luis is a co-founder and social software architect at SyndeoLabs, and a director at Exist Global. he likes building small web toys a whole lot. More ...

quick links to the good stuff

  • 25 First Dates 25 May 2009
  • True Crime: Confessions of a Criminal Mastermind 17 Feb 2009
  • Finding Your Soul Mate: A Statistical Analysis 27 Jan 2009
  • Sex and Schrodinger's Cat 07 January 2009
  • An Extended Rant on Heroes 26 September 2008
  • Zero Barrier 05 May 2008
  • Sweatshop Blogging Economics 08 April 2008
  • The Doomsday Singularity 25 February 2008
  • Piracy and Its Impact on Philippine Music 21 January 2008
  • The Manila Pen-etration by the Hotelier Antonio Trillanes 29 November 2007
  • Journey of a Thousand Heroes 17 December 2006
  • Shake, Rattle & LOL 30 December 2005

    elsewhere online

    • Last.FM
    • Del.icio.us
    • Flickr
    • Plurk
    • Multiply
    • Stumbleupon

    guttervomit

    • 2

      Shake, Rattle and LOL

      30 Dec 2005

      shake_rattle_roll.jpg

      What can I say about this movie that you weren’t already expecting?

      Well, I suppose that depends on exactly what it is you expect from the nth entry into this signature horror series. I was expecting something ridiculous and fairly nonsensical personally, and … well, I certainly wasn’t wrong.

      As is the tradition with SR&R, the movie is split up into 3 separate stories, each one with a different set of characters, director and overall tone. The first one is a real piece of work: fakey occultist Ai Ai de las Alas is hired by a poorly-coiffed (she’s wearing a nasty wig) Gloria Romero to contact the spirit of her dead grandson, who died a year ago in front of their house’s poso (hence the title). Ai Ai has a small team that helps her make her seances more dramatic, but they are picked off one by one, by the most terrible visual-effects glop that you are ever likely to see in a movie. I can’t stress this enough; the red goop that pours out of the poso and envelops the principal characters is like "Revenge of the Killer Strawberry Jam."

      (Yasmine Kurdi, by the way, is particularly comely as Romero’s nurse-slave, not because she’s a good actress or anything, but because I like the idea of having a totally docile, completely obedient starlet for a housemaid. Not that that had anything to do with the movie, of course.)

      The second vignette, Aquarium, features the fattest incarnation of Ara Mina known to man, made all the more obvious by the fact that beside her, Wilma Doesnt looks bereft of a third dimension. After finding an aquarium in their new condo, Ara Mina and her faithful husband Ogie Alcasid decide to keep it for their annoying prat of a son to play with. Never mind that a cataract-ridden old granny keeps coming out of nowhere to whisper threats and warnings, or the fact that in the middle of the aquarium is a paper-mache mask that would make Jim Carrey blush. (Yes, that was a spoiler.)

      When a tubero is killed while trying to fix their condo’s pipes (which for some reason, requires him to climb a ladder and poke around in the crawlspaces above the room), the story pretty much fell apart for me. Not that it was all that good to begin with, but come on. Being strangled by seaweed is a stretch, even for a movie of this quality.

      Given the caliber of the first two vignettes, I didn’t have a lot of hope left for the last segment, Lihim ng San Joaquin. Fortunately, the producers had the good sense to save the best for last (although I mean that relatively, of course). Lihim features Tanya Garcia and Marc Anthony Fernandez as a couple trying to start a new life in the countryside … a countryside that just happens to be infested with uruk-hai-like aswang. To say that this segment is more polished than the preceding two would be a vast understatement, but it does suffer from some of the same problems: an anemic special-effects budget and a plot that is little more than a mishmash of various other, better horror movies.

      That said, the first half of Lihim, which introduces the landscape and principal characters, is expertly done and would probably work better as the first act of a full-length feature than of this 30-minute amputee.

      So there you have it: another year, another filmfest. I should probably try to watch another one tomorrow to fulfill my yearly quota, but the available choices are a bit uhm, uninteresting. Maybe I’ll just watch Mulawin and get it over with, I don’t know.

      2 Responses to “Shake, Rattle and LOL”

      1. kala Says:
        December 30th, 2005 at 2:12 pm

        hopefully after the filmfest they’ll show matchpoint in the theatres. Saw it a few months ago (in original version too, that is english) and I was thinking of scarlett johansson’s (sp?) boobs and can’t wait to see your review of it. I mean of the movie, not the boobs. ;-)

        Wishing you all the best 2006 can bring.

      2. Kat Says:
        January 2nd, 2006 at 8:51 pm

        The last episode is also my favorite. Creepy, nice overall color, too. And Mark Anthony Fernandez was yummy. lol

      Leave a Reply

     

    categories

    • Home
    • No categories

    archives

    • April 2011
    • March 2011
    • February 2011
    • January 2011
    • August 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • July 2009
    • June 2009
    • May 2009
    • April 2009
    • March 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • August 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
    • October 2007
    • September 2007
    • August 2007
    • July 2007
    • June 2007
    • May 2007
    • April 2007
    • March 2007
    • February 2007
    • January 2007
    • December 2006
    • November 2006
    • October 2006
    • September 2006
    • August 2006
    • July 2006
    • June 2006
    • May 2006
    • April 2006
    • March 2006
    • February 2006
    • January 2006
    • December 2005
    • November 2005
    • October 2005
    • September 2005
    • August 2005
    • July 2005
    • June 2005
    • May 2005
    • April 2005
    • March 2005
    • February 2005
    • January 2005
    • December 2004
    • November 2004
    • October 2004
    • September 2004
    • August 2004
    • July 2004
    • June 2004
    • May 2004
    • April 2004
    • March 2004
    • February 2004
    • January 2004
    • December 2003
    • November 2003
    • October 2003
    • September 2003
    • August 2003
    • July 2003
    • June 2003
    • May 2003
    • April 2003
    • March 2003
    • February 2003
    • January 2003
    • December 2002
    • November 2002
    • October 2002
    • September 2002
    • July 2002
    • May 2002
    • April 2002
    • February 2002
    • January 2002
    • December 2001
    • November 2001
    • October 2001

    friends

    • Dementia
    • Gabby
    • Gail
    • Gibbs
    • Helga
    • Ia
    • Ina
    • Jason
    • Kaye
    • Lauren
    • Lizz
    • Luna
    • Mae
    • Migs
    • Mike
    • Ryan
    • Sacha
    • Vicky
    • Vida
    • Yuga

    search

    notes

    Guttervomit v3 went online in January, 2008. It uses Wordpress for publishing, and was built largely with Adobe Illustrator and Textmate. Logotype and navigation is set with Interstate.