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Bottle, gun, paint, film

by Juaniyo Arcellana - October 27, 2024 - 12:00am

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first acknowledged Filipino digital film, “Still lives” by Jon Red a.k.a. Juan Pula, which at the time it was released in 1999 was unaware it was ushering in...

Into the mystic

by Juaniyo Arcellana - July 23, 2024 - 12:00am

Book author and anthropologist Tita Pambid Domingo laments that everything, even the once occult amulet, can be seen on the internet, and if this is the case there is no reason holding back showing her husband Reuben...

Last exit from Lantana

by Juaniyo Arcellana - June 30, 2024 - 12:00am

On the third Friday of June just days before the Feast of San Juan, Mowelfund held its first screening of the “Dokyu Wave” series at the Conrado “Dengcar” Baltazar Theater in its office off...

James Taylor in Manila redux, 30 years later

by Juaniyo Arcellana - April 11, 2024 - 12:00am

Good things come to those who wait, not least to James Taylor and his fans who turned the Mall of Asia (MOA) Arena on April 8 into one giant folk house and speakeasy when the artist-musician had a sequel show to...

Letter to a ruined country

by Juaniyo Arcellana - April 2, 2024 - 12:00am

The more I listen to Khavn and the Kontra-Kino Orchestra’s The Woman Who Went Mad, the more it sounds like a love letter to a ruined country, hypothetically our own, what with its sparse instrumentation, vocals...

Friends still here and friends no longer with us

by Juaniyo Arcellana - March 3, 2024 - 12:00am

I know this is late, but received word of director Tikoy Aguiluz’s death on the eve of an out-of-town trip, and so was unable to attend his wake.

So long to Sky Cable

by Juaniyo Y. Arcellana - February 15, 2024 - 12:00am

News is out that Sky Cable will sign off by month’s end, making it the second major broadcast carrier and communications conglomerate to write 30 in as many months, after CNN Philippines last January. PLDT’s...

Lino Brocka, National Anarchist: Archivist’s delight

by Juaniyo Arcellana - December 6, 2023 - 12:00am

Screened early this year at the Rotterdam film festival, Khavn dela Cruz’s Lino Brocka, National Anarchist had a run at the recently concluded QCinema festival, every bit a tribute to the late filmmaker who...

Let’s hear it for boygenius

by Juaniyo Arcellana - October 20, 2023 - 12:00am

There are times when you hesitate to write a review because after having done so, you’re likely to put away the reviewed piece, especially if music, as if over and done with. Not so much with the band boygenius,...

Page-turner set in turn of century Manila

by Juaniyo Arcellana - October 4, 2023 - 12:00am

Walking through Megamall on a Tuesday afternoon with an elder sibling, shortly after a death in the family, would take us to the basement nook Book Sale and a novel by British writer William Boyd going for little...

Essential truths, unspeakable grace

by Juaniyo Arcellana - September 1, 2023 - 12:00am

A scene or two always stands out from a Lav Diaz film, and in the case of Essential Truths of the Lake recently premiered in Locarno, it is the procession of religious novices reciting what sounds like a local version...

Dilang-putol: Cat got his tongue

by Juaniyo Arcellana - July 8, 2023 - 12:00am

Now that we’ve reached the age of pre-censorship and the use of postmodern tools of communication, such that any stray report may or may not disintegrate into false news at the click of a mouse, consider that...

Post-pandemic music: Monochrome, Superego, The Garceaus

by Juaniyo Arcellana - June 17, 2023 - 12:00am

What has three years of pandemic wrought?

Brockas’ Manila by Night sends regards to cutie-cutie

by Juaniyo Arcellana - March 31, 2023 - 12:00am

Return of the primitive is what first comes to mind upon hearing the Brockas’ Manila by Night, the latest long-playing album of the band of filmmakers, who happen to pick up musical instruments, write songs...

Not a release: Latest from the Brockas

by Juaniyo Arcellana - January 25, 2023 - 12:00am

Filmmaker Khavn dela Cruz messaged to say that two of his latest films will have their premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival, from Jan. 25 to Feb. 5, and the band Brockas of which he and other directors from the...

Revenge of the spoken word

by Juaniyo Arcellana - November 30, 2022 - 12:00am

No two bands can be as different and poles apart in their approach as Jack of None and The Brockas. Both are driven by the spoken word as main inspiration for most of their compositions, which can range from frenetic...

The Passionate Strangers: Remembering Eddie Romero’s film starring Valora Noland

by Juaniyo Arcellana - November 4, 2022 - 12:00am

An old friend and high school batchmate now teaching film in South Korea, going by the alias Ynnocence, sent some months ago films personally requested for a re-viewing and re-evaluation, which included Eddie Romero’s...

Gone with the waves in Venice and San Isidro

by Juaniyo Arcellana - September 11, 2022 - 12:00am

One might say Lav Diaz’s latest film, Kapag Wala Nang Mga Alon (When the Waves are Gone), was constructed around a photograph taken during the drug war, the Pieta-like cradling of a user/pusher victim by his...

Katips says don't dream it's over A Katips says don't dream it's over

by Juaniyo Arcellana - August 13, 2022 - 12:00am

There are thousands of untold stories of a yet unfinished revolution, and writer-director Vincent Tañada has quite a few in his counter-musical of the underground scene, set during the height of martial law,...

Isang Salaysay ng Karahasang Pilipino: Light, shadow, dialectics

by Juaniyo Arcellana - August 9, 2022 - 12:00am

The latest Lav Diaz film has just made its premiere screening in the Marseille festival, and if European audiences have seen bleak, they haven’t really looked deep into the Filipino void.

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