Cinematical

Hello Kim,

Correction, please. "Serbis" is not the first Filipino film to be shown in competition in Cannes. The late great Filipino director, Lino Brocka, had the honor with his films, "Jaguar" and "Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim."

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It's good you were frank, I'm a Filipino & I don't like this Mendoza-Lao(the screenwriter) gimmick of mimicking the late Filipino director Lino Brocka's neorealist movies. Lao was the former screenwriter of Brocka & apparently Mendoza relied too much on him in interpreting the hackneyed script of Lao, even Howard Feinstein of Screen Daily noted Mendoza was better when he has partial credits for the script. Lao belong to the dark ages, he isn't a boost to the new indie scene. He only knows stories about squatters & prostitutes, it's good Brocka was able to polish the yucky tendencies.Mendoza apparently was awed of the more senior Lao. Well, he woke up too late. But at least, now it's clear he shouldn't aspire to be a Brocka clone & jettisons outdated dinosaurs like Lao.Anyway, the other indie Filipino directors are auteurs & they rely on their scripts- like Lav Diaz, Raya Martin (Now Showing" in Director's Forthnight)

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well, it made it to cannes. there's probably something in it that you haven't seen yet. And it's probably because you were looking on a different direction. The yuckiness, by the way, is real. It really does happen. And it could be worse.

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to Kim Voynar it's your opinion and i respect... but for me this film is a reality for those people who strive to live because of poverty... this is one type of social cancer in a society.... a business like this is so easy money to feed their family, so this is a wake-up call for all agencies of the government to do more programs as well as livelihood so that this immoral act will be lessen.

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This is not the first Filipino film to be shown in Cannes. Lino Brocka was in competition here twice more than twenty years ago with his films "Jaguar" (1980) and "Bayan Ko: Kapit sa Patalim" (1984). His other movies "Bona", "Orapronobis", and "Insiang" were also shown in the Directors Forthnight here also in
Cannes and latter movie gained great reviews.

I guess you're just a newbie in the Cannes Film Festival scene for not knowing Lino Brocka, a great Filipino director.

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To Kim Voyar: Okay fine, it's your job to watch films in cannes and write/review about it. but it think it is also your job to do some research because serbis is not the first filipino film to be in competition in cannes, as you can read on the previous comments. i am no critic but i am eager to watch this film and see for myself if it's really as bad as what you think.

To Tito: I do not think Mendoza is mimicking the late great Lino Brocka. What I think is that you are exagerrating things here.

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Who the hell is this tito; please get your facts straight before yakking up. Armando Lao is one of the best auteur sciptwriter in the country, he supervises indie films that again elevated filipino cinema to the international scene(kubrador, forster child, etc). He was very much active during the late 90's bringing forth,arguably, three of the most important film in that decade-if not the whole filipino cinematic history-(tuhog(larger than life),pila balde(fetch a pail of water) and minsan pa(one more time)). Time and again will prove that Armando Lao is one of the best,if not the best, screenwriter in the Philippines. You will never ever get this kind of discussion with other screenwriter in the country, and this is not a small feat-much more for a writer.

I will not argue that Lao is better than Lav Diaz but I dont think Bing Lao deserves this kind of bashing from this pseudo-critic named Tito. I love diaz though his protege, raya Martin(dont get me wrong i also love martin films particularly autohystoria)just contented himself to ride on Diaz aesthetic bandwagon. I hope Martin,someday, may find his true cinematic style and not just rely on his present filmic language.

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And one more thing Mendoza doesnt write the screenplay on his films:Ralston Jover(a Armando Lao protege)wrote Manoro(The Teacher),Forster Child and Tirador(Slingshot) while Pastor(also a Lao student) wrote the screenplay of Kaleldo(Summer Heat) and Masahista(the masseur).Although Lao supervises all of this film, Serbis is the first collaboration between Lao and Mendoza.

This is keeping the facts straight ok not like some of our pseudo-filipino here

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Hi Kim,
I won't argue about your critique... after all, I haven't watched the film and I believe critics have the right to write what they feel and believe in but I hope you know that it pains me to read that you found the remedy to boil disgusting. Some of us are privileged enough to be able to afford medical doctors but most of us don't have the money. It is a fact that the scene you witnessed is from real life and it is not metaphorical at all; I don't have the guts to do it and I can afford to go to the doctor so I don't need to use this remedy but I've seen this used and I know it's still being used in our provinces.
Philippines is not the most advanced country but please give us our dignity. It is not disgusting to use remedies that our elders have used before especially if it's all our people can afford and know.

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WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You go, Kim !!!!!!!!!!!!

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Nope, its probably not just the repellant sight of a nudie teenage Asian girl that ' makes ' em hot ', its in watching the same woman writhing in the pit that is her life . From the looks of things with these pack of automatons right here who find difficulty in accepting relevant criticism, that’s more like the case.

I think the real ' clueless bitches ' here are the suckers who are defending this wretchedness of this flick. For one thing, I could bet with safe certainty that NONE of you and your fellow pampered petty-bourgeoisie posters have probably even actually SEEN this film yet. Its all PR damage control douchebaggery, after your ruse has been found wanting in the most deserving of ways. You verbally abuse somebody for a ticking failure; a film that – and judging by the director’s nauseating political silence amidst the current dictatorial regime – is more of bent on degrading the Filipino, degrading himself, and degrading all of you, along with the poor for the sheer coital heck of it. That makes you his bitches.

And you’re all attacking the honest, sincerest, gut-level opinion of somebody who actually HAS seen it ! Its her word against YOURS dipshits !

I mean, I have NOT seen that movie either, because I do not plan to; Mr. Brilliante Mendoza simply disgusts me as a person. I have been warned time and time again about this guy’s M.O., about his ' oevrue' , and their questionable moral footing . The vibe that I’ve been getting however since, is that this guy is like the next Filipino art-film hack case - the latest in a notorious line of cinematic douche bags short on significant talent, who have built up this smarmy cottage industry for years : one that specializes in exploiting Third World misery; milking it’s squalor infested ‘exotica’ to the ground to propel an otherwise soft-core/hard-core sex flick product, which is what they’re all motherfucking about in the end, really.

‘ Poverty porn’, man. Puts ‘ Torture Porn’ to shame.

Apparently, some of them G-8 types apparently patronize this shit; maybe ‘coz it makes them feel rich, in an empowering way that supports their inherent prejudices against them ‘ sorry-ass sweatshop niggers ’. Maybe more like surreal psychedelic ‘ S-M self-flagellation trip for decadent Eurotrash deviants who couldn’t do much with their plundered world money; thus opt instead to pay getting off of this abhorrent shit like they do unto Thai lady boys in excrement. Speculation of course; but it IS becoming pretty damn worth noting. Else, what DOES explain this business, the whole damn freaking ‘poorsploitation’ shindig from which the local bastard producers’ has been getting surefire guarantee every time for the past decades ? Seems today, though, we have its newest installment : a lascivious film hurriedly made in merely TWELVE FREAKING DAYS on cheap H.D. , with apparently no redeeming social purpose or point or absolutely having nothing to say going THAT far just simply boggles the mind. [ Not that I’m specifically implicating the Cannes Film festival for anything; generally, they’ve got quite a run this year. My personal take is, since this type of smut quite evidently stems from an abhorrent lucrative string of precedents from especially them late ‘80s and ‘90s era trash , that it may have instilled an impression that THIS is the representative Filipino picture, and now that the Filipinos has gotten around into making those pitiful fuck fests once more, might as well . After all, it’s a bunch of grimy subhumans running around into mordant oblivion and generally being woeful and stuff ! ‘ Spare a dime ’, why dontcha ?

How ‘ hot and bothered’ did this rancid sack of filth aspired to be, so that it could get foreigners to watch it ? I checked out stuff on this ‘ Mendoza’ guy from the internet, and one of the things which stood out is that he has absolutely ZERO sense of latitude regarding the issue. Nada. He’s stoked with NO real desire in delving into the socio-political policies, excruciating corruption, and leaders that hasten and create the situation; and NEITHER the interest to actually confront or even make everyone do something about them.

So without taking account of those dimensions that should be necessarily considered in analyzing or addressing an otherwise complex, multi-faceted, poverty becomes reduced into nothing more than the fact that it’s some sickening, repellant blotch that must be dealt with. If this matter does not come across to you as product of human actions, of resultant political sins and general social inequity, that is concrete, made up of actual players and parties and personalities to blame ; of the hurt being inflicted upon humans towards each other, and by the ruling class AGAINST them, then what’s your fucking case? Why should this film even EXIST ?

Oh, but, the ‘squalid freak show attraction ’ should at least wake up the government agencies into doing something about it all, right ? Yeah, the main cause of the problem – and out of nothing but DISGUST? Is THAT it? Might as well just put up walls to cover their squatter tenement areas, or feed them with cyanide pills and turn their corpses into fertilizer, or increase the tuition fees of their state universities to keep away the transients from ever stepping on your well trimmed lawn ( and graduate with a degree so that they wouldn’t be transients anymore ). Or mounting national embarrasment such as THIS for all the entire world to see.

I’m pretty sure that very little of you would even dare ponder upon the ‘ supply side ’ economic growth that has INCREASES hunger and poverty for the past three years, and ‘improvement’ that has done nothing more but saddle actual ‘progress’ ( like getting better education, health, genuine sense of worth, growth of industries, worthier film industry, food and shelter…. ). Or look upon your stinking OLIGARCHY. Or have the guts to point the middle finger at your own illegitimate president; the ensuing class dictatorship you have apparently helped mount, and the ensuing psychological, moral, and social unraveling that YOU help perpetuate in either your inaction and quaint complicity, or outright dumbass support, coz you won’t even DARE to LOOK OUT OF THE DAMN FUCKING WINDOW !!!! You in all your self-righteousness and aggrandizement now try to wax morally upright here on how the ‘ poverty ’ is really so goddamned terrible in this nation, everybody should just stomach it like some sick ‘ endurance test ’ - even if you would not even really dare take them on in your blissfully dormant lives ? I might probably even benefit you LESS if it actually goes away – who else are you gonna be kick-around into a mass-murdering stampede for your repellant ‘ noontime entertainment programming’ ? What are you going to submit to the Cannes ?


With neither context nor underlying aim of critically dissecting and inspecting the root causes and push-pull factors of such a plight, after helping disenfranchise the masses from being able to give their own piece-of-mind about it, like you did the leaders they actually voted into office ; the only thing your film can ever possibly have going for it is debauchery.

THAT, my friends, is WHAT IT FUCKING LOOKS LIKE !!!!!

Still, in retrospect, the whole enterprise really is quite a canny two-pronged thing : 1.) squeeze the most out of Johnny Foreigner’s ‘bleeding heart’ moral pretensions ( w /c you probably even DON’T HAVE either, coz its sort of like ‘ complaining’ ), and 2.) in a way where you still get to bask and continually drown into your laughable parochial iniquity and mean spirited, mocking bias towards your own race. Except that not many people out there ended up buying it in the real world. Gee, didn't get them falling into your ruse this time, huh ?

People like you have long been sustaining and allowing self-aggrandizing mass media entertainment which no sane and decent person elsewhere could ever hope to like, that is singularly built on fucking with the downtrodden and getting abject pleasure in their suffering.

Now, when an impartial third person observes this to be a yuck fest, you get MAD. You fire on all cylinders towards other people’s revulsion towards your poverty, yet you could NOT even do anything about the deprivation that is being DONE ONTO YOUR LIVES !!!!

The problem with your types is you revel in the PATHETIC, and expect the rest of the masses, and perhaps the world to do exactly the same through internet ‘ Talkback’ sections - prodding dying dignities with a stick, including yours of course, while lying in an intermittent rut. I guess a lesson can be learned from this episode, and we can all walk home happy.

Here’s a suggestion, though : STOP MAKING PEOPLE WALLOW IN THE FILTH , !!!!! GET A FUCKING BRAIN STEM TO STICK IN YOUR GODDAMNED SPINE !!!!!

Please stop haranguing everyone with your ‘ pus remedies ’. It’s awful.

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Really, you have to wonder how this apparently gratuitous film with no redeeming value gets a pass from Philippine authorities, while a DOCUMENTARY regarding military human rights abuses was censored with an X rating ( true story ) .

Apparently, a purposefully maligning film that paints an entire populace as a pack of materially-challenged, pus-ridden sex slaves is NOT a serious threat to the national image. ( Then the supporters get shit-pissed when people would come in finding it icky ? Figures. )

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to bashthebullshit!

Shut-up man and please excuse us of your self-aggrendizing rhetoric you havent even seen the film. Its ludicrous how some people here judge the film not on its merit but based on what the critic says.

Its like a person eating someone else dung and havent had a slightest idea about it.

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shut up, Derek Pablo- you're wiping Lao's ass when he should be banished from the Philippine indie cinema. He belongs to the dark ages, the Latin Americans have long graduated from that kind of cinema & you're blindly following Lao when he's just "copying" the Latin Americans of OLD- repeat, of the 80's. The guy has no originality & you ignoramuses are swallowing his shit. He did a yucky script which Mendoza swallowed because Mendoza was so spineless now he himself shits. You knew who said he did a bad script, here-
(I copied this from a Philippine film blog which I rather not name the link because I'm ashamed of the immaturity to criticism of some rah-rah boys of Lao- thanks Anonymous The Bad Side, I may have been late in reading that blog but here it goes)
1) the major criticism on "Serbis" was that it revels on shock value (Explicit fellatio, blocked toilets and a crudely exploded ass-cheek boil form some of the more unsavory elements of "Service," Brillante Mendoza’s latest opus that revels in shock value", Jay Wiseberg,Variety) Signature Lao- perhaps Lao remembered the "human cannibalism" in Lino Brocka's "Fight for Us" (Oranoprobis) which was shown in Cannes years ago & that created a buzz. Perhaps he wanted to reprise that glory this time around only it misfired?
2. "pic’s rabbit-warren storylines, complete with half-dug trails" (Jay Wiseberg, Variety). Well, a direct indictment of Lao.
3. "The issues her offspring deal with - an unexpected pregnancy, an unrequited crush, a buttocks boil that just won't go away - appear trite, even lazy scriptwise" (Harold Feinstein, Screen Daily). The most direct indictment on Lao.
4. To nail the coffin, here's Howard Feinstein of Screen daily :"For the first time Armando Lao, who had supervised Mendoza's earlier screenplays, has sole screenwriter credit. Might this have impacted the vision of the director, who had previously written his own scripts?"

In Latin America, these so-called neo-realists are called traders of the misery of the poor. In the Philippines these Lao minions are calling it "barely untouched" cinema. My God, you're a shame, people. Go back to the 80's!!!!

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Lao & his ilk wants to make themselves famous by using the someone else's misfortune, calling it neo-realism not knowing all along that the world has long passed them by: go, bashthebullshit , you said it best, man:
(in bashthebullshit's words):
The problem with your types is you revel in the PATHETIC, and expect the rest of the masses, and perhaps the world to do exactly the same through internet ‘ Talkback’ sections - prodding dying dignities with a stick, including yours of course, while lying in an intermittent rut. I guess a lesson can be learned from this episode, and we can all walk home happy.

Here’s a suggestion, though : STOP MAKING PEOPLE WALLOW IN THE FILTH , !!!!! GET A FUCKING BRAIN STEM TO STICK IN YOUR GODDAMNED SPINE


I'm happy for the Philippine indie scene, the world saw it, made its judgement & now, we're finally weeding out the pretentious cobwebs that's distorting the progress

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I'm not done yet. This fool Derek Pablo mentioned some scripts written above which were supposedly the best scripts ever writen in Philippine cinema. Who watched those films, even Filipinos ignore them, what well-known critic in the world is even raving about them (only the small filmfests tolerated them)- only you, morons, who wipe each other's ass & impose your fascination for the pathetic on the world. Haven't you noticed that the world's sensibilities have changed & you're still like a sooo 80's Latin American wannabe- caught in the delusion you're contributing to cinema when all you do is imitating some ancient people's idea?

Hey, world, if you want Filipino scripts with a sensible story (not just a collection of yucky neo-realist pretensions with no original plot), check these names- Ricardo Lee, Michiko Yamamoto, Jose Javier Reyes

Derek Pablo & ilk, sorry, moron, you won't get famous by trading on the poor of the Philippines. The world is puking, can't you see?

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I bet only filmfests in such places like Morocco, India or Timbuctoo will ever entertain movies with scripts writen by Lao unless the organizers in such major ones like Cannes offer complimenatry pails for the vomitus of the viewers


For good measure, here's the major ctitics judging Lao's script:
1) the major criticism on "Serbis" was that it revels on shock value (Explicit fellatio, blocked toilets and a crudely exploded ass-cheek boil form some of the more unsavory elements of "Service," Brillante Mendoza’s latest opus that revels in shock value", Jay Wiseberg,Variety) Signature Lao- perhaps Lao remembered the "human cannibalism" in Lino Brocka's "Fight for Us" (Oranoprobis) which was shown in Cannes years ago & that created a buzz. Perhaps he wanted to reprise that glory this time around only it misfired?
2. "pic’s rabbit-warren storylines, complete with half-dug trails" (Jay Wiseberg, Variety). Well, a direct indictment of Lao.
3. "The issues her offspring deal with - an unexpected pregnancy, an unrequited crush, a buttocks boil that just won't go away - appear trite, even lazy scriptwise" (Harold Feinstein, Screen Daily). The most direct indictment on Lao.
4. To nail the coffin, here's Howard Feinstein of Screen daily :"For the first time Armando Lao, who had supervised Mendoza's earlier screenplays, has sole screenwriter credit. Might this have impacted the vision of the director, who had previously written his own scripts?"

In Latin America, these so-called neo-realists are called traders of the misery of the poor. In the Philippines these Lao minions are calling it "barely untouched" cinema. My God, you're a shame, people. Go back to the 80's!!!!

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