There was (again) a Luzon wide power failure today which lasted all of six hours and paralyzing everything from mass transit and the vertical travel of building employees everywhere. I was trying to lessen my neglected emails load, then the computer just went kaput. I didn’t know the whole island was affected then. So I went out of the house already, and proceeeded to the network to pick up a friend before heading to the UP Film Center. The traffic was awful and when I got there, we had barely an hour before the screening. I rushed into the building, flashed the ID, ran into the elevator banks and got into one just as the door was closing. I was in a hurry, and eight storeys up does merit the use of an elevator. Then within ten seconds there was a thud and we stopped. Right there between the second and third floors.

Now my first reaction would be to curse the darn electric company for being so inefficient and treating us to survivoresque situations when I have no inclinations whatsoever to take part in reality television. (A camera guy got stuck with us, and he filmed what was happening most of the time.) Being trapped in an elevator is not my favorite form of past time.

Immediately, scenes from my two favorite elevator movies came to mind. One was Louis Malle’s L’ascenseur pour l’echafaud, or A Lift to the Gallows (1958), with the totally divine Jeanne Moreau. It was a thriller about a murder and suicide attempt gone wrong, with the murderer ending up getting stuck inside an elevator. Then there’s Combat de Fauves, or Wild Games from last October’s Cine Europa. (Combat de Fauves was made in 1998, but has the same look and feel as the Louis Malle movie.) A workaholic advertising guy gets stuck in an elevator in a building where he's trying to find an apartment and ends up spending 3 gruelling days stuck there playing mind games with the building’s equally crazy owner. The experience of just watching those guys trying to get out but couldn’t, and add the mental torture of people out there, who are free to move and go to the bathroom as they please, just didn’t appeal to me.

Elevators are such cramped spaces that the reflex reaction would be to get out. There is a limited amount of air. You cannot preen in front of a mirror unless it has reflective surfaces. No food, no drink – unless you came in there armed with army provisions. If there are no escape hatches, the only next logical reaction would be hysteria.

Fortunately, one of my elevator fellows works with the security and maintainance people. They had to manually pull the elevator so it would land exactly at the elevator banks and they would try to pry the doors open. I think there were two guys who went to the very top of the building and pulled the weight equivalent of a small elephant. It took them all of twenty minutes.

I think I shall be climbing up the stairs all the way to the ninth floor for sometime following this, or at least wait for the non-glitch elevator.

Somebody noted that the LOTR is said to be a boy's adventure tome. Even Arwen, the Liv Tyler character's role in the Peter Jackson movie has been rewritten in such a way to expand exposure, character, and possibly to provide a romantic interest for I-am-still-not-king Aragorn. With that in mind, some people came up with The Very Secret Diaries of the Fellowship of the Ring. All the homoerotic tension going on have been voiced: Legolas is an airhead, but a very pretty one. And there's also some hobbit fetishes thrown in. Very funny, yeah.

The Editing Room has quite a different version of things altogether. I hereby present you with Lord of the Rings: The Abridged Script:

FADE IN:

INT. DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON'S HOME

DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON sits, on the phone with a
POWERFUL FILM EXECUTIVE.

DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON
So, I was tossing this idea around.
Maybe I should make films out of
the Lord of the Rings tril--

RABID FANS OF THE BOOKS
(breaking down the door)
LORD OF THE RINGS?!?!?! Finally! A
well-done, realistic, immersive
film version of the best trilogy of
overly long books ever!

DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON
Well, I was just thinking abo--

RABID FANS OF THE BOOKS
You know who would make an awesome
Gandalf? Ian McKellen!

DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON
Uh, yeah, well, that's a good idea,
I gue-

RABID FANS OF THE BOOKS
Oh, I can't wait! I'm going to
generate an ungodly amount of hype
for this movie for the next few
years! I'm sure you won't
disappoint us!

DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON gulps nervously.

DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON
(twitching)
Wow, I feel a lot of pressure. How
can I possibly create a film as
good as any book in the wonderful
Lord of the Rings trilogy? What am
I going to do?

DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON proceeds to sit down with the
trilogy and translate each page into screenplay format,
word by word.

DIRECTOR PETER JACKSON (CONT'D)
Yes! I will make the most loyal
movie based on a book in the
history of the cinema! Nobody will
be able to say the book was better
then! Ha ha ha!


More parallel universes: There is also a hypothetical, what if Kevin Smith directs the Council of Elrond. Jay and Silent Bob and all the usual suspects will be the fellowship, with lots of weed and fart jokes, and maybe an Alanis Morissette cameo thrown in. Think of it as Dogma in Middle Earth.

I am still very wide awake. I hope this has nothing to do with my chugging down 2 mugs of coffee from Saturday. I have turned into a tea or juice person in the mornings, and had not touched a drop of coffee for three weeks running prior to Saturday. Trouble sleeping, darn. Started fiddling with Photoshop and attempted to make a template for the blog's new look. But it will probably take me eons before I learn how to properly do the code and other graphic design stuff.

And it is pretty quiet for a fiesta weekend. No more karaokes blaring before midnight. My neighbors have newfound decency. Whoa.

The Edsa Dos anniversary celebration was yesterday, and it didn't really make as much noise as I hoped so. It only propels the theory that we Pinoys have short term memories, and perhaps short term goals. I have no illusions of a great miracle taking place one year after Edsa. Just look at our track record: a centennial plus years after the Spaniards have been booted out, fifteen years after the first Edsa, a year after Erap Estrada, and we are still in the same miserable state that we've been in since forever.

Entrails reader and I both have essays about Edsa Dos which appeared in peyups just several days apart. His is an excerpt from his journal, mine is just a bunch of questions and exasperated whining at our failure to really get our act together. Differences: Entrails reader has a much better grasp of Filipino than I do, and I usually write my stuff in English. But since I am on an experimentation mode, I ranted in Filipino, and his collected thoughts are in English.

Just go read the essays already.

I messed up my archives page. It's supposed to have the same look as the main blog page, but now there's just a stark white page and not much else. Hm.

I figured out how to post to the project, but there's still a lot of work to be done. I really hope we can all sit down and discuss this on Friday. Meanwhile, I'm fiddling with my blog's template. Nuninuninu...

Last night, while waiting for my work-related workshop to start, watching the tv news and having nothing to do, I called up entrails reader. We're supposed to have this so-called brilliant scheme of a website. We really haven't met up yet with the rest of the team to discuss the project in a tangible physical plane. All the exchanges have been done via email, and not like say, with everyone present in the same place, at the same time. In place of that, entrails and I thought we can have a blog for the sole purpose of chronicling our efforts. Kind of like "the making of a blog."

But as it is right now, I cannot even post to the blog. Blogger is asking me for our password and I dunno what it is. I am invited to a club that wouldn't have me as a member. Brilliant.

I realize that we're almost halfway through January, but what the heck. Here's further proof that I have no life.

Movie List for 2001

Vertical Limit
Meet the Parents
Emperor's New Groove
Balahibong Pusa
Little Nicky
Tuhog
The Sixth Day

What Women Want
Booba
Cast Away
Bounce
Nurse Betty
Karnal
Woman on Top

Hannibal
Erin Brockovich
The Wedding Planner
Miss Congeniality
Sa Huling Paghihintay
Billy Eliott
The Full Monty
Save the Last Dance
The Frighteners
Almost Famous
Quills

Ghost
Dogma
Gladiator
Comrades, Almost a Love Story
The Gift
Sweet November
Fight Club
The Beach
Requiem for a Dream
Magnolia
Flawless
Indochine
Pagdating sa Dulo

If these walls could talk 2
Sugar and Spice
American Beauty
Mighty Aphrodite
The Birdcage
Entrapment
Traffic

Taxi
Salsa
Le gout des autres
A matter of taste
Place Vendome
Est-Ouest
Code inconnu
Pearl Harbor
Buhay Kamao

In the mood for love
Mila
Atlantis
Romeo + Juliet
Time and Tide
Damong Ligaw
La Nuit des Varennes
Interview with the Vampire
Dr. Dolittle

Kahon
Kidlat
Laho
Anak Maynila
Anino
Riles
Girl of my Dreams
Greaseman

Legally Blonde
The Fifth Element
Radyo
Red Diaries
Not One Less
Bridget Jones's Diary
Purely Belter
Moulin Rouge
Love's Labours Lost
Hotel Splendide
Saving Grace

Bakit di totohanin
Splendour
But I'm a Cheerleader
Rush Hour 2
Original Sin
Himala

America's Sweethearts
Bye Bye Blue Bird
Classic
Ma petite entreprise
Leak
Wild Games
Flowers from Another World
The Christmas Oratorio
Wonderland
Suzie Washington
Night Shapes
American Pie 2
Badjao
Dos Ekis
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

Trip
Love Inventory
Mrs. vs. Miss
Song of the Siren
The One
Serendipity
Magdusa Ka
Sana Pag-ibig Na

Monsters, Inc.
Iron Ladies
Jan Dara
Nang Nak
Dream Girl
Four Fathers
Tatarin
Bagong Buwan
Hubog

Not included in the list are movies watched on cable on the various trips out of town, those viewed on television, some short films whose titles I forgot, and I may have left out several films because the viewing experience was so bad my brain has blocked all memories pertaining to them. (I almost forgot to put in The Sixth Day and Pearl Harbor -- unfortunate that I can still recall watching them. Argh.)

Wes Anderson digs through Francois Truffaut's pockets for small change in "From Truffaut's Centimes, a Wealth of Inspiration." The article is part of the "watching movies with" series from the New York Times. Wes Anderson is the sort of guy who picks a movie to watch, and tells you that he doesn't know why he chose it, and then spends the next three hours explaining the nuances which he so liked in the movie.

His latest movie The Royal Tenenbaums, about a family of depressed geniuses, the concept for which he said in Premiere was inspired by Salinger's Glass family. Yeah, and Rushmore is sort of like Holden Caulfield but not entirely? Will Wes Anderson's next movie be called "Pull down the ship's hull, boatmakers?"

Hurray, I finally figured out why my ancient junk of a machine refused to play my videos for like an eternity already. In my aforementioned trip to Greenbelt, I got myself a disk of The Sims. I loaded it, and then there was...nothing. A void. No light, no sound, no industrial light and magic. (Hehe.) I've been thinking that maybe the videocard got busted, so I trouble-shooted my way through it. Finally after many many tries, I was rewarded with a revolving 3D cube. And so now you can--

Sing all you like, sing all you like, sing all you laaahaaayyyk.

Another guilty pleasure: I was stuck in front of the tube yesterday, suffering through all the half-assed production numbers because I was waiting for Barbie of Barbie's Cradle. I caught the ads for her appearance sometime during the week. By the time Saturday rolled around, everyone at the house became a walking PDA. My brothers were telling me, "Hoy, ngayon kakanta sina Barbie." And I got up just before noon, and even my mother was like--never mind.

The noon time show's theme for last Saturday was wild wild west, and everyone was sporting cowboy hats and checkered shirts and generally getting jiggy with everything. It turns out the band wasn't there, just her. It was an acoustic segment with the girl soloists from several other bands and Aiza Seguerra. Though fan girl that I am, I missed the b.c. concert at the Music Museum because the prospect of several hundred people singing "Pagdating ng Panahon" totally revolted at the time. Plus I had some other things to do, so when I was finally free to watch the repeat, tickets were all sold out. Oh well. There will be other times.

And so after spending several months on my desk, I get to view the free VCD that came with the repackaged album. Yey! I can now sing all I like.

I'm such a fan girl.