The lonely sport

It seems like every other year, a significant movie about boxing, baseball, basketball or even golf comes along.  In 2010, there was The Fighter which had generated a lot of interest from critics.  The year before that it was Mickey Rourke’s performance in Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.   But there’s nothing much about tennis, the sport I love to watch, the one I know everything about but don’t play.   I’m still waiting for Hollywood to produce the definitive tennis film.

It didn’t help that Rafa or Roger didn’t make the finals in Melbourne last weekend.  I suspect Novak and Andy’s game the other day was a low-rater for a Grand Slam finals.  If R & R continue to not be in top form, Hollywood would only be disinterested further. 

In the last decade, I can remember only three films that touched on tennis:  The Royal Tenenbaums, The Squid and the Whale and Matchpoint.  Woody Allen’s Matchpoint devotes the most screen time to the sport.   Its lead character is a tennis coach.    The net ball is used as a recurring metaphor – the ball, or one’s fortune, could go either way.   But it isn’t really about the life of a tennis player.  More like the social-climbing and murderous Tom Ripley in an all-white sports outfit.

So why the lack of tennis films in spite of the sport’s high stakes and the huge fan base of its top players?  Is it too graceful a sport and devoid of the violence that Scorsese (Raging Bull) could exploit for cinematic effect?  Too elitist, and has none of the ingredients of the familiar “working class hero who triumphs over life’s obstacles” genre?  It hasn’t got much sleaze?

I think it’s the loneliness of the sport.   There’s no other popular sport where the athlete is barred from getting too close to another person.  The tennister comes out of the locker room with no caddy to lug his huge bag.  He can’t speak with his opponent or his coach.   In between games, he sits under the umbrella by his lonesome.   Yeah, I don’t see a blockbuster happening with solitude. 

A hipster wedding

\hip-stur\n. One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat.

-The Hipster Handbook, Robert Lanham

Hipsters also reject mainstream fashion, opting for vintage and thrift-store apparel, hats, sneakers and thick-rimmed glasses.  Their taste in music is just as un-mainstream – very ‘emo’, obscure, underground.

I just came from a hipster wedding. I’m so glad I’ve got hipster co-workers.  I get invited to their weddings which are more fun than usual.  My friends’ invite says “till death do us party”.  Couldn’t have been more apt.

Their invite also came with a 45 vinyl, and sartorial instructions: look dandy (bowties, neckties, vests, sneakers, hats, suspenders).  The couple exhorted their friends not to gift them with rice cookers.  Wedding ninang Raquel thought times had really changed. Parents are more accepting of their kids’ eccentricities.  When Raquel sent out her own wedding invites, her mother-in-law was shocked that hers didn’t have a second envelop.

The dandy groom with a funky brooch

The bride in a Mich Dulce. Awesome.

Pre-nup pic

The VW bridal car

The U.P. Bonsai Garden

Part of the entourage

Vinyl installation

Most guests wore Chucks.

Cotton candy giveaways

Yup, that's a skull on the wedding cake.

Thanks to the newlyweds for making me a part of their fab wedding.  Congratulations, and I pay further tribute to you by sharing a clip of the ultimate hipster movie.  Nothing’s more ‘cool’ than Godard’s 1960 classic Breathless.  You’re our modern-day Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg.

Renovation fatigue

The work on my new place hasn’t even started, but I’m already having renovation fatigue.   I’ve scoured bookstores, friends’ bookcases and magazine stands looking at design references.   I’m running out of Post-its to bookmark the ones I want to copy.  I thought, for a change, I should go to the movies for further inspiration.

Art direction in movies is as vital as having a great script.  It sets the mood and tone of the movie, and defines the key characters.  If not done right, the movie would flunk the requisite ‘willing suspension of disbelief’.  I especially like how the ‘look’ or details are amplified for a delicious visual experience. 

I like the clean, strong, masculine lines in –

Gattaca

Inception

The Holiday

Plant life will be sculptural –

The Lake House

Old, ornate mirrors must figure –

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Must have a statement sofa –

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

A very modern bathroom –

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

I’m not doing 60s but there could be some splashes of color from the 60s –

A Clockwork Orange

In the Mood for Love

The charm of 50s furniture –

Revolutionary Road

Yup, red is a favorite accent.

Twilight

Volver

Ocean's Thirteen

Amelie

There’s a lot to borrow from a recent movie that’s bad but beautifully art-directed.  All from Sex and the City 2 -

Must also copy the iconic blue door in Notting Hill.

I love how movies make you dream.

Drudgery

Contrary to what Sharon Cuneta showed you in Madrasta, or Maricel Soriano in Separada, advertising work is not at all glamorous.  We dress very casually.  I spend much of the time writing on the computer, and the output is far from prose.  It’s mostly science, distilling consumer information and marketing data into strategic abstracts.  And there are the countless meetings, where exchanges are formal and business-like, not really high-drama.  If you think about it, there’s no film that has captured life in an ad agency accurately.  Maybe the TV series Mad Men, but that was set in the 50s/60s, plus there are more women in top-level positions now, and smoking is not allowed inside the office.

But agency work is fun.  The wild, passionate people I work with keep me going.  Think Crazy People (starring the late Dudley Moore) but with milder episodes of insanity. 

Two creative processes we have most fun with: developing name studies for a product/line extension/event/promotions, and casting talents for a commercial.  Which brings me to the movie of the day, after this long preamble -- The Tourist.  It’s the first movie I’ve seen in my week-long leave from work.  The Tourist  must the blandest movie title for 2010.  And the worst onscreen chemistry since Portman and Christensen. 

There must be a better way to spend my break from work that I love.

Missing Isabelle Huppert in Pasay.

It's generational!

Co-worker Rocky’s topic for our monthly share-in was “how to understand and deal with millennials in the workplace”.  Millennials are those born in the period 1977 to 1998.  They’re collectively marked by dependence on technology and social networking, a neo-liberal approach to politics and institutions (especially religion), and ecological awareness.  At work, they perform well in groups, are in constant need of mentoring. It’s also easy for them to quit and look for better opportunities, being risk-takers.

Generation X (1965-1976) are a much more independent lot.  They’re usually referred to as the latch-key kids whose parents, the Baby Boomers (1946-1964), were busy improving and redefining social, political and economic conditions, and rebuilding everything that the second world war destroyed. The Gen X profile is grunge-loving, indifferent, alienated, distrustful of authority and rigidity; while Boomers, are idealistic, have strong personal values and an overachieving, competitive work-ethic, always yearning for recognition in terms of visible rewards.

A discussion on these three diverse generations would require a long sociological dissertation.  Based on such profiling, I could at best try to name the movies that best mirror each generation.

Baby Boomers:  The Graduate (1967)

Angst-y Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) rejects his parents’ (born pre-war) artificial values, and wants to take a path that’s different from what his parents planned for him.  He seeks emotional attachment with cinema’s first significant cougar, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft).  He turns his back on his Republican beginnings, and rides (a bus) off into the sunset with his true love, intent on leading a life that’s more meaningful.

Generation X:  Reality Bites (1994)

Lelaina: I just don't understand why things just can't go back to normal at the end of the half hour like on the Brady Bunch or something.

Troy Dyer: Well, 'cause Mr. Brady died of AIDS. Things don't turn out like that.

Millennials:  Juno (2007)

Her androgynous name alone tells you that her generation is not bound by traditional gender expectations -- they celebrate diversity,  Juno the millennial is smart, confident and knows what she wants.  If she were a boomer, she would’ve been tormented about teenage pregnancy.  She’s actually blasé about the results of the frog test, keeps her baby, woos her boyfriend back, goes back to school because she’d like to have a career after giving birth.  Her world is teeming with opportunities, in spite of temporary complications.

Did I get it right?   Boomers, X-ers and Millennials, speak up!  ☺

"Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa" and the short form

In Laurent Tirard’s book Moviemakers’ Master Class (Private Lessons from the World’s Foremost Directors), German director Wim Wenders of Wings of Desire (which critics hailed as the best film of the 80s, later remade by Hollywood into City of Angels – dreadful!) laments how students and young filmmakers “no longer start out by making short films but shoot commercials or music videos instead”.  Their priorities have changed since Wenders’ generation where telling a good story is more important than visual gimmickry.

A sweeping statement , I think.  There are directors today, younger than Wenders, whose filmographies are quite impressive, and they started out in advertising.  From the Philippines, there's Cannes winner Dante Mendoza,  Mark Meily and Chris Martinez.  David Fincher (The Social Network), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) also did a lot of commercials and music videos before making it big on film.

But it seems true that the primary impulse amongst Gen X’ers and Millennials is to make beautiful images, at the expense of creating narrative.  Could this be the influence of the graphic novel, considered more engaging than John Steinbeck or F. Scott Fitzgerald?  Or, could it be a nagging feeling that every story told had been told; so why bother creating new ones?

I really don’t know.  I may also be generalizing.  But it certainly wouldn’t hurt to hone one’s craft by making short films or shorter features.  We don't have as much access to such films these days.  The last significant collection of shorts would be Paris, je t'aime (2006).  Every serious DVD collector must have Paris, je t'aime, by the way.

Doing ‘featurettes’ or trilogies was quite popular in the 70s and 80s in local cinema.  A classic was Lino Brocka’s Tatlo, Dalawa, Isa (1974), a trilogy of shorts.  The short form gave Brocka the sense of urgency.  With not much time to spare, he had to tell a story quickly and tightly. The result was powerful, despite (or on account of?) the simple camerawork.  When Lolita Rodriguez screams “Sakim!” and "Mamatay ka! Mamatay ka!" in the episode entitled Bukas, Madilim, Bukas, you’d know what I mean.

The crazy, brilliant Bjork

Photographs from the Golden Globes red carpet have been trickling in on the Net, and Helena Bonham Carter’s gown seems like the worst fashion pick.  I actually like it.  British designer Vivienne Westwood made it.  Hollywood doesn’t get it.  Helena’s always been wacky, and Westwood’s humourous and anti-establishment aesthetic fits her.

They also didn’t get Bjork’s infamous swan dress.  In 2001, Bjork attended the Oscars as a nominee for the song I’ve Seen It All which was in Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark.  She wore a whole swan with its neck draped around her neck.  At one point, she reached under her dress and pulled out her purse, an egg!  That’s Bjork for you.  It would not have been Bjork if she walked down the red carpet looking like Mrs. Tom Hanks (Rita Wilson).  She's always been quirky, and her craziness has pushed her to a level of creativity and originality that no female artist could match.

The pure emotional rawness you get from her music she’s successfully translated onscreen. She’s only done one movie (von Trier's) and she swore never to do one again after the ‘bruising experience’.  That’s sad, since her performance as an almost-blind factory worker who kills Michael Morse for stealing the money she’s been saving for her son’s inherited eye disorder, remains as the one of the most brilliantly discomforting in any era.

The movie itself has divided audiences.  I loved it because it seemed so real.  But I would not see it again.  It’s a sad musical.  Perhaps if I had Bjork’s sense of humour, I’d rethink that oxymoron.

Great stories that preceded Samantha Jones' bad pun.

My friend Mike and company would do the geekiest thing ever.  For several times in the past, they gathered up around a huge TV, smoking cigars and donning Fedoras, watching The Godfather I and II.  Then each time, a trivia game would ensue – What does Don Corleone have on his lap in the opening scene of the film?  Who is Michael Corleone’s first wife whom he married in Sicily?  What was Don Vito buying at the market when he was shot?  What’s the brand name of the olive oil that the young Vito and his friends sold in New York City?

 

They would go on and on, because the first two Godfathers were just so rich in detail.  That’s how it is with great stories.  They connect and get you hooked.  They make you remember even the littlest things.

I’ve been asked recently why I always write about old movies, Pinoy or foreign.  First, it’s the desire to share with the younger generation what they’ve missed out in the past.  “The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new”, as the great film critic Pauline Kael once said.   Besides, the films before had better and more engaging stories to tell.  Again, like in the case of Mike and friends, it’s the great stories that I retain in my movie memory bank.

Not the visual gags that you see a lot of in movies today, except perhaps for the occasional Woody Allen, Pixar and The Dark Knight type.  Images, however pretty, will soon fade and be supplanted by more cutting-edge technology.  Unlike wonderful stories, they’re not shareable.

I can't even think of a great movie quote that came out in the last few years.  Can anything you've seen recently top these?

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into mine." -  from Casablanca

"Where I grew up in Brooklyn, we were too unhappy to commit suicide." – from Crimes and Misdemeanors

"Walang himala! Ang himala ay nasa puso ng tao, nasa puso nating lahat! Tayo ang gumagawa ng himala, tayo ang gumagawa ng mga sumpa at ng mga Diyos, walang himala!"  -  Himala

"Ginawang hayop tayong lahat ng digmaang ito, Naty, hayop!" – Oro, Plata, Mata

"But, Mrs. Mulwray, I goddamn near lost my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it. And I still think you're hiding something." - Chinatown

The only recent one that sticks is “Lawrence of my Labia” from Sex and the City 2.  I rest my case.

The Globes

Can you name the winners of last year’s Golden Globes?   Must be the same Oscar winners because the Globes would usually foreshadow the Oscars; but I can’t say for sure. Nobody can easily remember the winners, but everybody – the ‘live’ and TV audience – seems to enjoy the show each time.  It’s happier, looser, and the speeches are usually more enjoyable and wilder on account of the overflowing champagne served on the celebrities’ huge round tables. Ricky Gervais is the funniest and most irreverent host ever. The fashion choices are also much more adventurous than those in the more prestigious Oscars.

Remember Christine Lahti’s (of Swing Shift and TV’s Chicago Hope) memorable moment?  Lahti was nowhere to be found when her name was called.  Apparently, she stepped out of the hall to pee.  Robin Williams went onstage and pretended to be Lahti.  She finally showed up after a very long pause and was visibly flushed about the whole thing. The rest of the evening was then peppered with Lahti bathroom jokes.

The Globes also do it differently with the Best Picture category.  They split it into ‘drama’ and ‘musical/comedy’.  It’s bizarre.   A musical is not interchangeable with a comedy.  Some movies, which are considered serious enough, are categorized as comedic.  The Tourist.  Alice in Wonderland.  Juno.  In Bruges.  Pride and Prejudice.  Fargo.  Jerry Maguire.

But, just the same, the Globes recognize comedies or ‘lighter’ films which other award-giving bodies ignore.  It’s the pompous ones that are wrongly considered superior to the charming and lighthearted ones.   Lately, I’ve been seeing re-runs of the heavy-handed Babel and Crash on cable.  I don’t bother.  Give me Groundhog Day, Mean Girls or The Thomas Crown Affair anytime!  I’d rather hang loose, have fun on cable nights, much like a drunken Jack Nicholson on Globes night.

Major boredom

Have you ever walked out on a movie?  I have.  The ones that infuriate me most are those that have been hyped up as important movie events but turn out to be major duds.  Yawners.  It’s wasteful enough to spend two hundred pesos or more on a ticket.  Mustn’t let an awful, boring film steal more, from your precious time.

Here are the ones you should see if you have trouble sleeping:

 Dances with Wolves.    In the most atrocious of Oscar moments, Kevin Costner’s direction was adjudged better than Martin Scorsese’s work for Goodfellas. 

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.   Loved the book because of the ensemble of oddball characters.  In the movie, everyone was lifeless.

 A.I.  Spielberg didn’t know where he was going.  Pinocchio was far more enjoyable, even without CGI.

I’ve asked some opinionated friends on their choices for the ‘most anticipated movies that turned out to be most boring’.  Here are their answers:

Sockie F, director:  “Recently, The Tourist”.

Jessica Z, writer/blogger:  “Hiroshima mon amour by Alain Resnais.  Classic daw yon.  Zzzzz.”

Mark M, director:  “A Thai film called Tropical Malady, Batang Westside, and a French film called Sorrow and Pity.”

Don B, ad exec:  “Batang Westside”

Madonna T, film producer: “New Moon.  Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”

Noel O, creative director:  “Sakada”

Carlo D, director:  "Twilight"

Candice M, writer:  “Titanic.  Nakatulog ako, ate.”

Steve V, producer:  “Rosario”

Marilyn V, songwriter/agency COO:  “I actually got bored with I ♥ Huckabees.  I tried to like it, but it really sucked for me.”

Margaret S, creative director: “Marami!  Prince of Persia, Valentine’s Day, Superman Returns, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.”

Marc C, PR manager:  Time Traveller’s Wife, Narnia Chronicles, all of M. Night’s films after the one with Mel Gibson, and my greatest disappointment The Golden Compass because I loved the book so much.”

Dennis L, fashion designer:  “Most recently, it’s the last Narnia”.

Angel A, actress:  “Goodbye, America”

Chuck N, strategic planner:  “Rosario”

Ricky V, director:  Harry Potter movies.  Oh, Pathfinder was boring.  The only reason I stayed was because of Karl Urban.”

What sayeth thou?

The type of sex that doesn't sell anymore.

You don’t see much of it these days on TV.  Before, you’d have a group of actors doing the rounds of TV programs promoting their latest movie.  And almost always, they’d say the same things:  Panoorin ninyo po ito.  Para sa lahat, pampamilya.  May comedy, drama, action.  (Go, see it.  It’s family fare.  It’s got everything – comedy, drama, action).  That was quite harmless.   The annoying thing was:  May aral po kayong mapupulot dito.  May moral lesson po. (You’d learn from this movie.  It has a moral lesson to tell.) 

I grew up with priests all around me, and I knew every moral lesson from catechism class.  I certainly didn’t want my movie to be a two-hour-long sermon.  I thought, and I still maintain that, feature film as art has no other purpose but to entertain, bring us face-to-face with human truths (heightened or verité), or delectably examine human emotion.  If you want to preach, do a docu.  Or, wait till Easter Week to stage your cenaculo.

But if it unwittingly amplifies an urgent issue, and inspire you to take action, I guess it’s all right.  It still has to entertain, though.

The wild, funny, provocative, political, complex, sometimes indulgent 'Angels in America' 

Which brings me to an issue that is rarely tackled in movies today, that has a lot of moral underpinnings:  AIDS.  I can only name a few important ones – Longtime Companion, Philadelphia, Angels in America, Rent.  In the 90s, there were two from the Philippines: The Dolzura Cortez Story and The Sarah Jane Salazar Story.  A digital film entitled H.I.V. starring Jake Cuenca and Iza Calzado was purportedly shown last year.  But did anyone catch it?

The spate of films in the 80s through the 90s was an indication of how much a pandemic it was.  HIV infections in the States have declined in the last few years on account of available HIV-related treatments and health education.  However, in the Philippines, reported cases of AIDS cases has risen to alarming levels (from 528 in 2008 to 709 in 2009).  Those afflicted are mostly young urban professionals (gay and straight) who contracted the disease through sexual engagements in the workplace.  It is happening at a time where AIDS has become a non-issue in media, in pop culture.  Doesn’t sex sell anymore?

Sad, isn’t it?  Sadder, because the threat and prevention of HIV/AIDS is not even discussed in catechism class.   The moral lessons would likely deny sympathy for the afflicted, and the reality of arousal.