JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

I haven’t seen Speed Racer yet–the trailer alone looks like it might induce seizures in the audience–but it’s on my calendar, along with Harold and Kumar, and Robin and Ai-Ai. A friend of mine has seen Speed Racer, and his review goes like this: “Beautiful colors! Best colors of any recent movie!” When I asked about plot, direction, etc, he said, “This ensaladang talong is excellent!” You know that long-standing rumor that one of the Wachowski Brothers is now a woman?
By the way, I saw Deception and Ploning. Deception is inept and leaden. I’m guessing the producers are friends with the stars or their management, because how else could tenth-rate Hitchcock draw MacGregor and Jackman (Charlotte Rampling appears)? It’s supposed to be set in Manhattan, and every other movie seems to be set in Manhattan, but this one doesn’t even look like Manhattan. Don’t these people watch the many Law and Orders?

Ploning has some structural/expository problems–I call it Babel-ness–and my eyeballs started rolling every time I heard an aphorism uttered in the course of cracking cashews–but it’s far more interesting than the tripe the studios have been serving up this year. Ploning feels authentic. It valiantly sticks to the laid-back, contemplative pace of its location and true subject, Cuyo in Palawan, and it takes a genuine interest in the lives of its many characters–they’re people, not plot devices. I like the way the director Dante Nico Garcia cast non-actors in major roles, alongside stars like Judy Ann Santos and Mylene Dizon. Ploning is a movie about love, not the hackneyed romantic stuff, but the real, recognizable kind–among friends, family, and members of a community. Watch it, if it’s still on.