I have been addicted to movies lately and the friggin’ thought of becoming a movie critic who’d rather spot the ugly, imperfect technicalities than digest the film as a scapegoat for life’s sickening shits is making me cringe. Suddenly, I am reminded by Jessica Zafra and her obsession over Roger Federer and everything tennis, stinking sweat and all!
Perhaps the reinvigorated drive over love for the rolling film is anchored by my desire to weed out the B-listed bluff that could potentially ruin my next movie date with HER. I would have to admit the first date didn’t go rather well as we had to watch the last full show of one hideous suspense thriller, which went into the habit of cutting on and off, the image in the big screen becoming blurry in several instances, the characters speaking garbled lines like how some Wowowee deejay scratches the rolling film to produce that annoying screeching sound, thereby making the horror flick a put-on mirthful encounter instead. I would like to think I’ve learned my lesson albeit at the expense of my own pogi points. So that gives me the right to articulate a crisp R18 invective. Here goes my triple exclamation point-laden barrage:
Fuck that Haunting of Molly Suck-My-Moist-Clit Bitch from Hell movie!!! You fuckin’ ruined my first date and your fuckin’ flick poster deceived me to fuckin’ toss in my 300 bucks!!! Fuck the director and all the fuckin’ actors!!! Fuck you all, you double douchebag clusterfucks!!!
Now, give me a few minutes to breathe and compose myself.
So yes, my loyal three readers, I am spurting out another movie review yadda yadda in the hopes that the next time I take the cinema lounge with HER, we are spared from sitting through a lame plot teeming with characters from hell and scripts so badly written you’d rather make your own three-minute sex video for the Bluetooth masses. This time around, I watched a Bollywood-flavored movie and surprisingly, I found it quite good really. For a cynical, angst-ridden bastard who almost always looks at shot glasses half-empty rather than half-full, this is saying something.
Having reviewed the much ballyhooed Benjamin Button as clearly just a lame Forrest Gump copycat, I felt vindicated to hear that the Brad-Cate tandem lost to some obscure third-world actors (I don’t know, is India still considered Third World?) for the Golden Globes plum. For such rare occurrence when A-list actors in an A-list movie get ditched by unknown brown-skinned thespians, I become doubtful and ask: Is democracy really reverberating in America or are the Awards people just following through the current Ch-ch-change fad that is Barack Obama? Whatever the reason may be, the director who likewise gave us the engagingly neurotic Trainspotting and the hauntingly raw 28 Days Later deserves to be lauded for crafting such a fine film opus, an ingenuous cross and compromise of brutality and beauty, of sorrows and laughters, of suspended disbeliefs and leap of faiths.
Here’s the reel deal: We have Jamal, an 18-year-old Indian errand boy of sorts in a call center, hurled into an unusual territory as a player of the hugely popular game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” after a string of adventures and misadventures. He is on the verge of answering the final question to get the 20M rupees and the illiterate, teenage dirtbag that he is, he becomes suspected of cheating his way to the final round and is consequently arrested by the police.
Director Danny Boyle douches us with early drama as we witness how Jamal gets tortured by the fat lard policeman and hereon, Jamal takes us to his exhilarating life journey, filled to the brim of moving characters and rowdy panache, a distinct trademark of Bollywood movies. As he is interrogated by the police for unbelievably answering all the questions correctly, even using only one lifeline for a very simple interrogative that even a grade schooler can surely answer, the young protagonist harks back to bits and pieces of his early childhood in a series of flashbacks that apparently does not make you dizzy and nauseous but rather, makes you giddy and mirthful instead.
Suddenly, what you see isn’t exactly India and its squalor but rather, our very own Pinoy poverty, with its fetid entrails of Payatas children and blind beggars and collapsible shacks and everyday shit cakes, complete with fuckin’ flies to boot. You wonder whether the plot was really set in Mumbai, India or here in our frenzied Tondo, Manila. That I was able to relate in spite of mostly subtitled character clashes (the fresh, brilliant subtitle pop ups were really cool, by the way; I liked that they were placed strategically in all parts of the screen, instead of the stereotypical bottom-of-the-screen position) only proves how universally relevant the movie really is.
This is what a movie should strive for – people watching the flick not really because it has A-list, pedicured and spoiled Hollywood stars in the title role or because it is helmed by some contemporary toast-of-the-town director or because it is being produced by a big-budgeted film outfit but rather, because they get what the film is trying to convey and they see themselves in it, or at the very least, because they are entertained by it.
If there’s one part of the movie that I find endearingly wicked and hilariously awful, it would have to be the seven-year-old Jamal stuck in a queer dilemma that requires an immediate decision. Stuck inside a cramped Third World toilet (the kind of primitive toilet, usually found in far-flung provinces, where shit goes straight into a hapless body of water, no flushing needed) courtesy of his mischievous brother, Jamal had to decide how to get out of the four-walled wooden cubicle real quick to get the autograph of his favorite Indian action star. Pinching his nose and raising his other picture-carrying hand to save the Bollywood star’s picture from poop splotches, he thinks of the unthinkable and drowns himself in deep shit to get out of the crap booth. The result is an insanely comedic wonder of a running rascal covered entirely with slimy, stinking shit save the picture-carrying hand and waddling his way to the crowd to get the much sought-after autograph.
Maybe it just had the perfect timing. I don’t know. At a time when the entire human race is grappling over some worldwide recession and a Holocaust-inspired wars in the Middle East, people are definitely eager for some goodie-goodie I-will-survive flicks, affirming the message that in spite of you wallowing in deep shit, literally or otherwise, life can still be beautiful. But this I have to tell you: If you’re planning on a movie date with someone significant and build up pogi points over it, you might want to consider this pauper-gone-prince romantic fairy tale as a suave tool to swerve your arms at her hips, plant a kiss, and for the diabolical maniacs brimming with pirated DVD porn libido, end up in 7th heaven fornication at a nearby SOGO motel.
That’s, of course, after the credits begin to roll. You want to get your money’s worth, right?
Perhaps the reinvigorated drive over love for the rolling film is anchored by my desire to weed out the B-listed bluff that could potentially ruin my next movie date with HER. I would have to admit the first date didn’t go rather well as we had to watch the last full show of one hideous suspense thriller, which went into the habit of cutting on and off, the image in the big screen becoming blurry in several instances, the characters speaking garbled lines like how some Wowowee deejay scratches the rolling film to produce that annoying screeching sound, thereby making the horror flick a put-on mirthful encounter instead. I would like to think I’ve learned my lesson albeit at the expense of my own pogi points. So that gives me the right to articulate a crisp R18 invective. Here goes my triple exclamation point-laden barrage:
Fuck that Haunting of Molly Suck-My-Moist-Clit Bitch from Hell movie!!! You fuckin’ ruined my first date and your fuckin’ flick poster deceived me to fuckin’ toss in my 300 bucks!!! Fuck the director and all the fuckin’ actors!!! Fuck you all, you double douchebag clusterfucks!!!
Now, give me a few minutes to breathe and compose myself.
So yes, my loyal three readers, I am spurting out another movie review yadda yadda in the hopes that the next time I take the cinema lounge with HER, we are spared from sitting through a lame plot teeming with characters from hell and scripts so badly written you’d rather make your own three-minute sex video for the Bluetooth masses. This time around, I watched a Bollywood-flavored movie and surprisingly, I found it quite good really. For a cynical, angst-ridden bastard who almost always looks at shot glasses half-empty rather than half-full, this is saying something.
Having reviewed the much ballyhooed Benjamin Button as clearly just a lame Forrest Gump copycat, I felt vindicated to hear that the Brad-Cate tandem lost to some obscure third-world actors (I don’t know, is India still considered Third World?) for the Golden Globes plum. For such rare occurrence when A-list actors in an A-list movie get ditched by unknown brown-skinned thespians, I become doubtful and ask: Is democracy really reverberating in America or are the Awards people just following through the current Ch-ch-change fad that is Barack Obama? Whatever the reason may be, the director who likewise gave us the engagingly neurotic Trainspotting and the hauntingly raw 28 Days Later deserves to be lauded for crafting such a fine film opus, an ingenuous cross and compromise of brutality and beauty, of sorrows and laughters, of suspended disbeliefs and leap of faiths.
Here’s the reel deal: We have Jamal, an 18-year-old Indian errand boy of sorts in a call center, hurled into an unusual territory as a player of the hugely popular game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” after a string of adventures and misadventures. He is on the verge of answering the final question to get the 20M rupees and the illiterate, teenage dirtbag that he is, he becomes suspected of cheating his way to the final round and is consequently arrested by the police.
Director Danny Boyle douches us with early drama as we witness how Jamal gets tortured by the fat lard policeman and hereon, Jamal takes us to his exhilarating life journey, filled to the brim of moving characters and rowdy panache, a distinct trademark of Bollywood movies. As he is interrogated by the police for unbelievably answering all the questions correctly, even using only one lifeline for a very simple interrogative that even a grade schooler can surely answer, the young protagonist harks back to bits and pieces of his early childhood in a series of flashbacks that apparently does not make you dizzy and nauseous but rather, makes you giddy and mirthful instead.
Suddenly, what you see isn’t exactly India and its squalor but rather, our very own Pinoy poverty, with its fetid entrails of Payatas children and blind beggars and collapsible shacks and everyday shit cakes, complete with fuckin’ flies to boot. You wonder whether the plot was really set in Mumbai, India or here in our frenzied Tondo, Manila. That I was able to relate in spite of mostly subtitled character clashes (the fresh, brilliant subtitle pop ups were really cool, by the way; I liked that they were placed strategically in all parts of the screen, instead of the stereotypical bottom-of-the-screen position) only proves how universally relevant the movie really is.
This is what a movie should strive for – people watching the flick not really because it has A-list, pedicured and spoiled Hollywood stars in the title role or because it is helmed by some contemporary toast-of-the-town director or because it is being produced by a big-budgeted film outfit but rather, because they get what the film is trying to convey and they see themselves in it, or at the very least, because they are entertained by it.
If there’s one part of the movie that I find endearingly wicked and hilariously awful, it would have to be the seven-year-old Jamal stuck in a queer dilemma that requires an immediate decision. Stuck inside a cramped Third World toilet (the kind of primitive toilet, usually found in far-flung provinces, where shit goes straight into a hapless body of water, no flushing needed) courtesy of his mischievous brother, Jamal had to decide how to get out of the four-walled wooden cubicle real quick to get the autograph of his favorite Indian action star. Pinching his nose and raising his other picture-carrying hand to save the Bollywood star’s picture from poop splotches, he thinks of the unthinkable and drowns himself in deep shit to get out of the crap booth. The result is an insanely comedic wonder of a running rascal covered entirely with slimy, stinking shit save the picture-carrying hand and waddling his way to the crowd to get the much sought-after autograph.
Maybe it just had the perfect timing. I don’t know. At a time when the entire human race is grappling over some worldwide recession and a Holocaust-inspired wars in the Middle East, people are definitely eager for some goodie-goodie I-will-survive flicks, affirming the message that in spite of you wallowing in deep shit, literally or otherwise, life can still be beautiful. But this I have to tell you: If you’re planning on a movie date with someone significant and build up pogi points over it, you might want to consider this pauper-gone-prince romantic fairy tale as a suave tool to swerve your arms at her hips, plant a kiss, and for the diabolical maniacs brimming with pirated DVD porn libido, end up in 7th heaven fornication at a nearby SOGO motel.
That’s, of course, after the credits begin to roll. You want to get your money’s worth, right?
