youthful persuasion

i was slated to do some workout this morning, an exercise video was recorded for me by my chef cum cuddly bear. but rather than sweat out the unwanted and undulating adipose tissues in my mid-section, i tried to read my e-mails instead, a terribly passive undertaking. i traced no significant communication bits in my inbox but i still kept on surfing and chanced upon some interesting and profound pieces by some exemplary adolescence. it's enlightening to see these kids reach such profundity in their teens and twenties. i wasn't able to reach that level of maturity when i was younger. it was truly an edifying and uplifting read. you go out looking for silver and you find gold. now i've got to prep for my workout and joust for space amongst the hampsteadites.

deducing others

i've been hopping around movie review sites the last week and a half. the surge in blogging technology has made it possible for anybody to write and comment about any movie. in ancient times, we wait long and hard for broadsheets and tabloids, to get a critic's opinion on a certain project. how one qualifies to be a critic is still blurry for me to comprehend. he might be just like an ordinary folk, a movie fan, plucked from the tedious regulars but at least compensated slightly to share his likes and dislikes to a captive audience.

but it's too difficult to be completely objective. a review would always be riddled with all the impartialities embedded in the core. i've dropped upon one director's blog and he's a bit hurt by a few corrosive words against his film written by a former colleague he thought was his friend. what the auteur wrote in response actually hit the target, "if you know so much, why don't you make your own movie?" yeah, why not. let us see the hidden talent earmarked and lifted from quotes from film bibles, authored not by spielberg nor corsese and definitely not by paul thomas anderson, but some rather obscured academes and theorists.

peque gallaga ( i believe it's a sin not to include oro plata mata in the ten best pinoy films) once stated in flip magazine that people who make good reviewers are people like marilou diaz abaya, joey reyes and don escudero who really know their movies. he continues "but they are directors already. so, like, reviewing would be a step down the Food Chain. i'm not being facetious. the tragedy of a lot of film criticism in the philippines is that it is being done by mass com teachers and others who desire to be directors. much of their work is characterized by how they would have handled a cinematic problem. this is real tragedy because no real interchange is going on and directors are not learning parties who really love movies as an end in itself.""

and i totally adore joey reyes as a passionate observer of existential ditties. i wish he finds the time to blog again, with reflections his revering public would surely drool and enjoy. i always look forward to his facebook quizzes. i don't do well but they're quite hard anyway. at the moment i'll just re-read every now and then, midlife outtakes and mistakes, his compilations of essays published a few years ago.

i'm basically a fan. of a dancer. an actress. a comic. a writer. but not necessarily a director. if i don't like the main stars, i'm out. i don't even dare watch. just like anybody with a severe affliction of shameless fanaticism. you cannot rejoice in a gooner win when you're a tottenham supporter. it's my rule that if you have nothing nice to say, just keep your opinions to yourself. i once made a negative review of a favorite star's film once. but it only happened once and it still makes me ruminate whether it was right to comment. however if the director's is your friend and your critique no matter how constructive hurts a lot of people even the lead star who doesn't open her laptop often and i presume, take legitimate criticisms objectively, but replied out of being hurt herself and to defend her director-friend (which is very normal if you're a human being) was branded ungracious by one multiplier. i totally get her drift. the production venture was a laborious process, much more so if you were stranded in an island.

if you will only ruffle feathers with a friend, it's not worth spraying negative remarks just to practice grammar skills. the old adage is right, nobody's perfect. reviews are always personal, it's never only about work (walang personalan, trabaho lang are mere lines in a daboy movie). we all know that work is competitive by nature.

dodging the sun

this is england at its finest. it's totally taboo to use an umbrella under the intense heat of western sun but i might be tempted in this weather. the clothing of choice is the tube or the tank top for the ladies while the men are virtually shirtless. during bank holiday monday, one lady lounging in the park was wearing a bikini. it wasn't hot enough for a bikini but my prudish senses were once again impossibly enraged. back home, the beauty counters are filled with whitening creams and lotions as the masses and social climbers adore the mestiza look. while here in the land of four seasons, it's littered with tanning lotions as a tanned skin means wealth and privilege. if one's rich you can afford to go on pampered holidays. i get dark easily in bacolod by just stepping outside our porch. oh, i forgot we don't have a porch. so it's just our door.

these are days to cherish. the shorter nights propel the dance movements long been dormant inside my enfeebled spirits to come alive. in other words, i just need a bit of exercise. i'm getting really chunky. the world is not very kind if you're not as reed-thin as celebrity blogger super b. our metabolism simply slow down in our thirties. i don't mind being this old. i knew how it was not to gratify my cravings years ago, i dropped my weight significantly. it's not fair that an activity like reading isn't a calorie-reducing fare. guess, i'll just succumb to window shopping.

video deviation

it has been ages since i've watched a film in the cinemas. was it because i was burned from the third star wars prequel which cost a fortune when we dropped by at odeon's leicester square? could be. i would love to have gone and see there will be blood but i was submerged in my routines. nothing's catching my fancy at this moment. but thank goodness for the dvd. i still get to indulge in a few flicks that i had ticked in my catalog. the procurement process is just taking a bit longer, stretching to a year for some features. i wait for the prices to drop, which isn't model attitude. but before i can savor and experience its essence, time flies in sweeping motion and there it is, the dvd, discounted.

Knocked Up was one tearful experience. i was bawling during the end credits that i forgot it was a comedy ( i always cry when it comes to baby talk). this is the first time i've seen katherine heigl act again since my father, the hero with gerard depardieu (i don't subscribe to grey's anatomy feed or even roswell before that). seth rogen, the chubby geek who penned superbad with evan goldberg, fits the lovable loser role perfectly. there is always the danger that actors tackle every assignment in similar fashion i. e. the drew barrymore i saw in never been kissed share the nuances with the lovely heroine in the wedding singer. that goes with all the ben stiller comedies as well. but the seth rogen who played the lead ben in knocked up was far removed from the bumbling cop in superbad. knocked up is a poignant peek at the slacker lifestyle. it is quite believable in its undertones, men by nature are always pulled towards the swimsuit models orbit or the virginal beauties unfettered by the sophistication of the urbane and esoteric. while women on the inside despite the beautiful facade tends to get insecure hence the nagging, the bitching and the moaning.

other than the dreams of blokes to covet perennial trophy wives, is my ardent wish for a romcom with a central lisa simpson or a meg griffin character, walking away not necessarily with the hugh grant conundrum. he could be a slovenly charmer straight out of reality, not reality tv. i wonder how that dynamic would work on screen?

micro-blogging

for the last few days, i was just glued to the computer screen. rather than write something decent or study, i've been infiltrating the pop culture blogosphere. i can't remember what i've been reading anymore -- reviews, gossips, relevant news, profiles, the meanderings of the A-lists and wannabes. i've been surveying celebrity blogs, more like stare at their photos really. some of them post a select gallery of their travels. i couldn't paint singapore with all the trimmings and romanticism as regular tourists like them do. to me, there's no such phantasm as a poetic vision of the london tubes, specially not during the peak of the rush hour. the outsider point of view is always straight out of a van gogh work of art. but those trapped within the confines of the ghoulish structures and behaviors are jaded from the persistent encounters not only with some emulous specifics but with the paradigm of baby jane hudson.

high school trekking

as it has nearly been 20 years since i've graduated from high school, i've been snooping around the web trying to track down all my classmates to show interest in our alumni activities. it's not an easy job considering we're scattered all over the globe and live in different time zones. it's not actually quite 20 years yet but we have to get down to business in preparation for hosting our silver jubilee. with the influx of a variety of technological innovations since we were in our teens, the communication process would be deemed much easier to conduct and operate. but it's not. e-mails are left hanging. texts evaporates into thin air. in this age of social networking, one is acutely aware the last time a friend last logged-in unto their friendster profiles. but there are those very few who responded with unbridled fervor and enthusiasm. with the warm response, i'm immensely grateful. there are reunion photographs from the centennial six years ago i couldn't trace. the hours i'm laboring unearthing classmates details and photographs pins me away from specified chores and errands.

our class has a yahoo group since may 2002, all the messages are intact but the photo attachments from that year are all gone. the methods in saving photos merely half a decade ago are already primitive compared to today. if only our previous homepage is still running. yes, we had a website before. but you know how registered domain names work. starting over from scratch isn't like learning a new slang, more like embedding a new language in one's consciousness.

i was looking at websites of the younger batches. i chanced upon one of my brothers. he's six years younger. the site was talking about stars and constellations and such. we were three years or was it four years removed from such curriculum experimentation. but then we expect the younger generation to be more tech savvy than older graduates like us who were schooled in the milieu and rudiments of snail mails, typewriters and unreliable telephone landlines. however after undergoing a fabulous makeover, a sense of rejuvenation pervades the air. the work would ultimately be rewarding and well worth it.

web totterings

it has been a while since i've clicked the buttons for some E! channel fix, add to that some news conduits i just loved to focus on with laudable reports and documentaries about the state of the world. but with deluge of the number of television channels available for all of us to spend our much-valued idle hours, to be stuck on just one is rather limiting our growth as observers of current and historical events.

however pinoy showbiz is moving on a reversed path, it's still embedded in the dark ages of the studio system. people are drawn to network rivalries much more now than ever before. i can still recall in my youth when no such thing as a hideous network war exist, fans weren't as mean and derogative. these followers with web connections have been molded into a malevolent cluster of denigrators in forums and comments sections. i've tackled this subject before. draped and hidden in anonymity, detractors freely post noxious remarks. there's no excuse for crass comments.

however fans are eternally deluded despite negative publicities on their favorite stars, just as i still watch mel gibson movies. at the end of the day, one's body of work says it all. our views will always differ, as we're divided by hemispheres in this planet. east is east and west is west.