While looking for factoids on the film Totoo Ba Ang Tsismis? on the net, I found this great blog.

If my aimless wanderings on the web are right, the movie Karnal was based on a short story written by Teresita Anover-Rodriguez published in Mr. & Ms. Magazine in the early 80's. Ms. Rodriguez is known as Tita Dulce, the advice columnist at The Inquirer.

Karnal was shown when I was six, or maybe seven. These days, like John Mayer, I wish I was six again. The only downside being I can't enter For Adults Only movies at that time, it wasn't as bad as sitting through a hyped-up film at an overpriced cinema. Or waking up to work just to pay the bills, in general.

It took me more than a decade to see Karnal and Scorpio Nights, uncensored and uncut, with stampedes at the entrance. I've yet to watch the camp classic Temptation Island. There's a slipstream element in Ibalik Ang Swerti which reminds me of Murakami's The Second Bakery Attack (not that exact, though). I believe Belle Epoque and Like Water For Chocolate are the bastard children of Lino Brocka's Oro, Plata, Mata.

My manager looks like Tony Ferrer. A suite of electric guitar riffs, Pia Moran wearing a 'fro and blaxploitation films come to mind, as well as Eddie Romero who has directed Black Mama, White Mama (1972--haven't watched it, obviously). Said film had a great influence on Quentin Tarantino.

On another note, I don't know why we scorn the song-and-dance numbers such as those seen in Bote, Dyaryo, Garapa (an early Joey Marquez starrer, said object of scorn shot entirely in Quezon Circle) when today it's a staple in cartoon movies like Madagascar and Robots. And in Christmas parties too. I have a hunch that the Pinoys employed by Disney and Pixar are behind this.

W rings a bell. I'm sure I've watched a Mad Max-style Pinoy action before and it may be this. The baddest leather daddies and the raddest souped-up Toyotas that moonlighted as yellow taxis in Recto. Unfortunately the person who carried me through this ride is already dead and there are no witnesses available who can tell me what I've seen in Fame Cinema back in '83.

At that time I didn't feel the waning years of the so-called Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema. Or its death knell sounded off by mass-produced massacre films. The vintage black-and-white LVN pictures on Channel 9 every afternoon didn't feel nostalgic either on our similarly black-and-white TV set.

Yet with the movies on offer today both local and Hollywood (with a few exceptions, of course, plus the so-called arthouse), the past generation chants in my ears that they've had better.

*Images from Dumb Distraction.

This entry was posted by sky, on Friday, July 14, 2006. You can leave your response.