elizavictoria

mini-reviews, 3

Here’s the first, here’s the second.

Monsters vs. Aliens

Come on, all of my favorite people are here.

They were even able to squeeze Amy Poehler in there! I knew I should have paid more attention to the Computer character. And I was not able to guess that that was Rainn Wilson at all.

I was so excited when this film’s trailer came out – and I didn’t even know then who the voice talents were.

Well. I should have known: if you found a film’s trailer hilarious, more often than not the film itself wouldn’t be.

Monsters vs. Aliens is still funny, it has its moments, but I found the attack on San Francisco overwrought and tedious and, surprisingly, despite the amazing animation, bland, and really, if I didn’t see the trailer before the film I would have laughed at the theater more.

But the point is the producers need your money, media consumer. Who cares if you didn’t find it entertaining enough? You’ve coughed up the hundred-plus they need. So producers, you win.

Oh, but lay off the toilet humor. Stephen Colbert can be way funnier than that.

Balls of Fury

No, I don’t know what Maggie Q is doing in this darn film but I laughed and I’m not ashamed of it.

Maybe a little bit.

House of 9

Does anyone know this film? Has anyone ever seen it? Plot is simple and the action is engaging enough. Good for a lazy afternoon viewing.

Interesting that they cast Asher D as a rapper out to get his first contract, and then used his own song in one of the scenes. How shameless, and how lovely.

the year after

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This book was published late 2005; I was able to read it only this year. People always talk about brutal honesty – this book is brutal, searing, frightening, almost painful to read. In one article I read, Sylvia Plath’s daughter, Frieda, said she’s ashamed of her “very, very strong” need for a mother, evident in her poetry. It does open a weakness, Frieda said. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion does not only admit to this “weakness” (her very, very strong need for her husband, her daughter, normalcy) – she dissects it, connects it to existing literature, questions it, rejects it, accepts it.

Read an excerpt here.

this morning i –

woke up way too early in a room that they tell me was meant for two people (just quoting the landlady here, don’t get any ideas), and continued reading Yates’ Revolutionary Road (I saw the film first and is now stuck with one of those movie tie-in copies, movie poster as book cover). The thing about moving to a place closer to where you work is the fact that all of a sudden you have so much time. It’s amazing. So far I’ve spent the extra time staring at a blank wall. Well, last night I got so bored I ironed all of my handkerchiefs. I’m productive.

So this morning I opened the door and realized that the living room was silent. I moved in Friday and there was a guy there watching TV. Yesterday (Monday), he was also there, watching Oprah or whatever. I was preparing my baon on a glass-top table nearby, and the silence was so heavy that I asked, “Wala kang pasok?” He just shook his head. I think I also asked the same question to this other guy on Friday, who was cooking dinner and looked so pissed I didn’t even insist on getting his name. What the hell’s wrong with these men? Biktima ba sila ng di makatarungang retrenchment sa mga kumpanya nila? Or are they suffering from vagina envy at kating-kati nang itapon ako sa kahabaan ng Chino Roces?

Guys in the unit, yes. The thing is I was supposed to get this tiny room (big enough for brooms and mops – everything’s a matter of perspective) in a unit filled with girls in the other tower, but the occupant asked for an extension, and the landlady, who may or may not have left her cerebrum somewhere, allowed her to stay. I’m still mad about it. I actually put up a fight. One war was waged via text messages; it lasted till 2 AM last week. Ohyeah. But anyway, I realized that I was losing load and was close to really losing my patience – thank goodness I don’t earn enough to hire an attorney on retainer, or some big guy who can break arms – come to think of it, thank goodness I can’t break arms – so I just said FINE. They gave me this bigger room in another unit. I’ll be staying here until the other girl moves out, bless her selfish heart. (She was told I was moving in on this date, and still – ah, whatever.)

The living room was silent, which in my two-day-so-far stay there was a first, so I sat on the couch, saw that there’s a DVD player, and watched my Season 2 copy of The Office. I’m obsessed with the damn series at the moment. I wasn’t sure if the DVD player came with the unit or if it was owned by one of the tenants. But it was plugged in, so.

I wasn’t even supposed to move from my room in QC. I love my room there (two closets, bookshelves, a big mirror, bookshelves!), but early this month my QC landlady called and said that she needed the unit for herself and please get the hell out in time for the Pest Control guys’ arrival. Fuck you. No, I didn’t say that, she was nice, but it still made me angry. Talk about short notice. So I saw this other room in Makati, paid my down payment. The day after I made the transaction, QC landlady called, said April Fools! even though it was March. Apparently she’d just be dorming, or something. Of course since I’d already paid and told my father that I’d be moving I just told her to suck it. (No, I didn’t say that, she was nice.)

Then on to Makati, who welcomed me with open arms and the mess of occupancy extension and the temporary room.

Hay. I’m looking forward to the day when I can finally unpack all my stuff. I’m loving the room at the moment, though. There’s a big window out of which I can throw an annoying person (probably the landlady with the missing cerebrum, if she pisses me off again), and at night, the lights of the city look lovely.

Last night, one of the guy tenants spoke to me while I was in the kitchen getting water. I exist, apparently. Woohoo. This morning, another tenant asked about the couple staying in my room. They’ve moved out, I said.

“Hindi ko alam kung mag-asawa o mag-dyowa e,” he said.

“Ang sabi sa akin mag-asawa.”

“Sabay nga minsan maligo.” Nervous laughter. “Minsan nga…pero sabi ko, Hayaan niyo na.”

Prudes. Chos.

I finished three episodes and walked back to my room. I sat on the bed and noticed for the first time how bouncy the mattress was.

But of course. *wink*

mini-reviews, 2

Read the first “mini-reviews” here. And I suppose this should have been “mini-reviews, 2”, but what the hell.

I’ll keep this short because it’s hot and I’m cranky.

30 Days of Night

Boring. Next.

Well, okay, when the movie first came out I actually liked the idea of vampires terrorizing a small town in Alaska. (And no, not because of her. I didn’t know Palin then.) Cool premise: somewhere in Alaska the sun won’t shine for a month – what if vampires arrived at the place? And what if Josh Hartnett was the sheriff? OMG.

Whatever, my sister lent me a VCD (along with a brontosaurus fossil) and I didn’t even bother to pay attention to the second disc. The biggest action sequence in the film is the overhead tracking shot of the vampire attack that this reviewer liked so much, but the scene didn’t affect me in any way. The gore and the horror at times resembled 28 Days Later , but the film felt empty. I felt bad for the Jake Oleson character in the end for having a stupid big brother, but other than that, I didn’t really care.

The NYT said “the performers have little to do besides spill and drink blood in this tedious, inconsequential B picture.” Yeah. Thank goodness I didn’t see this in the theater. At least with the VCD I could fast-forward.

Knowing

This one unfortunately I watched in the theater.

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Knowing teaches us that Google has all the answers, and that when we finally meet the aliens before the world ends we realize that they all look like Spike from Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. There’s a spoiler in that sentence somewhere, but I don’t give a shit. I was hoping to see an intelligent film. Or a really, really stupid film that I’ll still enjoy, like Eagle Eye. Instead I’m given the worst kind – a sci-fi popcorn flick believing, in its heart of hearts, that it is not ridiculous.

I would have forgiven the stupidity if I found the characters engaging. I didn’t. (The “You and me together forever” bit via sign language made me puke in the mouth. I almost expected Spielberg and E.T. to pop up somewhere.)

Roger Ebert loved the film, but I think he’s just giving it too much credit.

* * *

Anywho, I’m looking forward to seeing Monsters vs. Aliens. :) I was supposed to see it on opening night, but I ran out of money. My siblings think their Ate is an ATM.

the only marathon i can run

My father dumped several DVDs back home, and so –

Bobby

On June 5, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy passes through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles with his wife, Ethel, and his security detail. He has just given a speech following a victory. He shakes hands with reporters, smiles for the cameras. A young man standing in the crowd raises his arms. The young man is holding a gun.

But this film is not about Bobby. It is not a documentary. We do not learn more about his life, the games he plays with his kids, his favorite breakfast. We do not see him brooding in a roomful of shadows.

This film is about June 5, 1968. It is just like any other day, but to some people the date is relatively more important. There’s a Dodgers game, for one thing. Kennedy’s campaign team is waiting for the results of the California primary. Inside the Ambassador Hotel, disgruntled busboys are working on a double shift, and the hotel’s inhabitants are dealing with their personal dramas. Some of the troubles shown in the film could have happened anytime – 1968, 1988, 2008; others have problems hopelessly connected to their current political landscape. At one point, a young student campaigner, after dropping acid with a friend, wonders aloud what will happen if Bobby Kennedy loses. “I’m only 19, I don’t want to go to Vietnam,” he tells his friend. “Do you?”

The film, written and directed by Charlie Sheen’s brother, Emilio Estevez, is like 22 short stories with the same setting, and the same ending. Peter Travers in the Rolling Stone called it “trite fiction”; I loved it.

Who’s in this film? Apparently everyone: Anthony Hopkins, William H. Macy, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Laurence Fishburne, Helen Hunt, Elijah Wood, Lindsay Lohan, Nick Cannon, Joshua Jackson, Shia LaBeouf, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, your next-door neighbor, Inday, everyone.

The Hoax

Remember that character Leo DiCaprio plays in The Aviator? So billionaire Howard Hughes was a bit, um…eccentric. Clifford Irving used this fact to his advantage.

Sometime in the 70’s Clifford Irving’s novel gets shelved by publishing bigwig McGraw-Hill. Irving so desperately wants to be published that he tells the firm’s executives that he has met with Hughes, who has asked him, personally, to write his autobiography with him.

Richard Gere, Alfred Molina. This film is love. This is a true story, too. After the autobiography was revealed as a hoax by Hughes himself, Irving wrote his own autobiography, detailing what he did to come up with one of the biggest cons in publishing history. The title of the book: The Hoax. The nerve of the guy.

The House Is Burning

I think this film was invited to the Cannes Film Fest. I don’t care. It’s boring, it’s generic. Just a bunch of sweating teenagers screaming at each other. Nice title, though. Sayang.

Maybe later I’ll see 30 Days of Night. Haha.

watching kate winslets

Revolutionary Road

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Again, American suburbia as setting and cause/motivation—straight lines, white houses, flawed relationships, a slow then sudden falling apart. It is a backdrop and a main character, in this film named as an address of the Wheelers (Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCarpio).

Revolutionary Road is one of those films where you feel you can pinpoint the exact moment where the characters make the wrong decision, but also know that it will not make much of a difference even if you are there to point it out to them. It is painful to watch, but a joy, too—it does not make a travesty out of a broken life.

Kate Winslet should have won the Oscar for this film.

(Photo from ClicktheCity.com)

The Reader

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How frightening, a narrow perspective. “We did not unlock them for the obvious reasons,” Kate Winslet’s Hannah says, referring to a group of Jewish women who ended up being burned alive in a bombed church. “We were guards. They were our responsibility!”

And I’m going to cheat right now and link to a great review by Ebert. The review made me appreciate the film more. Who knows, maybe I’ll watch it again soon.

(Personal pet peeve: I know it requires time and more money, but wouldn’t it be better if movies set in a particular country with characters of a particular race were told in the appropriate language? It’s strange, for example, to hear German characters in Germany speaking in American English with a German accent. Or, in Memoirs of a Geisha, Japanese characters in Japan speaking in American English with a Japanese accent. And even that showed effort on the part of the filmmakers—other movies would just have the characters speak with an English accent, even if they were in France or in Wales, as though having an English accent is enough to communicate foreign-ness. It’s weird.)

(Photo from Cinematical.com)

‘who watches the watchmen?’

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When we were walking out of the cinema a girl (presumably, hopefully, with a group of friends) immediately issued forth her verdict, and I quote: Tangina tangina tangina tangina. It was impossible not to hear her. She seemed unable to contain her displeasure even while inside the washroom.

And all the while I was thinking Okay, we get it, you’ve read the comic book. It’s almost one in the morning and my head feels heavy – we get it. You can shut up now.

I’ve read the comic book too, you know.

I saw the film with a friend (who had compli tickets, yay!) who hasn’t read the source material, and she was fine with the film adaptation. I was fine with it. The comic book is too complicated to be filmed in its entirety (like the comic-book-within-the-comic-book part, how in the world will they film that without reaching the 5-hour mark and messing up the film’s narrative?), but the filmmakers managed to tell the stories that needed to be told in under three hours. I actually saw that as a feat.

My favorite parts in the comic book were the origin stories of Rorschach and Doc Manhattan. Before I saw the film I thought the origin stories were going to be muddled, if not cut altogether. But they are there in the film adaptation, and I was surprised to be satisfied.

The film is loyal to the book. So loyal that, since I was re-reading the first few pages the afternoon before we went to the cinema, I found myself at times zoning out. I remembered another friend saying the film is loyal but is booooring, and now I’m thinking, perhaps it’s boring because we still remember the comic book. Maybe?

But the film is well-made. Great visuals. I loved the opening credit sequence. There are cuts in the copy of the film distributed in this country, and I still don’t get why they had to cut those parts. They’re having sex, what’s the big deal?

At times the violence felt over-the-top, as though the scenes were there simply for their surround sound potential, but it could just be me.

It was so weird to see these words during the opening credits: Based on the graphic novel – and then Dave Gibbons’ name. Oh dear. So Alan Moore was that serious about disowning this project.

I don’t know. The film wasn’t that bad. What do you think? :)

Photo from WatchmenDVD.com

My fave film critic, Roger Ebert, has written a lovely, lovely review (and I’m quite sure he didn’t read the comic book before seeing the film). Read it here.

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