BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Dawn of the Dead has dislodged The Passion from number 1. Someone should re-release this soon and cash in on the B-movie-horror/ bible epic revival!
Saturday, March 20, 2004
I didn't know half of these things about the school:
The university has attracted more international students over the years than any other American university. Currently, 16 percent of USC's students represent over 115 countries, with a present total enrollment of about 30,000 students.
... that's the 16 percent in the library studying every night haha... and living in the crappy dorms...
There have been more Trojans in the Olympics than any other American university
Most recently, the band produced an instrumental version of the popular song "Hit That" by The Offspring (whose lead singer is a USC alum), and it appeared with Outkast at the 2004 Grammy Awards in their hit song "Hey Ya!".
Cool!
...75 years impressive din, sino kaya ang commencement speaker...?
Thursday, March 18, 2004
I am looking forward to going home later tonight and watching TRIPPING THE RIFT! You have to love a show where the 3D animators bother to animate the girl character's boobs bouncing around.
Lab ko ang 80's
Masaya ang presscon ng Rewind concert na ginawa sa Ratsky Morato noong Lunes. Nagbigay ng sample sina Randy Santiago na kumanta ng Hindi Magbabago; Louie Heredia, who sang his first single Reasons; Gino Padilla na umawit ng The Closer I Get; Jett Pangan who did Salamat; at Raymond Lauchengco na kumanta ng Farewell. Absent si Juan Miguel Salvador, na may show raw sa Davao...
Ang saya saya! Kawawa naman si Jett Pangan nadamay pa haha. Ba't wala si KENO?!? Kulang din si Carlo Orosa. At dapat back-up dancers ang Knapsacks led by Jojo Alejar! Ang malungkot nito ay na-realize ko na memorize ko pa rin ang Hindi Magbabago. At Babaero. At alam ko pa ang orig na host line-up ng Lunch Date. At may panahon nung gradeschool na lahat ng limang piso ko ganito ang itsura. Kakahiya.
For the young who want to
Marge Piercy
Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
"Just what you need for the phenomenon of discovering in real space if you have a community,"
I wonder if in the future this will make it easier for people to hook up... say you want to get to know a girl, in the mall... if say Friendster stats are loaded into your phone in a BuddySpace sort of way and you know from your phone that that girl windowshopping is a degree away from your friend and that she likes, say, New Wave music and soy lattes... would you come up to her and say, 'hi you know my officemate and I know you're part of the online, uh, Roland Orzabal fan community... Wanna talk about the new reunited Tears for Fears album over some Starbucks lattes?"... or would that make you extra frustrated, that you know this girl's likes and how many degrees she is from you but you still can't make a move...
Use the comments box to answer the poll of the day: can technology save people from ka-torpehan? haha
Monday, March 15, 2004
Architectural Viewmaster Retro Coolness!
* I think a great part of my early years was spent looking through a Viewmaster, playing over and over again the same few reels that we had. I remember a Batman one, and then there was one which had images from Disney movies... With 3d imaging in everything I wonder if kids these days still get a kick out of looking through these.
Bored Bill
At that convention yesterday, there was this familiar looking guy sitting behind one of the tables doing a crossword puzzle. He had his feet up on the chair, his back hunched, his face in a bored-as-fuck scowl. After a double take I realized it was David Carradine. Nobody was asking for his autographs. Nobody was even making him pansin when I saw him there. It was pretty sad. I mean, this is BILL of KILL BILL.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Some Good in this World
At the Shrine comic-con today I caught Sean Astin doing a Q and A session with his fans. He came off as a warm, friendly guy. It would have been a supreme letdown if he turned out to be a prissy ass since he's so pure of heart as Samwise. What was an eye-opener to me was how much his fan base crosses generations. Donna has mentioned how he used to be a Tiger Beat type 80's matinee idol but I had to see it to believe it. There were girls in their late twenties/ thirties gushing about how they grew up with the Goonies. And he fielded several questions from girls like these about a Goonies sequel (which incidentally a friend of mine made concept art for a Goonies sequel pitch to Steven Spielberg so it really is in development as Sean mentioned). Then, you have the thirteen-year old girls who couldn't contain themselves and kept asking Sean for a hug (Moderator: What's your question to Sean? Girl: Sean, can you give me a hug?... question ba yun?) These girls who were hugged would have been toddlers during the '85 release of the Goonies and adore him for being Samwise. In this world of washboard abs and Atkins diets, I love seeing pudgy guys achieve success and win over girls' hearts.
After the comic-con I went over to the Grove to join a few of my classmates in watching the Passion. I was skeptical coming in, I hemmed, I hawed, I tried to back out at the last minute. It was like someone was dragging me to a Bible study. Suffice it to say, I was floored. I cried, I thought about God, I remembered all my CLE (Christian Life Education) classes, I had new insight into Christ's death, and I marveled at Mel Gibson's passion for the material. I can't judge the movie at face value, I think it would lack a lot of things if I didn't come into the theater with 28 years of being a Pinoy Catholic under my belt with close to 12 years of Jesuit education. I'm not a religious man, in fact I haven't gone to Church in weeks, I haven't read the bible since, maybe, grade 7, and Christian doctrine is so ingrained in our culture that I take it for granted. The Passion took all those things that I kinda knew in my head, all the stuff they taught you in CLE, and put them in an idiom I can understand - cinema. The filmmaking is solid. Given the breadth of the material, I think Mel Gibson did some really inspired choices of what to put in and what to leave out. And he has one shot - what I call the Eye of God shot - which is both subtle and majestic and I think is a flourish worthy of Orson Welles. I've stared at so many Stations of the Cross variations in my life, but all the detail, all the humanity of the biblical Passion play has never been so real to me until this film. This is the cinematic equivalent of the old masters' paintings depicting biblical stories - the iconography is evinced, but yet there are bursts of humanity also manifest, all in in gloriously beautiful images.
Much has been said about the gore, but for Pinoys who see real world flagellation and crucifixion scenes every Lent, this is par for course. In fact, this film is a cinematic flagellation. My old UP prof the late great Hammy Sotto always talked about how most cinema - esp. melodrama - is ritual, it is like going to mass, we know how films turn out because film genres have set codes but we still go to relive the highs and lows of the ritual and feel redemption. For people who already believe in Christ's story, watching this film will be like going to mass, or going through the stations of the cross. I don't think this film will sway anyone not in the fold already, but for believers (even the half-hearted or non-practicing ones) it makes things visually palpable and relevant. I don't think this is historically accurate and I don't really care, since when did you look for historical accuracy in the Bible? It is also not subtle at all, but why ask for subtelty in the retelling of the Passion? But I do hope, with the money this is reaping, that other bibilical films come out, films that are more subtle, more nuanced, I hope the Gospel of Mel doesn't become doctrine through sheer box office.
And I do have some reservations about the Devil in the film and he/she kept reminding me of the Power Puff Girls' enemy 'Him' and I wonder if it would have been better to have made him a sort of an unseen force of nature the way Gibson treated God the Father. I like how Gibson handles Jesus' character though... even if Gibson plays by the book and keeps Jesus largely iconic, there are hints of a schizo-psychotic personality when he's talking to God alone, as well as a general sense that Jesus was just a really nice gentle guy who was burdened with tremendous responsiblity.
Come to think of it, Samwise and Jesus shared the same fate. Jesus had to carry a heavy cross on his back up a hill after being betrayed and beaten up, while Sam, after being betrayed and beaten up, had to carry an indecisive wide-eyed Hobbit.
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam:
I know.
It’s all wrong.
By right we shouldn’t even be here.
It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really matters.
Full of darkness and danger they were.
And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy?
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.
A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you that meant something.
Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t.
They kept going because they were holding on to something.
Frodo:
What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam:
That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo.
And it’s worth fighting for.
Amen to that.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Gone, gone o form of man/ rise the demon Etrigan
I was reading about how DC just revived the Swamp Thing series and it made me want to sketch out old Swampy.
Now I'm itching to draw Etrigan.
Friday, March 12, 2004
asenso na ako... pero paano ibahin yung code para hindi 'comments' ang text?
R.I.P. NOWHERE MAN
One of our professors passed away yesterday. He co-taught History of Animation and was the leading resource on abstract animation and visual music. He was the one with the really trippy abstract stuff that would put a lot of us to sleep if we were up all night or put you in a trance if you were in the right mindset (or smoked the right things). Although they weren't exactly my kind of films the stuff he would teach and show made me think about my views on film a lot. People approach film as a child of literature, with a focus on narrative, story, characters. Why shouldn't it be closer to music? Fantasia was a step in the direction, but the stuff we saw from him were just out and out abstract, imagine Miro paintings moving around or Pollock. And really, a lot of the pioneering abstract techniques are regurgirated time and again in contemporary motion graphics, tv-spots, commercials and music videos. I am grateful that my mind was opened up to the possibilities of the medium through his teachings and the films he helped promote and restore.
What the obituaries miss is that he was the inspiration for the NOWHERE MAN character in Yellow Submarine. He was a dancer and an animator during the time the film was made. The resemblance of this character to him is actually a bit unnerving. He also kind of struck me as the Nowhere Man in spirit. In a world that demands stories from their images, he was forever championing the cause of visuals as visuals as music for the eye.
The Fab Four with the Nowhere Man
I was imagining our ShiTzu Cotton as a Sanrio character. Stole the funny tag line from the Sanrio website. HAHA.
I miss Cotton.
I want to plaster this all over LA like that Andre the Giant image nobody could understand.
x
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
PIXAR + SUPERHEROES + BRAD BIRD from the Iron Giant... damn, I'm so excited!
"Perfect World"
INDIGO GIRLS
We get to be a ripple in the water
We get to be a rock that's thrown
We get to be a boy on the bridge
Standing over the reservoir
I see the water lapping on the shoreline
Buried forest of a man made lake
Cemeteries are laying underneath it
Your heart like a damn embrace
We're floating we're swimming
And at this moment we are forgetting
What we caused what it takes
The one perfect world when we look the other way
I'm okay if I don't look a little closer
I'm okay I if don't see beyond the shore
I'm okay I don't have to do the killing or
Know what the killing is for
We're talking we're driving
And in this moment we are denying
What we caused what it takes
The one perfect world when we look the other way
One perfect world...when we look the other way
You can see beyond the middle isolation
And the miracle of daybreak doesn't move you anymore
Connect the points and then see the constellations
As the night comes down on the reservoir
We're swimming we're floating
And in this moment we are beholden
To what we've caused to what it takes
The one perfect world
Can we learn to live another way
Perfect world...can we learn to live another way
One...perfect world
Get to be a ripple in the water
***
Mukha na talaga silang manang, pero wala pa ring tatalo.
Monday, March 08, 2004
Multong Bakla
Putang ina... napa-check ako ng Friendster ulit after a long time, tignan ko kung baka may mga nahuli sa bandwagon. May isa akong message, at may isang friend request. Yung message si Lin! Natuwa ako, kasi nung isang gabi lang naisip ko na namiss ko na si Lin, ang tagal ko na siyang hindi nakakausap. So tuwa ako, di ba. Akala ko yung friend request siya din. Pero na pa talon ako sa silya ko ng makita ko kung sino ang nag-request. Putang ina nabuhay ang aking tinataguang ex-editor-in-chief! Tumugtog ulit ang 'The Youth' sa utak ko... Matagal na ang isyung ito at ang tagal ko ng di nakakausap 'tong taong ito, pero every year parang nadadagdagan pa din ang kuwento kahit kaunti, nung isang taon, nung isang Pasko may padala pang pastillas sa bahay. Nung huling Pasko wala na, akala ko finally tapos na, tapos sumulpot sa e-mail, siyempre deadma, ngayon sa friendster... Ano ba yan, tantanan na ako puede ba.
Mean ba mag-'no' sa request? Homophobic? Di ko na lang pansinin?
Sunday, March 07, 2004
Our batch threw a faux belated wedding reception for Ramiro and Reena last night. I was assigned to supply the caricature and mount it on a card people would sign. This is how it turned out:
*he's holding this contraption he always carries around to drink a tea called Mate(sp?- pronounced like Matet pero wala yung last 't', shet buntis at kasal na pala si Matet), and the small kid on the side is from his first film.
They've been living together for almost three years now. He's Argentinan, she's American, she's catholic, he's an aetheist, they were wed in a Chinese temple here in LA by a buddhist monk. She wore a tiongsam, he wore a red tie. If they were to choose a religion, he said, it would be Buddhism that's why they chose the monk to adminster the rites. It's the most multicultural wedding I've ever heard of and it was followed by an equally culturally-mixed reception.
Since they didn't have a formal reception, it being a small wedding with a handful of friends, the animation girls decided to throw a party, have them do the bouquet and garter and first dance thing and wear their wedding clothes again. I think the Asian girls just wanted to try their hand at baking a layered wedding cake. They succeeded beautifully. It was a pot luck affair at Vickie's place, so the food on the table was a mix of vegetarian pizzas, Hungarian caserole, gyoza, a Chinese cabbage dish cooked in some Korean sauce, spinach quiche, pita bread, hummus, cheesecakes and the wedding cake. The dancing started out with tango, went into trance, segued into Earth, Wind and Fire and ended with Ladytron after Sterling decided to go back to his pad and get some hip dance music. We had bubbles and balloons flying around while dancing and we capped the night with that drinking game where you clap in a circle and the direction changes if you clap twice yadda yadda.
By the end of it, most everyone regardless of nationality was properly buzzed. Love and alcohol bridge all cultural gaps.
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
This is what we have come to in this country of our afflictions, where young (28), bright (magna cum laude in Medicine) offspring of middle-class professionals (teachers in mathematics, science and English), yet unencumbered by the challenges of life (single, no children), throw in the towel before even putting up a fight.
What a sellout.
I really don't think that just because this guy topped the medical exams he deserves to be cannon fodder for the Inquirer's op-ed page. It's not like he's running for office. Then again, the wave of people, especially doctors, going into nursing is pretty sad. This morning I was reading about outsourcing in Time Magazine and all these Americans are complaining about their jobs being robbed from them. So we have jobs thrown to the Philippines and then we have the States importing nurses from the Philippines. All these programmers griping about losing jobs to Asia should just take up nursing.
Monday, March 01, 2004
Happiness is a talking dog.
