Category: movies

source code

It is easy for us to guess who the bomber is, but not so for Colter Stevens, who wakes up on a commuter train in the body of another man. The train explodes, and Stevens finds himself in a dark, cold capsule with a video monitor. You have to go back, the woman on the monitor says. Eight minutes, like last time, until you find the terrorist.

I have to admit that when I first saw the trailer for Source Code, I dismissed it as just another brainless, heartless sci-fi summer flick with an A-list cast. Glad to be proven wrong.

senior year

The high school that Senior Year shows is the high school that I know. I have never seen a more honest, more vibrant depiction. This is not the oversexed, ultra-hip, super-rich, privileged variety shown in Western TV, or the overwrought, lachrymose, mechanical high school dramas shown in local shows. In this high school, teachers are real characters, lovelorn students leave anonymous letters, graduating students fret over college entrance exams, and players cry when their batch loses during the intramurals. Here, the characters talk in class and with each other, and every time, they sound exactly like high school students – overeager, overconfident, a little bit naive. They speak in cliches (“Wala kasi tayong batch unity, e.”), use generic terms, and at times are unintentionally funny, but always, always, you see that shrug, that smile, that says you cannot touch them because they are invincible. And then, years later, the things that used to mean the world to them, they forget. High school has always been bittersweet, and Senior Year works because it offers no false note.

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What could be better than watching Senior Year with your high school friends? Jaykie’s my date. After the movie, we had dinner. It was a good night.

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Old pictures (ninakaw sa Facebook ni Ghia):

:)

movies during the weekend

Green Hornet

I never was interested in the Green Hornet. The show or the persona. I saw re-runs when I was a child and I thought it was horribly boring. Even after I learned that Kato was Bruce Lee. Or, especially after I learned that Kato was Bruce Lee. Who is this Green Hornet guy anyway, and how come he gets all the press?

And how come he's in the foreground?

I have to admit though that I only get to see tail-end scenes (Kato driving, the Green Hornet going on and on and on about something or other) of the show. I only put up with Green Hornet because Batman & Robin came after. I used to have this major crush on Robin. Anyway, I thought, if I’m going to sit on my ass watching a masked vigilante fight criminals I’ll just watch Batman. At least he doesn’t make Robin drive.

When I first heard that Seth Rogen is going to be the Green Hornet I…didn’t get it. Seth Rogen? How could this possibly work? At the moment I was thinking the producers were going to do it dark and moody, like what Nolan did with the Batman franchise, but lo! they just wanted a summer flick. In that case, it works. (It just went a little crazy with the car chases.) I appreciated the fact that they didn’t turn Cameron Diaz’s character into a bimbo. Not enough Christoph Waltz though. I’d like to hear more from a villain who’s going through a mid-life crisis.

Basically, the reboot serves as a vehicle for Kato, poor Kato, to say what the TV series couldn’t say: that the Green Hornet is a bit of a jerk, and Kato doesn’t get enough credit. Good for you, Kato.

127 Hours

Do you know this show? “I Survived”, every Sunday morning on the Bio channel? Jaykie and I used to watch that every week, and I’ve just had it up to here with people getting stuck someplace and  drinking their own urine and chopping off their own limbs. That doesn’t make it any less horrifying, or their survival any less awe-inspiring (frankly, if I were in their position, I wouldn’t have lasted half a day, I’d probably just lose my mind and wear pigtails and fight zombie Nazis with a sword – wait that’s another movie); it’s just that, why would I want to sit for two hours in the cinema waiting for a man to cut off his own arm?

I don’t even like James Franco’s character. I know this is based on a true story, and I don’t know the guy  personally, but to quote one of the girls, “He’s batshit”.

And he does go batshit, waking up one morning hungry and dehydrated and sorry, make-believing that he is the host, guest and caller in a live television show. That is the strongest scene in this film. It made him real for me, it made him human; that’s what made the film worth my time.

Inside Job

This documentary, which studies the financial crash of 2008, won at the Academy Awards. Watch it. It presents what happened in a clear, understandable manner. Watch the financial assholes squirm (or lash out in anger – “This is not a deposition, sir!”) during the interviews.

sucker punch

What it is:

– Zack Snyder’s wet dream

– A thirteen-year-old boy’s screenplay

– A videogame that thinks it’s a movie that thinks it’s a videogame

– A pastiche

– Shutter Island on crack colored with Watchmen

– A hot mess

What the hell:

– Ah, mental illness. You can do crazy things with it. (Pun intended.)

– Structure’s simple enough, and actually becomes predictable after a few scenes. I liked the silent movie sequence in the beginning. After that, protagonist is taken to a mental hospital. More slow-mo, silent movie shite. Then lobotomy scene! Then bam! Fantasy world! It’s like Pan’s Labyrinth really, the fantasy world as escape from the Awful Real World, except that they wear leather.

– Funny thing, though, inside the fantasy world, whenever she begins to dance, bam! Another layer of fantasy world! Like Inception!

– So A) Real World, B) Fantasy World, where they’re maids/dancers/courtesans, C) Secondary Fantasy World, where they go on several missions to retrieve a map, a lighter, a knife, and a key.

– It would have worked if the movie lingered longer in A, and showed us the actual interactions of the girls with each other. Then we could have a map (lol our own map) we could use to wade through B and the craziness and the shrill over-the-topness of C.

– Pan’s Labyrinth and Shutter Island (and even The Cell!) had the same themes, and they contained references to the real world of the tortured protagonists. Baby’s sister and mother is absent in all of the mindscapes. How can that be? And how come the stepfather only appears as a priest, for God’s sake. And why the dragons and the orcs and the blown-up city? Why the “mission” structure? Why a dance? Without the references, everything is just random, gratuitous shit.

– Yeah, yeah I know lighter, dragon, Rocket getting stabbed in B and getting blown up in C, but that’s about it.

– Character development, nil. So many women, and Blue is the only true character! Remember when he says, “I don’t like guns”? I laughed.

– Was the VO script written by Nicholas Sparks?

– Do I hate it? No. I’ve seen worse. It’s entertaining, in its own way. It’s just a shame that the filmmakers would spend so much time/money on something like this (it IS eye candy, you know) and didn’t even stop to consider THE FUCKING STORY.

The end.

I like the soundtrack.

the weekend

Friday! Early lunch at Army Navy and Frutti Froyo c/o Jaykie and family. Burned calories in badminton (where I thought I would win against J, and then didn’t). Off to the mall to buy stuff for the boyfriend, puttanesca and pizza at Sbarro, then home. Got drunk on House (Season 5 and some of S6) and Pretty Little Liars. Slept. A lot.

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Was finally able to watch Tangled with my mother and sister. I watched it in 2D, so I don’t know if it’s more exciting to watch in its intended format. I do agree with Roger Ebert’s contention though that colors appear dimmer in 3D. Not to mention that the 3D glasses are cumbersome and the illusion, albeit nifty, give me slight headaches. I’d like to avoid 3D now.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think much of Tangled when I first saw the trailer. Ack, another Disney re-imagining of a fairy tale highlighting love and cuteness – and it’s not even Pixar-made! I wasn’t excited about it. What else can you change about Rapunzel’s story to make it fresh and interesting?

I was so glad to be proven wrong. Thank you for the songs and the lanterns, Disney. If ever you felt the urge to translate this film onto the stage as a musical (and what a lovely musical it would make! Imagine the set pieces!), I’d see it in a heartbeat.

(And this should have won Best Song over Toy Story 3. Yes, I’m dissing Pixar for you, Disney. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME. I’m a horrible person.)

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Commercial break: My story, “Voyage to Bathala”, will appear in the March 19 issue of the Philippines Free Press, available in bookstands by March 16. :) Do buy and read?

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So I received payment for a story sale via PayPal instead of via a paper check, and I realized, instead of sending back the money and demanding the check, might as well use the funds to – what else? – buy books online. (The first PayPal payment I received was for a poem, and I used that to donate to Duotrope. It’s a very helpful site.)

I’m so 21st century. (I don’t buy things online. I don’t have a credit card. And I don’t even have an ebook reader. And I hate iTunes with all of my being. I’m still not so 21st century, it turns out.)

Books, old and new, are offered at reasonable prices at the The Book Depository, an online bookseller based in the UK, and they offer free shipping to the Philippines! (Exclamation points!!!) So I got Tana French’s Faithful Place, a book that’s already available here but only in (expensive) hardcover, and Lauren Beukes’s acclaimed novels Zoo City and Moxyland, books I can’t find here anywhere. All for around 26 dollars, or around a thousand pesos.

One story = three books. Not a bad trade. Hope the books get here safely, and soon.

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I’ve been feeling rather sad these past few days for whatever reason, but the weekend was able to exorcise all the bad vibes. There’s no place like home.

black swan

Saw Black Swan last night, after finding out that True Grit has been yanked out of the Ayala cinemas. For shame, we really wanted to see the Coen brothers’ film. But no regrets, the Natalie Portman-starrer is worth its ticket price.

We summarized it thus: Nina should take it easy. Or: Don’t do drugs and dance ballet. But that’s not to belittle this gorgeous film, which I still found gripping and hypnotizing and intense even after seeing it for the second time. Winona Ryder still made me jump, that <expletive>.

In the film, Nina the ballerina grapples with the problem of how to lose control and exude evilness in a dance that requires complete control, and a lightness that should remind one of angels. Finding the solution to this problem breaks her, eventually, because the body and the mind can only suffer enough injuries.

The first time I saw the trailer I knew – just knew – that I would love it: ballet + psychological horror + character fragmentation (+ okay that lesbian kiss intrigued me harhar + Nina’s make-up as the Black Swan is just lovely). Body horror is indeed horrific (“The Metamorphosis”, plus the Philippines’ many legends of transforming sinners, like the “Alamat ng Pinya” – have you ever considered how fucked up the “Alamat ng Pinya” is?), and this film made the ethereal swan look monstrous.

I’ve read a review online saying the film only made the reviewer ask more questions instead of giving her answers and I think: What questions, and why do they have to be answered? The film shows a young girl’s descent (or ascent?) to insanity. It is not a mystery that needs to be solved, it is meant to be experienced.

Why ask questions? There are no answers here.

and because i’m back from the holidays

…I have reviews!

1. The Wrestler

I fed this to the DVD player planning to just take a peek, but after the opening scene I was too enthralled to push Stop. Wrestling is all lights and glitz and scripted fun, but wrestlers grow old, and some of them grow old broken and alone. What a beautiful, believable, heartbreaking film. I should have seen it sooner. Every element just works perfectly: the writing, the shots, the improvised scenes. Pitch-perfect acting from Mickey Rourke.

2. Kikomachine Komix 6: Venn Man

I’ve read all the Kikomachine collections, and as expected this one also caters to the humor of the UP Diliman crowd (including me) and/or teenage boys (I have two brothers, and I speak like them sometimes, so yeah, including me). Unfortunately, unlike the other collections, Manix’s latest takes longer to get to the funny as storylines are sidetracked by existential ruminations that are actually better fit for the silence of 12. And we must admit that some of the jokes are getting old. But it’s still laudable for the create-your-own-adventure series near the end, which I enjoyed a lot.

3. Philippine Genre Stories Horror issue

I am a big fan of horror, but since I read so many horror stories and I don’t scare easily (I think), I always end up disappointed. Gah. Is it too much to ask? I just need a clean narrative and a story that gets under your skin. Though I liked “Leg Man” (PSF V), Dominique Cimafranca’s “An Unusual Treatment” didn’t win me over. The narration is clunky and reads like it is just following an outline. I bet the story’s funnier if a friend told this to me in person, in his or her own digression-filled style.”Same Time Again Next Halloween” by Alex Paman could have been a decent story, but it suffers from too much adverbs (too many “seemingly”‘s, etc) and a dramatic ending that feels forced. “The Haunted Man” by Raymond Falgui also lacks that organic flow, despite the fact that it is written like an anecdote. Joey Nacino’s “The War Against the City” intrigued me (I use city imagery in my poems and stories a lot). I expected a rich source of charged imagery, but his imagery didn’t move me.

It’s not all bad. Sean Uy’s “Tech Support”, though simplistic plot-wise, is a good read, and Charles Tan’s “The Jar Collector” shows a subtlety that is often missing in Filipino horror (we just love our espasol-looking ghosts and our hysterical protagonists).