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On Edel Garcellano (1): Philippine Literature and Class War
This is not a lecture note but is a part of a shelved project, a monograph on Edel Garcellano’s criticism which I can’t continue at the moment. I’ll share what I have at hand in the meantime. Edel Garcellano’s practice of literary criticism centers on locating literature as produced in the Philippines on the larger…
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On Postmodernism
These are the lecture notes I prepared back when I handled a Reading Visual Arts class early last year. The actual lecture happened on March 29, 2019. Since this is a lecture note, I did not attempt to add any “new” insights on the subject matter. This is a plain general review of ideas on…
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Ip Man 4: The Finale (China/Hong Kong, 2019)
Ip Man 4: The Finale will give not just martial arts fans, but moviegoers in general, a treat. Director Wilson Yip has ended the series with a great sense of balance. While it delivers the barrage of punch and kicks that the Ip Man series has become known for, Ip Man 4 also provides intriguing insights into the contemporary realities…
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We March Along with the Future
Scattered throughout the writings of the late Mark Fisher is this concept of lost future identified with a stasis buried behind “a superficial frenzy of ‘newness’, of perpetual movement.” This is in agreement with Franco Berardi’s declaration of the slow cancellation of the future as experienced by the psyche in the cultural superstructure. Fisher did…
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Dead Kids (Philippines, 2019)
If anything, there’s nothing dead about Dead Kids. This new feature by Mikhail Red sure is quite lively. Perhaps way too lively. Dead Kids is quite ambitious: it tries to be a lot of things, which makes it harder for itself to become something of essence. The narrative follows Mark Sta. Maria (Kelvin Miranda), the person who sticks…
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Tokyo! (France/Japan, 2008) [Tokyo Stories]
Taken as a whole, there does not seem to be any connecting points between the three films featured in the anthology Tokyo!, which was produced by Comme des Cinemas in 2008. Tapped the then-emerging world cinema auteurs Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-ho, this French production presented their visions and challenged the image of Tokyo from…
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John Denver Trending (Philippines, 2019) [Reel Asian 2019]
John Denver Trending, written and directed by Arden Rod Condez, exposes an anomaly between what passes as reality and truth. In an attempt to defend himself from his classmates who accuse him of stealing an iPad, John Denver Cabuncal (Jansen Magpusao) becomes the talk of the town after a video of him beating up one…
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A Step Forward (Japan, 2019)
Despite the growing discourse surrounding suicide, very few documentary films have approached the topic in the same way as Atsushi Kasezawa’s A Step Forward does. The film tries to balance out suicide as a phenomenon and the people involved while looking at it beyond personal motivations. The result is kind of a cartography tracing roads and spaces,…
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Notes on Audience-Taste, Education and Capture
Disclaimer: This convoluted essay is a product of me processing recent events and my writing projects in Media Studies. But just because this is related to a school project, doesn’t mean I do not take these seriously. In fact, I’m probably more serious about this now more than ever. Writing these down to at least…