Pure Kino Bootlegs at The Chinese Mall

You have been to the Chinese Mall right?  It's full of fake phones, fake shoes, fake everything.  There might be an original in there somewhere. You just have to look. Bootleg DVD's also abound.  When you pass by the vendor she says, "Sir, you like movie?"  All the movies they have available are just common dreck I can get from the internet. In fact you can get practically ANY film from the internet.  Who needs physical copies?

This is all a preface to say that in the Chinese Mall in Bacolod, 888, there is a DVD/Blu-ray shop that is selling pure Kino and I am very impressed by their offerings despite the fact that they are all fakes. Let me show you just a sample.

To begin with we have the Stanley Kubrick collection. This is all of his films on 2 Blu-ray discs. Stanly Kubrick is the man who filmed the Apollo moon landing and filmed Barry Lyndon by candlelight! What an auteur. A real artist. But look at the bottom of the box.  It says "1080P Beyond High Definition." There is nothing beyond 1080P.  That is as high definition as you can get aside from 4K Ultra HD. Just about every film for sale in this shop had that "Beyond High Definition" tag.  This collection is not original and is fake.

Next up we have the Hayao Miyazaki collection spread across three discs.  Probably there are more than three discs since there are about 12 movies in each box. There is also a huge problem with this collection which screams bootleg. That is the films included are all Studio Ghibli and not exclusively Miyazaki films. Now he did found that studio but he did not direct all the films they produced. The gibberish translation on the cover also hints that these films are not genuine.

"Classic Works of Injury." I do not know what those Japanese characters actually mean but "classic works of injury" is not it.  There is a discussion about these particular bootlegs on Reddit. A good collection nevertheless.

This all 7 American Pie films.  You read that right. All 7 of them. This is not necessarily pure Kino but it is very interesting and you won't get it from regular bootleggers. This box lacks the "Beyond High Definition" tag on the bottom of the box.

Here we have a collection of films from Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. I have seen all these films.  The first one is 120 Days of Sodom and it is the most reprehensible film ever made. Bar none. Nothing compares to the filth is this movie. It also has nothing to do with the other three listed. There is in fact no Tetraology of Life which is how I can tell this is fake. The 1001 Nights, The Decameron, and The Canterbury tales are all part of Pasolini's Trilogy of Life.

Although the outside of this box screams bootleg the inside does not reflect that.

There are 4 discs.  One for each movie. Each disc has their own artwork and it looks legit. I did not preview them but I bet the image looks good because they are probably ripped from the original DVD's.  

Finally we have a 4 disc set of the classic BBC series Civilisation. Who will buy this? Who cares enough to buy this? I am simply amazed this TV show is being stocked. You can watch it on Youtube. In episode one we are told:

Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity. Enough to provide a little leisure. But far more, it requires confidence. Confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, confidence in one's own mental powers. The way the stones of that bridge are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill, but it shows a vigorous belief in discipline and law. Energy, vitality - all the great civilisations or civilising epochs, have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversation, and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation but they are not what makes a civilisation. And a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid.

How can Filipinos relate to that?

This TV series from 1969 is all about Western European art and architecture. A good series. The box it comes in leads me to think it could be original. The vendor did say the Blu-rays where this one was were all originals but I have my doubts.

Having said all that let me clarify what I mean when I say these are all likely fakes. These movies are most likely pirated copies burned to a disc and cleverly printed with legit artwork on the top of the disc. The Pasolini and Miyazaki collection's certainly are. Contrast that with regular bootleg DVD's which do not have any type of artwork on the disc so you have to look hard to figure out the top and bottom. The box artwork, at least for Kubrick, is the same as that of the original. Over all these fake Blu-rays are well done versions of the real thing. A lot of thought and work went into their production. You aren't getting merely a pirated movie burned to a disc. You are getting a very lovely package to go with it.

The whole enterprise is impressive to me. Somewhere in China someone is bootlegging art films and shipping them to the Philippines. Surely it must cost a lot to make them but then again there must be a market or else they would not be made. 

Frozen 2, 3, and 4 Review

At a little DVD kiosk I jokingly asked the sales girl if she had a copy of Frozen 2. Much to my surprise she did! So I bought it.

This DVD does not only have Frozen 2 but also Frozen 3 and 4! How exciting! How did they get copies of these movies? Here is the DVD menu screen.

How could I pass up the opportunity of watching all 4 Frozen films, especially since three of them don't even exist! There are also two mystery bonus films.  Let's start with Frozen.  Have you seen it?  Good film. I saw it once back in 2013. Probably Disney's biggest hit since The Little Mermaid. But what the heck is up with this copy?

It is 2019 and these bootleggers cannot even bootleg a proper Blu-ray or DVD quality version of this movie?  This is literally a pirated version of one of the many Oscar DVD screeners which float around the internet every winter. Good film but the quality is awful.

How about Frozen 2?  It is one of the most anticipated films of the year! This is really Frozen 2.  Don't believe me?  Here is the title screen.

Actually this is a Russian film called The Snow Queen. Incredibly while the copy of Frozen is abysmal Frozen 2 shows how adept these bootleggers are because they altered the title screen of the original movie.  Here it is:

Much like Frozen The Snow Queen is a retelling of The Snow Queen. This version features wizards and magic mirrors. The plot is that the Snow Queen captures a powerful wizard but his daughter and son are still free. She commands her troll servant to capture them and bring them back to her castle. But something goes amiss and while the boy is blown by the North Wind to the Snow Queen's castle the girl and the troll are blown somewhere else and must make their way to the Ice Palace to rescue the boy. A lot of disjointed hi-jinks ensue. We are introduced to several characters and situations which are quickly forgotten and have no bearing on the story.

The animation is dull and lifeless. Lips don't match the words spoken. Expressions are wooden and don't match the dialogue or scene. It's a real mess but it was a financial success making a few million dollars and spawning two sequels.

Frozen 3 is just Frozen 1 but in higher quality. Cheek out the same scene as above.

See how much better that looks? Why include the poor quality DVD screener in this collection?

Frozen 4 is a short film titled Frozen Fever.

Released in 2015 this is a genuine Disney film with all the original characters you love from Frozen. It's Princess Anna's birthday and Elsa wants to make the most perfect day for her sister. Pratfalls, laughs, and singing ensue.

Frozen In Time is not a bad little movie. However the animation is horrendous. All the characters look lifeless but the story is entertaining and very much like Groundhog Day. Two children get caught in a time loop and have to learn to behave.

Here are some funny quotes from the show:

"I feel like a nine year old going on sixty."   "What if the only way out of this day is if we're good and help out the people closest to us??"

At a brief 40 minutes this movie does not overstay its welcome. It's funny that the producers had enough budget to hire Mira Sorvino and Ed Asner to voice the two parents but could not find enough cash to properly animate the story.

The last film is billed as Snow Queen. It's actually The Snow Queen 2. A sequel to the Russian film The Snow Queen which is listed on this DVD as Frozen 2. It's pretty awful. The audio is Russian and there is something wrong with the subtitles.

That is the title screen. The translation pops up about 15 seconds later.

You know what the problem is here? The subtitles are actually the subtitles for The Snow Queen part 1! How did they mess that up? They can literally change the title screen in The Snow Queen to Frozen 2 but they mess up the subtitles for The Snow Queen 2. The whole movie is in Russian which makes it unwatchable. This story has very little to do with the Snow Queen but follows the adventures of a troll who used to work for the Snow Queen. Amazingly this film made a cool $8 million profit at the box office.

That's it for this bootleg DVD. What was I expecting? I don't know. Not great quality but some of the movies here are simply dreadful. The awful DVD screener copy of Frozen should have not been included. There are plenty of other films about the Snow Queen that could have been on this DVD.  The 1957 Russian version is one of the best. It had a large influence on Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.  Check it on Youtube here. For English subtitles click on the CC button.

Is Duterte really the Superhero Icon of the Hong Kong Action Film "White Storm 2?"

Time for a mother movie review! Ths time it's a Hong Kong action film titled "White Snow 2: Drug Lords" starring Andy Lau.

What does a Hong Kong action film have to do with the Philippines you ask? Because DFA Secretary Teddyboy Locsin has tweeted to the whole world that this movie is a vindication of Duterte's war on drugs and that Duterte is the movie's SUPERHERO icon for the fight against drugs.

Is this true? Does the hero of the movie "White Snow 2" dedicate himself to Duterte's war against drugs? Does he really donate tens of millions of dollars to Duterte's war on drugs?  There is only one way to find out and that is to watch the movie.

"White Snow 2" is a tale of two friends, Tin and Dizang, who drift apart. Tin leaves his drug and gangster lifestyle to become an obscenely wealthy broker. Dizang works his way up the chain and becomes a big time drug dealer. Both are number one in their respective trades.

Tin's past comes back to haunt him as receives a letter from an ex-girlfreind who is dying of terminal cancer in the Philippines. She tells him she was pregnant with their son Danny before she left him and that know he is a drug addict and she wants Tin to look after him. Feeling the burden of this knowledge he immediately books a flight to the Philippines.

Tin is so wealthy he is able to bribe the PNP  to take him to a drug den where his son lives. 

Wow so much danger that they actually pull into a drug area in a limo!

"Where there are drugs, there's gonna be danger," says the PNP officer to Tin. Amazingly enough these officers, with no gear or masks like in On the President's Men, bust into the drug den and shout, "Where's Danny!" An incredible rooftop chase follows. Danny slips and dies.

In the next scene we see Tin at a drug rehab centre for youth. Along the way the man in charge leading him around says:

Drug is a very big problem in the Philippines. Our President claims that 75% of crimes are drug related. 

Tin is shown a large cell where people are writhing on the ground as they experience the pain of withdrawal.

At the end of Tin's tour of this rehab centre he gives his tour guide a check of an undetermined amount as a donation. How do I know that he is giving a donation to a drug rehab centre?  Because at 22:36 we see him leave the building and it clearly says Drug Addict Centre on the big sign out front. Also later on in the film at the 1 hour and 4 minute mark we learn this fact explicitly.

Next we see Tin sitting in his hotel room watching TV.  He is listening to somebody on TV talk about his war on drugs.

"You can hit 7 or maybe 10 and yet the people are wallowing in agony and suffering. My war against drugs will not stop until the end of my term. Until the last pusher, or drug lord, are killed. You know what? For those who are listening simultaneously, the bad people, just stop if you are doing bad things. I will not let you succeed." 

Ok there is a Philippine flag standing next to the podium so I guess this is supposed to be the President of the Philippines.

Looks more like Moe from the Three Stooges than Duterte!

Oh a wise guy eh!?

Tin is very inspired by this speech.  The camera pans on his face as he watches and we can see his thoughts working. What will he do?  Without giving too much away Tin goes back to Hong Kong and starts killing drug lords! 

But note that. He starts killing DRUG LORDS! At 1 hour and 10 minutes Tin is confronted by the media and he says:

"I sympathise with drug addicts. The problem with drugs is not their fault. The root problem is the drug lords. Without drug lords there'll be no drug problem." 

Everyone shouts, "What can we do!?"

Tin says:

"I hereby announce I'll pay a $100M bounty if anyone can kill the biggest drug lord."

At the end of the film a police officer and Tin have the following exchange:

Tin: The law can't punish him. Let me kill him.
Officer: That's enough. You can't kill all the drug lords in the world. Leave him to me.
Tin: I don't care! I'll kill as many as I can!

The movie concludes with Tin dead in his pursuit of killing Hong Kong's biggest drug dealer which just happens to be his old partner in crime Dizang.

So was Teddyboy right?  Was this movie a vindication of Duterte's war on drugs? Is Duterte the superhero icon of the film? The answer is a big NO!!!

First of all Teddyboy can't even get the plot right as Tin does not go to the Philippines AFTER his son dies but in order to find his son who is living in the Philippines as a drug addict.  Second of all Tin does not donate tens of millions to Duterte's war on drugs.  He makes out a check of unspecified amount to a drug rehab centre! That is because in Hong Kong Tin is involved in funding many anti-drug programs.

The speech of the fictional Philippine president appears to be copied from a speech Duterte gave in Singapore in December 2016. Watch the video here.

My campaign against drug will not stop until the, until the end of my term. That will be six years from now. Until the last pusher and the last drug lord are...

https://pcoo.gov.ph/dec-16-2016-speech-of-president-rodrigo-duterte-during-the-meeting-with-the-filipino-community-in-singapore-the-max-pavilion-and-hall-9/

After the word "are" Duterte then drags his finger across his neck and makes a noise like he is cutting off someone's head. The fictional president in this movie makes the same gesture. But take note again in this fictional speech the president says he will go after pushers and drug lords.  This is what Tin does. He kills drug lords. He sympathises with addicts.  The real president of the Philippines, Duterte, has no sympathy for addicts.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/30/rodrigo-duterte-vows-to-kill-3-million-drug-addicts-and-likens-himself-to-hitler

“Hitler massacred three million Jews ... there’s three million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

Tin does not go after addicts.  He only goes after drug lords. He sympathises with addicts. He funds programs to help them.  That is the complete opposite of the real Duterte. It is only after his son dies and he hears the speech of President Moe Howard that Tin decides violence might be the best way to solve the problem.

Tin's attempt to put into practice the fictional Philippine President's kill all the drug lords rhetoric ends with his own death!  

There are two morals to this movie. The first is that you cannot get rid of your past.  The second is violence is not the answer. Killing everyone will not solve the drug problem even if those you kill are all drug lords. You live by the gun, you die by the gun. A basic Christian principle from the lips of Jesus in Matthew 26:52. Violence is not the answer to the drug war. "White Snow 2" is a stunning rebuke to Duterte's war on drugs! Duterte is no superhero icon.  He is a warning sign to those who think violence can solve anything.

The message and the moral of "White Snow 2" are the exact opposite of what Teddyboy would have you believe.  Why does he constantly lie?

On the President's Orders Film Review

It's finally here. The drug war film so controversial that even the Palace had to issue a statement before they saw it. On the President's Orders. I actually watched it while eating my breakfast. Oatmeal with a fried egg all chopped up and mixed in. A perfect way to start the day. Coffee too! And not that 3-n-1 junk. Now that I have seen it I want to share my thoughts with you all. Let's get right to the punch:

This documentary film is all lies and propaganda and none of it is true.

To prove this assertion I am going to walk you through this film. Spoilers abound so do watch first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qugduxazBBg

The documentary was shown on PBS as an episode of the Frontline television program and before the proper film starts we get a thank you to us the viewer and a thanks to various foundations.

The MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Abrams Foundation, Park Foundation, John and Helen Glessner Family Trust, Frontline Journalism Fund, the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, Thomas and Karen Hamilton, and the Bertha Doc Society. If you are not aware that these big monied foundations set agendas and dictate policy then you need to watch this interview with Norman Dodd about how that all works.

Right off the bat we know we are dealing with people who have set an agenda.  But what is that agenda?  Once again I will lay my cards out and tell you. It is to discredit the PNP. 

After hearing a speech from the newly installed Caloocan PNP Chief Modequillo about how he wants to instil discipline in his officers one of the first scenes we see is a this same Chief Modequillo instructing officers on the firing range. He says to them, "Fire one shot and holster." They pull out their guns and then BLAM BLAM BLAM!!!  Modequillo screams "Hold fire ***** damn it!!"  

"Do you understand one round?" 

"Yes, Sir!" 

"You say yes sir, yes sir, but then you can't follow instructions!"

Are we supposed to laugh at the contrast between Chief Modequillo promising to instil discipline in his men and these undisciplined PNP officers who, when they are told to unholster their guns and fire one shot, continue firing? Are we supposed to laugh even harder when Chief Modequillo gives them a second chance and someone messes up and he threatens to shoot them?

Do you think that's funny? It's not funny. It is absolutely pathetic and it is only kept in the movie because it makes the PNP look bad.  Who's to say they didn't get more discipline as time passed? But we don't see that. Instead we see bumbling officers who can't follow a simple command and their Chief threatening to shoot one of them.

Neither is the scene where the Caloocan Jail Warden tucks his shirt into his underwear as he sings and dances funny.

He's just having a good time before he has to go to work and beat the inmates. Give him a break! Imagine if you had to oversee an overcrowded jail and you had to beat the inmates because as Sgt. Augustin says:

Yes, I hurt the detainees. I give them punishments.

If you don’t spank a child, he will not obey you. In prison you need to act like a gangster.

How would you make it through your day if not by singing and dancing?

It's just a way to make this guy look silly.  Look at this scene where the warden brings his weapon to the mess hall table.

Sgt. Augustin points his gun at a man who gets a little sacred and ducks out of the way. Is that funny? There could have been a round in the chamber.  The trigger could have accidentally been pulled and someone seriously hurt. You think the jail warden pointing his weapon at some guy in the mess hall is funny? It's not and tell me what value does this scene add to the movie which is supposed to be about the drug war? It only serves to make this man look foolish.

Just before we meet this jail warden we are introduced to the S.O.U. or Special Operations Unit of the Caloocan police who operate directly under Modequillo. Specifically we meet Captain Will Cabrales who is the S.O.U.'s Team Leader.

Like flies on the wall we are privy to this pre-raid conversation between Cabrales and one of his men.

"So this suspect, Jimmy Aussa, is well known in his area. He's been reported as a headache in his area. It's drugs, right?" 

"Yeah, but we don't have a search warrant. We know he has drugs, but we don't have a search warrant." 

"No, what we do in this case is focus on the gun. Always where there is a gun the drugs will be the second offense. He’s definitely got drugs?" 

"He's definitely got drugs. Someone like Jimmy Aussa, sir, if he gets out, he'll keep going back to his old ways. We will have to hunt him again and again. That's why we need to finish him right away."

"No, I asked the chief if we can go overboard, but he said it has to be clean."

Come on man.  For one thing we should not be privy to such a private and sensitive conversation. For another....it's just more reason to look down on the PNP. These men are actually discussing how to get around not having a search warrant and one of them is actually advocating taking Jimmy Aussa out! PNP officers advocating murder?  It's left in the "documentary" to make the PNP look bad.

How seriously are we supposed to take this documentary anyway when so many reviewers keep commenting on how cinematic it is?

“Cinematic with a capital C”

— BiffBamPop

“It’s a wholly cinematic, sensory experience, with straight-ahead reportage electrified by glaring streetlights and a panicked urban wall of sound; it would make a handsome companion piece to Filipino auteur Brillante Mendoza’s recent “Alpha, the Right to Kill,” a fictionalised Duterte-era action film that aimed for grainy docu-realism as much as Jones and Sarbil’s film trades in more sleekly immersive atmospherics.

Production values here are so dazzlingly high that, for entire sequences at a time, riveted viewers may forget to wonder just how Jones and Sarbil managed to force a camera into the fray. Sarbil, a gifted cameraman who won a cinematography Emmy for his and Jones’s 2017 Frontline episode on Mosul, shoots the nighttime raids with a hot, athletic immediacy that the aforementioned Mendoza (or even Michael Mann) would covet in a fictional context; bodies are silhouetted in the glare of emergency lights, though amid the shadows, we also get close-up glimmers of strained faces on all sides of the law. The idea here is not to aestheticize a human rights crisis, but to show the absurd movie-logic shoot-’em-up that Duterte has allowed the Philippines to become, right down to the “Fury Road”-style death’s-head masks worn by the executors. Populist politics can turn all too easily to popcorn ones; “On the President’s Orders” vividly captures the tipping point.”

          — Guy Lodge, Variety

“In this explosive cinematic investigation, directors James Jones and Olivier Sarbil get alarmingly close to the battle for the streets and soul of the Philippines. Their cameras stand before both sides — the victimised slum communities and the police squads blithely executing their countrymen from a perverse moral high ground. The staggering visions of violence, shot with a kinetic slickness and immediacy, are so electrifying that viewers will have to remind themselves: this is happening now, this is real.”

— Melbourne International Film Festival

https://www.onthepresidentsorders.com/

Is On the President's Orders a Hollywood film or is it a slice of real life? You want real life then watch the home videos my parents shot in the 80's on a huge, clunky VHS camcorder. You want a "cinematic, sensory experience" with "dazzlingly high" production values then watch this "documentary" or any other movie from Hollywood like Fury Road or Michael Mann's Thief.

Here's the bottom line: I watched this movie expecting to learn more about the Philippines' drug war and I'll I got were pictures of menacing and bumbling PNP officers. If I wanted that I could have just read the daily news!

Look I am not going to give away the rest of this film. All I will say is it's free to watch and if you have 54 minutes to waste then give it a chance. Breakfast time is as good as any time to watch it. But you should know this Frontline version is truncated because the one which was shown in L.A. was 1 hour, 12 minutes!

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2019-10-17/on-the-presidents-orders-documentary-review-philippines-rodrigo-duterte

What did they cut out!?

Filipinos and The Movies

Filipinos love movies.  You better believe it.  They love movies so much that famous actors are elected to be Mayors and Senators. They love movies so much that national policy and laws are based on them.  Take the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Lucas Bersamin. He really loves action films. Particularly the "...Has Fallen" film series.  

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/960901/sc-justice-fears-movies-about-terrorism-could-become-reality

“How can the republic survive if there was another kind of threat worse than rebellion or invasion,” a Supreme Court Associate Justice asked Tuesday as he noted that President Rodrigo Duterte’s martial law is already emasculated compared to that of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. 

“Like what, your honor?” asked former Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Christian Monsod who was one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution. 

“Drone can be operated as far as US attacking some abandoned place in Afghanistan. That is what I see in the internet,” Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin said. 

Monsod said a drone, even a million drones cannot threaten the life and survival of the government. 

“Oh I watched so many movies like White House has fallen, London has fallen. These are very terrifying realities that could happen in a few years’ time,”  Bersamin said, adding that the framers crafted a constitution “that constricted the use of the ultimate power to actual invasion and actual rebellion.”

“What if these [movies] become a reality,” Bersamin asked. 

“A thousand, a million drones cannot occupy a country,” Monsod said. 

“Oh you are so confident,” Bersamin said to which Monsod responded: “I have not seen movies like that.” 

Could the plot of movies like Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen ever become a reality?  IN the first movie the White House is taken over by terrorists and in the second a coordinated terrorist attack in London kills five Western leaders causing mass panic. Anything is possible but those are not likely scenarios. They sure don't reflect the reality of controlled conflicts by the global elite pulling the strings behind the scenes. And yet the second extension of marital law for the year 2018 was upheld by this man based in part on his unfounded fears which are rooted in fiction.

Bersamin is not the only one who has been watching too many movies. So has Sen. Lacson.  He recently filed a bill concerning the chain of succession in case of emergency.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1159110/whos-designated-survivor-to-lead-ph

If the President dies and then all of his constitutional successors are captured by terrorists, who will lead the country? 

Legislation loosely based on a popular Netflix political thriller called the “Designated Survivor” have been filed in the Senate and the House of Representatives to deal with such a situation. 

In the show, actor Kiefer Sutherland plays Housing and Urban Development Secretary Tom Kirkham, who is hidden away during the State of the Union. He was thrust into the US presidency when the Capitol building is bombed during the address, killing the president and everyone in it. 

The Philippine proposal is called the Presidential Succession Act, referred to simply as the designated survivor bill.

Sen. Ping Lacson wrote the Senate version of the bill, while Quezon City Rep. Precious Hipolito introduced the House counterpart proposal. 

Lacson told reporters on Thursday that his proposal was inspired by the Netflix series.

Again another situation that is not impossible but how likely is it that the President will die and all of his successors will then be immediately captured by terrorists? What does this scenario say about Lacson? Is he scared this will really happen? Does he believe that the very real threat of ISIS in the Philippines will get out of control? Duterte seems to think it will.

There is only one time when the government of a nation was nearly wiped out at once and that was in 2010.

The Smolensk air disaster occurred on 10 April 2010, when a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft of the Polish Air Forcecrashed near the Russian city of Smolensk, killing all 96 people on board. Among the victims were the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria, the former President of Poland in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish Government officials, 18 members of the Polish Parliament, senior members of the Polish clergy and relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre. The group was arriving from Warsaw to attend an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the massacre, which took place not far from Smolensk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smolensk_air_disaster

This air crash was a real disaster so why not base a bill on that? Write a bill directing that when large contingents of government officials fly overseas they be split across more than one plane so that everyone does not die if an accident were to happen.  Duterte's entourages are quite large.  There is no need for taking such a risk.

The Metro Manila Film Festival is a film festival held at the end of December every year.  December 25th to the first weekend of January. During this time no foreign films are played in any theatres throughout the country. This is kind of a weird situation and I know nothing like it. Think of all the great film festivals Cannes, Venice, Toronto, New York, Tribeca, Los Angeles these festivals are showcases for cinema from around the world and what happens at these festivals does not dictate what can and cannot be shown in the national theatres of he host country. 

But the MMFF is not a film festival for global cinema. It is only for Filipino films. What is the point? To boost the local industry I suppose. Only when it comes to film do we truly live in a global society. Take Japan for instance. Japanese films are shown and beloved around the world and not just anime. At least two of the most important directors of all time, Kurosawa and Ozu, are Japanese. The point here is that no film festival in the world, as far as I know, excludes foreign films except the MMFF and now there is a drive to have this film festival held twice a year.

https://entertainment.inquirer.net/344304/no-foreign-movies-twice-a-year-as-mmda-exec-wants-mmff-held-that-often

The proposal to stage Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) twice a year will make Filipino films more “profitable,” an official of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said Wednesday (Sept. 4). 

MMDA General Manager Jojo Garcia said the only time Filipino movies make money is when the festival is held every December during which theaters are forced to show only Filipino movies and no foreign films. 

Garcia said other film festivals are having difficulty making money because of competition from foreign films. He did not talk about the quality of movies. 

“But if we have a film festival that will not roll out foreign films? Who will benefit from it? Filipino films,” he added.

Amazing. Filipino films don't make money because of foreign competition so the solution is to force theatres to show only Filipino films twice a year! Maybe Filipino films are so bad no one wants to watch them. Maybe the Filipino film industry is comatose and out of ideas. Maybe? According to one director that is exactly the case.

This industry is on auto-pilot now. No wonder Cardo doesn’t die in Probinsyano. Until we’ve figured out how to woo the audience back, let’s just keep Cardo alive for now. 

The industry is abuzz, don’t get me wrong. Everyone seems to be working. It’s hard to put together a crew these days. If they’re not doing movies, they’re into TV or some digital series somewhere. Everyone’s working. But the work seems to be just getting by. No game changers looming in the horizon. No high concept fresh ideas coming out. Rehash after rehash. Rehashed love triangles. Rehashed May-December affairs. Cliche children stories and old age stories. Cliche boy-girl commitment issue movies. Good thing we got over with finding-the-great-one-love-in-the-world stories.  

Everyone’s into genre too. One-line premise genres . Everyone wants to discover a new genre or sub genre but there’s not much reimagining that goes into it. We mostly get fast and easy genre stories with old and told character arcs and plots. 

We are all guilty. 

This is not to say that everyone is not doing their best. That no one wants something fresh and sort of original. It’s the call of the times. It’s a calculated risk. Let’s try a different genre but let’s try the stories that sort of already worked. That’s the only thing we can afford. In this volatile industry where we don’t know if there’s an audience for any story we come up with or if it will ever see the light of day in cinemas, everyone is on desperate mode. Steady middling mode.  

Keep on doing movies. Work is work. Let’s do it fast and loose. Write it for 3 days. Yes, that’s a record writing time and studios seem to love it too whether it’s a good script or not. It’s just about content. More more content. You want content? You say every story’s been done 20 years ago? Well, so long as it’s content then anything is good. Some dumb ass browser sitting somewhere will devour this tired story nonetheless. The logline says it all no matter how shitty it all comes out, says the all-knowing producer. We can sell the logline. Let’s hope when they see it there’s word-of-mouth. 

Even our art-house has become stale. Stale. Art-house always explore the unknown whether in substance or in form. Our art-house no longer does that. They shock but it’s not groundbreaking. They gross out but it’s not visceral. They are contemplative but super boring. Art-house for the sake of art-house. 

I can’t sit still. We can’t just ride the tide and wish we end up in a good place. We’re in a state of coma now. We’ve got to find a way to move our toes on our feet to get us out of it and change the course of cinema in this country. 

https://www.facebook.com/erikmatti/posts/10156605389986446

"Even our art-house has become stale." The greatest Filipino filmmaker who resides in the art-house is Lav Diaz. His films have screened at major film festivals winning him multiple awards. But with  runtimes between 4 and 9 hours his films are unwatchable. Not in one go anyway. The average cinema goer doesn't have time for that.

Filipinos are not unlike the rest of the world in their love for the movies. Everyone loves the movies. The list of actor politicians from around the world is rather long. But I don't know of any country that has proposed or passed legislation based on the plot of a film or who's national cinema is so unprofitable that citizens have to be forced to watch domestic made films.

Cardboard Movie Display Graveyard

I went to see the new Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, as soon as it came out. The first showing at 11:00 am on the 14th was pretty dead.  Not packed. No lines. The theatre was basically empty. This is how it has been the past few times I have been to a see a hyped movie of the season at the first showing. I remember seeing The first Hobbit movie and I think there were maybe five other people.

This is a good thing. It means no waiting in line, no rush, and I get the best seats in the house. For this showing I took along one of my helpers who killed the kittens I found back in October.  Turns out the first showing was in 3-D which I was not keen on but I asked my helper if he wanted to see the movie in 3-D and he said yes. So I bought the tickets. The price was only 600 pesos!  

600 pesos for two people for a 3-D movie! 

Elsewhere in the world it would cost much more. 

They also gave us a free small popcorn and soda.

I have never in my life been given a free popcorn and soda at the movies. Never. What a deal!

I did not notice until much later but the price in those tickets adds up to 460 pesos.  So why was I charged an extra 140 pesos? Was the popcorn really free or did the cashier sneak it in?

Yeah it was free. At their website I checked the price for a 3-D showing at 11:00 am and it was 640 pesos. 40 extra for ordering online!  So I have no idea what is going on here. There are some other strange things printed on that ticket like it was issued on March 24, 2014 and is valid until July 31, 2019. What!?

But I saw something much more interesting than the movie. (Consider that sentence my review.) 😛

It's a cardboard movie display graveyard!  

Why is the display for Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children still out?  That movie is from last year! The Smurfs 2 is a 2013 movie which makes that display four years old! All the other displays are from summer 2017. How long will they be hanging around in the cardboard movie display graveyard?

I wonder if they would give these things away. But seeing as how the first showing of the new Star Wars film had maybe 10 people I don't think there are enough die hard movie fans to want any of these displays.