A Pledge of Allegiance: Film Blogging with Integrity

..from Hototay

film blogging and beyond... [from 2001: A Space Odyssey]

Three years of film blogging is cool but hard. I started as a mediocre and reached the zenith with this long decent article (and its still unfinished); I received comments from mild to harsh, garnered some praises, but was often than not dismissed as a pretentious film academic.

Surprisingly, throughout my blogging life, I have never bashed an airline company for a delay nor I have attended a blogger event for a company or film except for a critic's preview for an upcoming film by Alem Ang and Alvin Yapan last year, Gayuma (2011?). Aside from this, I'm an annual regular attendee of film festivals from June to Decemeber and I have been preoccupied with film studies for two and a half years now and still learning the theories and approaches even today. My blogging life is boring as a whole until one night, September 2, 2009, in the middle of rushing through some org stuff, when my film blogging life has change. I received a very vague text message from my classmate here at UP.

Friend: "Do you [know] Alexis Tioseco?"
Me: "Yes!"
F: "He's on TV right now."
Me: "Oh, he's always on TV every now and then."

opened my Blogger dashboard, dumbfounded by Oggs' feed: Alexis Tioseco (1981 - 2009)

F: "I think he's been murdered or something."
Me: "I know. I'm reading Ogg's post. :("
F: "Who's Oggs?"

I didn't reply.

Another feed from sir noel and sir dodo, and also from chard came along. I felt silence at that moment, I got cold feet.

As oggs, dodo and chard continued Alexis' legacy, I realized that my calling has come: to start writing serious film criticism with integrity, wit and prowess. I took up a Film subject on Philippine Cinema months later. I immerse myself with the local independent scene starting with Titus Brandsma. I met with fellow cinephiles and discussed with them about Philippine Cinema, and started a blogathon site for a fresh new look at film criticism: CINEMATON! CINEMATON! I also formed a facebook group, CINEPHILES! which has amassed possibly the largest social network of film enthusiast in the Philippines.

That simple dream of writing serious film criticism has become a minor goal. During the last few weeks of 2010, I realized the lack of film writers in our country. In my own little way, I started forming projects in order to fill this gap by starting my FILM DECONSTRUCTED series. Still at its infancy, it promises to help most local writers in approaching films. It's a long project and it can possibly lead into a free online film book if ever i get to finish it.

Film blogging is a learning experience. One's opinion on a film does not only concern impressions and personal biases of this and that, but it harbors numerous implications about his film culture environment and it informs us about his guiding principles on making judgments on films. The essence of film blogging is to encourage each and everyone in the film community to partake in the discussion of film without going through the slow and painful process of sending comments and corrections in journals. Film blogging helps not only in offering nonpartisan take on films but also in mediating modern cinephilia of today, as Girish Shambu observes. As it became a more and more complex ordeal with Twitter and Facebook side-by-side, film blogging became a substitute to print published film criticisms of today. As film critics sporadically loose their jobs, they move from the print platform to the online platform where the real ordeal of film criticism continues to grow.

Roger Ebert identifies Manila as one of place where one can find the best critics of cinema today. To maintain the influx of local film critics, I, as a film blogger from Manila, must continuously encourage local cinephiles to start writing intelligent thoughts on cinema. In my own little way, I have succeeded somehow by drawing them into our facebook group, CINEPHILES! and initiating our blogathon site CINEMATON! CINEMATON! I also put up a series of interviews with fellow cinephiles to get to know them better. After all, film is a personal experience.

This is a long way to go. More challenges comes ahead. And by continually blogging with integrity and passion for cinema, I accept the responsibility that not only the words I write but in the shaping of the next batch of local film writers in my own little way. Hence, I pledge:

By displaying the Blog with Integrity badge or signing the pledge, I assert that the trust of my readers and the blogging community is important to me. I treat others respectfully, attacking ideas and not people. I also welcome respectful disagreement with my own ideas.

I believe in intellectual property rights, providing links, citing sources, and crediting inspiration where appropriate. I disclose my material relationships, policies and business practices. My readers will know the difference between editorial, advertorial, and advertising, should I choose to have it. If I do sponsored or paid posts, they are clearly marked.

When collaborating with marketers and PR professionals, I handle myself professionally and abide by basic journalistic standards.

I always present my honest opinions to the best of my ability. I own my words. Even if I occasionally have to eat them.

I encourage everyone who blog about films to take on this badge.


Ciao!
****

TOP 100 FILMS - 56 - 60

Nostalghia's (1983) dream scape is vast and eternal. Like many of Takovsky works, the film ascribes to numerous religious and philosophical elements. Its core is an extended series of memories of the main character, Andrei Gorchakov, played by Oleg Yankovsky. The film is an oneiric journey into the spiritual world of the past and into the psychology of two alienated characters, Andrei himself and madman named Domenico. Domenico claims that the end of the world is near. To save the world, one must cross a famous mineral pool in the village while holding a candle. Near the end of the film, as Dominic retells the story of final judgment to his fellow city people, Andrei walks inside the mineral pool. Domenico died after putting himself on fire, while Andrei died of heart attack after crossing the pool after many tries. Tarkovsky masters in situating his characters as pillars for humanity's change. In Andrei Rublev (1967), he holds the key to humanity's salvation. In Solaris (1972), the characters both holds spiritual and cosmic functions. In Nostalghia, Dominico and Andrei carries 'eschatological' functions. At such level of generalization, Tarkovsky asks difficult questions at the highest zenith of human understanding: existence, origin of the cosmos, memories, philosophical truth. He tackles each of these concepts in the most extraordinary cinematography, I call it, eternally sweeping and moving-to-infinity cinematography. Such a gem of a film!

Pierrot le Fou (1965) is a Godard film I really like at first viewing. Its poppy, adventurous both in narrative form and style and it has most elements of the mid 1960s popular scene. The color arrangement of Godard is so striking, it is reminiscent of Une Femme est Une Femme (1961). The assimilation of the fourth wall will later be used in great depth in Godard's La Chinoise (1967). Some says Pierrot le Fou is a postmodern film. The case of postmodernism in Godard's cinema is very evident in most of Godard's work, however, one can approach this film more adroitly by analyzing its parametric form. The parametric form of Pierrot le Fou comes from its stylistic use of costume and color, being both integral to its mise-en-scene and cinematography. Godard's images are conceptual attacks to many aspects of 60s cinema and the world. The film can also be seen as a critique to the French bourgeoisie and the political thoughts emerging in 1960s. This somewhat preempts the succeeding political films of Godard and bids farewell to his stylistic experiments from 1960 to 1964. A must-see Godard film!

Le Mepris (1963) is the most minimalist of what I've seen in Godard so far. With deep-space staging and lenghty camera shots, this vibrant and melancholic film about love and infidelity is one of Godard's best. It tells a story about Paul Javal played by Michel Piccoli and the sudden alienation of his wife, Camille Javal, from their relationship after meeting a rich American film producer named Jeremy Prokosch played by Jack Palance. Godard reflects through the film his personal relationship with cinema. With allusions from as far as Homer's Odysseus, each character also alludes to the personal relationship between Anna Karina, Godard wife that time and Godard himself. The film also harbors issues about cinema in general. With quotations from many iconic movie scenes to the cameo role of director Fritz Lang, the film dissects the film making process and also the emotional turmoil the couple, Godard and Karina, was experiencing. The film was based on the novel of the same title by Alberto Moravia. What is so striking formally in the film is the amount of restraint Godard has put for himself. His previous feature, Une Femme est Une Femme (1961), surprises the audience with visual overload. However, Le Mepris (1963) the slow moving, observant camera and low contrast image-color choices blends in melancholic and minimalist overtone. It is Godard's personal film. It is considered as one of 1960s greatest film.

Talk to Her (2002) is a story of two women: Alicia, in a comatose state, and Lydia, a female bull fighter. They never met in the film and the only one that connects them is that both of them we're comatose at the same hospital during the time Lydia was badly hurt in a bull fight. The film is also about two men close to the two women: Benigno Martin, played by the talented Javier Camara, Alicia's caregiver in the hospital, and Marco Zuluaga, Lydia's lover. Like many of Almodovar's films, the film has a melodramatic core. Like his previous films, it talks about human relationships. With an idiosyncratic premise, Almodovar shapes the narrative with the character's emotional complexities through extended phantasmagorical visions of Benigno to the tonal adjustments in both mise-en-scene and cinematographic color based on character's mood. This is what makes Talk to Her Almodovar's richest work: the fine balance of form and emotions, a unique film in every sense of the word.

Jane Campion, in her highly elegant state of art, delivers her most unbreakable and controlled cinematic beauty, Bright Star (2009). I must admit I am very much impressed with its photography as much as I am impressed with its writing. Bright Star is created not upon whim but upon heavy study, with great precision and grace, on the art of mise-en-scene, cinematography and of course, writing. How rich, one could say, a cinema artist could be on staging a piece of tale like a painting in a film or to place the subject of poetry at its heart! Filmmakers today are gifted with so many options for their craft, enlarged by the spectrum of technology they can choose from. Yet we see Jane Campion, faithfully using the same techniques for lighting, but carefully bending it for naturalistic cause to deliver not only atmosphere but beauty to the characters she was always in love with since The Piano (1993). The color gradient she used for Bright Star ranged from the bright ones (in the beginning) to the dark ones (in the end). However, this spectrum of visible light is dynamic throughout the film and it still remained the film's most salient style, much like that of Almodovar's but less vibrant and sharp. The diffuse quality of the lighting infused with the shade reminds me of the other Renoir. It is painting-film.

51-55<...>61 - 65

Ciao!
****

Eternity (Tee Rak, 2010)

by Sivaroj Kongsakul

It's bad to judge the film by its trailer, but one can judge the trailer itself. This trailer made my day today. Happy weekend!

Ciao!

****

TOP 100 FILMS - 61 - 65

[Sorry for the delay, I was busy doing my undergrad thesis.]

Khavn's Cameroon Love Letter (2010) had its premiere at Rotterdam IFF 2010. I saw this film on a dark night inside Fullybooked-The Fort. The style of the film is almost the invert of what Godard used in his 1960s "intertitles experiments": Une Femme est Une Femme (1961), Pierrot Le Fou (1965) and La Chinoise (1967). If Godard's use of intertitles is to present an as-of-the-moment idea to add 'spontaneity effect' to the character's thoughts and actions, Khavn's use of text-on-image act as its main narrative. Based on the tele-serye Pangako Sa'yo, it tells a story about love and falling out of love, infidelity and passion, and things in between the two characters, Yna and Angelo. The visual footage is unrelated to the narrative, but its has its own story, a travelogue inside Cameroon with Khavn and his team. The textual narrative resuscitates the visual, its organic and idiosyncratic feeling, coupled with Khavn's live piano music, generates one of the most unforgettable movie experience I've ever been into. It's a very personal film, Khavn bares himself out through the texual narrative with the piano. Witness the most creative work of Khavn.

Annie Hall (1977) is a film about love, romantic relationships and human emotions. As in many films about love, Annie Hall mixes comedy, style and narrative convolutions, that it can be compared to (500) Days of Summer (2009). Woody Allen's frontal appearances and efforts to thoroughly break the fourth wall stretched the film's self-reflexivity. The presence of both theatricality and raw acting by Woody Allen and Dianne Keaton and many other characters hints us the uniqueness of the Allen's directorial control. The script, written by Allen himself, co-written with Marshall Brickman, who also wrote Manhattan (1979) with Allen, is highly superior it marks an innovation in scriptwriting. Allen's inventiveness in achieving a full scale non-linear work commands a new direction for his works. As one can observe, the narrator of the story, Allen himself, does not appear offscreen but he confronts the audience with a conversational style narration in second person and first person monologues. A classic tale of a bittersweet love story, it can be considered as one of the great contributions to the New Hollywood Wave in 1970s with Francis Ford Coppola's epic Mafia movies and Martin Scorsese's poignant anti-hero films.

A Man Escape (1956) is straight-forward Bresson film. It narrates a seemingly simple linear story about a prisoner of war, a lieutenant, who wanted to escape prison. He plans for an escape route inside his prison cell. The source of the conflict is the unknowable terrain he will facing per stage of his escape. His elaborate plan is dangerously risky, it involves both the might psychological, mental and physical strength. What strikes me formally with this film is the use of Bresson's minimalist framing aesthetics. He uses a trim down setting with almost a two-dimensional quality of images: flat. This is opposed to the running style of realism of Hollywood during the 1940s - 50s with Orson Welles and Billy Wilder's innovative films such as The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Citizen Kane (1941). Bresson's images in A Man Escaped (1956) have achieved less depth compared to these films. This effect produces a minimalist color to the film congruent to its simple story and ascetic acting style and editing Bresson wants to achieve. We see here the evolution of Bresson's technique of parametric aesthetic that he would master in his later films.

The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), some say, is the hardest Bresson film to watch. Maybe because the film demands not only new set of perceptual skills but the toleration of repetitive framing and cyclical mise-en-scene. Several times during the film, many frames and camera angles were precisely repeated. Auxiliary shots abound and the almost verbally constrained talky script demands attention to the viewers. No action can be hinted from the narrative except for the climax of the story. The movie is a set of recurring actions - cyclical conversations of Joan with the Judge. The film somehow expresses a critique of the cynicism of the church and its subscription to dogmatism. The Trial of Joan of Arc is Bresson's most parametric film since the Pickpocket (1959).

The Wizard of Oz (1939) is one of the earliest examples of a function-wise technicolor film. Its usage of color indicative of time, state of mind and place is one of the most unforgettable cinematic events in film history. Dorothy is a highly esteemed gal who will do anything to save her dog, Toto. She is being terrorized by her neighbor, Miss Gulch and being consoled by her friends in the ranch. She's being transported to Oz via a magical tornado. She encounters similar friends as in the ranch but this time each character is literally interpreted: Straw man who wants a brain, the tin man who wants a heart, and a lion who wants courage. Numerous special effects were used for the first time here: the bubble suit used by Glinda, the Good Witch of the North and the use of flares from her magic wand. Given this technical difficulty, one can say that The Wizard of Oz is one of the most complex film of the 1930s. Its innovations in the film form made it one of the most highly studied film opposite to Citizen Kane (1941) and Seven Samurai (1954). After more than 80 years, it still has the magic, a classic Hollywood film that transcends time.

56-60<...>66 - 70

Ciao!
****

WASAK 1 - Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

...conversations on Cinema

---

---

TOPIC: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)
Date: January 10, 2011
Language Used: Filipino
Location: Starbucks, EDSA Shangri-la Mall
Guests: Sani Ajero and Epoy Deyto
Length: 16:17
Recording Device: Nokia Phone
Music: Acrophobia - Penguin Villa (OST - Uncle Boonmee)

Hallooo! Hallooo! Everyone! I'm sorry if the Top 100 Countdown was put into halt. For some reasons my academic life is taking toll of me, I'll be back this weekend if my thesis won't eat me.

WASAK! Conversations on Cinema

Wasak! Conversations on Cinema is my newest blog project. It aims to record conversations with local cinephiles, film festival friends, film critics, actors, and programmers on films. It follows a loose structured conversation with free-flowing thoughts about movies, politics, social issues, and people. The project is somewhat a merge of focused group discussion and podcast, but hopefully, it will transform into film podcast equivalent to high-quality film podcasts of Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir and GreenCine Daily Podcast.

WASAK 1 - Uncle Boonmee (2010) is a conversation with two of my closest cinephile friends Epoy and Sani about a film by Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul, Uncle Boonmee..., which claimed the highest prize in Cannes Film Festival last year, Palme d'Or. It sort of focused on the imagery used in the film in relation to Joe's other films and political content of the film. Transcript of the interview will be provided soon in both English and Filipino.




Enjoy!

Ciao!
*****

On Blog Banners

...

The 400 Blows (1959) Blog Banner
circa February 2009 - January 13, 2011

The 400 Blows (1959) Blog Banner [link to the movie] - I have been keeping this for almost two years. I have never attempted to change it because its mythic positioning of the Antoine Dionel's head from a focal center to the side. I imagined my blog that time to be a venue for art cinema, a boiling chamber of ideas for a more critical, more analytical venue to ponder issues on stylistics and narratology of films applying theories of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. The film commands the entry of world cinema from the formulaic dominance of Classical Hollywood Cinema of the 1950s to the aesthetically diverse French New Wave of 1960s. This transition was aided by a group of revolutionary film critics who wanted to change the stagnant style of Hollywood. The banner pays tribute to that transition.

L'Avventura (1960) Blog Banner [link to movie] - I finally had a courage to change the banner from its previous look. The theme of this banner is a mix influence of Jacques Tati 's Playtime (1967) and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. I also increased the font size of the blog title three times to put emphasis. I also changed the tag line from 'Films, Art, Life and Nothing more...' to 'Exploring World Cinema frame-by-frame' to launch my dedication to the close analysis of world cinema for everyone's pleasure and understanding. One might notice that the banner is reminiscent of the CANNES IFF 2009 banner. I made it that way as a tribute to one of the most memorable Cannes season for Philippine Cinema with Brilante Mendoza winning the prestigious award Prix de la Mise-en-scene for Kinatay (2009), Raya Martin's film Independencia (2009) slated for Un Certain Regard category and Raya and Adolf Alix Jr.'s Manila (2009) screened for Out of Competition. 2009 was also the year when our dearest Alexis Tioseco died and somehow this banner is dedicated to his efforts of bringing Philippine Cinema to the World cinema stage even if its costs his whole life.


I don't know if I will change my blog banner next year or the following years. But surely, if ever I did change one, it will surely meant a lot.

Ciao!
***

Roger Ebert and Oscar Posters

...thank you so much Andy Briones for these great books!

I hate the man for killing Kinatay (2009) and being
journalistic, but otherwise, these book would be a
great addition for my film book collection!

****
Oopps...

L at Ang Alamat ng Panget! :3

Ciao!
****

Johven Velasco and Philippine Cinema

...in pictures


A warm thank you to Roger Junior Colobong for making my day the happiest by giving me this as a Christmas gift! I love you man! . :)

Ciao!
****

TOP 100 - 66 - 70

...Sheron Dayoc's Halaw (2010), shot in digital medium, has the aesthetics of celluloid cinema. The film is a political document of the dangerous ordeal faced by illegal migrant workers as they cross the borders between the southern islands of Mindanao and the tip of Borneo. Territorial disputes with compounding problems among the characters drive the narrative. The film, together with other CINEMALAYA 2010 entries, is also symptomatic of the improvement of the digital medium in Philippine Cinema. Filipino films like Muli (2010), Kinatay (2009) and Senior Year (2010) have raised the level of digital aesthetics in contemporary Philippine Cinema that at some point, one can notice that a digital film looks almost like a 16-mm film. Both borrowed each others stratagems with the former more akin to experimentation and formal distortions. In Halaw, the compositional quality of the images reach a high mark as it blends digital cinema verite with traveling shots on difficult shooting conditions. One can observe the amount of work Dayoc has given to this film, a work that would align him to the new breed of social realist filmmakers: Lav Diaz, Brillante Mendoza and Pepe Diokno.

Visage (2009) is an art film of incredible candidness and one of Tsai's meditative experiments verging towards surreal filmmaking. The film is transgressive as it deplores usual causal relations in its narrative. Structured in a non-rigid form with excessive transmogrified filmic elements follows experiments of David Lynch and Andrei Tarkovsky. It belongs to the oneiric genre which continuously evolves with time. The genre comprises most of the surreal art films in film history. The film is great addition to the genre. It explores new routes of visual phantasmagoria and mise-en-scene innovations. Clearly, Tsai was not received warmly by critics for his efforts due to its perceptual difficulty as it demands infinite interpretations. In Visage, Tsai puts supreme attention the nature of cinema itself. He draws new associations, new functions and a new configurations of space through the use of mirrors, windows, lenghty shots and even a full musical segment which is integral to compositional and associational depths Tsai was trying to achieve. Visage, one of the most intriguing works of the decade, needs both the analysis of its unconventional structure and parametric form.

Black Swan (2010) is Darren Aronofsky's most rigid film about hallucination. It has a linear narrative with supreme focus on the ballerina, Nina, played by Natalie Portman. The film is shot in normal lens, a lens that would capture the film, ironically, in the most ordinary cinematography in contrast to his previous experiments on the lens in Requiem for a Dream (2000). Black Swan is Darren Aronofsky's entry to mainstream cinema as hinted by the less enthralling aesthetics of this film. The expressionistic themes he developed, however, in this film is visually compelling it reflects a diminutive style of Aronofsky's supposedly extremely expressionistic one he developed in Requiem for a Dream. I do understand that Aronofsky's efforts of exposing the inner world of the disturbed proceeds in such a way that he follows, with meditation, the physical and psychological atrocities of the ballerina world. However, this premise is not enough to bring out the Requiem aesthetics it would have had achieved. Black Swan a bit toned down compared to Requiem. And like what he did in The Wrestler (2009), he explores another life of an performing artist, as he calls Black Swan a companion piece to it. What strikes more than the trim-down aesthetics of the film was the central performance of Natalie Portman being a ballerina. Like Jamie Bell in Billy Eliot (2000), Natalie painstakingly trained for the role, and like Adrien Brody in The Pianist (2002), Natalie's performance is visceral, raw and fluid. Its a role of a lifetime for Natalie.

Film Socialisme (2010) is Jean-Luc Godard's definition of immaterial and convulsive cinema. The ever eternal artist Godard who offered one of the most unique cinematic expressions in film history: INTERTITLES pieced together a film of visual fugue its core is undefinable at all. Its perceptual difficulty, as was his other films, is as compact as his other works like Nouvelle Vague (1990) and Histoire(s) du cinéma (1998). The films imperceptible form is an example of associational filmmaking, however, what Godard did was to piece together a series of shots from different settings using different types of cameras. In a way, as I see it, Godard directs the question to the present nature of film itself - a capitalist form of art marketed towards furthering the divide between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. As compared to his 1990s experiments, which focuses on the nature of film itself, Godard's recent features were about the extinction of film itself as an eternal artform for it became too commercialized, too politically maimed and destroyed. Godard's use of mix media and intersubjectivity in the film made it a postmodern gem, a film that commands limitless interpretation and questioning.

The version of Muli (The Affair) (2010) that I've seen was the final cut of the film, roughly two hours shown in the NETPAC series at UPFI mid-August last year, 2010. This film was an hour short of what people saw in CINEMALAYA 2010, which both received differing views. Both have different narrative cohesions and possibly different narrative tracks. The NETPAC version, which I have only seen from the two, is a landmark in gay independent filmmaking in the Philippines, a claim most of my friends would disagree. The strength of Muli is its "periodized" aesthetics. Covering three to four decades of diegetic time, the film works in an epic scale. Interestingly, Alix structures the film in such a way that each decade segment has a camera work faithful to that period to add to its recreation of the period. Its meditative qualities is reminescent of Ozu's pillow shots, a clear result of Ozu's strong stylistic influence to Alix. Adolf Alix's pillow shots are integral to the mise-en-scene, which Alix composed with highly lush and neutrally toned colors accented with bright ones to add contrast. Apart from its vivid color choice, its contemplative pacing allows the images to rest in the viewers eyes and saturate it with warmth. Muli raised the bar of artistry for the gay independent films comparable to stylistic gems of Philippine Digital Gay Cinema, Francis Pasion's Jay (2008), Brillante Mendoza's Masahista (2005) and Auraeus Solito's Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (2005).

61 - 65<...>71 - 76

Ciao!
***