Comments on: “My Additional Taping Day For I Love Betty La Fea” http://inbetweentakes.com/2008/10/22/my-additional-taping-day-for-i-love-betty-la-fea/ Philippine showbiz in the raw Mon, 16 Aug 2010 08:50:53 +0000 hourly 1 By: Mart Martell http://inbetweentakes.com/2008/10/22/my-additional-taping-day-for-i-love-betty-la-fea/comment-page-1/#comment-100 Mart Martell Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:01:26 +0000 http://inbetweentakes.com/?p=94#comment-100 Egay! Caught up with your past postings; and I don't think anyone can say that you lead a dull life. Is Betty La Fea based on Ugly Betty? I think a series like this is a good counterpoint to all the media rhapsodizing up of glamour and good looks. Who was it that said that, "God loves ordinary people, that's why he made more of them." I don't know if it's come out in the news there but in a film series recently shown at NYC's MOMA, one of the films was "Slingshot," directed by Brilliante Mendoza (sounds like a screen name, ano?). Anyway, it was favorably reviewed in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine. I hope to be able to see it (screnings Oct. 32-27). The New Yorker review: "IN this interlocking tangle of anecdotal episodes, the Filipino director, Brilliante Medoza, depicts the hell of chronic urban poverty with plenty of heart and not a shred of sentimentality. The action, centered on a densely inhahbited warren of shanties, begins with a night-time police raid, which allows Mendoza's hyper-kinetic camera to dash through corridors and up and down rickety staircases and present a rapid fire cross-section of its residents and their activities, ranging from sex and prayer to drug use and dividing the spoils of robbery. Honest work is hard to find (one young man, working as a pedicab driver, loses his vehicle to loan sharks and becomes a thief), violence rampant, health care prohibitive, (in one of them most moving sequences, a young woman steals to buy dentures), effort unrewarded (university students fall prey to the young "jammers" who rob them), law enfoprcement capricious and brutal, and politicians part of the problem. Young men swept up in the raid are sprung from jail by a councilman seeking their votes, crowds form in the street to pocket cash payments from competing candidtes, and campaign rallies which are joined with religious celerattions, are hardly more than stomping grounds for pickpockets. Mendoza offers little psychological insight and proposes no solution; his direction is chaotic but his fleeting portraits of people struggling yo survive will long remain in memory. In Tagalog." Egay, I don't know if this film will give foreigners the impression that what's shown in the film is typical of the Philippines and Filipinos. Offhand, I don't think so. To those who criticize the Philippines and the Pinoy - all I tell them is to look at their own American media where you can find all sorts of political corruption, racism and official stupidity. And I remind them that at least, the Pinoy does kill people of a different skin color; nor do we harass and maim those of a different sexual orirntation. I like to think that the Pinoy is more Christian than those bigots in America who claim that if you are not for McCain-Palin you are doomed to hell. Sorry, humaba nang masyado ito. I got carried away. Egay! Caught up with your past postings; and I don’t think anyone can say that you lead a dull life.
Is Betty La Fea based on Ugly Betty? I think a series like this is a good counterpoint to all the media rhapsodizing up of glamour and good looks. Who was it that said that, “God loves ordinary people, that’s why he made more of them.”
I don’t know if it’s come out in the news there but in a film series recently shown at NYC’s MOMA, one of the films was “Slingshot,” directed by Brilliante Mendoza (sounds like a screen name, ano?). Anyway, it was favorably reviewed in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine. I hope to be able to see it (screnings Oct. 32-27).
The New Yorker review:
“IN this interlocking tangle of anecdotal episodes, the Filipino director, Brilliante Medoza, depicts the hell of chronic urban poverty with plenty of heart and not a shred of sentimentality. The action, centered on a densely inhahbited warren of shanties, begins with a night-time police raid, which allows Mendoza’s hyper-kinetic camera to dash through corridors and up and down rickety staircases and present a rapid fire cross-section of its residents and their activities, ranging from sex and prayer to drug use and dividing the spoils of robbery. Honest work is hard to find (one young man, working as a pedicab driver, loses his vehicle to loan sharks and becomes a thief), violence rampant, health care prohibitive, (in one of them most moving sequences, a young woman steals to buy dentures), effort unrewarded (university students fall prey to the young “jammers” who rob them), law enfoprcement capricious and brutal, and politicians part of the problem. Young men swept up in the raid are sprung from jail by a councilman seeking their votes, crowds form in the street to pocket cash payments from competing candidtes, and campaign rallies which are joined with religious celerattions, are hardly more than stomping grounds for pickpockets. Mendoza offers little psychological insight and proposes no solution; his direction is chaotic but his fleeting portraits of people struggling yo survive will long remain in memory. In Tagalog.”

Egay, I don’t know if this film will give foreigners the impression that what’s shown in the film is typical of the Philippines and Filipinos. Offhand, I don’t think so. To those who criticize the Philippines and the Pinoy – all I tell them is to look at their own American media where you can find all sorts of political corruption, racism and official stupidity. And I remind them that at least, the Pinoy does kill people of a different skin color; nor do we harass and maim those of a different sexual orirntation. I like to think that the Pinoy is more Christian than those bigots in America who claim that if you are not for McCain-Palin you are doomed to hell.
Sorry, humaba nang masyado ito. I got carried away.

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