Some pics from last night, stolen from Alexis:

Joey drunkenly STOLE the mike from someone else. There's Alia ashamed in the background.

All the rowdy children.

Chris, as ever, full of himself. “Yes, my ego really is this big.”

There’ll probably be more later.

--

rock is desperate

It seems that rock journalism is so desperate for rock to come back, and I mean decent rock, not bullshit like Creed or whatever new band is ripping off Rage Against the Machine (and badly), but good, aggressive, driving rock. The Hives, The White Stripes, and The Vines are all mentioned on the covers of the current Spin and Rolling Stone. This way they actually get to write about musicians, and not pretty people plucked by record companies to sing songs other people wrote who know how to do as they’re told and follow dance steps.

Text message from Chris: “Holy fuck, is Simone a real digital character?”

Part of Simone’s marketing campaign from New Line was to claim that Simone was indeed a digital creation. Even in the credits of the movie, it says “Simone as herself” and there’s a list of people thanked for the “creation of Simone” that includes Claire Forlani, Audrey Hepburn and Mary J. Blige (who was Simone’s “singing” voice). They even claimed she was a creation of BUF, a great effects company who did work for Fight Club. But it’s not true. Simone is played by Canadian model Rachel Roberts, and New Line fessed up only after the movie was released. And Roberts was able to promote both the movie and herself. She auditioned and got the part, she can’t sing, but she was great in I Am Pig. They also “digitized” her face a little, to give it just that hint of artificiality, removing all facial blemishes, etc. If you do decide to watch Simone and didn’t read my earlier post, stay after the credits, there’s an extra funny scene.

--

Had my orientation seminar at AIM yesterday morning. I’m taking the Managing the Arts Program, a 2-week seminar at the Asian Institute of Management. Anyway, my fears were confirmed: I am the youngest participant (I think I’m the only one below 30!), and know no one, not even by reputation (well, maybe Lulu Tan-Gan). It probably doesn’t help that I have no experience, since I graduated last March. It sounds exciting, though, and since I’ve never taken a management class, I’m curious to see how I’ll take to it. Mother hen Cecile Manikan, the Program Director and one of our professors, easily impresses with her stories of past batches and what we’re going to learn. She claims, for example, that there is a legendary half-day tutorial on managing your finances which is so good you’ll know everything about income tax, tax breaks, etc. and not just for you but whatever company you work for. My classmates come from all over: one from the Australian embassy, 3 from the CCP, one Japanese cellist, a graphic designer, two Advertising writers, etc. I’ll be meeting more classmates who didn’t attend tomorrow, when the program officially begins.

They gave me this casebook, with really thick readings, and it’s only for the first week. Shit. Here I was hoping it was going to be a breeze. While looking through it, one of the ditzier classmates of mine said, “But there are no pictures...” She was also laughing loudly at every little thing. And the classroom is freezing cold. I should’ve brought a jacket. The dancer in our class, she was wearing a sleeveless shirt and was visibly shaking in the front row (I sit at the back).

Tidbit I learned: did you know Singapore’s budget for the arts is over 100 BILLION pesos? For a country with a population of 3 MILLION? “And if you read the papers over there,” says Cecile, “the artists complain!” Jesus Christ. Let them try it here. But, the upside is Singapore admits its artists aren’t that talented, and are importing teachers from all over the world. But at least their government has this strong push in trying to establish itself as the arts capital of Asia. But Christ, think about it: with the arts budget alone they could give each citizen, even babies and the infirm, a million pesos each and there’d still be oodles left over.

Disturbing: I was in a mall around lunchtime yesterday and there was this freaky-looking woman, with pale peeling skin and red blotches on her face, definitely above 40, asking the saleslady for “Treepol X” while her son, maybe 6 years old, was asking for Not Another Teen Movie, which I haven’t seen but I know definitely has copious amounts of nudity. Brr. Well, at least I got the pirated Panic Room (the original doesn’t have many features, dammit), but unfortunately they didn’t copy the French language soundtrack, which I wanted to hear because Jodie Foster dubs herself in French. She’s that fluent. It’s frustrating that there are hardly any features on the Panic Room original DVD, because there’s so much material they could have used: Fincher’s elaborate pre-visualization process, features on photogrammetry (which was extensively used in Fight Club as well as Panic Room), and maybe some of the scenes he shot with Nicole Kidman in the role (Fincher shot 18 days with Kidman before she broke her ankle on the set of Moulin Rouge, which she was finisihing). At the very least, a commentary. Disappointing since the DVDs of Fight Club and Seven are packed with features.

--

Had a much-needed outing at Rockwell too, with (deep breath) Quark, Chris, Alia, Ernan, Joeybrash, Mich and her two interns Goldie and Hannah, Alexis, Knox, and Patricia. There was a benefit concert/fashion show for an animal society who were giving out bags and beanie babies if you registered. I wonder if Neva would’ve been interestee. Saw the Itchyworms!, Mikey and Gay, Diego Monsterbot, Mo, Sara, Shine, Zach and Aya of Imago, Fatals Donna and Annette, Maui, Diego and Camille, Jason Drilon and Tina, Criselle and Yani, Sib, even saw Paolo Cruz and Claire inside Not Page One.

The rain didn’t stop the fun. Kitchie’s filled out some, but still sings well and moves around more. Mich and her popettes were loud as usual (Goldie won an Itchyworms! CD from host Anna Shier), Joey was a ham, interfering with video crews interviewing people (he even licked the camera!), Quark was interviewed and assaulted by his ex, Mich, the popettes, Joey, and Elena, who was pushed into him, Diego and Mikey and Donna and Annette and Aya and Kitchie all modeled clothes, even on the wet catwalk. Some dogs were running around. Mich fell on the ground, tackled by the others. Alexis was taping the others, but mostly the models. Chris arrived later, when we were eating and were loud at Brothers Burger. Drinking later, beside the playground and the giant hotdog outside Holland Sausages looking forward to eating himself. Played on the wet playground, Alexis taping couples going into the bathrooms, discussion, etc. Then got tired, went home, posted.

Did you know that 20% of Filipinos want to leave this country? That’s 1 in 5, people. I suppose I started thinking about it since Paul and Jenny just left, though not permanently, and I have a good friend who lives in the US now, PJ. Mookie’s studying abroad, so is Mark Casipit, and Chris’s sisters Katie and Colleen are moving there too (the twins leave on Tuesday).

I don’t really like this country anymore. The place is beautiful, but goes unappreciated by a majority of the people in it. The crime and politics is constantly depressing, ruled by egos and short-term plans that benefit themselves. Traffic is hell. I don’t think I like living in a country where if a family member befell an accident in the house, I can’t reasonably rely on any ambulance getting here in time. Or if your house is robbed, do you honestly expect the police to do anything about finding the robbers?

Honestly, what keeps me here are my friends. If only I could move to a nicer climate and bring them all with me.

The house of one of my dad’s friends burned down to the ground early yesterday morning. It took 10 minutes for their house, and everything they owned, to disappear completely. They saved the car, though it almost went, too. The fire started because of a cat, who had been clawing away at some wires that caused a spark. 10 minutes. Jesus.

I guess this is one of those reminders to everyone else to appreciate what they have, and to be very, very careful.

And to wipe cats off the face of the earth.

Read a good article here. It’s a comics column, yes (and the best one, at that), but read the political parts. This guy hates Bush, but he’ll tell you why, and paints an interesting portrait of what can happen in the future with all these changes they’re doing to the constitution.

Today is The Hong's birthday! One day over Friday the thirteenth. Be warned. But greet him first. He may yet spare you.

And congratulate Lia! She got accepted at Road Runner.

Tinkered with the template with Neva's help, and was finally able to figure out how to add more boxes over on the left. So now my links box actually looks like it's part of the template now. And I gave my guestbook links a box, since they were practically invisible before. So if you haven't yet signed my guestbook, please do so. :)

Depressing: Infinite Matrix is in trouble. They need money. Damn. Hope they get it. Do yourself a favor and take a look around over there, especially through the archives of Richard Kadrey's Nanotales. Nanotales are really, really short stories, you can usually read them in under 3 minutes. And Kadrey is one of those vastly underrated writers who really should be (at least) back in print.

And Neva's off to Cebu for the weekend, visiting Sheryll and Mikey. :(

Have an orientation seminar tomorrow (today). Should probably get some sleep.

Jenny De Dios left for Japan yesterday, and Paul E. left for Stanford the day before that.

Shucks. I’ll miss ‘em both.

Paul E. Here’s a guy who was valedictorian of his high school batch in La Salle, which comes with a full scholarship to La Salle University, but he chooses to go to Ateneo because he knows it’s the right thing to do. He maintains a damn near impossible average. He gets the departmental award, is offered a P100,000/month job after getting his first degree, but turns it down to finish his studies in Humanities. He graduates summa cum laude. Many believe he should’ve been valedictorian, and that it was bungled by politics. He was also very active in his organization, Heights, serving in different editorial positions his last 2 or 3 years. He’s also a writer, and a fine artist. Knows how to cook. Full of general information.

Basically, the stuff of genius. He’s going to Stanford because he can, because he’s not paying for it. You know what he’s going to be doing in return for the waived tuition fee?

Study dark matter.

That’s right. You don’t know it, neither does your seatmate, or your cousin. Only people like Paul know what dark matter is, and can apply themselves to studying it so that he can get into Stanford free (it’s actually conceptual matter smaller than atoms, the space between stars or some such ambiguous description, theorized to be multiplying since the universe is literally expanding, which at one point will be so much that its generated gravity [because mass is proportional to gravity] should collapse the entire universe, including time, into a superdense point, also called the Big Crunch, the reverse of the Big Bang and the end of our existence [and the possible beginning of another]).

What’s amazing is that Paul does not have an ego. He does not have “issues.” He is down-to-Earth, approachable, amiable, funny, and one of the nicest people you’ll find. Ever, anywhere, in history. And he’s gone, to make us proud and get rich and fund our projects, hopefully. His girlfriend’s a genius, too. She’s at Georgetown now, also a scholarship. Something in chemistry.

In Paul’s “Michelle” shoebox, I found her transcript. Imagine that. He keeps her transcript.

One day they will breed genius children who will perfect cold fusion and reverse global warming, make batteries that never run out and all of us, all over the world, will be working for them.

Good thing I’m already friends with the father.

As we were leaving his house on his despedida: “You don’t have to worry about staying in touch. That’s the good thing with everyone addicted to blogging.”
--
Jenny De Dios of the mean hug, the generous laugh, the gracious smile and the kind heart that the De Dios family has patented. She and her sister Jeline are also some of the finest, nicest, most charming, most wickedly funny people you will meet. Fiercely intelligent, Jenny is nonetheless able to appreciate lowbrow humor, which is something everyone should do. She’s going to Japan to live on her own, to study. She’ll be living in an apartment all by herself, will force herself to learn how to cook, clean, launder, and other fun games. Commuting, too. She’ll be spending Christmas there, alone, traveling, seeing Japan swallowed in snow, seeing its mountains and all those other places she’s read about in Memoirs of a Geisha or Haruki Murakami novels.

I met Jenny in the Ateneo Musicians’ Pool. Jeline wasn’t in Ateneo yet. Even then she was fascinated with Japan (even looked Japanese). She lent me lots of Rumiko Takahashi stuff: Ranma ½ novels and Maison Ikkoku. For her, it’ll be the culmination of that fascination that began in high school. She’ll only be gone a year, but we’ll still miss her. And how brave, to completely and utterly immerse yourself in a separate culture for a full year, alone. I suppose the best way to learn all those domestic skills is to jump in at the deep end of the pool.

I don’t know if I could to that.

Still in a 9/11 mood. Here's Art Spiegelman's New Yorker cover after Sep. 11:

and here's the current cover, commemorating the anniversary:

ADDED: I just love this cover. It's so poignant and effective. Emphasis through absence. Unlike almost all the magazines coming out at the same time, whose covers had the towers either burning or standing upright, this cover makes you fill in the blank, and you insert your own memory of the towers into the picture. At the same time, you can appreciate its literal presentation: the new skyline. Wonderful.

And here's Art himself:

Art Spiegelman is the creator of Maus, which won a Pulitzer in 1992. Maus is one of those books that made me cry, that absolutely cemented in my mind the potency and power of comics as an art form, as a delivery device, as a way to tell a story. When I was in New York two years ago I visited his childhood home, because there was a small drawn map on the back of Maus. I don't know if anyone else has done this (though there are probably lots), but it's pretty easy if you use the map (it's in Queens). Anyway, I couldn't work up the courage to knock on the door or ring the doorbell, so I just sat there looking at it and fully realizing that Maus is non-fiction (it's about his relationship with his father as well as what his father went through in the Holocaust).

Spiegelman now lives 15 blocks away from the WTC. It was his daughter's first day at school on Sep. 11. You can imagine his fright. Wife Francoise Mouly is the art editor of The New Yorker, for which Art supplies many covers. Together they edit the Little Lit anthology series of comics stories for children (highly recommended). Art hasn't done any major comics since Maus, but he's going to be embarking on one soon, about 9/11 (which you can read about here).

I was also thinking about them, and my visit to his childhood home, that day when the towers fell. I don't know them personally, but still... you can't help but wonder about all the New York celebrities you respect and admire: Woody Allen, Robert De Niro, a lot of great indy comics creators live in Brooklyn alone (Paul Pope, Ed Brubaker, Jessica Abel, Matt Madden, etc.), Conan O'Brien...

Here's an article by Spiegelman about making the cover above.

And here's an article you should really, really read. Please. Do me this favor and read this article. He puts into words what I felt, and does it so much better than I could hope to.

9/11

It occurs to me that this is Sep. 11. Time passes so quickly, but only when you think about it like that. Otherwise, sitting in a hospital waiting room, for example, or in class, time seems to drag on forever.

It’s important to remember. The special Time issue that came out right after the attacks, the one with the black border, predominantly comprised of pictures and analyses of the terrorists’ strategy? It had an editorial at the back (unfortunately I don’t remember the writer) that I agreed with wholeheartedly. It was obviously written in the aftermath, because it was tinged with rage, but a focused, laserlike rage, and it was intelligent. The gist of it was that we should not forget our anger. We should not let this event become another Hallmark movie, a made-for-TV special, a footnote in history. He urges that we must not let go of our shock, our hatred, our anger, because that’s what’s needed to pursue this thing to its bitter end. We can’t strike blindly, we can’t accuse without anything to back it up, but the greatest insult and dishonor to those who died and suffered would be to forget. To have the importance of what happened a year ago dissipate into another socio-historical event.

For me, it’s really how I’ll remember the 21st century starting.

It was evening here. Neva happened to be at my house, and we were reading comics, when she got a text from Katrice saying that a plane had crashed into the one of the Twin Towers. Curious, we went downstairs to the living room and found my family (along with cousin Ray) already watching the tragic events unfold live on CNN. When we saw the smoke and the size of the hole and the damage, we couldn’t believe it. This has been said many times but it really did look like something out of a summer blockbuster. The first thing we did was text our friends in New York about what was happening. We weren’t particularly worried about them, because it wasn’t known yet that the crash was intentional. We texted Quark and Lia, who, with Chris and Jomi, were in class at the New York Film Academy. Steph didn’t have a phone yet. Minutes later, the second plane hit, and EVERYONE saw it. And there was no doubt that it was deliberate. That’s when we started worrying. Ray was calling his family, who were calling his sister, who now lives in New York with a family of her own. Apparently Quark and the others didn’t know yet the extent of what was going on, because phone lines got impossibly tangled, and text messaging and cellphones were the fastest way of communicating with others. We told them what happened, they couldn’t believe it, then classes were canceled and smoke was already wafting in the streets outside. There’s an almost-funny story Chris mentioned where because they were in a film school, everyone— teachers and students, filed out with their videocameras and got some footage.

Even after I took Neva home, I was glued to the screen, switching back and forth between FOX News, CNN, and the BBC. I slept at 5 AM.

The days after that, reports were pouring in from people we knew: Steph smelled burning flesh, Martin, a classmate from high school, remembers seeing flakes falling from the towers, some of which were charred pieces of paper, others were sizzling pieces of what smelled like meat. He didn’t want to consider what it might’ve been. He personally saw some of the people falling out of the towers. One of my mom’s ex-secretaries, who she was very fond of, happened to be on vacation, and her sister was with her, when she was supposed to be in one of the towers on the same day for an interview. Their divine luck was even featured in a newspaper here.

For days we were just watching those three channels.

The picture now is murky. The propaganda against Bin Laden has been so effective you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks he didn’t do it, but has there really been any hard, substantial evidence? One of the most terrifying things about the attacks is that nobody outright claimed responsibility. They didn’t want any credit, just to terrorize, and perhaps send a message to America, that it was overconfident, complacent, and most of all, just as vulnerable as everybody else. I mean, all they had were airline steak knives and pilot training, and the absolute will that is necessary to sacrifice your own life for a cause that you believe is worth it.

Attorney General Ashcroft and the Bush administration have been able to pass a lot of ridiculous laws that actually actively curtail civil liberties. Ashcroft wants the FBI and CIA practically merged, and to grant them military powers. They’ve already allowed the FBI to access your mail without your knowing it. There’s a plan to set up concentration camps (and let’s repeat that for emphasis: CONCENTRATION CAMPS) for Americans who do not “cooperate” with the efforts against terrorism, efforts that are not delineated specifically to the point that people in authority can abuse that authority , point at someone and say, “Arrest him.” And it would be done without due process, without access to a lawyer or miranda rights. Most of the American people are unaware, ambivalent, or too swept-up in the wrong kind of patriotism to complain or protest. Or they’re scared, which is worse. It’s becoming a scary place to live. Actually, it’s slowly becoming a police state.

Currently, they’re planning to invade Iraq, a move that is not supported by other countries, and the suspicion (which I’m leaning towards myself) is that it’s a move to re-consolidate American support for the Bush administration, and to divert attention from the economic woes and scandals involving Enron, Worldcom, AOL Time/Warner, hell, even Martha Stewart (it’s a crowd the Bush family has been involved in for decades, as well). The realization of the American people that you can easily be swindled by CEOs because legislation can’t keep up with the changes, the complexities, the speed of the corporate, multinational, publicly-owned-stocks world.

No one should forget those who died.

No one should forget those who aided in the rescue attempts, whether it was their job, or they were just volunteering. Even dogs died in the hundreds from the shrapnel, going through the rubble, choking on smoke, getting wounded on glass.

No one should forget the brave passengers of Flight 93, who fought against the terrorists onboard, rushing them with pillows and trays as defense.

One of the most heart-breaking moments I will take to my grave is seeing the couple falling out of one of the burning buildings, hands clasped together (of course, lots of other people jumped, and there may have been other couples holding hands. They hit the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist. Think about that for a second. A pink mist.). I keep coming back to that image whenever I think of 9/11. So many questions. Did they jump? Did they fall? Were they pushed? Did they know each other? Did one love the other? Did one have to convince the other? How bad was it inside that they decided to end their life their own way by jumping out?

What was going through their minds in the freefall?

Did they regret anything?

I wrote a story about them. One day I’ll clean it up and give it to Harvey to draw.

Months later, the new Moby album, 18, comes out. There’s a song called Sleep Alone, which I realize, after several times of listening to it, is about Sep. 11, and that couple in particular. The chorus goes

“At least we were together
holding hands
falling through the sky.”

Saw S1m0ne, which was a lot of fun, and much funnier than I expected. I'm a big fan of writer/producer/director Andrew Niccol, who wrote/directed Gattaca and wrote The Truman Show. Him and P.T. Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) came out around the same time and I remember thinking that they were the ones to watch among the new kids that year. I also love Jason Schwartzman. This is the first time I've seen him in a movie since Rushmore, since I missed Slackers. If you're going to see S1m0ne, by the way, be sure to stay until after the credits, because there's a small scene everyone but me and Neva missed. Haha. You dumb fuckers.

Now Steph Misa has a blog! Wooh! The virus spreads…

And some friends have started the Love Stories blog, where you can read about true-life love stories. They can be requited or not, but must be real, and must have something about stop-in-the-name-of-LOVE! Cool beans.

That link box of mine is getting longer…

Methinks Ozzy’s enjoying this attention a little too much. I mean, look at that. He actually put a pencil-thin mustache on himself.

”Yes, as a matter of fact I DO crave your love and understanding.”

And here’s a cute drawing of Mich while she was watching Ring (also on her blog). She just figured out how to post pictures (and right-click for a Mac) so expect her blog to be picture-happy.

The Cinemanila Wrap-Up article that we did is now up at Indiefilipino.com. Check it out, and see you at the forums.

Two for a laugh:

An Onion feature on hilarious DVD commentaries, and this pic I found for Superman fans, from Garth Ennis and Amanda Conner's The Pro:

SNAPS from Paul E.'s despedida:

Here's Ozzy's message for everyone who picked on him. Pussy.

Women Love Him, Men Want To Be Him: Sexy Man Mark Lavin.

Me shooting Carlo (o Ate Cyn, pang-Mirror Project! Ha ha).

Here's why I love Paul E. By the way, that couple in the foreground (Jomi and Krissy) inspired all the "important" scenes in Gamitan.

There's that cabinet I was talking about. Look at all the soldiers! No wonder he got such good grades (labo). From left: Alia, Jomi, Mark and Quark.

Joey Tolosa back from the dead, with Ozzy and Trinka.

Too many jokes... overwhelming... insert... own... caption here.

Me, Chris, and Trinka watching Sarah Meier. I love that couch. It's so comfortable and sinks really deep.

Neva was sleeping all over the place.

See?

These pics all came from Carlo, by the way. Click here for more pics.

MISH-MASH

I’ve not been sleeping well lately. I can’t seem to get a good, restful sleep, just shallow naps that usually get interrupted by something or other. So I end up tired a lot of the time even though I haven’t really done anything. And I just finished an application essay, something I haven’t done since I applied to Ateneo for college. Had to explain my plans to contribute to the development of arts and culture in the country. Which in itself was a work of fiction.

My brain is muddled, so I hope I remember these right:

- Imagine my surprise at seeing Ana Maria Katigbak (known to us as Mookie) on the cover of a teen romance novella. I never even would’ve noticed it if it weren’t standing beside Arnold Arre’s After Eden (which came with a poster! You could also buy some mugs). I swear I did a double-turn, and even checked the indicia to see if I was being tricked by my eyes. But yes, there was her name, and I was so tempted to buy a copy and ask her to sign it next time I saw her, just to see the expression on her face. :)

- Got to see The Bourne Identity, which I thought was a lot of enjoyable, mindless fun. I was curious to see what a Doug Liman action film would look like, since I had enjoyed his previous films Swingers and Go. Matt Damon as action star was surprisingly not as jarring as I had suspected, but the really cool thing for me was seeing Clive Owen on the big screen.

Clive Owen is the coolest motherfucking man alive. If you’ve seen the BMW film series The Hire then you know why. If not, click on over and download those babies. They’re all worth it. The best one, Wong Kar-Wai’s The Follow, is unfortunately no longer available. Anyway, Clive was a kick-ass assassin here. He was also a kick-ass valet in Gosford Park.

- After Bourne Chris, me, and Neva passed by Mich’s workroom on the 16th floor of an empty building (it was around midnight), and found her drunk with her two underage interns, playing loud music and screeching unintelligibly. The depth of their depravity sickens me, as Jerry Falwell said of Larry Flynt.

- Sweet booty from the Bookfair: Grant Morrison’s Animal Man: Origin of the Species, Peter Milligan’s Human Target: Final Cut, American Century: Hollywood Babylon, Dylan Horrocks’s The Names of Magic, Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama, and Michael Crichton’s Timeline. There were a lot more books I wanted to get, but decided against it and thought I’d keep my money for a while instead. Of course, this’ll all be gone in a few days, knowing me.

- Joey shot the pilot episode of Brash Young (insert name here) on Saturday. Who knew he was such a ham? :) But he did a good job, was lively and loud and boisterous and cantankerous and jolly and knee-slappin’. And he served some good foodes after the taping.

- Paul E.’s despedida party was a blast. It was raining but that didn’t hamper the proceedings. Good food, good friends, and general ribbing galore. Two games of chess, the last 5 minutes of Shaolin Soccer, 3 riddles, Joey Tolosa’s return from the US, much teasing of Ozzy and his pictures, and practically everyone ended up thumbing through Trinka’s script, even people who didn’t know who she was. We got to see Paul’s room, which has this closet full of every imaginable G.I. Joe and playset (if I had a friend like Paul when I was in grade school I’d’ve probably killed him). A sweet shoebox of things from his girlfriend Michelle, and I found his hidden copy of Heavy Metal, stacked underneath a bunch of Pulp issues. Paul, for shame!

- I correctly figured out who the culprits were in Gosford Park and Batman: Fugitive, and solved 2 of 3 riddles given during Paul’s despedida! Wooh! :) I coulda been a detective.

- Check it out: pics from Quentin Tarantino’s first film in six years, Kill Bill, now in production:

That’s legendary fight choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping to his right, whose wire-work for The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have revolutionized Hollywood action. Tarantino doesn’t speak Chinese, and Yuen doesn’t speak English, so they couldn’t communicate with words. They used an improvised sign language (with accompanying vocal sound effects) to discuss the fights and blocking. Cool.

Mmm… Uma.

Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were among the films that made me want to become a filmmaker. He’s a guy who used to work at a video store while writing scripts he’d send out to different producers. Though he’s been accused (and is probably guilty) of trying to be a celebrity himself, there’s no denying he’s got this immense trove of pop-culture esoterica floating in that brain of his, and look at him now: 39 and directing a chop-socky feminist revenge flick, starring one of the most beautiful women in the world and his teen idol Sonny Chiba (and if you’ve seen True Romance, which Tarantino wrote, you know how much he loves Sonny Chiba, the original Street Fighter).

Happy birthday to Maggie Costello! This younger sister of "Beer" Costello doesn't steal, and if she screams like a girl... well then that's perfectly normal, isn't it?

And the fun just don't stop: Ozzy/Mike's new picture is just as great as his first one:

"Wanna see my THIRD pistol? You'll have to look real hard to find it, though."

Lots of stuff happened. Will blog more about it later. Now tired. Must sleep.

Everyone is talking about Ozzy’s picture below. You know, the one where he’s trying to invite you into his den of sin? The one where you can smell the pomade just by looking at it? All that’s missing is the penciled-in moustache, and you’ve got the first serious competition for Raul Julia’s corpse in a Gomez Addams lookalike contest. Anyway, I liked Carlo’s caption so much I’m going to re-present the now-infamous picture with it in place of my own:

Allah peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!

I now announce this the new game! Because everyone’s just tagboarding and trying to rack up record numbers in their comments. Come up with a funny caption for this soon-to-be-legendary picture.

---

Got to see Road to Perdition tonight. Holy crap do I love it. Immaculately shot, you can’t find a single bad shot in the film. Good script, acting, sound (Dear God please don’t let yourself watch this in a theater with shitty sound): this is how you adapt something. Having read the original graphic novel it was based on (which is available at Not Page One), one of the reasons I now love the movie so much is because it had everything I wanted to see in the book (not that it’s bad, but it’s got a slightly different focus). The only thing I can complain about, and it’s a minor one at that, is that the score is a little too generous. It kept calling attention to itself, and there were some scenes where I thought it would be more effective to not have music. Sometimes it feels as if they’re only doing it for the benefit of the less-intelligent audience members who have to be cued “This is a sad scene.” Apart from that, though, this is now my favorite film so far this year.

Patay!

Mike Arcilla, aka Ozzy, aka Bitch No. 2, has a blog din pala. But beware, it's not for females, children, or those with pacemakers. Much of it makes no sense and constitutes the kind of navel-gazing hardcore bloggers love. Ahh... you know I mean well, don't you, Oz?

Bitch.

You have to go to his blog! If only to see this picture of him in his "latin lover suave seductor" mode:

"Would you like to fiddle with my... violin?"

BWAHAHAHA!!!! That's just...
BWAHAHAHA!!!

Oh, and Joeybrash just announced that he's shooting an episode of Brash Young Cinema-- the TV show, this Saturday at 2, so come on over to hoot 'n holler!

Alright, let's get back to slagging Chris! Just awhile ago in Ateneo, he was going to steal a tennis ball he had picked up at the tennis courts, then threw it back, saying "This'll just get blogged, e." How right he was!

Cool link: if you want to see the super-cool title sequence of David Fincher’s Panic Room, click here. Quicktime required.

Visited Ateneo today. I still don’t miss the place. It didn’t help that it was fucking hot and traffic was everywhere. I hate how they keep accepting more and more students while doing nothing about the worsening traffic situation. It’s just ridiculous. Too bad, Sir Mark was home sick and I wasn’t able to properly thank him for his gift. But me and Chris got to see Julia, and got some tsismis and gave some back, and showed her all of our blogs. The entry below was posted while in her office. That’s where Chris was whining “There’s always something negative about me in each post” blah blah blah… so I wrote that thing about his family below, and of course, we bump into Maggie (his sister) outside Julia’s office. Then we ran into Trinka and sexy man Mark Lavin, spied on Nancy Castiglione for a bit, got some foodes, picked up my bro, stopped by CCHQ and went home.

I hate driving, and I hate this weather.

Oh yeah, Quark will be teaching a class at Ateneo next sem. I think DV Filmmaking. So if you’re still a student there or know someone who is, tell them to sign up. Some other batchmates who are going to be teaching: Camille Faylona at Thames (TV Production) and Chiko Lara at Assumption High (English?). And so the corruption of young minds continues...