The Lost Weekend

Mel Gibson is sick. I'm not sure what he exactly wants to say by portraying things so violently in his movies. The Passion of the Christ was already unbearable to watch with all the gore and he even ups the ante with Apocalypto. I saw the latter last Friday and almost completely repressed memories of the film instantly. A supposedly good film loses all its credibility when all that you recall about it is the violence rather than the story. It seems that Mel Gibson will continue to challenge viewers with how much unnecessary gore we can take in movies. Bamboo rating: two.

Needless to say (as my weekends have been pretty predictable even to my self), I basked in front of the TV the entire weekend. I finally finished the first two seasons of Lost. You bet I'm very hungry for the next season. While the second season answered quite a number of questions from the first one, there are yet more mysteries that were introduced in it. The writers of the show do have a great challenge of tying all the countless loose ends that have yet to be explained. Oh, I heard the delicious Rodrigo Santoro is in the next season. Hay, that's enough reason for me to watch talaga.

I also saw L'Enfant (The Child) from Belgium and France, which won the Cannes Golden Palm in 2005. You'll never know what you can pick up at the Makati Cinema square these days, including Cannes winners noh? I had very high expectations for the film on account of the honor it reaped. I'm not exactly disappointed but again, it's a movie that would not cause me to make cartwheels in front of the screen. The acting is superb of course, ditto for the script, which completely avoided all the clichés. I could not help comparing it with Tsotsi, which also showed a child's role in bringing forth moral decisions as well. But L'Enfant chose to show that evolution as a slow process hinted at the end of the film. I'm giving this three and a half bamboos.

Last among the films I've seen in the weekend was The Painted Veil, starring Naomi Watts and Edward Norton who were both brilliant as a couple who went to a remote part of China to bring relief to a village plagued with cholera. The film reminds me of The African Queen and similar films about a woman transplanted in a different culture (maybe Indochine too). I don't think The Painted Veil said something new though. At least they did not make cultural judgments but on the one hand the couple's story had been told over and over again. Ultimately the movie is saved by its moving music, rich set design, and phenomenal cinematography. Of course the two main actors were more than a delight. The movie deserves three bamboos.

All right, I did not completely spend the entire weekend watching TV. I did yoga last Saturday. Yesterday my sister and I went to the Powerbooks sale where we pulled four books: a couple of David Sedaris, one book about Burma, and an Alan Holinghurst. After which we moved to Greenhills. My sister was buying all these blouses that look no different from the other ones she has already. Women and shopping, sometimes they don't make sense to me.

**
Photo Credit: (1), (3), and (4): IMDB; (2) lost.joj.sk