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Warning: Contains spoilers

1. The Department of Synchronicity says: A South Korean student opens fire and kills 32 people at the Virginia Tech campus. (When you first heard that it was an Asian student, did you say to yourself, Please don’t be Filipino?) Meanwhile the movie Shooter, starring Mark Wahlberg as an ex-military sniper, opens in Manila.

2. Shooter is so wrong-headed that it actually advocates killing corrupt public officials. Its solution to abuse of power: Just kill them.

3. Mark’s character is sort of like the Unabomber, with Special Forces training instead of a mathematics background. As far as I’m concerned the direst section of the movie is the one where he’s wearing a plaid shirt and a pony tail. It lasts ten minutes, then he recovers his senses.

4. Ned Beatty’s evil Senator is obviously Dick Cheney. I kept expecting him to spray his hunting buddies with buckshot.

5. Shooter is an anagram of Hooters. Don’t you love it when an underwear model turns out to have real acting talent? Warms the cockles of my vestigial heart. It’s a good thing Mark takes his shirt off in this movie, or it would be a complete waste of time. In fact I started wishing he would get shot, so he would take it off again.

6. This is not the way to follow that brilliant performance in The Departed.

7. The movie is based on Point of Impact, a thriller written by Stephen Hunter, the Washington Post movie critic. I wonder what he thought of it.

8. There’s an interesting story in there, about America’s gun culture. The movie doesn’t do anything with it.

9. Mark Wahlberg shows up at your door with a bullethole in his chest and asks you to stitch him up. Discuss. (Oh no! I can’t sew!)

Twisted Travels, originally uploaded by Koosama.

. . .so we still have three copies of Twisted Travels to give away. Here are descriptions of ten movies about the movies. (The movies are Filipino, Italian, American, and French.) Email answers to emotionalweatherreport@gmail.com. First three to get all the items right, OR the most number of correct answers by Thursday.

1. The narrator is floating face-down in a swimming pool, dead.
2. A director under pressure to deliver a new movie finds himself seriously blocked, checks into a spa, and retreats into his memories and fantasies.
3. A woman who once dreamed of movie stardom becomes a stage mother. Her son appears on a TV variety show singing Black Magic Woman, surrounded by dancers wearing hot pants and lots of fringe.
4. Everything takes place during the filming of Meet Pamela. The kitten will not cooperate.
5. A prostitute becomes an actress, but finds that she cannot take the intrigue and hypocrisy in show business.
6. A ruthless producer does everything he can to succeed, betraying his friends and trampling all who get in his way. When his father dies, he hires extras to show up at the funeral.
7. It’s the advent of the talkies, and one of the silent screen stars turns out to have a really annoying voice.
8. Two cousins debate: Ishmael Bernal or Lino Brocka?
9. During a turbulent time, a young man abroad is befriended by a brother and sister who live in a huge apartment without parental supervision and act out scenes from the movies.
10. Alfredo! Alfredo! Aiuto!

The game of tennis is a convenient all-purpose metaphor, and filmmakers know it. I’m compiling a list.

1. The Squid and the Whale. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, a thinly-veiled account of his parents’ divorce and the hell of joint custody, set in Brooklyn in 1986. Painful and funny; after a while I couldn’t tell if I was laughing or cringeing. The movie opens with the couple and their two sons playing doubles, and the way they play sums up their disintegrating marriage. The younger son takes tennis lessons from a pro once ranked 402nd in the world. There is an argument over the merits of the one-handed backhand. The mother has an affair with the pro.

2. Match Point. Written and directed by Woody Allen. One of his darkest films, a comeback of sorts, and not set in New York. A former world-ranked tennis pro is befriended by the scion of a very wealthy family. Before long he marries his friend’s sister and becomes a rising executive at his father-in-law’s company. Then he falls in love with his friend’s fiancee, an American starlet, and risks losing the fabulous lifestyle to which he has become accustomed. Main tennis metaphor: the net ball, and the role of chance in human lives.

3. Strangers On A Train. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (of the Ripley books). Two men meet on a train. One is a tennis player on his way to see his estranged wife and ask her for a divorce. The other is a very strange man who wants his father dead. He proposes that they swap murders: he’ll kill the wife, and the tennis player will kill his father, that way the police won’t suspect anything because what would be their motives? The tennis player thinks the strange man is kidding. He’s not. The wife is murdered, and the player is the suspect. To elude the police and the killer, he hatches plan that involves his winning a match at the US Open in three sets, then taking off. There’s that famous scene where everyone in the stands is watching the ball fly across the court, but the killer is staring right at the tennis player.

4. A Room With A View. A Merchant-Ivory production. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala adapted the E.M. Forster novel for the screen. Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) is a muddled young woman in Edwardian England. On a tour of Italy she falls in love with the unsuitable George Emerson (Julian Sands), who grabs and kisses her during a picnic in Florence. Upon returning to England Lucy gets engaged to the twit Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day Lewis). Then George unexpectedly appears at her house to play tennis with her brother (Long pants! Wooden racquets!) Cecil does not play, preferring to walk around the court reading aloud from a trashy novel whose author Lucy had met in Italy. The passage he is reading describes the grab-and-kiss episode at that picnic in Florence. When Cecil is not looking, George grabs Lucy again. Here, tennis equals running and sweating equals passion and excitement.

5. Salawahan. Directed by Ishmael Bernal. I saw it years ago on Cinema One. Jay Ilagan and Mat Ranillo III are young men on the make. Rio Locsin is the “nice” girl, Sandy Andolong is the “liberated” fashion designer, and the fabulous Rita Gomez is a sex researcher. One day the three women meet at the apartment Jay Ilagan shares with Mat Ranillo. They eye each other warily, then Rio Locsin announces that it’s her birthday. Sandy Andolong asks her how old she is.

Rio Locsin: I’m 18.
Sandy Andolong: I’m 20.
Rita Gomez: I’m hungry.

Mat Ranillo discusses his sex life while playing tennis with his friends, and since this is the early 1980s everyone is wearing tight short shorts like Bjorn Borg used to wear. The tennis here signifies privilege and youthful energy. Usually when people play tennis in Filipino movies, it means they’re rich. (Rich people are also portrayed as wearing full make-up, couture, and jewelry while sitting around the house.)

6. Pat and Mike. Directed by George Cuckor. Katharine Hepburn plays a golf-and-tennis star, and Spencer Tracy her manager. Haven’t seen it. Given the year-round schedule of professional tennis, it would be impossible for a contemporary player to also have a career in golf.

7. Wimbledon. The Four Weddings and A Funeral people attempt a romantic comedy, set at the world’s most famous tournament, involving a top female player and a former world number 11 on the verge of retirement. They flub it completely, despite having Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst in the lead roles. There’s so much emotional turbulence and drama in tennis; this movie doesn’t have the intensity of a checkers match.

8. Annie Hall. Woody Allen again. Alvy Singer (Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) meet on a tennis court. She wears neckties and vests. He keeps watching The Sorrow and The Pity. They fall in love. They break up. What, you were expecting a happy ending?

9. The Royal Tenenbaums. Written by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson. Directed by Wes Anderson, who is quietly going through the collected works of J.D. Salinger—disguised, so he can’t be accused of unauthorized adaptations. This one is his Glass family chronicles. Luke Wilson plays a tennis player who self-destructs during a match—something that happens to our favorite players on a regular basis.

10. Mr. Deeds. Adam Sandler makes stupid movies that I enjoy. I would rather watch a moronic Adam Sandler movie than some pretentious artsy flick. (He was brilliant in Punch Drunk Love. No one noticed.) In this one he plays a small-town aspiring greeting card poet who inherits a billion-dollar company. Evil executive Peter Gallagher invites him to play tennis; Deeds gets helpful advice from new friend John McEnroe.

11. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Vittorio De Sica directed, based on the novel by Giorgio Bassani. In Ferrara, Italy in the 1930s, a young man plays tennis in the palatial estate of the Finzi-Continis. He falls in love with the daughter. The fascists come to
power. Their idyllic world goes straight to hell.

12. Sabrina. By Billy Wilder. Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn) is the chauffeur’s daughter. She is in love with the younger son (William Holden) of her father’s boss. The older son (Humphrey Bogart) steps in to break up the budding romance. The family lives in a huge Long Island estate with an indoor tennis court and an outdoor tennis court. Holden’s character meets his dates at the indoor tennis court; he brings a bottle of champagne and two glasses. On his way to meet Sabrina, he accidentally sits on the glasses.

In the 90s Sydney Pollack did a remake starring Julia Ormond. It is foolish to remake an Audrey Hepburn movie. It only calls attention to the fact that Audrey Hepburn is not in it. More recently, Jonathan Demme redid Charade with Thandie Newton. Aargh.

13. M. Hulot’s Holiday by Jacques Tati. On vacation at a seaside resort, Monsieur Hulot provokes a series of catastrophes. On the tennis court, however, he demonstrates an odd but effective technique.

14. Shampoo directed by Hal Ashby. Warren Beatty plays a heterosexual hairdresser who wants to open his own salon. To finance the venture he approaches Jack Warden, whose wife (Lee Grant) and mistress (Julie Christie) he happens to be sleeping with. The daughter played by Carrie Fisher is added to the list when Beatty turns up at his investor’s house and finds her playing tennis. She jumps him. No wonder he had so many customers.

15. Shakespeare’s Henry V, the film adaptation directed by and starring Laurence Olivier, and the 1989 version that announced Kenneth Branagh as the next Olivier/Orson Welles (Whatever happened to that?). The young King Henry declares his claim to the French throne; the Dauphin insults him by sending him …tennis balls. According to historians this didn’t really happen, but it’s an effective bit onstage and onscreen. Advantage, Will Shakespeare.

KING HENRY.
What treasure, uncle?
EXETER.
Tennis-balls, my liege.
KING HENRY.
We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for.
When we have match’d our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard.

16. English royalty also play tennis in Derek Jarman’s Edward II—a variation called “real tennis”, which was played indoors. And could someone check if there is a tennis scene in Jarman’s Caravaggio? Caravaggio killed a man over a dispute in a tennis match.

17. A Good Year directed by Ridley Scott has a scene in which Russell Crowe plays tennis with the cook in the villa in Provence that he’s inherited. This is according to my friend Mike who is addicted to tennis and plays four times a week.

18. I am happy to add Claire’s Knee to the tennis movie list. It’s a stretch—the tennis scene is not that important—but an excellent excuse to mention Eric Rohmer. Rohmer movies are not what movies are supposed to be: they tell rather than show. Nothing much happens. The characters sit around discussing how they feel, what they think, their notions of happiness, and what they plan to do. Later, they sit and talk about whether they did what they had planned to do, and what happened. For some reason, it’s fascinating. In Claire’s Knee, a man in his thirties, who is about to get married, becomes fixated on the titular body part. No, it is not a sex-comedy about a midlife crisis. Something momentous happens when he beholds that knee, and Rohmer works it all out beautifully.

19. Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni. David Hemmings plays a fashion photographer who takes pictures in the park. (Warning: Plot spoilers follow.) When he develops and enlarges the photos, he becomes convinced that he has just witnessed a murder. But the girl in the pictures, the negatives and photographs, even the dead body disappear, and he has no proof of what he saw. Or what he thought he saw. If he really did see it. In the end, all that’s left are a bunch of mimes in strange costumes, playing tennis without rackets or balls. Deep.

20. In Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali, the woman takes a tennis racket hanging on the wall in its press and threatens the man with it. He then pulls two pianos attached to two priests and a dead donkey.

21. In Louis Malle’s semi-autobiographical Murmur Of The Heart, Laurent’s older brothers teach him how to play “spinach tennis” at the dinner table. Later Laurent is diagnosed with a heart murmur and sent off to a sanatorium for treatment. He is accompanied by his beautiful mother, to whom he’s really, umm, attached. They play tennis.

The Movie Quiz is closed as of Monday, April 16, 7pm Manila time, because I have to write my column now.

Of all the entrants, only Eileen Ang and Patrick Llaguno got all 20 items right.

The rest stuttered in the Filipino movie category. Are we the only people to have seen Ishmael Bernal’s ironic classic, Salawahan? It’s been airing on Cinema One for years.

On the other hand all the entrants got Luchino Visconti’s Senso right. Not to cast aspersions on the contestants’ movie knowledge, but I’m guessing Google helped.

Biscuits, originally uploaded by Koosama.

“Filipinos” are sweet, crunchy biscuits with a hole in the middle. They’re available in plain, white chocolate, and dark chocolate varieties. The biscuits are manufactured by Kraft Foods Galletas, S.A, and sold in Spain and Portugal. The package says “Unete a la comunidad. www.filipinos.com.” And “Prueba filipinos despues de 1 hora en la nevera.” Translation: “Try filipinos after one hour in the fridge.”

Several years ago a politician tried to turn the biscuit into a patriotic issue, but it didn’t catch on. Like the periodic fuss about “filipina” turning up in dictionaries as “maid” or “servant”. Overheard in Rome: “My Mexican filipina is arriving tomorrow.”

During the Spanish colonial era, “filipino” meant a Spanish citizen born in the Philippines. Native Filipinos were called “indios”. Then Jose Rizal and the ilustrados in Europe started calling themselves “Filipinos”.

There are people out there who think we’re biscuits, servants, or Goliath’s tribe in the Old Testament. Clearly we have an image problem.

Here are 20 short synopses of 20 movies set in six different cities. Name the movies. The first five people to get all the answers right will each get a copy of my new book, Twisted Travels. Which, coincidentally, includes these cities.

2. A successful director of movie comedies wants to make a movie about the poor and the homeless in Depression-era America. His producers point out that he knows nothing about poverty, so he sets off to learn about it first-hand. He disguises himself as a hobo and goes off on his adventure. He winds up being jailed for a murder he did not commit.

12. She’s a Venetian aristocrat, he’s a soldier with the occupying Austrian forces. They meet at the opera. She becomes obsessed with him, and he turns out to be a heel. The Italian war of independence begins.

19. Four friends find themselves being tailed by a mysterious four-fingered Japanese hitman, a Chinese gang, and a priest. To unravel the mystery they go to a convent in Baguio and discover that there’s something in those holy wafers. Nuns, hitmen, and dragon ladies burst into song in this comedy-musical from the 1980s. 

Email your answers to emotionalweatherreport@gmail.com.