A prescription for the elusive foreign film Oscar nod

The first foreign film I saw in 2011:  El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in their Eyes).  This Argentine film won the Oscar Best Foreign language film in 2009.  It beat  Germany’s The White Ribbon and France’s The Prophet, two of the most delicately crafted films I saw last year.  

Watching El Secreto confirmed my distrust in the Oscars.  The film was directed by Juan José Campanella who I read somewhere did a lot of episodes for House and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.   The film played is a cross between those two shows: investigative, and filled with sexual tension a la Doctors House and Cuddy. 

The foreign language category is one that interests me most when the Academy announces its nominees.   Through the years, and because of the Oscars, I came to know about foreign films that local theatres wouldn’t show.  Some winners deserved their Oscars: The Lives of Others (2006), Day for Night (1973), All About Mother, Babette’s Feast (1987), The Tin Drum (1979), The Garden of the Finzi Continis (1971), 8 ½ (1963), Un homme et une femme (1966).  The dubious ones were Mediterraneo (1991), Departures (2008), The Sea Inside (2004), Life is Beautiful (1997), Belle Epoque (1992).  But every year, the Oscars comes up with a good mix.  They may not always get it right, but you could be sure there’d be at least two great nominees thrown in.

Babette's Feast.  Forget Like Water for Chocolate.  The best movie about cooking.

Day for Night. A must-see if only for the beautiful Jacqueline Bisset and Valentina Cortese.

The Tin Drum.  One of the very few movies where the movie adaptation was as good as the book.

But no Filipino film has ever made it!   I know, the Oscars isn't the best arbiter of taste, but we could use some good PR.  Apparently, from the 50s till the 80s, only 4 films were submitted to the Academy.  During the golden age of Philippine movies – from 1976 to 1982 – only Eddie Romero’s Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon  (1976) was entered (and didn’t make it).  None of these classics were submitted: Lino Brocka’s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (1974), Maynila: Sa Kuko Ng Liwanag (1975), Insiang (1976), Jaguar (1979) and Orapronobis (1989); Peque Gallaga's Oro, Plata, Mata (1982); and Ishmael Bernal's Manila by Night (1980) and Himala (1982).  But these were the Marcos years, and the government could’ve have stopped the local film industry from entering films that didn’t live up to Imelda’s “the true, the good, the beautiful” standards (but Oro and Himala were produced by Imee!).  Or was it sheer laziness?

It was only in the recent years that the Film Academy of the Philippines revived the campaign for a Pinoy film to be nominated.  And what did they send for Hollywood’s consideration?  Dekada ’70, Ploning, Ded na si Lolo.  Jeez.  Bad styling, tedium and hysteria do not bag Oscars. 

Curiously enough, no film of Brillante Mendoza, the toast of Cannes, had ever been submitted by the FAP.   I thought his movies were curiously Philippine enough to compete with very un-Hollywood imports.

So what would it take for a Filipino director to walk down the red Oscars carpet?  Here’s my own prescription:

1. Do not do digital.  Only foreign movies done with film finish make it.
2. Produce period films (if only Rosario had anything more profound to say).
3. Have a political backdrop like El Secreto. 
4. Enter and win in major festivals like Cannes and Berlin, and publicize like hell. 
5. Hire the best writers.  Originate!
6. Never gay-themed.  The prudes in Hollywood couldn’t even give the top Oscar to Brokeback Mountain.  

Flip-cocking the shotgun

"Nuking the fridge".  The idiom is the film equivalent of “jumping the shark” on television (Fonzie of the 70s sit-com Happy Days water-skis over a shark). It refers to a moment in a film installment that is so absurd that the death knell rings so loudly for the franchise. In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Harrison Ford climbs into a fridge to shield himself from a nuclear blast, gets hurled hundreds of feet away, then survives.  Did we want to see more of the archaeologist’s adventures after that? Naah.

Countless others have nuked the fridge – the Star Wars prequels, Terminator Salvation, Speed, Die Hard, Spiderman, Matrix, Scream – where some incredible plot device or annoying character hastened the film’s downward spiral.

But there are a few which were better than the original.  I’m coining an idiom for the opposite of fridge-nuking: flip-cocking the shotgun a la Linda.  An homage to Linda Hamilton’s final kick-ass moment, where she finishes off the T-800 by cocking the shotgun with just one arm in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.  It marked an even higher point for the James Cameron franchise.  I know, my idiom will never be a buzzword.  Can’t think of a cuter one right now.

Rizal redux

Such clever advertising we saw before New Year’s in the local dailies.  BBDO Guerrero crafted three print ads for Guerrero publishing, promoting the new editions of Leon Ma. Guerrero’s translations of National Hero Jose Rizal’s  Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.  The ads cash in on Intramuros tour guide Carlos Celdran’s theatrical protest last October.  Celdran spent a night in jail , and gained a lot of support for displaying a “Damaso” placard inside a cathedral, admonishing the Church to stay out of politics and the Congressional talks on the Reproductive Health Bill.

“Damaso” is a Spanish friar in Noli, notorious for his corrupt and lascivious ways.

Fittingly so, on the same day I saw Celdran’s face all over the newspaper, my Malaysian friends were raving about the Intramuros tour they just took with Celdran.  I had also just opened my gift from Adobo Magazine:  a Noli and Fili gift set!   I thought they were special since I had been wanting to read again Leon’s exquisite translations after losing my copies after college. 

The serendipities were all mine.  Wish the same would strike the film industry which is in dire need of meaningful material.  It would be great for some brave producer to have new adaptations of the two Rizal classics.

In the early 60s, the first National Artist for Film, Gerry de Leon, did film versions of the two books.  Film historians wrote that they were great, but my generation and the next could only wonder if they really were.  I don’t think there are any copies left.

There is no other prose as rich and historically significant as Rizal’s novels.  They were instrumental in establishing a unified identity for the Filipino by championing Filipino values (loyalty, kindness, idealism, courage).  But the more interesting part, in filmic terms, is Rizal’s satirical voice.  He lampooned and exposed various appalling realities in Philippine society, which still ring true today, post-Gloria A. 


I hope that the local industry's current predilection for recycling old themes, costume dramas and set reconstruction through digital technology would be put to good use with a Rizal redux.  Besides, wouldn't it be fun to re-stage the one monologue that had touched the hearts of many variety show and beauty contestants?  Sisa: Crispin?! Basilio?! 

Emotional weight over weightless action

Everyone’s up in arms every time a bad review on Inception comes out.    Nope, I’m not dissing it.  In fact, I was impressed by Christopher Nolan’s ingenuity and originality.   He’s stretched the boundaries of moviemaking.   I was awed.  But wasn’t moved.

I haven’t seen a lot of movies in 2010, enough to proclaim the best.   But I saw one film that had more emotional weight than Nolan’s:  Toy Story 3.  And it’ll endure, not Nolan’s manipulative storytelling or effects wizardry.

Perhaps it’s Pixar’s theme of social obsolescence that melts the heart.  What does it mean to be outdated, unwanted?  Does loyalty ever matter?  The emotions may be familiar but are all told in a package that only Pixar can deliver – with humour, charm and wit.  Everything just works, including the voicing and scoring.  It actually wouldn’t have mattered if the animation were done low-tech.  It had enough heart to triumph over effects wizardry.

A movie watcher's New Year's resolutions

I resolve to:

1. Support The Society of Filipino Archivists for Film (SOFIA).  Caught their screening of an obscure 60s comedy entitled Kasal o Sakal that starred Chichay, the greatest Pinoy comedienne that ever lived, and directed by Johnny Reyes, LVN baddie and designer James Reyes’ dad.  Hadn’t had a good laugh since Mano Po (and that wasn’t even a comedy).
2. Stay away from M. Night Shyamalan movies no matter how intriguing his trailers are.
3. Never give in to trilogies of comedy franchises.  Or those with robots overrunning the earth.
4. Open the complete François Truffaut collection that’s been gathering dust in my closet.
5. Go back to French language school to fully understand the nuances of moral order in Truffaut’s Wild Child/L’Enfant Sauvage.
6. Learn how to grab clips from a DVD and convert into Quicktime files to share with other cinephiles.  Youtube hasn’t got it all.
7. Take the time out to watch all the movies in the next Cinemalaya, the Philippines’ Sundance, our last hope for the revival of local cinema.
8. Start a campaign for competent screenwriters to pitch scripts with Manny Pangilinan who’s a promising (and moneyed) creative force.  The local version of Ismail Merchant?  Mother Lily of the early 80s (Manila by Night, Sister Stella L.) and before Mano Po would do.
9. Give Gone with the Wind a second chance.  I really didn’t get it.
10. Watch more movies from other Asian countries, especially Thailand and Korea. They’re doing more exciting stuff out there.  But then again, they don’t have anything like Zombadings: (Pataying sa Shokot si Remington).

The Peter Jackson antidote

The bubbly was un-popped.  The Christmas ham unsliced.  So was the cake from Manila’s most fabulous pastry chef (Carlo Estagle), and the cheeses I bought for our New Year’s Eve celebration.  Nothing could be more tragic than spending New Year’s in bed, sick from intestinal flu.

Bored, I popped in a DVD of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings:  The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), like what my roommate suggested.  A wonderful piece of advice any sick man could have.

I thought I didn’t have the patience to watch a very long movie again.  But from the moment I heard Cate Blanchett’s voice and her sweeping overview of the history of the rings, I knew this would be as gratifying as the Moët chilling in the fridge, till the last drop/frame.

It’s Jackson’s rhythm that engrosses.  Hundred of pages of Tolkien text condensed into a three-hour movie, yet cadenced.  It plays like a good read.  You are right there. 

The most significant movie of the last decade, may yet be the most meaningful for a sick man, or the healthy ones for that matter, on New Year’s.  Find your inner strength, the indomitable will to preserve in spite of odds in the new year, viruses included.

The WSOD Principle

When you find yourself cursing at Claudine Barreto in Anak for her rebellious and resentful ways against her OFW mom Vilma Santos (Go ahead, Ate Vi, slap her!), you know that the principle is working.  Or, when you start shouting at a Wes Craven character, telling him not to fall asleep lest Freddy Krueger exact revenge with his knives as fingers.

It’s the principle of ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’, or the acceptance of a level of implausibility in the narrative and the whole visual experience.   If you find yourself Tweeting or checking your watch repeatedly inside the cinema, then the film has flunked the principle.

There are some details that can break a film.  Like, costume design.  Inaccuracies or sloppy costuming will snap you out of stupor.  Remember, the batsuit nipples and Batgirl's zippers in Batman and Robin (1997)?  Period Pinoy films where men have underwear line before Jockey briefs was launched in the market?

But let’s talk about the ones that have upped the WSOD factor.  I’m less interested in costume dramas.  People are more accepting of costumes for 19^th century of early 20^th century films.  Just throw in a lot of hoop skirts and ruffled tops and it seems accurate enough.  References for centuries past abound.  I think it’s more challenging to do costumes for films set in the modern era (the 70s as a cut-off), since everyone has preconceived notions on how things went in the recent past.  Also interesting are those in fantasyland are -- only the costume designer and director’s vision of the nonexistent matters.

Here are my picks for costumes that pulled off the WSOD principle:

Star Wars (1977)

Milk (2008)

Clueless (1995)

Velevet Goldmine (1998)

The Fifth Element (1997)

Legally Blonde (2001)

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Devil Wears Prada (2005)

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)