Craig-a-thon

i watched quantum of solace with the entire office on thursday. watching the kick-ass opening titles by mk12 with a bunch of graphic designers was fun. everyone would go "WAH!" (our company's main intercultural expression of amazement) all at the same moments throughout the sequence. for some reason, i almost fell asleep during the movie. not the greatest reaction to get for a bond flick, although my eyes could not have been wider during daniel craig's sole shirtless scene.

then i saw it again with marlon on saturday. the second viewing gave me a full understanding of the plot -- again, not the greatest reaction considering bond flicks are not supposed to be rocket science. my dislike for olga whats-her-name intensified (so robotic! what's up with the standing with legs apart, fists closed all the fricking time? and that huddling in the corner drama! tumakbo ka na kaya?), as did my awareness of the utter lack of fancy secret agent gizmos.

on sunday, marlon and i decided to re-watch casino royale at home. whereupon i confirmed my impression that this is by far the better, sexier, funnier, more compelling, more memorable and more classic bond flick of the two.

even the aforementioned shirtless scene in quantum solace, as gratuitous as it was, just induced a wee tickle in comparison to the earth-shaking girlgasm i got re-watching daniel craig's rising-from-the- sea, skimpy-shorts glory in casino royale.

we had also planned to watch the invasion, but were too bangag to sit in front of the tv for a couple more hours. i just realized this also features daniel craig. soooo... if we watch this tonight it will be a full four days of hawtness.

the craig-a-thon shall continue!

I know, dahlink, I know

i watched indiana jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull yesterday with marlon, shrenik and shivaani. i gasped when cate blanchett first appeared onscreen. 

and for the first time, it wasn't because she was so fabulous -- it was because she was edna mode!

other than that, the movie was not bad at all -- after i spent the first fifteen minutes of running time searching harrison ford's face for signs of botox. i appreciated all the classic indy trademarks -- campy villain, gruesome creatures, overplayed deaths, puzzle-solving, escape attempts with attempts at humor, massive destruction, grand myth (in this case rather bizarre and cross-bred with another george lucas franchise).

i'm kind of glad the fedora stays with ford for now. i love shia labeouf, but he isn't quite the swashbuckling adventurer type to pass the torch to. remember the young indiana jones chronicles on tv? that guy was so much hotter; too bad he was about a decade too early for the sequel.

Reina Terminatriz

linda hamilton as sarah connor in terminator 2: judgment day = THINSPIRATION


wouldn't this post's title make a great addition to the modern-day santacruzan? i nominate bluearden, with his in-depth knowledge of miss universe parade of nations costumes, to design her gown.

i'm glad the first two terminator movies came out on cable recently -- marlon and i got to watch them sequentially, as they were meant to be seen. i'm pretty sure the producers of the franchise didn't intend T2 to be seen 80 times before the first movie, which is pretty much how i did it.

i'm also glad that over a decade after my tweenage fog of infatuation with edward furlong has dissipated, T2 remains a pretty damn excellent movie, deserving of its long-held place as one of my favorite movies of all time. i have a newfound appreciation for robert patrick, who was truly brilliant as the T1000, fusing relentless machine and creepy villain with such skill.

yes, edward furlong is the sole reason i saw T2 80 times. actually i'm not sure if that's a good enough estimate. try everyday after school for at least three months. i slow-moed all of his closeups in T2 on the family vhs, wrote fan fiction based entirely on his appearance in aerosmith's living on the edge video, bought every issue of teen beat/bop/big bopper/tiger beat with him on the cover, kept up with his career and lovelife for almost seven years after T2 was released, sat through horror dudfests like pet sematary 2 and brainscan. hello, i even bought the truly atrocious excuse for an album that he recorded in japan -- and listened to it daily.

that is the kind of tweenage devotion, inherent in all tweens to this day, which will stuff american idol in the bag for david archuleta.

marlon asked me: "whatever happened to this kid?" i turned to him and realized that he was unaware that he had married the biggest edward furlong freak in southeast asia. "do you really want to know?" i asked gravely. the short answer: pumanget siya.

i now realize what T2 had over the first movie: that big epic feel (reinforced by that gorgeous orchestral theme). ah, the beginnings of bigness, the spores that would eventually reach their mutated peak in the titanic, which we know was all about the bigness (and little else).

i went online and found a treasure trove of T2 trivia on IMDB -- read it! you'll realize just what an awesome movie it was, if you don't already love it.

hasta la vista, baby!

Contemplating Christian

it's friday evening and i've been zonked out the whole day. having a zonked-out, sick husband at home the whole day gives me an excuse to do this.

i had two interviews scheduled this week and i'm tamad to blog about them. they were both really interesting, to say the least, and i just don't have the mental stamina at the moment.

all i am capable of doing now is contemplating a christian bale-a-thon.

the thought was born a few days ago when marlon and i were discussing our celebrity crushes. (brief digression: i actually have a married friend who is shocked that i "allow" marlon to have crushes on other people, and that he and i are so open about each other's celebrity crushes. heller. we're married but not dead.) i named all of his correctly: anne hathaway, natalie portman, keira knightley and scarlett johanssen. he asked me to name mine, for the record: jamie oliver, dingdong dantes, brad pitt only in meet joe black, jude law only in enemy at the gates, and (what a motley crew!) christian bale.

then i realized i have seen a sh*itload, if not all, of christian bale's movies. yes, even newsies. inulit-ulit ko pa yan. so i decided to look up his filmography and check out which ones (at least within a 10-year cutoff, oa na yung mga prince of jutland era) i haven't seen. i realized that with the exception of american psycho and i'm not there (which is coming to town next week as part of the singapore international film fest), watching all the movies on this list will be a major test of the limits of my love for christian bale.

• american psycho -- the ever-elusive holy grail of christian bale dvds. where does one find a copy of this in asia??? i am almost tempted to buy this off amazon!
• i'm not there -- heath ledger (RIP) as bob dylan is a major, major plus. must see next week!
  
• 3:10 to yuma -- a western? errrr...
  
• rescue dawn
• the new world
• harsh times
  
• equilibrium -- though this looked like a cheaply produced movie from the trailers, muntik ko nang patulan when it first came out.
• laurel canyon -- sounds cheesy. sounds like a girly movie.
  
• shaft -- okay, at least i can get marlon to watch this with me.
• all the little animals -- ano kaya ito?
• velvet goldmine
  

in fairness what an extensive filmography ha. he played jesus christ in a tv movie. interesting.

oh my god wait! he's going to play john connor in terminator 4? *squeals* that's going to be soooo hot. casting coup ito! if there's anyone who can revive the terminator franchise after that last red-leather-jacketed monstrosity and claire danes killed it, it's definitely christian bale.

hmmm. i wonder if the local dvd rental has any of these movies. and i wonder when we'll finally have the spare cash for a dvd player!

Scary successes

the previous post made me think about what makes a good scary movie for me.

i find that the horror movies that i consider really, really good are those that sear one cinematic moment into your mind. as i mentioned in the previous post, shutter and the ring really did that for me. as did emily rose (the fear of 3am), omen II (the three little numbers on damien's scalp, plus his grey-eyed scowl), the exorcist (two words: spider walk), the others (nicole kidman and the children staring stoically into a window), to name a few.

i even remember one scary shot from early childhood, though i was too young to remember the movie: a white-faced, dark-haired girl trapped in the depths of a well, looking up in terror. (can anyone ID this scene?)

those that didn't pull off this brain-branding were pretty unsuccessful with me, and thus became largely forgettable: dark water, the reaping, the blair witch project, stigmata, gothika.

oddly enough, it must be an image; while i will forever remember the creaky-burpy sound the ghost made in the grudge ("aaa-aa-a-a-a-a-a-aaaa"), i thought that film was a complete waste of my time and money. i have no idea why hollywood picked it up for a remake.

the orphanage seems to be, so far, the only exception to this rule.

what are your success criteria for a scary movie? and what scary moments are stuck in your head, possibly for a lifetime?

p.s. if you're wondering why i didn't link to any of the movies i mentioned here, googling the first few and seeing their movie posters really creeped me out. time to go call marlon.

Not a single scare wasted

marlon and i have just seen the orphanage.

i think it may just be the best ghost story i've ever watched in my life.

i'm still reeling.

i wanted to watch it simply because it was billed as having been produced by guillermo del toro, not to mention the really cool movie poster. marlon, who hates scary movies and only ever watches them because of me, had to be prodded with a reference to pan's labyrinth to even consider it.

i don't really expect much when i go to see a scary movie. maybe just three to four scares, which can range from the cheap and predictable ("turn around, it's behind you!" or peek-under-the-bed type thrills) to the deeply disturbing (shutter's backbreaking shock, for example, or sadako's big moment in ringu).

so i really did not expect layers upon delicate, poignant layers lying under every well-thought, well-played scare. i did not expect to walk out of the cinema and think about love and loss, growing up and coming home, childhood and innocence, responsibility and blame, guilt and forgiveness, seeing and believing, and what truly has the power to disturb and terrify us to our very cores.

what is the greater horror for a mother: a creaky house full of the spirits of dead children, or the inexplicable loss of her own child? are ghosts really scary only because we meet them in our world and not, in a manner of speaking, in theirs?

none of hollywood's pointless scares or ghosts jumping out of closets here.

from a writing standpoint, the movie was extremely neat. not a single scene or reference wasted. if you played connect-the-dots with the script, you could most definitely connect one event in the first half of the film with another that would unfold in the second half. brilliant.

marlon and i raved about the movie all the way from the cinema to the mrt. on the train, he fell into a long-ish, thoughtful silence. then he gave me a sudden, tight hug.

if you want to know why, go and see the orphanage. go. just go!

i hope it comes out in manila. if not, get the dvd.

Sinful sugar Sunday

i spent most of yesterday with marlon and his two closest friends from work -- shivaani and shrenik, whose wedding in kolkata we attended two years ago. i love these two friends of marlon's and i'm happy that they're among my first friends here in singapore.

shrenik apparently is a man after my own salt-and-sugar-crazy heart (must have them one after the other), and i saw the full extent of his fiendish powers yesterday. what was possibly more mind-boggling than the amount of sugary snacks he keeps in the house is that, well, they're still around -- if i had all my favorite snacks in the house, they would all be gone in one afternoon. (except a small jar of nutella, which would take me two.)

the amount of sugar we had in the span of eight hours was beyond belief. consider:

• a bowl of ferrero rocher
• a pack of pepperidge farm dark chocolate chip and pecan cookies
• filipino tablea hot chocolate with condensed milk (our contribution)
  
• a pint of ben and jerry's cherry garcia
• various starbucks drinks: caramel frap, chai latte, iced tea
  
• coke zero
• honey dijon kettle chips
• magnum ice cream bars

and that was still over and beyond the indian lunch cooked by shivaani, who, bless her heart, fell promptly asleep as soon as the opening credits rolled for paprika (totally surreal japanese animated movie). i managed to hold out for the length of the dvd, but was totally zonked out for the rest of the evening. my head felt dull and heavy, and i got cranky if i had to think for too long. at home, i couldn't even read dangerous liaisons for five minutes without my pulse pounding at my temples. who knew that this was what lay on the opposite end of the spectrum from a sugar high?

but shrenik, diyos ko, totally out-sugared us all. yes, even me! he even brought out another bag of chocolates as if we hadn't already been methodically hustling our collective blood sugar to critical levels. he exhibited no visible delay of his motor functions, while marlon practiclally had to prop me up in the mrt station. it was truly awe-inspiring. i concede defeat.

or maybe not. i thought last night's saccharine bacchanalia was enough to put me off the sweet stuff for at least a couple of days. whaddya know, barely 24 hour hours later here i am blogging while munching on a crunch bar.

so when was the last time you had a sugar orgy?

The day that was

before i start blogging, a sneak peek. switch on your speakers or put on your earphones -- although i don't expect anybody to know the song, it's a gorgeous one.



on-site avp by mg digital video.

Spanish Saturday, subtitle Sunday

firefox shut down on me unexpectedly and i just lost a long, happy, impassioned post i wrote about starting spanish lessons yesterday and subtitling my portfolio today.

syet. feel na feel ko pa naman siya.

i'll recreate it when i'm not so bummed anymore. besides gotta get back to work. (work on extracurricular projects, not work work, so don't worry.) in the meantime i'll post something i wrote today that's not so long, but packs quite a punch.

toodles.

Make way for the king (3)

this is the last post of its kind. i promise. it's just that -- that -- *collapses into trembling, frothing puddle of fanhood*

hindi ba pag closeup mukha siyang totoong tao????



okay. now back to the rest of my life. ;-)

Make way for the king (2)

now, now, what have we here?

i actually smelled him as i lifted him out of the box. oh, the depths of depravity.

Make way for the king

he is now enthroned in his own little kingdom, ebony wood under his slim, black-shod feet and a light beaming on his tawny-colored head. it isn't the labyrinth, it isn't escher, but for now, it's the only dominion he can ever have.

he has a new slave too, who ran around the entire morning like a panting, lost puppy rearranging everything for his arrival, and whose heart almost stopped when his crystal orb fell from his gracefully posed little fingers to the floor thrice.

the kingdom is my desk, the slave is me, and jareth the goblin king rules. literally.

to be continued (with pictures!)

You remind me of a babe

babe with a power!

i got an email from my boss today with the subject heading: "my next new toy". this photo of the jareth figure from neca was attached.

you could say i've waited twenty years for this.

i don't remember this cape from the movie, pero di bale na -- the pointy, flipped-up leather collar (which i do clearly recall) and the distinctive 'do is more than enough to inspire all-consuming lust.

now if they came out with a figure of david bowie as he appears in his final scene in labyrinth, i would not stop going ape freaking sh*t until i had it in my hands. that flowing cape with the owl feathers and distressed floaty hems. that deep v-necked puffy shirt. those white tights. aaaggggh.

"just fear me, love me, do as i say, and i will be your slave."

oh YEAH.

Trailers and 300

caught the last full show of 300 last night at rockwell with gideon and jeline. it was fun, i don't know why i've never watched movies (or trailers) with them before.

trailers. that movie of mr. bean going to the beach in europe kind of reminds me of the acs on tour.

die hard 4.0 starts out like a corporate avp for a telecom company.

the trailer for -- norbert? norbin? norvin? -- basta eddie murphy movie was surprisingly funny. is there some kind of prosthetics award-giving body somewhere in the world? 'cause that there is a really convincing fat suit.

jeline on the reaping: "another satanist-apocalyptic movie." gideon helpfully cleared up my confusion on the plagues of egypt and the signs of the apocalypse. the reaping is about the former, although i know some people for whom a rain of frogs (the third plague) might as well mean the end of the world.

i liked how the trailer for the next fantastic four movie played out as just one continuous scene. i couldn't care less about the fantastic four, but even i goggled when the silver surfer burst out onto the scene. and i don't even know what he does except gleam and surf.

me on sunshine, which immediately followed: "another scientific-apocalyptic movie." we all giggled when the title was revealed at the end. "from the director of trainspotting comes... sunspotting." titter titter.

300. as promised by its promos, the movie was gorgeous. absolutely gorgeous. charlie (my partner art director) would pee his pants at every scene. abs, abs everywhere. it got so overblown at some point (was it when the oracle started exposing her nipples or when leonidas and the missus started going at it?), which made it so much more fun to watch.

may i just ask why the asians have all the circus freaks? ("how imperialist!" hissed jeline at some european-versus-asian dialogue.) is it so you know who to root for? because of course you'll root for the hotties.

gerard butler's accent-and-underbite combo struck me as strange. scottish pala siya. "they aw thweatening spawta!" mock-frothed jeline. "prepare for glowy!" he roared, purposely rippling his abs. subtext: "and flex!"

gay undertones abounded, which is unsurprising considering they're all equipped with cgi eight-packs and large padded panties (where did leonidas get the apple he had for a mid-skirmish snack? was that the bulge in his skivvies?). the two prettiest soldiers flirt with each other on the battlefield. "ay. doodams na yan!" murmured gideon. xerxes kept insisting he was divine. subtext: "i am divine... brown" (jeline). "i am divine... and fabulous!" (me).

pero in fairness, maganda talaga siya. as in beautiful, visually. plot- and dialogue-wise, obviously nobody set out to reinvent the classic guy battle movie, which was fine by me. i liked faramir's narration (who's that actor again?), although he rasped through most of it. and to have started out with a vision of the movie looking that gorgeous, and to have followed through on it... wow. galeng. i even liked the closing credits.

you can check out the posters on the imp awards site. i love the exclamation marks on everything, it's so old-hollywood overpromising/campy. and the "beautiful death" poster (yes, one of the few without the exclamation marks) is one of my favorite versions.

update: okay, i just came from a shoot and according to paolo contis (o diba showbiz ang lola mo), all the abs in that movie were genuine flesh and blood. apparently he read somewhere that the spartans worked out only their biceps and abs six months prior to filming. makeup plus the color grading must have just emphasized the outlines.

divine... and fabulous!