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Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Yap: F-movies list
By Januar E.Yap
Meanwhile
It’s a virtual pooling of realtime friends, a network generating like mitosis. You bore crannies on beehive walls, gaining company at the slight opening, unless unwelcome. The more flamboyant you scour and shop, the fertile your ground. If the mixed metaphors don’t confuse you, that’s what this thingee called Friendster is.
That first paragraph goes for the technophobe, who shrieks at the sight of a blinking cursor.
I tried surveying my friends’ favorite movies list. Omnipresent is the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy followed by the “Matrix” sequel. Some goes for the more artsy ones, foreign language films with humane themes, the pretty Iranian flick “Children of Heaven,” Zhang Yimou’s lovable “Not One Less,” the steamy “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” Brazil’s razor-sharp “City of God.”
One who’d register “crazy, funny, loves humor” in the About Me space puts serious films in the list. Something like, “28 Days Later” or “Citizen Cain.” The rather formalbuddy places Woody Allen in his list. Noel V. has “Shaolin Soccer,” the idea of the vigorous sport seen through Chaplinesque eyes.
Does our favorite movies list speak something about who we are? Yes, but who we are is a tentative thing, which is why the list stands updating. You take the movies seriously, and you submit to some kind of photosynthesis.
What did I put in my favorite movies list? Just “Man on the Train.” Why I won’t even explain.
What do we look for in movies? You watch “Pretty Woman” for escape. “What Dreams May Come” or “Final Fantasy” for visual vitamin. “Raise the Red Lantern” to wax philosophic. “Cinema Paradiso” for nostalgia. “Lord of the Rings” for spectacle. “Matrix” to see mysticism in the age of virtual circuits. “Manila by Night” for social studies. “Bayaning Third World” for a Rizal refresher.
For favorites, another story. I don’ like spectacle or palpable tension. I like the otherwise quiet, unphotogenic, uncinematic moments in an ordinary day of ordinary persons made spectacular on big screen. Spectacular the way cinema magnifies a twitch in the face or a strand of hair across a virgin’s mouth. Neither sentimental nor cynical. Dead, cold eyes staring at a fallen leaf.
(May 12, 2004 issue)
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