(Here's another years-old post. I promise I'll get to the current stuff - Hero)
Not that there's much point in doing this, but I thought it was time for another litany on aspects of popular culture. This time I'm focusing on local movies. It's in sections cause I'm not really into the whole "in summary" thing.
(clockwise from bottom-center : Nino Muhlach, the Gorio and Tekla poster, the Hyatt Terraces Hotel, the poster for Diborsyada.)
1. I saw a few minutes of a Nino Muhlach movie about a month ago and was reminded of how astute and precocious he was during his pre-ensyamada days. Maybe his role as a four year old pandesal vendor walking the streets staggers the imagination (how many cherubic, puffy-cheeked, healthy looking children are there actually roaming the streets plying their wares these days? Cherubic, puffy-cheeked AND healthy-looking, unfortunately, being the operative terms) but his performance was nothing less than delightful.
How can one fault a child who can believably churn out adult-like spiels like the best of them and still maintain an air of innocence about him? It wasn't an amazing performance, but it definitely wasn't cloying or forced either.
Unfortunately, it was also a Fernando Poe Jr. movie so I took my ten minutes of Nino Muhlach and changed channels. I’m not a suntok -at-isa-pang-suntok kind of person.
Among the current crop of child performers, I'd say Sharlene San Pedro is the one who reminds me most of Nino. She carries a relaxed wit about her that, if ever it is a practiced keenness, seems natural enough to convince me that she was taken from her mother's womb bathed in it.
Her foil would have to be her colleague Nash Aguas, whose acting seems to have a more obviously calculated and strained effect to it. But then again with proper guidance and management, both actors can still get better in the years to come.
2. I may have mentioned this before but one reason I like watching local movies from the 60s until the 80s is because I like observing how much the landcape has changed.
A few years back one of my favorite movies (I can't remember the title) was one that starred a bunch of young actors including Janice de Belen and Nadia Montenegro and had Freddie Webb and Nova Villa among the supporting cast of adults.
For the most part it was one of your run-of-the-mill teen angst/prom movies, but I loved it because of the scene in the old amusement park inside the Greenhills Shopping Center. I couldn’t remember what the actors were doing there but I guess it was either a date or an excursion. All I cared about seeing was the park.
The park was a knock-off of Disneyland called Fantasyland and they weren’t exactly discreet about the copyright abuse with their obviously-Mickey Mouse statues and the like, but the again, what child notices those things? (I think I did, but I didn’t care.)
It had the Octopus, a mini Ferris Wheel, and a bunch of other rides. I don’t remember if I went on many rides (actually the clearest memory I have is of a jilted attempt to go on the Octopus) but it’s the thought that counts.
The thought, of course, is of when my parents and grandparents would take us out there on weekends to have fun with our cousins, and come home with a treat or two. A few years or so after that, because of my dad’s job our weekends and vacations would be spent in the province doing absolutely nothing. (We weren’t allowed outside there.)
I also reported about the old Baguio in an earlier post on the movie Diborsyada starring Gina Alajar, Michael de Mesa and Jimi Melendez. Lots of old movies showed Baguio owing to the fact that it was the destination at the time and pretty much until the 1990 earthquake.
Baguio had the cool climate (a welcome respite from the humid Manila), the scenic views, the parang-Isteyts amenities at Camp John Hay (random retardedness: back in the 80s when we spent our summer hols there, I met a candy bar vending machine and I was so psyched. Could you tell that I didn’t get out much?) and the exquisite Hyatt Hotel.
Ah, the Hyatt Hotel, I have fond memories of running around in its corridors and watching people go up and down the glass escalator. Aside from being the primary location for Diborsyada, this gorgeous hotel was also featured in the movie Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising starring Christopher De Leon and Hilda Koronel.
Whenever I see the scene where Christopher de Leon and his older lover are hiding from a girl in the lobby cafe, I am reminded of how clever the hotel’s design was. I loved the circular booths which (if I remember correctly) sort of blended into the split- level floor of the lobby and allowed you proper intimacy. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if the cafe wasn’t the scene for many clandestine meetings just like the one in the movie.
If only the earthquake never happened, for more reasons than this of course, I think the Hyatt would be quite the landmark. I don’t think the architecture would have been dated at all, the passing of time would have made it rustic and luxurious at the same time. I think it’s called a paradox. Don’t quote me on that, I haven’t had my brain juice today.
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Just yesterday I saw a movie called Jack n’ Jill the Third Kind with Nora Aunor as Dolphy’s tomboyish sister (oh you know she’ll be “cured.” Every mainstream actor who plays gay in the movies is freakin’ cured.) and I was awestruck by a little scene where Nora was driving her little jeepney which had a Cubao –somewhere route.
From both sides of the jeepney you could see vast expanses of land and an uncluttered skyline and I thought, no way was that Cubao. Of course, it could also mean that their production designer was a lazy heifer and he didn’t give much thought to the painted route signage on the jeep.
But still, this was the 1970s (1979, to be exact) and at that time Manila wasn’t as filled up as it is now.
A little over a decade ago here in Commonwealth Avenue, Ever Gotesco wasn’t standing. There were huge empty tracts of land covered with wild grass and, it was supposedly perilous for commuters to pass through here because of bandits. But these days the streets are crowded with jeepneys, buses, and a never-ending supply of people walking and running, even where they’re not supposed to.
So it’s nice to see a Manila that’s a little bit more pristine than what I’m used to but not exactly completely alien either. I cherish the idea that even if that Old Manila is long gone, I was still a part. –Even if the only way I’ll ever see it again is through old films.
*I looked through IMDB and it’s apparently called Tender Age but for some reason Janice isn’t listed. I don’t even remember ol’ Greta being in there but Carmi Martin definitely was.
3. I’ve finally discovered the title of that Gabby Concepcion- Maricel Soriano starrer I’ve been looking for. It’s called Pepe en Pilar. :squeals like a girl:
Now all I need is a working copy of that, Mike de Leon’s Itim (which I’ve read has excellent production design. --I’m thinking of following Sir Hernando’s footsteps so I have to see this.) and the Lea Salonga movie Dear Diary which has an episode starring Michael de Mesa that has shades of Psycho in the story. (Actually, come to that, wasn’t de Mesa’s psychosis blatantly liberated from Norman Bates? He even had the dead mom?) Either way, I loved the spookiness of the episode.
4. I know it’s camp comedy and I SHOULD be able to laugh about this but Gorio en Tekla (starring Roderick Paulate and Maricel Soriano) seems kind of politically incorrect. For some reason they showed Roderick’s character, an effeminate Igorot, hanging from the trees at the beginning ala Tarzan.
I guess I’m offended because it kind of reminds me of the incorrect perception that Filipinos live in trees. Or if not the whole of us, just the indigenous people. I’m almost certain that the Igorot aren’t tree dwelling. (And I’ve hardly heard of any local tribe as being so.)
But I suppose I shouldn’t be so critical. For the most part they’re exaggerated, uncategorized, fictional tribal people and they did outsmart the bad guys. Maybe I’m just bored and looking for a fight.
Wanna have a go?
5. If Jack en Jill the Third Kind is good enough reference to go on, sward speak or, salitang bading hasn’t changed so much since the 70s. -Which means that this culture is virtually indefatigable and practically timeless.
Awesome.
And hey, + 10 points to the film for Dolphy’s excellent portrayal of a gay man which is eons away from the current crop’s tiresome performances of gay men which can confusingly described as straight-guys-playing-gay-guys-while trying- to- look- strained- so- that- nobody- will- ever- confuse- them- as- gay in- real- life. Or briefly, “closet queen” acting.
+20 points for a non-villain role for Paquito Diaz. He played a macho guy who turns into a dandy. Not exactly great acting but unlike Polo Ravales (for example, in Manay Po), the expert villain is giving his all as a Joe who is converted into a beauty queen.
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Unrelated: I met a few Film students last year in my copywriting class who had this special language of their own. Well, two words in place of two NORMAL words. If they liked something they said "check," and if they didn't, they said "ex" like in "x."
I was totally awed by how they could express themselves by calling out symbols you normally use to grade a test paper. How ingenious.
