Pusan International Film Festival
BUSAN, South Korea -- If you've seen the recent spate of Philippine indies doing their festival rounds, you might walk into Tribe (Tribu) wondering if you're still navigating the set of Kubrador, Slingshot or even "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros." There's nothing wrong with your cinematic compass.
Director Jim Libiran, who won best feature at the third Cinemalaya Film Festival for this debut, participated in scriptwriter Bing Lao's Real Time Writing workshop, also attended by some crew members of the above-mentioned films. Bing decrees that indie films should depict "reality" in the Philippines (if poverty is pervasive, so be it), in a condensed but virtual time-frame, and make the location or milieu (not the cast) the main character. That's why these gritty, slum-centric DV films employing grassroots nonpros all look the same -- poverty cannot afford any makeovers.
Tribe ferries us into the Stygian slum of Tondo through the voice of a child, Ebet. "Only the tough survive. ... Here, a child can be a badass," he asserts. He gives us a guided tour with a gang initiation rite as bonus. A boy not even in his teens is blindfolded and thwacked with a wooden plank while muttering I love Thugz Angels between clenched teeth. A girl not much older is given the option of consensual beating or nonconsensual sex.
Nothing else in the film quite lives up to this knockout, visceral prologue. The catalyst for the main action is the murder of one Totoy Turat, from the SBT gang. The cops for want of a culprit, arbitrarily arrest Memey, a member of Thugz Angels. Both gangs blame the Diablos. On the night of Totoy's funeral, Thugz Angels supply SBT with ammo to mow down their common foe. The cycle of vendetta repeats itself.
Tribe has been compared with City of God, for want of a transatlantic equivalent. Yet while the latter's superior aesthetic and technical prowess borders on stylistic ostentation, "Tribe's" threadbare production values offer cinematography of mostly nocturnal shots on a shaky handheld in alternating flashes of monochrome and harsh Dayglo colors. While City of God has a unified character-driven center, Tribe scours its location like a greedy scavenger, giving as much prominence to sweaty sex or a squabble over electric bills as to the slack buildup to the clumsily choreographed turf war.
While Kubrador is anchored by Gina Pareno's virtuoso performance and Blossoming by its crowd-pleasing gay theme, "Tribe's" Trump Card is its live rap music. Ad-libbed by the cast of real gangster rappers, each song is a unique voice articulating the rough-hewn vitality of their existence. Hip-hop or freestyle, that's the film's true soul and protagonist, not the faceless, overexposed slum.
TRIBE
8 Glasses Production Inc/Cinemalaya/Independent Filmmakers Cooperative of Philippines
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Jim Libiran
Executive producers: Dodge Dillague, Mitchelle Moreno, Jim Libiran, Gene Cajayon
Director of photography: Albert Banzon
Production designer: Armi Cacanindin
Music: Francis de Veyra
Editor: Lawrence S. Ang
Cast:
Ebet: Karl Eigger Balingit
Dennis: Restly Perez; Makoy
OG Sacred; Katherine: Ira Marasigan
Running time -- 95 minutes
No MPAA rating...
BUSAN, South Korea -- If you've seen the recent spate of Philippine indies doing their festival rounds, you might walk into Tribe (Tribu) wondering if you're still navigating the set of Kubrador, Slingshot or even "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros." There's nothing wrong with your cinematic compass.
Director Jim Libiran, who won best feature at the third Cinemalaya Film Festival for this debut, participated in scriptwriter Bing Lao's Real Time Writing workshop, also attended by some crew members of the above-mentioned films. Bing decrees that indie films should depict "reality" in the Philippines (if poverty is pervasive, so be it), in a condensed but virtual time-frame, and make the location or milieu (not the cast) the main character. That's why these gritty, slum-centric DV films employing grassroots nonpros all look the same -- poverty cannot afford any makeovers.
Tribe ferries us into the Stygian slum of Tondo through the voice of a child, Ebet. "Only the tough survive. ... Here, a child can be a badass," he asserts. He gives us a guided tour with a gang initiation rite as bonus. A boy not even in his teens is blindfolded and thwacked with a wooden plank while muttering I love Thugz Angels between clenched teeth. A girl not much older is given the option of consensual beating or nonconsensual sex.
Nothing else in the film quite lives up to this knockout, visceral prologue. The catalyst for the main action is the murder of one Totoy Turat, from the SBT gang. The cops for want of a culprit, arbitrarily arrest Memey, a member of Thugz Angels. Both gangs blame the Diablos. On the night of Totoy's funeral, Thugz Angels supply SBT with ammo to mow down their common foe. The cycle of vendetta repeats itself.
Tribe has been compared with City of God, for want of a transatlantic equivalent. Yet while the latter's superior aesthetic and technical prowess borders on stylistic ostentation, "Tribe's" threadbare production values offer cinematography of mostly nocturnal shots on a shaky handheld in alternating flashes of monochrome and harsh Dayglo colors. While City of God has a unified character-driven center, Tribe scours its location like a greedy scavenger, giving as much prominence to sweaty sex or a squabble over electric bills as to the slack buildup to the clumsily choreographed turf war.
While Kubrador is anchored by Gina Pareno's virtuoso performance and Blossoming by its crowd-pleasing gay theme, "Tribe's" Trump Card is its live rap music. Ad-libbed by the cast of real gangster rappers, each song is a unique voice articulating the rough-hewn vitality of their existence. Hip-hop or freestyle, that's the film's true soul and protagonist, not the faceless, overexposed slum.
TRIBE
8 Glasses Production Inc/Cinemalaya/Independent Filmmakers Cooperative of Philippines
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Jim Libiran
Executive producers: Dodge Dillague, Mitchelle Moreno, Jim Libiran, Gene Cajayon
Director of photography: Albert Banzon
Production designer: Armi Cacanindin
Music: Francis de Veyra
Editor: Lawrence S. Ang
Cast:
Ebet: Karl Eigger Balingit
Dennis: Restly Perez; Makoy
OG Sacred; Katherine: Ira Marasigan
Running time -- 95 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 10/9/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- The syndication arm of radio giant Clear Channel Communications is getting ready to play the Trump Card this summer. Riding the wave of success of his NBC hit show "The Apprentice", real estate mogul Donald Trump will use the Clear Channel network to launch a national radio show, "Trumped!" starting June 15, the company said Wednesday. Nationally syndicated by Clear Channel Radio's Premiere Radio Networks, the weekday show will span business and nonbusiness topics, including thoughts on the media and entertainment world as well as politics. "The public's appetite for Donald Trump's sharp, sage commentary has never been bigger," Clear Channel Radio president and CEO John Hogan said.
- 4/29/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- The syndication arm of radio giant Clear Channel Communications is getting ready to play the Trump Card this summer. Riding the wave of success of his NBC hit show The Apprentice, real estate mogul Donald Trump will use the Clear Channel network to launch a national radio show, Trumped! starting June 15, the company said Wednesday. Nationally syndicated by Clear Channel Radio's Premiere Radio Networks, the weekday show will span business and nonbusiness topics, including thoughts on the media and entertainment world as well as politics. "The public's appetite for Donald Trump's sharp, sage commentary has never been bigger," Clear Channel Radio president and CEO John Hogan said.
- 4/29/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
EXCESS BAGGAGE
Sony
Tone trouble seriously trips up "Excess Baggage", a sort of comedy, sort of caper, about an attention-starved teen (Alicia Silverstone) whose scheme to orchestrate her own kidnapping backfires when she finds herself being nabbed for real.
Despite some quirky asides and a promising start, the slight script leaves viewers with precious little to root for and even less to care about. As a result, "Excess Baggage" ends up going nowhere fast.
After a number of attention-getting stunts fail to get her billionaire daddy (Jack Thompson) to take notice of her, brazen Emily Hope (Silverstone) thinks she's got him this time by holding herself for ransom.
Unfortunately, her elaborate scheme -- involving electronically altering her voice when she phones in her demands and even doing her own self-binding, handcuffing and gagging before tossing herself into the trunk of her BMW -- goes horribly awry when professional car thief Vincent Benicio Del Toro) makes the fateful mistake of claiming said vehicle as his next parking lot heist.
Director Marco Brambilla ("Demolition Man") choreographs what little action there is with a sturdy but not particularly inventive touch (HR 8/29-31).
Michael Rechtshaffen
U-TURN
Sony
Oliver Stone has turned around with "U-Turn", a dicey noir that careens wild and tight like a good old-fashioned B movie. It's snub-nosed Stone, a raucous entertainment that doe not aim for the philosophical or political fences.
In tone and telling, "U-Turn" most akin to the filmmaking of Luis Bunuel, rife with undercurrents of degeneracy and human avarice and crested with outrageous humor.
Bobby (Sean Penn) has time to kill when his Mustang breaks down in a sleepy desert town. Trouble eventually comes in the beauteous form of the local femme fatale, Grace (Jennifer Lopez). She's a sizzler and it's downright obvious that her sexuality is her Trump Card, and she has her geezer of a hubby (Nick Nolte) whipped into a dither with paranoid jealousy. Right away, Bobby is in the thick of things.
Crackling with juicy dialogue and ambling up all the right, wrong roads, John Ridley's screenplay is a smartly lubricated blend of genre parts. It keeps us on our heels and more than a little on-edge in where it's going -- in short, it's darn good storytelling. What makes "U-Turn" special, though, is the characters, as sidewinding a bunch of varmints as you would ever want to encounter (HR 8/29-31).
Duane Byrge
HOODLUM
MGM
This gangster effort from director Bill Duke ("Deep Cover", "A Rage in Harlem") brings to light a little-known character and a fascinating chapter in black mobster lore. But the picture suffers from haphazard pacing and excessive length; not quite good enough to qualify as quality drama nor kinetic enough to satisfy thrill-seeking action-movie audiences, it faces an uphill road comercially.
The story follows the violent 1934 Harlem turf war between Dutch Schultz (Tim Roth) and Bumpy Johnson (Laurence Fishburne), a gangster who fought to maintain control of Harlem's numbers rackets. Bringing Johnson to life is the film's chief distinction. He is depicted as a tough-as-nails ex-con who is also a poet, chess player, ladies man and Robin Hood type. Whether this characterization is accurate is open to debate; there is not much documentation on Johnson.
But with the exception of a couple of scenes that approach a Tarantino level of humor, the screenplay never takes off. And with its 142-minute running time, "Hoodlum" is eventually more wearying than exciting.
Frank Scheck
Other reviews
Also reviewed last week were "Murmur of Youth" (HR 8/27) and "Trojan Eddie" (HR 8/28).
Sony
Tone trouble seriously trips up "Excess Baggage", a sort of comedy, sort of caper, about an attention-starved teen (Alicia Silverstone) whose scheme to orchestrate her own kidnapping backfires when she finds herself being nabbed for real.
Despite some quirky asides and a promising start, the slight script leaves viewers with precious little to root for and even less to care about. As a result, "Excess Baggage" ends up going nowhere fast.
After a number of attention-getting stunts fail to get her billionaire daddy (Jack Thompson) to take notice of her, brazen Emily Hope (Silverstone) thinks she's got him this time by holding herself for ransom.
Unfortunately, her elaborate scheme -- involving electronically altering her voice when she phones in her demands and even doing her own self-binding, handcuffing and gagging before tossing herself into the trunk of her BMW -- goes horribly awry when professional car thief Vincent Benicio Del Toro) makes the fateful mistake of claiming said vehicle as his next parking lot heist.
Director Marco Brambilla ("Demolition Man") choreographs what little action there is with a sturdy but not particularly inventive touch (HR 8/29-31).
Michael Rechtshaffen
U-TURN
Sony
Oliver Stone has turned around with "U-Turn", a dicey noir that careens wild and tight like a good old-fashioned B movie. It's snub-nosed Stone, a raucous entertainment that doe not aim for the philosophical or political fences.
In tone and telling, "U-Turn" most akin to the filmmaking of Luis Bunuel, rife with undercurrents of degeneracy and human avarice and crested with outrageous humor.
Bobby (Sean Penn) has time to kill when his Mustang breaks down in a sleepy desert town. Trouble eventually comes in the beauteous form of the local femme fatale, Grace (Jennifer Lopez). She's a sizzler and it's downright obvious that her sexuality is her Trump Card, and she has her geezer of a hubby (Nick Nolte) whipped into a dither with paranoid jealousy. Right away, Bobby is in the thick of things.
Crackling with juicy dialogue and ambling up all the right, wrong roads, John Ridley's screenplay is a smartly lubricated blend of genre parts. It keeps us on our heels and more than a little on-edge in where it's going -- in short, it's darn good storytelling. What makes "U-Turn" special, though, is the characters, as sidewinding a bunch of varmints as you would ever want to encounter (HR 8/29-31).
Duane Byrge
HOODLUM
MGM
This gangster effort from director Bill Duke ("Deep Cover", "A Rage in Harlem") brings to light a little-known character and a fascinating chapter in black mobster lore. But the picture suffers from haphazard pacing and excessive length; not quite good enough to qualify as quality drama nor kinetic enough to satisfy thrill-seeking action-movie audiences, it faces an uphill road comercially.
The story follows the violent 1934 Harlem turf war between Dutch Schultz (Tim Roth) and Bumpy Johnson (Laurence Fishburne), a gangster who fought to maintain control of Harlem's numbers rackets. Bringing Johnson to life is the film's chief distinction. He is depicted as a tough-as-nails ex-con who is also a poet, chess player, ladies man and Robin Hood type. Whether this characterization is accurate is open to debate; there is not much documentation on Johnson.
But with the exception of a couple of scenes that approach a Tarantino level of humor, the screenplay never takes off. And with its 142-minute running time, "Hoodlum" is eventually more wearying than exciting.
Frank Scheck
Other reviews
Also reviewed last week were "Murmur of Youth" (HR 8/27) and "Trojan Eddie" (HR 8/28).
Oliver Stone has turned around with "U-Turn", a dicey noir that careens wild and tight like a good old-fashioned B movie. It's snub-nosed Stone, a raucous entertainment that doesn't aim for the philosophical or political fences. Laced with a dark, absurdist sensibility, the film will debut this weekend at Telluride and likely delight festivalgoers with its brash economy and raunchy swagger.
More akin to "After Hours" and "Choose Me" in its surreal mesh of genres and bizarre humor, "U-Turn" is wicked amusement. In tone and telling, it's most akin to the filmmaking of Luis Bunuel, rife with undercurrents of degeneracy and human avarice and crested with outrageous humor. Movie buffs in particular will savor "U-Turn", especially for Sean Penn's rascally lead performances as well as the deliriously apt performances of such others as Jennifer Lopez and Billy Bob Thornton.
In chassis and structure, the story is, basically an old-time Western as a mysterious stranger rides into a sleepy desert town. In this case, the chap is Bobby (Penn), not astride a horse but tooling smooth in his 1964 + red Mustang -- that is, until it blows a hose and he's beholden to the local blacksmith, er, mechanic to get it fixed.
The grease monkey (Thornton) is a strange bird, golden-teethed and downright screwy; to boot, he knows he's got Bobby over a barrel. It's gonna take awhile, and it's gonna be expensive.
Bobby has time to kill, an unwelcome respite since the Vegas loan shark he's in hock to has threatened to kill him if he doesn't show up with his gambling debut; natch, he doesn't have the dough. When he wanders into town, he encounters a dirt-crazy bunch of yokels and it doesn't take him long to get butt-deep in hot water.
The trouble comes in the beauteous form of the local femme fatale, Grace (Jennifer Lopez). She's a sizzler and it's downright obvious that her sexuality is her Trump Card, and she has her geezer of a hubby (Nick Nolte) whipped into a dither with paranoid jealousy. Right away, Bobby is in the thick of things in this parched little outpost.
Crackling with juicy dialogue and ambling up all the right, wrong roads, John Ridley's screenplay is a smartly lubricated blend of genre parts. It keeps us on our heels and more than a little on-edge in where it's going -- in short, darn good storytelling. Although no one has ever accused Stone of having a light, comic touch, it's obvious he has a bizarre sense of irony and has forged here a crisp and wickedly funny entertainment. There is beneath its raw trappings, however, a deeper tale -- how far will a basically honest and decent person go when backed up against a wall, or trapped in a stifling dust bowl of a town? As you would guess in a Stone movie, they go to the limit -- or just past.
What makes "U-Turn" special, though, is the characters, as sidewinding a bunch of varmints as you would ever want to encounter. As Bobby, our touchstone character, Penn is terrific. Rough-edged, sympathetic and cunning, all at once. As the squirrelly auto mechanic, Thornton is hilarious and scary all at once, while Nolte is perfect as the young beauty's bedeviled husband. Jon Voight does an eerie turn as a blind man. But it's Lopez's wickedly wenchy performance as the femme fatale that is the lynchpin for all the craziness and all the conflicts: It's her sexuality, we see, that sets off all the explosions in this twisted little town. In short, there is great casting, a credit to casting director Mary Vernieu.
Technically, "U-Turn" is superb, as cinematographer Robert Richardson's acidic, parched hues clue us to the inner roilings of the characters, while Victor Kempster's smart, off-center production design is aptly both odd and scary.
Similarly, the herky-jerky, jump-cut punctuation is perfect. Hats off to editors Hank Corwin and Thomas J. Nordberg for the crafty cadence. As an added bonus, composer Ennio Morricone orchestrated the sounds for this spaghetti-based Southwestern. Properly, the music is more toned to the bad and the ugly than the good.
U-TURN
Sony Releasing
TriStar Pictures
Phoenix Pictures presents
an Illusion Entertainment Group production
in association with Clyde Is Hungry Films
An Oliver Stone movie
Producers Dan Halsted, Clayton Townsend
Director Oliver Stone
Screenwriter John Ridley
Based on "Stray Dogs" by John Ridley
Executive producer John Ridley
Director of photography Robert Richardson
Production designer Victor Kempster
Editors Hank Corwin, Thomas J. Nordberg
Executive music producer Budd Carr
Music Ennio Morricone
Costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor
Co-producer Richard Rutowski
Casting Mary Vernieu
Sound mixer Gary Alper
Color/stereo
Cast:
Bobby Cooper Sean Penn
Darrell Billy Bob Thornton
Blind Man Jon Voight
Grace McKenna Jennifer Lopez
Sheriff Potter Powers Boothe
Jake McKenna Nick Nolte
Ed Bo Hopkins
Flo Julie Hagerty
Toby N. Tucker Joaquin Phoenix
Running time -- 125 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
More akin to "After Hours" and "Choose Me" in its surreal mesh of genres and bizarre humor, "U-Turn" is wicked amusement. In tone and telling, it's most akin to the filmmaking of Luis Bunuel, rife with undercurrents of degeneracy and human avarice and crested with outrageous humor. Movie buffs in particular will savor "U-Turn", especially for Sean Penn's rascally lead performances as well as the deliriously apt performances of such others as Jennifer Lopez and Billy Bob Thornton.
In chassis and structure, the story is, basically an old-time Western as a mysterious stranger rides into a sleepy desert town. In this case, the chap is Bobby (Penn), not astride a horse but tooling smooth in his 1964 + red Mustang -- that is, until it blows a hose and he's beholden to the local blacksmith, er, mechanic to get it fixed.
The grease monkey (Thornton) is a strange bird, golden-teethed and downright screwy; to boot, he knows he's got Bobby over a barrel. It's gonna take awhile, and it's gonna be expensive.
Bobby has time to kill, an unwelcome respite since the Vegas loan shark he's in hock to has threatened to kill him if he doesn't show up with his gambling debut; natch, he doesn't have the dough. When he wanders into town, he encounters a dirt-crazy bunch of yokels and it doesn't take him long to get butt-deep in hot water.
The trouble comes in the beauteous form of the local femme fatale, Grace (Jennifer Lopez). She's a sizzler and it's downright obvious that her sexuality is her Trump Card, and she has her geezer of a hubby (Nick Nolte) whipped into a dither with paranoid jealousy. Right away, Bobby is in the thick of things in this parched little outpost.
Crackling with juicy dialogue and ambling up all the right, wrong roads, John Ridley's screenplay is a smartly lubricated blend of genre parts. It keeps us on our heels and more than a little on-edge in where it's going -- in short, darn good storytelling. Although no one has ever accused Stone of having a light, comic touch, it's obvious he has a bizarre sense of irony and has forged here a crisp and wickedly funny entertainment. There is beneath its raw trappings, however, a deeper tale -- how far will a basically honest and decent person go when backed up against a wall, or trapped in a stifling dust bowl of a town? As you would guess in a Stone movie, they go to the limit -- or just past.
What makes "U-Turn" special, though, is the characters, as sidewinding a bunch of varmints as you would ever want to encounter. As Bobby, our touchstone character, Penn is terrific. Rough-edged, sympathetic and cunning, all at once. As the squirrelly auto mechanic, Thornton is hilarious and scary all at once, while Nolte is perfect as the young beauty's bedeviled husband. Jon Voight does an eerie turn as a blind man. But it's Lopez's wickedly wenchy performance as the femme fatale that is the lynchpin for all the craziness and all the conflicts: It's her sexuality, we see, that sets off all the explosions in this twisted little town. In short, there is great casting, a credit to casting director Mary Vernieu.
Technically, "U-Turn" is superb, as cinematographer Robert Richardson's acidic, parched hues clue us to the inner roilings of the characters, while Victor Kempster's smart, off-center production design is aptly both odd and scary.
Similarly, the herky-jerky, jump-cut punctuation is perfect. Hats off to editors Hank Corwin and Thomas J. Nordberg for the crafty cadence. As an added bonus, composer Ennio Morricone orchestrated the sounds for this spaghetti-based Southwestern. Properly, the music is more toned to the bad and the ugly than the good.
U-TURN
Sony Releasing
TriStar Pictures
Phoenix Pictures presents
an Illusion Entertainment Group production
in association with Clyde Is Hungry Films
An Oliver Stone movie
Producers Dan Halsted, Clayton Townsend
Director Oliver Stone
Screenwriter John Ridley
Based on "Stray Dogs" by John Ridley
Executive producer John Ridley
Director of photography Robert Richardson
Production designer Victor Kempster
Editors Hank Corwin, Thomas J. Nordberg
Executive music producer Budd Carr
Music Ennio Morricone
Costume designer Beatrix Aruna Pasztor
Co-producer Richard Rutowski
Casting Mary Vernieu
Sound mixer Gary Alper
Color/stereo
Cast:
Bobby Cooper Sean Penn
Darrell Billy Bob Thornton
Blind Man Jon Voight
Grace McKenna Jennifer Lopez
Sheriff Potter Powers Boothe
Jake McKenna Nick Nolte
Ed Bo Hopkins
Flo Julie Hagerty
Toby N. Tucker Joaquin Phoenix
Running time -- 125 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 8/29/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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