flickstack: the 13 best films of 2009

hey, it's christmas again! 'tis the season for receiving gifts that are rarely the ones you wished for, taking money from your godparents and having your money taken by your godchildren, and getting pestered by bad, divide-and-conquer carolers. sure, there's the usual partying, eating, churchgoing but if there's one thing i hate about christmas in this country, it's the goddarn metro manila film festival. not only do they have the same kind of crap from last year, they force those pieces of shit movies into everyone's faces by having all the theaters show only those pieces of shit. thanks to more mano po, more shake rattle n roll and more hollywood-quality-my-ass eyesores from vic sotto and bong revilla, i will have to wait next year to see sherlock holmes. assholes.

anyways, before i rant any longer, here's my list of the best films i watched this year. and because it's my list, there are thirteen movies, the first 12 in no particular order and the 13th tops them off. so it's kinda like just a top 2 list. but with 13 items. because i like the number thirteen. i know i have already said that but this sentence has thirteen words.

1. up - with that title and having an old man as the main protagonist, you'd have thought it was movie about erectile dysfunction. but thankfully it wass by pixar so it turned out to be a really great kids-and-adults movie. with talking dogs and a "swordfight" between two old men. hmm.

2. watchmen - it wasnt perfect but it was an awesome comic book movie. tdk went the realistic, dark route. watchmen went comic-book-that-moves route. i enjoyed it. anyways, i know you dont want to but you can read my review of this film here. persuasive psychology works sometimes.

3. coraline - freaky stop-motion movie. button-eyed people, circus mice, better parent dilemma. im gonna let my daughter watch this when she old enough. like two years old maybe.

4. 500 days of summer - this movie was the kind of boy-meets-girl love story movie that we need more of, instead of the ones where the couple falls apart and one of them wins the other back with something cheesy.

5. thirst - fuck new moon. while those twilight fags were sparkling and flexing, sang-hyeon, a priest, was sucking blood from a comatose patient through an iv tube. this is the vampire film of the year.

6. zombieland - and this one is the zombie fillm of the year. bill murray rules.

7. moon - this movie is about a guy who is alone in the moon for three years. there's more to that but it would spoil the movie. i liked it a lot and i dont know what else to say...oh yeah, fuck new moon.

8. sin nombre - intense spanish film on gangs and poverty. the gang leader with tattoos on his face had a baby along while the new recruit killed a member of the rival gang as initiation. im grateful im not the father taking his daughter to america by riding on train roofs.

9. district 9 - im pretty sure that unlike this amazing movie, if aliens came to this country, the darn government wouldnt know what to do. the armed forces would be probably ordered to shoot the visitors on sight, no questions asked.

10. black dynamite - michael jai white, the guy who played spawn, has the same second name as my first name. didnt know that besides kicking ass, he could also do comedy. he owned this really funny blaxploitation movie.

11. grotesque - gross and painful to watch, just the way i like it. but beyond the blood, the dismembering of body parts and the cringeworthy gore, there's the message of self-sacrifice and how much you'd put yourself through for a person you like but barely know.

12. avatar - jeean and i saw this in a regular theater and it was great. im pretty sure imax would have tripled the awesomeness of james cameron's pandora. it's like eyecandy that is good for you, minus the sugar. review

and best film of 2009 according to me is... (long heavy metal drum roll please)

13. inglourious basterds - i like war movies and i worship quentin tarantino. inglourious basterds is unlike any war movie ever made. this film was first-frame-to-last badass amazing. long, talky, tension-building scenes, the hans landa character, hitler showered with bullets, everything was remarkable. which is expected of every quentin tarantino film, like his foot fetish. i didnt even try to make a review because id probably get to 10 thick paragraphs and still havent conveyed enough of my thoughts. and for any fellow quentin tarantino fans out there, i ask you: have you ever shaken his hand? i have.

AVATAR by jaiskizzy

apercu: just like how south park put it. it's dances with smurfs. but for anyone who gets off on synopses...it's the far future and a wheelchair-bound ex-marine fills in for his dead brother and is sent to planet pandora to help out with research on the blue cat-people called na'vi. jacked into a genetically engineered na'vi, he becomes part of the natives, learns their culture and falls in love with the local hottie. soon enough, he is faced with a dilemma: help his fellow humans obtain the unobtainium or fight with the na'vi to protect their homeland. (i like parentheses)

review: something i hate to admit is having watched titanic six times. three times in the theater, twice on home video and once on hbo. of those instances, only once was voluntary. anyways, james cameron's return to film has been touted as a game-changer and change the game it did. that game would be the 3d motion capture game which beowulf played well but lost. it was more in the gamut of pixar and dreamworks toons. avatar, on the other hand, well, as much as i like swimming against the tide, i am compelled to agree with the majority of moviegoers that this wasn't a movie. it was an experience.

but let's deal with the minuses first, shall we? (i'll pretend that you said "ok") the first gripe i had was on the voice-overs. it was quite unnecessary and i dont think its absence would have made a difference to the movie, er...the experience. half of the time, the protagonist was merely describing what was or what would be happening. i get that they're connected with the video logs (i am not gonna say "vlog" because i think it's stupid and gay) but the narrations were short and sparse and added nothing to the scenes. it would have been better if, like, when the colonel was talking to him while in the power-suit, he voice-overed "i should get these guys to do a dance in those suits and upload it to youtube lol". moving on, complaint number two: the near similar titanic storytelling. in titanic, the movie would switch from the ship scenes to the old woman recalling her memories. avatar employs the same switching from human mode to na'vi mode. i guess this is a gripe because i actually thought that jakesully (the protagonist) would get trapped in his na'vi body, hence more pandora sequences (more on that in next paragaph). anyways, the most criticized aspect of avatar is its flat, cliche story. the love story cliche. cliche evil guys after cliche treasure against cliche good guys. but (and now i swim on the opposite direction) it didnt bore me at all and i believe the simplicity helped propel the 3d experience forward by not delving on complicated subplots or overlong character developments. yes it wasnt original but it wasnt bad either. at least the drama didnt try hard too hard to jerk tears out of the audience.

now let's get to the meat of the matter, the cgi and the mocap technology. a few sentences back i mentioned the human mode na'vi mode switch. a large part of what makes it annoying is that i wanted to spend more time in pandora. dude, that place looks awesome. i came into the movie knowing that the na'vi and their environment are all computer generated and yet i could swear that those bushes, trees and animals (no aquatics though) were real. and james cameron has perfected the mocap because although the na'vi were obviously cgi, their movements and emotions looked very real. heck, even the long-noticeable mouth problems seem to have been fixed. it's all very amazing. the other thing that james cameron must have labored hours for was the science of the film. for one, pandora is kinda like a moon to a bigger planet so it would be natural for pandora to spend some time under the bigger planet's shadow and have longer evenings. and that is why most of the flora and fauna have luminescent abilities. they have evolved to survive the darkness. there is so much more to talk and ponder about the film, from the little details of the fingers (human-na'vi hybrids have five, real na'vi have four) to the nature-based "religion", which, to be completely honest, is one i would get behind if we had it here. but no review would encompass the true avatar experience. like jakesully in pandora, it's something jack into and see for yourself.

finalword: here is a film that pits humans against blue catpeople and you root for the catpeople. james cameron waited for the right time to realize his vision and the wait was all worth it because he has created an instant classic, this generation's bar-setter in visual effects. bravo, sir. and good luck, challengers!

the good: cgi, mocap, science

the bad: pace, narration

the ugly: the forced theme song

the verdict: 9 eywa jellyfish

abattoir.

be kind, remind

high school reunion's coming up and ive been forced asked to do the audiovisual presentation. i havent started on the actual slideshow of pictures yet due to image inadequacy but the intros, effects, music and transitions have all been dealt with. these elements i continue to tinker with every now and then as i wait for new digitized memories to arrive and all the cuttings and renderings have made me miss my video editing days.

and during a bathroom break, i looked back on those days and remembered the very first time i performed video editing. it happened long before i knew what final cut and adobe premiere were. all i had back then were a video8 camera, a tv, a vhs recorder, a cassette player and creative persistence (or persistent creativity?). cue flashback fx for 10 years ago...

it was for a class report in informatics. i didnt want to do the usual talking in front of the class. it was good to have luigi in the group because he understood and supported my ideas every time. luigi and i shot most of our scenes unscripted, except for the part where we had to read the textbook. when we had all the footage we wanted, luigi and i went downtown to find a place to have our video report edited. we found none. the report was to be presented the next day. i told my friend i'd take care of everything and we went our separate ways home.

with no previous experience in video editing, i attempted to do the whole thing on my own. i made title cards by drawing on bond papers and taping them on the wall. i recorded the footage from the video camera to the vhs, cutting them together by pausing, rewinding and playing the video. on sequences where a music track was needed, i pulled the audio rca plug off the camera and jacked it into the cassette player where a tape played. it was a painstaking task for one man to do and my numerous tries caused by errors resulted into some bad recording. those, i considered as effects. the closing credits i created by typing in microsoft word and shooting the monitor.

the following day, i carried the loaded vhs player to school and luigi brought a tv. we presented the report to our class's amusement. even students from the other classes watched and enjoyed. the end.

now where could that tape be...?