Title: Critic After Dark A Review Of Philippine Cinema
Author(s): Noel Vera
Publisher: Published by BigO Books (2005) 330 pagesSober, uniformed bank officer by day – crunching numbers and filling out forms and arguing with government employees over the phone – by night, film critic Noel Vera, sits in the darkest corner of the moviehouse, viewing (or enduring) the latest that Philippines cinema has to offer.
The articles collected in this book represent not quite half of what Noel Vera has written from the period 1994 to 2004, more than a decade of near-clandestine writings on cinema, Philippine and otherwise.
What Others Say
“You may not always agree with Noel Vera’s trenchant views on the art and craft of filmmaking – and I must confess that we don’t have the same pantheon of film heroes – but you have to grant that his reviews are always eminently readable. The insights are enlightening, the scholarship is reliable, and the humor is wry and dry.”
– Pete Lacaba, screenwriter, film critic and journalist, Philippines
” To those who think there is no more such a thing as film criticism in the Philippines, just read Noel Vera’s reviews and articles, whether in Cinemaya or on the internet. You can feel he loves cinema for itself, and he knows it biblically. Even if he sometimes defends B-grade Filipino movies, he does it with his heart and mind, and he always stands for one of the few true Filipino directors of today: Mario O’Hara, an heir to Lino Brocka and the best Filipino cinema of the Golden Age. This in itself is the way to redemption!”
– Max Tessier, film critic, France