Oh my God! I received the acceptance letter to a masters program abroad that would commence in September this year.
Friday evening I watched Friends With Money, starring Jennifer Aniston and a group of other more mature actresses (i.e. Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack). The movie simply came with those 8-in-1 DVDs so I watched it na rin. Surprisingly, I was quite entertained by it. Foremost, the actresses are astounding as a group of girlfriends trying to make sense of their relationships. The film also owes a lot to its astute writing for keeping it upbeat and witty. So this film gets three bamboos.
I finally saw Marie Antoinette by Sophia Copolla. I did not have high expectations from the film given the wide disgust critics have for it. I'm not sure what exactly Miss Copolla's intention was for the film, but for me it came out as a two-hour long music video. The photography was very fluid and energetic; the set was very lush and opulent (of course); the costumes were rich and luscious; and the music… ah, the music was pure, astounding irreverence (think of having an 18th century ball with rock music). It was enjoyable to watch if one is out for a ride of the senses, but it ends right there. For some depth and historical perspective about the French royalty before the revolution, I suppose you can learn more from looking it up on Wikipedia. The film deserves only two bamboos.
I've always been surprised at the odd films one can find in pirated DVD shops. One interesting movie I stumbled upon in Quiapo is No Regret, by Korea's first openly gay director, LeeSong Hee-il. I assume this movie is fairly new because it's not on IMDB yet. It tells the story of a rather cliché set of characters - the poor barrio boy in the city who becomes a prostitute (played convincingly by the luscious Lee Yeong-hun) and the gay businessman trying to find true love while his parents are marrying him off. So Lino Brocka and Mel Chionglo noh? The clichés stop right there though as what beneath it is a complex story of the relationship between the two. The viewer is spared of any melodrama, instead it reveals well-developed characters and a story that is poignant. I'm not sure however about its glacial pace (so typical of Korean films I realized) although it gives you enough time to contemplate the story and understand more the characters' despair and alienation. Except for the rather odd ending, it's a satisfying movie, which earns it three and a half stars.
I also saw The Last King of Scotland, a much praised film for its main actor Forest Whitaker. All right, it's another film about a third-world despot. Perhaps what makes it different however is that while all other films about dictators portray them as power-hungry bastards, this one shows the president as short of crazy. While it has great intentions of showing the mind of a tyrant, it misses in giving a full-rounded character of President Idi Amin, including his motivations, his fears, his thought process (the last one he almost completely lacks). Instead, it fell into portraying a caricature. As a Scottish doctor visiting Uganda, James McAvoy (as Nicholas Garrigan) was noticeably adept and the character was better written. I'm giving the movie three bamboos.
I learned about Fateless in Jay's blog and I was quite pleased that I found it in Quiapo. I was thinking, oh no, another Holocaust film! But really, after watching the film I think this horrifying moment (among others) in recent history should never be forgotten, thus more movies about it should be made. The film follows the experience of a fourteen-year-old Hungarian Jew, named György Köves (Marcell Nagy), during the Holocaust. It shows one boy keeping a semblance of motivation to live in such atrocious times. One part of the film discusses about man needing a life-giving obsession to keep their hope alive; it is that drive that Gyorgy nearly lost but he trudged on, which makes the it an inspiring piece of filmmaking. Four and a half bamboos.
Another interesting DVD I saw in Quiapo is a collection of Gong Li films. Ahh, Gong Li, who can resist her? The cover said the DVD has Raise the Red Lantern, but typical of pirated DVDs the film is nowhere inside it. So I settled for To Live (Yimou Zhang, 1994), touted as China's Gone With the Wind. Set in the 1940s and the next three decades, it follows one family's struggle during China's tumultuous history duing the said period. I'm not sure about the film though because there were just too much crammed into it. Chopseuy!!! It had its poignant and funny moments, but in the end I felt like I was watching a TV soap. Read: intoxicating and all over the place. Gong Li and You Ge (the latter winning in Cannes for his acting in the film) were excellent however. So only three stars for this one.
I heart Vina Morales.
Climbing the stairs. Most people rush to the elevator or escalator but I choose the stairs. With their height it's the most that I can do for my daily exercise. 
All the papers today seem to have the same photos in the front pages. I'm not talking about those clowns pretending to be the leaders of the country and their squabble for a seat in the national circus called the Senate. I'm referring to the pictures of couples locking lips last Saturday evening for the Lavapalooza at the Mall of Asia. From our apartment, I saw the magnificent fireworks that lit the sky at around midnight, which I suppose meant that the kissing has commenced. I heard they broke a world record that night. Cute.
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.
I was cleaning our bookshelf last weekend and realized that we haven't been replenishing our stock as much as we used to. Of course I've explained the reason for this a couple of entries back. Currently, I still have a backlog of around four books.
My MRT book (or the book that I read while riding the train to and from work) for the past weeks is Waiting by Ha Jin.
Let's start with The Last Temptation of Christ, which is directed by Martin Scorcese (sp?). I was a bit skeptical about the film because what else do I need to know about Jesus anyway? Exactly how many movies does it take for us to know his story? But then I heard it has a different treatment compared with all the rest of the bunch, a rather irreverent angle I should say (thus it is banned in Catholic Philippines). Indeed the film is a complex and fresh take on the life of Jesus, how he was supposedly subjected to the clash of his divine and human sides. For religious people, it can be a challenge to their faith and for skeptics it is also provocative. And for me it is affirmative of my assumptions about Jesus (which I'm not discussing here). So I'm giving this film four of five bamboos.
I couldn't remember the last time I cried while watching a film. Honestly, I couldn't. But The Pursuit of Happyness made me cry a fucking bucket. Will Smith plays this character who is trying to support his son after his wife left him. The movie takes us to the different stages of his struggle to regain a decent life for him and his boy. Of course it's a cliché on one man's triumph over adversity blah blah blah. Thinking about it now, the film is bloody manipulative but still it made my cry so it earns three and a half bamboos.
It has a very heavy subject of a child bride who was widowed when she was eight and had to live in this house for widows (a better option rather than joining her dead husband in his funeral pyre or marrying her husband's brother). It was fucking depressing but is a wonderful eye opener about the treatment of women in a different culture. It also tackles religious fundamentalism, hence a good take-off for a sociological and anthropological discussion. The film is set in 1938 when India was struggling with getting independence from the British. Thus it has a number of references to the political and cultural changes that the country was undergoing at that time. I should say this is one of the most enlightening films I've seen recently, so I'm giving it a five.
