The Wily Filipino

The SF Film Fest Is Upon Us!

It's San Francisco Film Fest time again, and I already have my lineup, in alphabetical order (by director):

Ahmad's Gubra

Glawogger's Workingman's Death

Hou's Three Times

Martin's A Short Film about the Indio Nacional

Solito's The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros

Suwa's A Perfect Couple

Suzuki's Princess Raccoon

Plus more vying for my attention:

- Maddin's "The Heart of Guy Maddin" (because he's actually going to be there)
- Zwigoff's "Art School Confidential"
- Solanas' "The Dignity of the Nobodies"
- Garrel's "Regular Lovers"
- Kobayashi's "Bashing"
- Sokurov's "The Sun"
- Herzog's "The Wild Blue Yonder"
- Ruiz's "The Lost Domain"
- Smith's "Heaven and Earth Magic," with Deerhoof playing live
- Tsai's "The Wayward Cloud" (which, after seeing bits and pieces of the infamous last 5 minutes of the film, I'm probably going to detest, especially after I told M, right before What Time Is It There? began, that the film would probably start with a shot of a guy smoking a cigarette for five minutes, and sure enough...)

But I thought I'd put a little plug for Neil Marshall's The Descent, a nicely effective horror flick about, well, six women in a cave. Contrary to the synopsis on the SF Film Society page, there are actually cheap shocks and gratuitous violence galore -- lots of jumping out from shadows, eye-gougings, and eviscerations, etc. -- but that isn't a bad thing. (I think I like Marshall's earlier film, Dog Soldiers, better; that film was six men in the woods instead.) But it helps, it really does, to have a beautiful, kick-ass Pinay (Natalie Mendoza) as one of the female leads.

A Peek.

Breaking blog silence -- I've just been incredibly busy -- with a list of the blog entries coming up, whenever I get to them:

- the coolest band in all of Japan right now , TsuShiMaMiRe (J-Lu will have to disagree, but more about that later; suffice it to say that I gave in to my deepest fanboy impulses)
- another OPM album roundup (including words on the coolest band in all of the Philippines right now, Junior Kilat, and the disappointing Ultraelectromagneticjam)
- book-making (where the V-Monster and I think of ways to justify taking a class)
- the coolest band in all of Canada right now, The New Pornographers
- and how I wish I could say that Belle and Sebastian were the coolest band in all of Scotland right now, but that honor goes to Teenage Fanclub
- all about ATL (but Gladys already beat me to the punch)
- Hou Hsiao-Hsien's wonderful Cafe Lumiere
- Nobuhiro Yamashita's joyous Linda Linda Linda
- and tonight, barring sickness, traffic, bad weather, etc., I get to become a fanboy again by hearing Luisa Igloria read her poetry

But I have an ever-growing stack of papers and exams to grade, another conference in a week, taxes to do...

The Sippy Cups, Cafe du Nord, SF, 3/12/2006.

Great Moment in Rock and Roll #4,382:

The Sippy Cups are a band who has forged a career from astutely figuring out the cosmic link between hippie surrealism and kiddie songs. But it's not just Pink Floyd's "Bike" ("Syd must be riding his bike around Cambridge as we speak," dryly commented the lead singer, Sippy Paul) or "Space Oddity" or "She's A Rainbow" that gets the Sippy Cups treatment; "Bennie and the Jets," "Low Rider" and "Drive My Car" (even Elmo has a version of that one) all get trotted out on stage, with a few lyrics tweaked here and there, to the delight of parents and kids alike. (As proof of a similar mindset, the American version of the British-French film The Magic Roundabout, retitled Doogal on these shores, expunged the Kylie Minogue theme song and replaced it with Pilot's "Magic" and the Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky.")

But I digress: the Great Moment in Rock and Roll #4,382 occurs about halfway through the set. The crowd of four to six year-olds up front and center -- hydrated by the juice boxes from the bar (Dad had his pint of Sierra Nevada), overstimulated by the lights and colorful costumes, entranced by Sippy Doug's juggling clown off to one side, perhaps a little sweaty and exhausted after trying to catch the big soap bubbles floating in the air -- are all geared up and excited. One of the singers, Sippy Alison, asks the audience if they want "a Velvet Underground sing-along" (this is "Who Loves The Sun") or "to jump around to the Ramones." There are various yells from the audience, and the singer says, "Sounds like you want the Ramones."

The drums kick in, that primitivist, elemental rhythm at 176 beats per minute. Sippy Paul crouches near the front of the stage: "I'm going to give you some vowels here, and you have to repeat them after me, okay? A! O!"

The kids shout, "A! O!" (The adults are grinning, because they know what will happen next, "Hey! Ho!" or not.)

Sippy Paul: "A! O! Let's go!"

The kids: "A! O! Let's go! A! O! Let's go! A! O! Let's go!"

And then Sippy Paul yells into the mic: "Now jump around!"

The kids go absolutely nuts. The band launches into "Blitzkrieg Bop," and it's as if someone pulled an electric switch and zapped the crowd. I don't think there isn't a single kindergartener on the floor in front of me that isn't jumping around like little Tasmanian devils, flailing with total lack of restraint. Over by the moshpit at the front of the stage I see my daughter Izzy's pigtails flying. The sheer energy of the moment is exhilarating, as if the kids all understood, on some deeper level, the thrill of collective abandon, of the primal joy of rock and roll made harder, louder, faster. The kids are alright indeed.

Dengue Fever, 12 Galaxies, SF, 3/11/06.

Somehow I managed to wriggle myself into the fifth row of Dengue Fever's concert last night. This was after I a) had abandoned friends up in the mezzanine, who had thought it was going to be too cramped, and b) was abandoned by other friends (including Special K) who were simply too wasted to make it through a set that didn't begin until midnight. (This was the result of Laszlo plus that bar next door, where Barbara Boxer apparently gave a speech a few minutes before we arrived.)

So it's official: Dengue Fever is the coolest band in America. They got the "hit" out of the way first ("Ethanopium," a cover from the Ethiopiques series, which made it onto the Broken Flowers soundtrack), then proceeded to unspool a setlist from their two excellent albums (including "Lost in Laos," a rockin' "Sni Bong," "We Were Gonna," "Flowers," "Escape from Dragon House," "Made of Steam," "Shave Your Beard," and Ros Serey Sothea's "I'm Sixteen" for the encore). It would be pointless to argue that the band's charm didn't primarily come from Chhom Nimol's impressive vocal range (and stage presence), but that would be to discount the limber Farfisa, sax and surf guitar-fueled groove laid down by the band. Their album from last year, Escape from Dragon House, is an amazing, heady, utterly unique swirl of music whose cultural influences are deliciously difficult to parse. In concert, Dengue Fever transforms that mix into a clear imperative: you have to dance.

"People Power Fatigue."

There is no better illustration, I think, of how GMA's KarlRovean tactic -- of equating any sort of dissent with "destabilization" -- has been parroted by both (alas) members of the media and the academe, than by the constant repetition of the catchphrase "people power fatigue." I read it as glib pseudo-sociological shorthand that both legitimates and reproduces acquiescence to GMA's vision of "order." Such "fatigue" is clearly contradicted by the mass demonstrations held both in Manila and in the provinces, both now and during the Hello Garci scandal (to name just two instances). The phrase -- an easy journalistic entree into understanding Those Wacky Filipinos -- (un)wittingly pathologizes opposition as being harmful to the body of the nation; it is "gulo," after all, and "gulo" apparently must be quelled through preemptive strikes.

Perhaps GMA herself said it best in her radio announcement proclaiming the "lifting" of 1071, when she thanked the Filipino people "who understand that the best way to a bright future is through hard work, not taking to the streets."

(Actually, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez has an even better quote in the Philippine Daily Inquirer:

"I think it has some sobering effect," Gonzalez said when asked whether PP 1017 had been effective when applied to the media.

"Even the most critical media had started to reexamine their policies," he said, adding that PP 1017, like all laws, had the effect of "sowing fear" among the people.)

Meanwhile, here's something backchanneled to me, and I'll let the unnamed person have the last word anyway:

as far as i am concerned, my wish is to see every demonstrator on EDSA arrested for destabilizing the Philippine economy. they have no viable replacement for GMA and they are making the philippines an undesirable place for any sort of investment. what alternative do the demonstrators have in mind? another "free election?" none of the street actions have, in any way, shape, or form brought a solution to the increasing gap between those who have and those who don't.

randy a martyr? good lord, after his support for Erap? while i am not an admirer of GMA, neither am i a fan of a loose coalition of FVR, Erap and FPJ sycophants, Marcos loyalists, Utrecht puppets, and glib neo-leftists. and that aquino widow should use her time putting some sense into her talentless daughter's brain before she wastes her energies on EDSA.

also, instead of focusing on that entire Garci incident, maybe those demonstrators should begin by locking up every member of the Marcos family and administration and making them accountable for what the Philippines has become today.

The SFIAAFF / J-Town.

So here are the films I'll be watching (or think you folks should check out) at the SF International Asian American Film Festival, given my limited time in SF (I have to be in Atlanta for a conference):

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Cafe Lumiere (2004).

My friend Jack's Mom said, "Isn't that that Taiwanese filmmaker who made that really really slow movie?" and proceeded to describe Tsai Ming-Liang's What Time Is It There? No, I said, that's another really really slow Taiwanese filmmaker. (I don't mind slow, honest.) It's going to be awesome, though; I'll be watching Tokyo Story again for this one.

Nobuhiro Yamashita's Linda Linda Linda (2005).

Read that synopsis! How could you not want to watch it? (I'll be pulling out my Blue Hearts CDs for that one!)

Richard Wong's Colma: The Musical (2005).

And my apologies to H.P. Mendoza, writer, musician and actor who has publicly shamed me, ha ha, for forsaking Colma: The Musical for the Belle and Sebastian / New Pornographers concert that same night, though he apparently skipped his mom's funeral for a Ben Folds Five concert. I honestly hope it was worth hearing "The Battle of Who Could Care Less" live. And my apologies in advance to L.A. Renigen, whom I think I've never met or been in contact with, but whose cousin is currently a student in my class and has asked me whether I'm watching her cousin's movie. I'm sorry, I said with a wince, realizing that this was at least the second time I had to explain myself after a colleague hassled me about not watching the film especially since I actually work on Daly City. But... but... Belle and Sebastian!

Jeff Adachi's The Slanted Screen (2005).

The director, Jeff Adachi, came by the office last week with a stack of flyers to promote the film. It sure sounded great (he came by the same week I had just shown Deborah Gee's 1988 documentary Slaying the Dragon for the 431st time, not that that's a bad thing). (I also did a double-take, because I recognized his name and face but figured there was no way he was that same Jeff Adachi I was thinking of. He was.)

Speaking of people wandering into my office, Aaron Kitashima (who is one of our majors, who did indeed wander into my office, and, who I just realized, is the grandson of Sox Kitashima!) has been circulating an online petition on the sale of properties in San Francisco's Japantown, which is currently nearing 15,000 signatures. More signatures will help; more information through an SF Bay Guardian article, here.

Stereolab, The Fillmore, SF, 3/4/06.

The best reason to see Stereolab in concert is that they rock live. This was not what I expected from the band who overall has deviated little from the two-chord, vintage-organ, pop wonders they've churned out; when I last saw them on the Dots and Loops tour, their live sound is more aggressive, with the drums higher up in the mix. The emphasis was more on the groove; most people could have very easily danced, except that they chose to hold their beers and dance the indie-concert shuffle.

Last night's excellent concert was no exception, with a setlist mostly taken from the new Fab Four Suture album. (Although not my favorite track from the collection, "Kyberneticka Babicka Pt. 1!") The "groop's" playing was remarkably tight, with Laetitia Sadier receiving much appreciation from the audience. (Projected on the back screen were film loops reminiscent of Brakhage and Harry Smith.) The band started off with "Miss Modular," threw in a surprise "Pack Yr Romantic Mind," finished the set with "Cybele's Reverie," and then played perhaps my favorite Stereolab track (other than "Pinball"), "Outer Bongolia," which descended into a whirlpool of squelchy, droney noise. (Mary Hansen's vocals were sadly missed; in my head I kept filling in the background harmonies.)

(Unfortunately I missed almost of Hot Chip's set; I really wanted to hear "Playboy." Hot Chip was even goofier and unfunkier in person.)