Antique (Korea, 2008)

Sweet, light, dusted with quirk and coated with candy cane colors, Antique is a gentle reminder that life is meant to be devoured, bitter chunks and all.

Director Min Gyoo-dong who directed one of the more intriguing Korean high school horror films Memento Mori---where a painful sexual awakening comes face to face with both social monster and vengeful ghost---continues his exploration of gender by adapting popular Japanese manga Antique Bakery by Fumi Yoshinaga.

Gone are the gothic and heavy with foreboding doom claustrophobia of Memento Mori. Antique, if anything, glows. It glows by contrast: trauma versus joy, sweet versus bitter, while delicious colors overlap and swirl to the riff of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with a sinister undertone.

The movie opens with an awkward confession, Min Sun-Woo (Kim Jae-Wook) admits with much difficulty his liking for Kim Jin-Hyuk (Joo Ji-Hoon). Jin-Hyuk more than turns Sun-Woo down, he smashes a cake on Sun-Woo's face while yelling his disgust.

Years later, Jin-Hyuk puts up a patisserie called Antique and hires Sun-Woo to be his pastry chef. The rest of his staff, a retired boxing champ and Jin-Hyuk's childhood friend and bodyguard---are all bewildered why he opened Antique when cakes in particular make him vomit. For those who haven't read the manga or haven't seen the Japanese series, the reveal is a surprise, one that takes the movie to a darker place, which is still sprinkled with the fantastic: shadow hands that choke manifest a memory that was too traumatizing for Jin-Hyuk to remember.

After Jin-Hyuk rejected Sun-Woo in high school, Sun-Woo has become the opposite of his stuttering past: a Prada-snug love magnet that no man, gay or straight, could resist. Except, of course, for Jin-Hyuk.

Homosexuality is played with flirtatious sweetness all through out with a dash of magic. It's a refreshing approach with no hint of irony and wonderfully free of guilt or tragedy. Joo Ji-Hoon of Princess Hours sheds his refined affectation for the hot-tempered Jin-Hyuk. His comedic timing is ruggedly perfect; the consuming burden of pretending to be happy for his staff and his family never leaves his eyes. (Ji-Hoon was recently convicted of illegal drug use. He was given a suspended jail term and community service. More information about this here.) Kim Jae-Wook of Coffee Prince plays Sun-woo with refinement and grace, and delightfully counters Ji-Hoon's brusque, manly manners with subtle but tender gestures.

Musical numbers, comedy, sexual tension, murder, and cakes, lots and lots of cakes. Antique can be faulted for juggling too many quirks and styles, but it is Min Gyu-dong's unexpected visual hiccups---women in the flour, a boxing ring covered with flowers, a fist fight with a shadow creature---that makes this film explosively sensual while propelling the mystery and plot. It's definitely tricky but Gyu-dong's instincts are spot on. In Park Chan-Wook's I'm a Cyborg but That's OK, the absurd, hallucinatory vignettes often distract from the storytelling and made the mundane more mundane; cool ideas that accidentally became the movie. Here, it is played to heighten the sensation, to make senses more tangible: Seduction in the women rolling in the powdery sugar, Fear in the drawer that sprung out of a child's chest.

Above the din of ecstatic imagination and your own grumbling stomach---have a slice of cake or ice cream within reach, it will come in handy---Antique's coda casually serves a palatable food for thought: Take the sweet with the bitter, the acidic, the spice but never forget the icing on top.

Rating: 5

ANTIQUE 서양골동양과자점 앤티크
Directed by Min Gyu-Dong
Starring Joo Ji-Hoon, Kim Jae-Wook, Yoo Ah-In, Choi Ji-Ho

Visit Hancinema for more Antique goodness. Below is Love is by FT Island MV from Antique.

Requiems and cake

Menggay had a face like a doll; those Drew Barrymore eyes could easily light up even the most dreadful study groups, usually Natural Science 1 or Social Science, geology and philosophers. She was very easy to get along with, and she was one of those friends in college I don't remember being introduced to because we had shared too many stories, notes, and giggles. She passed away two months ago from complications during child birth. The baby survived.

GeneticFreak, or Addison was one of the fierce posters over in Comic Kolektor Philippines. It was a forum that I, along with 3 other comic book geeks, put up to build a community of comic book readers in the Philippines. Addie was old school and he knew his stuff. Arguing with him over writers, artists and movies was always fun because his point of view never waivered. He loved The Wrestler to bits and wanted Mickey Rourke to win Best Actor. He passed away last Sunday due to pancreatitis.

Just this morning, W sent me a text message about a friend's husband's passing.

I was watching the Korean movie Antique last night with W. It's a fun film with lots of quirks. It's about a man who put up a patisserie even if cakes make him vomit. It's about varying degrees of love and the varying distances we go to to forget. It's about how we cover the bitter with the sweet, and make joyous moments, because they are so few and far between, even sweeter by indulging our sweet tooth.

It was around 1 a.m. when I sneaked out to the kitchen and devoured a chocolate truffle ice cream. Bitter. Sweet. And grateful.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (2008)

Because the status was not quo, Joss Whedon, in the middle of the WGA strike last year proved the studio yuppie scum wrong, that, no, money does not make a show brilliant, and that, yes, writers do. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog could very well be the best single episode TV show that wasn't on TV. A 43-minute musical initially produced exclusively for Internet distribution, Joss Whedon self-produced, directed and composed the music with the help of brothers Zack and Jed Whedon and actress Maurissa Tancharoen.

With my freeze ray I will stop the world,

With my freeze ray I will find the time to find the words to

Tell you how how you make make me feel...
- Dr. Horrible

Dr. Horrible, played with geek-buckling precision by Neil Patrick Harris, is a wannabe super villain who video blogs, replies to sent-in emails, and reveals his master plan to rule the world and win over laundromat girl of his dreams Penny (Felicia Day who played the potential and later on slayer Vi in Buffy the Vampire Slayer) through songs. When he receives a response to his application from the Evil League of Evil, he sets to motion his plan to steal the final ingredient to make his freeze ray work---a freeze ray that would freeze time and stop the pain so he could finally confess his love. Aww.

Much like everything else in the Whedonverse, things don't go according to plan. Horrible was successful in stealing the wonderflonium but he also accidentally introduced Captain Hammer (wonderfully hammy Nathan Fillon), his nemesis, the Superman to his Brainiac, to Penny.

The Buffy musical Once More, with Feeling, episode six of the gloomy sixth season is arguably the show's finest hour; I am obviously biased since I named this blog after Buffy's confessional number. A demon descends upon Sunnydale and binds the town and its inhabitants to a spell that made everyone sing and dance...to death. Best kept secrets were sung out loud, silly, oftentimes funny, and ultimately existential. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a more typical musical with songs for soliloquy. The songs this time around are catchier (but shorter, damn!) and the counterpoint vocals of Harris and Day in the exceptional My Eyes---which chronicles a downfall and a falling for someone, helplessly getting smitten beside helplessly fulfilling an evil destiny---packs a contrasting emotional punch that celebrated musical-movies Dreamgirls, Rent or Chicago can only dream of, err, packing.

The musical format keeps things whimsical, a sonic bubble that seemingly contained the plot in comic booky fantasy fulfillment territory. But this is no doubt a Joss Whedon story and if there's one thing that he is a genius at it's the slap-in-the-face, punch-in-the-nose, kick-in-the-shin, drive-a-stake-through-the-heart ending; Whedon cruelly reveals his last card just when you feel the worst has happened.

The last 3 seconds of Dr. Horrible has rightfully earned a degree in Horribleness; a silence and a blank stare that continues to haunt me.

I cannot believe my eyes
How the world’s filled with filth and lies
but it’s plain to see evil inside of me
is on the rise.
- Dr. Horrible

Fate versus free will seems to be a constant in the Whedonverse. Buffy accepted hers (fate) even if it meant a short lifespan; Angel went against his monstrous nature (free will) but only because he rebelled against his vampire fate.

Dr. Horrible at the start was obviously not meant for supervillainy. He declined a grudge match with Johnny Snow because there were children at a park and his ultimate secret weapon's main purpose was to stop time for confession's sake. Even when he was one click away from killing Captain Hammer, he hesitated.

It was crazy random happenstance.

It seems like no matter what he did, Horrible was destined to join the Evil League of Evil. It was his fate to be a villain. Whedon's characters continue to be caught in situations that dictate their roles in the world. He seems to be saying that there is no real good or evil; it's the circumstances that make us, that ultimately define us.

Hero. Villain. Sidekick. Victim. We are everyone at one point in our lives. It's beyond our hands.

Rating: 5

Get Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog here.
The commentary is equally sing-alongy.


Thaw your cold hearts with this preview.

Independencia (Philippines, 2009)

Independencia plays like Cocteau Twins' Blue Bell Knoll, form and pattern are forefront while the rest---actors, dialogue, chickens---drift like ambient noise, the swirling layers of synthesizers if you will that wall the experience within the confines of cinema. Independencia aims to capture the cinematic style of the period it depicts, here, the 35 mm films shot entirely in sound stages during the American occupation in the 1900s.

Free Form: A short rambling on history and why Jose Nepomuceno and co. are probably throwing a party in filmmaker heaven

The first picture with sound reached the Philippines in 1910, and in 1912, New York and Hollywood film companies started putting up offices in Manila to distribute films. The lukewarm reception led two American entrepreneurs to make a film about Jose Rizal's execution. With the curiosity of the Filipino audience piqued, Jose Nepomuceno produced the first Filipino movie, Dalagang Bukid, in 1919, which was based on a highly popular zarzuela piece by Hermogenes Ilagan and Leon Ignacio.

The U.S. colonial government then had already been using films for propaganda (in the guise of education and information dissemination) and locally-produced films---early film producers included American businessmen and local politicians---were only allowed to tackle "safe" issues of reconciliation among classes, religiosity and repentance, themes that prevailed in zarzuelas and theater. Ironically, the people who encouraged the Filipino film industry to grow were also the same people who limited its growth by setting rigid rules on expression.

The 35 mm film was a haunting reminder of our colonial past.

Independencia took that format, and the history that came along with it, and squashed the years of silence that the 35 mm format represented. Premiering in the Philippines on Independence Day makes the realization even more poignant.

I have only seen Japanese World War II propaganda films shot in 35 mm (courtesy of the Filipinas Heritage Library) but I could deduct that director Raya Martin celebrated and challenged both format and form. Independencia is stunning, a black and white magic eye that draws you with hypnotic visuals---look closely and details surface. And just as you get used to the shadowy reverie, Martin slaps you with sex and that clever bit of dialogue spoken to the audience. Apichatpongian in the dreamy texture of the jungle, and in the reveal of the darker side of nature reminescent of the tiger shaman in Tropical Malady, what Independencia lacks in momentum it makes up for with seductive mystery.

Raya Martin, whether consciously or not, has handed the 35 mm film back to the hands of early film makers Julian Manansala, Nepumoceno and everyone else who attempted to say something, say anything, but weren't given the chance to capture it on film. Pretty heroic stuff in my book.

Prisoners of Pattern: Thoreau and why that Robots in Disguise song never left my head.

A mother and son run to the woods to live deliberately, to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. The struggle for independence from the American colonial government is mere context to a romantic existential exploration of the absurdity of the concept of freedom. The family (along with the viewers) is plucked from everything familiar and is thrown into a disorienting tangle of trees, shrubs and rivers where they thrive in an illusion of freedom---the jungle itself is a prison of patterns and cycles, the world outside it more so.

Martin seems to say that freedom is not liberum arbitium where we can do as we please even if we are isolated from the rest of society and where values are insignificant to decisions made. In the jungle, there are no societal norms existing, but the values the family holds dear from folklore to, yes, their concept of freedom, is immutable, cultivated from the society of which they were a part of.

The crucial decision that the child makes at the end was dictated by the values he learned from his brief life with his parents.

Could our own values restrict our freedom? (Yes. Hello, Board of Censors.) Or does it dictate what we are free to do? Freedom and responsibility seem to be entwined; there is no freedom from being responsible for one's action. It's a cycle.

Keep moving, keep doing, keep breathing, stay living. Robots in Disguise's Cycle Song in a loop in my head while I am writing this. The mechanical absurdity of patterns, the "unfairness" of the world. Independencia is unabashedly arthouse in form but its thoughtful encounter with the absurd, whether mustached or veined leaf, is all too candidly angsty.

And just because I am free to declare this: It is fucking brilliant.

Rating: 5

Independencia (2009) Directed by Raya Martin
Produced by Arleen Cuevas
Starring Tetchie Agbayani, Sid Lucero, Assunta de Rossi, Mika Aguilos

Links consulted on history of Philippine cinema:

• History of Philippine Cinema by Arsenio Boots Bautista via National Commission for Culture and the Arts
• Philippine Journeys: History of Philippine Cinema
  

Independence Day Viewing: Sabongero and Independencia premiere

Happy Independence Day, Philippines!

62nd Cannes International Film Festival entries Sabongero, directed by Janice Perez, Official Selection to the Short Film Corner, and Raya Martin's Independencia, an entry in Un Certain Regard, will premiere later today at the 14th French Film Festival, Shang Cineplex 3. Serbis by this year's Cannes Best Director Brillante Mendoza will also be shown...Kinatay won't be having its premiere, unfortunately, and this article gives us a clue why.

Yay, freedom! The irony is lost on the Board of Censors, obviously.

Here's the screening schedule for the remaining three days of the festival:

June 12, Friday
Manong Maong and Anino - 12:30 p.m.
Sabongero - 3:00 p.m.
Serbis - 5:30 p.m.
Independencia - 8:00 p.m.

June 13, Saturday
Ridicule - 12:30 p.m.
Dix-Sept Fois Cecile Cassard - 3:00 p.m.
L ‘Esquive - 5:30 p.m.
Flandres - 8:00 p.m.

June 14, Sunday
Un Secret - 12:30pm
Jean de la Fontaine - 3:00 p.m.
Les Quatre Cent Coups - 5:30 p.m.
Van Gogh - 8:00 p.m.

Kita-kits!

Fan Chan (Thailand, 2003)

Rating: 4

Aww escapes your lips, unaware like a sigh, and there's no fighting it. Fan Chan (แฟนฉัน) disarms with its sharp eye for gauzy details making the childhood nostalgia surface like a rubber ball bobbing up and down, foolishly playful among the debris of adult apprehension. You want to stay here in the land of rubber bands and Gumamela soups where freedom's just another word for kung fu role play.

Many have attempted to bottle childhood but have done so by skipping the dirt that a bicycle kicks up or the sourness of the sweat. Some mistake melodrama for meaning and riddle the innocence with tragic awakenings. But there is no concern for meaning when school is out and you're 8 years old and about to dive into a river butt naked.

Fan Chan is cleverly simple: a young man, Jeab, learns about the wedding of Noi Nah, a childhood friend---a playground sweetheart---and goes back to their last weeks together before they separated ways. The six young screenwriters/directors who debut with this film have the riffs of memory perfected; a Thai pop song is the chirpy time machine to a small town in Thailand in the 1980s. Jeab (Charlie Trairat) and Noi Nah (Focus Jirakul) have been friends since birth, have fathers who are rival barbers and mothers who are best friends. Jeab wakes up late for school everyday, and everyday, Jeab and his father would chase the bus on a bike midway to school. On the bus, he meets an all-boy gang led by the school bully Jack (Chaleumpol Tikumpornteerawong) who constantly poked fun at Jeab and Noi Nah's closeness. Boys will be boys and Jeab was made to choose between playing Chinese Garter (or rubber band jump-rope according to Wikipedia) with Noi Nah or foot ball with Jack and his gang.

The film's English title, My Girl, is quite a turn-off because it reminded me of that Home Alone kid's movie of the same title, the one where it was all cuddly cute until he died. From bee stings, thank you very much. Fan Chan in contrast is unsentimental, which I think is a very, very brave move. Bittersweet is as far as it goes, that accidentally romantic rubber band bit at the end is quite a heartbreaker but as the grown up Jeab confesses, he got over it quickly...why, hello kite.

I am amazed at the similarity of experience; I played the same rubber band games and "brewed" the same nasty flower stew---I even tried the slimy soup at one point, not at all good--- and in a palpable way I was recollecting my own sweat-stained childhood down the tiny but heavily crowded streets of Sampaloc, Manila. Fan Chan is not about the plot, it is a celebration of days running wild with laughter, of the kind of recklessness that only comes with innocence. It deliberately meanders around endless afternoons of playing and bruising (much like My Neighbor Totoro's wide-eyed treks into the forest). And discovering new ways to have fun which, really, childhood is all about.

Minutes after the movie had finished, I began to wonder when I started fearing falling down flat on my face When did making mistakes stop being fun, when did letting go become so difficult?

Look everybody, no hands!


A song from the Fan Chan OST. Technicolor synth-pop, aw yeah.

รักคือฝันไป - Ost.fanchan

Kaleldo (Philippines, 2006)

Directed by Brillante Mendoza
Starring Johnny Delgado, Cherry Pie Picache, Angel Aquino, Juliana Palermo, Criselda Volks, Alan Paule

Rating: 4

Where Pampanga in Brillante Mendoza's first full-length feature, Masahista, is parched and metallic in its visual aftertaste, here in Kaleldo, it is magic realistic, the landscape and the elements anchored to the passion and secrets of three women. Set ten years after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo which buried the province of Pampanga under lahar, Kaleldo (Summer Heat) follows the lives of sisters Jesusa (Picache), Lourdes (Aquino) and Grace (Palermo) under the watchful eyes of patriarch Mang Rudy (Delgado) who is struggling to revive the family's woodcarving business. The names of the sisters establish the kind of religiosity that Mang Rudy observes, reflected in the way he demands obedience from his children who are ruled by emotional motivations which the movie reveals through snippets spanning three summers, pinned down by three elements as metaphors: Wind, Fire, Water.

Angin (wind) is Grace, the newly-wed and the youngest of the three who follows her whims to wherever it takes her as long as it takes her far from her mama's boy husband, Conrad. She detests having to leave her ancestral home for her in-laws' plastic-covered living room but tradition forces her to tame her rebellion as she slowly, against her will, settles down. Api (fire) is Lourdes, the middle child who appears to keep it all together. She is married to Andy (Paule) who on the surface is a meek, spineless man but is a sadist in bed and even more violently monstrous when angered. Lourdes sleeps with a bank manager to get her father's loan approved, to catastrophic repercussions. Andy beats her and Mang Rudy suffers a stroke. Danum (water) is Jess, quietly-serving, self-sacrificing, silently-drowning. As tradition dictates, being the eldest has appointed Jess as her father's caretaker but her taking on various jobs to help make ends meet for the family has prompted her to ask her lover Rowena (Volks) to watch over Mang Rudy. Jess and Lourdes argue over Rowena's contribution to the household; Mang Rudy puts his mighty foot down and declares that if Rowena is the reason for the tension between the sisters then she has to leave.

The parallelisms are sometimes too obvious: the wind as fickle temperament, fire as destructive rage and the sexuality of water when superimposed against lesbian lovemaking. Mendoza cuts his narratives with graceful shots of these elements---his arthouse leanings a little too contrived---but when it does work, the result is a brilliant cohesion of atmosphere and narrative.

The chapter on Fire is the richest of the three because it explores not just the element's destructive nature but also its cleansing and transforming attributes. Andy, to show his remorse with what he had done to Lourdes and as an act of repentance, takes part in the self-flagellation ritual held during maleldo (Mahal na Araw or Holy Week) while Lourdes who is secretly watching from a tricycle gets a spattering of (repentent) blood. Right from the start of the chapter, Mendoza has been showing us droplets of blood staining and blooming in water and he neatly ties this up with a scene of Lourdes washing the bloodied shirt of Andy, the final act of forgiving and forgiveness between the married couple.

Kaleldo continues Mendoza's ode to Pampanga and the families struggling within its dying soil. His love for the culture is palpable, the language and the food, the industries and the deeply-rooted cultural tics are framed against wildly vibrant skies, tangible worship at its most picturesque. On the surface, Kaleldo is a beautifully-shot family drama. Mendoza's storytelling can be confusing at first as he purposely veers away from conventional melodrama, and his visual metaphors have the tendency to distract. But once you get used to the movie's rhythm, then, just like the change of seasons, you'll welcome the varying textures and colors of the passing of time.

Batanes (Philippines, 2007)

RATING: 3

Batanes is a cinematographer's movie and Monchie Redoble has a carefully wandering eye. In Masahista, his camera sweeps above a series of boxy rooms like a predator surveying a landscape of twisted bodies, here, it contemplates, detached. Batanes itself is overwhelmingly rich and Redoble does a great job of letting the intimate details of the vast landscape surface. The depth is felt more than seen; the sea always threatens to flood, the land sharp and jagged. Glorious, yes, but also untouchable. And the characters caught in a cycle of love and loss seem insignificant against the force of nature, which, in its heart, is what Batanes is all about.

Batanes is at the tip of the Philippine peninsula and is regularly rocked by storms which limits the flights that enter the province. Up to the present, there are only hints of modernity in the Philippines' smallest province, electricity continues to be intermitent, and its locals, the Ivatan, are at the constant mercy of nature's temper. Coming from the outside, Pam (Iza Calzado) is at first thrilled at the quaintness of life in Batanes when she moves in with her husband Rico (Joem Bascon) who spends most of his screen time lecturing Pam about the sea and her moods. When the sea does begin acting like the jealous lover that Rico portrayed it to be and claims Rico's life, Pam begins to open herself up to nature's incalculable pattern. Redoble consistently frames the actors as small counterpoints to the landscape or the sore thumb sticking out from the encompassing palm of the ocean.

Directors Adolfo Alix Jr. and John David Hukom also look to the weather for storytelling beats; the plot moves along as nature changes colors, which is a little too obvious for my taste. The sea taketh and giveth, and oh how it giveth in the form of Ken Zhu, my favorite F4 from the Taiwanese TV drama Meteor Garden. Unfortunately, this is when the movie drastically stumbles.

As a character study, the film does succeed in creating an engaging albeit sullen lead. The movie is at its best when it is following Pam around the island as she struggles to accept the fate of her husband by understanding the random jurisdiction of the sea to the point where she almost drowns in her desire to fathom what her husband's last thoughts were. The very pagan approach to mourning---conversing with nature instead of praying to God; nature's will instead of God's will---is a welcome point of view that's quite far from the conventions of popular cinema. This thoughtfully-paced introspective journey is cut short when the sea washes ashore an unconsciousness and wounded Taiwanese man who will ignite once more Pam's darkening heart. I get it, love is a force of nature in itself, so powerful that it punctures the movie's delicate atmosphere as it rushes clumsily to a happy ending. The relationship isn't given enough time to blossom considering that both Pam and Kao (Ken Zhu) are still in the process of coping with huge losses, a husband for Pam, and a family left behind in Taiwan for Kao.

Directors Alix Jr. and Hukom seem to be more interested in telling the story of Pam and the sea more than Pam and Kao's which feels more going-through-the-motions than a possibly more provocative love-among-the-ruined angle (which, years later, Alix Jr. brilliantly achieves with the incandescently heartbreaking Daybreak).

Or maybe, by glossing over the romance, Batanes acknowledges how insignificantly small we all are, how petty our heartbreaks, how trite our daily rituals, compared to the divine madness of nature's whim.


Directed by Adolfo Alix Jr. and John David Hukom
Written by Arah Badayos
Starring Iza Calzado, Ken Zhu, Sid Lucero, Joem Bascon