Friday, September 16, 2011

Honourable Mention: Ang Panday

This was a Philippine fantasy movie from 2009, directed by Mac Alejandre, and was based on the Panday comics. Panday is Tagalog for blacksmith and the title character is Flavio (Ramon 'Bong' Revilla Jr.). The film sets up a world in which the evil Lizardo (Phillip Salvador) is set on taking over the world.

Flavio is one of his victims – his mother and father having been killed by Lizardo’s warriors when he was a child. He was brought up by his grandfather (Joonee Gamboa), the older man blinded by Lizardo’s venom. Flavio does not believe in the prophecy of a saviour for the people. He does, however, meet Maria (Iza Calzado), a beauty who is displaced from her village by Lizardo’s attacks.

Flavio, his sword, and Maria
Flavio finds a meteorite and forges a dagger – refusing to make a sword, despite the fact that the prophecy says that a sword made from a meteorite will kill Lizardo. However when the village is attacked the dagger grows into a sword. Flavio repels the attack but Maria is kidnapped – Lizardo then senses a power in her that he intends to harness by marrying her. As Maria has been taken Flavio is spurred into action.

aswang
The reason for the mention surrounds a village that Flavio and his companions, Emelita (Rhian Ramos) and Bugoy (Robert Villar), stay in. Their hosts, as it turns out, are aswang and the blacksmith and his friends soon find themselves attacked. Of course they defeat the vampires and the incident is just one small moment in the larger epic. However it makes it worthy of a mention.

The imdb page is here.

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Taliesin_ttlg said...

Avon Luna, please don't spam my blog with links to commercial projects without absolute permission from me.