BLEACHERS BREW EST. MAY 2006

Someone asked me how my blog and newspaper column came to be titled "Bleachers Brew". It's like this, it's an amalgam of sorts of two things: The bleachers area in the stadium/arena where I used to sit when I would watch baseball, football, and basketball games and Miles Davis' great jazz album Bitches Brew. That's how it got culled together. I originally planned on calling it "The View from the Big Chair" that is a nod to Tears For Fear's second album, Songs from the Big Chair. So there.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

My Game



A couple of months ago, I attended a press conference at Mezze where Nike introduced to a select few members of the media director Carlo Ledesma and producer Mel Lozano who were both working on a documentary called My Game. Prior to this, my buddy Jobe Nkemakolam told me that he was included in this film and that made me proud of him and excited about the project.

During the press conference, I got to chat with Direk Carlo and he told me that he included Jobe because of a column I wrote about the Ateneo Blue Eagle in the Business Mirror. So there was an even more personal interest now.

Post-production was finished not soon after the UAAP season and a premiere was held at the Power Plant last October 18. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around because I was in Thailand. I only finally got to see it the other day when I was able to acquire a copy and I totally enjoyed it. I thought it was sensitive and moving although at times, I got the feeling that there were certain portions where there was a certain level of “acting” that took away from the spontaneity. You pull for these guys – Don Don Hontiveros, Rico Maierhofer, Jobe Nkemakolam, Ren Ren Ritualo, Arwind Santos, and James Yap – and what odds they overcame to get to where they are now. The cinematography was great and the score equally sensitive to the mood. The various anecdotes aren’t too long and aren’t too short. Excellent editing if I may say so myself.

On the other hand since they touched on rather briefly on the history of Philippine basketball, I could make the case for some missing nuggets such as Caloy Loyzaga and Ed Ocampo, the old MICAA and the Crispa-Toyota rivalry that increased the popularity of the game. If their non-inclusion was for brevity’s sake then I understand, but if you tell me that talking about the history of hoops is altogether another story then I’ll still say that the use of pictures would have sufficed.

And of the stories of the ballers I thought that they were all perfect except for Ritualo’s. Yes, I know he’s a bemedalled hoopster, but his story is better suited for a La Salle legends DVD or something. In contrast, Maierhofer’s was even more interesting. Yap’s or Hontiveros’ stories are similar in some ways.

Nevertheless it still is a great piece of work.

I’ve got a stack of unwatched DVDs on my shelf and I am so glad that this is the first one I placed inside my player.

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