Directed by Bianca Catbagan and Jose Antonio de Rivera
Cast: Joem Bascon, Daniel Fernando, Nonie Buencamino

Less than thirty minutes through the film, the narrative of Suntok sa Buwan has already been established. By the time the two boxers have bitten the bullet, it’s already clear where the film is going: to a momentous fight that both of them need to win. Through a series of dramatic turning points, it also becomes obvious that the movie is fumbling for something to say. It stagnates and chooses only to advance for the sake of revealing details that add to its drama. It suffers from predictability, which is fine if the atmosphere is intense, but the script is unable go places because it lacks muscle—it only manages to show off how ill-nourished it is. The thinness of the material limits the characters, disabling them to breathe and travel far, and boxes them in a claustrophobic yet unexciting environment. The shots inside the ring are handled with skill but with little imagination—the characters move, but the entire sequence isn’t kinetic. Watching it is like sitting by the window and staring at a beautiful view that never changes. The scenery is lovely to look at, but it also tires the spectator sooner or later. Directors Bianca Catbagan and Jose Antonio de Rivera have fallen in love excessively with their subject and failed to recognize its rarely touched areas, which is hardly a question of depth and originality but of misguided decisions, of disregard for risks, and of not being able to deliver punches that hurt more inside than out. Their film teems with foolhardy youth: too much bokeh but too little flesh to feast on.

Truth: it was the year when I listened to too many albums. I checked my notebook and realized that I listened to five new albums every week in 2011. I couldn’t help it. I needed things to occupy my time and found these records. I devoured them like a madman, re-listening to them on my way to the office or back home, when I had my lunch, waited at airports, traveled on a bus or jeepney, took the train, walked to nowhere. These albums had been wonderful companions through the good and the bad, carrying me through the rough times and keeping me sane. I neglected books and movies because of them, and to what end? A certain kind of happiness, bittersweet, heavy, and forgiving. In Peter Silberman’s words, I was “pulled together but about to burst apart, rolled together with a burning paper heart.” Sappy yet true.

Below is a summary of the finest records I loved and continue to love from last year. Links to songs are provided, as well as a few notes on other stuff. Do listen to them if you have the time.

HONORABLE MENTION

WOLFROY GOES TO TOWN, Bonnie “Prince” Billy

NO TIME FOR DREAMING, Charles Bradley

LAST SUMMER, Eleanor Friedberger

SOUND KAPITAL, Handsome Furs

HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE PART 2, Beastie Boys

LA JOVEN DOLORES, Christina Rosenvinge

NOSTALGIA, ULTRA, Frank Ocean

YUCK, Yuck

EL CAMINO, The Black Keys

THE KING IS DEAD, The Decemberists

50. NO COLOR, Dodos

49. HEARTS, I Break Horses

48. UNDUN, The Roots

47. OPUS EPONYMOUS, Ghost

46. TAMER ANIMALS, Other Lives

45. 12 DESPERATE STRAIGHT LINES, Telekinesis

44. DYE IT BLONDE, Smith Westerns

43. ONEIROLOGY, CunninLynguists

42. SAFARI DISCO CLUB, Yelle

41. IMPOSSIBLE SPACES, Sandro Perri

40. TOMBOY, Panda Bear

39. TAKE CARE, TAKE CARE, TAKE CARE, Explosions in the Sky

38. GLOSS DROP, Battles

37. CIRCUITAL, My Morning Jacket

36. LAST NIGHT ON EARTH, Noah and the Whale

35. BLANCK MASS, Blanck Mass

34. FADING PARADE, Papercuts

33. SMOTHER, Wild Beasts

32. STRANGE NEGOTIATIONS, David Bazan

31. HELPLESSNESS BLUES, Fleet Foxes

30. THE MAGIC PLACE, Julianna Barwick

29. ARABIA MOUNTAIN, Black Lips

28. TURTLENECK & CHAIN, The Lonely Island

27. SKY FULL OF HOLES, Fountains of Wayne

26. PARALLAX, Atlas Sound

25. A CREATURE I DON’T KNOW, Laura Marling

24. BLACK UP, Shabazz Palaces

23. NOTHING IS WRONG, Dawes

22. SKYING, The Horrors

21. HURRY UP, WE’RE DREAMING, M83

20. THE KING OF LIMBS
Radiohead
[XL]

Listen: “Codex,” “Lotus Flower”

19. LEAVE HOME
The Men
[Sacred Bones]

Listen: “If You Leave…” “Bataille”

18. WIT’S END
Cass McCombs
[Domino]

LSS: “County Line,” “The Lonely Doll”

17. WASTING LIGHT
Foo Fighters
[Roswell]

Listen: “Arlandria,” “Back and Forth”

16. APOCALYPSE
Bill Callahan
[Drag City]

Listen: “America!” “Riding for the Feeling”

15. SUCK IT AND SEE
Arctic Monkeys
[Domino]

Listen: “She’s Thunderstorms,” “Love is a Laserquest”

14. SKYLINE
Yann Tiersen
[Mute]

Listen: “Forgive Me,” “Exit 25 Block 20″

13. DAVID COMES TO LIFE
Fucked Up
[Matador]

Listen: “Queen of Hearts,” “The Other Shoe”

12. RAVEDEATH, 1972
Tim Hecker
[Kranky]

Listen: “The Piano Drop,” “Analog Paralysis, 1978″

11. NINE TYPES OF LIGHT
TV on the Radio
[Interscope]

Listen: “Will Do,” “No Future Shock”

10. ECHOES OF SILENCE
The Weeknd
[XO]

Listen: “D.D.” “XO/The Host”

9. NAPOLEONETTE
Matthew Friedberger
[Thrill Jockey]

Listen: “What A Weird Weird Weird Weird,” “Shirley”

8. AESTHETHICA
Liturgy
[Thrill Jockey]

Listen: “Generation,” “Glory Bronze”

7. COIN COIN CHAPTER ONE: GENS DE COULEUR LIBRES
Matana Roberts
[Constellation]

Listen: “Libation for for Mr. Brown: Bid Em In…” “How Much Would You Cost?”

6. TAPE CLUB
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
[Polyvinyl]

Listen: “Dead Right (Wilmington Demo)” “Cardinal Rules”

5. NEW BRIGADE
Iceage
[What's Your Rupture?]

Listen: “White Rune,” “Remember”

4. D
White Denim
[Downtown]

Listen: “Is and Is and Is,” “Street Joy”

3. PAST LIFE MARTYRED SAINTS
EMA
[Souterrain Transmissions]

Listen: “California,” “Milkman”

2. BURST APART
The Antlers
[Frenchkiss]

Listen: “I Don’t Want Love,” “Putting the Dog to Sleep”

1. LET ENGLAND SHAKE
PJ Harvey
[Vagrant]

Listen: “The Words that Maketh Murder,” “In The Dark Places”

BEST EPs

HALLS EP, Halls

AN ARGUMENT WITH MYSELF, Jens Lekman

OH SUNSHINE, Oh Sunshine

GUARDS EP, Guards

WHAT A PLEASURE, Beach Fossils

QUADRUPLE SINGLE EP, Big Business

BEST OST

DRIVE, Cliff Martinez

SUBMARINE, Alex Turner

THEY’RE OK, BUT….

BON IVER, Bon Iver

FATHER SON HOLY GHOST, Girls

GO TELL FIRE TO THE MOUNTAIN, Wu Lyf

LOOPING STATE OF MIND, The Field

WATCH THE THRONE, Jay-Z and Kanye West

CULTS, Cults

DAYS, Real Estate

METALS, Feist

THE ENGLISH RIVIERA, Metronomy

EYE CONTACT, Gang Gang Dance

BEST SONGS NOT ON THE ALBUMS LIST

“NOTHING BUT HEART,” Low

“SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW,” Gotye feat. Kimbra

“MEASUREMENTS,” James Blake

“LOTS SOMETIMES,” Glasvegas

“THE DAILY MAIL,” Radiohead

“MEET ME IN MIRAMAS,” Matthew Friedberger

“BABY MISSILES,” The War on Drugs

“QUANTUM LEAP,” John Maus

“ROMANCE,” Wild Flag

“WHERE I’M WAKING,” Slow Club

“I FOLLOW RIVERS,” Lykke Li

“ORIGINAL SPIN,” Mother Mother

“LIPPY KIDS,” Elbow

“BRAIN ON A TABLE,” An Horse

“HOW CAN YOU LUV ME,” Unknown Mortal Orchestra

“SHOULDA,” Jamie Woon

“BUBBLE POP!” Hyuna

“HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE,” The Rapture

“SANTA FE,” Beirut

“UNDERNEATH THE SYCAMORE,” Death Cab for Cutie

“WAKE AND BE FINE,” Okkervil River

“ME AND LAZARUS,” Iron and Wine

“BLUE EYES,” Destroyer

BEST CONCERT ATTENDED

THE NATIONAL at the Esplanade in Singapore, November 6, 2011. A trip worth taking and a dream come true. Everything about it is made of happiness and fun and sad memories and getting high.

BEST SONGS 2011

BEST ALBUMS 2010

BEST SONGS 2010

BEST ALBUMS 2009

BEST SONGS 2009 

See you in July, I guess?

Pop music is my drug, and the more I withdraw from it the more I suffer. No matter how many folk or dubstep or black metal albums I listen to, a song full of irresistible hooks will always turn me into that mindless six-year-old kid dancing to Backstreet Boys and weeping to the tune of Westlife’s songs. Pop music has forever taken me hostage, and what do I get? Joy. Thrill. Fixation. That juvenile feeling of keeping a treasured secret. That accomplishment in being able to appreciate nuances of a song that most people think is junk. That delight in acknowledging the stupidity of it all but not being able to walk away from it. What else is there to get? Instead of pleading freedom, why not embrace it?

In a seminal essay, writer Tom Ewing talks about pop music and says, “[...] the primary tactic of the new pop critic was to bypass that and twitch back the showbiz curtain to locate these records in a production system. What made the tracks important wasn’t how they made you feel, but the innovative tricks creators used to get those effects. Intricate drum patterns, Bollywood samples, fake-harpsichord frills, or brutal minimalism—anything with an angle got love.” The first impulse is always one of love, of course, so why exempt feelings? Isn’t how music affects you more significant than how it is made, and consequently, how you respond to it?

Locally, 2011 is a year dominated by “Teach Me How to Dougie,” “Super Bass,” Adele, and Anne Curtis, each one of them inescapable, straightforward, and confrontational, and their ubiquity on television and radio easily switches between charming and annoying. Two of them appear below, and the other eighteen are for you to find out.

How about a nice shuffle before you read through the list?

20. “THE SHOW GOES ON”
Lupe Fiasco
[Lasers]

The song that announced the arrival of Lupe Fiasco’s third album was ripe with risks. The much talked-about fight he had with his producers who insisted on controlling every aspect of the record resulted in the delay of its release, but it only made the song’s title even more fitting. Lupe gets away with the dull lyrics and lousy rhymes because they are wrapped in a nice, shiny flow that gets better every time the chorus kicks in, owing its flaps and bounces to Modest Mouse’s “Float On,” carrying his rough disappointments in a sleigh ride and pulling a neat pop song from a hat caked with filth.

19. “DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH”
Nicole Scherzinger
[Killer Love]

The Pussycat Dolls are second rate and trying hard, and it takes Nicole Scherzinger’s second single from her first solo record to prove that. She doesn’t need the girls—she can nail a smashing hit single of her own. “Don’t Hold Your Breath” splashes with an ear-friendly mix of synths, bass, and piano, and on top of it is Scherzinger’s breathy vocals, steamrollering with lyrical punches and hip-shaking conviction. When she sings, You can’t touch me now, there’s no feeling left, imagine, how can a guy ever think of laying a hand on her again?

18. “BEFORE IT EXPLODES”
Charice
[Infinity]

By now Charice should have graduated from doing covers and started performing songs of her own, but these matters are clearly beyond her control. It would take a while before people get used to her without a song or two from Momma Celine and Whitney. Her image is fragile, and appropriate songs have yet to come her way. “Pyramid” helped her immensely, and though club music wasn’t something that fit her puniness, it displayed her potential as a well-rounded recording artist, given a proper team of writers and producers.

“Before It Explodes,” the first single from her sophomore record, fulfills the promise of a pop star Charice who is not only confident in her vocal abilities but also in her shortcomings, as she becomes more disciplined in adding dramatic shifts to her singing. For someone who earns praise for excessiveness, she has managed to lose the fat and lop off the curls from her routine. Her voice lives up to the woman that Bruno Mars has envisioned for the song, and every time she hits the line, let’s stop the madness before it explodes, she roars with cockiness made even more impressive by the way she rolls herself around the bridge.

17. “FRIDAY”
Rebecca Black
[Single]

All right, all right, it’s a pain in the ass. But this musical monolith deserves a spot on a list that glorifies the popular and the dumb, and more so because “Friday” is a mix of the divisive and the comical and the ubiquitous—everything a pop song should be.

16. “HELENA BEAT”
Foster the People
[Torches]

After the massive success of “Pumped Up Kicks,” it seems that Foster the People have nothing much to worry about. Three or four tracks from Torches carry the same thump and wallop, and one or two of them are potential chart-toppers. However, there’s a fat chance that any of them will be played on Gossip Girl, Homeland, Entourage, or CSI: NY and be covered by The Kooks or Weezer. Being in the shadow of a kid in a shooting spree singing You better run, run run sucks big time, but “Helena Beat,” which vaguely speaks of alcoholism and drug addiction, possesses the earworm qualities that made its predecessor click: remarkable hooks, gutsy synth arrangements, androgynous vocals, and a slideshow of disturbing images. The glee that comes from “Pumped Up Kicks” spills right through here, filtered and moderated, which makes the song longer but tighter and loonier. It’s tough being a follow-up single, but apparently these trigger-happy guys from L.A. have more upsetting stories to tell and they send them in colorful boxes of sweets.

15. “SINO NGA BA SIYA”
Sarah Geronimo
[One Heart]

All things considered, Sarah Geronimo should be thankful for Rayver Cruz. If not for him, she won’t have someone to throw virtual darts at every time she sings about heartbreak. “Forever’s Not Enough” is a superior song on all levels, but “Sino Nga Ba Siya” depicts her at her most wounded, and no one connects to listeners better than a woman who got hurt by her first love. Her words aren’t only clear—they are sharp, razor-sharp, cutthroat sharp. Her questions aren’t only straightforward—they are candid, honest, and undemanding. In fact, she might have been talking to Siri and asking for advice. It’s the song in Sarah’s catalog that may be the hardest for her to perform, but it captures her frailty and defenseless that her other hits cannot match.

14. “CHARLIE BROWN”
Coldplay
[Mylo Xyloto]

The best song from their weakest album, hardly because of the fuzziness of the songwriting—Took a car downtown where the lost boys meet, Took a car downtown and took what they offered me, lines which Chris Martin can scribble in his sleep—but by virtue of a rare kind of magic that their instruments manage to muddle up, the audio tracks that leap from everywhere, most especially the wailing guitars that burn the mawkishness and make the song frosty, slowly Zooropa-ing the mush away.

13. “THE EDGE OF GLORY”
Lady Gaga
[Born This Way] 

A large portion of Lady Gaga’s persona is smokes and mirrors. Subtlety is never her strong suit, but she easily uses that to her advantage by channeling her diverse musical influences to her compositions. On Born This Way, she offers such huge servings of rock, metal, opera, and disco that listening to it becomes thoroughly exhausting. By the time the record hits the final track it’s all hot and heavy, and “The Edge of Glory” seems to add more weight with its slosh of techno synths that befits her larger-than-life ambitions. It’s a monster quite different from “Bad Romance,” “Poker Face” and “Born This Way”—it’s softer, richer, riskier in terms of structure, and her voice is fuller and fiercer. It’s a dance anthem for the weepies—it’s mad, manic, and maudlin, like the feeling of downing consecutive shots of vodka—and Gaga’s eclecticism has finally found an appropriate direction to go to. She never believes in “less is more,” so she asks Clarence Clemons to fashion a sax solo towards the end, batter the heart even harder, and pour more syrup.

12, “UNIDENTIFIED”
Taken By Cars
[Dualist] 

Taken by Cars manage to refine their sound in Dualist, yet what stands out in their sophomore release is the unabashed dedication to hooks, specifically the eye-squinting polish and smoother texture that each song exudes. “Unidentified” follows the gleam of album opener, “This Is Our City,” and throws all the energy at the dance floor, punching holes in hearts as Sarah Marco spreads disco fever with her infectious singing. It’s more hypnotic than erotic, preferring spins and glides as the verses, chorus, and bridge seem to outrun each other’s slickness. There are no wasted seconds on the track—a cunningly seamless production is as scarce as hen’s teeth nowadays— and like every untouchable pop song, it pulls the ripcord at the most unexpected and breathtaking.

11. “WHO SAYS”
Selena Gomez and The Scene
[When The Sun Goes Down] 

“Who Says” is Selena’s response to Facebook and Twitter haters who hounded her after she started dating Justin Bieber, and it’s wise of her to turn such torment into something sweet, into a celebration of individuality and self-worth. Hitting two birds with one stone, she is not only able to inspire her fans but also establish and reiterate, by dropping the word “beauty” countless times, how pretty she is, as if referencing to herself provides an impression of experience, an authority to speak on every girl’s behalf. Every time she repeats the verse, I’m no beauty queen, I’m just beautiful me, who can blame her self-confidence? Who dares to cringe after that figure of speech, It’s like a work of art that never gets to see the light? And who cares if the most expressive line in this song is Na na na na na na na na na na na? 

10. “LONELY”
2NE1
[2NE1 2nd Mini Album]

Far from the feisty and gutsy techno-warfare singles the group is known for, “Lonely” wallows in simplicity. It takes away the Auto-tune, bombastic beats, and rap intrusions and lets the girls’ vocal abilities shine—the absence making its presence felt deeply—and such risky undertaking pays off in many exuberant ways. Invisible is the transition among the singers, and it shows how confident and comfortable they are in slow tempo. Stripped down, “Lonely” leaves 2NE1 in a state of utter nakedness, but there’s nothing to hide here but talent, which reveals the glitter and teeth marks of sadness.

9. “TNT”
Pupil
[Limiters of Infinity Pool]

Ambivalence doesn’t work all the time, but in Ely Buendia’s case, when he drops words like a threatened man who finds comfort in poetry, it kills the monotony of a predictably dark and dull atmosphere. “TNT,” the lead single from Pupil’s Limiters of the Infinity Pool, starts with a flaming guitar riff that signals the clash of instruments about to inundate Ely’s vocals, peeling the layers until they reveal a door of sonic surprises. One can’t help but make a Teeth comparison after the nifty bridge, but that only adds to the song’s charming mysteriousness, which builds a fortress before finally drawing the curtains in a split second.

8. “TELL ME IT’S LOVE”
Westlife
[Gravity] 

There was one touching moment during the Westlife concert in Manila when Nicky Byrne recounted a conversation with a Filipino staff member at the hotel they stayed in. The woman came up to him and said that she was a huge fan of the band and that their songs helped her get through elementary school. After making fun of his mates’ age, Nicky asked who among the audience was listening to their songs during elementary and more than half of the crowd raised their hands, which made the band members chuckle even louder. Shane started to sing words from “My Love” in a cappella and Nicky grabbed his camera to film the people singing along, and for the nth time the night was drowned in memories, all coursing through from the bright stage.

“Tell Me It’s Love” was never sung in the concert, but it was tucked somewhere in the band’s tenth and final studio album, Gravity. A throwback to their early singles, it is as generic as any Westlife song can get, alternating between Mark and Shane’s sweeping vocals, building up towards a chorus that looks back as much as it looks forward. Wrapped up by Nicky’s maudlin bridge and Mark’s trademark torch singing, the rendition of the song is close to perfect, which explains why the band’s breakup is a little hard to embrace.

7. “PATULOY ANG PANGARAP”
Angeline Quinto
[Angeline Quinto]

Angeline Quinto came at the time when the local music industry was consciously and unconsciously looking for someone as good as Sarah Geronimo. With the arguable exception of Christian Bautista, whose popularity is only hyped by his international fan base, Sarah’s contemporaries have all been passé—Erik Santos, Sheryn Regis, Rachelle Ann Go, and Mark Bautista are still out there but they’re only as negligible as anybody—and even she has been making constant efforts to reinvent herself to avoid the sharp fangs of oblivion. ABS-CBN knows that the solution is to come up with another talent search, even if it means producing another mediocre show.

Angeline bags the title among the hordes of Sharon wannabes , wins a recording contract, and eventually becomes the reliable provider of soundtracks for soap operas. Her breakthrough single, “Patuloy ang Pangarap,” maps out her journey, from dreaming dreams to finally realizing them, imbued with banalities that fail to make her flinch. Angeline’s careful singing gives her away: she means all the words she says. The song is about her, for her, and by her. By the time she reaches the peak of the song, she has nothing left to do but hold all her aces, flap her wings, and soar.

6. “ROLLING IN THE DEEP”
Adele
[21]

In the year that witnessed a tug of war between Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, Adele just stood in the middle: she took the cake and ate it by herself. She’s the corporal opposite of Amy Winehouse, but she shares the late singer’s knack for emotional lift, vulnerable to every proof that love is indeed a losing game. But unlike Amy, Adele prefers screams and histrionics, favoring drama and towering arrangements in lieu of sublimity, her quivering voice a reminder of hurt and willingness to suffer. From the guitar strums in the beginning to the thunderous claps in the bridge, “Rolling in the Deep” describes Adele at her most sorrowful, glimpsing at her healing heart before patching the holes of regret and despair. But the song also depicts her strength and sobriety. She takes all the pain in and lets it all out, her soul emptied out and filled again, showing everyone her breathtaking needlework.

5. “TAMBAY”
Spongecola
[Araw, Oras, Tagpuan]

It is possible that the members of Spongecola, who have long been creating some of the most vexing pop songs in the past few years, are not aware that they have released their finest composition, lyrically and melodically, this year. “Tambay” is not a risky undertaking—it still makes use of the band’s trite songwriting and ostentatious chord arrangements—but now it is fine-tuned from start to end, progressing from a run-of-the-mill ditty to an irresistibly catchy courtship song that stands alongside the best of Parokya ni Edgar and Kamikazee. Yael Yuzon gives up the overbearing screams and delivers well-adjusted bellows, accompanied by guitar screeches and eager beats that fit the teenage vibe nicely, flashing a three-minute wonder worthy of numerous repeats.

4. “SUPER BASS”
Nicki Minaj (feat. Ester Dean)
[Pink Friday]

In the past two years, a Nicki Minaj verse means gold. Whenever she makes a guest appearance, she turns a so-so song into something remarkable (“Up Out My Face”) and a good song much, much better (“Woohoo,” “Raining Men”). Sadly her own songs from Pink Friday lack the pump and kick of her collaborations, and if it weren’t for Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez, to whom “Super Bass” owes its break, she’d be quickly reduced to a novelty, a trinket to be discarded over time. In a span of three minutes and a series of wild verses, fortunately, she changed all that. “Super Bass” is one of the year’s loudest and proudest turning points, an arsenal of all things weird and wonderful made even weirder and more wonderful by Nicki’s skill at catapulting, robbing every word and stuffing all of them into her mouth before launching an impeccable chorus. How the song turns affection into something worth sinning for is no easy feat, but the way she declares her fondness for a guy and sugarcoats it to the point of intoxication, there seems to be no other feeling happier than that.

3. “WE FOUND LOVE”
Rihanna (feat. Calvin Harris)
[Talk That Talk] 

There’s something very hormonal about Rihanna’s songs that liking them equates to being instinctive and juvenile, her tunes teeming with immediate vibrancy that burst with force and color the moment the chorus hits and repeats. What makes “We Found Love” different, however, is that the listener’s expectations are only as good as the surprises she pulls, something which producer Calvin Harris has structured so slickly the sparseness of the words works surprisingly well to the song’s advantage, the blaring synths even catchier than the hook line itself. We found love in a hopeless place shines with peerless ebullience—it’s 2011’s tallest skyscraper as far as earworms are concerned, and Rihanna, who feeds on sadomasochism and doom, chants it with a mix of lust and despair, throwing daggers with her eyes closed. Knowing that she suckles on excesses, Harris gives her less, and one of the most trifling pieces she has been asked to work on turns out to be an exceptional gem.

2. “OTIS”
Jay-Z and Kanye West
[Watch the Throne] 

The kind of lifestyle that Jay-Z and Kanye promote doesn’t come close to the kind of lifestyle that the two lead in real life. Their richness goes beyond money, fame, and luxury. They no longer need a territory to conquer and a culture of contradictions to turn upside down. “Otis” seems purposely arranged to sound like an effortless exercise—the two rap titans trading verses that show off and underline their skill and influence—but in all its tremendous superciliousness there hovers a luster that never wears off despite the lack of anything that resembles a chorus, apart from the sample of “Try A Little Tenderness” that provides the song a charming pockmark. It’s a pronouncement of fortune, a statement of infinite assets and zero liabilities that no longer sees the sky as the limit. Nothing in it breaks new grounds except for Jay-Z and Kanye breakdancing on top of their careers with no one to challenge them but their own vanities, the throne left to no one but to their shadows.

1. “COUNTDOWN”
Beyoncé
[4] 

Sasha Frere-Jones describes Beyoncé as “a quiet meritocrat, celebrating the pleasure of doing things well and not making a particularly big deal of it.” She dashes from one huge triumph to another without making a fuss, a diva and a hustler at the peak of her career who never runs out of novelties to offer, challenging herself in every career move she makes. After successfully headlining Glastonbury last June, she is now a proud mother at 30, giving birth not only to her first child but also to a number of songs that would soon inspire and make up her subsequent albums. Filled with references to her happy married life, 4 captures Beyoncé’s finest form as a singer, gracefully bending genres from soul to RnB, supported by an excellent team of producers that enables her to sharpen what’s already sharp and churn new classics.

“Countdown” stands out in the record’s stream of blues and spikes. In pure “Crazy in Love” fashion, Beyoncé delivers a maniacal confession of love that bleeds as much as it thrills, a song whose only idea of rest is a beaming smile. It is built on Beyoncé’s temper, a kinetic ball that rolls far and fast regardless of the flight of stairs it needs to climb, the topnotch quality of her voice complementing the mad instrumental crescendos. It champs at the bit, it tosses and turns, it jumps and sizzles—there are so many things happening in the song that it’s impressive how she manages to keep up and march along, but that’s her gift: being able to hold out her hand and touch numerous places at once. She sweetly talks about her relationship with Jay-Z, telling it like a school girl reminiscing a first kiss, and she is backed up by a cathedral of beats and colorful syncopation that lift her from the storm. Never has Beyoncé shown any sign of wavering; on the contrary, she goes up and up. polishing the structure of the song before returning to its centerpiece, rarely pausing for breath, hovering in midair for three and a half minutes, and then poof: she disappears.

NEXT: The Top 50 Albums of 2011

Will this make Ilda think?

On New Year’s Eve, a six-paragraph piece of trash appeared on a Web site called Get Real Philippines. Written by Ilda, “Filipino films: they don’t make us think” is intended to be an eye opener, but the only thing it opens is the lid that covers the stink of the site’s pool of writers. The article is poorly written, poorly edited, and poorly thought-of—poorer than the festival it slams, and poorer than the culture of people it looks down on—and it should never have gotten the attention it received, had people stopped adding fuel to what turns out to be a harmless source of fire.

But shit has already been thrown on both sides and the discussion has switched rapidly between horror and comedy. If shit has some use then it is to make the land more fertile and productive: more reasons to prove that Ilda is a lunatic whose goal to make people “realise that things are not always what they seem” is something that she cannot do for herself. Benign0, the manager of the site and Ilda’s defense lawyer, is a rightist hypocrite who promotes change but whose entries and comments point at his deliberate resistance to change, a shameless totalitarian who’s too conceited to believe that change is possible through his “thinking” and the “mind work” done by his team of editorialists.

On the “mission” page of the site, Benign0 speaks like a scholar of Filipino culture, someone who is able to identify its weaknesses and their corresponding solutions, and believes that the country is “the result of lots of action underpinned by very little thinking.” This is the same person who glorifies the Weinsteins and devotes six paragraphs to the history of Miramax to illustrate his case against Philippine cinema, the same prophet who says that “the Philippine film indie sector lacks the sort of innovation that makes billionaires out of nerds and outcasts like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs,” and the same high and mighty who cannot create anything good from the things and ideas he destroys. In the final section of the page, GRP seems like a network of people—pyramiding?—who knocks on your door in the morning to test your religious beliefs. “But we continue to appreciate the contribution of every member of the GRP community and the conscious effort it takes to maintain a clarity of purpose in our minds to ensure that we do not get lost along the way.” From which brochure was this lifted from?

On the other hand, Ilda, who loves The King’s Speech as much as she loves flaunting her silliness, couldn’t have been a better species. Her judgment is rendered invalid by her own mistaken assumption that the world should be thankful for her opinion. Despite her obvious shortage of knowledge about local films—really, she’s blaming independently-produced films because she’s too snobbish to seek them out?—she still thinks her generalizations are well substantiated. She’s the worst kind of evangelist, the type who never shuts up and whom you wish is battery operated. Leaving a response to the comments section of her article would have been appropriate, but there is danger in the mere idea of engaging oneself in a discussion hosted by the opposing party. Therefore, upon careful consideration—and even though a strong proof has been presented that Ilda’s essay does not deserve any type of critical discourse—I decided that reacting to it is better than ignoring it, so rejoice, GRP ministers. Let it be known that whatever misreading invoked below is entirely Ilda’s fault—her writing and her thoughts leave room for a lot of misinterpretations.

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The type of films Filipino filmmakers make [reflects] the type of people most Filipinos are – people lacking in substance. Just looking at the list of entries for this year’s [Metro] Manila Film Festival, you can already tell that not a lot of thinking was involved in the process of making them. Even the titles leave nothing to the imagination of the audience. Most of the actors playing the lead roles are the same ones we’ve seen since we were kids or some hot young flavor-of-the-month of one producer or another.

Dear Ilda,

First, local filmmakers do not only make one type of movies—there are several types, if only you care enough to know the difference between them. Second, yes, these movies do reflect their audience, but these are people who do not lack substance. In fact, they are more sensible than you. They have exercised their freedom to spend money on movies. Putting trust in a shaky but venerable industry is a sign of substance, of a mind that weighs the pros and cons of a decision. You have also gone as far as implying that you are different from these moviegoers—you have substance, yo—and by simply looking at the list of MMFF entries, you have already made up your mind not to watch any of them because, hey, you’re smart, you don’t waste money on crap, and you can’t believe these people are lining up in theaters, like they are so bobo, right? Third, have you seen any of Danny Zialcita’s movies? The titles of his films (Nagalit ang Buwan sa Haba ng Gabi, May Lamok sa Loob ng Kulambo, May Daga sa Labas ng Lungga, Nang Masugatan ang Gabi, Bakit Manipis ang Ulap?, Bakit Madalas ang Tibok ng Puso?, and a personal favorite, Kapag Tumabang ang Asin) are laughable, but they are actually good. His characters talk relentlessly, but with a lot of sense. But then again why would you care about something you don’t know?

Take the 13th [installment] of Shake, Rattle and Roll, and ask: What else can people expect to get out of it? Not much, obviously. People are probably watching it for the eye candy. Every year the film features starlets parading and pouting for the camera hoping to look cute enough to win an award. That’s right. Talent in acting is not really a criterion for winning an acting award in the Philippines.

…in the Philippines! …like a pyramid!

You ask: what do people expect to get from watching Shake Rattle and Roll? I ask: why do you care? What reasons sound good to you? That they expect to learn more about the dynamics of horror as a genre based on too-stupid-to-live characters? That they expect to see Don’t Look Back or Rosemary’s Baby?  You’re right, “not much,” but how arrogant of you to belittle the enjoyment, no matter how small it is, that people can derive from watching the movie. For instance, Jerrold Tarog, who unfortunately you don’t know, made an episode last year called “Punerarya,” which I liked a lot. The first two episodes, directed by Zoren Legaspi and Topel Lee, were more than worthy to be walked out on, but I stayed because I wanted to see Jerrold’s shit and I wasn’t disappointed with what I saw. So, that’s what I got out of it. I saw Odette Khan as a monster. I got scared numerous times. I wanted to chop Nash Aguas in half. If I wanted eye candy, I should have watched porn instead. And just to let you know, Carla Abellana was superb in “Punerarya,” but the best actress prize went to Ai Ai delas Alas, so maybe there’s some truth in what you said. But seriously, you believe in awards given by MMDA?

In the case of the film Enteng ng Ina Mo starring Ai Ai delas Alas and Vic Sotto; the actors had nothing to work with in terms of storyline and dialogue. The characters just basically rehashed their roles specifically with Vic playing his Enteng character from the 1980s TV series Okay ka Fairy ko and Ai Ai reprising her winning role in last year’s Tanging Ina Mo. It’s another one of those things in the Philippines we can refer to as scraping the bottom of the barrel. The producers are obviously milking the franchise until it bleeds.

Consider this: if you decide to eat at a fine-dining restaurant, do you make a public announcement and say that the food is too expensive? What’s that expression again, “it goes without saying”?

And what about the new Panday 2 movie? First of all, how does Senator Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr find the time to make movies? Isn’t he supposed to be spending more time deliberating policies in the Senate instead of delivering cheesy lines? Aren’t there enough men to take over the role Senator Revilla inherited from the late Fernando Poe Jr? Second, the new Panday movie is being criticized for being a blatant rip-off of the 2010 Hollywood blockbuster remake of Clash of the Titans. All the film needed was Medusa to complete the cast of Perseus’s nemesis. There was nothing special about the “special” effects either.

This is classified as rant, and rants are OK, especially if they are directed towards someone as irksome as Bong Revilla. However, by making a point that Panday 2 “is being criticized for being a blatant rip-off” of Clash of the Titans is a low blow. Bong said that it’s better than Harry Potter, didn’t he? Furthermore, the MMFF is the only time of the year when Hollywood movies get some rest, so thank you for spoiling it.

How do these filmmakers sleep at night knowing that they are not really creating a work of art but just copies of some other people’s work? They are not even making people think; they are not even stirring emotions or provoking people into doing something with their lives; they are not even inspiring young people to aspire for greatness. What they are producing is just stuff you can discard after one use. In short, most Philippine films are a total waste of the people’s time and money.

So, this is the part when you point the loaded gun at the filmmakers.

Determining if something is a work of art or not is similar to hitting your head on the wall and asking why it hurts—it’s kind of, uhm, stupid. It’s a Moebius strip; it just goes on and on. If you think it’s not a work of art, fine, it’s not a work of art. But what makes art an art is that it can be interpreted in infinite ways; hence one’s appreciation, or the lack of it, is only as meaningful as the others.

Nothing is original: deal with it. Even your thoughts are not. How can you sleep at night knowing that someone has already written what you just said? Your personal observations are sweeping statements that can be proven wrong if we interview people. Perceptions of art cannot be definitive. For all you know, a kid watching Enteng ng Ina Mo or Panday 2 might be dreaming of doing films or being a comedian someday. Who knows about the possibilities?

Moreover, making a categorical statement like “most Philippine films are a total waste of the people’s time and money” means you only rely on what little you know about local cinema. It might have been a stronger argument if you removed “most,” since it would be less ambivalent, but apparently you wanted something safe to say and easy to get away from. Humility is substance, my friend, and you seem to have none of it.

Films are supposed to be cultural artifacts that reflect our culture and, in turn, affect us and our outlooks towards life. Most films are considered art, for entertainment and a powerful tool for educating — or indoctrinating — society. But nowhere can we find our culture or any significant message of consequence in our films. Films are powerful tools of communicating ideas and who we are as a people. Unfortunately, our films tell us and everyone else that we are shallow and superficial.

Aside from its triteness, what’s clear in this paragraph is that the MMFF was chosen as a concrete example to illustrate the shortcomings of Philippine cinema and make generalizations about it. This mindset abridges and limits the arguments because these movies do not represent the entirety of the industry in both quantity and quality. Complaining about the MMFF is like beating a dead horse. Supporting the festival, however, is always a choice. You may not like these types of movies, but you can’t take the entertainment away from people who look forward to seeing them every year. There are options offered, and though it seems that the atrocious outnumbers the bearable, the festival still serves its purpose of providing a family fare during the holiday season. A selection of indie films shown a week before Christmas has also been included in the MMFF since last year, an act that can be viewed as some sort of tokenism, but at least there’s some effort from their part, no matter how minimum.

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Needless to say, there has been a wealth of Filipino movies in the past ten years, and they cannot be ignored if one decides to write about the matter. There’s a thin line between constructive and destructive criticism, and Ilda’s essay fall into the latter because of its failure to recognize many aspects of Philippine cinema and her tirades that display her lack of familiarity with the subject. Her point of view switches between far-sighted and near-sighted, and in the end she resorts to a cross-eyed pronouncement that lashes against Filipino culture, which she deems” shallow” and “superficial,” as if she doesn’t flag her own abysmal shallowness and superficiality. The biggest blunder committed in the essay is when she claims that she is higher than the culture she actually belongs to, the egotism and conceit that Philippine cinema and its people can be summed up in six lousy paragraphs, backed up by nothing but amour-propre.

Just because they subject themselves to dumb and tasteless movies, Filipino moviegoers are neither dumb nor tasteless. Calling a number of films dumb and tasteless is open to question, but these movies exist because there’s a set of audience who tolerates them, not because of a society that’s in full agreement with their values. They are present in mainstream and independent sectors, made by people whose core of values has been irreparably institutionalized, a cycle repeated over and over, generation after generation. Considering their politics, these movies reflect only a specific aspect of the culture, and not the totality of it.

Furthermore, the clearest  fallacy in Ilda’s generalizations is the confidence in her judgment—her separation of high art and low art, of art and entertainment, of highbrow and lowbrow consumers—and by baring her thoughts she has also exposed how debased and minute her understanding of the world is, how her ignorance is wrapped in despicable pride.  One can only wish that a majority of Filipino moviegoers would have time to see more films, not just the ones shown at malls, but they have more pressing concerns to attend to, be it economic, socio-political, or personal.  Information is readily available online, but not everyone owns a computer and has access to speedy Internet, so it’s admirable when filmmakers decide to bring their works to grassroots communities, reach out to the marginalized, and encourage discourses with people in the area.

The programmer’s job cannot also be discounted. In addition to the yearly screenings of Cinemalaya, Cinemanila, Cinema One Originals, and Cinema Rehiyon—four of the biggest film festivals in the country that showcase a variety of features from north to south—there are small-scale public screenings organized in private residences and establishments that put emphasis on overlooked and underrated films and filmmakers. These movements, which have not been strongly present in the 90s and the early part of the 00s, prove that there is basis in declaring a golden age in Philippine cinema, that in fact there is progress in terms of the quality of films being made and the quality of appreciation being given by the audience, as exemplified by the increasing number of people attending festivals every year and bloggers writing reviews online. Like other national cinemas, the local film industry struggles from the constraints of traditional moviemaking and the fetters of nostalgia—every now and then people look back to the years of Bernal and Brocka—but that’s the good thing about it: contemporary filmmakers and moviegoers are leaving a unique mark on the landscape of Philippine cinema despite these hindrances, and the industry is no longer standardized and homogeneous but multi-faceted and ripe with contradictions.

“Filipino films: they don’t make us think” is one of those incongruities that obviously comes from a group of groundless hecklers who means more harm than good, who believes that all independent filmmakers—unabashedly called “point-missers” and “onion-skinned crybabies,” groundbreaking terms, mind you—are whiners. Let’s leave it on a happy note, can we? Remember Lino Brocka’s Insiang? There’s a short and amusing scene in the film when Hilda Koronel passes by a bunch of kids and she accidentally steps on shit. She gets mad, of course, so she rubs her slippers on the ground and walks away. That’s a brilliant moment, and it befits this issue very well because Ilda, twenty-six years later, is the reincarnation of that piece of shit, excreted without warning. Like Insiang, we should all just abandon her like a boss.

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(A) Enrolling in a class under Mr. Alemberg Ang
(B) Appearing in a movie with Ms. Lilia Cuntapay
(C) Watching the filmography of Direk Wenn Deramas
(D) All of the above

If you know the answer, please leave a comment below.

(1) Comix

Brilliant! Tragic! - Art Brut

B-Sides - Noah Gundersen

(2) Women

Indestructible Machine - Lydia Loveless

A Creature I Don't Know - Laura Marling

(3) Water

Civilian - Wye Oak

Shapeshifting - Young Galaxy

(4) Colors

Group Therapy - Above and Beyond

Echoes of Silence - The Weeknd

(5) Abstract

Native Speaker - Braids

The People's Key - Bright Eyes

(6) Architecture

Helioscope - Vessels

Neighborhoods - Blink 182

(7) Gray

Wounded Rhymes - Lykke Li

In Waves - Trivium

(8) Skull

Blown Realms and Stalled Explosions - Enablers

The Seventh Degree of Separation - Arena

(9) Portrait

Fjree Feather - Forest Swords

Tomboy - Panda Bear

(10) Patterns

Realism - Shine 2009

Massless - Graviton

(11) Dogs

Goodbye Bread - Ty Segall

Blue Suicide - Coma Cinema

(12) Kiss

Suede (Reissue) - Suede

Total - SebastiAn

(13) F is For…

Forever Today - I'm From Barcelona

Metals - Feist

(14) Minimal

Suck it and See - Arctic Monkeys

The Rip Tide - beirut

Looping State of Mind - The Field

An Argument With Myself EP - Jens Lekman

(15) Space

Flumina - Fennesz + Sakamoto

Space is Only Noise - Nicolas Jaar

(16) Cross

Audio Video Disco - Justice

BlackenedWhite - MellowHype

(17) “Elephants”

The Moonlight Butterfly - The Sea and Cake

Yuck - Yuck

(19) Kids

The Gaddabouts - Edie Brickell

Several Shades of Why - J Mascis

(20) Skyscraper

Azari & III - Azari & III

Zonoscope - Cut Copy

(21) Black and White

Ravedeath 1972 - Tim Hecker

Dropped Pianos - Tim Hecker

FIVE BEST ALBUM COVERS

Blanck Mass - Blanck Mass

Ukulele Songs - Eddie Vedder

Nursing Home - Let's Wrestle

Biophilia - Bjork

All The Way - Nightlands

FIVE WORST ALBUM COVERS

Shangri-La - Yacht

Crazy Clown Time - David Lynch

F.A.M.E. - Chris Brown

The Great Escape Artist - Jane's Addiction

Born This Way - Lady Gaga

5. I AM THE BEST, 2NE1. Directed by Seo Hyun Seung.

Everything here screams with extravagance: flashy outfits, luxurious production design, strange sci-fi elements, excessive display of swag, too much emphasis on glam. But in 2NE1’s glitzy universe, over-the-top ideas are a beauty to look at, and even the scantiness of dance moves doesn’t hurt much. Who run the world again?

4. THE WILHELM SCREAM, James Blake. Directed by Alexander Brown.

The song is lovely, but James Blake is lovelier. Even the shaky camera says so, capturing him in profile and toying with effects and colors, soft blues and luscious greens, ambivalence and swoon, eye contact and sexual distance.

3. BEST THING I NEVER HAD, Beyoncé. Directed by Diane Martel.

It’s not the lacy corset that looks terribly good on her, nor the extravagant details on her Vera Wang gown, nor the playful wedding ceremony and the hilariously bad home video that turn this into a spectacle: it’s Beyoncé’s face—the way it shines with happiness and satisfaction, the way it achieves revenge without actually doing it, and the way it shoots daggers at every douchebag who deserves a bloody kick in the face. Look at her. She’s contagious.

2. THE GREEKS, Is Tropical. Directed by Megaforce. Animation by Seven.

A no-nonsense depiction of kids in the age of counterstrike who fire guns at enemies and strangers, produce and sell meth, speak French in drug deals, throw explosives, and enjoy the inanity and insanity of it all. “I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.” Right. Totally fun.

1. LOTUS FLOWER, Radiohead. Directed by Garth Jennings.

Longtime Radiohead fans like myself were not supposed to be surprised when this came out in February—Thom’s sporadic movements (or seizures?) and crazy gyrations every time he performed onstage bore the seeds—but for some reason we were: not only surprised but also astonished, affected, and bemused, and later on the surprise turned into intense euphoria, exaltation, and rapture, exhilarated by the sight of Thom Yorke careening, cavorting, frolicking, jitterbugging, jiving, prancing, swinging, waltzing—whatever you call those moves or gestures of trying to survive a fit. The moment this video was released, the world became better every second, and dancing no longer needed talent: it only required joie de vivre.

(144) PORTAMENTO/The Drums: pierce dons robert smith and talks about things heavier than heaven and sadder than the sound of one hand clapping #7.5

(143) NO TIME FOR DREAMING/Charles Bradley: bradley is 62 years old and this is his debut album. get ready for soul punches #8

(142) THE RIP TIDE/Beirut: the lightest beirut album so far, and by lightest it means most accomplished #8

(141) PERFECT DARKNESS/Fink: aches and trembles and fans the flames that rise from its bonfire, blowing and kindling the wind #7

(140) LOOPING STATE OF MIND/The Field: it sure lives up to its name, but the wide stretches lack will-o’-the-wisps #5.5

(139) LUPERCALIA/Patrick Wolf: some tracks cut through like a hot knife through butter; some go from one ear to another #6.5

(138) WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN/Selena Gomez and The Scene: miss bieber drops pop missiles and makes sweeping gestures of self-worth #6.5

(137) NEW BRIGADE/Iceage: 4 Danish lads pull together a punk-spit-punk helter-skelter debut of flaming riffs and anarchist sonic youth shrapnel #9

(136) GRAVITY/Westlife: doing original songs is still the best way to impress #6

(135) AN ARGUMENT WITH MYSELF/Jens Lekman: jens leans closer to paul simon, his anecdotes and litotes sending forth gleams #7

(134) WALLS/An Horse: kate cooper bleeds it out, switching between her heart and brain damn too many times, and lands every kiss with a fist #7.5

(133) BLANCK MASS/Blanck Mass: after witnessing nuclear accidents, an alien hides in subterranea, records his experiences, & beams someone home #8

(132) WATCH THE THRONE/Jay-Z and Kanye West: not as beautiful, dark, or twisted as MBDTF, but their crack fantasies together play for keeps #6

(131) DUALIST/Taken by Cars: dance gurus are able to even out the splats of noise and make the irresistible hooks and a-one textures float #7.5

(130) UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA/Unknown Mortal Orchestra: rags and tatters of analog wavering in low-key gaieties, itching to help you get laid #7

(129) TORCHES/Foster the People: contains loops of hoops and trapezes that are supposed to disappoint but they don’t #7

(128) WITHIN AND WITHOUT/Washed Out: takes on a trippy glo-fi cruise before dipping its heart in slimy collagen high and low #7

(127) ON A MISSION/Katy B: occasional fistfuls of swell pub-club decoys signed, sealed, and delivered from calm #5.5

(126) REPTILIANS/Starfucker: from the clever band name to the tunes that bask in torrential synths, STRFKR’s childish fun is hard to dismiss #7

(125) DYE IT BLONDE/Smith Westerns: “…love is lovely and when you are young.” a soundtrack to many nights of long walks and short kisses #7

(124) ANG SAYAW NG DALAWANG KALIWANG PAA/Various Artists: fans of the movie will be delighted. fans of vic robinson will be in seventh heaven #6

(123) FADING PARADE/Papercuts: thick and heavy, heady and textured, oftentimes more melodic and melancholy than Beach House #7.5

(122) LAST SUMMER/Eleanor Friedberger: eleanor steps back from her brother’s excesses and rollicks in the skating rink of her blues #7

(121) STRANGE NEGOTIATIONS/David Bazan: the wonderful weariness of bazan’s introspection makes up for the album’s shortness on surprise #7.5

(120) LIMITERS OF THE INFINITY POOL/Pupil: shares the sobriety & might of the first & second, though the sonic handcuffs here are more adventurous #7

(119) ATTENTION PLEASE/Boris: its pop knives stab deep, the blood drowning the meagerly arranged tracks and hanging them wet #6.5

(118) HEAVY ROCKS/Boris: the metal prefixes and suffixes connect and disconnect amid the billows of icy fire and smoke #7

(117) NEW ALBUM/Boris: a ravishing J-pop/rock start gets shaky and leans on abstract towards the middle and end #7

(116) GROUPLOVE EP/Grouplove: vocal tidal waves and robust harmonies open the door to unexpected come-ons #7

(115) HOW YOUR INFLUENCE BETRAYS YOU/Typecast: the sentiments are lame and juvenile, but the drums and guitar work are made of massive #6

(114-92)

(91-60)

(59-33)

(32-1)

Shot, written, and directed by Don Jaucian

“Waking up is a parachute from dreams. / Free of the suffocating turbulence, the traveler / sinks toward the green zone of morning,” Tomas Tranströmer writes in “Prelude,” the first poem in his first book published in 1954. Don Jaucian evokes the same feeling of terrifying liberty in his short film, “Mars Caronia,” except that in lieu of words (and their power to conjure images) he uses colors of varying tinctures that rain on the screen sporadically to produce a disconcerting mood of psychedelia. From the point of view of a boat passenger, the splash of water is a key image, and it magically transforms into a school boy’s piece of artwork painted clumsily on a small canvas. It’s quite obvious that Jaucian intends to pay tribute to one of his favorite filmmakers, Raya Martin, but despite the unmistakable influence, he is able to come up with something unique, a work that “clatters tambourines of ice” and “leaves behind a long, shimmering comet tail.”

Written by Armando Lao
Directed by William Pascual
Cast: Jaclyn Jose, Anna Marie Gutierrez, Julio Diaz, Gino Antonio

Sex takes up a generous amount of time in Takaw Tukso. Director William Pascual and writer Armando Lao purposely extend the lovemaking scenes and create a series of Bergmanesque erotica, letting the drama benefit and suffer from its theatrical embroideries. The film won the major awards at the Gawad Urian in 1987, but like its two co-nominees for best picture (Mario O’Hara’s Bagong Hari and Peque Gallaga’s Unfaithful Wife), only few have seen it because of utter negligence, burying it deeper in anonymity.

It’s a tale of two couples trying to come to terms with the hell that’s starting to burn between them. After an exasperating fight with her mother, Debbie (Anna Marie Gutierrez) decides to leave home and elopes with Boy (Gino Antonio), the cousin of her boyfriend, Nestor (Julio Diaz). They get married and stay in the house where Boy and Nestor live, distressing Nestor even more. Debbie’s friend, Letty (Jaclyn Jose), has been in love with Nestor for a long time and she seizes the opportunity to get closer to him. After a night of sex, they tie the knot and live in a room next to Boy and Debbie’s. Tension among the four ensues—carnal between Debbie and Nestor, fraternal between Nestor and Boy, and belligerent between Debbie and Letty—and it’s only a matter of time when the house becomes too small for them and fire starts to spread like domino pieces falling on top of one another.

Its sexual dynamics bears a striking resemblance to Scorpio Nights, Peque Gallaga’s 1985 film about a student bedspacer peeping through a hole on the floor and fancying the sight of a woman in her lingerie, whom he eventually sleeps with. Both movies depict the claws of darkness that hovers around the setting, particularly the bedroom, and in Takaw Tukso’s case, the car repair shop. These confined spaces breathe a life of their own and provide a distinct mood of claustrophobia. Debbie, Boy, Nestor, and Letty get trapped in some sort of black hole: they act according to their instincts and turn into animals when provoked. Lao is less conscious about the scruples of morality than the logic of dramaturgy, putting danger signs everywhere, and keeping track of each character’s misstep. Like most directors of Lao’s scripts, Pascual allows himself to be controlled and overpowered, yet there are crucial scenes in the film whose strength comes from his directorial command, most especially the confrontations among the four characters. The manner in which the acting is delivered to perfection—the vulnerability that warrants an explosion anytime—owes a lot to his discipline as a director.

The existing bootleg copy does not do justice to Joe Tutanes’s masterly camera work and Brillante Mendoza’s outstanding production design, both elements that grease the narrative and turn it into a visual spectacle. Even in its sad state of overexposed colors and unintentional jump cuts, the film shows proof of the skill committed to it. Similar to some of the films made in the 80s, it hints strongly at the effects of martial law, as well as the anxiety of what lies ahead. Furthermore, highbrow moviegoers are likely to admire its rigid stone wall structure, forgiving its tendency to indulge in rhetoric and extract repetitious arguments. It is too in love with its own beauty and brilliance to notice its boundaries, which adds to the discomfort of watching it. Takaw Tukso is a flawed work, but one that stands by its imperfections and makes them worthy of defense.

First published on:

Directed by Jewel Maranan

Poverty gives birth to many stories. It’s a subject so loud and close that audience members usually take for granted some of its sincerest depictions. Most of these stories, like myths and fables, have been told countless of times before, and only a few of them try to rise above from the commonplace. Unfortunately, a certain tendency of Filipino filmmakers is to turn poverty into a genre whose distinct elements have to be satisfied in order to please festival programmers. A number of these movies are preoccupied by the need to overstate the milieu and present characters struggling to survive life. That’s one view of poverty, but where are the others?

Jewel Maranan raises her hand, though it is difficult to see her in a crowd of acclaimed local directors, her documentaries only enjoyed and talked about by a select group of people, mostly peers and colleagues who follow her career. Her first full-length, Kung Balatan ang Bawang, which won the best documentary at the Gawad CCP for Alternative Film and Video in 2008, is one of the finest thesis films produced by the UP Film Institute. Suffice it to say, her academic background has been put to good use. Bawang not only documents women who spend long hours of the day peeling sacks of garlic for a living—receiving less than a hundred pesos for their service, sometimes even less, and being treated unfairly by their employers—but it also presents the perverse ironies experienced by people in dire straits, Maranan refusing to give in to the dangers of ill-mannered sentimentality. The film is shot in Parola, a small community in Tondo, but it’s only in her next feature when she decides to bear its name, seemingly wary of the stereotypes and misconceptions associated with the place.

If Tondo’s image has been blundered notoriously on television and in movies, it’s not because of misrepresentation—surely, there are crimes committed in the place as in any other community—but because of tolerance. No one cries foul when it is repeatedly called the armpit of the city; people are conditioned to accept that. Billboards in Metro Manila are luckier because at least authorities take notice of them and bring them down. On the other hand, who bothers to listen to the poor folk of Tondo? Who cares if they don’t have food to eat or a plate to put their food on? The police blotters and evening news can take care of that. Tondo raises human interest that is less socio-political than anthropological, the kind of stuff that reality television feeds on. Tundong Magiliw doesn’t put too fine a point on these truths, and never, in its 78-minute running time, is it also conscious about making a difference. Maranan is vocal about her advocacy, and she lays it patiently, the way a dressmaker places fabric on top of patterns, to make sure that every piece fits just right.

Tundong Magiliw focuses on a family that lives in a shack near the North Harbor, where cargo is delivered every day and industrial ships passing by the water are the only signs of activity. Virgie, the mother, looks idly at her surroundings as she waits for fish to tug at her pole, hoping that her husband and three children will have something to eat for lunch and supper. She is oblivious of the trash floating on the water or the insects crawling on the rock where she sits. Barefooted, she returns home and is welcomed by her children. On the floor of their house, an essential point of action in the film, is where her family spends most of their time together. They share a meal, they talk about Hilary Clinton, they fancy waiting for a gelatin to be sprinkled with sugar and milk. Virgie and her husband talk about finding work. Their kids busy themselves pasting pirated DVD covers on the wall and discussing war movies, zombies in the water, and killer snakes. Their everyday concerns are almost negligible, but the camera captures a handful of glitter in the air before leaving a sorrowful family portrait.

The beauty of it is that it does not try to impress. On the contrary, Tundong Magiliw’s aesthetic force is effortlessly persuasive. The images leap from pretty to picturesque without looking like generic postcards, a characteristic that evokes the paralyzing visuals of Agrarian Utopia (Urophong Raksasad, 2009), another recent documentary also shot at breathtaking angles. Maranan puts her subjects inside a transparent sphere, allowing her audience to observe them from a distance and feel their troubles vicariously. She is able to express the collapse of what separates life from fiction, both of them sharing parallel realities, the emotions of the characters carrying the narrative and not the other way around. In Robert Bresson’s words, “An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it,” and Maranan, in her attempt to present life falling apart at the seams, manages to do that.

What holds Tundong Magiliw together is the discipline that connotes a penchant for minimalism, emphasizing the importance of balancing elements on and off screen. For instance, the sound of the water and the noise of children playing outside Virgie’s house are not only audible but also visible, as they provide a graphic impression of movement. Unlike Jim Libiran, Maranan prefers morning to night, running the risk of depicting ennui instead of hostility, pregnant silences rather than wearying noises, unaware that her geographical inflections are given away by the thriftiness of her action. Halfway through the film, one realizes that Virgie and the rest of her family speak for their own and not for their milieu. They shift unknowingly between internal and infernal, the circle of their life failing to miss a turn, eventually giving birth to another offspring of uncertainty, yet another hungry bastard.

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“Makati, 1984″

Written by Amado Lacuesta
Directed by Ishmael Bernal
Cast: Hilda Koronel, Chanda Romero, Carmi Martin, Rio Locsin, Gina Pareño

On the surface, the first team-up of writer Amado Lacuesta and director Ishmael Bernal is rather unlikely. Prior to the release of Working Girls in 1984, Lacuesta was a bank executive in Makati, working his way up the company ladder, and Bernal had already been making movies for more than a decade, including the highly regarded works Manila By Night, Himala, and Broken Marriage. Lacuesta’s background was focused on business, Bernal on art and its many limbs. Both showed remarkable success in their fields, and their paths wouldn’t have crossed if one of them hadn’t chased his other dream.

Noted for writing dialogues in his pad of paper at work, Lacuesta pursued writing on the side. Having little exposure to film production did not discourage him to submit a script to a competition organized by the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines. A few years later he was asked to write a screenplay for Viva Films, which producers Tony Gloria and Vic del Rosario picked up to advance the careers of some of the industry’s biggest stars then—Rio Locsin, Carmi Martin, Chanda Romero, Hilda Koronel, Baby Delgado, and Gina Pareño—and to introduce newcomers like Edu Manzano and Cesar Montano. Bernal agreed to direct Working Girls, and it went on to become one of Viva’s critical and commercial triumphs. More importantly, its writer, given a pat on the shoulder, began to take movie projects as part of his day job.

Lacuesta needs to be mentioned early because he is seldom championed by film writers, while in fact, looking back on his relatively short career in cinema, one realizes he has never written a second-rate script. Even Mumbaki (Butch Perez, 1996), which tells the story of a man returning to his roots in Ifugao to serve as a town doctor, a material that works outside Lacuesta’s artistic comfort zone, holds up very well because it strikes a good balance between heavy research and emotional sensitivity. For Working Girls, apparently, he does not have to conduct research. His many years of work in Makati have provided him enough knowledge to write a script whose characters are anything but forced. He has lived in the environment: watching presentations at board meetings, observing secretaries share gossips, putting up with the formality of dinner cocktails, sneering at office politics that thrives whenever somebody gets promoted or when the stock market plunges into an all-time low. His dialogues do not sound scripted; on the contrary, his pen makes graceful strokes however complicated the plots may be.

“Sabel! This must be looooove!”

One important reason for its success is its colorful characterization. Carla (Hilda Koronel) holds one of the top positions in Premium Bank and is being considered for promotion. Her closest rival is Raul (Tommy Abuel), a womanizer who gets her secretary, Isabel (Rio Locsin), pregnant. Raul, however, has his eyes on Amanda (Baby Delgado), an executive from Property Management Seminars who faces stiff competition with Nimfa (Gina Pareño), a single mother who earns a living selling jewelry to employees of both companies, returning every week to bring new items and collect payment. Rose (Maria Isabel Lopez) cannot pay Nimfa on time, so she asks help from her friend, Khris (Joel Lamangan), and she eventually concedes to prostituting her body for easy money. Anne (Chanda Romero) has less financial problems than Rose, but her marriage is slowly falling apart. Taking no notice of their troubles is Suzanne (Carmi Martin), the voluptuous secretary (read: office slut) who seduces old executives and willingly offers her “assets” to them.

It goes without saying that Working Girls champions women, but it is not hampered by any feminist intentions. It still plays on stereotypes about women being inferior to men (read: male chauvinist pigs) but the movie shows them only to make fun of them. Lacuesta and Bernal, both male, treat women as women: they flirt, they hurt, they fall in love, they fall out of love, they work their way to the top, they make stupid decisions. That’s the movie’s firearm of feminism: women are not different. Their brains are bigger than their boobs, as Joyce Jimenez wittily points out in Narinig Mo Na Ba ang L8est? (Jose Javier Reyes, 2001), but there are times when their boobs take control and it’s perfectly fine. Their imperfections only make them more attractive. Their sexual needs do not make them less of a person, and their efforts to please the men they like demonstrate how society is turning the tables for the better.

Almost eighty percent of the film happens at the workplace, and even when the characters are staying home or dining at a restaurant, they still talk about work. Working Girls is driven by the idea that career makes or breaks a person’s life at a certain point, and Makati in 1984, booming and becoming the city’s center of business, is the place to be for people who want to succeed. Dirty old men, social climbers, office bullies, doltish receptionists: they’re all there, haggling to keep their heads above water. Bernal has an eye for structural design and cinematic space, complementing the supposedly monotonous interiors with shots of streets and skyscrapers, taking pleasure in adding fine details like old-fashioned taxis and advertisements lit by neon colors at night. Unlike Star Cinema movies that depict the middle-class, Working Girls presents people who are not alienated from their surroundings. The characters’ wealthy backgrounds are not just an excuse to shoot in luxurious locations or to have them talk about their luxurious lives (read: No Other Woman). When Carmi Martin screams “Sabeel! This must be looooove!” and Edu Manzano calls her to his office and reciprocates her feelings, it’s nothing short of brilliant, the kind of humor that doesn’t leave a bad taste of camp in the mouth.

Jose Javier Reyes, in one of the lowest points of his career, dared to remake Working Girls in 2010. He took the liberty of using the same title and said that his version was intended to pay tribute to Lacuesta and Bernal, unaware that he only did them a disservice. He filled in the shoes of writer and director and fell short on both. For one, he failed to realize that in Lacuesta’s world, hindi lang bata ang lumalandi. Men and women in their thirties and fourties aren’t promiscuous: they are liberated. They have lives outside the bedroom. Lacuesta knows how executives talk to fellow executives and how common employees try to make ends meet and still manage to have some fun after. They are humorous because they are intelligent. Bernal was aware of all of these, and obviously he didn’t have a hard time making the great script work.

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Written by Ricky Lee
Directed by Mel Chionglo
Cast: Piolo Pascual. Janna Victoria, Cherry Pie Picache, Koko Trinidad

There is no denying that Piolo Pascual, after more than ten years in show business, has earned the right to be called an icon. His name has become synonymous with matinée idol worship, a status once achieved by the likes of Richard Gomez, Aga Muhlach, and Robin Padilla, and whose impact, arguable it may seem to many, has been way beyond usual. “Papa P” bears both sides of the pop culture coin. It’s a nickname that even straight guys have become accustomed to and the elite have grown fond of. Aside from acting on television and in movies, he also sings, performs at concerts, hosts programs, and endorses countless products and services. It’s hard to question Piolo’s charm and versatility, yet why is it that his first major role on the big screen, a character whose passion for movies is eclipsed by his passion for romance, rarely gets the attention it deserves from fans and cinephiles alike?

For one, Lagarista is not a vehicle for stardom. Its intentions are modest and simple, far from the themes of star-driven blockbuster movies. Released in 2000, the film is directed by Mel Chionglo, produced by Crown Seven Ventures Inc., and written by Ricky Lee. Piolo stars opposite Janna Victoria, a lesser known actress whose shot at fame also depended on the movie. Fate has been less considerate to Janna; she never had a role this big after Lagarista. On the other hand, Piolo, whose face and physique had been turning mature at the time, appeared in a number of films playing leading man roles, before finally snagging a crucial part in Dekada ’70 (Chito Roño, 2002). After that, people no longer regarded him as an obscure object of desire. On the contrary, the desire was defined, affirmed, and known. Two years after receiving a Gawad Urian nomination for Lagarista, Piolo turned the tables and collected numerous best supporting actor trophies for his performance in Chito Roño’s movie. Dekada ’70 made him a star. Lagarista made people notice that he has the makings of one.

A more disheartening reason for Lagarista‘s failure to leave a mark on viewers is that it didn’t stay long in theaters. It’s one of those movies promoted in tabloid newspapers, written about in gossip columns, and mentioned briefly by Cristy Fermin or Lolit Solis in entertainment news. For what it’s worth, the CBCP might have cared to review it. But like most “lost” movies in the 80s and 90s, it wishes to be reconsidered, as this site aims to instill in its readers, as a work worth revisiting, if not for its aesthetics then for the bottle of time it was able to keep. Lagarista does not aspire for greatness, but in every nook and cranny, in its artlessness and sincerity, in its obliviousness to Piolo’s naiveté, it was able to achieve a feat so little but heartfelt, capturing a phase in Philippine cinema when filmmakers cared less about stars but the stories they earnestly wanted to tell.

At the center of the movie is Gregory (Piolo Pascual). He bikes his way through the streets of Manila and transports film reels from one theater to another. He lives with his grandfather (Koko Trinidad) whose dementia worries Gregory, but whose stories on local movies—being friends with Rogelio dela Rosa, Carmen Rosales, Leopoldo Salcedo, and other film stars—fill him with inspiration. Even his name is taken from a famous movie star: Gregory Peck. He is surrounded by characters whose situations reflect the environment he lives in, their stories mostly about love and separation; Jimmy (Pen Medina), his coworker who waits for his wife (Jennifer Sevilla) to come home; Osang (Cherry Pie Picache), a neighbor encumbered by the (im)possibilities of her lover’s return; Elmo (Bryan Homecillo), a kid left by his father to an abusive uncle (Noni Buencamino); and Bella (Daria Ramirez), a frequent visitor of the theater where Gregory works, giving “extra service” to its patrons.

In many ways, these people emphasize the affection Gregory feels for Anna (Janna Victoria), a girl who stays in a nearby dormitory and moonlights, as Gregory eventually finds out, as an entertainer in a nightclub. He falls for her and she lets him into her life, but her wayward nature, not to mention her tendency to think only for herself, is bittersweet for someone as hopelessly romantic as Gregory.

The film focuses on their love story, but it isn’t exactly the type of romance that promises anything new or interesting. What makes their relationship worthy to look at, however, are the details that complement it, no matter how manhandled they are in the film. For instance, a clip is shown from Hihintayin Kita sa Langit (Carlitos Siguion-Reyna, 1991) where Richard Gomez and Dawn Zulueta are kissing passionately, and then it cuts to Gregory and Anna inside a motel room, about to make love. The attempt at parallelism is obvious, a little laughable in fact, but the film gets away with it the moment the couple strips and shares the heat of the night. The charm of Lagarista rests on its ability to drop numerous references (the FPJ movies, the Rosanna Roces and Nora Aunor posters, the sentimentality of Priscilla Almeda’s cameo near the end) and make them appear without any hint of arrogance, candidly showing how the moviegoing experience is attached to their lives the same way social networking sites preoccupy most people today.

The most touching scene happens when Anna celebrates her birthday and Gregory wants to surprise her by screening a Sharon Cuneta movie she saw as a kid, the title of which she couldn’t remember. Armed with only bits of the movie’s plot in his mind, Gregory goes out of his way to find a reel of the film and steals it from another theater. A humble celebration takes place inside the cinema, attended by their few friends, and they watch the movie together. The next day, in what feels like a pie being thrown at their faces, Gregory and his cohort Jimmy are put in prison.

Never has the film hinted on Gregory’s affection for the job or the importance of it. The nostalgia, however, lingers on the details that Chionglo and Lee use to provide texture to the film. Much of the film’s memorable images are the hand-painted billboards for B-movies and soft-porn releases gracing the facade of ill-maintained theaters. Passing by them, vehicles along Recto and Avenida scramble in traffic, as Gregory hurries to deliver the reels on time. In an early scene, he finds out that Jimmy steals old film reels to earn money from making small wind instruments. Later on, the theater where they work closes down to give way to a residential building. The movie soaks in these details and fortunately its filmmakers know the right time to squeeze.

Upon reflection, the movie theater in Lagarista resembles the one in Serbis (Brillante Mendoza, 2008). It’s a place for people seeking cheap pleasure, mindless of the movie being shown, heedless of the memories that used to inhabit the seats and the aisles. But unlike Mendoza’s film, Lagarista does not trip on the necessity of realism and ends in some sort of silly fantasy. Watching the feast of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo, Gregory convinces Anna about living together. The strange thing about it is that neither of them sounds like characters from a movie. They seem to have finally crossed the screen and embraced another form of life, speaking a different language, writing their own story.

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Noli, as it stands today

A six-year-old kid growing up with toy trains and hand-me-down books could only look forward to the weekend with an exceptionally hopeful pair of eyes. Weekends meant freedom, doing things I was not allowed to do from Mondays to Fridays: sleep late, wake up late, play outside, listen to the radio, watch television, invite friends over, disappear from the house. Saturdays were reserved for household chores, helping my sisters clean the house, tagging along with my brother to buy merienda, running errands that only a six-year-old kid could do. On the other hand, Sundays were far more special: we wear our best clothes, we go out, we eat out, we watch movies.

To be honest, it wasn’t exactly the movies that made me wet with excitement back then. I didn’t care about movies. I didn’t care about stars. I didn’t care about buttered popcorn and Coke in can. The prospect of watching movies every Sunday, a family habit that continued for more than a year before it stopped because we had to cut expenses, filled me with happiness because it meant I’d be passing by the store located near the theater, a small establishment that sold local comics. While my siblings were looking at film posters and arguing about petty things, I’d sneak out of their sight and into the store, browsing through cheap collections, checking out the new issues most especially. My mother would eventually find out where I was, and after endless promises of studying hard at school, she’d buy me a copy of Funny Komiks and I’d shut up, holding a key to another world where my sisters and brother could not enter.

The theater is called Noli. It’s located at the corner of Laguna Street and Rizal Avenue, facing a busy intersection where tricycles and jeepneys load and unload passengers. At first I thought Noli only showed local movies, but there was a time when we went there and my parents said we couldn’t watch the film, apparently because of me. I didn’t ask why but I remember the film was Schindler’s List. We had no choice but to leave. My mother promised that we’d be back next time, but that next time never happened. It was the last time we went there together as a family.

Noli closed down several years ago. In the late nineties its owners tried to save the business and screened sexually provocative films. It didn’t prosper. Its seats remained cold and empty. Its floors were never swept clean again. Its lights were no longer lit. The small store beside it that sold comics also disappeared. The restaurants we used to frequent had been replaced by salons and lotto outlets. I vaguely remember how Noli looked inside—I’m pretty sure it’s nothing special—but its proximity to the places I found special endeared me to it. One weekend I went to the place where it used to stand. I stared at its decrepit state, and it never felt the same.

*This article is part of the Hidden Skyline Competition, sponsored by the British Council. Along with other shortlisted entries, it will be exhibited in the Future Memory Pavilion at the National Museum of Singapore from October 18 to November 19. Learn more about Writing the City here.

Tomorrow is Iya’s first death anniversary. She turned seven last July 23. She died of aneurysm, between two and three o’clock on a Saturday morning, when most people were either sound asleep or reading a book to help them fall asleep. Rain was pouring hard then, as it is now, and the sound of its marching fall was portentous. A few hours before she was pronounced dead I was in my room browsing through the last pages of E.M. Forster’s Maurice, which I started reading when my family went out to dinner, our last one together with Iya. The book made me cry, but I never realized I’d cry harder after putting it back on the shelf.

My sister called to ask for directions to a hospital in Pasig. I scurried to check the Internet, gave her instructions, and sent my hugs for Iya, unaware that my niece was already unconscious, that she would no longer be conscious and return to our house with stories of her friends at school. I was worried, but hopeful. I never thought my sister’s next call would be about Iya’s death, but there I was, wringing the water out of myself like newly washed laundry, the cobwebs in the corners of my room commiserating with me, swayed by the wind as I sobbed, cried, and whimpered. The news of her death hit me hard. I didn’t know what to do. My sister wasn’t speaking clearly but I already knew what she was saying, so I said, please tell the doctors to revive her, bring her back, kahit gulay na siya. I hung up and bawled my eyes out. I refrained from making noises because my mom might hear me. We couldn’t tell her yet. She had a stroke a few months back and was just beginning to recuperate, and several months later, in the most unfortunate of circumstances, she’d be diagnosed with breast cancer. I cried on my pillow for I didn’t know how long.

My brother and I took a cab to Pasig. From time to time he would explain to the driver why I was crying and why our niece was brought to a hospital in Pasig while we could have brought her somewhere near. All I remember from that long ride was the rain. Everywhere there was water: puddles on the side of the road, water dripping from the roofs, the splash of rain on the taxi windows, my tears falling recklessly from my eyes. At the hospital my two sisters were waiting for us. I hugged them and before I knew it I was on the floor, hitting my head on the wall, unable to control myself from crying. The tears just wouldn’t stop. I didn’t know how to make them stop, and in a way I didn’t want them to stop. Days and weeks and months after Iya died I would still cry that way, and those mornings were the hardest to bear. A picture of Iya in my notebook, a memory of her at a convenience store, a kiss from her on a random day, a drawing she made, a card she sent me, a test paper from her class: any of them would easily make me cry. I couldn’t look at kids anymore because they would always remind me of Iya. I couldn’t pass the aisles of sweets in the grocery store because I would always remember the promises I made of buying her presents on payday. I couldn’t go home from work without remembering the many times I ignored her because I was so tired.

Iya had a lot of pictures, and in most of them she was happy, posing and smiling like a movie star. She loved seeing herself in photos, and there were times when she would grab the camera and take a picture of us or anything that struck her fancy. In fact, our personal computer and mobile phones were filled of her pictures. She was always ready for fun. God knows how hard it was looking through them again, remembering where this and that were taken, in the living room, at the mall, at a fast food chain, at a swimming pool, trying to guess if she was pleased or sad or about to throw a tantrum. We had pictures of her ever since she was a baby, and I’d look at them now and miss those days, how I seemed to take them for granted, how I forgot to pay attention to her because I was too preoccupied with my thoughts. I regret missing the chances when I could have spent more time with her, taught her how to read, or just cuddle her before she went to sleep. One day she promised me that she would read all the books on my shelf when she grew up and learned how to read English. It was a sweet promise, and I held on to it because I knew she would, if she had lived longer.

There was never a day I hadn’t thought of her. On the train I would cry heedless of the people around me. At my workplace I’d stop writing and cover my face with a jacket so that my seatmate wouldn’t see me. There were nights when I dreaded going to sleep because I would just bawl my eyes out. Recently I was at a friend’s apartment and we were talking about random things. He stood up to get something and I was left alone so I dozed off for a minute. Before I knew it I was crying no end. Looking back, I think it was the memory of Iya watching videos on my iPod that made me sad then. She loved Blu’s animation (one of the two reviews I published on this blog that mentioned her; the other is her scathing assessment of Bong Revilla’s Panday) and the music videos of Kylie Minogue’s “Come Into My World” and Blur’s “Coffee and TV.” She liked the Blur video most especially. She saw it lots of times. She was clearly amused by the dancing milk carton, and sometimes she would beg to see it again every time I was using my iPod. I’ve always thought that last shot of the two cartons flying to heaven was too melodramatic, but whenever I came across that video now, it was Iya I saw in their smiling faces, flapping her wings and reaching the sky before finally disappearing. It has been a year and the pain has never gone away. I’m sure it never will.

I never had the chance to say goodbye to Iya before she died. I didn’t have the courage to hug her before she was put inside the hospital freezer because my sister said her face was bloated after the doctors tried to revive her. She was only six and it was too much for her. When she was brought home for the wake, my sisters had to shout at me because I didn’t want to look at Iya inside the coffin. They told me Iya might think I was ignoring her, like I did before when I was too exhausted from work. I looked at her and realized that she wasn’t asleep. She’s dead. She’s no longer here. She will no longer ask for Koko Krunch every morning. She will no longer ask me to stay in her room and sleep beside her. She will no longer walk with me on my way to the bank machine or 7-11. She will no longer visit my room and ask what this word means or where this place is. She will no longer sing her favorite songs. She will no longer dance to my favorite songs. She’s somewhere else now, and I wasn’t able to tell her for the last time that I love her more than myself, that I have millions of dreams for her, that I am saving up to send her to the best schools, that I am going to buy her beautiful clothes, that we’re going away somewhere and watch all the movies she wants and we’ll be the coolest uncle and niece this world will ever know.

Thank you Stipe, Berry, Buck, and Mills. For the most part of my childhood I was the man on your moon, supernatural superserious, a nerd carrying a Walkman on the way to school, comforted by your music. You don’t know how much I owe you. Until then, until always.

Written by Quark Henares and Diego Castillo
Directed by Quark Henares
Cast: Jason Abalos, Glaiza de Castro, Ketchup Eusebio, Alwyn Uytingco, Diether Ocampo

It takes a rather distant observer, someone whose knowledge and experience of local music are no match to Quark Henares and Diego Castillo’s, to put Rakenrol in some kind of sober perspective. Two observations are worthy of mention: first, if Rakenrol were intended to pay tribute to the glory days of Pinoy rock music, then the film misses the point. By piling details on details and cameos on cameos, the movie lays more tracks than its narrative can maneuver into, most of which split in the middle and spoil some of the film’s heartfelt moments. Second, among the people from that era who bear witness to its humble beginnings and touching end, Henares is the best person to tell its story. Sadly, he blew that precious opportunity. His insistence on sidetracking and celebrity grazing ends up in drudgery, showing his bad habit of biting off more than he can actually chew.

Contrary to popular belief, movies whose main firearm is nostalgia are not foolproof. Since their attack aims straight at the heart, they expose their weaknesses as much as their strengths, making them more vulnerable to scrutiny. At the center of Rakenrol is Odie (Jason Abalos), who falls in love with his best friend, Irene (Glaiza de Castro). They share CDs and posters, talk about songs on the radio, and watch gigs of their favorite bands together. He writes songs about her and records them. She eventually gets around listening to them, oblivious that they speak to her, Odie too shy to admit his feelings. Driven by their passion for music, they decide to form a band. Mo (Ketchup Eusebio) and Junfour (Alwyn Uytingco) join them, completing Hapipaks’s lineup and in a way forming a circle around the couple, allowing Odie to express her affection for Irene less implicitly. But a douchebag named Jacci Rocha (Diether Ocampo) gets in the way. Irene is besotted with her obsession for Jacci, the egotistic and megalomaniac vocalist of Baron Münchausen, and Odie has no choice but to stay put as Jacci breaks her heart and his.

Rakenrol‘s story looks good on paper. Inevitably it brings to mind many music-driven movies—High Fidelity, Once, Almost Famous, Empire Records, 24-Hour Party People, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, heck, even The School of Rock. A tale of heartbreak sells anywhere, and coupled with music it only becomes more painful. Every song plays like a drug slowly taking effect, resonating like a childhood daydream. Had the story been told well, Odie and Irene’s romance would have been trapped in a magical time capsule of some sort—their love waving from such great heights, lodged inside a beautiful snow globe, entombed yet boundless—something that the filmmakers had actually envisioned for the film. Henares and Castillo, however, are too busy inserting cameos and references, which are fairly reasonable since Rakenrol is an attempt to bring back the feeling of those times, but they indulge so much in breaking the film in fragments, resulting in uneven pacing and hodgepodge plots. The film resembles an apartment where Hapipaks members throw a party: every person they know knocks and enters, and no one remembers who pukes on the couch or leaves early.

There are way too many details, and most of them are rather negligible. Gay music video director Ramon Bautista, cuckoo artist Jun Sabayton, talent manager Matet de Leon, and shady Japanese businessman Ricardo Cepeda, though quirky and entertaining to some extent, are just there for laughs. Considering that humor is better appreciated if it isn’t too eager to please, these characters don’t serve much purpose, unless the intent of the film is to show off what its filmmakers are capable of achieving. Henares and Castillo are obviously more concerned with recreating cultural atmosphere, which is not only limited to music, and that would have been commendable if the narrative isn’t so gangly. In fact, its lankiness is disturbing; remove the fat and what’s left is a story that relies so much on the periphery. For instance, it should have been a joyful moment when Ely Buendia appears fortuitously near the end—the idea of chancing upon him at Ministop feeds on every 90s kid’s fantasy—but by the time he rambles on life and inspiration, all fluffy and frothy, seemingly embodying the entirety of the movie, it turns out to be a failed suicide attempt. That short scene is totally unbearable, worse than Ely’s worst song, and it’s because the movie can’t decide whether to humanize or dehumanize him.

The saving grace of the movie would have been Hapipaks, but the band is reduced to a convenient pretext for Odie to be with Irene, something that happens in real life when love messes up with one’s priorities. Irene makes it sweeter, but in fact Hapipaks is Odie’s dream with or without her. He is a songwriter, a musician, an avid fan of rock music. Hapipaks is more than Irene. Even if she doesn’t say yes, Hapipaks is a reminder of memories before she became part of Odie’s life. Rakenrol loses sight of that. As the credits start to roll, the idea of forming a band, finding a manager, performing at bars, and releasing a record all seems superficial. More than anything else in the movie, no matter how thin it is, the love story sucks everything in, the joys and struggles of being in a band, the bittersweet smell of success, the comfort of good music. Odie and Irene should have taken the sinking boat and pointed it home, but they wasted their time.

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Written and directed by Nawruz Paguidopon

What’s very upsetting about Ang Ladlad party list’s defeat in the May 2010 elections is not the missed opportunity of winning a seat in Congress—although that, of course, is a shame—but the proof that some members of the local gay community consider indifference an option, even if the cause being raised is that of their own. Ang Ladlad only received a total of 113, 187 votes or 0.37 percent, below the 2 percent requirement to earn a congressional seat. For a group whose campaign has always been resilient and whose objectives are clear and well intentioned, Ang Ladlad lost an important battle. What went wrong? To whom this loss should be attributed? Whatever happened to the strong solidarity that the LGBT community is known for? Nawruz Paguidopon’s As Told By the Butterflies does not provide answers, but he tries to dig some of them by interviewing people from the party list, most notably the group’s leader, Danton Remoto.

“A struggle is always long and unfinished,” Danton says hopefully in an interview. Later on when Ang Ladlad members walk around a community to celebrate Santacruzan and promote the group, he remarks about the Catholic bishops trying to stop them, “They’ve been wrong before. And they are wrong again.” Danton’s conviction offers a glaring contrast to the story being told in the film, that of a suicidal young man burdened by his homosexuality. The inclusion of such detail, which serves as the film’s main prop, is obviously a personal decision, but the weakness of it lies in how the narrator contemplates his problem, the hopelessness in his voice when he tells, “hindi puwede kasi hindi mangyayari.” Nawruz presents a grim contradiction, a truth that seems to forget that the personal and the political are actually inseparable, taking for granted that windows, aside from offering escape, also provide a view of the sky from end to end.

Written and directed by Jose Javier Reyes
Cast: Eugene Domingo, Toni Gonzaga, Zanjoe Marudo, Wendell Ramos

Frustrating is how consistently mediocre it is, how every scene tries hard to be funny or sensible, how every joke is not on you but on the film itself. On second thought Joey Reyes is barely keeping his head above water in his recent films, a bunch of them bordering between tacky and passable, which is another reason to be frustrated because he used to be a good scriptwriter. Those twin wedding movies, Kasal Kasali Kasalo and Sakal Sakali Saklolo, are over the top yet the pleasure of watching them stays even on the second or third viewing because of Judy Ann Santos, Ryan Agoncillo, and Gina Pareño. Wedding Tayo Wedding Hindi!, which used to be p’Wedding Tayo, p’Wedding Hindi!, tramples on the same theme and concerns; however, it’s obviously done in haste and poor taste. Otherwise, Toni wouldn’t be talking in dated gay speak gratingly, or Eugene’s acting wouldn’t be so annoyingly forced, or the entire movie wouldn’t be so pedestrian it deserves a towing service.