QUEZON City, Philippines (December 18) – Most of the television networks’ airtime is once again bombarded by trailers and promotions of entries for the Metro Manila Film Festival or MMFF which will start this December 25. It’s a good timing for movies, since the holiday season gives families the opportunity to spend quality time with each other, namely watching films together. And the MMFF will also give them the opportunity to watch their favorite artistas and idolos. It’s also a season of gift-giving, so we expect movie producers and creators have made something that is as good as presents, inside and out.
However, what I observed during the past MMFFs is horrible. It’s alright if the authorities behind it open the fest with lots of colors and floats; but please, did the entries even justify all the effort spent? The celebrities are the only ones highlighted during the event, not the movies. Why? It’s because of the lack of quality of the “mainstream” entries.
Let’s accept the painful fact that there are entries that are treated as the main course, and the others that are only seen as indies. If the mainstreams are not even worth watching, audiences will likely perceive that the indies are not good enough as well, which is somewhat wrong.
Most of the time, indies are even ten times or more better than the ones created with millions of pesos. Imagine, watching a movie that is full of indirect advertising, displaying names of products both in the foreground and back. Sacrificing the presentation and the visual aesthetic just for sponsorship is just a big jeer to the viewers.
Making the wound deeper is the poor storyline and the lack of art. There are the gasgas stories; action scenes in comedy style, love stories that gives you goose bumps, a married man cheating on his wife, etc. Too much novelty and predictability makes the film a trash, too corny. The cinematography is too conventional, obviously tagging the director of photography (DOP) ignorant of fresh angles and focusing in the industry. Sorry, not so sorry, but the creators and their production teams need to take these criticisms, in order not to make the same mistakes they do over and over again.
Giant face palm to some, not all, past entries and move on. Let’s just hope for a full-of-quality pictures they will show this holiday and looking forward into the absence of korni.
(written by Rex Felix Salvador, edited by Jay Paul Carlos, additional research by Lovely Ann Cruz)
