Seed of Chucky

Seed of Chucky

The '70s

It's not just Coppola (The Godfather movies) or Scorsese (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver) or Robert Altman (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us) or Francois Truffaut (The Story of Adele H.), or Werner Herzog (Aguirre, the Wrath of God), but also of Brocka (Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, Insiang, Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang), Bernal (Pagdating sa Dulo, Aliw), Celso Ad. Castillo (Pagputi ng Uwak, Pagitim ng Tagak, Burlesk Queen), Mike de Leon (Itim, plus the cinematography of Maynila sa Mga Kuko) and Mario O'Hara (Mortal, Mga Bilanggong Birhen, Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos).

Here's where separating Filipino and foreign film threads is a disadvantage, because the story of the '70s is of a smattering of international talent (Herzog, Truffaut among others) and a flowering of American filmmakers (one of their best and most productive periods, in my opine). And in one corner of the world, starting to get some attention, a modest Golden Age of Philippine Cinema.

Saw

SAW

Ossessione

Looked at Visconte' Ossessione (1943) and it's gorgeous, maybe my favorite Visconte until The Leopard. Lovely little touches here, and there--like when Calamai sits down and first pours her heart out to Girotti, Visconte inserts a shot of him listening to something (a seashell, I think), and in his innocence, hands it to her to listen (she does with a touch of maternal indulgence). It's a lovely touch, the implication that Girotti's a boy in a man's body, an innocent to possibly be duped, or fallen in love with. You can't help but fear for this big boy.

And the neorealist trappings work so well with noir--the grit, the sweat (you can smell the exhalations off the fat husband's armpits), the harsh sunlight on paving-stone streets capture the spirit of small-town noir so much more beautifully than, say the Hollywood version does (John Garfield is perfectly cast, but Lana Turner looks every bit the star she is to be a credibly slatternly housewife). And the two lovers here (Calamai and Girotti, who look anything but celebrities) feel more genuinely conflicted--their hearts wanting more than anything to trust each other while their brains tell them that's the last thing they should do (their brains are right by a mile).

If I remember correctly, the Cain novel has the lovers go scot-free, and then meet their fate; Visconte goes less for irony and more for that sense of implacable Fate, turning her wheels--which feels more in keeping with neorealism's sensibilities. Beautifully bleak.

Argento's Inferno

Checking Argento's Inferno again--what can one say except that at his best he's directing opera more than anything else (that's why he keeps coming back to the theater in his films). Colors, music, gorgeous sets and costumes, all orchestrated and tautly designed to evoke terror and a ravishing of the senses, simultaneously (maybe--at his very best--a ravishing of the senses through terror).

Everything else falls by the wayside--plot, characterization, social commentary (I can almost hear him snorting at the very notion). Above all is the image, and its power to evoke powerfully primal emotions. This isn't a cinema for the brains, but for the gut, even gonads.

Lucio Fulci's Zombie

Watching Lucio Fulci's Zombie again and trying to compare it with Romero's Dead movies.

Well, you miss the realism of Tom Savini's makeup (which is so crucial to the Dead films he should be credited as co-director--and Romero as much as admits Savini directs the scenes in question). Despite Ian McCulloch's disparaging remark that the undead in Zombie look 'dead' where those in Romero's Dawn of the Dead look like 'actors in rubber suits,' Savini really gets the details and textures and even internal anatomy right (McCulloch probably hasn't seen what Savini could do in Day of the Dead), not to mention there's actually a rationale for the successively more gruesome makeup--as each movie (Dawn and Day) is set some years after the previous one, the zombies rot accordingly.

Then there's the fact that while Romero has always worked with small budgets, Fulci's film has that 'no-money' look (they get kicked out of a newspaper office by Rupert Murdoch when their unauthorized shoot--they had asked a janitor for permission--interrupts a meeting).

Despite which, there's something to Fulci's film. Where Romero does (usually sharp) social commentary, Fulci does frank eroticism--at one point, Auretta Gay goes on a scuba dive in her glorious altogether (with a closeup of her tightening a crotch strap that makes your eyes want to cross), and later has an encounter with a zombie with a rather sensual slant (she struggles with him wedged between her legs, in a slow-motion parody of rape). (SPOILERS) The shark topping off the scene looks uncomfortably real--you wonder if the stuntman they used actually survived the shoot (END SPOILERS).

Then there's that one notorious scene--y'know what I'm talking about--that illustrates all the differences between Romero and an Italian filmmaker like Fulci. Romero's got an unflinching eye--he shoots the most graphic horrors straight on, no frills, with bright lights to catch all the splashing gore. Fulci savors his horrors--when (SPOILERS) arms grab the woman head, Fulci gives you an extended, breathless moment where her eye is suspended before the wooden spike. And he doesn't just film it going in (with accompanying exploitation-flick shriek sound effect--just to make sure you jump, if someone isn't already screaming), he has to show you the eyeball tearing sideways, to emphasize the fact that it's in there and not going out except in the most agonizing manner (SPOILER END).

There's a cruelty to Italian horror filmmakers that outstrips any other nationality I can think of (Hong Kong filmmakers may do lengthy closeups, but you don't get the sense that they're enjoying the blood and pain, at least not to the same degree). Wonderful filmmakers, but with radically different flavors.

When will Filipino films win an Oscar (or: answering a moron)

From pinoydvd:   xage: When they get an Oscar nod.. which I doubt.. even if there is a BLUE MOON.. no chance in hell a pinoy film will get an Oscar nod..     

What qualifies for a mere fifteen minutes of fame are the Oscar winners. Anyone care who won Best Picture in 1980? Anyone care who lost ?

Apparently the latter. The winner was Ordinary People, which hardly anyone remembers anymore. The loser was Raging Bull, which nowadays is almost unanimously listed as one of the best films of the 1980's.

And the list of great films that never won or aren't even nominated are endless...not to mention the filmmakers. Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse, Isao Takahata, Ritwik Ghatak,  Raj Kapoor, Mrinal Sen, Robert Bresson, Jacques Rivette, Jean Luc Godard, Tian Zhuangzhuang, King Hu, Tsai Ming Liang, Hou Hsiao Hsien, anyone?   Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag is still cited by film critics all over the world--was cited, in fact in Goeff Andrews' book, Film: The Critics' Choice as one of the 150 great films in world cinema.

Not a lot of Oscar winners in that book.