I, Robot

I, Robot

South Carolinian barbecue

Schuler's in Latta, South Carolina, being on its northern edge, serves rather North-Carolina-like barbecue; you have to pour the mustard sauce on the side to give it the true SC tang.

It's very good pit-cooked 'cue (tho they do use commercially bought coal briquettes instead of starting from hardwood), coarsely chopped and juicy; the mustard sauce gave it that little extra something to make it stand out from its northern cousins.

It's served on buffet with excellent sides, from softly salted lima beans to fresh-baked buscuits, to robust turnip greens.

Not to mention tremendous ribs--crispy burnt ends that lead (as you chew along the bone) to meltingly soft smoky meat.

The desserts are glorious--peach cobblers where the crust is sweet and the peaches tart, blueberry cobblers where your teeth bite into crunchy buttery sugar, a red velvet cake with icing to die for,  and these crispy chocolate cookies with chunky chips and walnuts that I had to load into my pockets, just so I can taste em at home.

It's maybe not the best barbecue place I've been to (to date, that honor belongs to Allen & Son in Chapel Hills, and Wilbur's in Goldsboro), but it's easily the most beautiful, with picture windows in the back that open out to a meandering little stream with ducks and geese (tossed em some biscuits and the damned fowl almost attacked me).

Imelda at La Tienda

Something I wrote back in January, 2003 (reminded of this by the latest and most improbable hit in Manila, the Imelda documentary):

Saw Sex and Lucia, and after the screening, asked the director of Instituto Cervantes where he'd eat for good Spanish food, and he mentions La Tienda. So we went there.

Salad was slices of smoked blue marlin over greens with sweet white onions, capers, julienned beets, and a green & black olive vinaigrette. Soup was sopas de mariscos--clams, shrimps, squid and fish in a soup so thick and flavorful and garlicky they must have pureed a whole mess of seafood (plus cloves of garlic) for the broth and THEN added the chunks and bits of whole meat after.

Main course was baked lapu-lapu (I think that's snapper), prawns and squid in a white wine, toasted garlic and onions sauce. The onions were so sweet, they seemed candied. The other main course was lamb shank in garlic sauce--falling off the bone tender lamb in a thick and creamy and faintly sweet garlic sauce.

Dessert was pan de sal (dinner roll) ice cream with pureed olives and tomato jam. It was delicious--sweet, bread-flavored ice cream with a trace of cummin, over a layer of olive puree, and a bottom of sweet and faintly tart tomatoes.

Great food. We take pride in having the best Spanish food in Asia, better than you can get in far wealthier Hong Kong. It's one benefit of being opppressed by the Spaniards for four hundred years.

Plenty of Japanese clients--the place was full. The waitress also recommended the dessert to a pair of Japanese execs, who looked doubtful till she pointed at our table. So they ordered it. They were having fun arguing over the actual contents of the dish with the waitress when we left...

Oh, and guess who sat behind us, impeccably dressed and made up and all: Imelda Marcos. The Iron Butterfly has to eat her Spanish food in a restaurant now, like everybody else...that said, she was one classy looking lady, even with extensive plastic surgery, even at her age.

Exorcist 2, and why it's better than The Exorcist

From The Atlantic online:

Exorcist 2 in my opine may not have the cheapo shock thrills of the first Exorcist or the unintentionally funny awkwardness of Blatty's Exorcist 3 (officially the real sequel), but it does have Burton spouting all that heavy theology, which on one side is irredeemable camp, on the other has Burton's beautiful growl and Boorman framing and lighting him in such a way he looks a hell of a lot holier (and more devastated) than Jim Cavaziel in Gibson's momumentally unimaginative Passion.

Then there's the filmmaking. Which is gorgeous. Which (some of it, anyway) is inspired by the flying sequences in Murnau's underrated Faust, only in gloriously amber color, as if Boorman smeared honey on all his lenses.

The film is a great something--sometimes I think a monumental sick joke on religion, sometimes I think a fantastic filmmaking experiment that you shouldn't (for the sake of your sanity) take too seriously. It's Boorman turning the theological bullshit Blatty (appropriate name, I think) spouted in the original picture into something that resembles science fiction--a scientifically workable theory on the nature of evil, no less.

Breakwater around the world

Breakwater went to the Brussels International Film Festival (the famous one), and is going to the Tokyo Film Festival, the London Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival and Pusan Film Festival. Also Vladivostok in Russia and Hamburg in Germany. More invites forthcoming.

As of this time, Katherine Luna won best actress at the Cinefan Festival of Asian Cinema in New Delhi, India.

Still more Hollywoodization

From av_phile1, in pinoydvd:

How old is the Filipino film industry?  I think those post-war films were the toddler years of our cinema. Aping those hollywood movies was like what budding fine arts students do when copying artworks of the masters to sharpen their technical skills before their own individualistic artisitic styles can shine through.  

Unfortunately, the aping continued to the 70s and uo to now.  The problem is that hollywood has also been evolving in both technical, production, directing and artistic stykes.  Starting with those glossy musicals and Greta Garbo films under the studio stable system of the 30s to the 50s, then to the adolescent rebel years of the 60s and 70s starting with those James Dean films and the French Connection-like films.  The materials and the neo-realist styles and themes evolved.  Along the way, pinoys have been mimicing one change after another, never really finding their own indivdualism or signature.

The first film was shown in the Philippines in 1897; the first Filipino film made by Filipinos was shown in 1919. Before World War 2, we were doing 60 films a year, and was the most advanced moviemaking center in Southeast Asia.  

Arguably the greatest Malaysian moviemaker ever was Filipino Ramon Estella, who made films there and taught the Malaysians how to make films. We did musicals, horror, dramas, action, comedies--you name it.

After the war, we were doing neorealism (Anak Dalita (The Ruins)) and noir (48 Oras (48 Hours)). Manuel Conde's Genghis Khan so impressed film critic James Agee (ever read him? Classic volumes on film criticism, the scriptwriter for African Queen, and Night of the Hunter, and a Pulitzer Prize winner) that he befriended Conde and championed his film to Venice film festival. Gerardo de Leon continues to dazzle film critics today (ask Pierre Rissent, ask Tony Rayns), and impressed even David Lean. De Leon was influenced by Ford, admittedly, but also Kurosawa, and he wrapped that great film style of his around subjects that were quintessentially Filipino.

Hollywood has influence--that much I know. But there are filmmakers then, filmmakers in the '70s ((Lino) Brocka, (Ishmael) Bernal, (Mike) de Leon, Celso Ad. Castillo) who resisted that, and learned not from Hollywood but from de Sica and Fellini.

Today, (Mario) O'Hara, (Mike) de Leon and Lav Diaz have moved beyond that neorealist style into different directions.  De Leon is sui generis, God only knows what goes  on in his head or inspires him; Diaz is inspired by Tarkovsky and Kurosawa Kyoshi and Hou Hsiao Hsien--admirable models indeed.  O'Hara--well, I don't know where his influences come from.  He's never seen Godard, or Renoir, or Hou Hsiao Hsien or Wong Kar Wai, so I can't tell...but of the three his is possibly the wildest imagination.  Check out Sisa or Pangarap ng Puso (Demons).

Tikoy Aguiluz carries on in the neorealist tradition, a la Brocka, but he has a canny commercial sense and sharp nose for a good story that almost helped him break out internationally with Boatman (he sold that to Warner Brothers too) and with Segurista (Dead Sure).  Still have expectations of him.  And who knows, Celso might still surprise us...

Hollywood has little to offer--mostly a banal, chewed up storytelling style that's imaginatively and culturally bankrupt. I've cited filmmakers who have gone to Hollywood who saw what made them distinct and special become dull and smoothly glossy--Emmerich, Goeff Murphy, Roger Donaldson, Verhoeven, Besson, Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, even poor Jean Juenet isn't doing all that well nowadays.  The list is long, and gets longer all the time.

Steak Night

My butcher had gone home early, so I couldn't get the two-inch porterhouse I usually ask for (I have them cut special). Instead I settled for two one-inch porterhouses that I cooked separately.

So I slathered them with a mix of canola oil and melted butter; sprinkled them with lots of kosher salt and fresh-cracked pepper, then cooked them, one at a time, four minutes to a side, in a cast-iron pan that had been heating in a 500 degree oven for half an hour.

While the steaks rested for about five minutes, I sprinkled a handful of fine-chopped onions into the pan (I forgot to buy shallots), cooked em for 30 seconds, then poured in half a cup of balsamic vinegar (the good stuff, really sweet), and reduced it over medium heat until there was about a couple of tablespoons left. Took it off the heat, Dropped three tablespoons of butter into the sauce to melt, and served it with the steaks.

The quiet tart-and-sweet of the reduced balsamic and the rich velvety nuttiness of the butter gave the porterhouse a lovely flavor. We ate it with hot and crusty French bread and a salad of mixed greens dressed with extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, a crushed garlic clove, kosher salt and cracked black pepper.