The Wily Filipino

DVD Tag.

Tagged by DBD, so here we go:

Total Number of Films I Own on DVD And Video:

A lot. The number of DVDs I have that are still in shrinkwrap is embarrassing.

The Last Film I Bought:

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Wages of Fear. My justification was that the Criterion edition just went out of print. (This wasn't as extravagant a transaction as the Poeta's purchase yesterday of that Kurosawa Criterion box set.)

Five Films Which I Watch a Lot / Mean a Lot to Me:
This is a hard one, because they're two separate categories, but the first one is easier to figure out:

- Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now
Regular readers of this blog would know that I write about the film often; it still can't let me go.

- Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro
Because it's one of Izzy's favorite films, I've seen it more times than I can count, but that's not the only reason it's on my list; I can't think of any other film that communicates childlike wonder, the realities of adulthood, and the connectedness of life on earth in such a simple, funny and spiritually transcendent fashion. In fact, I'd go out on a limb here and say that Tonari no Totoro is just about perfect.

- Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now
While I could write that it's a haunting meditation on loss and memory, blah blah blah, Roeg's film is a genuinely unsettling, brilliantly edited horror flick that just happens to star two great performers -- Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie -- and is ostensibly about a serial killer in Venice. (Only Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock comes close in terms of evoking similar feelings of dread.)

- Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love
At Angkor Wat they sell rubbings of the many intricate temple carvings for tourists. Wong's film functions in the same way: it's comprised of visual and aural traces and wisps of an affair, in one of the most palpably gorgeous and ethereal films I've ever seen. (The crumbling majesty of the temple complex figures prominently in a scene that almost makes me misty-eyed every time I watch it.) I set aside time to watch the movie once a year, and it's probably not enough.

- John Woo's The Killer
Blood and guns in slow-motion, a body count probably in the hundreds, and loyalty and death writ large in all its terrifying beauty -- what more do you want?

(Three) People I'm Passing the Baton to:
Three Bay Area cities: Fremont (enough of this Oaktown stuff), Albany, and Daly City.

GMA Komiks.

In what I hope will be an ongoing series, my brother Bulletproof Vest goes nuts with Photoshop (or whatever it is he used) and Google Images -- read the rest of this comic epic. (We were chatting last night and we figured he could do an entire series on the two above panels alone, a la Get Your War On.)

Gee, Thanks.

At Random, #7.

In which the sunshine finally arrives on Ocean Beach.

Album Cover Quiz.

And I thought I'd do better at this sort of stuff, but I'm drawing a blank on numbers 8, 11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 24, 30 (Ohio Players?), 32 (same photographer as 26, right?), 33, 34, 36, 40, 41, 46, 47 and 50. That's a lot of blanks! (Not that I really want the Greatest American Hero DVDs.)

Eye Candy.

I figure I must have read Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory back in 1981, and so, while watching Tim Burton's new film, I realized I'd completely forgotten the gleeful, childlike perversity in which Willy Wonka dispatches the children to their bloated, slimed, filthy and taffy-pulled fates. It's nothing new: it's an element that's both in Burton -- see Henry Selick's The Nightmare before Christmas, or Burton's second-best film, Edward Scissorhands -- and certainly in Dahl's work as well. (His almost cheerful introductions to the episodes of Tales of the Unexpected, mostly based on his short stories, belied the cruel twists that would happen at the end.)

Once you get used to this particular mindset, it's a little easier to enjoy the nastiness that Burton unwraps for us. (The audience, however, was unusually quiet throughout, even during a fantastic sequence where the Salts are whisked off to their doom by a battalion of trained Fordist squirrels. I imagine such a Gashlycrumb end was a little too traumatic for Berkeley parents; the Poeta and I were laughing out loud though.)

One of the members of a mailing list I'm on (rightly) guessed that the film would be visually beautiful but completely lacking in warmth and soul. I'm happy to report that the first half hour, at least, is rather touching, with its portrayal of the good-hearted Bucket family. But Burton milks this whole nobility-of-poverty theme for all its worth; it's seemingly earnest, but their suffering clearly borders on caricature, as does most everything else.

"Visually beautiful" is what one inevitably gets in a Burton film, and viewers expecting eye candy will not be disappointed: the psychedelic rivers of chocolate, candy machines designed by Rube Goldberg, the incongruous homage to Kubrick close to the finale, the snow-blasted dreariness of Northern England (or wherever it's supposed to be). Some would probably argue that Johnny Depp is the most "visually beautiful" element in the film, but here he's reduced to cheekbones and unnaturally straight and white teeth -- with his large sunglasses, he looks like a cross between Bono and Dr. Caligari, with a dash of Freddie Mercury thrown in for good measure.

This is where the film squanders the sweetness earned at the beginning, once the focus of the screenplay moves from Charlie to Willy Wonka. (There's little narrative suspense in any case, even for the kids in the audience. The simple morality of Dahl's tale is set up so that the odds are totally stacked against the other children, who are practically embodiments of the Seven Deadly Sins; the enjoyment in the film comes from seeing the factory interior and waiting for the children to be eliminated, a la Battle Royale.) Depp, who is probably one of the best actors of his generation, draws from some well in outer space for his Wonka, and the result is off-putting. His Keith Richards impersonation in Pirates of the Caribbean garnered him critical acclaim, but at least he was endearing there; here, it's a series of stoned non sequiturs and unnatural grimaces.* Funny, yes, but Paul Reubens probably did it best for Burton over two decades ago.**

*The equivalent, if you will, of those squeals and hiccups everytime that other manchild, with his arrested adolescence, pancake-makeup face and proprietor of a similar fantasy world, would sing.

**I would also have been happier watching the film if the lone Oompa-Loompa wasn't played by a South Asian man, which therefore raised the specter of the extraction of labor from colonized, colored people. But Deep Roy's role is actually more interesting -- as the Poeta pointed out, he's the Greek chorus, after all, singing Danny Elfman's songs -- and he has a couple of surprise appearances that complicate his apparent servitude.

At Random, #6.

Just a couple of hours ago (as I was being driven from Jupiter in Berkeley to my car on Fourth Street en route to a late-night restaurant in Oakland's Chinatown) I was treated to the strange, if not downright surreal, experience of watching Derek Jarman's video for the Pet Shop Boys' "It's A Sin." In a minivan. With the volume cranked way up. And sake bottles clinking in a paper bag.

At Random, #5.

One more summer project: I want another tattoo.

Movie Quiz #7: The Answers.

Shot 1:

I guess I thought people would recognize the final scene of Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus (1959), but I was wrong.

Shot 2:

And I thought people would recognize that scene in John Woo's The Killer (1989) when Danny Lee figures out how Chow Yun-Fat massacred those assassins, but I was wrong too.

Shot 3:

And I thought that people would recognize Hanna Schygulla's back -- there was a big clue there! -- in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), but I was wrong again.

Shot 4:

And I thought that people would recognize the last image of that incredible shot in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946) -- that's Ingrid Bergman's hand with the cellar key -- but I was, once again, way wrong.

Shot 5:

And finally, Danny Lloyd (I think it's kind of cool that his first name really is Danny) pedals through the hallways of the Overlook and stops by room 237, in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980).

Boyong Valencia -- a high scorer from the days when I still had my Pinoy Trivia Quiz, almost a decade ago -- was the first to give me the lone correct answer. You folks will get an easier one, one of these days...

At Random, #4.

All last week, Teenage Fanclub's "Ain't That Enough" was the greatest song ever -- finally knocked off its pedestal, at least temporarily*, by HALCALI's "Giri Giri Surf Ride" (thanks to J-Lu, who also sent me the incredible video).

*Not for long, as it found my way back onto iTunes; more later. But that HALCALI song is pretty irresistible...

Batman Really Begins.

(Image stolen from Beyazperde.)

Not much about Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins either: people have said it's the best of the Batman franchise -- followed almost always by "Which isn't saying much," although in this case it is. It's an excellent popcorn movie, and there's real visual pleasure to be had at the glorious mess of metal and fire and steam at the end (the Poeta kept calling that part "sexy," and I think I know what she means).

The bad thing about "origin" movies is that the audience knows what happens next; the good thing about it is the leisurely way by which Batman's persona and surrounding trappings -- the bats, the cave, the Batmobile -- is slowly revealed to the audience and Bruce Wayne himself. In this respect the farfetched plot, involving a water vaporizer that makes little logical sense, is mere window dressing; the real story is Wayne coming to grips with his own identity and past (kind of like Guy Pearce in Nolan's Memento).

Christian Bale isn't half bad -- he's certainly better than any of his predecessors, and he has a mean, inscrutable look to his face that fits the Dark Knight persona -- and he is surrounded by an impeccable cast, after all, with at least a couple of Oscars between them. (Except for Katie Holmes, who looks all of nineteen, as an assistant D.A.; the fact that Christian Bale looked, at certain angles, like Risky Business-era Tom Cruise did not help at all. I'm trying to restrain myself from reproducing the whole Tom - Rob - Scarlett - Jessica - Lindsay - Katie story here, but it's easy enough to Google.)

But the best of the cast was an almost unrecognizable, Bill Macy-ish Gary Oldman, as a (then) Sgt. Gordon, making Batman Begins my favorite Oldman movie since Peter Medak's Romeo Is Bleeding. (I was going to write that Oldman's rumpled, lived-in character nicely anchors the film in some sort of external reality, but Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman perform this function as well.) At least it's good to see Oldman not play the kind of sweaty psycho role that used to go to the far less talented Dennis Hopper.

At Random #3.

I've started running again; we'll see how long I/this lasts. I only run for about 20 minutes, but I think I run fast. (I'm suddenly reminded, almost guiltily, of my Auntie Letty, who's in her '60s and works out at the gym two hours a day, five times a week -- but takes cigarette breaks between crunches! As she so eloquently put it, "I exercise so I can smoke!")

Some Words on Howl.

(Image stolen from Le Quotidien du Cinema.)

There's not much I can write about Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle that The Former Makeweight hasn't already written, in a series of finely detailed (and, as she herself claims, obsessive -- I mean that in jest, of course) entries, on her blog Getaway.

As usual, Miyazaki's visual sense is exquisite, with the castle itself looking like a living, breathing creature (and, as always, no one does flying scenes like Miyazaki does, which we see in a triumphant early scene). It's also probably his most surreal film to date, what with a jumping scarecrow, a fire demon with the voice of Billy Crystal (not as severely miscast as others have mentioned), a young wizard with a huge magic beard, and a Howl that kept reminding me, unfortunately (particularly when we see him in his overstuffed, toy-littered bedroom, agonizing over his beauty), of Michael Jackson. The narrative is also this loosely connected sprawl -- at some point the Poeta turned to me and asked, "Am I the only one who finds this all incomprehensible?" -- though a kind of dream logic kicks in during the last half-hour or so and one simply has to sit back and drink up the images. Worth watching, definitely, though it doesn't have the epic sweep of Princess Mononoke or the eloquent simplicity of My Neighbor Totoro (probably my favorite Miyazaki film).

At Random, #2.

Special K, the Poeta and I have to sit down and plan a going-away event for D-Dog, who's taking off for East Lansing in the fall. (We have an idea but we want it to be a surprise.*) Unfortunately D-Dog wants to invite Melanie Griffith, Fran Drescher and Brittany Murphy! Have these women even been in a room at the same time? (Guess I'll have to disinvite Scarlett and Jessica then -- sorry gals! Didn't want you to have to find out through the blog, but my cellphone battery was running low!)

*Unfortunately the idea -- Great America for the whole day, doing all the rides twice -- just got nixed yesterday afternoon by D-Dog, who apparently got incredibly dehydrated the last time he went. (And we were sitting out in the sun with Special K and our midday beers at Zeitgeist when he said this!) So, back to the drawing board: if anyone has Kelly Clarkson's contact info, D-Dog will be very happy...

Questions on Lancelot.

Some random thoughts -- actually, questions -- which I wrote right after seeing Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac last week:

It was a choice between Mean Girls and Lancelot du Lac, and the latter won. (I was also trying to console myself for not seeing "Spamalot" last week with Bulletproof Vest.) I'm still trying to wrap my head around it (I don't know anything about the film, and it's my first Bresson, which is probably not the first Bresson to start with, and I just finished the DVD a few minutes ago) -- in particular, the constant, abstracted waist-level camera shots of legs (and later, gloves and lances and swords) of both men and horses. As if they were interchangeable somehow.

Is Bresson trying to say that the results of those limbs' actions are oddly separated from the characters? Or does violence -- almost all of which happens offscreen -- separate these tangible, physical extensions of humanity from the humanness of the people themselves? (At some point Guinevere offers her heart and soul to Lancelot, and he responds with "It's your body I want." There aren't any heroes here except probably for the poor deluded Gawain.)

Indeed, close to the end, we only have those differently-colored tights to tell people apart, and in the last scene, Bresson chooses to remove that as well.

And what is up with the soundtrack? That same chirp, that same horn, that same whinny, the consistent sound of clinking armor that is finally silenced in the last shot... (In that almost interminable jousting scene, we see the same shot of the musician looped over and over.) That war and violence, like the sonic elements of the film, are condemned to repeat eternally? Or -- as Brandon on the Pivotal Film mailing list put it -- just bad sound design?

And the first minute of the film... which came first, this film or Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

Laura Cantrell, Cafe du Nord, SF, 07/06/05.

(Photo by Ted Barron, which I stole from WBUR.)

I've increasingly become a fan of American country / folk / bluegrass music in the last year or so. And so earlier this evening I found myself front and center, practically eye-to-eye in front of Laura Cantrell (my new musician crush), in a tiny club, at (incredibly) her first San Francisco performance.

I adored her debut album from 2000 when I first heard it only last year; her third album, Humming by the Flowered Vine, out on Matador, just came out sometime last month, and it's every bit as sweet as the first two. (It's more of a New York album than a Nashville one, if that makes any sense.)

And what a show it was: Cantrell, who has the voice of an angel, and her band (mandolin, bass and acoustic guitar with Mark Spencer, Jon Graboff and Jeremy Chatzky) played a fantastic set; she herself was quite chatty, introducing each song and referring, every now and then, to her former life as an investment banker. They started off with "When the Roses Bloom Again" (surely an antiwar song, from where I stand), then "Churches off the Interstate," and onto a good helping from her three albums for the next 90 minutes (maybe even longer). Highlights included a stripped-down "Not the Tremblin' Kind," a gorgeous "Khaki and Corduroy" (probably my favorite song from the concert), and an encore of "The Whiskey Makes You Sweeter," "The Early Years," and a beautifully hushed "Bees" to end the concert. In a perfect world, Cantrell would be a star...

There is a generous number of downloads at her website if you folks are interested. There are also some great photographs as well, where she seems to have this cute deer-in-the-headlights look every time. "Check this out! I'm actually standing next to Steve Earle!" (And I can't forget the interactive subway map.)

At Random, #1.

The Sassy Lawyer thinks about leaving. (Don't miss the ongoing discussion either.)

More Books for the Fall.

My ever-mutating syllabus for my Asian American culture class is finally settling onto a vague coming-of-age theme. In the class's earliest incarnations, I indulged my anthropological side with a couple of ethnographies; I've since moved to assigning readings in "the expressive arts," which is the course catalog's "official" conception of "culture."

Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter is the lone, constant reading which will never be removed from my syllabi: as template for the Asian American memoir, it's a quick but substantive read; the domestic drama has the virtue of being almost timeless; and it also provides the pedagogical opportunity to enable the students to read on different levels -- to pay attention to the silences and ellipses, to think about the impact of such a memoir, to pull out the implications of Jade Snow's decisions.

This semester I'm pairing it with Ed Lin's Waylaid, a wonderfully hilarious and vulgar novel about a boy who, basically, wants to lose his virginity. (Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son was the runner-up, which I've taught before; so was R. Zamora Linmark's Rolling the R's, but my students were so unprepared for the disjointed prose that they rebelled against it.) I read Waylaid when it came out -- attracted mostly by Helen Zia's incomparable blurb ("Ed Lin has wrought an Asian American Holden Caulfield, whose view from his tightly conscripted life of working at his parents' motel is to get laid without getting fucked.") -- and immediately wanted to inflict it upon my students, but wasn't sure how they would take all the joyous sleaze. But my colleague D-Dog (upon my recommendation!) has used it for a couple of semesters with great success, so my students will be reading it with/against Jade Snow.

It's the films I'm stuck on right now. I've always loved Wayne Wang's Chan Is Missing; it's one of my favorite films, period, but I simply cannot muster any interest from the students every single time I show it. (Perhaps if it was some sort of film class, but...) My colleague Malcolm says that the students are simply "unprepared," and I agree. Much of what the film is based on seems absent -- should I really be so critical or presumptuous? -- from the students' cinematic vocabulary: the improvised-sounding dialogue, Charlie Chan films, the "long" takes, the use of silence, noir films in general, the "static" camera, the unsubtitled conversations, Vertigo, the absolutely sublime final five minutes, Le Samourai, even black and white film period...

So... Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow? (Funny -- I think I'd rather teach John Woo's A Better Tomorrow II -- that, after all, is partly set in the U.S.) Chris Chan Lee's disappointing Yellow? Gene Cajayon's The Debut (not one of my favorites, but good to teach with)?

(Finally nailed down my Anthro class, videos, readings, everything: it's college students and undocumented immigrants in the fall.)

Books for the Fall.

I'm also (somewhat belatedly) trying to figure out my anthropology syllabus. While it would be easier on me, I hate assigning the same things over and over, and I've never repeated books in successive semesters simply because it's boring. It's hard figuring out the right calibration; my favorite ethnographies are either too "esoteric" or too theory-laden for the first-years to appreciate. At the same time, I want them to be able to sink their teeth into actual ethnography.

Last spring was, I think, a successful one, though one student rightly criticized me for not assigning any ethnographies per se. Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down is a triumph of journalistic writing, but in terms of anthropological principles and ethics skirts, at times, on the dubious. Donald Stull and Michael Broadway's Slaughterhouse Blues was, strictly speaking, a sociological study and not the single-sited, area-focused work of which most anthropologists are fond. (This was, however, something of a surprise hit: I wouldn't have figured a book on the American meatpacking industry would generate such great discussions.). In any case, both books had their fans (and of course I am one): one student said he would be "greatly disturbed" if I didn't reassign Fadiman this semester, and another thought I should do Slaughterhouse Blues again because it was "important for students to read about social inequity."

I also used to assign at least one book on music -- I'm sure you regular readers know how invested I am in it -- but haven't done so in a long time. My students have read books on techno, hiphop and dancehall -- not all of them ethnographies though -- and enjoyed them, I think. (My former student Jean Jacket thanked me the other night for assigning Deena Weinstein's Heavy Metal -- as she put it, "it got me a boyfriend.")

So far I've boiled it down to a Bay Area-centered fall. (As an outsider, I explain to the students every semester, I'm very fascinated with American culture.) I'm looking through Carla Menjivar's Fragmented Lives, on Salvadoran immigrants in SF (I wonder how it compares with Sarah Mahler's American Dreaming, which actually upset a couple of people one semester), and J.A. English-Lueck's cultures@siliconvalley, and both look quite fascinating. Rebecca Solnit's well-written and still relevant (though really rather breezy) Hollow City, on gentrification in SF, might be a good quick addition as well. (Plus excerpts / articles from Gray Brechin's Imperial San Francisco, or the Castro Street chapter from Frances Fitzgerald's Cities on a Hill, a screening of Curtis Choy's documentary The Fall of the I-Hotel, maybe something of mine about Daly City...)

The other combination I'm considering has not much relevance with each other. Leo Chavez's Shadowed Lives, on undocumented Latino immigrants in San Diego, was a real eye-opener for many of the students a year ago; the fact that Chavez also made two documentaries in connection with his work makes it a no-brainer to assign to an intro class.

The other is Michael Moffatt's Coming of Age in New Jersey, about which I'm still on the fence. His ethnography on Rutgers students is hilarious, well-written and sucks you in; it also features a chapter I've used before that beautifully illustrates how brilliant insights can emerge from seemingly banal but detailed participant observation. But it also happens to be quite dated (the research was done in the '80s) -- which might, in fact, be a good launching point for discussion. (The attitudes toward race, for instance, are pretty hair-raising; the chapters on sex, at least at first skim, seem to just go on in somewhat creepy detail about students' sexual experiences / fantasies.) Or maybe toss Tanya Luhrmann's (I'm a big fan of her work) Of 2 Minds in the mix.

Yesterday at Moe's I bought three more ethnographies that look extremely interesting as well. One of them, Setha Low's Behind the Gates, seems like a better companion to Chavez's ethnography mentioned above; it's a study on gated communities, and should make the students think about fear, security, borders, labor and so on.

But then I could always go back to the old standbys: women in rural Iraq, fellatio rituals in New Guinea, poverty in Naples...

This Week.

Sigh. If it weren't for airfare prices, and our usual lame coordination, I would be in Philly right now hanging out with my brother Bulletproof Vest. He and his wife Clarissa (can't think of any snappy nickname right now) are I think debating whether to return to Manila or whether Clarissa takes that postdoc. If they do go to Manila, it means I won't see my brother for a long time. =(

Bulletproof Vest, coincidentally, lives a block away from the park where the lone US venue for Live 8 is going to be held. That was the plan -- hang out, go to Live 8, then catch the train to NYC the next day to try to squeeze in a showing of Spamalot, but alas...

I would have loved to see Jay-Z and Stevie Wonder live (for free!), but the rest of the Philly lineup I'm not too sure about. I did see Sarah McLachlan during her unimpeachable Fumbling towards Ecstasy days, but her recent output, with the exception of a couple of songs, has been fairly negligible. The rest of the people playing, at least as announced a month ago, seemed dire: P. Diddy, Rob Thomas, 50 Cent, Bon Jovi, the Dave Matthews Band, and yes, MF5. (Though my brother called me up when surprise performer Kanye West was singing "Jesus Walks!")

But I guess if I went I wouldn't have been able to have lunch with see Howl's Moving Castle and Batman Begins with La Poeta (and raid Amoeba and Rasputin as usual), or have coffee with 12 Mile, or go for a midday drink with Special K, or have drinks again with 12 Mile and Jean Jacket and the Mean Girls Gang at Molotov's, or go to Sausalito with the Iz, or sing along to Spandau Ballet and Kate Bush with my cousin Rousseau and Erica (sorry, can't think of a snappy nickname for her either) before they move to Portland, or get a crash course in J-rock from J-Lu, or Korean goat stew with the Big J... What a week. And just this afternoon at a cafe this woman walks up to me as she's leaving and gives me a big charcoal sketch of a guy with glasses sitting with his legs crossed -- it's me! Like when was the last time that happened to you?

In any case, if my brother will still be there in the fall, a Thanksgiving visit to the East Coast will be in order.

Your New Favorite Song.

Soundtrack for an Imaginary Wes Anderson Film, Track #5.

Nowadays you can't listen to Nick Drake without thinking of his impending suicide at 26; this is a mistake, as it seems to inadvertently cast a doomy shadow over everything he sang.

This music download is cheating somewhat; after all, Drake's "Fly" already shows up on The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack. But this is probably my favorite song of his, from his 1970 album Bryter Later, and it wouldn't be out of place in an Anderson film. (Surprised it hasn't been prominently used in a movie, actually.)

It's one of those jauntily melancholic tunes that qualify for Sad Happy Songs ("Here Comes The Sun," "Wouldn't It Be Nice"). I've always liked that florid piano counterpoint, and the slightly surreal lyrics -- "could've been a signpost, could've been a clock" -- that vaguely reminds one somewhat of high school poetry. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Hear it (6.71 mb, .m4a).

Movie Quiz #7.

[Answers to be posted soon.]