Yes, indeed. My domain transfer has pushed through and at a cheaper rate from the old registrar, plus free web hosting from doteasy.com which makes everything just fine and dandy! Now, to get back to this blog at long last and recount the days past.
Christopher Ad. Castillo, son of Celso, has made a film. We went to watch it last Saturday, and, well, I have to say I we weren't exactly thrilled. The Sky is Falling is meant to be a "descent into madness" story. A psychologically challenged woman seeing a therapist is the main character of the film. She moves into a house with a "haunted" connotation because of events that unfolded there 15 years prior: a young child stabs her mother to death, then kills herself. The premise is workable, and any one with a good mastery of narrative could perhaps propel the story forward and lead it in various directions.With that said, however, there were many problems I had as the film progressed.
Set aside his stylistics: natural lighting, all hand held cameras, raw sound, no filters, strange camera point of views with no justification - there were just too many things that popped up as question marks in my head. Number One - the thing that bothered me most was that this woman moves into a house that is owned by a Filipino family - no doubt, a friend or relative's house of Castillo's. Where on earth have you seen an American woman living in a house with an ornately framed Last Supper picture hanging over the dinging room area furnished with a carved armoire and wooden dining set, covered with an embroidered table cloth? That whole area just reminded me of Aunt X's house when she invited the entire family for any cause for celebration throughout the year. Number Two - does this American woman really like the whole Asian thing as she likes to go down to the corner Pinoy store and randomly grab sutanghon noodles off the shelf (I'm sure you can spot the freezer that holds the frozen bangus and longanisa, and the boxes that hold the saba and nyog).
Filipino nuances aside and down to the grit. Dialogue was uninventive, vapid and unispired (the crazy Filipino preacher guy on the corner cries out, "The sky is falling!"), well Castillo does admit he did NOT have a script; acting was mediocre (well, not enough lines to deliver and half the time she was just walking around downtown L.A.); the camera angles were ridiculous - what is the point of shooting from below this woman's hip and how many times do we need to spin around a single room?; do we really need to build suspense upon the suspense already happening? So, we are to conclude the woman is a schizo, she made up all these people and yes, she IS crazy. What a revelation! She began a little crazy, gets a little crazier, and somehow, not shown in the film, she is ready to face society again. How did she get over her madness? What event helped her realize her dellusions? Or are those male voice-overs of her therapist all in her head too? If this was inspired by Polanski's The Tenant, it certainly is a far cry from it. The Tenant frightened me to no end. Didn't help that I was only 6 or 7 when I saw it - but it is indelibly marked in my brain as one of the most frightening stories of a man's descent into madness and his displacement in society.
This reminded me of a bad Filipino horror movie displaced with blond and brunette American actors, spiked with your token Filipino friends who you asked to be in the film. A Celso Ad. Castillo film made in America on a budget. 3 for effort, 3 for story, 2 for cinematography; 2.5 stars average rating.
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