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Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi’s return to his schlock horror roots following his billion dollar Spider-Man successes, is an extremely entertaining movie about a girl who is tortured, humiliated, and frightened to death for 90 minutes. It stars Alison Lohman as the terrorized girl and Justin Long as an Apple store.

While enjoying this fun shriekfest I realized why many people loathe the very idea of Kinatay, the movie for which Brillante Mendoza won Best Director at Cannes. (Most of us have not seen Kinatay so we cannot discuss the work itself, only its reception.) It’s alright and even laudable to portray human suffering as long as it’s for entertainment purposes. It should only take place in an unreal and fantastic realm. The audience should be in on the joke so they can leave the theatre laughing, reassured that such horrors will never happen to them. These torments only befall fictional other people.

Or if it’s a serious movie with Oscar aspirations, the spectacle of suffering should make the viewer feel virtuous and well-informed about current issues. After leaving the cinema he could assuage his conscience by writing a letter to the editor decrying social injustice.

I gather Kinatay offers none of the above. Critics–even the admirers–have been unanimous in finding it neither entertaining nor comforting nor likely to make viewers feel good about themselves. The nerve of that Brillante Mendoza!

Movies should have a moral lesson we can all get behind, like “Be nice to old ladies.” And they should make us feel good. After all, someone else goes to hell.

And Con-Ass is Filipino for ‘Throwing a party for no reason and inviting only the host’, according to Rep. Teddy Locsin, who asks, “Nag-e-Ecstasy ba ang mga proponents of this House resolution and why are they not sharing the joy?” The House resolution convenes the Lower House as a constituent assembly to consider “constitutional amendments no one has proposed, do not exist, and therefore cannot be considered.”

In other suits, J.D. Salinger is suing the author of an unauthorized sequel to The Catcher In The Rye.

Salinger wants publication enjoined, all copies of the book destroyed, damages and costs.

Not a fake: Vermeer’s The Love Letter

On his NYT blog the filmmaker Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War) has a fascinating seven-part series called Bamboozling Ourselves. His subject is the Dutch painter Hans van Meegeren, who forged Vermeers and sold them to the Nazis. Morris asks: What makes a work of art great? Why are people so easy to fool? What is genius, what is trickery? Not to be missed.

‘…what makes a work of art great? Is it the signature of (or attribution to) an acknowledged master? Is it just a name? Or is it a name implying a provenance? With a photograph we may be interested in the photographer but also in what the photograph is of. With a painting this is often turned around, we may be interested in what the painting is of, but we are primarily interested in the question: who made it? Who held a brush to canvas and painted it? Whether it is the work of an acclaimed master like Vermeer or a duplicitous forger like Van Meegeren — we want to know more.‘

Duplicity, the new film by Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) has drawn some flak for being ‘too clever for its own good’. What is wrong with that?

It’s a corporate espionage-romantic thriller starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, who are spectacular together, and Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giammatti as warring CEOs of personal products conglomerates. The action moves back and forth over a five-year period, but there is a point to the chopped-up chronology. You think you know who’s playing whom but your assumptions are regularly disproved. That’s because the two leads are in the business of playing mind games, cons, disinformation, and as former spies (CIA, MI6) they can’t help themselves.

By keeping the audience on a need-to-know basis Gilroy is asking them to trust him, which is funny because his characters don’t trust each other, but a good ploy because his point is that someone is always manipulating someone else. Like the filmmaker and the audience. At one point the characters are rehearsing their lines for the con, and Julia stops and says, ‘Are you directing me?’ Gilroy reminds everyone that there’s one person directing the entire scheme, and that’s him.

Critics have compared the zingy exchanges between Roberts and Own to the best bits of the Katharine Hepburn-Cary Grant screwball comedies. Yes they’re witty and charming, but Duplicity constantly reminds us that they’re not spontaneous. They’re rehearsed, cold-blooded, and cynical.

The biggest joke is that the protagonists are in love with each other. Espionage is the metaphor for romance: Are you in love with each other, in love with the idea of each other, or in love with how clever you are or how clever you think you are when you’re in love? And is there really a difference?

Duplicity is only showing at SM Cinemas.

Ricky Jay, sleight of hand artist, actor, Mamet collaborator, narrator of the film Magnolia, author, on Susan Boyle, exposure, and the audience’s expectations.

CONFLATE, if you will, the extraordinary attention lavished on the unlikely 47-year-old Scottish songstress Susan Boyle, whose rise and fall played out recently on the television program “Britain’s Got Talent,” and the reaction accorded to one Mathew Buchinger some time earlier in the Council Chambers in Edinburgh.

Because of their appearance, both Buchinger and Ms. Boyle were saddled with low expectations. This can work to the performer’s advantage: lessened anticipation coupled with high ability can bring on an exponential acceptance.

If it scares the crap out of you, print it on toilet paper.

TOKYO (AP) ―In a country where ghosts are traditionally believed to hide in the loo, a Japanese company is advertising a new literary experience — a horror story printed on toilet paper.

Each roll carries several copies of a new nine-chapter novella written by Koji Suzuki, the Japanese author of the horror story “Ring,” which has been made into movies in both Japan and Hollywood. (Keep reading)