My tonsils are in danger of falling out. Just came back from a friend's birthday. I'm still reeling from the drunk punk version of "Ang Huling El Bimbo." The horror, the horror.
It seems like Libis is the gimik place of choice for people now, judging from the traffic and the difficulty for circling around for a parking spot. However, Eastwood City in Libis has the atmosphere of a theme park. Everyone is either walking or lounging around in outdoor tables. Kind of like cafes, although not exactly European. (You know how there are tables with umbrellas on them inside the malls? What's there to hide from? The UV rays from the nonfunctioning exhaust fans?)
It also jarred me to almost crash, and I mean crash, against my college professor's table. Imagine, him out there in a gimik place. He has friends! He has a life! Whoa.
Saturday, January 12
A friend of mine recently lost her mobile phone after a hold-up in broad daylight. You would really be surprised at the casualness with which these robberies occur. It could be the well-dressed teenager beside you on the jeep, or a woman seemingly dozing off. Which reminds me that I have my phone for exactly one year now. I lost my first phone December 2000, on a waiting shed outside a mall while I waited for the street lights to change. Whoever stole it didn't poke a knife at me, s/he simply stuck his/her hand inside my bag. The moment you realize you don't have it anymore, you look around you, trying to identify a suspect. But everyone is rushing off in different directions, and there really aren't any cops to ask help from. It's gone, never to be seen ever again. And I only had that phone for a month. Darn.
I don't have the same luck with backpacks. A month ago, I discovered that my bright purple pack had a huge gush on its pocket. Not so big as to get something, but it really pisses me off. It happened to me twice already. Even with all the precautions you take, a single unguarded can cause you your valuables. Or maybe I just don't have that much luck with that particular kind of bag. Or maybe I should just be thankful that I escaped from the ordeal unhurt? Something in me just doesn't agree with that. I worked hard and paid good money for my stuff, and somebody just comes along and takes it. Absurd, absurd life.
I don't have the same luck with backpacks. A month ago, I discovered that my bright purple pack had a huge gush on its pocket. Not so big as to get something, but it really pisses me off. It happened to me twice already. Even with all the precautions you take, a single unguarded can cause you your valuables. Or maybe I just don't have that much luck with that particular kind of bag. Or maybe I should just be thankful that I escaped from the ordeal unhurt? Something in me just doesn't agree with that. I worked hard and paid good money for my stuff, and somebody just comes along and takes it. Absurd, absurd life.
Friday, January 11
I watched a movie called Happy End over at Greenbelt the other day. It's a Korean movie, I think, with Asian actors and such. But the marquee and a title search at IMDb gives me several results which doesn't seem to fit with the movie I actually saw.
What I watched was a domestic drama: a thirtysomething Asian guy in a nice suit spends a lot of his time reading at a second hand book and magazine shop, reading entire books and not buying them, to the annoyance of the shop attendant. He does the groceries and picks up the baby from day care and heads home. He doesn't have a job and is then designated as house husband. Meanwhile, a woman and a blandly cute and bespectacled and tousle-haired Asian guy are getting it on, and how. They seem to defy the limitations of space and human anatomy, contorting themselves into almost impossible positions in the pursuit of satisfying libidinal urges.
Spectacled Guy and Wall Girl had a romantic past: SG kept all her letters, and he has more pictures of her, filling entire albums and using rolls and rolls of Polaroids. Then they head their separate ways and Wall Girl comes home to Mr. House Husband.
Wall Girl chides her husband for taking it easy, for not seemingly being interested in getting another job. There is the conflict of who wears the pants in this house. And even more interestingly, who wears pants and then takes them off rather quickly. The affair gets rather steamy. Spectacled Guy wants his lover to leave the husband and settle a life for "their" family. More and more, Wall Girl forsakes her family to be with her former boyfriend. She even goes to the length of drugging her baby to meet up with him. It is the husband who goes all worried for his always tired wife, the sick baby. Then he discovers the key. The husband seems to know about his wife's past relationship with Spectacled Guy.
When the husband discovers the infidelity, the movie takes the way of the film noir, though not entirely dark. He plots his revenge against the lovers. The husband receives notice for a funeral of a former teacher. The husband asks a friend of his to drive him to the train station, ostensibly to attend the funeral. He charges into the love nest, and combs the place for evidence that the forensic experts would surely find. He then discovers the abundance of pictures, and he goes through them with the pain of learning that there his wife has a far much greater love and lust interest other than him. Indeeed, the only time we see husband and wife in bed together, he had to ask: "Is it any good?" One wonders why she even married him in the first place, if she so loved Spectacled Guy and was even pregnant by him. Was the husband a lackey then? Was the Spectacle Guy unwilling to marry her? It didn't seem like that at all.
The knowledge that his wife might soon leave him, even if she does try to make a valiant stand not to. When she goes home to her husband and tries to make conversation over dinner, making amends, trying to compensate for everything, one can see the guilt on her face, the herculenean effort to do the right thing. How can she help himself? Spectacled Guy is appetizing, his hair falls onto his face with just enough grace, and he can surely bring the house down. The rule she set for their affair, that they both treat it as a fleeting fancy, comes down like a house of cards.
Their inability to overcome and break the affair leads to their ruin. The way the film builds up to this, by presenting the husband as the wronged one and therefore he has the right to make them suffer, wears thin by movie's end. For one thing, the husband proves himself to be smart. He has piled up all the material evidence against Spectacle Guy, he has arranged for himself a brilliant alibi, and by presenting himself as the good house husband, the police will cast the motive for killing not upon him but on his rival.
The film maker piles all the cliches here. While he gets off appearing as the bereaved widower who must now raise "their" child alone, he still doesn't get away with it. In the film's last scene, we see the husband and their baby spooned together in sleep, on the floor facing the balcony. Daylight is starting to pour in, and the husband stirs from his sleep. He cradles the baby, thoroughly knowledgeable of his guilt. I'm not even sure if he realizes that the baby is not his, that while he has managed to get rid of the lovers, the baby that he treasures so fondly is still theirs. Oh well, the irony of it.
Happy End doesn't quite know what to do with itself: it starts out as a domestic drama, dabbles in tragic love story, and ends up a revenge motive light noir. There is nothing really remarkable with the story and the cinematography. It doesn't even cut it as a noir, there isn't enough atmosphere. It isn't the romance that the marquees hark it to be. The Happy End in the movie guide advertises a "new age romance." I'm not even sure if this is indeed the correct movie. All the Happy Ends in the IMDb don't say anything about forensics, or tired old cliches. The only thing common with them is that they all wanted something so badly but they either didn't get what they wanted, or they did get it, only to discover that it's not what they thought it would be. I only watched it because the only alternatives were Jinggoy and Juday's movie and Andrew E.'s. I haven't got that much of a choice, do I?
What I watched was a domestic drama: a thirtysomething Asian guy in a nice suit spends a lot of his time reading at a second hand book and magazine shop, reading entire books and not buying them, to the annoyance of the shop attendant. He does the groceries and picks up the baby from day care and heads home. He doesn't have a job and is then designated as house husband. Meanwhile, a woman and a blandly cute and bespectacled and tousle-haired Asian guy are getting it on, and how. They seem to defy the limitations of space and human anatomy, contorting themselves into almost impossible positions in the pursuit of satisfying libidinal urges.
Spectacled Guy and Wall Girl had a romantic past: SG kept all her letters, and he has more pictures of her, filling entire albums and using rolls and rolls of Polaroids. Then they head their separate ways and Wall Girl comes home to Mr. House Husband.
Wall Girl chides her husband for taking it easy, for not seemingly being interested in getting another job. There is the conflict of who wears the pants in this house. And even more interestingly, who wears pants and then takes them off rather quickly. The affair gets rather steamy. Spectacled Guy wants his lover to leave the husband and settle a life for "their" family. More and more, Wall Girl forsakes her family to be with her former boyfriend. She even goes to the length of drugging her baby to meet up with him. It is the husband who goes all worried for his always tired wife, the sick baby. Then he discovers the key. The husband seems to know about his wife's past relationship with Spectacled Guy.
When the husband discovers the infidelity, the movie takes the way of the film noir, though not entirely dark. He plots his revenge against the lovers. The husband receives notice for a funeral of a former teacher. The husband asks a friend of his to drive him to the train station, ostensibly to attend the funeral. He charges into the love nest, and combs the place for evidence that the forensic experts would surely find. He then discovers the abundance of pictures, and he goes through them with the pain of learning that there his wife has a far much greater love and lust interest other than him. Indeeed, the only time we see husband and wife in bed together, he had to ask: "Is it any good?" One wonders why she even married him in the first place, if she so loved Spectacled Guy and was even pregnant by him. Was the husband a lackey then? Was the Spectacle Guy unwilling to marry her? It didn't seem like that at all.
The knowledge that his wife might soon leave him, even if she does try to make a valiant stand not to. When she goes home to her husband and tries to make conversation over dinner, making amends, trying to compensate for everything, one can see the guilt on her face, the herculenean effort to do the right thing. How can she help himself? Spectacled Guy is appetizing, his hair falls onto his face with just enough grace, and he can surely bring the house down. The rule she set for their affair, that they both treat it as a fleeting fancy, comes down like a house of cards.
Their inability to overcome and break the affair leads to their ruin. The way the film builds up to this, by presenting the husband as the wronged one and therefore he has the right to make them suffer, wears thin by movie's end. For one thing, the husband proves himself to be smart. He has piled up all the material evidence against Spectacle Guy, he has arranged for himself a brilliant alibi, and by presenting himself as the good house husband, the police will cast the motive for killing not upon him but on his rival.
The film maker piles all the cliches here. While he gets off appearing as the bereaved widower who must now raise "their" child alone, he still doesn't get away with it. In the film's last scene, we see the husband and their baby spooned together in sleep, on the floor facing the balcony. Daylight is starting to pour in, and the husband stirs from his sleep. He cradles the baby, thoroughly knowledgeable of his guilt. I'm not even sure if he realizes that the baby is not his, that while he has managed to get rid of the lovers, the baby that he treasures so fondly is still theirs. Oh well, the irony of it.
Happy End doesn't quite know what to do with itself: it starts out as a domestic drama, dabbles in tragic love story, and ends up a revenge motive light noir. There is nothing really remarkable with the story and the cinematography. It doesn't even cut it as a noir, there isn't enough atmosphere. It isn't the romance that the marquees hark it to be. The Happy End in the movie guide advertises a "new age romance." I'm not even sure if this is indeed the correct movie. All the Happy Ends in the IMDb don't say anything about forensics, or tired old cliches. The only thing common with them is that they all wanted something so badly but they either didn't get what they wanted, or they did get it, only to discover that it's not what they thought it would be. I only watched it because the only alternatives were Jinggoy and Juday's movie and Andrew E.'s. I haven't got that much of a choice, do I?
Hello, my hobbit name is Myrtle Bracegirdle of Hardbottle. *offers hand out* What's yours?
Really sorry. But I'm still in my LOTR redux mode.
Really sorry. But I'm still in my LOTR redux mode.
Wednesday, January 9
Saturday, January 5
The backpacking thing I plan to do as soon as my schedule clears up. In all probability I will have to do it alone. I've been scouting around for good travel books around the Philippines. There's the 1999 edition of "26 Days Around the Philippines" by Carlos Libosada, but a lot of things have definitely changed since then. I am waiting for another edition of that. And of course the ever trusty Lonely Planet guides. I saw a copy of their Southeast Asian guide and it costs a good thousand bucks. Scream. I'm putting it on my wishlist for the moment.
My brain is on non-critical thinking mode. That will do for now. And you thought I couldn't make all the mababaw comments. Ha.
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