'Splaining it to idiots

From pinodvd's thread: Who are your top 5 favorite Filipino directors?

llanesmark: To  all the readers im not that good in terms of who are the best filipino film directors? Why do you like them? And what film did there real best.

greatbop: NONE. they all suck. they're all unimaginitive.

Yeah. Right.  

murcielago: Haha.  I'm with you on this greatbop.

...jesus christ, another one...

Another one what? You think it's just greatbop and I who feel that way? You think we're the exceptions? I haven't  been watching any Filipino movies lately for a good reason or so I thought. Was I out of the loop for too long? Have we produced our own M. Night Shayamalan, Ang Lee, or even a Gurinder Chadha in the meantime? Where are the movies? 

Hey, I just feel it's careless (to put it politely) to lump an entire country's cinema and filmmakers into one category (sucks).

M Night Shayamalan? Ang Lee? Chadha? Against Lav Diaz, Mike de Leon, Lino Brocka, Mario O'Hara, Celso Ad. Castillo, Gerry de Leon? I'd like to hear the argument.

murcielago: Point taken. It's just that the sweep and crassness of greatbop's remark perfectly captured the indifference and disappointment over local movies I've developed thru the years as a more-than-casual movie watcher. Sadly film has proved to be just another arena where Filipinos have underachieved. Without exception, the supposedly better local movies I've come across I can only describe with any combination of the follwing: unoriginal, unrealistic, ostentatious, uninspiring, and technically crude.  I'd be as proud as you the day Filipino film makers achieve international acclaim and recognition, never mind commercial success.  Do you honestly believe we have broken thru the world stage even once? I ask cause you're asking me to compare our directors to ones who have.  And lest you think so, that isn't even my gauge for judging a movie. 

The sweep and crassness of bop's remark doesn't even begin to convey the idiocy of what he's saying. If he's seen the relevant Filipino films, then maybe we can take his remark seriously.

You HAVE to be careful saying things like that. Or be prepared to back up your statement. Because you'll be questioned about it, that's for sure. It's not being 'onion skinned,' it's calling on a comment that was probably posted without thinking and probably without much knowledge of the subject being disparaged.

So, have you seen Pila Balde, Segurista, Pangarap ng Puso, Bubungang Lata, Batang West Side, Kriminal ng Baryo Concepcion, Bayaning Third World, Rizal sa Dapitan, Lihim ni Madonna, Eskapo, Sisa, La Vida Rosa? Has he?

If so, let's talk further.

We've always been world class; not all of us (maybe a fraction of a percent) and certainly the world doesn't know it. It's a matter of marketing.

1ringwd4s:

"NONE. they all suck. they're all unimaginitive."

i concur. 

Another yahoo. 

1ringwd4s: exactly! 

YAHOOS

From Gulliver's Travels:

Here we entered, and I saw  three of those detestable creatures whom I first met after my landing feeding  upon roots and the flesh of some animals which I afterwards found to be that  of asses and dogs, and now and then a cow dead by accident or disease. They  were all tied by the neck with strong withes fastened to a beam; they held  their food between the claws of their forefeet, and tore it with their teeth.

My  horror and astonishment are not to be described when I observed in this  abominable animal a perfect human figure; the face of it, indeed, was flat and  broad, the nose depressed, the lips large, and the mouth wide. But these  differences are common to all savage nations, where the lineaments of the  countenances are distorted by the natives suffering their infants to lie  grovelling on the earth, or by carrying them on their backs, nestling with  their face against the mother's shoulders. The forefeet of the Yahoo differed  from my hands in nothing else but the length of the nails, the coarseness and  brownness of the palms, and the hairiness on the backs. There was the same  resemblances between our feet, with the same differences, which I knew very  well, though the horses did not, because of my shoes and stockings; the same  in every part of our bodies, except as to hairiness and colour which I have  already described.

I did indeed observe that the Yahoos were the only animals in this country  subject to any diseases, which, however, were much fewer than horses have  among us, and contracted not by any ill-treatment they meet with, but by the  nastiness and greediness of that sordid brute...the cure  prescribed is a mixture of their own dung and urine forcibly put down the  Yahoo's throat.