Slumdawg Reformist

Slumdog Millionaire, Manila-style.

Not Giving In
Artist: Rudimental feat. John Newman and Alex Clare
Director: Josh Cole
Cast: Allen Añas, Tugo Cunanan, Ereson Catipon, Arsell Dela Cruz
2012

Rudimental‘s music video, “Not Giving In,” has much in common with Dangerous Minds, Music of the Heart, City of God, even Sister Act and all those other inspirational movies that goad the youth to choose art over drugs and violence, that reaffirm creativity as the path to freedom from one’s sordid political and economic chains. It begins with two brothers in the Manila slums, borne to a degenerate father and an abused mother. The two (happily) subsist on petty thievery, an inseparable tag team of sorts.

A Dream Goes On Forever

Urban sprawl for two: the neoliberal dream world.

Inception
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Leonardo diCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
2010

It has all the elements of coolness. International espionage, dapper sartorial style, designer urban spaces. And hot characters. (Don’t they even perspire? Grrr.) Sure, I won’t deny that I immensely enjoyed Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s slick suits and gravity-defying fight scenes. Or Ellen Page’s smart clothes, and even smarter brain. And Marion Cotillard, mmm, who wouldn’t screw up their subconscious to grow old with that bombshell? Oh, and Leo was good, too.

But after more than two hours of pseudo-psychoanalysis chuchu, physics jargon and special effects extravaganzas, what the fuck was Inception really about?

Isang Binti Ka Lang, China!

Anak ng Jada, ikaw ba si Obama?

The Karate Kid
Director: Harald Zwart
Cast: Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith, Taraji P. Henson
2010

I saw the new Karate Kid movie on a bus in EDSA. Viva piracy! I wasn’t really planning to watch the film, but the traffic was bad and the copy was decent.

Jaden Smith as the new Karate Kid is the latest in the slew of black accommodations after Barack Obama’s inauguration, the most prominent of which include first black Disney princess (The Princess and the Frog) and the campaign for a black Spiderman.

Not That Into the Blue

Not to be discriminatory, but his time, you can really call the non-white race 'alien.'

Avatar
Director: James Cameron
Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang
2009

What bothers me is that despite its liberal positioning, heavy-handed environmentalist message, and critical appropriation of Bush era rhetoric, Avatar heaps all the progressive bits onto Jake Sully and his team of rogue Sky People. The Na’vi themselves are a people with no agency, portrayed as mere subjects of research, of love, of benevolence and aid. They are shown to be hardheaded, mystical, and to some extent, docile. Their physique and culture are an amalgamation of non-white entities: African, South American, Aborigine, animal and alien. “Savages,” Col. Quaritch calls them, but at least he’s the fictional villain. The real savagery is the directorial mishmash of everything non-Sky People (read: non-American, since Sully’s renegade team also consists of the token ethnic characters).

Even the Fantasy is Heartbreaking

A field of purple dreams.

Were the World Mine
Director: Tom Gustafson
Cast: Tanner Cohen, Wendy Robie, Judy McLane, Nathaniel David Becker
2008

In a queer world, the happiest spectacles can be the saddest things.

Tom Gustafson’s Were the World Mine is a creative adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The story is familiar, clichéd even. Timothy (Tanner Cohen) is a student in a small-town exclusive school, ostracized by his male peers because he is gay. He has a crush on a jock, Jonathon (Nathaniel David Becker). Beginnning as a largely passive character, Timothy keeps mum about his crush, even to his best friends. He puts up with the crap his chauvinist classmates throw at him. He is patient with his mother despite her qualms about his sexuality. Timothy lives with his queerness as best as he can, enduring each day, waiting for the time he will graduate and leave that backward backwater of a town. His life begins to change when his English teacher Mrs Tebbit (Wendy Robie) announces auditions for the senior school play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Timothy clinches the role of Puck, and Jonathon, Lysander.

Love in the Time of Camera

Two seemingly divergent films—the effects-laden extravaganza Cloverfield and the geeky-chic (500) Days of Summer—both end on a May 23^rd. Other than that, they’re as divergent as it gets.

However, both explore interesting angles on the relationship between cinema and life. In Cloverfield, for example, in the midst of crisis, people are looting not grocery stores, but electronics shops, seizing flatscreen TVs and other gadgets. In (500) Days of Summer, the lead character goes into a cinema only to watch his life played out, albeit stylized, on screen. These instances are symptomatic of how closely life and love are linked with the audiovisual form.

Perhaps it is best to begin by saying: Cinema is both a cultural and economic medium. That is, the act of watching a film combines the cultural (the transmission of ideas, formation of consciousness) with the economic (paying for the experience, generation of wealth).

“Imperialism is an economic undertaking,” explains Jonathan Beller, “as well as an ideological and libidinal one.” It is these aspects—the libidinal and ideological—which are so conspicuous in Cloverfield and (500) Days of Summer.