Monthly Archives June 2010

Brillante Mendoza, “Kinatay” (2009).

At some point in Brillante Mendoza’s controversial film Kinatay, there’s a brief and unexpected shot of something one rarely sees in the usual squalor of a Mendoza film: a postcard-pretty image of a Manila Bay sunset, complete with palm tree and silhouetted spectators. It’s surprising, and almost out of place – but it is, after [...]

On Brian Pera and Masha Tupitsyn’s “Life As We Show It: Writing on Film” (2009).

[Crossposted on Goodreads.] I was really looking forward to picking up this book — movies being a passionate interest of mine — but found it to be a rather uneven collection. Organized, kind of, around the provocative question “if movie-watching has become in itself a primary source of experiencing the world, what kind of movies are [...]