Geoff « CLEVE.ARGUELLES dotcom

26Dec/0914

Of Ang Panday and MMFF

I usually watch one entry film for the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) every year with my elementary friends. We know that the entry films are a bit crappy and most of the films are just there for the money. But we still watch every year because it serves as our annual gathering. We usually watch movies whenever we go out and when it's December, you have no choice but to watch an MMFF film. Mind you, we go out slash meet only once a year.

35th Metro Manila Film Festival

Ang Panday/ The Blacksmith

This year though, my two brothers asked me to join them spend their money and watch Bong Revilla's Ang Panday. It is a remake of Fernando Poe Jr.'s film if I'm not mistaken. And the story is written by the controversial Carlo J. Caparas (CC). My mother and my sister decided to join us too. It became a family thing.

We went to Robinson's Manila Movie house and waited for the show. Cinema 4, the one in Pedro Gil wing is a piece of trash. Very dirty. Sleeping operator. The volume is being adjusted for like twenty times. It's a bit distracting and irritating. And there were no ushers! Robinson's is usually not this bad when it comes to entertainment.

Plot

The movie was very plain. Do I really have to mention that the plot is VERY predictable? There were no hidden messages or anything. VERY plain. Dapat paglabas ko ng sinehan, pag-iisipan ko ang mga pangyayari, mag-iisip ako, may intellectual exercise. There should be a discourse worthy or a conversational piece for a movie to be considered as a movie. What? But there aren't any. Lucky for them that I was trying to fit social/ economic/ political/ historical stuff in the movie but I failed. No hope.

Characters

The characterization too is very plain and shallow. Characters failed to leave an impression to the viewers. There is a failure in the part of the writers and that of the directors too to develop the characters, to humanize them and give them life. Introducing characters is not a matter of who, what, when, or where. It's a matter of why. They also failed to connect to the viewers. There were few attempts to connect but all these failed. I could have been a better story writer. Maybe it's not the movie team's fault, maybe it's CC's fault.

Emelita (Rhian Ramos) and Marcos (Geoff Eigenmann) could have done something major. They should have played as a REAL side-kick for the

Panday/Flavio (Bong Revilla). Could have been exciting because of their semi-Assassin and semi-Archer role. They could have participated in the development of the story and contributed to the excitement in the fighting scenes. Rhian Ramos and Geoff Eigenmann were both sexy though.

Lizardo (Phillip Salvador) disappointed me. I thought he would be a Joker a la Heath Ledger type of evil antagonist. It did not work like that, he looks mentally-ill rather than evil. Role should have been given to someone better.

Effects-slash-Animation

I don't really know the difference between the two so i'll treat them as one and the same. Their special effects is thing that they are most proud of, right? I even heard a remark from a GMA 7 executive commending the movie's special effects. Pang-Hollywood daw, pang-international. What? It's quite crappy, though closer to average than trash. Multiplication effects and landscaping animation failed. The only notable animation there is the flying creature, i think it's a dragon. Yes, his/her name is Bagwis. It's quite real in my eyes, very Eragon and War of the Dragons.

The Festival

I wish MMFF could be changed into a festival of excellence, filipinism and creativity. Not a festival for money, profits and revenues. A festival that would be concerned not with profits but with the content and form of the entry films. Exceptional and highly-relevant films should be encouraged as against to another Ang Panday type of movies. No wonder that the industry is dying.

0.5 out of 5 stars relative to all the movies i watched.

3 out of 5 relative to all the entry films in the festival.

P.S. I can't find a decent source of pictures and profiles of the casts. So, yes, Wikipedia. :P

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