“The words are not good for the secret meaning, everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly—yes, and this is also very good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree with this, that this what is one man’s treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person.” ― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Finally saw the somewhat controversial film Quezon (2025), the 3rd movie in the Bayani (Hero) series of E.A. Rocha and Fernando Ortigas, Executive Producers and Jerrold Tarog, Director of the films. The controversy arose when one of Quezon's grandsons Ricky Avanceña questioned the director during a Q&A forum on the film. He asked if the… Continue reading The debunking of the Quezon hero image
Debunking Heroes like Lapu-Lapu while Upholding Colonizers like Magellan in Philippine Films A grandson of the country’s first Commonwealth president expressed concern and anger at the portrayal of his grandfather in the movie about his granddad. Quezon (2025) is the fourth movie in the Bayani (Hero) quadrilogy that included Bonifacio, ang Unang Pangulo (2014), Heneral… Continue reading Lapu Lapu Out, Magellan In; Revolutionaries Out, Colonizers In
Just saw Magellan (2025). I have never been a fan of Lav Diaz. Once, I had to sit in a theater to watch a 7-hour Diaz film. It was required watching for one of my film studies graduate courses. It was one of the worst films I had seen. Magellan (2025) was a re-imagining of… Continue reading Magellan (2025): Filipino Self-Bashing
FB reminded me of a blogpost I wrote in 2015 about the movie Heneral Luna. At that time, FB had a section for blogposts. I wonder why this blogpost is still in FB memories when the Blog or Notes section on FB had been deleted already. Since the Blog/Notes section of FB had been deleted,… Continue reading Luna, Mabini, the Cojuangcos and the Philippine Revolution
Just saw this marvelous Shakespearean movie -- HAMLET -- starred and directed by Kenneth Branagh. I am so amazed that the producers agreed to do a full 4-hour version of Shakespeare's play. Yet it was shown only in very limited number of theaters. I didn't even know it existed until a few days ago. It… Continue reading Hamlet (1996): The Unabridged Film Version
I scoured the World Wide Web a couple of nights ago looking for my lost blogs or blogposts. Thankfully, I found some of my posts from my very first blog, M-Reality. One of the posts I recovered was my review of the Spiderman 3, which was published in Mr & Ms. magazine. SPIDERMAN 1 and… Continue reading Spiderman Trilogy (2002 – 2007) by Sam Raimi
Postprandial Musings, 2.0 