AUDITOIRE

Book Shopping along Laurel Avenue

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:03:00 +0000

...is a Saturday afternoon...

Initially, we have Truffaut speaking of Jules et Jim (1966)

On the other hand, I am having preoccupations of my itinerary this afternoon. As soon as I finished watching the controversial Un Chant d'Amour (1950) in the order of understanding Jean Genet as a homophile, and the vehement contraption he developed on that, i wanted to have coffee at Starbucks and write on my dear old 200-page diary abouth the influence of Genet to Warhol and Warhol to LaBruce. The complication of such itenary is melancholia. I have been locked on a strange mood yesterday, coupled by my incapacity to create my long due stylistic analysis on Tokyo Story (1953). I do not seem to make a first sentence, and my outline sucks. Also, I am greatly frustrated by my resistance to reread Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov because of my lack of spirit, the lusterless boredom of nothingness.

Un Chant d'Amour (or A Song of Love)

So i went out in search for the time lost. I walked and had an idea, by 220pm, i wanted to shop for books, lots of them. I ended up at Laurel Avenue at the campus where two bookshops can be located: one, on top of Zago/Mister Doughnut Stall, where i also purchase most of my DVDs, and the other one, at the corner of Laurel Avenue and A. Roces Avenue in front of the Post office. I am in search of something from philosophy, maybe because i miss it as indicated by my previous post just this morning. I settled in at the second shop for lower book prices and i made a reservation on some books to be picked up after i have finished writing this post.

And i have made choices:

Hopefully, some truth will come, somehow, somewhere, on my existential journey, in the light of life and death and feelings of despair.

Cheer up, myself.

Ciao!
***

Spinoza, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:26:00 +0000

...i miss them...

Before I ever engaged on film studies, I was totally immersed in philosophy. I am and always have been in love with it. A field of inquiry that connects everything that we see and do not. A peak, a zenith of every human understanding, the closest to truth and furthest from mental and metaphysical blunder, the meaning of one's life, P-H-I-L-O-S-O-P-H-Y. Marvin, you know my work on this. Even though i have shifted from field to field, from theoretical physics to literature to philosophy to film studies, what remains in my sun-colored Barcelona diary from December 2006 - September 2008 are my multi-colored thoughts, scattered in all directions, here and there, up then down, reflecting on the whole expanse of the history of philosophy, and the metaphysical truth of my existence.

I miss them so much. They are such philosophers who all wanted in life is to encompass the totality of reality, and the unreality which continuously blurs it.

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Fun Facts:

This is how Spinoza proves the existence of God taken from Part I: Concerning God of his magnum opus, Ethics.

"The potentiality of non-existence is a negation of power, and contrariwise the potentiality of existence is a power, as is obvious. If, then, that which necessarily exists is nothing but finite beings, such finite beings are more powerful than a being absolutely infinite, which is obviously absurd ; therefore, either nothing exists, or else a being absolutely infinite necessarily exists also. Now we exist either in ourselves, or in something else which necessarily exists (see Axiom. i. and Prop. vii.). Therefore a being absolutely infinite-in other words, God (Def. vi.)—necessarily exists."

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Ciao!
***

Five Images for Rossellini...

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:40:00 +0000

...for the love of it...

From the Flowers of St. Francis (1950), a different Rossellini, the ascetic, neorealistic Rossellini, a post-Roma citta aperta feature, a film of religious hegemony, Catholic and full of life.

Ciao! Must sleep and wake up early!

***

120 Days of Sodom (1975)

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:45:00 +0000

... is a new frontier for cinema studies...

Warning: For Adult Readers only, or for those who have reached the edge of cinematic quintessence.

[pic from]

A shot from Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom (1975)

As Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaire, ate his $47,221 (2, 251, 969.49php) lunch at Nello's up at Madison Avenue, Upper East Side, New York with six to ten people, I was standing at the port of Caticlan with the beaming sun (or Le Soleil in French) waiting for our automobile service to park. We were fifteen science clubbers half-awake on our arrival from the island of Boracay. I came to think that my itinerary is lost, and that i shouldn't be there at that time, and that I should be watching more films to meet some deadlines.

Three days later, I braced myself to watch three films in succession: Ozu's Tokyo Story(1953), Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), and Pasolini's Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Of course, the first two are regulars on my list, however, the third one is my nth attempt to watch it.

There exist films that obliterate old traditions of filmic themes. Usually, these films have a remarkable and, surprisingly, high aesthetics that they cannot be denied as an art form. This mechanistic limitation is highly controversial, and it has spurred dozens of debate about the reception of such films, and also the stylistics they involve. Such is Pier Paolo Pasolini's sad and violent Salo, or 120 Days of Sodom. Salo is controversial and it has always been. Salo has established grounds beyond the reach of my thumb, if there exists a 'thumb' that sets measurable standards on the 'viewabilty' of a film. But I am not a person to use such a thumb to elicit the importance and the unimportance of films, more so, to categorize films whether they are inherently filmic or not. Such complication is not applicable to the total elucidation of Salo.

Also, to view Salo in comparison with La Regle de Jeu (Renoir, 1939) or to Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) is insufficient. No proper relationship except, i think, a mise-en-scene comparison, can be established between 'canonical works' and Salo. Though, one can argue that Salo is itself a canon, but this may track a different set of arguments, maybe directed to the question of 'what makes a film a canon?'. If Salo is to be discussed, it requires three fundamental groundings: Ethics, at the zenith, Aesthetics, as a grounding, and Reception Theory, the link between them. Ethics, itself, is problematic as a field because of its split or multi-split perspective: Teleological and Ontological Ethics. Aesthetics, or the inquiry to art and beauty, have had developments for the past years, specifically film aesthetics with the publication of David Bordwell and Noel Caroll's book, Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Reception theory is going there.

To approach Salo, one can construct a formal analysis with an assumption that Pier Paolo Pasolini is a poet of cinema. Pasolini was a poet and always has been. Another alternative study is an auteur study of the film, to analyze Salo in relation to the body of Pasolini's work. An elucidation of the ethical grounds crossed with narratology and thematic analysis can also be established. A reception study, focusing on the cognitive effect of each piercing image is also recommendable.

These suggestions are only limited to my proposed groundings namely ethics, aesthetics, and reception theory. Other groundings can be proposed to describe, evaluate and analyze Salo. This is to say that after 30 years of neglect, with the coming of a wider distribution of Salo in DVD, film studies can benefit equally as Salo could possibly have if a series of studies can be established. That's all for now. Ciao!

Salo. Like hell.

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I am excited to watch Amarcord by Fellini, and Maurice Pialat's Loulou. . . More Bresson this November I hope.
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Plotlessness...

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:10:00 +0000

...or simply as it is...

Camera on a sushi-conveyor...

I got this video from Harry's Unspoken Cinema, and it is beautiful! I remember how F.W. Murnau crafted the first ever artistically important technique on camera movement in his 1924 film The Last Laugh. Dennis Wheatley and Stefan McClean have created something else, not Murnau's movement but beyond it. Absolutely fantastic!

Le Soleil de Boracay

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:50:00 +0000

...on a lonely planet...

I have been on a journey, a whole week, seven full days of silence, of souls and minds going around and about, a journey from a distance, bellowing, into the deep calm waters, one cannot truly explain the ecstasy of le soleil de Boracay...

Just settling in Manila right now, preparing for my second semester this year. Will get back in a couple of days. I miss you all!

Bande A Part (1964): A Godard Syndrome

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:54:00 +0000

...is a Godard-for-all...

Nouvelle Vague, is it?

I miss film. I have two more days to end my semester. After finishing two main requirements for my Chemical Engineering Elective, ChE 198, I had another one of those 'Godard' moments. I could not recall the exact feeling, but I could characterize it as a robust cinephiliac desire of wanting more film experiences.

It is evident that most of my recent film viewings are a recollection of my old desire from mainstream classics when, from a quick observation of a close, he said: "Wala ka na bang bagong classics?" (Do you have any new classics?) By 'classics', I mean from Classical Hollywood Cinema.

With Godard syndrome running in my head, I recorded about three instances of re-watching Bande a Part (1964) for past the few weeks, a high incidence of cinephilia. Equally relevant is Frank Capra's A Wondeful Life (1946) which merited two viewings this month. Also, a rare occurence is my attempt to rewatch David Lynch's Inland Empire (2004) three times but at the strike of the first two hours, i retaliated by watching The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) for three times also! Lynch is, what can I say, prodigious is his surreal mantra? A question of form, indeed!

Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) consumed 12 hours of my life last month, and for the love of God and his children, I have to keep it inside my closet to give way for other works for if not, i would spend the next month rewatching it until my eyes turned black.

Gladly, after the first half of my hell week, I am still alive. Two more days, and I am off to Wonderland.

Ciao guys!
***

TOP 10 Priority List for CINEMANILA 2009

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:09:00 +0000

... back from the dead...

[here] [here]
[here] [here]
[here] [here]
[here] [here]
[here] [here]

Tokyo Story (1954) is indeed the best film of all time.

This week is hell week in UP. I thought I was dead and gone Monday night after my exam in Engineering Science. But Alas! I am still here salivating on Cinemanila for the nth time. I have so many films on hold, so many Nouvelle Vague and Murnau to watch, and a lot of Kurosawas and Renoir to deconstruct. Yet, in all this semi-quasi film history digging, and of climaxing at Ozu's Tokyo Story (1954) a few days ago (I cried relentlessly twenty minutes before the ending), I am willing to risk anything just to watch these films:

TOP 10 Priority list for Cinemanila:

(1) Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino)

October 16 (FRIDAY) | 8 - 10:33 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 7.

(2) Mammoth (Moodyson)

PHILIPPINE PREMIERE:
OCTOBER 17 (SATURDAY) | 7:00 – 9:05 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 5
OCTOBER 18 (SUNDAY) | 1:30 – 3:35 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 4

(3) Hunger (Steve McQueen)

OCTOBER 23 (FRIDAY) | 3:00 – 4:30 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 5
OCTOBER 23 (FRIDAY) | 7:30 – 9:10 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 7

(4) Ricky (Francois Ozon)

OCTOBER 19 (MONDAY) | 9:30 – 11:00 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 5
OCTOBER 20 (TUESDAY) | 1:00 – 2:30 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 7

(5) Tulpan (Dvortsevoy)

OCTOBER 20 (TUESDAY) | 7:20 – 9:00 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 5
OCTOBER 21 (WEDNESDAY) | 3:30 – 5:15 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 5

(6) Pandora's Box (Ustaoglu)

OCTOBER 22 (THURSDAY) | 6:30 – 8:30 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 7
OCTOBER 24 (SATURDAY) | 4:15 – 6:00 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 4

(7) Samson and Delilah (Thorton)

OCTOBER 17 (SATURDAY) | 9:30 PM – 11:10 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 4
OCTOBER 18 (SUNDAY) | 3:45 – 5:25 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 5

(8) Independencia (Martin)

OCTOBER 21 (WEDNESDAY) | 5:45 – 6:30 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 5

(9) Biyaheng Lupa (Lao)

from (here)

October 19 (Monday) | 08:00PM | Cinema 6
October 23 (Friday) | 04:30PM | Cinema 6

(10) Engkwentro (Diokno)

OCTOBER 21 (WEDNESDAY) | 7:00 – 8:00 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 6
OCTOBER 23 (FRIDAY) | 2:45 – 4:00 PM | MARKET! MARKET! CINEMA 6

See ya!

---------

ROSENBAUM On French Cinephilia
Mizoguchi rocks hard

I quote from Rosenbaum's Paris Journal, Spring 1972 (Paris moviegoing, MODERN TIMES)" [Film Comment, Spring 1972; slightly tweaked, September 2009] (18 Sept 2009) that Harry posted a few days ago:

"...At a recent Cinémathèque screening of THE LOVE OF SUMAKO, THE ACTRESS (Mizoguchi, 1947), nearly all of the seats were filled. Although the print was in Japanese, without subtitles, and no plot synopsis or accompanying information of any kind was handed out, all but about ten of the spectators remained for the film’s duration, without complaint..."

This is France in the '70s.

Paris, as Rosenbaum mentioned, is the center of cinephilia in the world!

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Ciao!
----
BYE for now!

I will be in Aklan from October 22 - 30, 2009 for CSIW, Children's Science Interactive Workshop. The next formal update for this blog will be on the first week of November, but i will still try to update it via scheduling posts (hopefully). Brr... it's cold out here.

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FACETS!

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:32:00 +0000

... or I love Facets!

Apart from Criterion Collection, another best source of essential films in DVD format is, of course, Facets Multimedia. If you are looking for rare independent films, save your souls because Facets have a mesmerizing line-up of films from the other world of cinema. If you are looking for films from Pluto, well, Facets can satisfy your cinephiliac desire.

What I found is a string of Filipino films including rare classics by Geraldo de Leon. I am so satisfied to find de Leon's The Blood Drinkers (Kulay Dugo ang Gabi, 1966), a vampire flick with heavy visual quotations from Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922), from their list.

Driven to satisfy the lust of... The Blood Drinkers.

JUST A THING...

...Have you heard of our dear old Roman Polanski being arrested at Germany? How is he doing?

...I am planing on a grand study on Edward Yang. I will be completing his oeuvre by next year if possible. Do you know any sources of his works?

...I am about to begin my YEAR 2009 countdown of the best films i have watched this year. I will be picking up the Yummy 20 by December together with 10 notable films. I will discuss each in a formal essay form, well again, for fun.

Ciao then!

AM I A GOOD FILM CRITIC?

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:13:00 +0000

...or, more importantly, am I a film critic?

Tell me, myself, am I a film critic?
from Orpheus (Cocteau, 1950)

I cannot process the word film critic quite clearly in my mind.

As Arbogast continues his annual 31 Screams for October (for this is Arbogast's best), and as Senses of Cinema tear their previous design for their new Issue 52, I resorted to revisiting Harry's Critical Falacy Series,well, for fun. It is Friday night, October the 2nd, there is a superstorm coming and i have nothing to do but wait (with flashlights, food supplies, and a ton of coffee). I re-watched some good old classics from the 1930 - 1950s France, some Italians, a bit of 1970s Scorsese's, and a ton full of Bertolucci and Kurosawa, well again, for fun.

The classes in Metro Manila were suspended last Sunday afternoon until Saturday by CHED (Commision on Higher Education) and DepEd (Department of Education). Plague by boredom and desolation, I stayed awake to write this post. Half of the dormitory was empty, most of my friends hoarded a ton full of DVDs from my shelf for the preservation of their own souls. One of them borrowed all Coppolas and the other one dared to re-watched the extended version a.k.a. Director's cut of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2006 - 2007) in one full blow, good luck for the 11 1/2 hours of his life.

As for me, I found a blog post from Harry's archives entitled: Consensual Criteria of a good critic. Harry, noting from La Critique de cinéma by René Prédal, 2004, identifies a film critic as the one who"...talk[s] about films and ponder over the nature of cinema. " Harry notes the following criteria expounding this thesis, and i quote from him:

"The critic is meant to ignore the public reception and speculate on the film's meaning in art history (its value in duration and immanence).
4 main criteria :
Love of Cinema : passion + curiosity (for discoveries and novelties). Watching a lot of movies.
Culture : expert of cinema history (1000 or 2000 essential films to know to be able to relativize the creativity/skill of new movies against past production) + deep general culture (arts and real world, which is the source of cinema inspiration)
Cinema technique knowledge
Writing Quality : style, communicative enthousiasm, readable, clarity, pedagogy.
And also :
5) Sensibility : emotion. To develop affectivity even for disliked movies.
6) Stance without prejudice : Judgement rooted in critical theory trends without rigid ideology.
7) Objectivity : no influence by the majority of opinions, nor by personal mood/instinct.
8) Sense of hierarchy (values) : Being able to make pertinent comparisons. Freedom and independance of thinking, against the editorial line, other critics and social fads)"

A SELF-EVALUATION

Tell me, myself, am I only a cinephile?
from Orpheus (Cocteau, 1950)

I have been watching a lot of films for about a year and a half now, and I consider myself as a starting film critic, more like a cinephile.

In Criteria number 1, it notes that a good film critic must love cinema. Do I love cinema? If not with cinema, what am I doing here watching every Renoir that i find and salivating on every Kurosawa and Hitchcock? Or what makes a 500php ($10) weekly budget for DVDs if not for the love of cinema? Or my monthly trip to the audio-visual section of the main library to watch unwatchable, rare films by Tarkovsky and Eisenstein. How i endured 120 Days of Sodom and Caligula if not for the love of cinema and the full expression of it. How i sacrifice the banalities of life just to arrive two hours in advance for the screening of Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher (2002) during the French Film Festival last June. How i love cinema and how I owe to it!

In Criteria number 2, it says that a good film critic must be expert in cinema history. I am actually at this phase right now. I am attempting to collect all pertinent films from the different cinematic traditions from the primitive era to the recent New Waves, if there no substitute word for it, of different national cinemas. I am specifically interested on French cinema (Poetic Realism to French New Wave and on), Japanese Cinema (Mizoguchi to late Kurosawa), Primitive Era, German Expressionism and Soviet Montage. What had influenced greatly to my own self-expression and, more importantly, to my beliefs, is the Contemporary Contemplative Cinema whose version of the world is much life my version, long takes and deep-staged mise-en-scene. I am at the research phase for the whole year. I hope to see more of my own cinema next year as I refocused my interest to it.

In Criteria number 3, it argues that a good film critic must be expert or at least must know the knowledge of cinema technique, or as Bordwell wants it, the stylisitics of cinema. Because i love Bordwell a lot, i keep tons of notes on this area of film studies. I have read and reread his book on film aesthetics, Film Art, which have increased greatly my knowledge on even the simple difference from a establishing/reestablishing shot to a shot/reverse shot. I am dedicating my time to the elucidation of the ever mysterious technique of contemplative cinema artists in deploying narrative cues and mise-en-scene. I would love to do a big research on mise-en-scene and cinematography for these films because i feel that the cosmic effect of many contemplative films are greatly affected by the crude manipulation of these elements. moving on...

In Criteria number 4, it mentions that a good film critic must have a good writing quality. There lies a question on grammar. Ever since I started writing, before i gave birth to this blog, i have never been grammar conscious. I consider grammar my least priority putting diction and sentence structure on top of my list. I never read Elements of Style by White and Strunk because it is another self-help book for writers. Personally, I hate self-help books, no offense to Mark if you're reading this right now. Grammar is less important than composition, i think. It is restrictive, traditional and commonplace. I know you would say that is fundamental English and that i must be followed in all kinds of writing, but, forgive me if i came or have been influenced by modernist writers like Joyce and Woolf for their ungrammatical, highly truncated syntax. Both of them have influence my syntax: Joyce, influencing my inter-sentence construction parallel to his style in Ulysses (1921) being sometimes disjointed, and Woolf, influencing my intra-sentence construction, the long winding, comma-infested (i used to love semi-colons before) writing. I love both their styles. Ulysses, if you have read it, is a big example of an ungrammatically-explosive piece of writing.

And a note to all, i don't usually edit or review my blog posts. The coarser a post's syntax is, the more genuine its message. My writing may appear more formal if given that I am not writing in a blog and that I am writing a formal analysis of a film. There are different levels of writing, and one should know that we write at different formalities. I sort of treat my film blog as a breakaway from all conventions of writing.

SO, AM I A FILM CRITIC?

Your movie sucks! - Ebert.

Film criticism is, in a way, integrated to my system right now but not primarily central to my discourse. I consider myself more of a cinephile/film researcher and less a film critic because, first of all, i do not offer pure criticisms on my blog. Evaluations are hard to construct because, personally, I am more of a scientific person than an impressionistic one. I treasure the technicalities of films, how they are constructed, how the director manipulates a certain angle to achieve a certain effect. I consider each film as a systematic arrangement of pictures and sound temporally arrange to execute a non-narrative/narrative expression. Second, I wanted to follow the footsteps of Bordwell in his Historical Poetics stance. Bordwell has influenced me from day one because of his scientific approach to films, which i am totally in line with. So i guess, my answer is no, I am not a film critic.

RANDOM RANT:
On Kurosawa's Seven Samurai

Chris Fujiwara calls it a 'male cinema'. (here)

I am very curious about this. After watching Seven Samurai (1954) for the second time with a close friend of mine, he noted that almost every plot element of the film is somehow reminiscent of 13th Warrior (1999, John McTiernan) starring Antonio Banderas. Well, maybe what my friend was reffering to was what Seven Samurai is original about. It is one of the first films who started the plot concept of gathering heroes to form a team to battle evil forces. We can connect tons of films and comic stories with this plot concept, i know you can think of one right now (I am thinking of X-Men or Heroes). Well, we have George Lucas with his Star Wars concept heavily referenced to Seven Samurai. No wonder why the 13th Warrior is highly connected with Seven Samurai because, as my friend observed, it involves a gathering of heroes to form a team for the sole purpose of battling evil Vikings per se.

Anyway, enough of this.

More discussions on pertinent films this coming October.

Ciao!

****

THE GREAT FLOOD OF MANILA

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:50:00 +0000

Emptiness...

...is seeing humanity underwater...

[image source 1]
[pics 2,3]
[pic 4]

"People wade in the chest deep floodwater Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009 in suburban Cainta, east of Manila, Philippines. Rescuers plucked bodies from muddy floodwaters and scrambled to save drenched survivors on rooftops Sunday after a tropical storm tore through the northern Philippines and left 75 people dead or missing in the region's worst flooding in more than four decades. (AP Photo/Mike Alquinto)" (from here)

I haven't settled in yet on my routine: film blogging. My experience last Saturday was unsettling enough, not just for me, but for my other friends who were somewhat stuck between fear and paranoia, unable to shake off their experiences of wading in the flood, and witnessing the city of Manila in complete turmoil. Saturday was in fact the biggest day of the year for me and for most of us who have witness the horror and pain. But look at us, we are still here, I am still here writing a post to tell it all.

WEDNESDAY, September 23, 2009
An grim prediction

It was Wednesday, upon exiting room 307 of the Engineering building, when i exhorted over a group of my Chemical Engineering classmates that my life would change in about 72 hours (that is, 3 days from that day, Saturday, September 26, 2009) for I was anticipating the biggest event that i would be organizing in my entire life --- the PSYSC Science Olympiad National Finals (here) and (here). The Top 20 schools from both Elementary (Grades 5 to 6 or 7) and High School (3rd year to 4th year) Levels from all over the country screened from the recently concluded PSYSC National Eliminations last September 5, 2009, would be competing in the National Finals at the SM Mall of Asia by that time.

FRIDAY NIGHT, September 25, 2009
PRE-PSO FINALS PREPARATIONS

The half of the PSO team, a small group of four eager college students volunteers from UP Diliman namely Kim, San, Mona and me, and with the help of other eager students, and members of the PSYSC ECAT team, were preparing everything. By 7 o'clock in the evening, that 'everything' composed of AVPs to be edited and crafted, certificates of recognition to be printed, practical exams to be arranged in boxes and containers separated per category, questions to be reviewed and discussed, and so on. Each of the task were equally distributed among us, and I was given all computer related work a. k. a. Engineering work. So i worked with the AVPs and all. By 10 PM we were asked to move out of preparation venue and camped out at the Mall of Asia for yet another preparation. I was tasked to leave all Eng'g work and find a taxi. I asked Mona to help me out and we walked in the middle of rain along A. Roces Avenue inside the campus and I felt something bad.

I expressed to Mona my inhibited feeling about the unending rain that began a few hours ago:

"I feel bad about this long and unending rain. I prefer a one time, big time downpour than a slow, retarded heavy downpour. What do you think?" She agreed.

I found a taxi a few minutes later. Kim and San went ahead of us three which included Anacel being our auditor/acquisition/supplies manager, Mona and me. We carried pertinent stuffs such as printers, LCD projector screens, bond papers etc stuffing everything that fitted inside the taxi. We brushed through C5 high way unaware of the building traffic jam. We detoured to EDSA Avenue and went straight to the Mall of Asia arriving at about 1100PM. Maam Rhea, SM Mall of Asia Marketing/Events organizer of the Nido Discovery Center helped us set up the chairs for the venue. We worked 'till 100AM and moved to the nearest McDonald's 24-hrs outlet and stayed there before dawn strikes.

I was busy fidgeting Vegas to finish the AVP for the opening program when my battery died. I suggested that we moved to the nearest Starbucks franchise for the benefit of an electrical socket. We went there but it was closed. Dreaded by a dead laptop and the few ticking hours before the opening program, i prayed hard that i would finish the AVP. And I prayed, and prayed, and prayed that everything would be okay...

SEPTEMBER 26 - PSO Proper
The Reckoning of the Sky

I finished the AVP by 7AM, an hour before the Opening program. The rain poured aggressively outside of the venue proper as the program progressed. I assisted Hansel in operating the technical stuffs. The rest of program pushed through, unaware of the coming tragedy, a reckoning of the sky.

-----o - o - o -----
Josette's struggle with the Storm
[adapted from the true story of Josette Ann Baconguis]

Her class ended at around 1130AM, she ate lunch at the UP shopping center wishful to arrive at the event's proper by around 1PM just in time to help out in all things necessary. She waited for a jeepney that would take her to the nearest MRT station.

She was wearing her formal wear. She scrupulously arrange her hair as the rain drenched her umbrella. The jeepney driver, suggested that he cannot take any passengers outside of the campus because the water was rising. Unaware, she insisted and explained that she had to go to the MRT. Beside her was a graduate student with a bruised leg whose destination was Cubao.

The jeepney skidded off unable to contain the accumulating passengers whose eyes were struck with offish oddity. In their minds were shear pictures of Philcoa, the gateway of all commuters to different parts of Manila, under three feet of water.

Water level rose at chest levels.

Josette had this picture in her mind that time, but her spirits were awaken by the necessity of her presence in the event at the PSO Finals in the Mall of Asia. She was very determined to get there no matter what. The woman with a bruised leg, Michel, joined her insistence to find a cab that would take them to their destinations.

Finally, a taxi cab stopped in front of them and promised to take them to the nearest jump off point. It was 200PM, two hours after her lunch. The taxi halted at Central where the flood level was below their knees, enough for them to sally through the clammy waters. Michel hesitated at first sight, her wound, fresh from the surgical knife from her past medical operation, would open up and the risk of contracting the deadly Tetanus virus was high.

As the flood waters went up, they waited for aid, and luckily a private vehicle stopped and fetched them to the nearest mall where the water level had not yet risen.

2:30 PM. They waved for all kinds of vehicle passing through Commonwealth Avenue, and nothing, not even buses or dump trucks were kind enough to let them hitched a ride to the nearest MRT station. Many stranded passengers joined them and waited for a miracle. A jeepney headed to the MRT station offered the empty seats to the passengers on the street. Josette and Michel were lucky to sat on the last seats.

Philcoa

Philcoa - flooded.

By the time they arrived at Philcoa, everything was in chaos. The traffic scheme was jammed, the usual route of the Quezon City Circle's counter clockwise traffic was blocked by criss-crossing buses, trucks, and vehicles. Josette's eyes were clouded with fear. She never saw Philcoa in such a dismal scenery: garbage floating here and there, college students soaked in their school uniforms, horns of cars and medium-weight vehicles clamored in their highest decibels. She covered here ears as she and Michel went out of the jeepney to do the impossible----to walk towards the MRT station two kilometers away in knee-deep waters.

Kim, a fellow friend of mine, described Philcoa as it was last Saturday in his September 27th post on his blog. He wrote with candidness:

"...Philcoa was a scene I thought only seen in movies. It was a picture of a corner of a country subjected to a natural calamity within an economic crisis. Holding on to my wallet instead of trusting the nerve endings of the skin on my butt to assure me of its presence every now and then, I entered the ever-reliable and jam-packed Mercury Drug. The “Closed” sign of the more expensive alternative MiniStop mocked its 24-hour bullshit.

With McDo and Jollibee closed, I moved to look for bread, my heart beating fast out of fear of going hungry. I found one last loaf on the shelf and in true cinematic fashion increased my walking pace towards it. My hand reached for the bread as another lady gestured to take the same. Working my charm, and seeing that she was already holding three loaves of bread anyway, I shrugged my shoulders and tried my very best to look hungry. It worked and I almost died trying to stifle my laughter.

Safe with food, I was hell-bent on and actually excited about walking my way into campus, confident in the Decolgen I bought despite the fever I felt was coming. Hence my disappointment in the relief of finding a Philcoa jeep ready to go when I tried the terminal again." (from here)

The horror was in Michel's face. after surviving a post-bone-tumor-removal operation a month ago, she faced another life-threatening situation upon crossing the shallow waters pilled with floating debris mixed with bacteria-infested canal waters. How could she do it? She looked at her companion , Josette, as she inhaled the humid air, for Josette was strong-willed and courageous, a capacity she needed in times like this. The sole of her shoe touched the brackish flood waters, the wind chilled her. Her blouse was drenched in rain for Josette was the only one carrying an umbrella for both of them.

She did what seemed appropriate at that moment. Slowly, she placed her shoes on the bottom pavement and waved her legs through the ravaging storm waters, and, grabbing Josette's left arm they walked on the drier pavement. They sauntered in disbelief of seeing hundreds of commuters walking towards the MRT station, by that time, the only available transportation to cross Manila.

A man riding motorcycle bypassed the immovable traffic.

Three o'clock in the afternoon, the sky was dark, and the humidity of the air had lessen. They arrived at the GMA-Kamuning station completely damped. They climbed inside the train and waited for a few minutes and finally, Josette arrived at the Taft Avenue station and Michel at the Araneta-Cubao station.

Michel would witness Araneta-Cubao in deep waters. Below is a picture of an Avenue beside the Araneta Colliseum completely immersed in waters.

Note that the water level reached the rooftop of the car.

Josette arrived at the MRT station at about 500PM. Taft Avenue was, for her, the most chaotic she had ever seen. Apart from the accumulating passengers, the flood levels at the base of the station was above chest levels. A group of brave citizens, hand-in-hand, swam across the EDSA Avenue when, suddenly, a big trucked sallied from Taft Avenue sent a wave of floodwater engulfing them whole. Josette, in her conscience, saw the force of nature out of control and the possibility of death. The brave citizens persisted as they gasped from the incoming wave. With arms clasped closer, they moved in a steady pace, summing up their courage, as they inhaled life.

A bus traversing on the flooded streets of Manila sent a wave
as it passes through the Avenue.

In Josette's mournful eyes, she had witnessed the most horrible. After a few minutes of non-stop arrival of passengers, the overpass connecting the MRT station and the low-lying streets of the Taft-EDSA intersection was filled with people. By a singular thrust from the northside, the people on top of the overpass oscilated to and fro, unstabling their positions sending a deadly stampede ten feet from the rising flood waters.

People from the station watched in horror.

The stampede grew at critical heights; and, one by one, people violently fell from the ten-foot overpass plunging into the floodwaters. A shrieking woman, outbalanced from the edge of the overpass, was thrown at backward position landing on the 6ft floodwater screaming for help.

Josette, unable to contain the scene, went back to the MRT Train and headed towards the Quezon Avenue Station. She walked from there towards Philcoa. It was almost dusk, 7PM, and Josette scurried for food at Philcoa. All establishments were closed except MEALS TO GO. They offered her enough food to regain her energy.

Her eyes were almost closed in exhaustion.

And she went by foot to her dormitory from Philcoa, where, upon entering the room, her roommates were there, and she cried peacefully in their arms.

-----------------

7PM, SEPTEMBER 26, 2009
PSO FINALS CLOSING, MALL OF ASIA

It was Josette's account of the flood that moved me into writing.

As the PSO closing program ended, the SM Management declared that all roads were impassable. I was clearly spaced out because of hunger and tiredness, and did not heard clearly the news about the flood and how chaotic Manila was. I was unaware of Josette's experience. I suddenly remembered feeling light and dreamy, but i managed to open a web-page FLV movie from ABS-CBN NEWS website explaining the odd phenomenon. I readjusted the video and plug it in the LCD monitor, volume-up the sounds to let the rest of the participants, coaches, parents, advisers, principals, the PSYSC team know the situation outside Mall of Asia.

The Management requested us to stay indoors. They opened the Food court and supplied us with watter and sandwich during the night. They also provided the Nido Fortified Discovery Center and the Planetarium as areas for accomodations.

We stayed there overnight. By 12 o'clock in the evening, the National President of SM went there to inspect us, she gave us Krispy Kreme doughnuts and additional water supplies. I cannot sleep that time trying to find a way to text my parents that I was okay, to send a message to a close friend that I wouldn't be there to bring him a dinner, to tell them that I was not alone but with fifty something people from PSYSC. I wanted to pray hard, the hardest, upon seeing the videos uploaded in youtube and the horror drawn in the faces of my colleagues.

How lucky I was to be there locked from rain and cold.

How very lucky we were!

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2009

Everything Calms down

And yet, for there was morning in all days, it simply began after another announcement from Mall of Asia that some roads were passable. I woke up in the middle of the room, napping on three chairs arranged together with my cellular phone ringing. I gathered myself and went to the bathroom.

I slapped my face and washed it in methodical phase, brushed my teeth and went out.

The signal from all networks were revitalized, I sent text messages to important people, and helped out in the cleaning of the venue. By 9AM we had breakfast at Jollibee near Mall of Asia. And from there, we journeyed back to where we came from.

As we passed through the streets and avenues of Manila, it seemed as if nothing happened. Dry pavement illuminated by the sun, a streak of clouds over the horizon. Manila was waking up, i thought. How calm it was! For there was Philcoa, waterless, and EDSA-Taft intersection busy as a bee, and all roads that led us to our destination, were calm, easy, and light.

A total opposite, a mere extension of an illusion that I created in my head.

I was never aware that Marikina City and Rizal were heavily hit, or that my friend, Paul Jordan, grieved for his flooded appartment, and in all this, I slept. I slept without knowing that some people could not sleep at all because of the fear that succumbed them, or the rain, and their cold bodies.

How the Lord must be merciful to all of us; I cried inside out while sleeping.

It happens.

****

Bande à part (1964)

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 19:55:00 +0000

...Godard foreva!...

Odile

I was slightly encouraged by this scene to pursue my T-shirt design for Godard.

Ciao!
***

Engkwentro, District 9, Bertolucci and One Year of Cinephilia

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:46:00 +0000

...going back to business...

[Engwentro googled image]
[bertolucci image]

Pepe Diokno and the light. (here)

That is, going back to what i love most, watching films on Tuesday nights and spending my careful research on 'some contemplative films' on Friday nights. I have heard recently that Engkwentro (2009) directed by Pepe Diokno won the Orrizonti prize under New Horizons category in the recently concluded 66th Venice Film Fest. Pepe Diokno is twenty one years old. As you might recall, last year's Orrizonti Award was given to our very respected and loved, Lav Diaz with his feature Melancholia (2008). Oggs presented a careful observation of Engkwentro's style. He wrote:

"Perhaps the most glaring difference is style. While Libiran sometimes indulges in long takes (there's a particularly lovely scene where Libiran's camera follows a utilities man who is mobbed by Tondo residents who are complaining about their electricity bills), Diokno attempts to tell his story in one long take. He failed at that attempt but achieves something close. Engkwentro is composed of a couple of takes, seemingly seamlessly edited together by Miko Araneta. Diokno's camera is constantly in motion: candidly shaking as it treads the labyrinthine passageways of his makeshift slums; following the characters as they hatch their plans, negotiate, orate and fight; and document the goings-on with the efficiency of an inconspicuous voyeur." (here)

Long takes, that is. It is not clear, however, if mise-en-scene staging (i.e. staging in deep space as in Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) or Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1969)) was Oggs's point here. If the long take was made as a cinematographic effect, obviously, because Oggs later observe that the camera was moving, it might have a different function. Let us say, the use of Jean Renoir's long take, mobile camera on La Grande Illusion (1937) functions differently as long take, steady camera of Welles in Magnifecent Ambersons. In an interview with the Inquirer Pepe Diokno clarifies this aesthetic choice saying:

"...that the 61-minute film was done with one long take. “Actually, there were 51 cuts, but we had to digitally erase the cuts and make it look seamless. We wanted to make it appear continuous, as if it was one long tracking shot.”" (here)

I think this 'volatile' use of long take, handheld camerawork can be connected with the cinematography of Wong Kar-wai and obviously related to the style that proliferated in 1960s art film cinema, the cinéma vérité. I have made a careful observation after watching Alan Clarke's 1988 film, Elephant, that:

"The object of contemplation will be lost, however, if the directors will pursue this (handheld camera) cinematic style. It can be thought that hand-held cameras may depict the theme of violence... with much accuracy because it can deploy much of the needed hastiness and immediacy of the gunner shooting a victim. It can also add a lot of psychological positioning as post-compositional effects. This style is common in art house cinemas especially in the independent waves in the 80s. Kubrick did use a handheld camera when he filmed certain scenes in The Shinning (1980)."(here)

If cinéma vérité style is central to Engkwentro's camera, correct me if I am wrong, nothing is more 'cinéma vérité' than my Saturday night movie madness on Neill Blomkamp's District 9 (2009) which is still showing at SuperMart theaters this week.

District 9

from slashfilm.

District 9 is a mesh of documentary-style and special effects, and to see young audiences sitting next to me enjoying the terrifying treat amazes me. The film is a bit 'horrory' for an age of 14 or 15. I, myself, am shocked by the visuals of District 9. It has a highly developed aesthetics that deserve academic study, whatever the inconsistencies present in its form, for example, the surveillance footage style, if remember it completely, have some shot/reverse shots effects. Who could find a surveillance camera with such high cinematography???

Bertolucci and Celebrating One Year of Cinephilia

The Bertolucci position - Cinephilia has never been this good!

Finally, the highlight of my week, aside from Godard, is a string of films by Bernando Bertolucci which I have recently acquired namely his masterpiece, The Conformist (1970), his most controversial film that drived Pauline Kael crazy, Last Tango in Paris (1973), his Oscar winning The Last Emperor (which I purchased last month), and his recent feature The Dreamers (2003).

One can say that I am living in an auteur's world. A couple of days ago, my friend observes: "Oh! Wow! you have almost all Scorseses [he was refering to Scorsese's oeuvre which I have carefully been collecting.]." I replied: "Believe me, I don't have. You are talking of 21 features, 8 documentaries, 7 shorts. And they are not all in DVD, not that i can recall. And I don't have enough money."

This issue of collecting oeuvre of filmmakers, as in my attempt to collect all Kurosawas, Brillante Mendozas, Lav Diaz-es, Godards, Hitchcocks, Murnaus, Almodovars and Renoirs, is highly frustrating. You can't collect them all in DVDs, particullarly on a high-definition, notable, unstrangled DVD copies. I have this recent urge to unmasked all of history of film (at least the most notable) and to lay it on my table and select my top 20 best films of all time. To date, my cinephiliac wanderings have been continuing for about a year now. It started way, way back when i posted my article: "A Consuming Film Research: First Steps." published in this blog last September 10, 2008. A year and six days passed and over two hundred films and more than fifty film books, I can say that I have been successful in my undertaking to transforming myself into a film blogger, and the best thing, a film cinephile.

Do you remember this picture from my September 10, 2008 post?

from here

These are my first film books that I have read in my whole life. Before I cut this post, I have long admired this quotation from Godard:

"I need a day to tell the history of a second, a year to tell the history of a minute, a lifetime to tell the history of a day."
- Godard from Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinéma

Ciao and welcome to another year of cinephilia with Adrian.

Histoire(s) du Cinema (1998, Jean-luc Godard)

****

Gymnopedie No. 1 and David Bordwell at 16:9

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:38:00 +0000

...melancholic reading...

Gymnopedie No. 1 (1888) by Erik Satie

and

Bordwellians, anyone?

Good Morning film world! I think I am back again to my research on a couple of contemplative films in preparation for my ________. I have to reread the interview from 16:9, a Danish film journal. I just want to share my notes, mostly taken from the third instalment of the interview of David Bordwell, the famous film scholar of UW, with Jakob Isak Nielsen, entitled: Part III: Writing on Film Style.

All were quoted from the interview:

"We still lack a comprehensive account of color in film, we lack a comprehensive account of camera movement, we lack a comprehensive account of many, many aspects if sound."

"We don't even have a study of the history of lighting, something so essential to all films --- or even a portion of that history, say, lighting in the classical Hollywood cinema or the 30s even."

"It would be wonderful if they [studies on lighting] could be comparative in terms of periods."

"I think there are different ways to go on this but I do think that poetics in general --- and stylistics in particular --- tend to be very comparative."

"One of the reasons that I think fewer [film] scholars pick up the poetics perspectives and try to develop it is because it seems focused on minutia or triviality. It inquires into highly esoteric issues and I have to say it parallels the standing of stylistics and poetics in literary studies."

"Whereas the kind of stylistics that I'm proposing by concentrating on denotation and then secondarily on expression and decoration says 'actually referential meaning matters a lot.'"

From Part I- Hitchcock, Hartley and the Poetics of Cinema:

On Hitchcock:

"He seemed to be just a master --- a virtuoso of the film medium --- and he was almost our film school. Hitchcock --- more than any other filmmakers, even European filmmakers --- was the director people felt they could learn most about cinema from."

"I prefer how to work on directors who are underappreciated; on directors about which I feel I have something original to say."

Jakob asks a question:

"To ask about the poetics governing any filmmaking tradition is to pose at least four broad questions”:

1. Overarching form: by what principles are the films created as distinctive narrative wholes or “other” wholes?
2. Stylistics: how is the film medium deployed in a film or body of films?
3. Spectatorial uptake: how do form and style shape the uptake of films?
4. Historical poetics: how do form and style exhibit patterns of continuity and change over time and how might we best explain these patterns?"

"I was only concerned with the denotative function of style. Again it is a matter of seeing how much I can squeeze out of a single concept. I'm interested in the expressive functions, I'm interested in the decorative functions."

Ciao!

[Internet here sucks as usual.]

***

R. L. Stine Craze

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:00:00 +0000

...when I was a kid...

I love R.L. Stine! When I was a kid i used to collect all of them, and when I went to high school I sold all of them because i felt that i have grown. Yes, I said to my friends: "I think i'm too old for that." Eight years later, I regretted everything.

My first ever book adventure before Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Harry Potter, Tolstoy, Woolf, and Dostoevsky was, of course, Night of the Living Dummy, the seventh installation of R.L. Stine's Goosebump series. Though I never really understood it, not that I remember it completely, I came to an understanding that books can take you anywhere and all the cliche of it.

Books should be central to one's childhood.

Ciao!
***

Torquay, Devon (1924)

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 04:56:00 +0000

...is something else...

Hallo! I got this from BFI (British Film Institute) youtube Channel and I was so amazed by the quality of this 1924 extract. From the BFI's description: "This extract comes from Claude Friese-Greene's 'The Open Road' - originally filmed in 1925/6 and now re-edited and digitally restored by the BFI National Archive."

Look, we don't have technicolor back in the 1920s. The camera back then was so medieval, yet, as one film theorist would argue, the camera used back then is one of the best of its kind. BFI have made big contribution by adding color to this 1920 clips using advance technology, maybe on coloration techniques [a bit of physics, i guess], so that we can enjoy this age old clips.

Kudos to BFI!

Ciao!
***

Alexis Tioseco (1981 - 2009)

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:08:00 +0000

this is for Alex...

The Letter I Would Love To Read To You In Person is a writing that one has to read and never forget.

When I sense a great passage of time, there is this feeling disintegration and fear that I have made such a waste of time, but one must live on, through that crack and tear that we pass everyday. The sudden passage of Alexis Tioseco have left a great impression on me. I am not related to Alexis personally but I feel a cosmic feeling of thirst for his connection. August 30, 2009, two days before the tragedy, I left a comment on his latest blog post, i said:

"Gosh! Alex, i totally agree with everything here. What is Philippine Film History, its essence and legacy, without an archive. The restoration of the films from the silent era of our old local cinema should be highly prioritize. If we cannot afford ‘LOCAL CRITERION COLLECTION’, it is best to keep everything free from the inevitable damages like dust, suspended particulates, high temperature effects of summer, or moisture accumulation during rainy days etc. I could cry now really. As we all know, all things decay with time, and there is not enough left. What in the heavens are they waiting for! What!"

It reverberated in my head, the whole time i recalled reading Oggs's September 2 post in the middle of everything. September 1 was part of the week that I can consider as my busiest week of all time. I had no sleep for three days preparing my part for the National Science Club Month. I had a little time for internet when, at last, one fine Wednesday night in the middle sorting papers and video editing i opened my BLOGGER dashboard and the name 'Alexis Tioseco' caught my eye and it was from Oggs. I exclaimed: "Oh my! Alexis!" I was shunned in disbelief, and right then and there my last words from my comment echoed like fire: "as we all know, all things decay with time, and there is not enough left."

Not enough left Alex, not enough left. I am hoping for an answer from him. But fate have silence my call forever.

"It is important for people to write about their own cinemas and not let it be left to those outside to dictate what matters."
--- Alexis Tioseco [from here]

Ciao Alex!
****

PSYSC SEND - OFF...

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:02:00 +0000

...and everything goes with it.

PSYSC --- one way of looking at it.

Everybody needs everybody especially in PSYSC where science clubbing, central to anything else, comes first before the cough, headaches and sleepless nights of conscious self-torture. If there is one thing about cramming that I hate, it is the 'aftertaste'. However, when one crams for the Filipino Youth in general, even when the weight gets heavier and heavier, one gets a euphoric feeling, a vision, and it sets one above the rest, above the ordinariness of youth. You become, as a science clubber, a vehicle for change.

This coming September 5, 2009, PSYSC will be organizing the Science Olympiad and Summit on 10 different sites around the Philippines. I will be organizing the one in Legaspi City, so I will be staying there for three days to prepare everything. The complete list of sites is shown below:

PSYSC Science Olympiad (PSO) Sites:

* BHC Educational Institution, City of San Fernando, La Union (R I)
* Olongapo NHS, Olongapo City (R III)
* Elyon Academy, Nagcarlan, Laguna (R IV)
* Aquinas University, Legaspi City, Albay (R V)
* Capiz National High School, Roxas City, Capiz (R VI)
* Zamboanga del Sur National High School, Pagadian City, Zamboanga del Sur (R IX)
* Corpus Cristi School, Macasandig, Cagayan De Oro City (R X)
* Davao City National High School, Davao City (R XI)
* Agusan National High School, Butuan City, Agusan del Norte (CARAGA)
* Angelicum College, Quezon City (NCR)

National Science Clubs Summit Sites:

* Capiz National High School, Roxas City, Capiz (R VI)
* Zamboanga del Sur National High School, Pagadian City (R IX)
* Davao City National High School, Davao City (R XI)
* Agusan National High School, Butuan City, Agusan del Norte (CARAGA)

For more information about SUMMIT and PSYSC SCIENCE OLYMPIAD please visit our website: http://psysc.org.

ON-THE-SPOT POSTER MAKING CONTEST

Quoting from our site:

"In support to the Asia Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF) space education and awareness program, the DOST Science Education Institute (SEI) in cooperation with the Department of Education and the Philippine Society of Youth Science Clubs (PSYSC) will conduct an On-the-Spot Poster Making COntest during the Regional Level of the PSYSC Science Olympiad (PSO) on September 5, 2009.

Theme: OUR UNIVERSE - GREAT DISCOVERIES

The poster making contest encourages the children to expand their imagination and express what they may find in the universe. It also contributes to the celebration of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) in 2009 under the theme: “The Universe-Yours to Discover”".

See you there!

Once a PSYSC, a PSYSC forever.

***

THESES ON JEAN-LUC GODARD!

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:52:00 +0000

...or heaven!

Breathless...

Boujour! Catherine Grant of Film Studies for Free has just illuminated a couple of links at her blog concerning some PhD Theses on Jean-Luc Godard, one of my favorite directors of all time. This is equivalent to my recent enlightenment on the filmic aspects of Andrei Tarkovsky after reading some pages of Films by Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue by Vida Johnson and Graham Petrie, because, as we all know Andrei Tarkovsky is an auteurist as hardball as Godard. Whenever I encounter Godard I sense cinema lurking somewhere. hmmm... I was thinking the other day of making a shirt design dedicated to him, purely minimalist, JEAN-LUC GODARD, a black print on white, what 'ya think? Anyway, i think it is cheap as hell, so let us put it on the garbage bin.

Go dig in for Godard's sake!!! (reposting links from Catherine...)

1) Gary Elshaw, 'The Depiction of late 1960's Counter Culture in the 1968 Films of Jean-Luc Godard', MA e-thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, November 2000

2) Douglas Morrey, Jean-Luc Godard and the other history of cinema. PhD e-thesis, University of Warwick, 2002

3)Thibaut Schilt, 'Marginal Pleasure and Auteurist Cinema: the Sexual Politics of Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Catherine Breillat and François Ozon', PhD e-thesis, Ohio State University 2005

***

VONYA I MIR for Adrian Danilovich Mendizabal

Tolstoy in his deathbed...

Recently I decided to put back Anna Karenina on the shelf and decided to start on War and Peace (1869). I hope this venture on long literature pieces will not be a waste of time. War and Peace is over a thousand pages, why am I doing this? But anyway, I wanted to do a 'meditative' reading on Tolstoy wherein everyday I dedicate at least a hundred pages of thorough and, as much as possible, uninterrupted reading on the book. War and Peace is a complex epic of a group of Russian families during the Napoleonic war. I began reading August 25, i hope i will finish by mid September.

Meanwhile, enjoy this clip from Death in the Land of Encantos (2006).

This was shot somewhere at my province, Bicol Region,
here in the Philippines.

***

STAYING ALIVE...

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:01:00 +0000

...hay buhay...

Randomness...

Something Nietzschean, absurd. Bertrund Russel go lang!
Heidegger... Ahmm... is it too much to say that?

Ako ay buhay pa naman. This is not an update about films but about my life: sleep at nine, wake up at four in the morning to finish a design, sleep again until eight and go to class at eight thirty, then a quick lunch at twelve, then a grueling afternoon of problem sets, books to read, and lengthy equations to nail oneself unto. I just want to say sorry to certain people for forgetting important dates and for being unmindful of important tasks because if one is faced with a truncheon of tasks, one has to prioritize the best-shaped and well-edged spear - one that can penetrate oneself fully. It is a fact that a human being, no matter how will-situated one is, can strike life only once and one at a time It is best to keep everything under control, smoothen ones moment, and let go of pensive things that creates a great divide on who we are and what we could possibly be.

In the light of August, the month that I will never forget, I do face certain deadlines narrowed to about 48 hours on interval. In my best ability, i will completely cease the inevitable doom of that September 4, 2009 departure for Legazpi City, and also, will completely cease my inability to understand myself in times of stress. I will learn new things, newer things that comes along the way. The next two weeks will be highly critical to my physical, emotional and academic evolution. I have two exams next week and another two perhaps on the following week after next week, and urgh! that September 4!

May God guide us through this hard times. Hard times, my friends, hard times!

I leave you with Cough and Sneezes (1945).

Hay buha...Chooo...! Ehem!

Ciao!

Happy Together (1997)

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:41:00 +0000

... because this is Wong's finest...

I'll never gonna dance again...

There is something in Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together that i like as much as other films who use cinematography in its full expression. Happy Together defines and redefines cinematography. No wonder why i fell in love with the film. I suddenly observe, most of the films I like have a strikingly demanding use of cinematography to holistically fuse every aspect --- narrative style, mise-en-scene, sound, acting. I subscribe to this convention as if it was the only means of evaluating films. Am I wrong here? Is Citizen Kane (1941), the greatest film of all time, a great tour-de-force in acting? I bet it can't be justified in that aspect. Of course Citizen Kane's victorious, universal appraisal as the best movie of all time came from its most innovative use of the deep-focus cinematography and deep-space mise-en-scene. Kane is the pinnacle of that style and because of it, it has changed the way people look at films --- it started the view of films as a form of art. I should discuss more about Kane later.

Meanwhile, I pick two sample shots from the film which i think have explained why cinematography is central to Happy Together.

A central scene

Ciao!

***

ANNA KARENINA after Five Years...

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:50:00 +0000

...

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Ilya Efimovich Repin's (1844 - 1930) painting: A Portrait of Tolstoy

I read Anna Karenina five years ago for a book report. I just wanted to read it again. Upon reading the first sentence: Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way", i remember the feeling of psychedelia, a flash of wave that broke me half: two souls, the life I am leading and the frivolous life that i am trying to put away. It reminds me that there are two kinds of writers. Such is a writer that grows from everything, and such is a writer that condemns growth and relieves himself that he, a vehicle of expression, is the measure of everything that he creates.

Reading Tolstoy is incredibly difficult for a fifteen year old that I was. With no advance lessons on syntagmatics and syntactics, or even a notion of translating a piece of literature from language to language, I scuttle over Anna Karenina like as if it was a literature of meditative trance, a long hum of bees continuously uncovering itself upon me day by day. Upon reaching page 365, i stopped and reflected on what i have achieved, half of Anna Karenina was in me, and i stopped there, and i would dare to open the book again after five years to completely take it in.

I choose to grow.

Ciao!

--- o ----

My copy is from the old translation by Constance Garnett (above)

--- o ---

***

No Skin Off My Ass (1991)

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:43:00 +0000

... or should i invest for this film?

No Skin Off My Ass by Bruce Labruce

I am busy like any normal person in the campus. It is midterms at U.P. and everyone looks stressed like me with big black eyebags ready to shut off anytime. As suppose to films, I am concentrating my attention on two aspects: French Films from Poetic Realism period (1930 - 1939), mostly that of Renoir and Carne, and the New Queer Cinema for my written personal report on my sexuality subject, Soc Sci 3. Historically, I see how much Bruce Labruce's first feature No Skin Off My Ass can be important to this wave of independent filmmaking in the 1990s. I am trying to connect foreign influences like Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991), James Cameron Mitchell's Short Bus (2006), Todd Hayne's I'm Not There (2007), and Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin (2004) to the whole body of Queer cinema prevalant in the local independent circuit. I have not chosen any local titles yet, but i have several titles in my mind right now: Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (Aureus Solito, 2005), Lihim ni Antonio (Joselito Altejeros, 2008), Lalake sa Parola (Joselito Altejeros, 2007), Serbis (Brillante Mendoza, 2008), Masahista (Brillante Mendoza, 2005). Anyway, you can catch some of this local films in a local film blog, The Bakla Review.

My analysis would run like this:

Contemporary ---> (1900s - 2000s)

(1) Historical Data source related to the construction of the films
(2) Contemporary Gay Sex history: extract parallelisms to no. 1
(3) Extracts from contemporary film books, literature, and criticisms on the films notably from Richard Dreyer, the Ladlad Series, and other 'monumental works'
(4) Exposition for the main thesis: "....." (I won't tell you!)
(5) Conclusion

Okay, I stop here!

Ciao!

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Samba Saravah...

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:05:00 +0000

... is the song to sing about...

Samba Saravah
sang by Francis Lai in Un Homme
also recently by Stacey Kent
[lyrics from]

Être heureux, c’est plus ou moins ce qu’on cherche
J’aime rire, chanter et je n’empêche
Pas les gens qui sont bien d’être joyeux
Pourtant s’il est une samba sans tristesse
C’est un vin qui ne donne pas l’ivresse
Un vin qui ne donne pas l’ivresse, non
Ce n’est pas la samba que je veux

J’en connais que la chanson incommode
D’autres pour qui ce n’est rien qu’une mode
D’autres qui en profitent sans l’aimer
Moi je l’aime et j’ai parcouru le monde
En cherchant ses racines vagabondes
Aujourd’hui pour trouver les plus profondes
C’est la samba-chanson qu’il faut chanter

On m’a dit qu’elle venait de Bahia
Qu’elle doit son rythme et sa poésie à
Des siècles de danse et de douleur
Mais quels que soient les sentiments qu’elle exprime
Elle est blanche de formes et de rimes
Blanche de formes et de rimes
Elle est nègre, bien nègre, dans son cœur
Mais quelque soit le sentiment qu’elle exprime
Elle est blanche de formes et de rimes
Blanche de formes et de rimes
Elle est nègre, bien nègre, dans son cœur

A piece from Claude Lelouch's "to fall in love" Un Homme et Une Femme (1966).

Ciao!

***

On Not Watching...

noreply@blogger.com (ADRIAN) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:51:00 +0000

...Francesco Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979)

First notable frame from Christ Stopped at Eboli.

I just had a gathering day. It is one of the rare days where i meet people and people remind me of how trivial and boring my life was. Sometimes they offer you advice and sometimes they just dump you on a sidewalk. What happened to me yesterday was the usual --- friends, a violent reaction, then dump. Right then and there. But i realized, most of these people are the ones who I have been with for years and perhaps, maybe they were right. But how sure am I?

It is not their issue but my issue, and perhaps, I have to reevaluate what i used to call 'myself'. How am i supposed to say this correctly? I just sat in front of my laptop and sulk at the screen. I was supposed to continue two AVPs and a poster design but my mood is way down. I desperately needed to watch a four-hour with a heavy subject to remind myself that i am not alone. What can be more appropriate than Francesco Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) a rich epic tale but really depressing.

On a second thought, why should i be sulking? Have I lost all my spirit? So what i did was I put up a cup of coffee, put in Sex and the City and enjoyed about three to four episodes. I had a new spirit right then and there.

LESSON: When you need to lighten up yourself, you do not need a three to four-hour film. A sex comedy can brighten you up.

Ciao!
***