TOP 100 FILMS - 81 - 85

...

Avatar (2009) is James Cameron's most bloated movie ever. Titanic (1997) is bloated and so as the Terminator series. Fat movies and million-dollar productions promise two things: an explosion and a hellbent end-of-the-world scene. Both are present in Avatar, a one fat movie of the 21st century. Avatar created a large explosion of films rendered in 3D, its the stuff that pops out of the screen when you wear 3D glasses. Yeah, I guess you heard it somewhere. Anyway, Avatar is a gem in terms of its technical brilliance. I say nothing can match this invention of Cameron for being the first one to shot an otherworldly live-action film using a 3D Fusion Camera System. Its like using a digital camera, but the camera's projection is in 3D. In that way, the filmmaker can judge by aesthetics the look of the film during shooting compared with the conventional 3D ones done during post-production.

Requiem for a Dream (2000) is a gem of a mysterious film about obsession, drug addiction, and self-ridicule. It touches themes about alienation and self-loathe. A psychological rift of a film, Aronofsky uses extreme expressionist aesthetics like wide-angle close-ups, splits screens, outlandish camera choreography, centered framing and a winning-performance of Ellen Burnstyn. The plot acclimates in a crescendo, punctuated by a repetitive taking-a-drug montage. His highly subjective compositions demands a lot of attention and analysis that this film might be one of his most important works.

Begotten (1991) is a cockroach in a den. It is metaphysically sick, sloppy and eerie. Its darkness is unmeasurable and even unattainable in today's cinema. This is an Elias Merhige gem, a masterpiece and a landmark work of art in experimental cinema. One can look upon the history of the experimental genre: Maya Deren, the woman who got the balls, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, one can observe that this work is a temporal rift from the trend. Shot it black-and-white, it is reprocessed in film laboratory to attain the black-white-half-tone absent cinematography. The film is so perverse, so dark it rips the balls out of anyone else. Someone said it is equivalent to Samuel Becket's darkest parables. If one knows who Samuel Becket is, you'll picture it right away. WASAK is an understatement.

Amores Perros (2000) marks Inarritu's beginning of his neorealist Death trilogy that would be celebrated internationally six year after the release of this debut. The film is a stand out for achieving a hard-boiled, macho-man atmosphere composed with depth, resonance and intensity. Its aesthetics emulates the key elements of Latin American filmmaking: fast and snappy editing and intensified color fields characteristic of films like Y tu mamá también (2001) by Alfonso Cuaron and City of God (2002) by Fernando Meirelles. The film's treatment of violence depends heavily in Inarritu's compositional style and staging strategies that without Inarritu's direction, this might turn out to be a misdirected action movie.

A Serious Man's (2009) ending is indicative of the Coen's confidence with their craft. Considered as two of the most enigmatic icons in movie history in terms of style and homogeneity, the Coens developed a provocative but diverse style through the years mixing different genres and techniques, each of their films exhibits a pluralistic take on cinema as filmmakers. The film, which was totally a different take from their previous No Country for Old Men (2008), is a unique attack on the suburban alienation, a black comedy rendered with a strangely diffuse visual but carefully composed structured shots, elegantly paced and conflict driven. The film conflates many issues about the black-comedy suburban genre that it questions its implosive stature as a trend.



*****

TOP 100 FILMS - 86 - 90

....

Au Revoir, Les Enfants (1987) is war film about a friendship between two boys who met inside a boarding school at a French countryside. One is a French Jewish and the other one, a French Catholic. The political weight of the film and also its autobiographical weight made it one of the most unforgettable Louis Malle film one might see. The film secures Malle for being a serious filmmaker, since wherever a director writes and directs about the Holocaust, he offers a great subservience to the humanistic goals of cinema: the critical and sensitive understanding of the our dark history. The film is not visual flair, nor a preachy recollection of childhood during wartime. In his most honest way, Louis Malle orchestrates the budding of a friendship between the two main characters with steady-camera aesthetics, close-ups and staggered acting recreating, perhaps in his mind, what its like to loose a Jewish friend during the war.

Octavio Silos' Tunay na Ina (1939) is Philippine cinema's one of the three surviving films made by a Filipino director before the Japanese Invasion of 1940s during which all the film archives of pre-war Philippines were destroyed. Gazing through this historical document, the same year Jean Renoir released his beautiful, beautiful La Règle du jeu (1939), I cannot help but to draw comparisons to both local and foreign films after it: the camerawork, its song-and-dance formula which was very popular that time as we do have romantic comedies now in 2000s. The film is full of life, so magical one can not help but admire the history of Philippine cinema flashing before you, sitting inside the classroom, and smiling because Tita Duran, singing Maligayang Pasko! was still a very young that time. This is the oldest Filipino film I've watched in my whole life and maybe yours too.

Of Time and the City (2008) is Terence Davies ode to Liverpool. It contains black-and-white newsreels about Liverpool and its people, tilt shot of Liverpool's grand structures magnifying their edifice. The most piquant element of the film is the moody scoring coupled with the poetic narration of Terrence Davies about his hometown. Filled with melancholy and nostalgia, Davies rhythmically arranges a somewhat pseudo-documentary satire of a town that reminds him about the life he almost wanted to forget.

La Chinoise (1967) is Jean-Luc Godard's leftist film in primary colors. Godard conditions this film to be Bretchian, it discords conventional cinema's illusionist intent of linear story-making and breaks it down into its very basic, often decentralized narrative minimalist in mise-en-scene but complex in ideological make-up. This is Godard's earliest effort to absorb the Bretchian ideals with his most successful being Tout va Bien (1972). In La Chinoise, Godard's visual style is further stretched, experimenting on the redundant puns, disproportional framing and odd film costumes as explored in his earlier film, Pierrot le Fou (1965). Visual matches and overlaps constructs an impenetrable film about the communism in China. The battle between visual constructs and auditory puns acclimates into a zig-zig motion towards a resolution to the thematic overload.

Zombieland (2009) demands analysis. Its humor is flat, its characters are boisterous, its premise is overrated. What is key to the beauty of Zombieland is cinematography. At one scene, during their rampage inside an India Souvenir Shop, the camera records a fleeting caricature of non-consequential activities of destroying things around the shop: as my philosopher friend observed, nihilism in slow motion.






*****

TOP 100 FILMS - 91 - 95

...



Criminal Lovers (1999) bridges campy and nonplus filmmaking. Shot in lucid 16-mm film, its cinematography adjusts the editing into a characteristically paced thriller with a balance accord between its luscious photography and acclimating action. The film follows two lovers in their quest to kill the man they both desire and in the process ending at a wrong territory that will challenge both their sensibilities. Its oddity is compared to eating an eggplant raw - doesn't taste good, right. The film ended tragically, like many films of Ozon. At some point, Ozon draws the film with fluidity in color, often expressionistic and primal, it succeeds by deliberately teasing the viewers with counter-intuitive motives.

All is Forgiven (2007) is Mia Hasen-Love's filmic caricature of a family formed and broken by lies and drug addiction and a daughter who reconnects with her rehabilitated father after eleven years. The stylish camerawork and lightning expands the film from a minimal bent into a half-light, hald-dark impressionistic film that recalls numerous French directors from Jean Renoir to Louie Malle to contemporary like Arnaud Desplechin and Oliver Assayas. This film is so nuanced it very French in many aspects.

Summer Hours (2008) is a gem of a movie, an Assayas that each generation of the French audience will love. This film demonstrates how vibrant Assayas' treatment to his characters' temperament. The film oscillates from light and dark, it unmasks the very concept of life after death. Like many French movies, as it is in painting, this kind of life is reflected on material things: a painting, a vase, a veranda, a panel, a window over looking a garden. It encapsulates these banalities as if each one has something grand, captured to us by the supreme and solid camera work of cinematographer, Eric Gautier. The characters accentuates these banal things by reinforcing their identities, memories of such things and its histories (even secrets) and informing us of their worth. Summer Hours is a drama of things past, of histories, of art, and of dead people in their happiest hours before death.

Transamerica (2005) enunciates a reflection of what a film about real transgender should look like. It harbors a great acting performance by Felicity Huffman as Bree. A sensitive and heartfelt film, but insanely funny: a comedy, a farce with serious advocacy. It illustrates quite simply and in an honest way what comes ahead of a life as a transgender named Bree meeting up his son, by accident inside a correctional facility in New York. Apparently, his son, Toby, want to go to Hollywood to become a porn star, they hit a road trip from New York to California, hence, Transamerica ladies and gentlemen.

The Magdalene Sisters (2002) is big in terms of slicing through the dark side of an unflinchingly abusive treatment of nuns inside an asylum for girls. The film is bathed with thrills, suspense and violence it can become a horror movie. But luckily, it did not. Banned by the Vatican, it remains one of the most horrifying movies I have seen this year.


*****

TOP 100 FILMS - 96 - 100

...

Once again, AUDITOIRE's year-end tradition of ranking the best there is in world cinema regardless of era, style or origin, is here at last. AUDITOIRE believes the best way to account a year with cinema is by ranking his best film experiences for this year. So here it goes, my bottom 5!

La Fille du Rer (The Girl on the Train, 2009) is film by French director Andre Techine about a girl who fakes a hate crime. One thing AUDITOIRE likes about this film is the prosaic framing with intertitles similar to the films of Jean-Luc Godard of the 1960s. It remains a tantalizing piece of work about modern France and its youth. Emilie Dequenne's performance struck both the animosity of her character and also its arbitrariness. It's quixotic form makes Techine one of the most exiting directors of contemporary French cinema.

In UP (2009), there is an observable symmetry between filmic elements: young and old, bright and dark, happiness and melancholy, freedom and restraint. Inspired by many icons in film history, UP is a conglomeration of visual quotations from old movies hidden within its mise-en-scene. It has inputs from films like the silent, The Lost World (1925) to Lamorrise's The Red Balloon (1956) to L'Avventura (1960) it is one of the most underrated masterpiece animated films Disney released in years.

Toy Story 3 (2010) stretched the whole franchise of Toy Story from its great and humble beginnings to a moneymaking business investing on melodramatic conflicts like abandonment, rejection and betrayal. However, it has innovations in terms of complexity. As with other Toy Stories, this has the most expanded mise-en-scene: from Andy's house we are introduced to a kid's school, to a garbage dump-site and to the house of another kid. This increases the technical complexity of the film because it introduces more characters and different look of the mise-en-scene, hence more animation skills needed, which is hard by the way. So to the PIXAR animators who painstakingly pieced together this film, kudos! Have a Merry Christmas to you all!

Sa'yo Lamang (2010) is Laurice Guillen's tortuous drama which I wanted to escape at first viewing. While everyone else cries besides me during one of Lorna's seizure's, I was laughing because it looks like The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). Anyway, the film's main character played by Bea Alonso is an eye-opener for me. Bea has a great potential as an actress and she showed it with intensity and control in this film. Her portrayal as Dianne Alvero is one of most unforgettable performance of a Filipina actress I have seen this year. She finally knows the craft but needs more direction and mastery.


The Holy Mountain (1973) introduced me to the notorious film director, Alejandro Jodorowsky. After watching this one I was hooked with the strangeness of Jorodowsky's inputs. It's one of the most refreshing films I've seen this year. It is build upon a lot of visual codes, excesses and pictorial overloads similar to what Godard did in Film Socialisme (2010) but in a rigid fashion. The film is explores the absurdity of religion, and like many other religion, it self-reflexivity is satisfied by destroying the fourth wall at the end of the film. Did you know that Khavn dela Cruz's style is similar to Alejandro Jodorowsky's?

91 - 95 <...

*****

My Night at Maud's (1969)

...



I haven't seen you but it seems that you're the best Christmas gift ever. [^_^]

Ciao!
****

Wasak na MEGATON CROSSWORD PUZZLE - Khavn + MMFF

....for CINEMATON 3: MEGATON (Khavn + MMFF)

Here is something to think about!

ACROSS

2 | Ang Pamilyang ________ ng Lupa

6 | Enfant terrible of Philippine Cinema

7 | Kataga mula sa paboritong pelikula ni Sani Ajero by Khavn

9 |Mortal na kaaway sa Magic Temple (1996)

12 | Awarded Best Actor during 1st MMFF

13 | Cinemateque kung saan pinalabas ang Son of God (2010) ni Khavn nung Dec. 23, 2010

15 | Isang short film ni Khavn

16 | _______ Festival Motherfuckers (MFMF)

17 | Isang pelikula ni Khavn tungkol sa aswang sa Quezon City

19 | One-day-old ______

20 | Pelikula ni Khavn na nanalo ng Best Feature noong 14th Philippine Independent FF (2001)
DOWN

1 | Pelikula ni Khavn kung saan ang isang karakter ay may hawig kay Travis Bickle

3 | May pinakamaraming napanalunang Best Actress Award sa MMFF

4 | May gusto kay Hasmin sa Magic Temple

5 | Katagang pamalit sa 'Astig' ni Khavn

7 | Isa ulit short film ni Khavn

8 | Director ng 1981 MMFF Best Picture

10 | Palabas sa TV kung saan binase ang Cameroon Love Letter (2010)

11 | Paboritong lugar ni Khavn sa Maynila

14 | Best Picture 1989 MMFF

18 | This is ____ a film by Khavn

20 | Ilang araw na dilim ang tinutukoy sa pelikula ni Khavn na naipalabas sa Rotterdam IFF noong 2009?





Ciao!
*****
Don't peek!
(click to enlarge)



TWELVE GIFTS TO CINEMA

...twelve essays on twelve memorable film experiences this year...


Dearest readers, I welcome you all to another year-end special of AUDITOIRE: Twelve Gifts to Cinema! In the spirit of Christmas, Auditoire has written twelve film essays celebrating another year of a memorable encounter with cinema. This year's top 12 films were carefully chosen from a pool of 100+ films watched by Auditoire from January 1, 2010 to December 25, 2010. The twelve films are historically variant chosen from different eras possessing different styles and different approach to filmmaking. This is to introduce the readers to variety and heterogeneity of cinema in form and style and to produce detailed essays to guide each film enthusiast in the aesthetic and thematic issues of each film. The series will begin tomorrow and end until January 2011.

TWELVE GIFTS TO CINEMA

1 |

2 |

3 |

4 |

5 |

6 |

7 |

8 |

9 |

10 |

11 |


12 |



Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!





Ciao!
****


Bal (Honey, 2010)

...a short review

Rating: 5/5


A tremendous film whose parametric form will encourage film academicians to uncover the richness of the form and style of the trilogy. It revolves around a boy observing the world around him captured with poetic subservience to its main character. In terms of cinematography, it has the most piquant, most subtle, most painterly images ever captured in today's cinema. it is almost meditative it recalls the works of Abbas Kiarostami and Andrei Tarkovsky. Its sound design, where everything is diegetic, can be describe as crystalline it adds depth to its mise-en-scene. One could observe, after finishing the trilogy [Yumutra (2007), Sut (2008) and Bal (2010)], the rawness of style Semih Kaplanoglu is trying to achieve: each frame is well adjusted in terms of its elements and he does have a different way of putting a montage, mind you! Fans of contemplative cinema, don't end the year without watching this film!

I don't know what is this...

...
But I am happy! Stay longer please.

Ciao!
****

Auditoire did not win Best Entertainment Blog

but Auditoire is very thankful for the support of everyone from the local and international film community...

Une Femme est Une Femme (1961): and a one...

You may sense a bit of bitterness, but hey, cheer up guys, Auditoire pretty much received quite a following from the film community this year, and that is, for me, more than enough to be happy with.

GOING INTERNATIONAL

Une Femme est Une Femme (1961): and a two...


This year, Auditoire received quite a reception from the international film community. I have never been happy in my life when one day after posting a blog post, a world-renowned film critic and scholar from Australia and editor-in-chief of film journal Rouge, Adrian Martin, commented on the post. Never in my life have I been frozen in my seat when he said:
"If you're watching many films and writing intelligent thoughts about them here on your blog, you're a film critic, no question about it !! Welcome to the club !!!"
--- Adrian Martin (Oct 2009)
An affirmation that one is a film critic from a world-renowned film scholar is more than enough to bear. Adrian Martin, wherever you are, I will never forget this one ever. As my fellow blogger, Epoy Deyto, considers a feedback on his short film Lalakeng may Isang Mumurahing Camera (2010) from famous or, better yet, historical figure of avant-garde filmmaking, Jonas Mekas, as one heck of an unforgettable event in his life, for me, this one is beyond being unforgettable, its nerve-racking!

I also want to thank fellow film critic from France, Harry Tuttle, who owns two major, major film blogs the international community adored: SCREENVILLE and UNSPOKEN CINEMA for listing Auditoire in World Artfilm Blogs Directory together with fellow film blogger Sir Noel, the late Alexis Tioseco, Oggs, Richard, Dodo and Simon Santos.

I am also very thankful to Catherine Grant, a UK film critic and famous owner of the notorious film blog, FILM STUDIES FOR FREE, for her enthusiasm with Auditoire's LIVE NOTES SERIES especially when she twitted my L'Avventura (1960) Frame-by-Frame Analysis and three other film critics re-twitted it including @thedailyMUBI. That was one heck of a night for me!

I also would like to thank Film-Philosophy, a notable scholarly film journal in the web, for inviting me to their annual conference on Film and Philosophy in Liverpool, United Kingdom for two consecutive years to present a formal paper for publishing. As much as I would love too, I do not have money to go to U.K. for such purpose. But thanks anyway! It is such an honor.

To other fellow film critics, cinephiles and scholars from around the world who reads this blog: Rex Baylon and Jim Gerow of New York, USA, Dan North from U.K., Just Another Film Buff of India and the ones from Spain, thank you so much for being patient with me. I love you all guys!

LOCAL INFILTRATION


Une Femme est Une Femme (1961): and a one, two, three four...

This year, Auditoire, has began its immersion inside the local film culture starting with 6th Titus Brandsma Short Indie Film Festival where he met theater actor-director Jon Lazam, a starting experimental filmmaker and critic, Epoy Deyto, and cinephile and critic, Sani Ajero. Auditoire did attend two monthly screenings of Tioseco-Bohinc Film Series at FullyBooked the Fort with Epoy Deyto where we regularly meet and sit with filmmaker and critic, Carl Joseph Papa, and organizers, Oggs, Richard, Dodo.

With all my heart and soul, thank you Sani, Epoy, and Fidan for establishing and continuing with me our blogathon site CINEMATON! CINEMATON! . I owe you guys a film book about French New Wave, haha! Tig-iisa sana kayong copy, next year nalang! Char! I also would like to thank the contributors for Cinematon 2 - Star Cinema, Chris Fajardo, a film programmer of Titus Brandsma monthly screening, and Carl Joseph Papa. I'm sorry for being makulit to you. Haha! I also wanna thank Ryan Borja for reading this blog. :D

I want to thank film critic, Sir Noel Vera, for putting up my blog finally in his blogroll. For me, it's a great achievement. Thanks Sir Noel! :D

I also want to thank my long time cinephile friend, Jay Rosas, we haven't seen each other but we are as if long time friends or brothers even, thanks for sticking with me and my blog for almost two years now. Ewwwsss.... Hahaha!

Une Femme est Une Femme (1961): bladadadanggg da dangg...


I also want to thank local filmmakers: the most adored Raya Martin for the heads up about Alexis Tioseco liking my blog, that was sweet; Auraeus Solito for promoting a post, Archie del Mundo for all the laughter and tears we shared, kaya yan mars, konti ire nalang mapapanganak mo na ang Taksikab (2010/2011); Jay Altarejos for appreciating my words about Pink Halo-Halo (2010) and for sending me screencaps for a film article. I finished it a couple of months ago. I am hoping to send it somewhere over the net to get published, if not, i'll publish it here in my blog.

I am also thankful to be invited in a Critic's preview of upcoming film of Alvin Yapan and Alem Ang last September 2010. I hope my comments about the film helped, good job guys and goodluck!

Thank you so much UP Film Institute faculty, Joni Gutierrez, for your support in my FILM DECONSTRUCTED project which will be running until end of 2012 and hopefully will amount, into a publishable film book if ever I manage to survive that two long years of writing about film criticism. Also, thank you to my Film 12 instructor, Maam Avie Felix for appreciating my film critiques about Philippine Cinema (all of them will be published before the year ends in this blog).

And for all the people in the facebook group I've created for local cinephiles to meet and talk about movies, CINEPHILES!, thank you so much for keeping it alive! I owe you all choknuts!

I want to dedicate all of these works, these achievements and even my failures to Alexis Tioseco for being an inspiration to everything I do in film blogging. I wish you are alive right now tell you how great you are. You and Nikka will never part our hearts and mind.

AND LASTLY and MOST IMPORTANTLY...

Une Femme est Une Femme (1961):
Ma-Karina, Ma-Karina, Ma-Karina!

To my all friends, dormmates, roommates, Ace Ligsay for accompanying me at the awarding ceremony of Philippine Blog Awards 2010, PSYSC, Chem Engg Pips, random classmates on GE Subjects, thank you so much! I can never survive this blog without you! Thanks for enduring the plugging

To my family, Lola Mila, Enciso Family and to my mother and father who supported me through the years and for giving me freedom to express myself in any form, in any medium, anywhere, anytime.


And last but not the least, YOU my readers, thank you so much for being here!


COMING SOON!!!

The year end is coming. Guess what's coming to Auditoire this December?

A frame-by-frame analysis of Silent Light (2007)

Ciao!
*****

SENIOR YEAR (2010)

...
[Spoiler Alert: Reading this will spoil you. This is an in-depth analysis of the film and it talks about the specifics so be be wary of the information given here. Read with caution!]

Senior Year (2010) is Philippine independent cinema in a candy bar. Here is a film that touches so many issues that it somewhat collects the filmic conflicts of past ten years of Philippine independent film-making: homosexuality, infidelity, familial problems, coming-of-age, modernity, class consciousness, religious dogmatism, social awareness, drug addiction, crime and politics. Inspired by Jude Apatow's 1990s TV series entitled Freaks and Geeks and Lauren Cantet's placid The Class (2008) written similar to Mike Leigh's pre-production method, Senior Year is quite a bomb!

Some Notes on Form and Style

What strikes me the most, above all, is the way the film was pieced together. From the use of lens to the pans and tilts to the perpetual camera movements, the film proves to be technically dazzling, a bittersweet type of film we do not usually see in mainstream Philippine cinema lately. At one noticeable instant during a hallway scene, the artistic control of the camera is evident when the characters enters and exits the hallway similar to the order of a fashion show. The camera, adjusted in deep-focus, moves forward and backward in a glacially paced manner reminiscing the sort of cinematography Jean Renoir employed in La Grande Illusion (1937) and numerous other films which uses a continuously moving camera to reveal depth of the mise-en-scene and offscreen elements.

The lighting functions well enough it becomes an expressionistic tool giving each character both depth and abstraction. At one instance, when Carlo, the flamboyant gay character in the movie, phones Bundha, a noticeable change can be observed in the type of lighting used for each frame. From the bright lampshade of Carlo, it cuts away to an almost chiaroscuro low-contrast lighting on Bundha reflecting her state of mind. The frontal framing of Bundha's face followed by 180-degree-cut of her quarreling parents about her father's drug addiction problem exhumed some sort of abstraction wherein the audiences were oriented for its conceptual purpose more than its visual purpose. Or simply, this is a film the enables the viewers to think actively than passively, to participate in the thinking process not just to received it as it is. The scene, due to its lack of establishing shot, gave us cues as to what level of perception Jerrold Tarrog wants his audience to view the film, a high level of intelligence most of local mainstream films fails to achieve.

Jerrold Tarog in motion.

One can go on by saying that the artistic control Tarrog and his production team gave to the film played well with its entertainment value making it one of the few local films with an indie-mainstream conditioning, a trend that has become competitive with films produced by big producers such as Star Cinema and GMA Films for quite sometime now.

Tarog do have his own way of making a film. From his blog he notes that he did a series a acting workshop first before coming up with a screenplay and of course with the film similar to the style of Mike Leigh. He also let his actors improvised some of the scenes. The results is a semi-raw quality of film acting delivered in a quirky style both nuanced and seemingly controlled.

Thematic Richness


The Seniors!

Aside from its aesthetics, Senior Year is one good example of the multifaceted film composed numerous sub-plots with an ensemble cast. The narrative structure follows other local films like Manila by Night (1980) and Jologs (2002) and foreign films like Magnolia (2005) and Crash (2004). Each main character is highlighted and deepened by providing filmic information about their family, dreams and conflicts. Each one is represented by their distinctive qualities., though at times may be succinctly dismissed as stereotypical traits. These qualities integrate into a comic collision of riot and laughter one cannot escape from its hilarity and be entertained. From the lesbian couple (Steph and some girl) bounded by the dogmatic religious teachings of her father to the drug addiction faced by Bundha to the abuse of the English teacher by her husband to the infidelity issues faced by the charismatic guy named Ian to the class-conscious student who owns a karenderia summarizes the richness of Philippine cinema for the past ten years thereby defining our present generation: the youth of 2000s.

Here is a film that, ten to fifteen years from now, will be remembered as a crowd's favorite, a film that reflects the young Filipino generation of the 2000s each of us will miss and will be constantly reminisced through the years.

Ciao!
****

James Franco in Drag

...so

[photo by Terry Richardson]
[via Pas Un Autre Blog]


I just died. Amen!

Ciao!
***

In the Mood for Love (2000)

...you knew it, but you don't want it...


Phlegm. Danger.
Death. Love.
L.
Ciao!
****