Desperada
Monday, January 07, 2008
Spent the weekend watching Desperadas and Resiklo with Cousin Whammy, who, like every other college student in Manila, was required to write film reviews on the current, vainglorious batch of MMFF entries. I’d end up an echo if I blog my own detailed assessment. Haven’t written anything yet, but already I find that sense of redundancy flitting around my keyboard, the buzz of its stunted vocabulary ringing in my head. Loopholes (holes…holes…). Melodrama (ma…ma…). Budget (dget…dget…). Weak attempt (tempt…tempt…). And the dialogue! (ogue!...ogue!...). My god! (od!...od!...) Bong Revilla’s so fat (fat…fat…).
And let us not forget the most employed reverberation of all: For a Filipino film (ilm…ilm…).
For a Filipino film, the lighting wasn’t bad.
For a Filipino film, they used good angles.
For a Filipino film, that robot looked pretty agile. I guess.
For a Filipino film, it was funny. (“I say, I quite fancy that part when Miss Ruffa Mae Quinto waved those dildos around in the lobby of 8 Waves Waterpark. Yes, yes. Quite, quite,” says the bajillionth film blog critic as he holds his monocle and strokes his shaft with aplomb.)
I won’t be able to laud either flick without seeing them as earnest yet poor ventures into Hollywood-style filmmaking. And this fact sucks eggs. And I am quickly beginning to regret my use of the word “earnest.” And god, do you see what’s happening here? My sentiments can’t help but resonate what’s already been said not just about this season’s batch, but about each and every batch since this “fete” began. A complete waste of space, this.
But I really can’t say anything good about Desperadas even within this context of consolation. Resiklo, however, did deserve a smidge of approval. It had set-ups and pay-offs that were executed smoothly. For a Filipino film, this modest employment of screenplay structuring skills was pleasantly satisfying, and I left that cinema without feeling all that ticked. Not as livid as I was after Desperadas, anyway. What a load of doody that was.
Nonetheless, sexual tension between Bong Revilla and Jennylyn Mercado? Holy hell. For an MMFF film, even that was retarded.
posted by marguerite @ 2:05 AM
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