JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Jay, Francis X. Pasion’s witty and insightful first feature, won the Best Picture prize at this year’s Cinemalaya festival. Its star, Baron Geisler, was named Best Actor for his killer performance as a gay writer-producer who manufactures a “reality TV” show. Jay gets my personal Heisenberg Indeterminacy Award for illustrating how the behavior of particles is influenced by the presence of an observer, and the Best Use of An On-Camera Accident citation for the dead chick.

Best Director and Best Screenplay went to Chris Martinez for 100, which also won Best Actress for Mylene Dizon and Best Supporting Actress for Eugene Domingo. 100 also took home the Audience Award, probably because of all the entries, it best fits the old-time Pinoy idea of a good movie: it makes you laugh and cry, offers catharsis, and reminds you of your own life but not in an oppressive manner. I predict this movie makes it at the multiplex. I give it my personal Best Performance by a Cat trophy.

Tara Illenberger’s Brutus, the enlightening story of two Mangyan children trying to smuggle wooden boards for illegal loggers, got the Special Jury Prize, Best Supporting Actor for Yul Servo, and most unsurprisingly, Best Cinematography for Jay Abello, who also directed Namets. You try shooting a movie in mountains, forests and rivers, see how it looks. I’ve been told that an NGO filed a restraining order on the movie, saying it put the Mangyans in danger from illegal loggers. I hope the flap gets media time for Brutus because it deserves to be watched. I predict that foreign festival programmers will be very interested in this one. It gets my Holy crap, a movie in which the military and the rebels are both viewed in a sympathetic light! prize.

I saw six of the ten movies in competition, and none of them was godawful! Wait, must write my column.