movie marathon, anyone?

This is a repost from Kukay's Multiply Blog. I have always been amazed by Geng's dad, with all the artsy-bitsy thing that he is. Dyan mana si Geng e.

I'll find time to check these movies out sometime. (And I better publish this ASAP, before I kill myself. I am supposed to be studying, you see?)

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This article will see print on People's Journal (ata) within the week. Column ito ng tatay ko and i'm sharing it here.
My kuya, who is working in the Middle East, usually emails my dad about trivial stuff and my very sweet poodrahbel includes some of their email conversations in his column. Kuya writes and Poodrah reacts.

Listahan lang ‘to ng mga pelikulang astig

Ulat ng anak:

JOY gave me this website so as to combat boredom and to watch movies even before they are shown on the big screen... She knows that I am a movie buff and I love remakes, not to mention my knowledge of books turned into movies.... I usually watch movies and TV series in this site. My current series favorite is Prison Break (adapted from Clint Eastwood's Escape from Alcatraz) and Smallville (I am a superman fan ever since kaya hilig ko ito). Downloading these movies for, well, pirating (yari pag nalaman ito ng OMB) is a different thing and be sure you have Quickplayer, Flashplayer and DIVX since most of these movies are rip offs (not to mention illegally taken).

If you want to watch old movies that have better quality... Maraming old movies dun as well as new ones and rip offs. Dito ko napanood ‘yung old movies ni George Romero and yung The 300 Spartans (mas maganda pa rin ang 300 ni Frank Miller) but you have to have the mentioned programs in the PC before you can watch. Ask assistance from Aaron or Arjuna (for sure ikatutuwa din ito ng dalawa).

Ulot ng kulamnistang ama:

ADD this to an arbitrary list of must-see films— with the most memorable lines or silences I can reckon:

(1) Kazuo Mori’s Zatoichi at Large had the blind swordsman protagonist hemmed in an orchard by a tangle of peach tree branches groaning with the weight of ripe fruits. Protagonist sniffs at the deluge of sweet ripe scents, plucks out a fruit, and trudges on—why, he could have plucked a lot or gorged himself but didn’t. Too bad movies don’t come with aromas to touch our noses. That silent scene had me chewing a lot of cud about taking only the needful burden on one’s body.

(2) Yoji Yamada’s The Twilight Samurai had the dirt-poor retainer telling the samurai he was ordered to kill that all he had on himself was a bamboo sword—doomed samurai villain’s gaunt face manifests a chiaroscuro of emotions before going berserk at what he deems was an insult at his swordsmanship. That’s a scene packed with pregnant silences before the bloodbath— but the movie is all about a hard-up petty samurai trying to raise two kids and an elderly mom, something too close to a Pinoy’s heart.

(3) Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai had this peasant character mawkishly, awfully, woefully holding back his tears as he stares at an empty rice bin—its contents filched the previous night. The film in all its show of martial strategy, tactics, and no-holds-barred brutality is a fight for RICE…

(4) The Christian Bale-starrer American Psycho starts out with a passionless monologue that sounds like a Dr. Vicky Belo advertisement of skin-care products. The horror of a hollow life is probed to its marrow in this novel-turned-film.

(5) Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses has a solemn, silent foreshadowing scene which limns the woman protagonist—she has no undies on and lets out a dark eyeful in her romping moments-- with two giggling kids in a sitting room. Scene ends as femme fatal grabs the young boy’s crotch, boy cries but she holds on to his penis.

(6) The Rosauro de la Cruz scenario Scorpio Nights opens with panoply, unrelenting, all-out assault of maddening din that defines the microcosm of an urban poor setting—no let up to the noise that invades even the nooks and crannies of even clothed crotches. So it’s no shock that the Anna Marie Gutierrez character whispers to her lover within her husband’s earshot, “Kantutin mo ‘ko.”

(7) Ken Kesey’s novel-turned-movie metaphor for an authoritarian regime One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has this finale in which the supposedly mute character Big Chief grunts then heaves off a drinking fountain, and as water geysers out, he smashes the lunatic’s asylum windows with the fountain, then, flees.

(8) The 1954 Gary Cooper-starrer High Noon packs taut tension in a no-dialogue panning shot of the protagonist trudging through the streets of his town, seeking out volunteer deputies for his noon showdown with a convict who swore to kill him. It’s an emotional tug-of-war between shirking from social responsibility and heeding duty’s call.

(9) Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane paints the portrait of a ruthless media mogul who barks this unforgettable line to a correspondent sent off to cover a war that never was, “You write the news, we provide the war!”

(10) Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner had this wry line spouted off by a replicant, “We came to meet our maker” that sums up a creature’s undying yearning to interface with his creator, superhuman seeking a not-so-puny god.

(11) A Viet movie, The Scent of Green Papayas had a sigh, a reverie smack in hard-nosed reality, a pause for a sequence featuring the female protagonist listening to her pet cricket in a tiny bamboo cage…