Monthly Archives: November 2010

the deathly hallows: part 1

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The first two films were near-faithful adaptations of the first two Harry Potter novels written by J.K. Rowling. Helmed by Chris Columbus, who directed Home Alone, among other films, the first two had that feel-good, cheery feel, despite the monsters. And anyway the ghosts looked like Casper and the troll looked like a CGI joke, so there was no real dread, no real sense of helplessness.

Alfonso Cuaron stepped in to direct the third film. Focus went from story details to style: the Whomping Willow was used to show the passing of months, the dementors were filmed underwater to approximate fluidity, and the film ended in a freeze-frame. Most fans considered it their least favorite film perhaps because it felt radically different from Columbus’s installments, but it was a beautiful film. However, details concerning the Marauder’s Map etc were edited out. It’s this annoying sickness that will hound one Potter film after another -important plot points get edited out, and we are left with scenes that, though enjoyable, feel like fillers.

The fourth film introduced new characters and surprised me with its humor, but there was a glaring error in the characterization of Dumbledore – he was the Zen teacher, what was he doing pushing Harry against walls and sounding like a crazed high school principal? The fifth film was blah, the only saving grace the lovely Helena Bonham Carter – she made a perfect crazy bitch. The sixth film was quite enjoyable and engaging for me – until it forgot to explain why the Half-Blood Prince is called the Half-Blood Prince. Not even a line? Really?

And then the last film, cut in two. It opens with an extreme close-up of Bill Nighy’s eyes, which, coupled with that determined voice and the flash of cameras and the news of dire things to come, made me settle more comfortably in my seat: ah, this is going to be good.

And it was. The film offers several memorable moments, and a soaring soundtrack. There is humor when the trio enters the Ministry of Magic, beauty in the lush landscapes and the misplaced innocence of a particular wedding, and horror in the torture of beloved characters (Helena Bonham-Carter, you crazy bitch, I adore you). The animation, which made me sit up and pay close attention, reminded me strongly of Guillermo del Toro.

There are still dragging moments, too much exposition, too many characters, but the film is a necessary step. Now that we’re so close to the end.

tally, some musings

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Inspired by Aliette de Bodard’s post about shameless self-promotion for the Nebula Awards! Ha! I’m no Aliette, and I don’t think any SFWA member will take the time to ~nominate me, but it’s always fun to do a tally.

For 2010 I have published seven short stories.

  • “Sand, Crushed Shells, Chicken Feathers”, Philippines Free Press, March 22, 2010.
  • “Salot“, Demons of the New Year, March 24, 2010.
  • “Once They Were Gods“, Expanded Horizons, April 1, 2010.
  • “Monsters”, Philippine Speculative Fiction V, April 24, 2010.
  • “Brothers”, Cantaraville (Issue Ten), April 2010.
  • “Jeremy’s Magic Well”, Gig and the Amazing Sampaguita Foundation, Inc. July 2010. Illustrated by Ray Nazarene Sunga.
  • “Elsewhere”, Usok #2, November 3, 2010.

The Nebula Rules say, “All works first published in English, in the United States, during the calendar year, in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, or a related fiction genre are eligible for the Nebula Awards® in their respective categories.” And “Works first published in English on the Internet or in electronic form during the calendar year shall be treated as though published in the United States.”

That means my eligible stories are “Salot” (horror/fantasy), “Once They Were Gods” (fantasy), and “Elsewhere” (science fiction).

I have two reprints this year:

  • “Incidental Light”, Philippines Free Press, January 3, 2009. (Reprinted by Basement Stories, October 2010. link.)
  • “Parallel”, Philippine Speculative Fiction IV, February 28, 2009. (Reprinted by Expanded Horizons, November 3, 2010. link.)

Not sure if the Nebula accepts nominations of reprints, but anyway both are eligible. “Incidental Light” is a fantasy, while “Parallel” is sci-fi.

So far, I have published eight poems.

Also, a bunch of essays and reviews. Quite a good year.

I started a novel, but quickly gave it up because it felt like a short story being stretched to its limits. I’ll stick with the short story form, thank you very much.

This is also the reason why I never joined the NaNo. Ever. :p

Last night I began writing notes for a new story. I still have no idea when I’m going to start writing it. Lazy, lazy bee.

With special guests: High Chair poetry books, PGS, Tobias Wolff, bright bed sheet, and electric fan haha.

Re-reading these babies. Mmm poems.

Got these from Jaykie’s sisters from Boracay! :D

I bought a pair of gloves. Doing the laundry sometimes wounds my fingers. Domestic wounds, woe.

Jaykie’s better, and for that, I am thankful.

day: notes

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(There were 57 people confirmed murdered on Nov. 23, 2009. The 58th victim is still missing. This poem originally appeared in High Chair, Issue 12.)

1.
We can be buried by the things that do not worry us at this hour.

2.
This car the only car on this street.

3.
We talk about breakfast as if it were sacred. No child knocking on our windows, no display of garlands. Only an idling garbage truck, men fixing a crooked billboard.

4.
(Beggars knock on the glass, so you knock back, and they move on. When did it come to pass that a knock meant I am alive but I am not here? When did it come to pass that a knock meant No?)

5.
The trains are dead at this hour, but I only had the heart to say, The trains are silent.

6.
57 bodies. They knock outside my car window, and I knock back because I am weak.

7.
What is the point of my telling you this?

8.
All around you, suddenly: a shielded radiance, a muted glory. Perhaps you’ll look at me and think, There is no real kindness in the world, but don’t we know this already?

9.
On that road, a man in a sweat-stained uniform is saying, Here. And here. And here.

10.
We have never been there. We will never be there. Before the guns were fired into their faces the victims must have thought, No help will come to me now, and they were right.

11.
An afterlife? Perhaps. Perhaps it is a place. Perhaps in that place is clarity. A blinding. But right now we can still see. For example, I still like flowers. I still look forward to the smell of morning. Here. And here. And here. The places where you want to be kissed.

12.
I collect them like newspaper clippings. A gesture that makes me smile, or perhaps a moment that makes me feel worthless. Here is the trick in begging: put a few coins in the can to fool people about your worth. All I want to say: I was not empty when I first came to you.

13.
And now this morning that does not find them in it. The knocking on glass as we read about mutilated genitalia, an exit wound the size of a saucer. A coin clangs on the bottom of the can. Please. Please. Please.

14.
The sun rose the day after the massacre. This is either indifference, or a show of an infinite mercy.

15.
- It is still dark.
- We are not frightened.
- We turn away like the morning.
- We dream of an open field.

in sickness and so on

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Jaykie and I only really get to see each other during the weekends, so it sucks when one of us ends up sick during those two (or three) precious days. We were thinking dengue or UTI or something fatal, but when we (with his brother-in-law and kasambahay) took him to St. Luke’s Global City last night (pretty place, but Makati’s one-way streets are maddening; can you imagine bleeding profusely and trying to figure out where the entrance to the ER is through those streets jesus christ you’ll die) and after the bloodwork and the urinalysis came clear and OK it was decreed that Jaykie has a throat infection. Antibiotics, paracetamol, water, and he should be as good as new.

I don’t think I’ve been to an ER before. Maybe as a child, but I remember nothing. It’s so silent. I was so used to the chaotic medical dramas.

* * *

There are no 24-hour fast food joints in Global City! It’s an outrage! Last night both McDo and Jollibee closed their doors with those plastic signs that say they’re open 24 hours oh the irony.

* * *

New old songs in my music player: The Veils, The Decemberists, Mariah Carey’s Christmas album (damn right!), and soundtrack of The Lion King (Broadway).

I am nothing of a builder/but here I dreamt I was an architect.

* * *

I realized over the weekend that you only consume 105 calories if you control yourself and eat just one-half of a Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar. That’s just 5 calories more than your regular cereal bars.

* * *

I am sooooo excited for HBO’s Game of Thrones. The pictures are fabulous!

I got the link from GRRM’s LJ blog, where he’s either “tired” or “stressed”. He’s only “happy” or “bouncy” when he’s talking about football. LOL.

* * *

While still in the condo Jaykie said he wanted to take me out on a date. We wanted to watch the Harry Potter film, but how, I said, he was burning like a bed of coals. I’m fine, he kept saying. He wanted to take me away from all this (gestures, takes in the room with his hands), even for just a few hours.

You’re the sweetest thing. Feel better and we’ll go have fun this weekend, fo’ sho’.

* * *

Have a laugh. Read this. One-hit wonder na makata hahahahahahahahaha. (Link from Kate.)

easy a, and other things

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Like hell you need to know the storyline. Watch it, watch it! They reference Natasha Bedingfield, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Kinsey, and even work the phrase “whore couture” into a sentence!

* * *

In the interest of being healthy, we went to Chimara to buy movie snacks. The tofu chips are actually very filling, so just buy the small pack. I recommend sour cream for seasoning. Also: the apple chips are heavenly. They blossom like sweet marshmallows in the mouth. Wash down with green tea.

* * *

VN Benedicto, who did the artwork for “Elsewhere”, has an interview up at Rocket Kapre.

How did you go about creating the artwork for “Elsewhere“? I’m glad this one was assigned to you, considering the subject matter, since you’ve done comics before.

It was kind of intimidating since I haven’t done a sequential page in a looooong time. And I have never done a fully digital comic page. I spent a lot of time just coming up with a layout. I also relied heavily on references for both the colors and pose of the hand in order to make it reasonable realistic, and kept the rendering of the page loose so as to contrast with the realism of the hand.

double whammy

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Today, my Inbox brings good tidings.

1) From Vanilla Press -

Dear Eliza,

Once again, I want to thank you for your submission “Summer Evening”.  Carrie, Ben and I were all extremely impressed with your skill and mastery of character.

We made the difficult decision not to include your story in the November issue, purely because we had accepted several suspense/horror stories already and wanted to maintain some genre variety.  However, we do hope you will allow us to publish it in the upcoming Winter 2011 edition, which will go live in February.

So I sent them an e-mail saying that February 2011 is good for me. That’s not too far away. :)

2) From Sarge Lacuesta, literary editor of the Philippines Free Press -

Hi Eliza,

Congratulations! Your story “Reunion” has been selected as a finalist for the 2009 Philippines Free Press Award [redacted]

The programme will begin at 6 o’clock in the evening. I do look forward to seeing you there, and I thank you for your excellent contribution to the country’s oldest magazine, and to Philippine Literature.

*confetti*

Somebody find me a dress.

the miracle life of edgar mint

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I’ve always wondered how John Irving pitches his novels. They span years, feature a dozen or more characters, and contain stories that cannot possibly fit in a synopsis. A synopsis cannot do his novels justice. A plot outline will only reveal a tall tale with no heart.

Brady Udall’s The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint reminded me very much of John Irving’s novels, and it certainly contains the elements that tall tales are made of. Edgar Mint, half Apache and half Caucasian, is run over at the age of seven by a mailman’s vehicle. The vehicle’s wheel runs right over his head, and the mailman, howling, touches his skull and feels it give. That boy’s dead, a man in the crowd says, but Edgar survives (albeit with a lumpy head). And so his odyssey begins: from St. Divine’s, a hospital for the poor; to Willie Sherman, a school for delinquents; to a house filled with sad Mormons, to a doorstep in the rain. We know the basic elements of journeys: a growing collection of friends, a goal, self-discovery, many adventures – and that’s what we get here.

Sounds old? Perhaps, but Edgar Mint is a compulsive read, a captivating story. It moved me.

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

now reading: The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

20th Century Ghosts

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!), 100 Bullets

new! Showbiz Lengua, Our Story Begins, Feast for Crows, PGS Horror and Christmas issues

philippine genre stories: christmas

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Oh, I knew I did something wrong. I should have read the Philippine Genre Stories Horror issue first, in time for Halloween. Ah, well. At least the Christmas season is nigh, and this review is a better fit. (But I’ll review Horror in a future blog post anyway.)

The PGS Christmas issue was published in 2008. Christmas! Personally I wouldn’t dare touch the Christmas story, but authors Erica Gonzales and Dominique Cimafranca do a good job of offering us  alternative stories to the famous birth. In Gonzales’s “Jumper Cable: Crossing”, Jesus is a biological entity that has crossed over from a more advanced dimension, and the angel Gabriel is a Dimension Agent sent to the “vessel” Mary and her partner Joseph just so they won’t run around and panic. Written with the matter-of-fact tone of its bored protagonist, this is hands down my favorite story in the issue.

Cimafranca’s “Twilight of the Magi” features the Three Magi, but with the special powers of fire, wind, and lightning. The central question is: If the Magi’s magic is for the fight against evil, what will become of their powers once the Emissary arrives? Will the Magi be obsolete, useless?

M.R.R. Arcega’s “The Magic Christmas Box” reads like a parable. Quite sweet, and I ended up enjoying it, even though I’m sick and tired of Christmas parables. Michael Co’s “Off-Season” is a crime story, but I found it frustrating because it didn’t go all the way. Give me a murder, not a stolen bike. After the big reveal, I just shrugged and flipped the page.

Andrew Drilon’s “Noche Buena” is a romance story featuring Fiesta Ham and Quezo de Bola. Seeing the character names, I thought this is a humorous story, or a satire, or an existential story featuring talking ham. It’s not. It’s a straight romance with a tragic end that I just can’t take seriously because of the character names. There’s really something wrong if you find the Author’s Notes more heartbreaking than the actual story.

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

now reading: The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

20th Century Ghosts

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!), 100 Bullets

new! Showbiz Lengua, Our Story Begins, Feast for Crows, PGS Horror and Christmas issues