Archive for the ‘Movies’
Goodbye, Mr. Nimoy. You have been and always shall be our friend.
Ever generous, even in his final public message.
Leonard Nimoy has died. To generations of nerds he was the uncle who would remind us to be logical when faced with ignorance, stupidity, meanness.
Apart from playing the original Mr. Spock to perfection he was the host of In Search Of…a TV show that investigated the 1970s obsession with UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, Sasquatch, the Loch Ness monster, killer bees and other phenomena that we kids assumed would lead to planetary extermination any minute.
Here’s a Spock-centric episode of classic Star Trek: Amok Time, written by Theodore Sturgeon. It’s mating season on Vulcan.
T-Bird At Ako is a screwball comedy disguised as a drama
And we mean that as a compliment because we love screwball comedy.
We saw the digitally restored and remastered Danny Zialcita movie T-Bird At Ako last night at the UP Film Center, and it is an absolute scream. Nora Aunor was in attendance, along with Odette Khan who owned every scene she was in, and screenwriter Portia Ilagan, who recalled the spat she had with Zialcita over the movie’s “redeeming” ending.
Our review is coming up as soon as this migraine clears. Meanwhile, check out our previous posts on Zialcita movies:
Speaking of Karma, here’s Danny Zialcita, a review of Karma starring Vilma Santos, Ronaldo Valdez, Chanda Romero, Tommy Abuel
Try A Little Suicide, a review of Tinimbang Ang Langit starring Kuh Ledesma, Christopher de Leon, Rio Locsin
Thanks to Leo Katigbak, head of Special Projects at ABS-CBN, for the tickets to the premiere. Leo’s division has so far restored 84 Pinoy classics from the film archive, including Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon, Himala, and Oro, Plata, Mata. Coming up: another Nora Aunor-Vilma Santos starrer, Ishmael Bernal’s Ikaw Ay Akin. We saw it on Cinema One a few years ago and recall, apart from that enigmatic killer ending, a scene in which Christopher de Leon and Vilma Santos watch a movie at Alliance Francaise.
T-Bird At Ako will screen at chosen cinemas, watch your theatre listings.
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Read our column, Nora and Vilma get bi-curious, at InterAksyon.com.
“It’s beyond my control”: Dangerous Liaisons at CCP’s Tanghalang Pilipino
According to some critics, the 18th century novelist and army general Pierre Choderlos de Laclos wrote the novel Dangerous Liaisons to expose the perversions of the French ruling class, which would shortly get their comeuppance in the Revolution. In the novel, which unfolds in a series of letters, the ex-lovers and combatants the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont plot their seductions like military campaigns.
The novel has been filmed many, many times. We are most familiar with the sumptuous Stephen Frears adaptation based on the play by Christopher Hampton. Glenn Close and John Malkovich are the leads, and their pawns are the radiant Michelle Pfeiffer as Madame de Tourvel, Uma Thurman as convent-fresh Cecile, and Keanu Reeves as the Chevalier Danceny. The current Dr. Who Peter Capaldi is Valmont’s valet. This production revels in its theatrical roots: every glance is a coded message, and the characters wear their baroque fashions like armor. It is so much fun, no one asks aloud what those women see in Malkovich.
The more understated Milos Forman version had the misfortune of coming out a year later. Annette Bening and Colin Firth conduct themselves with a more subtle malice, but the production design is less spectacular. Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere made changes to the plot so the outcome is somewhat kinder.
Then there is the modern teen version in which rich kids Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Philippe plot against Reese Witherspoon. None of these three versions follow the ending of the Choderlos de Laclos novel in which the Marquise, her reputation ruined by the publication of her letters, flees to the country, contracts smallpox and dies. Which would be worse for her than being booed at the opera, no?
The Tanghalang Pilipino production which goes onstage weekends at the CCP Little Theatre is called Juego de Peligro. Translated from the Hampton play by Elmer Gatchalian and directed by Tuxqs Rutaquio, it is set in late 19th century Manila. The schemers are now Margarita (Shamaine Buencamino) and Vicente (Arnold Reyes), two upper-class Spaniards corrupting the indios, who include a wonderful LJ Reyes as the virtuous married woman, and Vin Abrenica as Keanu.
The historical context creates difficulties, beginning with the language: it is rather long-winded and the leads speak it in the fraile-accented Tagalog of old movies: “Nguni’t subali’t datapwa’t an mana indio, que barbaridad.” And then the costumes: we are used to seeing Dangerous Liaisons with low necklines and elevating corsets for the women’s costumes and tight pants for the men’s. The setting being pre-Revolution Manila, there are no boobs or quads, though there are butts, all male, for which we are not complaining, and Vin Abrenica’s abs, which should get separate billing.
Drogon: This is not G-rated!
Still, bringing colonialism and class struggle into a 233-year-old novel is an interesting choice, and Margarita casts herself as a proto-feminist who refuses to be controlled by the patriarchy. Students being introduced to Choderlos de Laclos may find themselves hooked.
Juego de Peligro runs until March 8 at Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino, Cultural Center of the Philippines. Tickets: Call 8321125 loc. 1620 and 1621, 0905-2544930, 0921-8204155; TicketWorld 8919999, ticketworld.com.ph.
Kingsman: Mr. Darcy goes berserk and we wonder what took him so long
Eyewear maketh man: Colin Firth and Taron Egerton in Kingsman.
Kingsman: The Secret Service, Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the Mark Millar comics, is the most fun we’ve had at the movies this year so far, but then we enjoy onscreen violence because it saves us the mess of perpetrating our own. We are totally the market that thinks Scanners needed more cranial explosions.
Colin Firth is even better-tailored than usual as a member of a super-secret intelligence agency operating out of Savile Row, and Taron Egerton as his downmarket protege is adorable. Initially we were disturbed by the seeming right-wing reactionary thrust of the movie—that it falls to the upper classes to save the world—but this is turned upside-down before long.
Millar’s comics oeuvre resembles a hyperactive 11-year-old’s rewrites of superhero comics (Kick-Ass), and Kingsman is for those who wish the James Bond flicks had more violence. As in Wanted and the Ultimate Avengers, those in power are overthrown and hands that feed are inevitably bitten.
Firth is always charming, even when he’s committing mass murder, and the action sequences are clever and funny. In fact the movie is so kinetic, we regretted having seen it in 4DX because the moving chairs are redundant. Critics are up in arms over a scene in which a woman offers an agent sex if he saves the world—how is this different from every action movie? Oh, and eyeglasses. Rrrrrr, eyeglasses.
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