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Mar

4

Just Talking About Something Else

Filed Under General, Video Blogs | 5 Comments

I’m taking a break from talking about comics for the meantime. It’s my all time consuming passion, but really, too much of anything is a bad thing. I’m about a lot of other things as well, and comics is only a part of it. Another thing I’m really into is film. I won’t go so far as to say I’m a complete film buff because I’m not. I just like watching movies… movies of all kinds. This Wednesday I’ll be watching an advance screening of 300. Well, that’s vaguely comic book related, but what the hell.

I have a lot of favorites and one that I’d like to mention is Akira Kurosawa’s version of “The Lower Depths”, adapted from a Russian play by Maxim Gorky.

The Lower Depths

It’s not one of Kurosawa’s more famous films like Seven Samurai or Yojimbo, and it even features a de-fanged Toshiro Mifune in a refreshingly un-macho role. The entire film is all about a bunch of people talking and arguing, and yeah, it may seem boring the way I tell it, but I found myself being completely engrossed by it. And it’s just not me. Once in a while the Komikero group would have a movie marathon, and one time it was this movie that we watched. We were so fascinated by it that it inspired us, even if we ended up just talking about it, to do a stripped down version of the play on our own, adapting the Japanese setting into a Philippine setting. One day maybe we can get around to it, a scene at a time.

I discovered my taste to be quite varied. For instance, I really like films like Moulin Rouge!, Titanic, Ed Wood, Aguirre Wrath of God, Love Actually, Bloody Pit of Horror, Re-Animator, Godfather, Lord of the Rings, Glenn or Glenda, Citizen Kane, Red Beard, Open Range, Shaolin Soccer, and lots more. I utterly enjoy action B movies like American Ninja with Michael Dudikoff, and Missing in Action with the great Chuck Norris. I find them extremely enjoyable to watch, laughing out loud at movies that well, not really meant to be THAT funny. Coincidentally, they’re both shot in the Philippines. I get a great big kick out of Chuck Norris crashing into crates of Minola Oil.

Speaking of Minola Oil, I also love to cook. The stuff I love to do tend to concern chickens for some reason, along with pasta, and really hot spices. I’ve uploaded recipes of two of my specialties up at You Tube.


BEEF CALDERETA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prCn95xDu98


CHICKEN CURRY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-CZY95VXbc

I think it’s about time I wrote those things down. I tend to experiment a lot with my cooking and more often than not, I tend to cook one dish differently each time. It can be good, but it can be bad as well, specially if I’ve hit upon a recipe that really worked and I have a hard time repeating it.

Now I’m hungry….

Comments

5 Responses to “Just Talking About Something Else”

  1. Eusebio Yu on March 5th, 2007 1:52 pm

    Hi Gerry,

    Nice to know you have varied interests. I do consider myself a film buff, but not to the point of a leonard maltin. I love watching high budgeted movies – those no-brainers with big explosions all around,i.e. Independence Day, Armageddon, Face-Off and the like. And of course, superhero movies. Ocassionaly I watch foreign language films like Y Tu Mama Tambien, Cronos and those Hong Kong made police/gangster movies.

    One of my favorite films is Jaws. It is such a great film with great perfomances by Roy Schneider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss. Yeah, the rubber shark was pretty lame, but what do you expect? It’s 1975. The way the characters banter with one another, while the shark was silently stalking them was suspense at its best. The shark doesn’t make an appearance till mid-way through the movie. A stroke of genius. Ben Hur was also a great movie. The Chariot race itself was the worth the price of admission. Walang sinabi ang Gladiator, with all its CGI glory.

    A few years ago, I watched a Japanese film called “Zatoichi”. I’m sure you know of this movie. It’s about a blind swordsman. Anyway, what really made me smile was , at the end of the movie, they have a long dance sequence! I thought only Tagalog movies have these things! I was half-expecting Dolphy to show up dancing! Oh well….

  2. Gerry Alanguilan on March 5th, 2007 8:23 pm

    I also enjoy those big budget movies, my favorites being things like T2, True Lies, King Kong, and I thought Armageddon was really nice. I have it on Criterion DVD.

    I thought Jaws was brilliant. I think the fact that we didn’t see the shark until the very end worked very much to make it a compelling movie. I can’t still forget… “The Head. The Tail. The whole damn thing.”

    Ben Hur is one of those movies I watch more or less every year. The 3 disc DVD of this is fantastic, which includes the old silent movie version. Gladiator does parallel the plot of Ben Hur a bit, and although George Lucas pays homage to the Chariot Race via the pod race, the Chariot Race is still every bit as exciting as the first time I saw it.

  3. Gerry Alanguilan on March 6th, 2007 2:07 am

    Hello Laya! Nice to see you here!

    Yeah, I’m also very wary of hollywood adaptations of properties that I love in the original form. I didn’t like the adaptions of things like From Hell. I think I posted something about it earlier.

    I can’t wait to see The Departed. I really like Martin Scorcese’s work, my favorite being Goodfellas.

    I’ll definitely keep in mind your suggestions for other Japanese movies. Once in a while I’d just watch WOWOW, even I don’t understand what’s going on, but I can follow the story well enough by visuals alone. It’s fascinating looking at how different their culture is based on how they react to certain things… and how crazy some of their ideas are.

  4. Eusebio Yu on March 6th, 2007 8:52 am

    Hi again…

    Well, I did watched The Departed. While it is not by far, Scorsese’s best, it is still better than most movies released last year. The difference between this movie and its Hong Kong counterpart, is The Departed is much more violent. Infernal Affairs was so popular in Asia, that they made it a three-parter. I won’t spoil it for you since you haven’t seen it yet. But the original version has a different ending and it dwells more on characterization rather than violence.

    Anyone watched Sin City? When we talked about adaptations, we normally prefer it to be faithful to the original material. Well, I found out that there is such a thing as being TOO faithful. It is almost a carbon copy of the comic book. Panel for panel, frame by frame…Even the dialogues are the same. While the visuals are nice, I didn’t enjoy it too much. I know what’s gonna happen before it happens. Now, Spider-man and X-men are relatively faithful, but they took some liberties in certain areas. I can respect that. At least I would be pleasantly surprised at how things will turn out.

  5. noel on March 6th, 2007 8:53 pm

    its 9:00 pm. and i’m getting hungry…

    waaah…!