Almodovar vs. Gosengfiao

From a_film_by:

David Ehrenstein: Almodovar is unquestionably talented. But I've never really been all that impressed with his work. When he first burst upon the scene his supporters -- like Kael -- were always going on about how "daring" he was. Yet I've never found anything at all daring in any of his films, even "Law of Desire."

Count me in the lack of love, even more so for the later, more 'human' works (Talk to Her, All About My Mother) than for the wilder, earlier ones (which I do like). Actually, there's what I think is a Filipino equivalent to Almodovar, and one who started working earlier than he did--Joey Gosengfiao, gay Filipino filmmaker with Japanese blood who was doing straight-faced camp in the early '70s until today.

In fact his masterpiece, Temptation Island (1981, no relation to the reality show) is stranger than anything Almodovar's ever done, I think: beauty pageant contestants on a ship that sinks are marooned on an island, where they are forced to seek food, water, shelter, and a place to plug in their hairdryers. Plenty of sex, bitching, giant ice cream cones and a climactic act of cannibalism.

Women I'd love to take to bed with me

Isabelle Adjani (Eye-gougingly beautiful woman who pines to the point of insanity for a man in The Story of Adele H.)

Irma Adlawan (Luminous in Bagong Bayani (The Last Wish) and heartbreaking as the raped mother raped a second time by the screen adaptation of her life in Tuhog (Larger Than Life); also extremely sexy in person)

Emmanuelle Beart (Naked pagan dance in Manon of the Springs; beautiful and mostly nude in the four-hour La Belle Noiseuse; wickedly funny in 8 Women)

Ingrid Bergman (Beautiful in For Whom the Bell Tolls (John Derek, Bo's husband, rated her the only woman who deserved a '9' after seeing her in that picture); heartbreaking in Casablanca (the film is laughable without her); devastating in Notorious)

Marilyn Chambers (seminal performance in art porno Behind the Green Door; fascinatingly phallic in Rabid)

Marion Davies (possibly the first and one of the finest screwball actesses, particularly captivating in The Patsy)

Jeon Do-yeon (Breathlessly powerful opening sex scene in Happy End; the rest of the film is a memorable drama about a woman forced to choose between her husband and loving child and her lover)

Maria Falconetti (Gives perhaps the single greatest--and most erotic--performance on cinema in The Passion of Joan of Arc (linke to article explaining why it's erotic))

Ariadna Gil (one of the most beautiful faces in Spanish cinema; stood out in the otherwise lackluster Belle Epoque; was maddeningly desirable in Amo Tu Cama Rica)

Ana Marie Gutierrez (gave indelible performances in at least two great Filipino films--Takaw Tukso, an erotic Ingmar Bergman chamber piece set in Manila, and Scorpio Nights, the definitive Filipino statement on sexual nihilism and despair, set during the terminal years of the Marcos era).

Camilla Horn (beautiful as the woman desired by Faust in the first half of Murnau's Faust; even more beautiful as the ravished woman wandering alone in the snow with her dying child, in the latter half of the same film)

Gong Li (Red Sorghum; Raise the Red Lantern; Ju Dou; Farewell to My Concubine. Need I say more?)

Irene Jacob (Delicately erotic in Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique; heedlessly passionate in his Trois Couleurs: Rouge)

Jennifer Jones (Song of Bernadette, Duel in the Sun; the combination of holy saint and half-breed spitfire is irresistible)

Machiko Kyo (memorably sensual as the raped wife in Rashomon, and as the traditional wife who is even more desirable than her liberal, Westernized daughter in Kagi)

Ida Lupino (alternately tough, sensual, vulnerable and neurotic in films like On Dangerous Ground, They Drive By Night and High Sierra; and an accomplished filmmaker to boot)

Anna Magnani (funny, sexy, simply great performance in Rome, Open City; memorably theatrical in The Golden Coach)

Lea Massari (Gave me a whole new view of mothers in Murmur of the Heart)

Ruby Moreno (Inexhaustibly sexual in the Japanese-Korean comedy All Under the Moon; funny and touching in the erotic noir thriller Segurista (Dead Sure))

Nargis (One of the most beautiful faces in Indian cinema, who gives one of the greatest performances in Indian cinema in (what else can you call it?) Mother India)

Lena Olin (Passionate, crazed, unforgettable in films like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Enemies: A Love Story; even in something as flawed as The Ninth Gate she's a sexual powerhouse)

Rena Owen (Strong, unmistakably sexual presence in Once Were Warriors (a great performance too). And, I might add, a wonderfully shameless flirt)

Leni (god help me but my dick has no conscience) Riefenstahl (Beautiful and one of the greatest filmmakers on Earth. Oh, and a Nazi--but nobody's perfect...)

Waheeda Rehman (With Nargis, one of the most beautiful faces in Indian cinema, with wonderful performances in Pyaasa and Kaagaz ke Phool)

Jeong Seon-Kyeong (no-holes-barred performance in To You, From Me; the scene in the toilet is to, uh, die for).

Barbara Stanwyck (In The Lady Eve, in Double Indemnity, uses sex as a weapon; men can only succumb)

Jung Suh (mute, sensual, with a memorable way with fishhooks in Kim Ki Duk's poetic, emetic The Isle)

Sharmila Tagore (impossibly beautiful great-granddaughter of poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a favorite of Satiyajit Ray in films like The World of Apu and Days and Nights in the Forest; even when I met her in New Delhi a few years ago, she was one foxy grandmother...)

Kate Winslet (Wonderful, sensual and warm in films like Heavenly Creatures, Jude, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Oh, and in Titanic, but I try not to hold that against her...)

In defense of Grace Kelly in Rear Window

wedge: I think how the way she seduces Jeffries...she's too elegant. And she's like a mannequin in a Burdines boutique.

She's elegant and that's the joke--complete mismatch with Jeffries, plus an ice-queen facade you would just love to violate (that moment between her and Raymond Burr, with Stewart watching, that turned me on). But she's a warm breathing human being underneath the facade, vulnerable to jibes about her upper-classism, and to Jeffries' reluctance to commit himself. Plus that slow-motion kiss introducing her to the film is (to me, anyway) like a fantasy of a kiss come true.

wedge: Hm, I think she was merely the atypical Hitchcock leading lady eh? Was used to seeing the Marion Cranes, the `I's, the Julies, the Alicias...tragic figures in tragic plots, deprived of a happy ending unlike Lisa Fremont.

Well, Janet Leigh in Psycho, that's Hitchcock in a different flavor. There's the thriller Hitchcock, the romantic Hitchcock, the light entertainment Hitchcock, with several films representing an overlap of either two or three qualities...and the observation that comedy especially light comedy is never as easy as it looks.

Which reminds me of a story: Cary Grant went to the Oscars one time, this was when he had long since retired, and at the door the girl asked him his name. When he told her, she said "You don't look like Cary Grant," to which he replied "Nobahdy daas, dahling!"

Sexual Hitchcock

wedge: Now that we speak of it, what do you think is the most `sexual' (if not erotic--which is a different term altogether) Hitchcock film?

Tippi Hedren's rape in Marnie is shocking yet sensual. There is eroticism in the moment when Bates peers into Marion's hotel room (the remake ruins things by having him masturbate). Notorious' sensual long kiss has been mentioned to death, but I think the kiss in the wine cellar was more dangerous, more abandoned, and sexier because of that. Rebecca has its moments but it's more a Selznick film than Hitchcock, something he's admitted himself. There's wonderfully sexy wit in Rear Window ("preview of coming attraction"), North By Northwest ("Should I murder you?" "Please do...") and To Catch a Thief ("Do you want a leg or a breast?"). Even Hedren being assaulted by birds in The Birds had a perverse undertone to it (her alabaster skin being pecked by hundreds of sharp beaks).

But for sexual urgency I can't think of a more intensely dry-mouthed moment than Scotty waiting for Julie in her hotel room in Vertigo. After that sequence, I practically had to smoke a cigarette...

The Passion of Jim Cavaziel

David Ehrenstein: Word got out during the shooting of The Thin Red Line that he actually believes he's Jesus Christ.

No, I'm not making this up.

HAW!

"Ebolusyon," the 9 hour Filipino film, goes to Toronto

Here's some links:

http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2004/filmsschedules/description.asp?pageID=filmlist&id=90

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/noelmoviereviews/message/455

More on Hitchcock and Notorious

From pinoydvd:

wedge: Hitchcock is famous for sexual innuendoes in his films (hence, his name speaks of it hehe  ).

Alex's Electra complex is slightly similar to Norman Bates', though the latter exudes a more fatal manifestation of such mental disturbance.

You mean Alicia's (in Notorious) Elektra complex (Alex I suspect has an Oedipus complex with his mother). Yep, Alex is definitely a father figure. Tho she much prefers her fathering from Devlin.

wedge: You think there's an incestuous affair between mother-and-son? Alex's affinity (in my opinion) with his mother is simply like what we call being a `mama's boy'.  Oh. I only suspect it was Alicia and her promiscuity...

No, not incest, but she does smother him with her love (and visible contempt) and she does get under his skin like no one else except Alicia can (that's why she's so jealous of Alicia--because she gets under her son's skin).

Sometimes sex is the least perverse aspect of a relationship. Sometimes repressing sex or the fear of sex is sicker than its opposite--which is what Hitchcock was all about.