Dance dance dance, the Hollywood version

Very informative analysis of dance and choreography from classical Hollywood dance movies: how deceptively simple was the complicated choreo of the barn sequence in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," the give it up and forget you're a regular guy mode of "In and Out," and how Gene Kelly's splash down a rainy street is reminiscent of a 4 year old's simple joy.

Also learned from article that they're doing a batch of remakes, headed by "Shall We Dance?" I saw this movie many years ago in UP, and its simplicity wowed me. Saw it in the same year as Baz Luhmann's "Strictly Ballroom," also a dance movie in the same mode in which the ugly duckling shy person blossoms into a formidable dancer. In the Hollywood remake, the shy Japanese businessman role will be essayed by Richard Gere, hopefully now with more dancing skills than what he exhibited in Chicago, and the dancing muse will be played by Jennifer Lopez.

And the Dirty Dancing remake will be set in Havana, now cleverly called "Dirty Dancing Havana Nights." How innovative is that, 'no? Hehehe. But I think I'll watch it because it stars Diego Luna, that impish little boy from Y Tu Mama Tambien. Gael Garcia Bernal may be the man, but I don't object to watching impish naughty little boys either. Hehehe.

death by bludgeoning?

So France's most popular rock star, who's being called like a French Kurt Cobain, is suspected of having killed his famous actress lover, Marie Tritignant. I first heard about this after I crawled home early Sunday morning after having coffee with friends.

Of course Mr. Rockstar may or may have not done it. But he is the prime suspect. It's the hottest buzz the French press has to jumpstart the summer lull. Makes for a good crime investigation movie. Shyet, ang bad ko.

karma 727

and I'm also an emotional Phi, who dares but only likes to look rather than touch. I don't talk much but I'm a 10. Er, whatever that means.

Logic and what?! wtf?

I took the E-mode IQ test and it said that my intellectual type was a "Precision Processor." And did I know that "this means you're exceptionally good at discovering quick solutions to problems, especially ones that involve math or logic. You're also resourceful and able to think on your feet. "

Eh? Me, math and logic aren't exactly best friends. They know this. Something must be wrong with that quiz. I seem to remember that I was a "Visionary Philosopher" type some years back. So what does that mean? Nawala na yung analysis at spatial capabilities ko? Na-drain na ba ang creative juices ko? Unless I got better in math, which is blah because I had to endure math classes. Bakit di na lang nung pinagpapawisan ako sa exams ng Nat Sci at Math I di ba? Anomalous, this quiz. That's all I can say.

126.

Carly Simon says

You're so vain, you think this blog post is about you...You're so vain....

creativity as an ingredient of madness

It's always been said that the truly creative people are a little mad, or at least wear really weird hats and mumble to themselves. Natch. I think it's part myth, partly true. For some reason I had the sudden mental image of a man fluttering his arms about, like wings, and all yellow. It's like the madness of birds. Arcellana, natch. Isn't his first death anniversary somewhere along this timeline? Must be it.

I want my favorite Asian renegade supercop, CSI.

Went to see Bangkok Haunted with my brothers some weeks ago. I've been seeing the trailer since forever, and since it was from the Pang brothers who made The Eye I was pretty interested. Major disappointment. My brothers were going, we should have seen Terminator instead, and I had to drag them thru bad weather to see it. Jol is supposed to post a review of it, scathing like his usual self, but it's not up yet.

I also saw the trailer for Dark Water, which is from the director of the Ringu series. It's like he transported the ring with its water/well imagery and transformed it to a..water tank. How's that for a formula?

I'm becoming disappointed with all these Asian clones. Been wanting to see movies which rock, goddmamit. Yesterday, I resorted to watching So Close again at the Film Center. At least, even if some say it's basically an Asian Charlie's Angels. It had lots of kickass fight scenes involving girls in stillettos. I like the soldier-bandit motif. Kunyari pa-deep, like Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, di ba? Hehe. What more can you ask for?

I had a bad memory from watching So Close alone in Megamall. Got bitten by ten thousand surots in Cinema 6. But I don't mind, which is why I watched it again. This time brought along Nonblockmate Arlene, who has a bagful of her European snapshots. I'd watch this movie again. Two words: Karen Mok.

She was in Fallen Angels, which makes her a Wong Kar Wai baby, and Cinemanila is having a WKM retrospective so I want to watch that again. She was also in Shaolin Soccer and the adaptation of Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen. And the girl studied Italian Lit, and can speak several Languages. Plus her brother is a writer. Astig di ba? Magtatayo na kami ng Karen Mok fans club. Hehehe.

Rise of the X

With the death of John Schlesinger, director of Midnight Cowboy and one of the last major studio films nominated for a Best Picture Oscar comes the introspection as to what has happened to sex in movies. New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell also traces the rise of the x-rating, or its equivalent the NC-17:

Is there a fear of dealing with grown-up sexuality in movies? Absolutely. Movies are intentionally sexy without being sexual, because puerile teasing is a kind of salesmanship. The sad corollary is the preponderance of violence in American films. A foreigner judging the United States by its films would think Americans spend more time running from exploding fireballs than having sex.

The X rating wasn't initially viewed as the scarlet letter but as a reaction to self-imposed studio censorship so intrusive and baffling that movies existed in the Bizarro Universe, a place remarkably similar to our own but with freakish differences, including having married couples sleep in twin beds.

After 1968, the year the ratings were created, the freedoms they offered were celebrated by filmmakers. Still, it was the subject matter of "Midnight Cowboy" — a male prostitute and his manager — that got the X rating; the film received an R when it was rereleased in the 1970's.

The rise of the X rating as the equivalent of a biohazard logo came about for two reasons. One was that the combination of violence and sex in "A Clockwork Orange" so incensed some newspapers, then the primary form of promotion for movies, that they stopped carrying advertising for X-rated films. (Some newspapers do not accept advertising for NC-17 films.)

The other reason was that the Motion Picture Association did not copyright the X-rating. Companies seeking a rating submit their films to the association and pay a fee, and the ratings board bestows its G, PG or R in return, all of which have been copyrighted. The X was not, which created a laughable concept in sleazy promotion for pornographic movies: a proliferation of X's stamped across the poster. The unspoken thought was that these movies were so hot that one X was not enough for their lust, sex and bad acting.

The last major studio film with an X rating was Showgirls, and man, was that some showcase for Joe Esthezhas, Paul Verhoeven not withstanding.

In our backyard, we are producing lesser movies, both in quantity and quality. A film like say, Live Show will get all the brouhaha because of the sex-content. But we only have two or three kinds of movies now: the odd romantic comedy starring Regine Velasquez, bang-bang action movies with Robin Padilla/Jacky Woo in it, and our garden variety sex films. The sex films are of two kinds: the major studio semi-glossy types with any of the Hot Babes in it, or maybe Joyce Jimenez; then there's the run of the mill with any of your number of unknowns. Have you noticed how these low-budget sex movies focus on girl collectives, ie, Mga Babae sa VIP Room and Sa Piling ng mga Belyas. Belyas has Mark Anthony Fernandez in it. I mean, that must be a total low. An ex-Guwaping and star of the awesome filmography of Pare Ko, Hesus Rebolusyonaryo and Mangarap Ka is doing a low-budget sex movie. Yeah, we're dead meat.

Okay so the Trillanes post spawned several versions within the week it first came out. I'm sure people have received its various incarnations, like the English translation and the reply to Trillanes letter. Oh well. Got word that one of our high school batchmates was part of the mutiny group now killing time in Fort Bonifacio.

Because Empire of Memory is in my to-read list,
and because it is not the final emotion.

Factory of Souls
Eric Gamalinda

It takes just two people to bring the world
to ruin. So goes the history of love.
At the end of the day we tally the casualties
of war, victory for the one who gets wounded

the least. You say it's time for a change
but I don't know to what end, change being
just the skin of some incandescent creature
whose grotesque beauty is what we adore,

whom some people call love, whom we
venerate because it consumes us, morsels
for its huge soul. My people say, don't look
or you'll go blind. You say the end was always

just around the bend. I say all we have
is unconditional surrender to the future.
So unreliable is the past that I feel compelled
to leave unmourned the blind, relentless loves

that may have scorched into our hearts
the way the saints accepted stigmata.
My people say,look back or lose your way.
Or, walk backwards if you can.
So I found myself on a bus to New York City

to lose myself completely. Past Hunters Point
we hit the factory of souls - a thousand tombstones
whose subterranean chambers manufactured
the silk-like smoke that we must feed to God.

I don't think the world's ever going to end.
I think it will go on and on, and we will
be as nebulous as Nebuchadnezzar, our lives
not worth a footnote, our grand schemes

no more than insidious whispers, all memory
shifting like the continental plates. I should grieve
for time misspent, love returned to sender,
ambitions gone awry. But bards more sage than I

have seen the folly of our loss - and have sung
more dirges than I can bear. In the future,
perhaps all science will finally come around;
genetic engineering, I hear, will be all the rage,

and we will be a super race in a world
infallibly perfected, where trains run on time,
love never dies, and hope can be purchased
by the pound. They call it "immortalization

of the cell lines." We will choose what will survive.
Our destiny made lucid, we will find the world
contemplating itself, like the young god
who held his breath and found Narcissus,

the beautiful rapt face all sparked with awe,
one hand about to touch the pool,
his body lurched towards that marvelous
reflection. I suppose the human race

has always felt compelled to desensitize
its failures. My people say, to go unnoticed,
you play dead. Or something. I myself

may have chosen to forget a face, a name,
some cruel word uttered carelessly, but not,
after some reflection, intending any pain.
and many others may have chosen to forget me.

It works both ways. My people say, regret
is the final emotion. It's what you see
when you look back. It's what's no longer there.

stolen from this site.