Such an exciting week ahead. I look forward to tomorrow’s advanced screening at The Podium of More Than a Game, the basketball documentary produced by LeBron James, which has been lauded since its Toronto filmfest screening several weeks ago.
The film follows James’ exploits as part of a Fab Four turned Fab Five of teammates at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. The original Fab Four of LBJ, James Dru Joyce III, Sian Cotton, and Willie McGee had been playing together since fourth grade, and became such buddies that they decided to enter the same high school together. Under Coach Dru Joyce, as juniors they were joined by outsider Romeo Travis, got to the brink of a state championship, but lost.
They gained redemption in their senior year, but it is their special bond formed through seasons of character testing that docu filmmaker Kris Belman, himself an Akron native, brings to the fore. He is said to have done the landmark 1994 Hoop Dreams film one better by focusing on the team concept.
Even as it chronicles LeBron’s coming of age and the development of his megastar basketball persona, it also delves into how the Fab Five turn into the most formidable scholastic basketball team while becoming the best of friends, and most importantly, into the game of basketball.
I’m actually watching it twice tomorrow, early in the afternoon as an MTRCB previewer, and later in the evening at Podium’s big screen in the special premiere. More Than a Game was released in the US on Oct. 2. I understand that Viva Films starts its regular local screening early in November.
On Wednesday, Oct. 28, I’m up early for the start of the NBA season, with LBJ’s Cleveland Cavaliers on its first collision with the Boston Celtics. As James has said, the first game of the season won’t define their team’s character this year, that it might take a month to see how Shaq and the newbies fit in and how the Cavs might do all the way to May.
Well, we’ll see. I certainly hope my hoop dreams will finally see fruition in June, soon after we’ve elected the right President — whom I believe I already know, this early, too.
Another great movie to look forward to is This Is It, which features excellent footage from Michael Jackson’s rehearsals for what had been planned as a monumental comeback tour that would have started in London.
Again, I prize my MTRCB posting for such perks as catching the first preview of this stunning film a couple of weeks back, or well before its special two-week run in theaters worldwide starting this Wednesday.
MJ fan or not, you can’t miss it. I want to see it a second time, too. Director Kenny Ortega judiciously selects electrifying footage of Michael as a compleat entertainer — a musical genius who not only composes and sings his own songs, but dances them up as only he can.
There’s a part where hi-tech allows him to burst into a vintage black-and-white movie — The Big Easy if I’m not mistaken — to cavort with a sultry Rita Hayworth and elude machine gun fire from Humphrey Bogart. MJ slides down a banister with the quickest of ease, races across a street as gracefully as a gazelle. Then the screen bursts back into full color, with his back-up dancers assuming poses on a steel scaffolding in a presumed homage to Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock — but with a city skyline’s backdrop in glorious orange. We happy few at the Columbia theater break into a collective gasp.
This becomes a swoon when he reprises I’ll Be There in a stirring new rendition, with early footage of the Jackson Five flitting in. The “Thriller” redux is vastly updated, with ghouls emerging from a graveyard in 3D. Billie Jean of 2009 is superb. Man in the Mirror is an incredible duet. And all throughout we see how calm he is as a fellow artist, no divo/a act but all grace notes as he encourages a lady guitarist: “Hit your highest notes; it’s your time to shine.” — said in that consistently soft tone of his, almost like a child puckering up for a treat.
When he has to stop a number, where other superstars would complain, he speaks of “an inner ear” that has to be allowed to function — meaning go easy on the choral volume on that one. The entire company is in awe and in love with him, from the dancers who stop and watch his solo moves with mouths agape and “You the man!” fingers thrusting forward appreciatively, to the musical director who says, “He knows his music, he’s hands-on with tempo and all that, he’s a genius, nothing more you can ask for.”
Well, maybe except to have lived longer. But then again, such is the impact of This Is It that somehow one feels cynically, selfishly grateful that the King of Pop left us when he did; otherwise we would’ve waited for over a year for the film of that tour. And it wouldn’t have been the same, as it would’ve been before thousands of screaming fans.
With this movie, one feels the intimacy of having been onstage with MJ, or on the sidelines, seeing him so very up-close, the way his fellow musical and terpsichorean artists, set designers, special effects guys et al. did, collaborating and communing with the maestro of the gentlest of leads.
Hail, Michael. He was it.
The UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Galleria Duemila and Filipiniana.Net (a division of Vibal Publishing House) conducted the launch of the book The Art of Duddley Diaz last Saturday, Oct. 24, in line with the exhibit billed as “Messenger of the Gods: A Duddley Diaz Retrospective” which runs till Oct. 30.
Written by the formidable art critic Dr. Alice Guillermo, with an introduction by Vargas Museum curator Dr. Patrick Flores and a foreword from National Museum director Corazon Alvina, the book celebrates Diaz’s passions as manifested by his body of significant works and as an acclaimed Filipino sculptor working in Italy.
His varied repertoire testifies to Duddley’s spiritual background and influences. As a boy from San Mateo, Rizal, his ambition was to become a Pope. Well, he did manage to receive a personal blessing from one, as his career as a multi-faceted sculptor and painter has installed him as a long-term resident in Italy.
This Piscean has been a life-long scholar. From 1979 to 1983 he received an art scholarship from the CCP and Folk Arts Theater to complete his Fine Arts course at UP. While still in college, in 1982 he won the Gold Medal for Sculpture in the annual competition of the Art Association of the Philippines (AAP). From 1984 to 1990, an art scholarship from the Italian Government allowed him to complete consecutive courses in sculpture and painting at the Academia di Belle Arti of Florence.
In 1990 he was sent as the Philippines’ representative to the 26th Marble & Sound Festival in Serbia. In 1995 he won the Allegri Art Gallery Exhibition award in Florence. In 1997 he enjoyed a Freemen Full Fellowship Grant at the Vermont Studio Center in the US, where he also exhibited at the Red Mill Gallery.
Meritorious recognition for Diaz has seen no let-up. In 1998 he was commissioned to create the monument to Dr. Jose Rizal as a boy in Calamba, Laguna, in time for the Philippine Centennial. The following year, he created another important commissioned work, the “Via Crucis” for the San Tommaso a Lama Church in Perugia, Italy. He is currently at work on a similar commission for the De La Salle-Zobel’s new chapel.
Duddley is adept at various sculptural media, including clay and terracotta, wood, cast bronze, brass, marble, silver, ivory and ox bone. The current exhibit also showcases the scale and character of his works, from large-format relief panels to intricately carved ox bone and silver jewelry.
Duddley Diaz writes, as his artist’s statement:
“When I visit museums, I would look at an artwork and often wonder what inspired the artist to create his work. What does he feel and think? A painting or sculpture which was made centuries ago can still strike me with an awe-inspiring power and energy, a sense of timelessness and mystery. These artworks hold an aura that withstands time. I ask myself, ‘Why is this so?’
“Questions rush through my mind. But in the end, I connect with the artist who offers me an insight into his life and invites me to discover the culture of his time. That fascinates me about mythology — the past is very much a part of who we are today. Art is influenced by our ancestral myths.
“Much of human history is influenced by mythology. So are my works — which try to participate in humanity’s plight with the eternal question on redemption and rebirth, and the harmonious balance between the physical and spiritual.”
Dudley’s signature piece is known to be Halina, the Moon Goddess of Bikolano lore. He has had exhibits billed as “The White Goddess and Others” (in Cardiff, Wales), “Mothers & Goddesses” (in Chianti, Italy), and “Epifanie: Manifestations of the Sacred” (at Galleria Duemila in Pasay City last year).
Indeed, the boy who would be Pope continues to ascend the firmament of creativity as a messenger of the gods. In a sense, and without this sounding jocular, he represents what LeBron James and Michael Jackson do, which is to personify the harmony between the physical and the spiritual, for the purpose of excellence that exalts us all.
Mabuhay ka, Duddley