1827 days later and I still don’t know how it happened;
still reeling,
still going,
“Wow.”

:D

Scholastic is having a 3-day Book Fair from Feb. 28 – Mar. 2 (Mon. – Wed.) at Studio 1 Plaza (where is this?). According to the email I read, you can reserve Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince at a lower price than the bookstores are offering (which makes sense, since Scholastic is both the publisher and distributor of said book). I wish I could find out if they’ll have the colorized Bone volumes on sale…

If you go here you can read, for free, the first issues of Tom Strong, Top 10, and Tomorrow Stories, all written by Alan Moore. Good stuff.

An oldie but a goodie. Found it again while looking for something else.

National Lampoon argues quite convincingly that Superman Is A Dick.

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It is mildly frightening that some people are saying that Constantine is a good film. I generally agree with Tasha Robinson’s review. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; I hear that there are actually some people who think the last 2 Matrix movies (aka Those That Shall Not Be Named) were movies (some of those few actually say it’s good! Imagine that, Mark Lavin.). It’s a little bit more aggravating when I hear that some of the people who recommend Constantine are comics readers. Which can be, in a way, a sort of test. If you liked Constantine, you are in no way a John Constantine fan.

It’s bad. The story’s a mess. The worst thing about it is Keanu. The best thing it’s got going is a competent, better-than-expected visual style (that unfortunately somewhat peters out at the end). That and Rachel Weisz. And I’m sorry, but when is Hollywood going to learn that the only thing less scary than CG demons is the Care Bears? The only time I remember CG creatures having a genuine effect is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But here they’re just laughable (they’re brainless, too!). And, might I add, possibly the most cliché conception of Hell I’ve seen. Oh, yes, red, fire, post-apocalyptic wasteland, etc. Souls burning. That’s bad enough, but good GOD, did you see Heaven? Actual clouds and spires! Sunlight! It looks like the most boring place in imagination! In the beginning, there were still some actual touches: Constantine not holding the elevator for Isabel, for instance. But then later, it’s like, buy him some eggs, and he’ll tell you his whole fucking life story! WHO IS THIS MAN!?

I hope people are more careful with the word “good.” You know, reserve it for what really deserves it. Because Constantine, even if I wasn’t a comic fan, even if I wasn’t a John Constantine fan, is a bad Hollywood film. And when we claim that bad shit is good, that just lowers the bar further and gives Hollywood more license to churn out shit. I’m glad that in the US, Constantine’s first weekend box office take (extended, since it came out earlier) couldn’t outperform the supposedly-also-tepid Hitch, which was on its SECOND week, for the top slot. Still, word is they’re going to try and make it a franchise too. If so, poor John Constantine (the character); he really is damned.

I know in the end it’s really just a matter of taste. I just wish we had better.

Good, on the other hand, is too small a word for Alexander Payne’s Sideways. I’m glad I didn’t read up on this; I didn’t want to build an expectation. I just knew that I hadn’t seen an Alexander Payne film I hadn’t liked yet, and this one definitely did not disappoint. I know nothing about wine, but it doesn’t matter. The film’s not about that anyway. It’s difficult for me to actually talk about; I’d rather people just went out and watched it. Experience it for themselves. I’ve found that different people take different things from it, which is certainly the mark of a great film, if anything. It works on a number of levels, but even the superficial one is meaty enough for at least 3 films.

I hope to see Aviator tonight, though that 3-hour running time is a doozy when you’re not in the mood.

For some reason, Love Me If You Dare, a film I was really looking forward to, is playing at SM City, AND NOWHERE ELSE. WTF?

I've been quoted on a banner ad for the Haruki Murakami website. How strange. And I caught it on the Bookslut blog, no less, where I often go. Cool. I was happy enough getting translated into Italian, but this is cool/weird too. It's also (so far) turned up on Stereogum and Metafilter, and get this: one on Metafilter is on a page discussing a friend of mine, resident genius and sweetheart Genie Ranada, whose costume has been seen by so many people around the world she keeps crashing picture host sites and has become her own meme.

Though I wonder how many people have curiously clicked on the link and went "Whuh--? It's just some dude's blog!"

I want to see Tetsujin 28 (known elsewhere as Gigantor). What is it about robots and boys?

Another Edgar Wright video for Charlotte Hatherley, "Summer." Her songs are a bit too long, but sometimes I'm reminded of Juliana Hatfield. And I was staring at her for a while, wondering why she seems familiar, when I realized: she's the guitarist of Ash.

Finally, the trailer for Hitchhiker's Guide is up on Amazon, this time with people. It looks good; I like the cast a lot. And the release date's been moved up to April. :)

Sin City (film) website now live.

Here's the schedule for Eiga Sai (Akira Kurosawa!) at UPFI (I'm too lazy to put this much at a time in the remember! box):
23 February Wednesday 4 p.m. Doomed aka To Live (Ikiru)
23 February Wednesday 7 p.m. The Bad Sleep Well
24 February Thursday 4 p.m. Not Yet (Madadayo)
24 February Thursday 7 p.m. Judo Saga
25 February Friday 4 p.m. Doomed aka To Live
25 February Friday 7 p.m. High and Low
26 February Saturday 1 p.m. Doomed aka To Live
26 February Saturday 4 p.m. Rashomon
26 February Saturday 7 p.m. Seven Samurai
28 February Monday 4 p.m. Not Yet
28 February Monday 7 p.m. Stray Dog

Congratulations go to Erwin Romulo for the Camiling Story premiere last Tuesday. Mel Chionglo, Eddie Romero, Lav Diaz, Ricky Davao, etc. were all in attendance. It was my first time to lay eyes on Mike De Leon. Was also nice to see some people I've not seen in a while: Cecile, Trinka, Gay, Kathy. And hopefully we've convinced (or bullied) Joey into reopening Brash. Come on, man! Shallow Grave!

I liked Camiling Story better this second time around. And the trailer for Rico Ilarde's Sa Ilalim ng Cogon made me want to see it.

"Wow. United Colors of Benetton." - Neva, upon seeing Bloc Party's members for the first time (and yes, I've still been listening to "So Here We Are" a lot)

And something funny to end this post. My favorite's "Aikin-Johnson."

If you're not doing anything at 6 PM this Tuesday, Feb. 15, trot your ass over to the NCCA in Intramuros (633 Gen. Luna) for the premiere of Erwin Romulo's Camiling Story, starring Diego Mapa! With Yvonne Quisumbing-Romulo's short Puey preceding! Free entrance, open to the public, how can you beat that deal? Not even a dress code!

Neva and I went to CDy's exhibit opening last Saturday waay over at The Cubicle. It's the first of her "Short Time" series of exhibits, and it's an interesting assembly of work, charcoal pieces of a man undressing. It slowly dawned on me that though presented as fine art (which it is), it's also sequential art, meaning the exhibit is a comic strip. As you start on the ground floor and make your way upstairs (there's even a piece hanging on the wall of the stairway, so you have to stop there too), the man gradually loses all his clothing, and the coup de gras is a powerful POV shot I hope never to experience firsthand. I think it's terrific; beyond unifying the pieces with a strong theme, it makes it more interactive, and there's more of a narrative, though you can appreciate each work individually as moments/glimpses. So it works on multiple levels. They even painted the walls of the gallery specific colors to contrast with the works and try to capture the ambience/atmosphere of a motel. Kudos to CDy! You can see some of her works at her online gallery, but if you can drop by The Cubicle to check out the exhibit, do so.

Speaking of CDy, she named a teddy bear after me! Meet Mon-Mon:

Complete with zippers and chain!

She gave me the prototype a few months back, but it hasn't left Neva's possession. I wanted to post about it, but decided to wait until it was for sale already in UFO. Which it is. Check out her other stuffed stuff at BOMBA!

I've never had a sadomasochistic teddy bear named after me before. It's quite a thrill and honor.

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Dear God. Looks like it's really happening.

Batman Begins Super Bowl TV Spot
War of the Worlds Super Bowl TV Spot
Bud Light ad banned from the Super Bowl

Rebecca Miller's The Ballad of Jack & Rose

An eerie short, Muppets Overtime

Shockingly funny news (actually not so shocking)

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I've abandoned my Global Frequency email ad, for those who were using that to contact me. I'm still using the Hotmail and Gmail ones, and still get Friendster notifications, or you could just comment here, if so inclined.

It was a little weird. The Global Frequency account was mostly for work. But I also ended up using it as a repository for reference and stuff I thought I might need later on. Research, weblinks, addresses, etc. But cleaning it out I found stuff I'd completely forgotten about in the 2 years I've had it: correspondence from Dave McKean's producer, account info for a site I registered for but completely forgot about, a reply to someone I hardly knew who chose to come out of the closet to me, and an angry email from Neva that contained 29 instances of the word "fuck," "fucker," or "fucking." It was a bit arduous, and that was just for an account I've had for a little over 2 years. If I had to clean out my original email account, the one I've had ever since I got on the web ('94 or '95), it would take forever and be, I expect, quite painful. In this regard these email accounts are almost like diaries or photo albums. Gmail's especially structured in this way, with conversations considered one file and the ability to store a LOT of detritus.

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I finished Peter Biskind's Down & Dirty Pictures after about 2 weeks. It's a nice thick book, the one he was promoting when I met him at the Edinburgh Book Festival last August, but it was only in hardcover then and I couldn't afford it. Got it at the recent Powerbooks sale. It concerns the era during which I fell in love with film ('90s), so it was very interesting to read the behind-the-scenes dramas and hilarity concerning some of my favorite movies. Very dishy and very much worth it.

After that I barreled through Michael Chabon's The Final Solution, which Neva got me in Singapore. I loved it. It's just a short novella, but impeccably written, just a wonderful homage to the whole detective genre. I love that he really integrated the setting and times into the story, not focusing just on the "case" that the aging Sherlock Holmes (never mentioned by name, but all the hints are there in the beginning) was working on. And the triple-meaning of the title was inspired. After winning the Pulitzer for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which is one of my favorite books EVER, Chabon seems to have stuck very much to genre fiction, looking at his output: his next work was the young adult fantasy Summerland, then he edited the genre anthology for McSweeney's, and now The Final Solution. What I love is that he's brought this unabashed, unapologetic poetic lyricism to genre fiction. His writing style might strike some as too elaborate, but I like it that way. It doesn't flow as effortlessly as, say, Auster or Murakami, but that works to its advantage: sometimes you can read it out loud, slowing yourself down and just enjoying the arrangement of such-and-such sentences, or a clever turn of phrase, things that don't usually occur in genre fiction, which tends to more often than not be all about plot. Chabon's been great at introducing characterization and writing style as equally weighty ingredients to the mix.

Now halfway through Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, which so far isn't as thick or ambitious as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was, despite the press and hype surrounding the book. I realize it's more of an event than I first understood: not only is it his first book in a while (I think Undergound came out in '02?), it's his first NOVEL in a LONG while, because the last 2 books were an anthology and a non-fiction book of interviews. There isn't much of the whiz-bang descriptions I love, but the story's intriguing enough. The structure is similar to his Hard-Boiled Wonderland & The End of the World: alternating chapters between 2 protagonists, with elements of one sometimes appearing in the other, which feels slightly viral and uncomfortable sometimes. There is the surrealism I've come to expect (talking cats), and a harrowingly intense scene of evisceration. Elements of Underground have also emerged, in chapters that are basically transcripts from a strange event in WW2.

Must every book jacket declare that this is a work of the author at the height of his powers? It almost seems like a joke now.

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Saw Stacy Peralta's Riding Giants, and it was breathtaking. Made me realize how little I know about surfing, even from a distanced POV. It made you want to learn how to surf at the end, and the soundtrack is awesome. Not just in the selection of music, but when and how it was used. Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Moby, and at the end, suddenly and with great impact, Erik Satie. Like I said, breathtaking. The history of surfing is more interesting than I would ever have expected. There's this guy Greg Noll, who was an icon in the '50s, '60s. He's an old guy now, but the way he talks about surfing is so... affecting. Like he just exudes this love for it, completely and utterly believable. It's actually very sweet, especially in this part where he compares it to a woman. Then there's Laird Hamilton, whose life-story kind of makes him the Jesus of surfing. This guy's so big he was in Ralph Lauren ads and when I saw them in high school I just thought he was another male model. Then you find out he's the best surfer the world's seen, is married to Gabrielle Reece (something of an icon herself), etc. After he surfs this ungodly wave there's a shot of him crying. And the footage is spectacular, especially past the 1:17 mark (the Propellerheads song). That one wave in Teahupoo, I swear to God, looks like A MOVING WATERFALL MADE OF GLASS. If that even makes any sense. And it's just so frighteningly fast, and just massive. Go watch it.

We also saw I Heart Huckabees, which we enjoyed very much. It really shouldn't be taken seriously. Some people have decried it as pretentious but I feel it's all very tongue-in-cheek. I love Isabelle Huppert. Here's an actress literally willing to have her face shoved into mud. And dammit, she's STILL hot. But the surprise for me was Mark Wahlberg. He was so funny.

The new Mirrormask trailer is out! And it's fucking AWESOME! And I mean that in every child's sense of the word. I LOVE that last bit of dialogue at the end, with the floating head. And it's a nice mixture of creepy/spooky/fantastical! Remember the first time you caught anime and it was weird, seeing these cartoons from a culture so alien and different to the ones you were used to? It feels like that, except it's like you're watching scary cartoons from outer space, or a parallel dimension.

There's 2 things you can do on Friday night: you can belt out some tunes for Mika, or catch Belleville Rendezvous at Gab's.

These gorgeous posters are for Chan-Wook Park's Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, which will complete his "Revenge" cycle begun with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy.

Have you checked out Dinosaur Comics? Do. It's basically the same clip-art pictures, over and over again, with amusing variations. Some hilarious examples, c/o Joey: one two three four five

Pao was at least good for one thing: he brought to my attention that I haven't name-dropped Haruki Murakami in a LONG time. And you know why? Because he hasn't been putting out any books! Well, maybe in Japan. And that Birthday Stories anthology. Anyway, his "new," translated-into-English novel is out: Kafka on the Shore. And here's his new website. Wow! Author as rock star. I love the Music section, and am particularly happy with the Art section. Neva actually saw this in Singapore (she's back, btw), but it was about P1600 so we decided to just wait until Powerbooks gets it, where it'll likely be cheaper (I've read that there are already copies at Fully Booked, but don't know how much). She's glad to report that it's nice and thick (like Jonathan Strange thick), which should help make up for the long months of no new Murakami goodness. Actually, I just wish they'd get to work on those translations. He has a book that came out recently, After Dark; I wonder when I'll get to read that? And I remember Jenny saying that he still has a couple of untranslated novels/stories from the early years in his career. This reminds me: when I saw Vintage Murakami in PowerBooks it was frustrating that there was a story there seeing print in English for the first time ("Ice Man") when everything else was just excerpts from novels I'd already read. So, I did what any other fan would: I stood there and read the whole short story. I'm not paying 700 bucks for that one short. Also went through 3 essays in this book, Prime Times: Nick Hornby on The West Wing, Douglas Rushkoff on MST3K, and new fiction from Mark Leyner on Hawaii Five-O. Now there's another favorite writer of mine who hasn't put out a book in YEARS.

February is Francois Truffaut month at Alliance Francaise's Video Club, whose screenings are now back to being free (and have been moved to Saturday since I was last going). March is Jean Renoir. Check 'em out.

A Volkswagen ad that was completed but never aired.

Are you a good tracer? Wanna move to Austin and work on Richard Linklater's first post-Before Sunset film, an animated adaptation a la Waking Life of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly? Check out the information below this article. Well, I'm sort of excited for this, it looks very interesting and I'm becoming a Dick fan, but part of me will always wonder how this would've looked if Charlie Kaufman penned the script. A Scanner Darkly was his dream project.

Finally, don't click on this.

UPDATE (A FEW HOURS LATER): Kafka on the Shore is at PowerBooks for PhP1299. Good thing I dropped by on the last day of the sale!

JE SUIS RANDOM

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride! Yeah! I'm more excited about this than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to be honest.

The trailer for Crispin Glover's What Is It? is insane! Like a Troma film from the New Wave! Like when other films make fun of "experimental" cinema (Ghost World's "Mirror, Father, Mirror," anyone?)! Is that not the perfect title for this movie? Warning: boobies!

Teri Hatcher has a problem that I'm sure many of us generous manfolk would volunteer to help her out with.

Hey Ciudad! And any other band who might be reading: Myspace now have this feature where, if you're a musician, you get a special page with a built-in mp3 player and you can stream your music, and offer it for download if you wish. You know, might be an interesting way to get the word around.

Perhaps the best music video I saw last year: Kings of Convenience's "I'd Rather Dance." Even if it may be old. Reminded me somewhat of Jared Hess's Napoleon Dynamite, and speaking of, he did the video of The Postal Service's "We Will Become Silhouettes."

The new ipod shuffle looks mighty tempting. I wish I could afford an ipod. But even if I could, I don't have a computer that would maximize its potential. I mean, we're still using a PC that has a Windows 98 OS (from when it was NEW, so this thing's about 7 years old) that has, uh, 11GB of hard drive? That and I'm still kind of waiting for Microsoft to launch their own MP3 player and start dem wars (but there's STILL no schedule on that, and their informal ceding of the videogame platform wars to Sony isn't an inspiring sign). Creative's Zen players get a lot of good press but just don't have the marketing oomph of Apple. But the shuffle looks interesting... I'm just wondering why, when flash drives now have a capacity for 4GB, they didn't come out with a 4GB model? Did they think it would cannibalize ipod Mini sales?

Douglas Coupland's next book is a sequel to Microserfs. There is a part of me that thinks this is a bad idea, that good works should be left alone, but there is also a part of me that is curious about what's happened to the characters, who I love (it's my favorite of Coupland's novels). The rumors of a Taxi Driver sequel, on the other hand, inspires nothing but revulsion in me. And while I'm at it, Martin Scorsese is directing the US remake of Infernal Affairs with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon taking over for Andy Lau and Tony Leung. At first I groaned when I read it, but thinking about it, Scorsese could really do something with the subject matter. It's all in the handling, so fingers crossed. Another remake, with less potential this time, is Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow) doing Oldboy with Nicolas Cage.

Hey, hey! The Da Vinci Code is being made into a movie: Tom Hanks is the lead, Jean Reno is whatever French character, and it looks like Audrey Tautou's in the cast too... in a film directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman! Hahahaha! Sorry, guys.

Neva is in Singapore right now. Alexis is in Indonesia for 2 weeks. And I think Quark and Lia are in Bangkok right now. Weird that suddenly they're all out of the country at the same time. With Chris likely busy at AIM (being their poster boy and all), am I doomed to stay at home watching DVDs of The OC?

And yes, I am actually watching The OC. A show I would ordinarily never even go near. I remember it being on my radar only as "that show produced by McG and Doug Liman," but everything about it screamed Dawson's Creek. Or, as someone else mentioned, "this generation's Beverly Hills, 90210." I'm glad to say that it's neither of those things (I mean, there are common elements, but quality and execution-wise they are far different. I hope it stays that way, too). I only gave it a chance because Steven Grant loved the second season. And he's a guy who hates most things. Our tastes might not always link up, but he's a damn good writer so I tried and, thankfully, chanced upon the first two episodes of the first season, getting to start off at the ground floor. It helped that the first 2 episodes are helmed by Doug Liman himself. So anyway, yes, it's a soap, but what began as a guilty pleasure is now something I just can't stop watching. It's interesting to watch such a dialogue-driven show emerge as a hit in the landscape of American TV, which mostly sucks. The OC deserves props if only for one thing: reviving the career of Peter Gallagher. He was born to play Sandy Cohen. Who knew he'd be so good in this kind of role? Without him and Adam Brody's Seth I wouldn't be watching the show. Well, maybe for Samaire Armstrong I'd stick around for a while, but after she's gone I'd split. I damn near fell out of bed laughing when Peter Gallagher went "Mad props, son," pumping his chest and pointing to his kid. Oh yes, and "Yogalates," which I rewound and rewound, much to Neva's annoyance.

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UPFI sent in their next month's schedule and I've updated the box to the left. It looks like I'm a shill for them, don't it? But what are you gonna do when they show a lot of stuff I like? In the Mood for Love! Happy Times! 2046, for those who missed it! The Last Wave, which I've never seen! From out of nowhere, A Hard Day's Night! I'm really tempted to watch Eternal Sunshine, Before Night Falls, and Amelie on the big screen again. By the way, I don't just throw stuff up there; only stuff I recommend. There are other screenings I don't give a toss about; check out their website yourself in case there's something you like that I don't.

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In recent months I came across two terms that somewhat apply to me: Brinksman (which I'm trying to slowly move away from, I swear) and Sniper (though I haven't even looked at an online auction site in over a year).

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I am now good friends with Neva's dog Mittens (who has moved in with her), when before we just kind of tolerated one another. It sometimes feels like I'm cheating on my own dog, Marla.

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Watch this. You can read about it here.

There is the Fantastic Four trailer, which looks like a cheap cash-in to The Incredibles. Looks like a bad year for Marvel, as Elektra is a flop and a critical corpse. And there is the full trailer of Hideo Nakata's The Ring 2. Section Eight production The Jacket looks pretty interesting, and the trailer for the Lars Von Trier-written Thomas Vinterberg film Dear Wendy is up at its website. As expected, it looks to have controversy written all over it.

And check out the video for Charlotte Hatherley's "Bastardo," directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) with cameos by Simon Pegg & Lucy Davis (The Office).

You know what isn't such a great album? The Mars Volta's Frances the Mute. I mean, what the hell, guys? A little over 70 minutes long, track 2 is the most "conventional" at 5 minutes. Tracks 1, 3 & 4 are 12 minutes long, and track 5 is 30 minutes. Who do they expect to listen to this?

Over on the other end of the spectrum, Bloc Party's Silent Alarm is the first GREAT album of 2005 (also one of my favorite album titles in a long while). It hasn't left the car's player since it got there. And "So Here We Are" is such a wonderful, wonderful, anthemic song. A great way to start the year. It's a little strange that that's the song I've attached myself to because it doesn't sound like the songs that made me like the band in the first plce. I've actually been listening to it on repeat while cobbling this post together. The video's here (one of 'em's wearing a Pretty Girls Make Graves shirt!), listen to it and hear how great it is. It's so nice. I love it. It's so good. It's so good it makes you want to do something with your life. Or embrace sad-faced strangers in the street. Or eat sandwiches with a friend you haven't seen since grade school. And this is a song without even a chorus, mind.

They're offering some mp3's on their website. All good, but try "The Answer" & "Staying Fat" particularly. Especially since they're not on the album.

I also enjoy the fact that the singer is black but doesn't sound like it, and the drummer's a freaking tall Asian. Most. Multi-Cultural. Band. Ever.

Mad props, guys. Mad props.

Who has a Paypal account?

Wanna help a brother out?

We interrupt this blog to provide 2 images of startling power:

"Get me out of here."



"Revolution!"

Regular programming will resume shortly.

The Onion AV Club have put up their Will Eisner interview in his memory, and while you're at it, check out their quasi-year-in-review while you're there.

O: Speaking from a purely idealistic plane, where would you like to see the industry go from here?

WE: I would like to see more sophisticated material. I would like to see the comics industry reach a point where good comics material is reviewed in The New York Times and treated at a level equivalent to oil paintings and good literature. I'm hoping we'll see more of that. I believe it will happen, and I'm hoping to be around when it does.

You can find Will Eisner's biography here.

In other depressing news, the film adaptation of V For Vendetta is progressing, with Joel Silver as producer. The good news is, the Wachowski Bros. aren't directing it. The bad news is, they wrote the script, and it's being helmed by a first-timer, their AD James McTigue. Natalie Portman has been cast as Evey, which, for some reason I can't pinpoint exactly, doesn't sit well with me. I mean, there's already a teaser image. Notice how it implies that it's all a creation of the Wachowskis?

Vanity Fair's last Star Wars feature for a while has a gatefold cover that made me smile, even if Lucas has dashed his franchise's brains on a jagged rock like a baby seal.

Oh yes, Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey join Brandon Routh in Bryan Singer's Superman as Lois Lane and Lex Luthor. You can figure out who's who.

I was disappointed with Kung-fu Hustle. I was so looking forward to it. I wanted lots more: more Stephen Chow, more story, more development, more humor. The fight scenes were terrific, but at what expense? There were no characters to love. And he's becoming lazy by relying too much on special effects. Another thing is the tone seemed inconsistent. I thought he'd try to make his most accessible film yet, but there's death galore, characters coming in and out, and some scenes would be genuinely scary and violent, but then leavened with an out-of-place joke or cartoony CG. Excellent casting, though.

Ocean's 12 could never've lived up to its expectations (especially with a different writer) but it was still supremely satisfying, and was a con instead of a heist. Also, as a cinephile I loved all the nouvelle vague influences. The worst thing I can say is, as expected, it was unable to consistently maintain the energy/fun level throughout every solitary second of its running time like its predecessor. Excellent turns by Vincent Cassel and Catherine Zeta-Jones, too. Even the cameos are cute, and there's a specific moment that's almost a beyond-the-4th-wall nod to the very first, Rat Pack Ocean's where even the filmmakers just let everyone in on the joke that they're just having a good time.

One of my personal heroes has died.

Will Eisner passed away on Jan. 3, after complications from a quadruple bypass heart operation. He was 87.

Most of you haven't heard of him, which is a bit of the sad part of all this.

Will Eisner was, as Alan Moore put it, "the single person most responsible for giving comics its brains."

He is often called the father of the American graphic novel, for his A Contract with God, published in 1978. I'm not exactly sure if he is (there have been works/creators vying for the title recently), but it doesn't really matter. Eisner is the man who unapologetically, unabashedly saw the potential in comics as an art form, a medium, a way to tell stories. He always treated it with respect, as a valid form of literature, even when everyone else around him sneered or made light of his efforts, sometimes even his peers and co-workers. He started his own studio of artists, giving people like Jack Kirby and Jules Feiffer their first jobs. He was one of the first people to really examine the form and craft, why this works and that doesn't and what this change will result in, and he put this knowledge to use as a teacher and in his essential books of instruction that he published himself under his imprint Poorhouse Press. He is the man who always believed that comics wasn't JUST for children, and didn't ALL have to be about superheroes. He's the man who gave the world The Spirit, which was published weekly in major newspapers, a strip aimed at adults with mature themes and bravura invention in storytelling. He's the guy who, unlike most of his contemporaries (like Bob Kane), adamantly refused to sign away the rights to his creations, a pioneer for creators' rights before there was any widespread knowledge in the industry that it was even an issue. He's the man who stopped the lucrative Spirit series to go do his part in the War, where he used his knowledge to make instructional and technical manuals for engineers in the infantry. He is the man the comics industry's equivalent of the Oscars-- the Eisner Awards-- are named after (and he's handed each award to its winner since the beginning). Perhaps most amazingly, he is the gentleman who never became a cynic through all the decades comics has seen, who was supportive of all endeavors and especially loved it when young people took an interest in making their own comics.

When he died, he wasn't just "continuing to work in the medium he so loved," he was an engine of creation. He was damn prolific for an 87-year-old. He had a graphic novel come out last year, Fagin the Jew (a biography of the character from Oliver Twist), he has a book of conversations between him and Frank Miller entitled simply Eisner/Miller coming out in April, and he had just completed what will now be his final book, to be published posthumously (obviously), entitled The Plot. In between all that he was making appearances at conventions and speaking/lecturing at universities and conferences.

He was an inspiration to most everyone he met, and millions more he didn't. At the least, he has entertained many more millions of readers through his works.

He will be missed by us all. The world is a poorer place without him. But he left it a better place than he found it, and his contributions to this world will far outlive anything we will make. In fact, the debt we owe him-- not just us fans, but the medium, the industry, and everything he has influenced-- can never truly be repaid. And you know what? He never meant for it to be a debt in the first place. He always gave freely of himself, because he loved and believed in the medium, the fans, the industry.

That's just the kind of guy he was.

WORKS:
DC have The Will Eisner Library, which includes The Spirit Archives.
Dark Horse have a sketchbook, Last Day in Vietnam, Shop Talk, Hawks of the Sea, and the forthcoming Eisner/Miller. They'll also publish his official biography in the summer, called "A Spirited Life."
NBM have his adaptations.
Fagin the Jew was published by Doubleday. The Plot will be published by WW Norton later this year.
His seminal books of instruction: Comics & Sequential Art, and Graphic Storytelling, published by Poorhouse Press, should be available in any good bookstore (I know they're in both Powerbooks and Fully Booked).

I just want to call attention to the fact that there are a lot of great films playing at the UP Film Institute this month. I have the ones I’m interested in listed in the remember box to the left, but you should go to the website for the full schedule, in case there’s something I missed that you would like to see.

Did you know that in the months after 9/11, poetry books saw a massive spike in sales not seen since, well, decades? Almost as much as religious books.

Wired’s interview with Nintendo’s Hiroshi Yamauchi must be read to be believed, I shit you not. "HEY, BALLMER, WHY DON'T YOU SUCK MY TINY YELLOW BALLS?" Hilarious.

Ricky Gervais is going to write an episode of The Simpsons. :)

I can't remember a more depressing holiday season than this one. Just locally we had 2 bad typhoons one after the other, followed by floods and landslides resulting in multiple casualties and millions in property damage. Of course, there is the utter devastation that nature unleashed with an earthquake and subsequent tsunamis upon South Asia, which we were, luckily, spared. The death toll last I heard had passed the 120,000 mark, when just the other night it was 80,000. You can see some video footage of the tsunamis here. Just thinking about that kind of destruction can boggle the mind. Entire villages and coastlines rendered, entire families disappearing. I was watching BBC and they were interviewing this tourist in the hospital, and he was talking about how he was holding his son in his arms and when the wave hit his son just vanished. He was trying to get out of the hospital to join his family in the search for the boy but they wouldn't let him go because his injuries were still too severe for him to be moving about. The whole interview he was semi-weeping and it was just heartbreaking. And that's just one story out of thousands. So many people still haven't been accounted for, even, at one point, both Arthur C. Clarke and Jet Li.

Back to local, and just among people I know, some friends have lost family members, and others have broken up relationships.

This whole year has been kind of weird. There didn't seem to be a dominant feeling about it; there were good times, and there were bad times, but mostly a kind of blah-- punctuated occasionally by the good and bad. And maybe we hold on to those good and bad times as extreme points in contrast to everything else that was pretty much same ol', same ol'.

I'm not a very religious person. These holidays, I pretty much treat as a time for giving thanks.

This year my dad lost 2 siblings, his last living sister and his eldest brother. Both to cancer, which had already claimed his father and eldest sister. It came up during Christmas dinner, to think about what we've lost. It was an awkward moment for me, because I realized that my dad still has 3 brothers left. If I lost 2 siblings, I'd be alone. I wondered about families who would have their first Christmas dinner minus a family member. My tita who lost her husband, my tito who lost his wife. Friends who had lost family members. Even the De Venecias. Their youngest daughter had been in classes both Neva and I had taught. Though we didn't really know her, it's always sad when someone younger than you-- and someone that young-- dies. Someone I know died around Halloween. He was slightly younger than me, a fresh graduate. I didn't know him very well either, in fact I'd only been with him twice, but both times we had genial talks about photography; at the time I was saving up to buy an LC-A and he wanted to get my Quad Cam. When someone younger than you dies it's always a sharper reminder of your own mortality. You feel like it shouldn't happen, which I imagine any parent feels when their own child dies before them.

Is that what we are left with, at the end of the year? To take comfort in that things could've been much, much worse, and in the light of all these surrounding tragedies, we got off lucky? Look around you, at your family members who are still with you, friends and loved ones thankfully in good health. A home and hopefully a job, with clothes and food and things you love: books or comics or films or music or art. Hug them a little tighter, laugh at their jokes a little louder, appreciate things a little better.

Giving thanks.

It's more than enough.

In the department of people with too little to do, someone has made the Michael Jackson video "Thriller" using nothing but Legos. And on this forum, some guys have started photoshopping stills out of Lord of the Rings. Most are crap, but one or two show some kind of clever wit behind them. Examples:

Randy Lander has an article up about his favorite comic covers of 2004. I agree with some of them, particularly the work of James Jean (who has an artbook coming out in March), Jock, Jim Rugg (great attention-getting covers for a new series), Tony Moore, Frank Quitely (inspired covers for We3), and Mike Huddleston (a very underrated artist). I love Jo Chen's art as well.

But something that I suspected has been confirmed, and it is very very exciting. And if anyone's interested, that's what I want for Christmas next year. Can I get a yeah-ha?!

Not only is there a Clive Owen Sin City poster (finally!), but the trailer's out! And it looks awesome.

The Get Shorty sequel Be Cool has its trailer up, and I'm a bit disappointed that it's not Barry Sonnenfeld directing, but it is nice to see Chilli Palmer again. The Weather Man, after The Family Man & Matchstick Men, may see Nicolas Cage typecast more than he already is, but I actually liked this trailer, and just hope that Gore Verbinski can deliver the emotional goods, the way I was surprised by Brett Ratner's The Family Man. Doug Liman's remake of Mr. & Mrs. Smith doesn't really interest me, other than the action scenes. Hope it'll surprise me too. And via Jason, Appleseed is looking sweeter and sweeter.

Also, check out Woody Allen's Melinda & Melinda & Martin Scorsese's The Aviator.

July 16 sees the publication of Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince.

This Red Meat strip reminded me of a specific scene in Spaced:

Sorry, been busy, I've been meaning to post...

I saw 2046 again, last Sunday, by myself, at the refurbished Greenhills theaters. It was my first time there since it was renovated, and the shape of the theaters sucks. It's very wide, so when I thought I was choosing a seat in the middle of the theater I thought I'd be a good distance from the screen, but not close enough to the rear that you can hear the projector whirring, which I grew to hate especially during all those Film Festivals they used to have at Shangri-La Plaza (which has since also refurbished its theaters, though I haven't been yet). But no. Despite being in the middle of all the seats available I was still too close to the screen for my comfort, and just felt sorry for everyone else sitting in front of me, which was nobody. There were unfortunately only less than 10 people, and the couple to my right left after about 30 minutes. The family of 3 seated behind me I was walking behind when the film ended, and the daughter who was about my age hated it, remarking "What was with their hair?" which had me remarking, "You fucking imbecile you should've been aborted," although I said it in my head, not out loud. But the dad liked it, and the mom didn't speak. So points for daddy, but sorry, your daughter's a doorknob.

By and large, my initial impression hasn't changed. I do really like the film very much, and focused on different details this time around. I think I have a better appreciation of the structure this time around, too. The beginning part is intended to be confusing because it's still out of context, which is provided later (and repeated, in case you really don't get it). The character arc of Chow Mo-wan is more coherent to me now, especially with the favor to Bai Ling at the end, AFTER the Faye Wong sequence.

The film really is ripe for examination and speculation. What's the story behind Gong Li's hand? Why was futuristic Takuya Kimura injured after departing 2046? Is it meant to be a literal translation of Chow's emotional injuries? Where is the significance of 2046 in regards to what it means for Hong Kong? Harvey has an idea, but if anyone else can shed more light on this I'm all ears. I have this idea of 2046 being an ideal for the character of Chow Mo-wan, because it was in that room that he had his happiest moments with Maggie Cheung's Su Lizhen, and that's why it represents, in his fiction, a happy place where nothing ever changes, and thus, no one ever leaves. I think that was his dream: to recapture, or return to that room, and never leave (I think dialogue with a similar tone/spirit is in one of the deleted scenes of In the Mood, but I'm not sure).

I'm now less convinced of Chow's feelings for Bai Ling. Not to belittle Bai-- if you remember, the story stayed with her more than it did Chow for a good while. Her feelings were intensely genuine, and now that I think about it their whole relationship was another echo of Days of Being Wild. How Chow treated Bai, Leslie Cheung's character treated both Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau. I don't think Chow saw Faye Wong as a challenge, either. I think that she reminded him of Maggie Cheung's Su Lizhen (the writing helps). Perhaps this is why he wanted to help her with her relationship despite its circumstances. If he couldn't have his happy ending, he could at least help encourage others to find theirs. Almost a romantic notion, that in an alternate universe, he and Su Lizhen could've ended up together.

Also, little smatterings: Takuya Kimura was EXCELLENT. The first and last shot are the same: the resting place of the secret, which was also the last shot of In the Mood. The smeared lipstick of Gong Li in the beginning, which Neva first brought to my attention, being explained in the end.

Any film that has inspired this much thought given me so much to chew on has to be on my list of favorite movies of the year.

The only place it's showing now (practically) is Glorietta 4. Only lasted a week in most places. :(

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Christmas traffic has now reached the point where I don't want to leave the house anymore. My blood pressure goes up, I swear like a sailor and basically get into a rabid bloodthirsty berzerker rage. The worst part of it is I sometimes end up in a bad mood whenever I get to where I'm heading, which is bad news if it's a party, or meeting up with Neva.

The better-quality new Batman Begins trailer is up. And here's the trailer for Constantine, which bears no resemblance to the character I have enjoyed reading since high school.

Here's a short film adapting a short Sin City story. Not bad.

NICE AND SMOOTH

A new Batman Begins teaser trailer can be viewed here, though a better-quality version is expected Monday.

And here is the teaser for Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, for next summer. That was fast. I thought this was still a ways off. Proudly claiming the "most expensive movie ever" tag.

A second teaser poster for Batman Begins, also tres cool, and, more than the first, actually looks like it's been ripped from the pages of a comic book.

Terrence Malick's first film since The Thin Red Line, The New World, has a trailer. And here's the trailer for Tim Burton's Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. It looks like a scary film. Good. Would you like to see the full uncensored sex scene deleted from Team America? Pervert.

Brother, can you spare $20 million? I'm thinking of buying myself a submarine. You know, for when I feel like going to Boracay over the weekend.

An Oldboy toy! Wicked!

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[minor spoilage]

So. 2046.

It did not blow me away. I like it a lot; maybe I even love it but just don't know it yet (I still have to see it maybe 2 more times). At first, I was going to write "I don't know if I'm blown away by it" but then thought to myself "Well, if I'm not entirely sure about that, then it definitely means I wasn't." Being blown away is not a state of uncertainty.

This is not a terribly bad thing, because honestly, it was near-impossible to meet my expectations, built up over 5 years of half-starts and still-in-progress-es, and the director (one of my favorites)'s previous work.

I love so many scenes, so many moments, but structurally I did not find it organic. Unlike with In the Mood for Love, I felt more at a distance with 2046, like I couldn't really get to know the characters the way I wanted to. Maybe that's intentional, maybe it's something on my part.

As always, I love the music. Wong Kar-wai's always been good with that, though some people have found the repetition of certain songs annoying. I'm not sure if it's the first time he's used opera, but he uses it to good effect here, and bringing back songs from Days of Being Wild struck a nostalgic chord. This underscores very well those parts where he links 2046 to characters from Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love. I was also delighted to hear Kieslowski regular Zbigniew Preisner's work included. And as usual, he continues to be inspired by Latin American music, particularly with the song that introduces Bai Ling (Zhang Ziyi).

As far as cinematography goes, I have to admit I was expecting a bit more. Though the feeling isn't really disappointment. The use of color is excellent, but the composition of shots and movement of camera was a little more reserved, a little restrained. Which, considering the subject matter, I thought wouldn't be the case. There weren't moments or stylishly-cut sequences that made my jaw drop. The closest thing was the occasional juxtaposition of 2 shots, usually conversation scenes. And one shot of the Carina Lau android going from sorrow to glee (and red to blue) in a split-second. But again, this means more concentration on the narrative, not necessarily a bad thing.

Relating the films together satisfies a fanboy aspect of me but I have to wonder about how it affects the characters from a macro point of view. Are we to understand that Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) was in Days of Being Wild (the very last, seemingly useless scene), and in the unseen wake of the events of that film met/consoled Carina Lau, then got married to someone for In the Mood, then, broken by the events in that film, becomes a cad in 2046? That's some arc! Why is he such an asshole to Bai Ling, when it's hinted he may have found the closest thing to genuine feeling (or did I just answer my own question)? And, in the next "episode," why is he so nice and encouraging and supportive to Faye Wong's character? I would like to think it's not merely because of a superficial attraction.

I have a massive crush on Faye Wong. Ever since I saw Chungking Express. I remember making my family wait while I finished A Chinese Odyssey 2002 (produced by Kar-wai, shot by Doyle, starring Tony Leung, Faye Wong, Chang Chen, and Vicki Zhao; watch it, it's cute fun) at my cousin's place, even though they already wanted to go home. Remember the Melissa Auf Der Maur post? The next of that kind was supposed to be Faye Wong, and it's been sitting half-written in some file for months now. I successfully kept my cool when I found out Quark saw her in Taipei (and a little saddened to hear of some diva-ish behavior). I didn't realize HOW much I'd missed her until I saw her onscreen. She didn't look like she'd aged a bit. The same big, inviting eyes, same cute nose, the same cute expressions that look like they were headed for another emotion but stopped short. It was an utter delight to see her again, hear her voice, see her move. Do you remember what she was saying in Japanese? It gains more relevance later in the film, after more information is disclosed.

It's interesting to watch the scenes set in the future, or the storyworld of "2046," because you have to look at it, at least, on 2 levels. Simply, as narrative, what transpires between the characters, and underneath that, as extensions of what Chow feels towards his life and the characters that orbit him, and how he disguises/masks/subverts those feelings. Because of the characters orbiting Chow, I feel that 2046 is more of a spiritual successor to Days of Being Wild than In the Mood was (and initially hyped as).

Alexis and I still wonder if this is really the final, final cut, because Chang Chen and Maggie Cheung seem to be excised from the film almost completely. Also, there are continuity errors. Big, glaring ones like wasn't a certain character dead? How did they turn up again later in the movie? And of Bai Ling, Chow Mo-wan says "That's the last time I ever saw her"-- TWICE. Mysteries remain, like what's the story with the black-gloved hand? In a more tsismis vein, what's with the naming of a character after a famous Chinese actress who was exiled for acting in Red Square and had a hiccup of a scandal involving Doyle earlier in the year?

I've been thinking a lot about storytelling recently, and the devices/tricks at hand. I'm more analytical towards 2046 than I expected. Partly because I was re-reading articles on Wong Kar-wai films (coming again, I suppose, from the level of excitement/anticipation that preceded it). So I'm looking at what he's using again: repeating patterns, both in the film and in the structure of the film. Echoed/underscored by music, dialogue. Voice-over narration. Themes explored: longing, coping, memory, the passing of time. Where would Wong Kar-wai be without narrow corridors, too few places to eat (so characters could keep bumping into one another against their will), and hotels that only have one phone? In a way, again, a fanboy part of me is welcoming to these elements. But also a small part of me demands the new. One of the great things about In the Mood was it was made as a reaction to Wong Kar-wai style being appropriated by everyone else. So he abandoned his trademark voice-over, tried some new tricks and it was great. He got to this great "show over tell" aesthetic that I was somewhat hoping to see here. But the voice-over narration favors the "tell over show" style, especially when he returns to a full ensemble cast and not the laser-intense focus on 2 characters that In the Mood was. At times, though, the voice-over felt like spackle applied to the gaps in story and continuity. Hence my impression of lack of organic development. I suppose this is an effect of Kar-wai's process. Since he has no script, the story comes together in a very unique way, and to cover up gaps he has to use narration. This connects with what I mentioned earlier about feeling at a distance: without narration in In the Mood, I was more taken in by the characters' stories, because it unfolds in front of me at the same time it does to them. In 2046, we are told what happened. Sometimes it's already in the past, sometimes the narrator wasn't there to see it but was told the story, and is now relating it to us. This is maybe unavoidable with so many characters, but that intimacy and shared experience is sacrificed. The problem with too many characters is you can't give time to each, not as much as you'd want, and you end up short-changing some or a lot of them. Think about it: what do we really know about some of the characters in the film? What we're told by Chow. Because there just isn't enough space to show scenes denoting character; the "plot," as it were, must go on.

I'm a little wary about writing this now, because I wonder if my opinions will change upon the second and third viewings.

Anyway, sorry this went so long. Just thinking out loud.

ADDED: After re-reading the above, I want to reiterate that I really do like the film very much. :)