Friday, March 14, 2008

“Katas ng Saudi”

Katas ng Saudi, by Jose Javier Reyes, is a film not about the struggles and hardships of an OFW abroad. It is basically about the inconveniences of a person returning from abroad and finds that he is trying to support a family who rarely knows him. Casts are Jinggoy Estrada, Sharon Cunetas, Lorna Tolentino, Shaina Magdayao, Ricky Davao, Bayani Agbayani, Rayver Cruz, Eugene Domingo, Liza Lorena, Dick Israel, Arron Villaflor, and Julian Estrada.

I believe that this film is an exceptional film. It is not the kind of film that we use to watch. The tendencies of this film is one of a kind that it depicts a problem, a problem despite one keeping the family from financial struggles, finds himself/herself abandoned by the love of his/her love ones. Oca, played by Jinggoy Estrada, returns home from Saudi and proves that not every act of heroism has a happy ending. His children rarely know him as their father so he struggles to bring himself back in the family. The simplicity of this film makes the emotions and feelings involved to stand out. It is not really a ground-breaking film but with the film’s creativity and sympathy, it can definitely make the viewers cry.

It is evident in our society nowadays that because of a family’s financial difficulties, someone in the family had to leave just to be able to provide compensations for the other members of the family. An OFW’s job may have something to do with providing care for their clients or boss but they themselves can’t provide care and love for their love ones. A trouble brought by the factors involved in the job like distance and

miscommunication. The children grow up not the way the parents want them to. This results to arguments in the family. And it is fortunate that a film like this was made to show the whole family what problems or misunderstandings would come up if ever they are in this situation. A simple and prevalent story or situation that is happening or may have happened in our lives that we tend to disregard. And with the goals of this movie, to touch and teach the viewers, it will certainly affect not only the OFWs but as well as the ordinary Filipinos who work here in the Philippines.

Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer (Mariana Griswold)




Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907)

Bronze; 20 3/8 x 7 3/4 in. (51.8 x 19.7 cm)

Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer, 1851–1934, was a multitalented reviewer and writer who persistently promoted the development of the arts of the United States during the Gilded Age. She re-examined several public sculptures by Saint-Gaudens, as well as the Farragut Monument and the Standing Lincoln, and was one of the sculptor's earliest and most dedicated supporters. In this relief plate, the artist has illustrated the sitter within a rectangular frame with her head and shoulders facing left in bust-length profile. She wears a high Victorian collar and her hair is braided in a twist. Saint-Gaudens made full use of the textural possibilities of the bronze medium by modelling her dress with a vigorous facade and complementing it with her smoothly polished skin. Above Van Rensselaer's head is inscribed “animus non opus” (The spirit, not the work), a proverb in agreement with the sitter's principles and standards. The bronze was come together with by a carved oak frame designed by the architect Stanford White.

Stalking Panther


Alexander Phimister Proctor (1860–1950)

Bronze; 9 1/2 x 37 1/2 x 6 1/4 in. (24.1 x 95.3 x 15.9 cm)

Proctor based a before time account of "Stalking Panther" on youth observations in Colorado, studies of panthers in New York's Central Park Zoo, and dissections of cats and cougars. “Stalking Panther” was exhibited at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893; the statuette was shown the following year at the Society of American Artists in New York. In 1894, Proctor went to Paris and brought along a plaster cast of "Stalking Panther" in order to keep on refining the work. Using a shaved cat for anatomical reference, he finished the second version and had it cast in bronze. The Metropolitan's statuette is presumed to be from this second version. The work is more than an anatomical evaluation of an extended or stretched out cat in mid-stride; the piece is a psychologically appealing study of predatory gesture towards an unseen prey, reflecting the artist's awareness in portraying animals as forces of uncivilized nature.

The Jackson

Hiram Powers (1805–1873)

Marble; 34 3/4 x 23 1/2 x 15 1/2 in. (88.3 x 59.7 x 39.4 cm)

This sculpture, arguably Powers's finest, commenced his career. With the sponsorship provided by his Cincinnati patron Nicholas Longworth and letters of introduction that provided him access to President Andrew Jackson, Powers went to Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1834. Jackson sat for Powers in a room next to the president's sitting room in the White House. The model, which was completed with several sittings in January 1835, pragmatically depicts the sixty-seven-year-old Jackson with his head and gaze turned to his left, his long lean face profoundly marked with wrinkles, his mouth and cheeks sunken from lack of teeth, and his creased forehead set off by a shock of thick, brushed-back hair. The only feature of the bust that relates it to the Neoclassical mode are the “unincised” eyeball and the toga. The "Jackson," along with other portrait busts of statesmen, was translated into marble after Powers settled in Florence permanently in 1837.