MMFF What Is Your Major Malfunction?

As we end the year I want to talk about something that coincide with our local Christmas season, that award festival. The Metro Manila Film Festival or MMFF for short, the so-called prestigious award giving body that kills both foreign films that blossomed anywhere in the planet around Christmas season and well deserved local movies.

The festival has a terrible history of controversies and questionable decisions yet the masses and gossip addicts still embraces the horrible chosen movies every year and not recognize movies that are obviously better.

I still don’t get on how they choose the movies that will compete for the festival. Recently, the committee is quite obsessed including movies that are just rehash of old ones, unnecessary sequels with actors that feeds on the gullible masses and movies that most likely written in a day, shot in a week, and post edited while playing a PSP.

MMFF Guy: Whats a good movie?
Since the festivals main marketed description is prestigious, and as others say the MMFF is in the same level of Oscars, the movie selections should have the following important characteristics, even if the movie is a comedy and horror.

1. The story is good

Sorry, I only came up with one characteristic, but believe me, that is the most important factor of a movie. The story comes first, the actors are just the tools to execute the story, guided by a director that knows what the hell is he or she doing and accompanied by a well-organized crew.

MMFF Guy:What could go wrong?
The big day has arrived, it’s the real awards night, but what’s this, obviously needed stuff is not done… properly? or not done at all?

First and foremost, since they only had a very, very limited selected movies, why the hell they still limit the nominees for each categories? why not have every movie has its own representative? There was a massive backlash when one of the movies that has a female protagonist (I wonder if the committee members knows the word protagonist) that is obviously entitled be nominated in the best actress group, since again she is a female and lead performer, was not included in the nominees.

I read somewhere that the nominees is already pre-selected by the “new and improved” jurors and they only chose 3, among 8 movies, per category. Well that is stupid, there are 8 movies fighting and killing your Christmas movie selections, not 3 films and in this approach, the nominees are stupidly inconsistent.

Other award bodies, especially the foreign ones, release the nominees before the real event to create buzz, even gossips that some of our local country men die for. Here in our dear MMFF, they only show the nominees, fueled with their idiotic nomination process, on the night itself.

Since we are talking about nominations, the festival is heavily promoted and well-funded (they even had a lengthy commercial on theater) yet they can’t come up with decent “the nominees” nomination highlight video. You know, the one they say each nominee, and the video will show something from the nominee. Like if I say nominee A, the video will show nominee A doing something from the movie. God damn, the presenters looks embarrassingly stiff and awkward while reading the nominees one by one like a disgruntled underpaid employee.

MMFF Guy: Our event is awesome
The recent one, oh boy, there are a lot of technical disasters and dumb decisions occurred throughout the night. Even if it is a delayed telecast, they should have done something to redeemed the influx of event related problems which include.

• Few mics not working and no immediate replacement mic was given to the speaker. He has to walk a few meters just to get a working mic
• Lots and lots of dead air (meaning nothings happening)
• Playing the applause music when they show the crowd that only around 5% was actually clapping
• Terrible lighting in some scenes

Lastly, their main animated event ID, the horrible early 90s look video probably rendered in a Windows 95 computer. An arts college student can do better event ID than that crap.

I hope they will do a better job next year, and hopefully, the rumored text to vote scheme is true, at least the choices will be from the people. Then again, a lot of our country men here votes on who and what is popular like in every election.

The only good thing MMFF has done this year is to recognized some indie films. Who knows, these future big time movie makers will offer the MMFF a set of movies that are actually good.

And one more thing, can they move the festival in other dates than Christmas? please? Hollywood always come up with good holiday films and we are still stuck with local MMFF selected movies that are 70%  dreadful and painful to watch.

Thank you for reading my last and a very world saving entry and have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all you again.

The Post of Rage 1

I call this series, THE POST OF RAGE, the complementary complain topic. I just want to talk about things, common things you usually see and hear everyday that is in need of proper ass kicking or plain ignore like what I always do. It may have a slice of angst but if I manage to impart these little comments to the public, and for some reason, everything I will mention here was immediately removed from the world in entirety, well, I congratulate the world for making itself a better place.

People who throw used cigarette butts in the grassy area of Ayala Avenue.
Every morning, not only their kill themselves with cigarettes as well attempting to share their plight to other people through a process called “passive smoking”, they also desecrate Gods green earth by throwing their used cigarettes in grassy areas, particularly the ones on the side of the Ayala avenue. I am not an OC type of guy because my room is always a mess when I left home for work, but I thought people who work in Makati, particularly in the Ayala area, who are all educated, should know the basic concept of throwing garbage in a trash can. Is throwing your own garbage, particularly used cigarettes, in a trash can a hard thing to do? It’s only a mere few feet, even inches from your place? Are you in a hurry and have no time to throw your cigarette properly Also, you are making the work of the street sweeper a lot harder, finding creative ways to find and retrieve thrown cigarettes scattered in said areas, even in the hard to reach areas like the drainage. You, as a well-educated person, should still know the proper way of throwing trash like cigarettes in a trash can.

Kapamilya / Kapuso online war.
Ah yes, the online war between the hardcore and rabid fans of Channel 2 and 7. They brought the term fanboyism (or 90% of the case, fangirlism) in a whole new level. They go bonkers when their favorite star got bad mouthed by rival networks fan or personalities. You can see these people wasting their lives, battling each other through “flamewars” in various local message boards, even in various video sharing sites Youtube and Daily Motion. There are dozens of channel 2 and 7 shows uploaded in this kind of sites, using different title names to mask themselves from the ongoing purge of copyright infringement materials. Whenever you view the text comments, at least one of them will have an “OMG ANG PANGIT NG SHOW NA YAN!!!!111 ZOMG ITS SUXXORS!” kind of post and someone will reply, usually in minutes, “HINDI, MAGANDA ITO!! SA INYO!! PANGET!!!! WALANG KWENTA!!!”, and some other guy will reply, and before you know it, another person will respond, and this will go on and on for a very long time. This always happens to videos which focus more on with a single actor/actress. Someone will post a tribute video of actor A, and in few hours, even minutes, another flame war will begin.

Smokers in Public Utility Vehicles, the open ones
Angst time ahead. I don’t mind people smoking in public, as long as they properly dispose the rolled tube of death properly, but I just can’t stand people who smoke in public utility vehicles, like the jeepney and tricycle. Can they just wait to get to their destination and load their lungs with 4000 kinds of chemicals afterward? That habit is frustrating  walking around the city, tired, trying to reach your destination via an open air vehicle, like the jeepney, and some dude or dudette shares his plight with you through smoking. Passive smoking is deadlier than self smoking, since the real smoke is an irritant, and allergy sufferers can experience stuffy or runny noses, watery or burning eyes, sneezing, coughing, wheezing, and a feeling of suffocation within minutes of exposure. There was an actual incident around last year, when I am inside of an air-conditioned bus, heading home from work, a guy ascended the vehicle, seats in the front, and attempts to light a cigarette, inside a smoke free bus, talk about the level of nicotine dependency of this guy. Good thing the conductor immediately stopped the man from smoking before he mixed the air from a dying air-condition with his 4000 chemicals.

Havaianas
They are just a bunch of expensive slippers, with designs. Why stay in the line outside of the store, waiting for your turn then fork out your cash when you can buy 5 even 10 reliable and cheaper slippers instead from other stores? I remember seeing a line, with stanchions between people, waiting for their turn to enter the shop at the Mall of Asia. I thought it was a line for a restaurant instead bunch of guys and gals looking directly towards the glass panel of the store, waiting for their turn. They enter and 90% of time they will not buy anything and leave the store. Good for them.

Metro Manila Film Festival
I don’t mind watching local films, I love them and it is clear on my habit of watching Cinema One at the wee hours of the day. But please, do not put the Film Festival candidates around Christmas time, especially if most of the films are downright horrible. Good holidays films, both foreign and local, is obviously the main attraction of the cinemas, during of course the holiday season. Most of the films look, was like produced in a week and does not look like it even used a single storyboard, I doubt if they even know whats a storyboard is. The bad thing is most of the candidates are crappy, really crappy. We had to wait till January to watch Avatar and other films that  internationally hit back in December. They can place the festival on other date, like in October, after the onslaught of popular foreign summer movies. The film festival committee should know the deserving films, the ones included in the festival. Garbage films with popular actors are very popular. These garbage should rolled and ditched somewhere immediately, it’s all about the story and overall presentation of the film. The actors are just the tool of the film, not the main reason to watch the film. Still, even how obviously crappy the film are, the loyal fans will still buy tickets just to see this guy with same facial expressions even if he is happy, sad or about to deliver a killer line.

That’s it, so far, still a lot of things that deserves a proper written spankings, and I hope I made the world a better place.