All Mine To Give (1957)

I work in a production/media company as a proof-reader of subtitles/close captions for DVD's. American studios outsource a lot of the DVD subtitling work overseas, our offices is one of those places where they give their films for subtitling. We work on mostly American TV series and old movies. Some of them real classics both famous and rather obscure. Some of them I liked, some of them I could barely stand watching, some of them I loved. I usually don't review any of them on-line. But this particular one I'll make an exception since it is so exceptional.

All Mine to Give (Allan Reisner, 1957) is a drama said to be based on a true story about an immigrant couple (Glynis Johns and Cameron Mitchell) who set out to make a life for themselves in 1850's America. They managed to build a home and have six children. They were happy. For a while. Then tragedy strikes the family and the eldest child, a barely 12 year old boy, is taken to task to carry a heartwrenching burden.

This film is a major tearjerker. Unlike other major tearjerkers, however, the film never felt phony or overly manipulative. The story and the emotions involved all feel genuine thanks in large part to the great performances of the leads: Glynis Johns as the matriarch of the family, Cameron Mitchell as her husband and Rex Thompson, as the eldest child who gives one of the best on-screen child performances.

I would personally rank this alongside Grave of the Fireflies and Bicycle Thieves as among cinema's greatest tearjerker drama. In fact, it would be sort of accurate to describe this as an American Grave of the Fireflies. The opening scene of the boy pushing his baby sister in the snow in a sled strongly reminded me of Isao Takahata's anime masterpiece.

Apart from a few airings at Turner Classic Movies, All Mine to Give is woefully underseen. It's a good thing they'll be releasing this gem on DVD so that more people would have access to see it and discover what a classic film it really is.

Filmmaker Focus: Alejandro Jodorowsky

This is the first of what I hope to be a series of blogs on filmmakers I've encountered in my cinematic travels (or simply put, directors I've watched). The latest director that have caught my fancy is Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky whose films are really something else. The first film of his I've seen was
Fando y Lis, one of the strangest love stories I've ever seen. The title characters, a man and his paraplegic girlfriend, go on a strange journey to find a mythic city to have their dreams and wishes fulfilled only to be driven mad. Shot in black and white, the story gets into all sorts of directions incorporating surreal and shocking imagery (including a scene where characters actually drink real human blood) but unlike, say, Peter Greenaway wherein story and character pretty much take a backseat to imagery and abstract ideas, Jodorowsky manages to engage the characters with the audience enough that gets them through the strange imagery and give them a surprising emotional wallop in the end.



As much as I admired Fando y Lis, I personally think El Topo is a genuine masterpiece. Like the former film, El Topo also concerns a strange journey. But this time far more complex and complicated. And colorful. And how. Some of the best use of color in film can found in El Topo. Some shots, I felt, were like moving abstract paintings, the deep reds, the bright blues, the blinding yellows. The film is a Western about a man who defeats a group of bandits and abandons his son for a woman who convinces him to go and defeat four gun masters then finds himself amongst freaks and battling an evil religious cult (believe me, it's even WEIRDER than it sounds). It's colorful as it's strange and fascinating, the film is filled with allegorical religious and political symbolisms and imagery that really has to be seen to be believed. Yet it manages not to feel the least bit pointless or pretentious. I really felt like I was watching a Fellini, Bunuel and a Leone film all at the same time.

R.I.P. Cyd Charisse

I'll let her work speak for itself.

Indy Movies

The latest installment in the Indiana Jones trilogy opened this week, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull over 18 years after the last installment, The Last Crusade. To commemorate this much-awaited summer blockbuster, I've decided to review all four of the films together.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is the film that started it all. Taking off on cliffhanger B-movies of yesteryears, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (together with screenwriter Philip Kaufman) created this unique character, an archaeologist who travels the world hunting for legendary artifacts while evading bad guys who want the same artifacts for evil. The film pretty much wrote the formula for summer blockbuster movies: Combining tongue in cheek humor, outrageous action sequences and scary scenes all within the context of a rather preposterous, fantastical plot.

The first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, did it splendidly. Archaeologist Dr. Henry 'Indiana' Jones battle it out with Nazis to find the Ark of the Covenant. It defined a genre, spawning a lot of pale imitations. It truly defined the modern-day escapist film genre. From it's now often imitated opening sequence to that horrific/ghoulishly fun sequence of melting Nazis, it still holds up well through repeated viewings.

The often-maligned second film of the trilogy The Temple of Doom is oddly enough one of the most underrated. This time around, Indy battles a cult who enslaves children to pursue the power of legendary stones. People have complained about how they were annoyed by Short Round and angered by the ditziness of Willie Scott and by the apparent ethnocentrism leveled against Hindus but in the end, it really is a fun, solid action adventure film that's still way better than most films which try to imitate it. A mess? Yes, but a fun mess.

The third film of the original trilogy, The Last Crusade teams up Jones with his father to search for the Holy Grail. Sean Connery played the elder Henry Jones and part of the film's success was his on-screen chemistry with Harrison Ford. He definitely gave the series extra humor and pathos. Many people say this was an improvement to The Temple of Doom. I beg to differ. On hindsight, I would say that they're pretty much equal in terms of quality. Both pale in comparison to the original film.

18 years and several false starts and rewrites later, here comes Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And I have to say that this is probably the weakest of the entries to this franchise. Yes, it does contain some elements that made the original trilogy fun: The swordfight between Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf between two speeding vehicles is a particular highlight but the film suffers from two elements: The introduction of CGI and the story.

Part of what makes the first three films exciting and new is the fact that they were made in the 1980's and that most of the stunts featured are live. CGI has spoiled this genre because you can literally think of anything and it could happen. Before CGI, people actually gave thought as to what stunts they can do live which gave it room for more creativity. CGI is also part of the reason why a lot of Indy movie wannabes like National Treasure and The Mummy movies don't work as well.

The story of Crystal Skull is pretty preposterous: Aliens ruling an ancient South American civilization? Please. Granted, the other plots of the other Indy movies are fantastical, this type of fantastical does not belong in an Indiana Jones movie. The movie, however, tried it's darndest to capture the spirit of the original trilogy and it sometimes works, admittedly but it's still a very disappointing far cry from it.

My 25 Favorite Songs

I'm going to take a break from talking about movies for a while. I'm on American Idol mode so I thought I'd give you my 25 favorite songs of all time. I'm not including instrumental/classical pieces, showtunes, traditional/Christmas/religious songs, non-English language songs and opera. This is strictly a pop/rock/r&b area. These are the songs I love to listen to most in my iPoD. These are not in any particular order but the Top 5 is pretty much set in place:

"Bridge Over Troubled Water", Simon & Garfunkel
"Over the Rainbow", Judy Garland
"Bohemian Rhapsody", Queen
"Moon River", Audrey Hepburn
"Paranoid Android", Radiohead
"Let It Be", The Beatles
"Your Song", Elton John
"A Whiter Shade of Pale", Procol Harum
"American Pie", Don McLean
"Paint It Black", The Rolling Stones
"Criminal", Fiona Apple
"You Oughta Know", Alanis Morrissette
"Mr. Bojangles", John Denver
"Imagine", John Lennon
"Come Together", The Beatles
"Tiny Dancer", Elton John
"Midnight Train to Georgia", Gladys Knight and the Pips
"Smooth Criminal", Michael Jackson
"Can't Help Falling In Love", Elvis Presley
"Son of a Preacher Man", Dusty Springfield
"Lose Yourself", Eminem
"Blowin' in the Wind", Bob Dylan
"Sympathy for the Devil", The Rolling Stones
"The Way You Look Tonight", Fred Astaire
"Smells Like Teen Spirit", Nirvana

Apologies to my readers

I'd like to apologize to any readers of my blog out there for not posting as regularly as I promised. I really want to reserve really long, really meaty entries for this blog and I haven't had the time to do so. It doesn't help that I have been distracted by work, American Idol (Go, David Archuleta!), Lost, the script I'm working on and general laziness.

There was a sale in Powerbooks today (a local bookstore chain in my country) exclusive to Powercard holders (yes, yours truly is one of them) since I frequently buy books from this store.

I picked up The Story of Film by Mark Cousins, a very concise, very informative and very accessible book on film history. Anyone interested in film should check it out.

Cinematic Abortions

The volatile, hot-button issue of abortion has rarely been tackled with real cinematic and intelligence. American films like The Cider House Rules and If These Walls Could Talk are, on the whole, too smug and too simplistic in their respective handling of the issue. In comes Cristian Mingiu's film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days completely and utterly stripped of politics, the film is probably one of the most poignant films on abortion ever made.

Set in Romania in the 1980's, the film follows a day in the life of Otillia (Anamaria Marinca), a young woman trying to procure an abortion (which was illegal in the country at the time) for her none-too-bright friend Gabita (Laura Vasilliu). The film's brutally raw honesty can get a little bit uncomfortable at times. The lead performance of Annamaria Marinca is truly amazing. Despite her character's inexplicable actions such as actually prostituting herself when the abortionist they hired was angrily backing out and her almost saintly devotion to her half-wit of a friend, she makes it all seem believable. In a scene during a party at boyfriend's family's house, she sits in the middle of the table not saying a word, she still manages to be a focal point of the scene and convey a multitude of emotions.

Freed from the need to convey anything political or make a firm stand on the issue, Mingiu instead made a film that's truly a gripping story on the lengths someone can go through for friendship and at the same time, a fascinating look into a time and culture seldom seen outside of it's country. It's truly a staggering piece of cinema.