained and fetid soil
the dying is done.
The final breath was deep
filled with purpose
because the heavens do not mourn a man
and begrudge tears to a garden reserved
for standing, stagnating saints.
Orphans begging by the tombstones of cemeteries.
But the dead understand.
Beneath their burial and putrefaction
is mourning and begging.

Remarkable coming from a young woman--but not her best; her best are recited towards the end of the film, and they are heartbreaking: the story of two lives, captured in a handful of words.

I was asked once, after a screening of this film (by the late Nika Bohinc, if I remember right!), why would children be frightened of the spirits of the forest when all they have known is innocence and joy? I had an answer then, a fairly good one I thought, but having mulled it over, I feel this is how I should have answered: that what children know is so very little compared to what they can see going on about them, and that even with their handful of knowledge (or, rather, because of it--what was Socrates' definition of a truly wise man?) they can sense danger and darkness beyond their small, secure circle. Children can sense, and see, and in this way know (even if they are not sure of the particulars); thus equipped, and not incapable of imagination, they can fear. When they grow up into flawed adults (a budding poetess and crusader, a feared rebel killer), their knowledge increases and the width of their circle widens; but the darkness is never completely dispelled, and the fear never really goes away.

(I suppose I have to do this: I tag girish, The Little Round-Headed Boy, and, uh, Nathaniel R. in The Film Experience)