Meanwhile... back at the Hall of Justice

The Evolution of the Black Mamba | InterAKTV

2011-07-21T20:48:00.000+08:00

The Evolution of the Black Mamba | InterAKTV

Green Lantern

2011-06-16T12:28:00.000+08:00

The key to any good comic book to movie adaptation is to get the essence of the characters and bring them to life exactly as the hardcore fans would envision it. This held true in the original Superman from 1978, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, and other such success stories. Scriptwriters and directors may tinker with some details, change up timelines and plots, but the essence of the characters; what makes them heroes in the first place, cannot be altered.

In the case of Green Lantern, director Martin Campbell faced the challenge of bringing DC Comics’ resident ring-wielding space cop and all of the constructs he can shape with his mind to the big screen. Though many scoffed at the choice of quick-witted Ryan Reynolds for the iconic role of Air Force Capt. Hal “Highball” Jordan, he proves to be a more than capable pilot, albeit a burnout who has made a living of disappointing those around him. Tasked with joining the intergalactic peacekeeping group known as the Green Lantern Corps, we see actual excitement when Hal receives the power as well as trepidation with the gigantic responsibility that comes with the green Power Ring.

Clearly, Peter Sarsgaard steals every scene where we see his character of Hector Hammond. Known for possessing a giant head in the comics, the added backstory of disappointing his politician father and his gradual descent into madness makes Hammond almost sympathetic. Though Blake Lively has been notable as just a TV star on Gossip Girl, her portrayal of Carol Ferris doesn’t come across as a one-dimensional damsel in distress but rather a multi-faceted go-getter trying to run her father’s company.

Using narration by Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush), the audience is quickly given the backstory of why the Guardians of the Universe founded the Green Lantern Corps in the first place and why they harness willpower in the form of those little green rings. The montage of Jordan being indoctrinated by Tomar-Re, Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan) and Sinestro (Mark Strong) is paced fast enough that one feels the exasperation Hal experiences when he fears that he doesn’t measure up to the Corps’ standards. It’s actually one of the more fun parts of Green Lantern.

In the Green Lantern mythos, the essential elements are as follows: dying alien passes Power Ring to irresponsible pilot, Jordan meets thousands of aliens on Oa, joins Green Lantern Corps and swears “The Oath”, Jordan has issues with the Guardians, pilot overcomes his fears to become the greatest Green Lantern of them all. Green Lantern, the movie, follows each of these elements save the last one. After all, there has to be some plots for the sequel(s). Tapping the Parallax entity as this first film’s main villain and tying his story to Abin Sur’s (Temuera Morrison) demise makes sense because it gives the film a universe-spanning baddie while also explaining the Power Rings’ problems with the color yellow.

A few years ago, a live action Green Lantern movie would not have been possible. Now that advances in special effects have made the hero’s ability to create shapes and constructs of any shape and size possible, anticipation for the Green Lantern movie rose to a fever pitch. Truth be told, most comic book fans were pushing for Reynolds to be cast as that other iconic DC hero, The Flash. There was trepidation that a “funny guy” like him could bring the gravitas and All-American hero vibe that permeates from Hal Jordan. I am quite pleased to report that he fills the green boots and Power Ring with aplomb and eagerly await Green Lantern’s next cosmic adventure.

Confessions of an NFL fan in the Philippines

2011-02-15T16:31:00.000+08:00

I am a sports fan. I’ve been so since high school. Even though I’ve never been good at basketball, I made it a point to know every little fact and figure I could about the National Basketball Association (NBA), the local Philippine Basketball Associaiton (PBA), and of course, our beloved University Athletics Association of the Philippines (UAAP). Even before I could appreciate basketball though, I was fascinated with American football. With relatives in Chicago, Illinois, a love for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL) was ingrained in me at the age of 10. It didn’t hurt that in 1986, the Bears won Super Bowl XX over the New England Patriots with guys like Walter Payton, Jim McMahon and William “The Refrigerator” Perry playing leading roles.

Over the next few years, I tried watching as much football as I could, even though local channels hardly showed any NFL games. When at school and during breaks, I’d be in the library reading up on NFL legends and classic teams that came from the early days of the league. Names like Vince Lombardi, Red Grange, Y.A. Tittle, Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown became as familiar to me as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan were.

To truly understand the rules of football though, I had to play it. At the very least, I had to play a version of it in video game form. Enter John Madden Football 1992. On the old 16-bit Sega Genesis system, I learned how to run sweeps, pass from the shotgun formation, rush a quarterback with a blitz and defend against the long pass with a dime defense. Even on a (now) primitive gaming system, I could see how the quarterback was the brain of an entire offense and how everything rose and fell depending on his performance. I also saw that when on defense, guessing correctly what the offense ran could result in a loss of yardage or worse, a loss of ball possession altogether.

American football, with their glistening helmets, giant shoulder pads and oversized players, is such a different game from basketball that it is akin to a foreign language to most people. To me however, those differences are what made the NFL more appealing in the first place. Since this is such a physical game where injuries are so brutal, an NFL season is only limited to 16 regular season games. Playoff matches are all elimination matches and the Super Bowl, for all of its hype, gratuitous halftime shows and excessive advertising buyrates, is not a best-of-three but one ultimate game. Whereas a big basketball arena in the Philippines seats between 16,000-19,000 people, a typical American football stadium usually seats between 60,000-80,000 in the stands.

Living in the Philippines, where basketball is undisputed king, my love for the NFL has often been met with blank stares or plain indifference. After all, who could talk to me about why Marshall Faulk remains underappreciated for his great hands even as a running back or why Ray Lewis might be one of the greatest linebackers of all time or who truly is the best quarterback today: Peyton Manning or Tom Brady? Over the years though, I stayed a fan of the league, following players like Deion Sanders, Jerry Rice, Terrell Davis, John Elway, and We NFL fans are a niche market, even smaller than football (or soccer) fans. Soccer has the quadrennial World Cup and annual competitions like the UEFA Champions League, English Premier League competition or the Spanish Primera Liga with teams spread across Europe and Latin America. The NFL only has players in the continental United States with Canada’s Canadian Football League (CFL) adopting most of its rules.

Movies like Any Given Sunday, The Program, Necessary Roughness, The Longest Yard and Remember the Titans have all shown us glimpses of lives of football players. Truthfully, some of these football movies ended up being better than any basketball films save for Hoosiers and Glory Road. That’s not a reflection on the quality of the sport but more of how filmmakers have been able to bring out more drama or personality from American football.

In the US, when the leaves turn brown and autumn is in the air, the NFL dominates the headlines until February while hardly drawing any interest on Philippine shores. Even if the most recent Super Bowl saw the hated Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers for the title, the result still drew my interest. For those of us who learned to love the game and still have favorites (Go Bears!), we still get pumped up when August rolls around and we hear that classic opening line to Monday Night Football: “Are you ready for some football?!”

Thor TV Spot 1 (OFFICIAL)

2011-02-07T09:28:00.000+08:00

Captain America: The First Avenger TV Spot 1 (OFFICIAL)

2011-02-07T09:27:00.000+08:00

The Makings of a 3-Peat

2010-10-14T13:36:00.000+08:00

In the Zone - Headlines

It was uploaded a bit late, but the sentiments still ring true. Raise those three fingers, people. Say it with me: "THREEPEAT!" "One big fight!"

Last Four Standing

2010-09-14T09:13:00.000+08:00

In the Zone - Headlines

Ready for the UAAP Final Four this coming Thursday and Sunday?

A Draft Fraught with Surprises and Twists

2010-08-31T16:12:00.001+08:00

In the Zone - Headlines

Here's what I thought of the 2010 PBA Draft. Had to stop myself from calling out Rabeh al-Hussaini to check his ego at the door and get his head on straight.

Changing of the Guard: A Review of the First Round of UAAP 73

2010-08-10T09:53:00.001+08:00

In the Zone - Headlines

Anybody notice that round one of the UAAP has been dominated by guards? Right now, I'd pick RR Garcia of FEU as the MVP.

Spot.PH | For the Boys: 10 Must-Have Basketball Shoes | SHOPPING FEATURED NEWS+FEATURES TOP LIST

2010-07-21T14:36:00.000+08:00

Spot.PH For the Boys: 10 Must-Have Basketball Shoes SHOPPING FEATURED NEWS+FEATURES TOP LIST Thanks to Jon V, Chad G, Joustine C, Masto M, CP V, and Dan S for helping me compile this list!

When Egos Meet

2010-07-19T14:11:00.001+08:00

In the Zone

This was obviously written before LeBron's dick move, when everyone still thought he would show some class.

A Lakers-Celtics Story

2010-07-19T14:05:00.001+08:00

In the Zone

Got a little story I wrote about a few weeks back posted online. This was written before LeBron spitting in the face of Cleveland fans and joining the Miami Hype.

The Art of Hating Kobe Bryant - Players Voice - Players Voice

2010-06-29T00:18:00.000+08:00

The Art of Hating Kobe Bryant - Players Voice - Players Voice For the Laker fans out there. Shove this article in the face of very Kobe hater you find. Let's see where these guys fall in these categories.

UAAP Season 73 Preview

2010-06-12T20:08:00.000+08:00

Ateneo Alumni Association

Ready for an early UAAP Seniors Basketball preview? This is a very neutral article, I didn't lean towards the blue side. :p

FIFA 2010 World Cup schedule on Balls Channel

2010-06-10T20:34:00.000+08:00

Mark your calendars! The 2010 World Cup is upon us!

Adidas Teams Up with STAR WARS for World Cup Ad Featuring David Beckham, Snoop Dogg, Jay Baruchel, Ciara, and Daft Punk

2010-06-06T00:24:00.000+08:00

Adidas Teams Up with STAR WARS for World Cup Ad Featuring David Beckham, Snoop Dogg, Jay Baruchel, Ciara, and Daft Punk

Hmm, now what could we do to make the Star Wars universe cooler. Oh I know, why not add Snoop Dogg to the mix?! This ad is just briliant and the execution is seamless. Even if Beckham is overrated and washed up, he doesn't ruin the ad.

FRINGE - The Next Chapter

2010-06-05T01:21:00.000+08:00

Three loooooong months until Fringe returns. Nooooo!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsqv7pIKQjk

L.A. Story

2010-06-04T14:58:00.000+08:00

Ateneo Alumni Association

No, it's not about the Lakers this time. :p Something I wrote about L.A. Tenorio instead.

Nike Zoom Kobe V (5) Big Stage Edition (Finals Colorway) | Detailed Look | Kix and the City

2010-06-04T06:44:00.000+08:00

Nike Zoom Kobe V (5) Big Stage Edition (Finals Colorway) | Detailed Look | Kix and the City

VERY NICE. Clean detailing. Damn. Now I wanna see the road colorway.

The All-Time Squads: Celtics vs. Lakers

2010-06-03T22:35:00.000+08:00

The All-Time Squads: Celtics vs. Lakers

Another reason why I have always and will always pick the Lakers. Their all-time roster rocks, and it's the only roster that can beat the all-time Celtics too. :p

GeekTyrant - News - THUNDERCATS Is Making a Comeback in a New Animated Series!

2010-06-03T06:53:00.000+08:00

GeekTyrant - News - THUNDERCATS Is Making a Comeback in a New Animated Series!

Thunder, thunder, Thundercats, hooooo!!!!

UPDATE W/ CONFIRMATION!! This Is CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER!! -- Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.

2010-06-03T06:41:00.000+08:00

UPDATE W/ CONFIRMATION!! This Is CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER!! -- Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.

Now THAT's much better. If this will be look in the World War II parts of the movie, it's a good start. They can probably update it for a sleeker version for the modern version down the road.

Manuel Pellegrini: Jose Mourinho won't last at Real Madrid - Europe - ESPN Soccernet

2010-05-30T18:37:00.001+08:00

Manuel Pellegrini: Jose Mourinho won't last at Real Madrid - Europe - ESPN Soccernet

Who me, bitter? Haha! He has a good point though. Coaches never stay at Madrid because their leadership is never satisfied. Stability would be nice, but that's not the way they play.

Kobe Bryant is a better basketball player than LeBron James - Jack McCallum - SI.com

2010-05-30T01:47:00.000+08:00

Kobe Bryant is a better basketball player than LeBron James - Jack McCallum - SI.com

He said it. So did Grant Hill apparently. I can only agree with them. ;)

Ron Artest Game Winner - NBA Playoffs 2010 WCF G5: Lakers vs Suns - 5/27/10

2010-05-28T12:06:00.000+08:00

Ron Artest. 'Nuff said.

Spot.PH | » The Pursuit of Trivia: Manila Quiz Nights | ENTERTAINMENT FEATURED Things To Do

2010-05-28T01:10:00.000+08:00

Spot.PH | » The Pursuit of Trivia: Manila Quiz Nights | ENTERTAINMENT FEATURED Things To Do

A little something I wrote about the Trivia Nights around Metro Manila. As someone who has tried each, I’d like to think I know what I’m writing about. ;)

Nike's 20 Best Commercials of All Time (with video)

2010-05-27T01:55:00.000+08:00

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/396992-just-did-it-nikes-20-best-commercials-of-all-time-with-video

I would've had the Freestyle add higher, possibly added Vince Carter's Dr. Funk ads, possibly the Air Force 25 ad too, but this is a pretty awesome list.

'Hawaii Five-O' 2.0

2010-05-23T23:46:00.000+08:00

So they've recast the roles of McGarrett, Danno and Chan Ho, but made Kono into a hot, tan Korean girl who plays a Hawaiian. Grace Park will basically be in a bikini every week. Thank you, Lord!

Nike - Fifa World Cup 2010 advert

2010-05-21T14:58:00.000+08:00

Twice is Nice

2010-04-30T23:55:00.000+08:00

Robert Downey, Jr. made me believe that he was born to play Tony Stark. After seeing him in all his armored glory in Iron Man, I knew for a fact that Marvel Comics had hit a grand slam homerun. Universally lauded as one of the best comic book adaptations ever, the first Iron Man made fanboys like me ecstatic and begging for more. Almost two years to the day since then, we all got to see Downey don the red and gold armor once more.

A lot has happened since Tony Stark revealed to the world that he was Iron Man. Stark Industries has never been more successful and the US government wants to acquire the armor to supposedly keep it out of enemy hands. Tony hasn’t told anyone though that he’s been having problems brought on by the Arc reactor in his chest. He’s begun to take more risks, even promoting Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) to be SI CEO while hiring Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) as his new assistant. Meanwhile in

Russia

, Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) has been using his father Anton’s notes to create his own weapons based on Stark technology. When Vanko joins forces with Stark rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) to get the military contracts that Stark has given up, it can’t be good news for Tony.

Director Jon Favreau got right back on the driver’s seat in this sequel and continues the story of everyone’s favorite self-destructive and narcissistic billionaire. Downey seems even more comfortable in Stark’s skin this time around, really going to town with his manic personality. He also gives Tony some weakness when confronted with his mortality, and I loved the fact that the filmmakers touched on Tony’s great comic battle with alcoholism from back in the 1980s. He once again pulls off the arrogance and devil-may-care attitude of Stark with aplomb. Though some complained about Don Cheadle replacing Terence Howard as Lt. Col. Jim Rhodes, a good actor like Cheadle made it work. He is a bit small beside Downey, but when he dons the Mark II and War Machine armors, it doesn’t seem awkward at all. For someone like me who actually owns the first appearance of the War Machine armor, it was definitely a geek-out moment when that armor first appears.

Both Paltrow and Favreau (as chauffeur Happy Hogan) are tasked to do more in Iron Man 2, and it was great seeing them rise to the challenge. Pepper Potts has too often been nothing more than a glorified secretary in the comics and it looks like screenwriter Justin Theroux made sure to give her more responsibility while also keeping her banter with Stark going. Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury was also more than just someone you waited to see after the end credits. He gets to be a legit bad-ass, the one guy you believe can place Tony Stark in his place and wake him up from his drunken stupor. I also enjoyed the fact that Johansson was more than just eye candy as the Soviet superspy known as the Black Widow. She definitely channels her comic book counterpart and brings all of Natasha Romanova’s sexiness, physicality, and allure to this role.

Though Sam Rockwell brought some sneaky “Tony Stark-wannabe” sensibilities to his role as Hammer, you knew from the moment he stepped out of the shadows that Rourke was going to steal every scene he was in. In this revival of his career, Rourke successfully merges the comic book personalities of both the Crimson Dynamo and Whiplash into someone who is basically a dark reflection of Tony Stark. He seems to relish getting into Vanko’s skin as well as the tattoos, the Russian accent, and the bitterness of the character. My one wish that wasn’t fulfilled in this film was a face-to-face confrontation between the Russian Black Widow and the Russian Whiplash.

Overall though, I have to give Favreau, Downey, Paltrow, and everyone connected with Iron Man 2 major props for taking the time to really thresh out a great film, not just a great sequel. The technology on display is such an essential part of the Tony Stark/Iron Man character and I was very happy with the way that the filmmakers liberally used them. Giving a nod to old school expositions and “World’s Fair” types of shows was also something I appreciated, right down to the cheesy themesongs and welcome video from Howard Stark (John Slattery). Once more, the respect given to the comic source material is such an essential element of any good movie adaptation and Iron Man 2 delivers that in spades. I think I still like the first film by just a tad, but this is still a fantastic and fun ride that everyone should enjoy on the big screen. Bring on Iron Man 3!

Not Quite Winners

2010-04-30T22:49:00.001+08:00

To say that I’m a fan of The Losers graphic novels would be a huge understatement. I started collecting the five collected graphic novels back in 2004, way before there were even rumors of a movie. I liked the comic because it talked about a special forces team that was wronged and were trying to get revenge. It felt like a cross between Three Kings and Ocean’s Eleven. Thus, I had quite high expectations for the film adaptation.

Sent to the Bolivian jungle by the

government to hunt and kill a target, the team known as The Losers changes their mission parameters when they see some anomalies. Speaking to a mysterious voice known only as “Max” (Jason Patric), The Losers are left for dead. Col. Franklin Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) convinces his team that they can get their revenge on Max while the rest of the world thinks they’re dead. Joined by the enigmatic Aisha (Zoe Saldana) Clay’s team plots a way to get back to the

while exacting justice on the man who wanted them dead.

For me, the best part about The Losers is seeing the team come to life on the big screen. I liked the casting for the most part, particularly for Clay, Aisha, Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) and especially Jensen (Chris Evans). They looked and felt exactly how they did in the source material. Though Columbus Short was good as Pooch, the comics kind of portrayed him as an older man. Idris Elba also gave a credible performance as Roque even though he was a white man in the comics.

My first problem with this movie is the casting of Jason Patric as Max. The main villain of the comics is kept a mystery for so long that his ultimate revelation was a major event there. In this film though, we’re introduced to Max fairly early and he’s nothing like I expected him to be. Patric plays him as an over-the-top villain with no redeeming qualities and it often seemed like he was trying too hard in the role. It didn’t help that his dialogue often sucked.

Another glaring problem with The Losers is that it was often bogged down by bad pacing. Just when you think things are picking up and the action is about to go non-stop, there are moments when everything slows down in favor of dialogue when it isn’t really necessary. Those scenes could have been done in a way that the quick pace of the movie could have been maintained, but director Sylvain White didn’t do so.

There are definitely scenes in the film that were great to see since they came straight out of the comics. The characterizations of Jensen, Cougar, and Pooch, as well as the team’s relationships with one another made the characters likeable enough, it’s just that the deficiencies were just too glaring to make The Losers into a real winner.

She Blinded Me with Violence

2010-04-23T00:36:00.000+08:00

The past two or three decades have seen so many so-called “experts” telling us that we’ve been desensitized to violence in the media. We’ve heard arguments that since there’s so much graphic violence, blood, and gore in movies, TV, and newspapers that we no longer get shocked when we see all of those things in real life. Believe me though when I say this: watching Kick-Ass will shock you out of any desensitization you may have had before you entered the cinema.

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a geeky high school student who dreams of becoming a superhero. Living with his widowed father and hanging out with fellow geeks Marty (Clark Duke) and Todd (Evan Peters) he wants to make a difference in his community while also impressing his crush, Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca). Creating his own superhero costume, Dave assumes the identity of “Kick-Ass” but gets beaten up the first time he tries stopping crime. Eventually gaining fame through YouTube, Dave inspires other heroes to put costumes on, but it also earns him the enmity of the mob run by Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).

Kick-Ass literally kicks serious ass. Based on the Icon Comic written by Mark Millar and drawn by John Romita, Jr., the film is over the top in its depiction of violence and I loved it. Johnson gets his ass handed to him a number of times, cementing why there are no superheroes in real life. His portrayal of Dave is different parts funny, pathetic, tragic, and ultimately, triumphant, no small feat for someone in their first major movie role. His interaction with the equally geeky and awkward Chris D’Amico/Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is funny because both desperately want to be cool yet fail on so many levels. Mintz-Plasse still reminds all of us of his role as McLovin in Superbad, and it’s going to be tough for him to get out of these kinds of roles, but I’m not going to hate him for making the most out of the situation.

Ultimately, most people will love the character of Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Moretz) and her father Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage). Not only do they love using weapons and killing bad guys, they actually have a real, loving father-daughter relationship. I knew that I’d seen Moretz in other films, but I didn’t realize that she was the little girl in the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror or Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s sister in the horrible (500) Days of Summer. She’s just amazing as the cussing, balisong-using Hit-Girl and I’ve got no doubt that she’ll be a star after this. Cage lost a lot of his “geek credibility” because his performance as Johnny Blaze was so bad in Ghost Rider. In Kick-Ass, he gets that geek cred back in spades. You actually see glimpses of the great actor that Cage was before he tended to just do any movie that met his price.

Director Matthew Vaughn really seems to go to town with the tongue-in-cheek humor and graphic violence in Kick-Ass. Although at this point, I haven’t read the source material just yet, I’ve heard from multiple sources that the film captures most of Millar’s and Romita’s humor, in-your-face action, and unapologetic displays of gore. Vaughn uses the violence though, not just for the sake of showing blood and guts, but also to hammer home the notion that superheroes are best left in the realm of make believe. Also, I’ve even heard some people say that the film version of Kick-Ass actually surpasses the comic version in terms of coolness and fun. That is a major accomplishment for any movie adaptation to achieve.

I realize that it’s only been four months in 2010, but I’m already saying that Kick-Ass has been my favorite movie of the year so far. It’s irreverent, it’s imaginative, it’s hilarious, it’s pathetic, but it’s also tons of fun to watch. I’d definitely watch it again in a heartbeat, for fear of Hit-Girl kicking my ass all over the place.

Turn Back The Clock, Turn Off The Brain

2010-04-22T23:21:00.002+08:00

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that with a title like Hot Tub Time Machine, you pretty much check your IQ at the door. The mere premise of the movie is ridiculous and the trailer essentially shows you everything you need to know about the film. But, those are also the same reasons why I wanted to watch this movie in the first place; because every so often, you just want to turn your brain off and have a good laugh.

Old high school friends Adam (John Cusack), Lou (Rob Corddry) and Nick (Craig Robinson) have grown apart over the years. Mostly due to work or just a change in their priorities, they’ve stopped hanging out but still fondly reminisce about their heyday in the mid-1980s. When Lou accidentally almost kills himself, the three guys (joined by Adam’s nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) head off to one of their favorite hangouts in the 80s, Kodiak Valley Ski Resort in Colorado. Getting drunk and high while relaxing in their hot tub, the quartet magically find themselves transported back to 1986. Initially planning to do exactly what they did the first time they went through that “Winterfest ‘86” weekend, Adam, Lou, and Nick eventually decide to change things. The ramifications of their actions though might end up changing their 2010 lives too.

Hot Tub Time Machine is one of those movies, like The Hangover or The Pineapple Express, that you just enjoy for itself. No deep plot, no convoluted story, no major character development. Just a fun ride that you watch with a buddy and let the good times roll. Cusack is the biggest name among these actors and it was fun seeing him letting loose here after seeing him most recently in 2012 and Must Love Dogs before that. As a fan of The Office, I was thrilled to see Craig Robinson in a real starring role in a film and he doesn’t disappoint. He brings some of that swagger he has as Darryl on TV but also portrays a completely different character here as the whipped Nick.

To me, the major surprise here is Corddry. I barely noticed him in Blades of Glory, Old School, Semi-Pro and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. In fact I only paid attention to him when he played a manic, racist agent in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Here in Hot Tub, he’s actually got a meatier role and he gets to interact in almost every major scene with Cusack and Robinson and he’s hilarious as the manic-depressive Lou. Duke is also pretty funny as the nerdy Jacob, and I found it amusing to find out after watching the movie that he’s best friends with another “geeky” actor, Michael Cera.

As funny as this movie is, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how the local Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) made such inane cuts throughout the film. They basically cut out some shots of women’s breasts as well as some jokes about sex and relegated the Filipino audience to guessing “What happened?” It’s these kinds of stupid censoring that makes me wonder if the censors think we are all infants whose eyes need to be protected from boobs and sex talk. Pardon my French, but give me a fucking break, MTRCB.

All things considered, I had fun with Hot Tub Time Machine. The comedy was wild, the sights and sounds from the 80s plastered a smile across my face, and I really liked the chemistry of all the actors involved. So it’s not a deep movie. So sue me.

The Life and Times of a Basketball Lifer

2010-04-16T22:13:00.001+08:00

I grew up watching the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers. They were my team the moment I saw Magic Johnson leading a fastbreak and dishing off to James Worthy, Byron Scott and/or Michael Cooper. The team in “Forum Blue and Gold” got my attention when I first started watching basketball in the late 1980s and they still hold sway in this era of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol. Yet despite that Laker-love, my many relatives in Chicago began converting me to the then-hapless Chicago Bulls in 1985 when a rookie by the name of Michael Jordan took to the air in the Windy City.

Imagine then my excitement to actually shake hands and interview one of MJ’s own teammates from the first Bulls’ championship, point guard BJ Armstrong. In town to promote the Junior NBA program of the league, I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to the former 11-year NBA veteran thanks to global NBA sponsor Gatorade and got some insights into how special those Bulls championships were. “This is basketball heaven right here!” BJ said of the

Philippines

, reveling in the love that’s been thrown his way by a nation of people with non-stop hoop dreams.

Benjamin Roy “BJ” Armstrong, Jr. was the eighteenth pick in the 1989 NBA draft out of the University of Iowa. In just his second year, the Bulls climbed to the top of the mountain and won the NBA Championship. He was part of the first Chicago “Three-peat” team, emerging as the starter in the 1992-1993 season when he was the league’s three-point field goal percentage leader. In the wake of

Jordan

’s first retirement, he became an All-Star in 1994. He was the Toronto Raptors’ first pick in the 1995 NBA expansion draft and eventually played for the Golden State Warriors, Charlotte Hornets and Orlando Magic before winding up his career back where he started, in Chi-Town, in the 1999-2000 season.

Asked what it was like to play alongside

Jordan

, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant and those famed Bulls teams, BJ shared that he didn’t really think about that until after he had retired from the NBA. “At that point,” he said, “Michael wasn’t ‘Michael’, Scottie wasn’t ‘Scottie’, and BJ wasn’t ‘BJ’. We were just a young team trying to learn how to beat the Celtics.” He further elaborated that the Bulls were too busy playing basketball and living in the moment that they had no inkling that they were making history. Acknowledging that the Detroit Pistons were at the top of the NBA in the late 1980s, BJ said that all of their efforts were directed towards coming together and working as a team to dethrone the Pistons and win their first title.

A self-proclaimed “basketball lifer”, Armstrong had been playing basketball since he was a kid in Detroit and remains involved in the game even after his NBA career has ended. Spending one year working for ESPN’s NBA Fastbreak show, he then worked as Assistant General Manager for the Bulls and is now involved in sports management with the Wasserman Media Group. In fact, he’s the agent for the Bulls’ new superstar, Derrick Rose.

He shared a funny story wherein he and Michael Jordan caught an NBA game just a few weeks ago. BJ and “the greatest player to ever put on a pair of sneakers” looked at each other and realized that they were having fun just watching an NBA game now that they were both retired from the league. BJ added that Michael basically “had to buy a team” so he could experience being a fan again, referring to

Jordan

’s purchase of the Charlotte Bobcats. He noted that

Jordan

is an NBA lifer like he is, so much so that during

Jordan

’s first retirement, BJ said “he was calling me everyday anyway, talking about the game, going over scouting reports.” He concluded that

Jordan

“will be involved in basketball his entire life. That’s who he is.”

Recalling how his first NBA coach is now the coach with most NBA Championships with ten (and counting), BJ said that he was very lucky to play for Phil Jackson. “We came in together,” BJ recalls of Jackson, “He was just a rookie coach in my rookie year and Michael Jordan was a young player, Scottie Pippen was in his second year so it was just a matter of all of us there, at the right place, at the right time.” He added, “our personalities meshed, we won a few games along the way, and before you knew it, we were crowned champions. I’d love to think we knew what we were doing, but we didn’t. We were just young kids.”

On their way to building their dynasty, the Bulls had memorable rivalries with the Pistons and the New York Knicks. Even as I asked BJ why rivalries don’t seem to exist in today’s NBA, he thinks it’s because of the high turnover of players in the current game. “The fans in particular don’t really have a chance to grow with that group,” he lamented. “There’s no attachment with the team because the teams are always changing.” He goes on to note that, “very rarely do you see teams stick together now for 4-5 years. Every offseason, you juggle your lineup.” In his generation, Armstrong relates that team executives would let guys grow together and see if they develop over the course of 6-7 years. With all the wheeling and dealing in the NBA though, BJ said that in the end, “the best players always find a way to have their team in a position to win.”

Since BJ is still involved with the NBA and now with management of athletes, it was only natural to ask him about the possibility of a Filipino getting drafted by an NBA team. Without skipping a beat, Armstrong said that sometimes, you just need the opportunity to make that impact. “At some point, the stars are gonna line up, someone is gonna believe in you, which will then inspire you to believe in yourself,” he declared. When fellow blogger Eddie Ching asked him about the possibility of the Bulls drafting former Ateneo Blue Eagle team captain Chris Tiu, BJ smiled at Eddie and said “I like the way this guy thinks!” Ching added that Tiu doesn’t even have to be signed, just drafted, and that adidas could just make jerseys in the Bulls’ famous red and black with “Tiu” and “17” emblazoned on it. “Instantly, you’d sell 100,000 jerseys overnight,” he excitedly told the former All-Star. Armstrong the businessman then half-jokingly told Ching “Let’s talk later!”

Clearly, basketball has been very good to BJ Armstrong. From his roots in suburban Detroit to his days in the Big 10 Conference playing for the University of Iowa, to the championship days with the Chicago Bulls, all the way to his current stint as a player agent, he’s come full circle. From learning the game to now being a teacher and mentor to a new generation of players. Noting that he doesn’t know anywhere else in the world where basketball is loved like it’s loved here in the

Philippines

, BJ Armstrong looked as comfortable here as he did shooting threes in the old Chicago Stadium. He looked like he was at home.

Thanks to Gatorade, Mr. Ton Gatmaitan and Mr. Rick Olivares for this interview.

Island Fever

2010-04-16T18:26:00.000+08:00

I’m a sucker for psychological thrillers. There’s something about the darkness of the topic and the way they always seem to explore some aspect of the human mind that appeals to me. That’s one of the reasons why I liked playing video games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill so much when they first came out. The darkness and the mystery involved were scary but at the same time, very appealing. In the hands of a modern maestro like Martin Scorsese, I had very high expectations for his take on the psychological thriller genre with Shutter Island. After a bit of a rough start, I found myself liking it.

In 1954, United States Marshall Edward “Ted” Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from the Ashecliff Hospital on Shutter Island on the outskirts of Boston. The prisoner, Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer) seems to have vanished into thin air. As he asks the head psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley) for assistance in the investigation, we find out that Daniels lost his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) to a fire and that he served in World War II during the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau. Strange things continue to happen around the island and Daniels is convinced that Dr. Cawley and the hospital staff are covering something up. Even as Daniels tries desperately to get to the bottom of things, he learns some things about himself that he might not be able to handle.

To say that Martin Scorsese is a master of modern cinema isn’t much of a stretch. The man has made some of the greatest films of all time such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and The Departed. He doesn’t just direct gangster movies or sports films as he’s managed to cross genres with ease. The last time he directed something similar in tone, it was the great remake of Cape Fear featuring Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte back in 1991. In the case of Shutter Island, the film starts off quite slow. There’s a whole lot of exposition required to set the tone here and it takes a bit of a while to see why that happens.

DiCaprio seems to really be at his best when Scorsese directs him. Much like Scorsese and Robert De Niro worked fantastically from the 1970s to the 1990s, so have the director and DiCaprio been amazing in the 2000s and beyond. His portrayal of the hardnosed investigator starts off by being subtle, but as you peel the layers away, he starts showing depths to the personality just as we see depths to his story. By the time we get to the twist in the ending, you’re feeling all kinds of empathy, horror, and sadness for the character.

Kingsley has been relegated to character roles over the decades, but that doesn’t make his performance any less stunning. Seeing him on the screen with DiCaprio and the great Max Von Sydow is a real treat because actors of this caliber so rarely appear in a scene together, let alone a single motion picture. Michelle Williams is also pretty effective as Daniels’ dead wife, someone who haunts him and is the root of all of his issues.

As I mentioned earlier, the slow pace at the start of the film can really bore you if all your concentration isn’t on the film in front of you. Despite the ominous tone set once Daniels and Aule arrive at the island, and in spite of the investigation going through thunderstorms and cover-ups, it still feels slow. At some point though, Shutter Island felt like those old school games I wrote about. I guess nowadays with movies being done based on video games and vice versa, that was inevitable, and it’s not like I didn’t like that comparison in the first place.

Again, I can’t repeat enough that the payoff to Shutter Island occurs near the end of the movie when the twist happens in the story. When the twist happens, you find yourself thinking back to how the film started and how certain things that you might have neglected are suddenly significant now. I just felt that Scorsese could have gotten to that twist at a quicker pace than what he did in this example.

Unity Through Sport

2010-04-12T16:37:00.000+08:00

Sports movies tend to be one of two things: either really good (The Natural, Hoosiers, Remember the Titans) or really bad (Fever Pitch, Blue Chips, For the Love of the Game). You know that sports movies are supposed to inspire you, make you believe that great things can happen through a sport, and that the good guys win in the end. Now add to those elements some political intrigue, racial segregation, and the fact that it really happened in

South Africa

and you have the Clint Eastwood-directed Invictus.

After Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) is released from his 27-year prison term in 1990, change begins to grip

South Africa

. By the time he is elected president in 1994, the country is a year away from hosting the Rugby World Cup. Realizing how big this could be for the country’s unity and future, Mandela has a heart-to-heart talk with South African Springboks team captain Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon). If this underachieving team of underdogs can actually come together and shock the world, maybe this “rainbow nation” will come together and support them. The odds are long and a lot of South Africans have openly rooted against the Springboks all their lives, but Mandela and Pienaar believe that something special can happen.

I read somewhere that it was only a matter of time before Freeman portrayed Mandela in a film. After all, the great actor has always played wise characters or men with great dignity as seen in Driving Miss Daisy, Unforgiven, and especially in The Shawshank Redemption. He steps right into Mandela’s shoes and captures the spirit of a man who has survived almost three decades of imprisonment yet emerged stronger, smarter, but with forgiveness in his heart. Damon may indeed be a lot shorter than the real life Pienaar, but he gives a very credible performance as the team captain who’s trying to lead his team to victory while also trying to inspire a divided nation. Even in his own home, though his Afrikaan wife and parents support him, they’re wary of Mandela. That’s in stark contrast with their household help who loves the new president.

For me, the performances of Tony Kgoroge as Mandela’s head of security Jason Tshabalala, and the trio of Patrick Mofokeng, Julian Lewis Jones, and Matt Stern as the racially mixed security detail surrounding the president. Their interactions with one another, ranging from distrust to discomfort, mild amusement, and eventually winning together served as great contrast to the main storylines of the World Cup and Mandela’s struggle.

Eastwood manages to bring all these elements together in a two-hour long sports movie that has some very moving scenes in it. I particularly found the scene where the whole Springbok team goes to where Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island and Pienaar examines where the man was incarcerated for 27 years to be very powerful. As a sports film, you know this is leading up to a happy ending. But when that inevitable ending finally does happen and the whole nation erupts in celebration, I’ll admit that I still had chills down my spine. For only in sport can moments like these happen, where people come together to cheer for a specific person or team. Whether it be Manny Pacquiao or the Ateneo Blue Eagles, sports can unify people in ways that very few others can.

At the end of Invictus, that’s what really gave me chills. For when the Springboks won the World Cup and Pres. Mandela hands Pienaar the Web Ellis Trophy, you could feel the entire

South Africa

cheering them to the upset win over the heavily favored All Blacks. People who hated the Springboks or never even cared about rugby were all watching on television as their team won for their country. Now that’s what you call a Hollywood ending.

Finding Some Airspace

2010-04-11T23:43:00.001+08:00

As someone who’s had recent experience with losing jobs, I’ve found that the words of people in human resources departments are hardly comforting. When somebody tells you that you’ve been rendered redundant or that your services aren’t necessary anymore, it’s a crushing blow to one’s ego and you start to feel your whole world crumbling around you. Imagine then the life of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a corporate downsizer from Career Transition Counseling who travels across the

United States

to inform people that they’ve been fired because their bosses are too cowardly to do so. That’s the premise behind Up in the Air.

Ryan’s lifestyle of living out of airports, hotels and his luggage has alienated him from his family and basically all other human beings. He’s been thriving in this atmosphere and loves racking up the frequent flyer miles and the perks of his travels. When Ryan is informed by his boss Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman) that the company wants to cut back on expenses by implementing the ideas of newbie Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), Ryan argues that Natalie has no clue on how he conducts his firings. Forced to take Natalie under his wing, Ryan starts to share his philosophies with her while seeing how he’s essentially become devoid of emotion. Ryan also begins to have feelings for Alex (Vera Farmiga) someone he was just supposed to have a harmless fling with, and is forced to return to his family to see his younger sister get married.

I only heard the Oscar buzz surrounding Up in the Air late last year but I really had no idea what it was about. I’ve been a fan of Clooney’s work, but I didn’t really feel a need to see every film he’s ever starred in. Truth be told, the first time that I tried watching this movie, I basically fell asleep through the first 40 minutes. However, when I gave it another shot, I found it to be extremely intelligent, engaging, and pretty moving. Director Jason Reitman adapted the film from Walter Kirn’s novel of the same name together with Sheldon Turner and it’s a movie that’s heavy on the dialogue. In this case, lots of dialogue is a very good thing as it basically brings us straight into the head of Clooney’s Bingham.

Vera Farmiga is great as Alex especially when she tells Ryan to think of her as “you with a vagina”. She manages to charm the charmer in Ryan while also tending to the bruised ego that Natalie has in the middle of the movie. She also hides an unexpected secret that caught me completely by surprise. Anna Kendrick is also fantastic as the ambitious Natalie, someone who gave up her own dreams to follow a boy. Their interaction, particularly when Natalie talks about what she thought she’d be at a certain age in contrast to what she perceives Alex to be, was a winner to say the least.

Still, make no mistake that this is Clooney’s movie through and through. I had gotten to the point where I began to think of Clooney as little more than just a pretty face. Graying at the temples and running around with hot supermodels/actresses, but still capitalizing only on his looks. Up in the Air reminds us that the man is still an actor. He’s still the charming rogue that he perfected in the Ocean’s series of films, but there’s actual vulnerability here. You see it when he tries to reconnect with his sisters, when he tries to talk to his future brother-in-law, when he comes to a realization in the middle of an important speech, and especially when he comes face-to-face with Alex’s secret. Clooney actually made me care about his character, and for that he and Reitman deserve tons of credit.

Smart films too often go unnoticed or worse, go over our heads, in favor of Hollywood’s blockbusters. I am pleased to say that I gave Up in the Air another shot after dismissing it as “too talky” the first time around. It turned out to be one of very few films that had me thinking and marveling at its brilliance once I completed it.

Nothing Beats the Original

2010-04-06T20:56:00.002+08:00

First things first, I loved the original Clash of the Titans. I mean LOVED it. I first saw it when a tito of mine sent a Betamax tape to us of the movie in the early 1980s. As a kid who was always interested in mythology, it was a veritable treasure trove of Greek myths, legends, and monsters. Every time that I watched it over the years, I began to appreciate things that I didn’t notice as a kid. There was the fact that the great stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen created all the creatures for the film like the Kraken, Medusa, Calibos, Pegasus, etc. There was also the fact that popular actors like Sir Laurence Olivier, Burgess Meredith and Maggie Smith were prominently featured. It also made Harry Hamlin a star before he appeared on L.A. Law. Suffice it to say that when I heard that Clash of the Titans was going to be remade, I was giddy with excitement. But did it measure up to the original?

Perseus (Sam Worthington) has been caught up in a war. It has cost him the only family he has ever known and he discovers that his real father is the god Zeus (Liam Neeson). The city of Argos has been targeted for destruction by the god of the underworld Hades (Ralph Fiennes) unless Perseus can find a way to defeat the monstrous Kraken. He embarks on a quest fraught with danger and monsters. Denying his demigod status, can Perseus save Argos while defying the gods?

Let’s get to the good stuff first. The effects for Clash of the Titans were topnotch. Visuals have indeed come a long way since 1981 and today’s effects have been able to do a lot more with powerful computers than anything Harryhausen could create with rubber and clay. The pace of the movie is quite fast which I believe is helped by Hades’ stating that the Kraken will be unleashed in ten days instead of the 30 days in the original. The 3D conversion was also horrible and completely unnecessary. It was so obvious that the producers just wanted to cash in on the 3D craze and rushed it for Clash.

Gemma Arterton as Io was also breathtakingly beautiful in this movie. It’s like in every scene she appeared, she had just taken a shower. She clearly had more chemistry with Perseus than Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) did so the twist in the ending wasn’t such a shocker.

The problems I had with this film are many, not the least of which is that it just didn’t capture the spirit of fun that the first Clash did. I guess director Louis Leterrier and Worthington wanted to inject some 2010 sensibilities into the story, particularly by having Perseus reject his godhood. Well excuse me, but doing that basically decapitates the Perseus story altogether. Perseus reveled in his demigod status and enjoyed the gifts that the gods gave him. To have him turn his back on those gifts and reject Zeus just made him seem like a petulant child.

I also couldn’t understand how Leterrier could cast great actors such as Polly Walker as Cassiopeia and Danny Huston as Poseidon yet underuse them for such a big movie. Even Alexander Siddig as Hermes and Izabella Miko as Athena were relegated to mere window dressing in the scenes on Olympus. It’s like Leterrier hired a casting director to get these names and faces then he decided to leave them on the cutting room floor.

Don’t get me wrong, 1981’s Clash already took a lot of liberties with the myths for the sake of making the story more interesting and heightening the adventure factor. Substituting Perseus for Bellerophon and integrating Medusa into the adventure all worked out in the end. Even the Kraken wasn’t a part of Greek mythology and was actually a Norse sea monster. It just seemed like 2010’s Clash lost some of the cheese and lighthearted fare that made the original such a classic in the first place.

I still had fun watching this new version, and it clearly helped that I was watching with other fans of the first. Let’s just say that I’d still take Laurence Olivier, Harry Hamlin, and Ray Harryhausen’s clumsy animation over the slick armor and self-doubting Perseus of the remake any day of the week. Still, it was fun hearing that line again. You know it, "Release the Kraken!"

Growing Up Viking

2010-04-03T10:05:00.000+08:00

I’ve recently come to appreciate Vikings a lot more than I used to. I blame the Northlanders graphic novels written by Brian Wood because he’s made Vikings brutal, graphic, and very violent. A few years ago, the Antonio Banderas starred in The 13th Warrior based on Michael Crichton’s book Eaters of the Dead. It was also a great interpretation of Viking life and the way of the cold Norsemen. In other words, most of us got the impression that Vikings were oversized marauders who enjoyed pillaging villages, using giant bludgeoning swords and wore helmets with horns.

Thankfully, How to Train Your Dragon gives us other aspects of day-to-day Viking life. For young Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the pressure to live up to his father’s legacy is tremendous. Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) rules the island of Berk and deals with some unusual pests. Dragons have been raiding the village, taking away their food and livestock. Hiccup isn’t big or strong enough to join his fellow Vikings and feels like a disappointment to his dad. When he builds a machine that downs the never-before-seen breed of dragon known as the Night Fury, all Hiccup has to do is slay the dragon to prove himself worthy of his fellow Vikings. However, he sees something in the Night Fury’s eyes that make him reconsider everything he knew about dragons in the first place.

My favorite animated Dreamworks film of all time is Kung Fu Panda. It captured all the right elements of good animation, great voiceover work, and a fantastic story at the heart of it all that separated it from what I perceived to be missing in Shrek and its sequels. Luckily, How to Train Your Dragon echoes Kung Fu Panda in that regard. The animation competition between Disney-PIXAR and Dreamworks has been so strong lately that if one slips up, you can bet the other will take advantage. As a result, we as film viewers emerge as winners.

The story of Vikings in itself is already fun, but add to it the insecurity that Hiccup feels when trying to measure up to such a dominant presence as his father and still trying to fit in with other kids his age, and you’ve got a winner. It would have been good to just have Hiccup meet Toothless the dragon and be instant friends, but to have him try to win the dragon’s trust and the dragon needing Hiccup’s assistance to be able to take flight again was another brilliant move. I particularly liked the ending which saw Hiccup not exactly unscathed after the final battle.

Baruchel has been a hot commodity in Hollywood lately, joining his peers Michael Cera, Jonah Hill (starring here as Snoutlout) and Christopher “McLovin” Mintz-Plasse (cast here as Fishlegs) as sort of a new generation of comedians. He brings a great deal of awkwardness and insecurity to Hiccup that made his anguish believable. I’ve also got to give props to Craig Ferguson as Gobber the Belch, trainer of the young Vikings. He gets into the whole spirit of being a taskmaster while also relaying tales of his Viking exploits that have cost him a few limbs. Fellow Scot Butler has his best role since his starmaking turn in 300 here. Butler as Stoick once again portrays “the great leader of men” role, but it’s his vulnerability as father to a son that shows some real voice-acting chops.

I really liked this film because it managed to tell an awkward coming-of-age story while also talking about understanding other species/races and interaction between fathers and sons. The fact that it had Vikings, dragons, and great 3D animation almost seem secondary because the plot at its core is just that good.

The Bored Locker

2010-03-08T16:32:00.001+08:00

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t hear all the hype surrounding The Hurt Locker. This movie about the war in Iraq was supposed to be the best “modern” war film since Black Hawk Down and supposedly was the one film that can stop Avatar from winning the Best Picture award at the 2010 Oscars. I had been putting off watching it for months because there was always something that, to me at least, seemed more interesting to do. But, I finally gave in on the night before the Academy Awards.

Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) leads the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit of the US Army’s Bravo Company in Baghdad, Iraq. The former head, was killed while trying to disarm a remote-detonated explosive device and James tries to fit in with his new troops. It becomes increasingly obvious to Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) that James is a bit of a loose cannon, effective but also reckless. A raid on a warehouse reveals the dead body of a boy who’s been implanted with bombs. Believing the boy to be someone who sold DVDs to him, James leads the team to hunt down insurgents who detonated a bomb, but results in Eldridge getting shot in the leg. Though the EOD team’s tour of duty eventually ends, SFC James realizes the one thing he loves is being in the war zone.

Director Kathryn Bigelow has done something that so few directors, male or female, have attempted to do: make a serious war movie. The Hurt Locker isn’t pretty and it doesn’t present itself as anything but a heavy drama. By casting relative unknowns, the filmmakers ground the film in realism and make the scenario more believable.

Unfortunately for me, it also bored me no end. The first half of this film just drags on and on after the death of the former head of the EOD played by Guy Pearce. Steeped in dialogue and lots of military jargon, I somehow found myself nodding off after James first arrives in Baghdad. Yes, the sniper scenes and the explosions are great visually while also carrying a healthy amount of tension, but that didn’t make up for that boring start. For me, if a movie bores me at any point, then it clearly doesn’t deserve an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Bigelow should be commended for bringing all of these myriad elements together into a movie, but I cannot and will not commend her for nearly knocking me out at the start of her film. Renner’s portrayal of the adrenaline junkie SFC James was credible and it might be the vehicle to finally make him a star, but it still took him so long to make me sympathetic that I almost gave up on him.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can give The Hurt Locker all the awards they want. They can do it as a slap in the face of James Cameron and Avatar, as well as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, or Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, and Disney’s Up. For me, I was still more engaged in each of these latter movies than with Bigelow’s award-winning piece.

Down the Rabbit Hole Once More

2010-03-06T17:43:00.003+08:00

I was never a fan of the “Alice in Wonderland” story. Growing up watching Disney movies, “Alice” was one of the few that I never saw in full or just never really enjoyed watching. Maybe it was too weird, or maybe the effects were too creepy, I just never got hooked by it. I did find Mickey Mouse’s version of “Through the Looking Glass” funky though. There was something about Mickey going through a mirror that appealed to me as a kid.

Over the years, I had grown to appreciate Lewis Carroll’s “Alice”. I’m of the mind that it’s never fully been intended for children and that the author must have been on some pretty strong drugs when he was writing it. Iconic characters such as the White Rabbit, the Red Queen, the Cheshire Cat, and of course, the Mad Hatter, have made their way into popular culture and everyone is pretty familiar with them in one form or another. However, when word first leaked that director Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp were going to do their own version of Alice in Wonderland I really looked forward to it.

A 19-year-old Alice Kingsley (Mia Wasikowska) is being forced to conform to the norms of proper Victorian English society. Struggling against these rules, she follows a white rabbit down a hole and stumbles into a different yet familiar world altogether. Bombarded by questions from residents of “Underland” if she is “the real Alice”, she ends up scarred by the monstrous Bandersnatch while running away from the army of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham-Carter). Seeking the aid of the Mad Hatter (Depp), Alice learns that the Red Queen and the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover) attacked the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) with the Vorpal Sword and the dragon-like Jabberwocky. The White Queen believes that Alice can be Underland’s champion, someone who can actually beat the Jabberwocky and end the Red Queen’s tyranny. Does she have what it takes to rise to the occasion?

As in any Tim Burton film, the visuals in Alice in Wonderland are very rich. Now that Burton has actually embraced true digital filmmaking, he gets to truly run wild with his imagination. SPOILER ALERT!!! I wasn’t really aware of how much green screen effects Burton utilized for this movie until after had seen it, and I think that really helped me get more immersed into his vision of Wonderland. There is a marked difference between the world above and below ground, and it goes beyond the crazy creatures that inhabit the latter. Through the use of modern special effects, it’s become easier for anthropomorphic creatures to interact with “real” actors and for the Red Queen to be shown with a bulbous head. For me personally, that only enhances the “wonder” in Wonderland.

We’ve already seen the acting chops from Depp and Bonham-Carter countless times before, so it wasn’t a surprise to see them lose themselves in their respective roles. I still remember Glover from his days as George McFly in the Back to the Future trilogy, but he does seem to embrace playing weirdoes nowadays. It was a joy to hear Alan Rickman’s voice emerge from Ambsalom the Caterpillar’s mouth in this film as he lent a good amount of creepiness and gravitas to the role. Though Wasikowska is a relative novice in film, she really does shine in this, her first starring role. After getting over her initial resemblance to Gwyneth Paltrow, I found myself just looking at her as Alice and wondering if she can follow this role with something as meaty.

Burton’s Alice is a definite trip. It’s a sequel to the original Disney toon as well as the version that most of us are familiar with yet it manages to stand on its own. The familiarity that we all have with these characters didn’t hurt my appreciation for it, in fact, it made me like the film even more. There are moments where the plot does slow down, but I feel that it’s visual spectacle more than covers up for those shortcomings.

Kobe Bryant Profiles: GQ.com

2010-02-17T07:35:00.000+08:00

Kobe Bryant Profiles: GQ.com

Nice to know that Kobe and I share one thing: we're both ultra-competitive in Cranium. ;)

Bleeding Blue

2010-02-12T08:02:00.000+08:00

The truth of the matter is that I’ve forgotten a lot of them. I’ve been watching Ateneo-La Salle games since I was a college freshman in 1992, and for the life of me, I don’t remember more than half of them. Sure, I got immersed in the rivalry during “the Dark Ages of Ateneo basketball” in the 1990s, when the Blue Eagles would get beaten not just by powers like La Salle and UST, but also by also-rans like UP and NU. Back then, Ateneo-La Salle tickets were only difficult to come by because it seemed like all the green alumni were hoarding them. You can’t tell me otherwise because their crowd occupied 70-80% of the Araneta Coliseum while we had one solitary bass drum to lead our cheers. I know because I was there in Upper Box B.

In my sophomore year in 1993, the Blue Eagles went through another dismal season. Although the season started with promise as Richie Ticzon and Paolo Isidro were then joined by transferees Vince Hizon and Dodot Jaworski, it turned into another nightmare season for the team from Loyola Heights. Ticzon was on his fifth and final year with the Eagles, and he had never beaten the hated Archers. This was his last chance at tasting at least a bit of old school Ateneo-La Salle glory.

My cuts for the old Reserved Officer Training Corps (ROTC) had run out and back then, Ateneo-La Salle games were only broadcast on Saturdays, when there was ROTC class on the Ateneo campus. When the schedule revealed that on the final day of round 2 of the eliminations, Ateneo would face La Salle, my blockmates and I decided on the spot that we’d overcut for the sake of this game. The weird thing for us was the game wasn’t even the main game for the day. So low had the Blue Eagles fallen in the UAAP that their classic rivalry game could only serve as an appetizer for a game between then-powerhouses UST and Adamson.

I don’t recall much from that day except that a classmate and I rushed from Loyola Heights to the Araneta Coliseum while still in our ROTC fatigues. The Ateneo contingent was tiny, probably less than 50 people, and all we had was that single bass drum to lead the cheers of the Blue Babble Battalion. In those days, the Green Archers were just on their way to becoming UST’s main rival for championships. These were the years when they were powered by Jason Webb, Mark Telan, Maui Roca, and all those names I grew to revile.

The details are all sketchy now. ABS-CBN wasn’t carrying the UAAP games then. The Internet was still a few years away from really taking off so I can’t find any scores from that game online now. All I remember is that some time in the second half, Ateneo still trailed the mighty De La Salle. We were on our way to another defeat, and even as a college sophomore, I knew that it would only bring down school morale further since it was a defeat at the hands of the team from Taft Avenue.

At some point, somebody from the blue side yelled “Go Ateneo!” What surprised me wasn’t the enthusiasm that the fan showed. What was shocking was the response of a member of the Babble. This guy clad in a blue and white jacket shouted to the Ateneo crowd “’Go Ateneo!’ kayo ng ‘Go Ateneo!” eh di naman kayo nagche-cheer!” He implored us then to cheer even more since we had absolutely nothing to lose since La Salle was such an overwhelming favorite. It certainly got a rise out of the gathered crowd. Our side began to cheer in earnest, screaming “Get that ball!” and “Fight!” louder than we had at any point earlier in the game. The Babble guys even turned to the massive UST throng and mentioned that since they didn’t like DLSU either, then they should cheer with us! Sure enough, the people in yellow began back the Ateneo cheering section and aping our cheers!

I don’t remember the final score. I don’t recall who the leading scorer was. I just remember that on a Saturday afternoon in 1993, I watched Ateneo beat La Salle for the first time live at the historic Big Dome. I was in fatigues and heavy combat boots. I had a 2x3 haircut. I was an awkward teenager. But we beat the Archers in Richie Ticzon’s last game as a Blue Eagle when nobody outside that little group believed that Ateneo could do it. When Monday rolled around, it just seemed like everyone was smiling more on the campus. There were jokes made that since the losing streak against La Salle had finally ended, maybe classes would be suspended. It didn’t happen of course, but such was the importance of snapping the streak.

Since then, I’ve seen a lot of improbable things when watching my beloved Eagles. I’ve seen them blow out La Salle on a day when every shot seemed to drop. I’ve seen them advance to the Final Four for the first time, and even advance to the UAAP Finals after a long hiatus. I’ve also seen them lose heartbreakers to both strong teams as well as bottom-feeders. I can proudly say that I saw the most impossible thing that I could think off when I was in college: three Ateneo Blue Eagle championships in the span of a decade. We Ateneans have been spoiled in recent years, but those of us who lived through the dark times, we who saw heartbreak when nothing was expected of the team, we know better. Those losses have just made me appreciate the wins even more. You realize that after “the Dark Ages”, the only thing that can follow is brighter days indeed.

More Than Just Elementary

2010-01-14T15:07:00.000+08:00

I’ve been a huge fan of Robert Downey, Jr. for years. He always seemed to be a guy who didn’t take himself too seriously but was also a stunningly good actor. I thought he was brilliant in Heart & Souls, but even more so when he got his Academy Award nomination in Chaplin. He overcame addictions to be a humorous yet charming lawyer Larry Paul on Ally McBeal and completed his comeback from the brink with lead roles in the hilarious Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and the awesome double dip of Iron Man and Tropic Thunder.

When I first heard that Downey had been cast to take on the iconic role of Sir Arthur Conan Doye’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes, I think I might have lost my mind for a few seconds. After all, Downey already proved he could provide an excellent English accent in Chaplin, and I thought he had the perfect energy and weirdness necessary to portray the quirky Holmes. Partnering him with the equally brilliant Jude Law as his own Dr. John Watson and having the film directed by Guy Ritchie only made me want to watch this film more.

In Victorian England, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson prevent a ritual sacrifice being conducted by parliament member Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). When Blackwood is sentenced to be hanged, he promises Holmes that he shall return from the grave and cause even more havoc in London. With no new cases to solve and Watson moving out of their flat on 221B Baker Street, Holmes falls into depression and even bets on himself in boxing matches. When Blackwood’s crypt mysteriously opens, Scotland Yard enlists Holmes and Watson to help them prevent a panic and to stop Blackwood. With the aid of Holmes’ old flame Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), they uncover a plot to cause terror and overthrow governments on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the first few minutes of Sherlock Holmes, we immediately see that this isn’t your dad (or even your granddad’s) version of the character. By taking the audience into how Holmes thinks, analyzes situations, and comes up with solutions, director Ritchie also gives us a new way to appreciate the detective’s mind at work. Downey doesn’t don the famous deerstalker hat of Holmes, nor does he say “Elementary, my dear Watson,” but that does not take away from the fact that he is the most “fun” Sherlock Holmes on film ever. Yes, he seems to be playing an English version of his Tony Stark alter ego from Iron Man, so what? The reason why he’s such an effective Holmes is because of the energy that only Downey could bring to the character and I, for one, loved it.

The chemistry between Downey and Law was crucial to make this movie work and luckily, they do have great chemistry together. Law’s Watson isn’t some bumbling oaf. Rather, he is a former soldier, respected physician, and can defend himself in a scrap. In that sense, he is Holmes’ equal and complements the detective quite well. Law doesn’t steal scenes from Downey (even though a star of his magnitude could if he wanted to) and that preserves the integrity of the title character.

Strong has a (pardon the pun) strong resemblance to Andy Garcia, but that doesn’t take away from his menacing performance as Blackwood. The dark features and the deep voice add to his creepiness. I’ve heard complaints that there are parts of the film that drag or get boring, and I noticed where one might say that. However, I also thought those parts were needed in order to explain Blackwood’s background and what his motivation was for going down that path. The glimpses into England during the reign of Queen Victoria were also entertaining since it doesn’t gloss over the grimy state of the nation while also showing the construction of the famous Tower Bridge. If I had one criticism of the movie, it’s that McAdams’ Adler was underutilized and certainly could have done more with Downey and Law. Yes, she’s definitely eye candy, but McAdams is also a good actress and Ritchie should have remembered that.

I felt that Sherlock Holmes was a fun film and definitely brought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creations into the 21st century. The roughhousing and explosions may not have been part of the original stories, but the team of Ritchie, Downey, and Law make it work in the end. I can’t wait for the sequel.

A Rivalry for the Ages

2010-01-02T16:13:00.002+08:00

I started watching NBA basketball in earnest back in 1987. In the NBA Finals, I saw Earvin “Magic” Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers launch a hookshot over the Boston Celtics led by Larry Bird. From then on, I was addicted to the NBA and became a diehard fan of Magic and the Lakers. I couldn’t stand Bird or the Celtics. They were too white, too green, too un-LA. The Lakers, on the other hand, played uptempo basketball, had Magic leading the fastbreak, and finishers like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and Byron Scott to highlight their “Showtime” style of play.

When I borrowed the book When the Game Was Ours, I felt like I was being handed the keys to how Magic’s and Bird’s brains worked. The old archrivals came together to write this book (with sportswriter Jackie MacMullan) in order to clarify some things that had been written about them and to set the record straight on others. It was a relationship that I thought began when they first clashed in the NCAA Basketball Finals in 1979. I was surprised to learn that they were previously teammates the previous year at a World Invitational Tournament. After that, with Bird’s Indiana State team on one side and Magic’s Michigan State squad on the other, the greatest rivalry in basketball history was born.

When the Game Was Ours chronicles the lives of two men who, on the outside, looked like polar opposites. Larry Bird was white, a self-confessed “hick”, wasn’t very fast, and kept to himself. Earvin Johnson, Jr. was black, grew up outside Detroit, and had a magnetic personality. But these two shared such a love for basketball, enjoyed making their teammates better, and absolutely hated losing so badly that they ended up being good friends once they let their guard down. So intense was their rivalry that both admitted that one of the first things they did when they woke up was to check the box scores to see how the other did. Both grew up relatively poor but were drafted by the two premiere franchises in the NBA and immediately brought them back to prominence. They are credited as the men who supposedly "saved the NBA" although neither would claim so lofty a title.

The insights shared by each superstar help make this book the enjoyable read that it was. From their recollections of specific games or even specific plays, it’s clear that they lived through those moments and cherished the highs that only competing against the best could give. On the flipside, they also recall the most painful defeats, and still relive the mistakes that could have swung a series in their favor. Elite athletes like Johnson, Bird and Michael Jordan are all ruthless competitors, unusually driven, and hate losing at anything, and this book only helps to cement those stories.

It truly is amazing to see how each looked at the other as their ultimate measuring stick, how each was so committed to beating the other man that they devoted more time to practices and workouts so that they wouldn’t be outdone by their rival. When the rivalry did begin to thaw and a friendship began to bloom, it’s heartwarming to know that their similarities eventually allowed both to appreciate how special their place in basketball history had become. It even got to the point that when Magic found out that he was HIV-positive, Larry was one of the first people he called. Bird’s reaction, feeling like he was punched in the gut, reflected his own concern for the man who he had wanted to beat more than any other.

Their eventual final teaming as Olympic teammates for the original Dream Team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics also allowed them to build closer relationships with peers. Bird became inseparable from Patrick Ewing, while Magic and Jordan presided over the greatest basketball game that was never caught on tape. Their individual enshrinements into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and their lives after the NBA have only made their bond stronger as, to this day, both claim that people often ask them where the other is. These two guys are why I got into basketball in the first place. This book just helps crystallize why I still love the game so dearly.

The Next Step for Movies?

2010-01-02T10:51:00.001+08:00

What is left to be said about Avatar? It seems everyone who’s seen it has already been blown away by it’s stunning graphics, the special effects, and the advances that director James Cameron has made in 3D animation. My voice would be that of just another fanboy who worships at Cameron’s feet. Still, I’d like to try and give my take on this movie and why I think it’s one of the best science-fiction films I’ve seen from the past decade.

In the year 2154, humans have left Earth and have begun exploring space. On the moon Pandora, the RDA corporation wants to mine the mineral called unobtainium but this has brought them in direct conflict with Pandora’s natives, the blue-skinned, nature-worshipping Na’vi. The humans can only move around Pandora’s toxic atmosphere either in machines or in “avatars”, human Na’vi hybrids controlled by genetically matched humans. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is a paraplegic former marine who volunteers to replace his twin brother who was trained to operate an avatar but was killed prior to departure for Pandora. Though Jake works under the supervision of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), he actually reports to Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) a military man who wants to know how to get rid of the Na’vi and get all the unobtainium possible.

Jake’s avatar gets lost on Pandora but is rescued by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), a female Na’vi who learned English through Augustine’s efforts. Brought back to the holy Hometree, Neytiri’s parents are the Omaticaya tribal chief Eytucan (Wes Studi) and the priestess Mo’at (CCH Pounder). Directed by Mo’at to teach Jake in the ways of the Omaticaya, Neytiri shows the human the bond that the Na’vi have with Pandora’s animals, plants, and the mother goddess Eywa. Jake then finds himself torn between his duty and his growing appreciation for the Na’vi, specifically Neytiri.

First of all, I don’t recommend seeing Avatar for the first time without at least watching the 3D version. The last two movies I’ve seen have been in 3D (the other being A Christmas Carol) but Avatar just raised the stakes in 3D motion pictures. One might feel a bit uneasy with the 3D initially, but after a few minutes, it becomes almost a natural thing to see the film that way. The merging of the live action with the computer-generated parts is also seamless, something I was really looking forward to critiquing before entering the cinema. Worthington, Saldana and the other Na’vi went through the whole motion capture process similar to what transpired in A Christmas Carol and The Polar Express except this time, their characters also interacted with actual human actors. If I was given the chance to watch this in IMAX, I’d jump at it too just to witness what Cameron’s true vision for this epic was in the first place.

As far as plots go, I’ve heard Avatar being compared to the 90s animated film FernGully: The Last Rainforest but since I didn’t see that toon, I can instead compare this to films by the great Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki’s films often have themes of environmental awareness and nature fighting against technology and there were parts of Avatar that had echoes of both Princess Mononoke and Laputa: Castle in the Sky in that regard. I definitely think Cameron had been watching a lot of anime leading up to coming up with Avatar’s story, whether it was subconscious or not though is another story.

Still, the main draw of Avatar isn’t the plot. That’s only incidental to this experience. Indeed, watching Avatar is an experience because we might have just seen the future of films with this piece. Cameron supposedly helped push for the development of the cameras and filmmaking process necessary to make what he envisioned into a reality onscreen. The effects, the visuals, the sheer spectacle of the film, these have become James Cameron’s trademarks and they’re the reason why I want to watch movies that he produces or directs. Avatar is by no means a perfect film, but despite it’s plot holes and the cheesy love subplot, it was still a fun experience to enter a cinema, put on my 3D glasses and be transported to Pandora. Isn’t that why we watch movies in the first place?

A New Take on a Classic

2009-12-29T17:38:00.001+08:00

Everyone has heard of the Charles Dickens classic known as A Christmas Carol. There have been so many interpretations over the years, whether it be animated, live-action, even Muppets (!) that one would think that there would be no other way to make the story fresh anymore. Well director Robert Zemeckis found a way and through the magic of IMAX and 3D, his version of A Christmas Carol can stand proudly with the best of them.

In Victorian England, Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is miserable once again. It’s been a few years since his partner, Jacob Marley (Gary Oldman), has passed away and the miserly old moneylender hates giving employee Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman) any days off, even if it is Christmas. When Marley’s ghost visits Scrooge on Christmas Eve, Marley warns him that his miserable existence must change unless Scrooge also wants to be miserable in the afterlife. Three spirits haunt Scrooge, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Together, they show the old man how he has wasted his life until that point and that a terrible fate awaits him if he does not repent.

As timeless and great as Dickens’ work is, this treatment of A Christmas Carol is different because of the exceptional animation that was undertaken to create it. Improving on the performance capture effects seen previously in The Polar Express and Beowulf, Zemeckis’ team at ImageMovers Digital have added so much detail to their characters that it’s a bit scary. Wrinkles on faces, liver spots on hands, and pores on skin are so clear, the only thing separating the animated characters from actual people is their colorful world and the situations they’re put into.

Seeing the movie in 3D and on the mammoth IMAX screen only served to enhance my enjoyment of it. Then again, every film I’ve seen on IMAX has been a fun experience. The 3D touches of falling snow, horses galloping, and other similar effects were nice to see, particularly on such a big canvas as the IMAX screen. Though there are a few times when the 3D can be a bit distracting, they are few and far between. I can say though that if I had seen A Christmas Carol in a regular cinema, I believe I would have still enjoyed it. I’ve heard that this treatment remains quite faithful to the original source material, something that I always appreciate in movie adaptations.

A friend told me that they hesitated to watch this film because he wasn’t a Jim Carrey fan. I reassured him, however, that if you didn’t know Carrey played Scrooge, you wouldn’t notice him. More than just adopting a British accent, Carrey just removes everything we’ve gotten used to about him to play the old miser as well as the three Christmas spirits. Oldman looks exactly like Cratchit so we can’t separate one from the other, but I believe Carrey really needed to separate himself from Scrooge in order to make the character work, and in my opinion, it does.

Killing Nazis for Sport

2009-12-15T12:37:00.003+08:00

I desperately wanted to love Inglourious Basterds. After all, this was the latest film from Quentin Tarantino and his films tend to be the kinds of films I love. With Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2, Tarantino pretty much desensitized me to different kinds of violence. So when I heard that Tarantino was going to do a World War II film that had Brad Pitt and other actors killing Nazis, I was already looking for the line to the ticket gate. Unfortunately for me, Inglourious Basterds didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

In Nazi-occupied

France

, the famed “Jew Hunter” Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) has the Jewish Dreyfus family killed except for the escaped Shosanna. Over in Italy, American 1^st Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembles a team of Jewish-Americans and Germans to cause havoc within Germany by scalping Nazi soldiers and carving swastikas on the the foreheads of survivors. Popularly known as “The Basterds”, even Hitler himself takes notice. Four years after her family’s murder, Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) now goes by the name Emmanuelle Mimieux and operates a small Paris cinema. When the German sniper Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) shows interest in movies and her, Shosanna is forced to screen the premiere of a film made by Nazi propaganda head Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) about Zoller’s exploits for the Nazi elite. Shosanna plans to burn down her cinema to kill all the Nazis altogether. At the same time, Raine and his Basterds are also plotting the assassination of the German brass with the help of British Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) and German film star/spy Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) resulting in a bloody standoff in the basement of a French pub.

Basterds is typical Tarentino in the sense that a. there are a lot of scenes where characters just seem to be talking, b. there’s a lot of graphic violence, and c. the film is an homage to a film genre of the past. I’m not saying the long dialogue is a bad thing at all, in fact, it’s one of the Tarantino trademarks that I love. The dialogue helps the audience understand where the characters are coming from, their motivation, as well as why they’re doing the things they do, and Tarantino has made a habit of writing rich dialogue for his characters. The first scene in particular shows just how evil and twisted Standartenführer Landa truly is. Waltz’s performance here stands out so strongly and he really feels like a suave yet demonic Nazi of the highest order. He combines charm, class, and hatred of Jews to go beyond the stereotypical Nazi of old and his brutality later in the film shows even more of his acting range.

As a Tarantino film, it’s best to keep in mind that Inglourious Basterds wasn’t meant to be historically accurate. I mean, there’s no record of anybody scalping Nazis during World War II and the ending of the film obviously didn’t happen. Despite the great cast, good plot, and the gory details, there was still something a bit off about the film for me. I think the pacing was a bit too slow when compared to other Tarantino favorites like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. I realize the need for explanation and establishing how things are what they are, but I believe Tarantino could have done away with a few minutes here and there to speed up the pace. After all, in a film like this, we as audience members just want to get to the next killing scene already.

I did like the fact though that both Shosanna’s plan and the Basterds’ plot never overlapped and only intersected during the film’s climax. In that way, there was no need for any awkward introductions between characters and the focus stayed on both plans trying to come to fruition. In my humble opinion, Inglourious Basterds was still a good film to catch, just not as good as previous Tarantino efforts on the big screen.

This Should Have Stayed Grounded

2009-12-15T00:45:00.001+08:00

As a kid, I was fascinated by stories of aviation pioneers like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. I remember a book that my parents gave me then that told of how both crossed the Atlantic Ocean individually on their planes, making them heroes worldwide. The tragedy of Earhart’s disappearance as she attempted to circumnavigate the world has been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories and innuendo for over 70 years, I guess I was just waiting for a movie about her life until that point. Thus I was one of the few who actually wanted to watch director Mira Nair’s Amelia.

Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank) had long dreamed of flight and she was determined to become the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Through the efforts of George Putnam (Richard Gere), she does so, along with setting several other flying records. Putnam and Earhart fall in love and marry, but she also begins an affair with Federal aviation administrator Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). When she does break off the relationship with Vidal and returns to Putnam, Earhart is determined to set the greatest aviation feat of all: circumnavigating the world. Hiring renowned navigator Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston), Earhart tells her husband that she wants to retire from flying after this is done. However, a series of events happen that results in tragedy for Earhart and Noonan.

I’m usually a sucker for these period pieces and biographical films about famous people, so Amelia was something I looked forward to. Based on the books East of the Dawn by Susan Butler and The Sound of Wings by Mary S. Lovell, the film paints a picture of an Amelia Earhart who was initially allowed to fly as nothing more than a publicity stunt. When she first earns fame, she used it to push for more power for female pilots and more representation for women. However, director Nair doesn’t make Earhart a saint, showing her brazen affair with Vidal.

The problem I found with this film is that it was just too damn slow. Even though Swank looks just like Earhart, the plot just seemed to be stuck in quicksand at times. Although Gere and McGregor try to make the most of what’s been given them, it just lacks enough of a punch to make Earhart’s life more compelling. There are times that it seems the actors just can’t generate the energy to make the film livelier. For a film about a woman that set so many records and accomplished so many new and exciting things in her time, Nair somehow finds a way to take the fun out of Earhart’s story.

The life and mysterious disappearance of Amelia Earhart has been and will continue to be the subject of much speculation and hypothesis for many years to come. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can call Amelia as a good film to refer to when citing a source for those theories in the future.

Welcome to Zombieland

2009-11-30T12:01:00.000+08:00

You gotta love zombies. I mean, they’re dead, mindless, only want to eat to satisfy unnatural hunger, want to create more zombies, yet also want to eat their fellow zombies. What makes Zombieland stand out from the dozens of zombie movies made in the past is that this is a funny, dark, and violent done with some amusing tricks by director Ruben Fleischer.

The film starts after a zombie apocalypse has turned most of America into a virtual “zombieland”. Narration by “Columbus” (Jesse Eisenberg), he adopted the name to signify where he’s heading in hopes of finding his parents in Ohio. Columbus has been following certain rules to avoid being killed or turned into a zombie including doing cardio, double tapping to ensure the zombies are dead, being wary of bathrooms, limbering up, etc. Along the way, Columbus bumps into a man called Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who has a gift for killing zombies. They, in turn, are conned by sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) into giving up their truck and their weapons. Both pairs reach an uneasy truce as the girls are willing to help the guys reach their destination while they themselves plan to visit the Pacific Playground amusement park in California.

Zombieland immediately immerses you in what has become a reality for its inhabitants. Through pop-ups and shorts sketches, Director Schneider shows how to survive a zombie attack. It’s similar to the old “Pop-Up Video” concept on VH1, but with far more dire consequences. Eisenberg sometimes sounds like fellow geek Michael Cera and his neurotic hero does serve to annoy Harrelson’s ultra-cool renegade character. Their chemistry was essential in keeping me involved in the movie, as was their interaction with the con artist sisters. I always find it weird watching Abigail Breslin nowadays, especially since I used to see her in movies like Signs, Raising Helen, and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement when she was just six. After showing off serious talent in Little Miss Sunshine, I think it’s safe to say she’s got this acting thing down pat.

The zombies in Zombieland aren’t the classic slow, plodding kind from Night of the Living Dead, but that’s not such a bad thing. I love that they run and attack, forcing the protagonists to think fast. The makeup effects are decent enough, but surprisingly, what carries this movie is actually the plot. The idiosyncrasies of Columbus, Tallahassee’s quest for revenge and the last Twinkie, as well as the trusts issues of the sisters actually make them more endearing and sympathetic. Add in a great cameo by a famous actor in the middle of the film and you have a funny, innovative, yet engaging zombie film.

It's The End of the World as We Know It

2009-11-30T10:38:00.006+08:00

Disaster movies with “end of the world” scenarios have come in all shapes and sizes before. From having meteors hurtling towards the Earth or a new Ice Age, I thought I had seen them all. Give credit to producer/director Roland Emmerich for finding another one for his film 2012: the Mayan people predicted the end of the world would happen at around the date of December 21, 2012. So Emmerich proceeds to destroy the world once more and maps out how a few select humans manage to survive the coming disaster. Yeah, this isn’t exactly nuclear science.

In 2009, Dr. Satnam Tsurutani (Jimi Mistry) tells American geologist Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) that the earth’s core is abnormally heating up, it sets into a motion a chain of events that they predict will culminate by the year 2012. Helmsley warns White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) and subsequently, American president Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover). By 2010, Wilson informs other heads of state of the coming disaster is inevitable but that they can prepare for it by working together to ensure the survival of humanity. Unfortunately for Helmsley, his computations are off by a few months and the catastrophe starts happening early. Caught in the crossfire are struggling author Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet), their kids, and Kate’s new boyfriend Gordon Silberman (Thomas McCarthy). Can this ragtag group possibly survive the destruction of life on earth as we know it?

Make no mistake, I knew full well that watching 2012 would mean a whole lot of suspension of disbelief on my part. I mean, movies predicting the end of the world aren’t exactly the “smartest” movies out there. So yes, I tried to keep an open mind and lowered my expectations even before the film started. Director Emmerich already gave us Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow so he does have some experience in this genre. True enough, it’s pretty much the same as far as story goes. Emmerich tries to give us the “common man” point of view, that’s why he gave us Cusack’s character as well as their dysfunctional family.

The most impressive thing about 2012 is, of course, the special effects employed. CGI effects have gotten to the point that filmmakers can destroy practically anything they set their minds to, whether it be the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil, the White House, or even the entire state of Hawaii. The character moments in 2012 are few and far between, although they do try to give them to us through the Curtis family, the Russian mobster Yuri Karpov (Zlatko Buric) and his sons, the relationship between Pres. Wilson and daughter Laura (Thandie Newton), and Helmsley and his musician father Harry (Blu Mankuma). What was particularly entertaining for me though was to see Woody Harrelson portray conspiracy theorist and “oracle” Charlie Frost. Looking scraggly, demented, and paranoid, Harrelson stole every scene he was in, providing some of the memorable scenes of the film.

2012 is not going to win any awards. It’s not going to dominate the box office like previous Emmerich movies may have. It’s just a mindless film with great special effects that posits some interesting theories on how the world might end and how humanity’s spirit will find a way to survive it.

Boys Will be Boys

2009-11-18T11:19:00.000+08:00

Rare is the play that translates so well into film. With that in mind, Nicholas Hytner’s film The History Boys is probably the rarest of those gems. Based on the Tony Award-winning play by Alan Bennett, it is a film that clearly stems from the stage. With rapid-fire dialogue, tons of witty rhetoric, and a sparkling screenplay, this film pulls you into the world of eight British youths who are aiming for entry into two of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world.

Set in 1983, the soundtrack is a delight for any fan of 80s music (me foremost among them). Eight grammar school students have been selected by their headmaster (Clive Merrison) as possessing the potential to enter either Oxford or Cambridge. The boys excel in their classes but are still typical adolescents: loud, arrogant, brash, and with lots of sex on the brain. Though already under the supervision of Mrs. Lintott (Frances de la Tour) and Mr. Hector (Richard Griffiths), the headmaster feels they need some more prodding in order to ensure their Oxbridge education. That‘s when they bring in Mr. Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), a young teacher with lots of insights that can potentially affect the boys’ future.

The cast is a marvel to behold. Perhaps owing to their previous experience of performing in the theater version, each actor delivers their lines with such familiarity, confidence, and aplomb that they make every word seem compelling and straight from the heart. Griffiths is an actor that I’ve only previously seen as a comedic buffoon in King Ralph and one of the Naked Gun films, or as Uncle Vernon in the “Harry Potter” series. His Hector allows him to stretch his acting muscles and deliver a virtuoso performance as a pained and tortured teacher with a dark secret. Hector knows that the headmaster is repulsed by him, but his love for teaching and for this group of boys convinces him to stay on… in spite of the loneliness he experiences.

De la Tour’s Mrs. Lintott is so sublime that you might lose sight of her. That would be a huge mistake as her performance helps ground the movie in the face of all the testosterone surrounding her. My friend Jo’s favorite character was undoubtedly the confused teen with the great singing voice Posner (Samuel Barnett). He shines when performing in front of his peers, be it in a scene from a movie or when singing “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” to classmate Dakin (Dominic Cooper). He perfectly captures the confusion and angst that teenagers go through and we were completely under his spell every time he was onscreen.

Cooper’s Dakin is the consummate flirt. Whether it be the headmaster’s secretary Fiona or Posner or his own teacher Irwin, Dakin knows he has an effect on people of any age or sex. He uses that to his advantage of course, and though we sometimes shook our heads in disbelief at this abuse of power, we couldn’t help but be in awe at a young master in action. Moore as Irwin is someone who wishes he had done better in school and is now trying to get the best out of boys not much younger than him. Though he may lead a double life, Irwin feels that if this group can pass Oxbridge, it will serve as a validation for his perceived shortcomings.

Needless to say, I really, really, really liked The History Boys. This was a film that I only caught because my then-officemate Jami heard good things about it and the screening for The Holiday was too late. I have never been so happy to stumble into a cinema as within the first five minutes, I was hooked. With the British accents and the dry Brit humor though, I agree that half of the film’s humor probably went over my head. That doesn’t matter though. The parts that we did get totally blew us away.

It is so rare to find such an intelligent script being acted out by such exceptional actors that I can’t help but rave about it. I still like Jerry Bruckheimer movies and films starring Will Ferrell and Steve Carell, but I still thoroughly loved sitting in a movie theater and watching the genius that is “The History Boys”.

Originally posted on February 13, 2007

Happily Ever After?

2009-11-16T14:32:00.001+08:00

We all grew up on fairy tales. Passed down from generation to generation, these stories varied from simple nursery rhymes to more extensive stories that had moral lessons at the end. Writer Bill Willingham’s comic book series Fables has brought all of these varying stories together under one roof, as a bunch of mythical beings who have escaped their fairy tale “homelands” and moved into a secret spot in the Upper West Side of New York City. In the book Peter & Max: A Fables Novel however, the story revolves around two brothers. Both musicians, they both wanted to follow their father’s footsteps. The brothers are Peter Piper and his brother Max, who would become the evil being known as The Pied Piper.

Johannes Piper raised his sons to be skilled with the pipe as he was. Early on though, he noticed that young Peter was more gifted in music than his brother Max. To Max, none of that mattered though as long as he inherited Johannes’ prized possession, the magical pipe known as Frost. On their annual visits to play at the fair, the Pipers would stay at the estate of Squire Radulf Peep together with his wife and six daughters. The youngest, Esmerault, or “Bo” was Peter’s favorite playmate. When the first war drums of an invading empire are heard, the Peeps and Pipers were shocked to find goblins ransacking the Peep estate. Even as Johannes bestows Frost on Peter, an incensed Max begins his descent down a dark path that will have him commit unbelievable atrocities, deal with a witch in The Black Forest, and acquire magical powers that made his story legendary yet deadly. Centuries later, it will be up to Max’s brother Peter to finally bring him to justice at the expense of the peaceful life he has found for himself and his bride away from the Homelands.

I’ve been collecting the Fables graphic novels for a few years now and it has been a constant source of delight for me. Willingham’s ability to bring so many beloved fables, nursery rhymes and fairy tales together has been nothing short of masterful for over five years now, and with this prose novel, he proves that he can write a mean story even without the beautiful art from partners like artists James Jean, Mark Buckingham, or Lan Medina. Of course the few illustrations by frequent Fables contributor Steve Leialoha were much appreciated, but Willingham really shines in his writing here. Peter & Max doesn’t require you to read all of the Fables (and the spin-off Jack of Fables) graphic novels that have come before, but knowledge of those works will double your delight in this piece.

The sibling rivalry that arises between the Piper brothers is quite intense, but there is a fair amount of believability in there as Willingham made a birthright the turning point that finally destroyed their relationship. It might be a bit sacrilegious to compare Johannes, Max and Peter to the Bible’s own Isaac, Esau and Jacob, but I believe Willingham did draw inspiration from the good book for his own purposes.

Since this is “a Fables novel”, there was a fair amount of magic and mystical things happening within these pages. Some animals spoke, music emanating from pipes could hypnotize or destroy, and beings can wait centuries before collecting on old debts. It’s always a treat for me to see some of the fairy tales I remember as a kid reinterpreted in the hands of Willingham, and it’s no different in this case. By crafting an extensive backstory for characters like the Pied Piper, Peter Piper and Little Bo Peep, we become more emotionally invested in the stories, drawing more than just kiddie amusement in the end.

The legend of the Pied Piper’s hypnotic music whisking the children of Hamelin away has a darker slant in Peter & Max, particularly when one sees how the twisted musician became what he wasas he acquired the powerful yet evil pipe Fire as his own. My one big complaint about this novel was probably how anti-climactic the final battle between the brothers was. I thought it was anti-climactic after they had such a magnificent clash back when they were in the Homelands and the dueling pipes were on full display. It was also very entertaining for me, a fan of the graphic novels, to see old favorites such as Rose Red, Bigby Wolf, etc. here as supporting characters. The big treat, however, was to see more of Frau Totenkinder, particularly when she was a more malevolent creature.

As dark as Max’s descent into madness was, the contrast in the love story between Peter and Bo is also a treat. From the innocent games they played as kids to the uncomfortable teenage years and facing the Empire’s assault together and the inevitable confrontation with Max, Peter and Bo survive because they have each other. No matter the problem, no matter the physical or mental anguish they face, Peter and Bo endure whether in their old land of Hesse or in their new home because they know that at the end of the day, they have each other’s back. They made me hold out hope that there is indeed a happy ever after waiting for all of us.

Going Beyond the Law

2009-11-08T22:04:00.001+08:00

Too often, when we watch action movies featuring a wronged man seeking revenge on “the system”, it features one guy with a gun taking out people who have wronged him using a lot of brawn and huge amounts of firepower. This was the kind of movie that made stars out of Schwarzenegger, Willis, Stallone, and Eastwood in the past. The difference with Law Abiding Citizen is that this time around, the wronged person uses his brain more than just brawn.

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) sees his home invaded by thugs and blacks out before his wife and daughter are murdered. Philadelphia prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) is eager to keep his conviction rate, so rather than take the case before a judge and jury, he agrees to a deal that will lessen the charges against the actual rapist and killer Clarence Darby (Christian Stolte) but will sentence one of his men to death by lethal injection. Shelton is devastated and angered when he sees Darby shake Rice’s hand. Ten years later, Darby’s accomplice Ames dies an excruciating death. Darby meets an even more gruesome fate. When Rice (who has risen to the rank of assistant district attorney) arrests Shelton for the murders, Clyde almost gleefully agrees to be imprisoned. Meanwhile, other people who were involved in the case surrounding Shelton’s family are dying one at a time while he sits in jail. How can he be causing all of it and how low is he willing to go to fix the judicial system?

I’ve been a Gerard Butler fan since he made such a huge impact as the Spartan king Leonidas in 300. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in his last film, Gamer. It’s good to see that with Law Abiding Citizen, Butler gets back some well-deserved swagger. Here is somebody who has been wronged by the faulty American justice system who systematically eliminates every person he thinks robbed him of his family. He doesn’t just go around punching people or shooting them with guns, he has meticulously planned everything in detail to use a variety of means to send each person a message. It’s almost impossible not to root for Shelton while the killings are happening, even though he’s supposed to be the film’s villain.

Director F. Gary Gray has already proven himself to be a good action-drama filmmaker in the past with films such as The Negotiator and the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, so Law Abiding Citizen doesn’t let up in the action department. The city of Philadelphia provides some additional character to the movie that would otherwise be lost of the filmmakers had just elected to make it another generic New York film. It’s a refreshing change though to see African-American Foxx as the slick but successful lawyer while the Caucasian Butler is the diabolical convict with nothing left to lose. Apparently Butler (who also served as a producer on the film) asked that he take the Shelton role even though Foxx was already previously cast in it. Though both are different kinds of actors, they do share some nice screen time together and that added to my enjoyment of the film.

Butler’s Shelton is a pretty vengeful character here, but he’s convinced that he’s helping in fixing a dying and decrepit organism that robs people of true justice. The various ways in which he kills everyone shows both genius and madness, making it irresistible to the audience. Yes, we all know that Nick Rice was a slimy bastard who did anything to get ahead, but the way Shelton took out Rice’s co-workers and associates went beyond just getting rid of “the bad guys” and inevitably makes Shelton a “bad guy” himself. Still, it was pretty sweet how he got his point across, as depraved a point as it was.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

2009-11-08T17:47:00.001+08:00

There’s nothing like a good scary movie to send you looking over your shoulder or double-checking if you’ve said your prayers at night. I’m not really sure why I like scary movies, I mean these films are designed to make you scream, give you nightmares, or doubt if there’s something creepy crawling under your bed. Considering that I can’t stand rollercoasters, horror movies are almost nothing to me. For me, the best scary movies won’t show you the ghouls in all their gory glory or won’t have all the guts and innards on display. The best scary films are the ones that leave stuff to your imagination through the use of sound, very simple special effects, and a great deal of innuendo. Paranormal Activity clearly is one of those great scary movies.

In a house in San Diego, California in 2006, young couple Micah (Micah Sloat) and Katie (Katie Featherston) are apprehensive because of a few strange occurrences. Katie claims that a ghostly entity that has been haunting her since childhood has followed her to this new home. Micah wants to capture evidence of this, so he gets a video camera and sophisticated audio equipment to monitor their bedroom as they sleep. Katie contacts a psychic, Dr. Fredrichs (Mark Fredrichs), who says that they are being tormented by a being feeding off negative energy. He suggests that they get in touch the demonologist Dr. Abrams to better understand what they’re dealing with, but Micah wants to make contact by himself through the use of a Ouija board despite Dr. Fredrichs warning against that.

The audio-video equipment ends up recording strange occurrences over the course of three weeks such as noises in the middle of the night, flickering lights, Katie standing up beside the bed and staring at Micah’s sleeping form for hours, footprints entering their room but none heading out, etc. As the strain of these phenomena only aggravate them more, whatever is causing them seems to be getting stronger and more daring in its exploits.

Shot in the form of a documentary like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity might just be the most original and terrifying horror movie in years. First-time film director Oren Peli uses a very modest budget, with hardly any effects to craft a movie that seems so real, it is terrifying. By using a simple video camera and having just Featherston and Sloat supposedly filming everything, you get the impression that these things actually happened to real people three years ago. The camera is shaky, like it is in normal home movies and the acting seems even more raw as they deal with the unseen yet terrifying entity. Much like Blair Witch did a few years back, it’s tough to determine where fiction ends and reality begins. To me, that is a big part of why Paranormal Activity is such a good film. By suspending disbelief better than the typical horror/slasher flick, this movie does what every film aims to do: make you think what you see on film is 100% real.

I started watching this movie alone in my room at around 1:00am on a Wednesday, but even before the first scene was done, I already turned it off and switched to The Tonight Show instead. Why? Because the documentary style with which it was filmed had me concerned that I was going to be too caught up in the illusion and might be too scared at such a late hour. Instead, I proceeded to watch the film a day later, and I was right. I had chills down my spine at different points of this film and some parts made me jumpy. Whether it was the sound of footsteps in the night, a blanket moving suddenly, or the sight of Katie sleepwalking creepily, the director Peli made me believe that “an entity” truly did haunt this couple. The version that will come out in local cinemas will supposedly have a different ending than this version that I’ve seen, so I am curious enough to watch it again. I dare you to watch Paranormal Activity in a cinema or alone in your house at night. Let’s see just how brave you are.

This Was Definitely It

2009-11-02T16:41:00.003+08:00

Like everyone else, I was shocked to find out on the morning of June 25, 2009 that Michael Jackson had died. My childhood would not have been complete without his music, particularly on albums like “Off The Wall”, “Bad”, and of course, the monster that was “Thriller”. Though he somewhat faded from public view due to his eccentricities, his music would pop up on the airwaves every so often. Once in a while, I even played his albums on my iPod for kicks because I was still a fan. Yet the whole world seemed to shake and convulse when the “King of Pop” passed away at the age of 50. His planned concert tour of 50 shows called “This Is It” would not happen.

Surprisingly, that concert tour’s choreographer and director, Kenny Ortega (of High School Musical 1, 2, and 3 fame) had apparently shot a bunch of rehearsal and backstage videos of the preparations for the tour. There was so much video shot of auditions for back-up dancers, Michael and company shooting videos that were to be shown on giant video walls while performing, and Michael freestyling on vocals and dancing, that Ortega could make a pseudo-documentary out of it. As a final tribute to Jackson’s genius, This Is It, the film, was created for a limited two-week theatrical run and boy, it’s definitely worth watching on the big screen.

It’s a performance tour-de-force and a rare look into the painstaking attention to detail that Michael gave to every concert, every performance, and every song. From the first beats you hear of “Wanna Be Starting Something”, you are instantly transfixed on the genius and your feet begin to start tapping along to the rhythm. Throughout the film, one sees the perfectionist that Michael was, paying attention to details such as music cues, variations in dance steps, where and when he would be standing for a particular note, how his performance syncs with pre-shot videos, and even how a burning coat should be treated once it starts to burn. He may have been a bit obsessive-compulsive, but nobody can ever argue with the fantastic results that his live concerts had become. There are a couple of moments when he asks the musical director or Ortega to start a song all over again because he noticed something they could improve on. “That’s why we do rehearsal,” he said, and you knew he took rehearsal very seriously.

The dancers who auditioned to be part of the tour were literally in tears when they found out they would join their idol. Often, while Michael rehearsed or tried out a few moves, those dancers were screaming and cheering the loudest. Why? Because, as my friend Mitch said, “They just got treated to a free concert!” We should all be as lucky as they were.

Michael was also gracious enough to share the stage with a few artists, and two really stood out. Greek-Australian Orianthi Panagaris stepped into the venerable rock and roll shoes worn by Eddie Van Halen and Slash to do the difficult guitar riffs on “Billie Jean” and “Black or White” respectively. She didn’t just do them justice, Orianthi stood toe to toe with the King of Pop and matched his energy on her guitar. Japanese-American Judith Hill sang Siedah Garrett’s part in the Jackson duet “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” and hit all the notes that the former Brand New Heavies lead vocalist once made famous. Those who watched Michael’s memorial service at Staples Center might remember Hill as the girl who led the singing of “Heal The World” at the end. These two women shared a stage with the great entertainer, and might have just received a final push from him on their own individual paths to stardom.

Make no mistake, the footage used in This Is It wasn’t supposed to be released to the general public. They were intended for Michael’s personal collection, just something to chronicle the events leading up to the tour. It may seem a bit rough or out of focus at times, and there are instances when Michael isn’t really singing, but rather humming along as he traces his dance moves. Luckily for us, Ortega was able to translate it into a fitting tribute piece. It’s just so sad that when one watches this film, you note how Michael seemed to be so full of life and looked so energized when he was onstage. It’s like being in the spotlight with people looking at his every move put him at ease. There were a lot of moments where my friends and I would be dazzled by his moves, then realize that Michael is indeed gone. The King of Pop is indeed dead, and This Is It is all that we have left of what might have been a magical concert experience. Thankfully, for artists and musicians like Michael Jackson, the music lives on long after the man has left the building.

Soaring High in the Sky

2009-11-01T01:02:00.000+08:00

I became aware of Astro Boy from the animated version shown on local TV in the 1980s. It was a fun and simple show back then, complete with an unforgettable yet catchy theme song, but I wasn’t aware of how significant the character was to cartoons and Japanese culture. I only found out about 15 years ago that Astro Boy or Tetsuwan Atom was the model for which all Japanese anime followed. The original Tetsuwan Atom comic (or “manga” in Japanese) was created by legendary manga illustrator Osamu Tezuka in the 1950s. Tezuka’s use of large, expressive eyes became a staple of Japanese animation for decades to come and Tetsuwan Atom has been like Japan’s own Mickey Mouse in terms of popularity, marketability, and appeal to all ages.

I even followed the 2003 anime version of Astro Boy on the Animax network. A bit darker than the 80s version, this was still Astro in his robot fighting glory, and it was great seeing him reimagined for a new generation. For the 2009 feature film version of Astro Boy, I was curious how the character would look in full CGI, and I was also hoping that the plot wouldn’t be too stupid or too kid-oriented to alienate an old fan like myself. Happily, it wasn’t, and there was enough of the classic manga/anime as well as a more than decent plot that I was fully engaged in the film.

Set in the near future, Metro City is a floating metropolis floating above the dump that is all that’s left of Earth. Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage), Head of the Ministry of Science, is too busy to make time for his brilliant 10 year-old son, Toby (Freddie Highmore). During a demonstration for Metro City’s President Stone (Donald Sutherland), the Peacekeeper robot accidentally kills Toby. Wracked with guilt, Tenma creates a robot in Toby’s image, embedded with Toby’s memories, and powered by positive blue core energy. After the robot that Tenma also calls Toby begins to show an independent streak, Tenma rejects him. Stone wants Toby’s blue core at all costs, eventually dumping the robot from Metro City to the robot dumping ground on the surface. Can the newly-renamed “Astro” find acceptance with the surface dwellers and evade President Stone’s clutches?

I have to admit that I had pretty low expectations for Astro Boy. After the disaster that was the live-action adaptation of the anime Speed Racer, I kind of expected Astro Boy to be in the same category. I was more than happy to be proven wrong. The plot follows some of the origins from the 1950s manga and anime, while also modernizing it for the 2009 audience. There was still enough elements though (including renaming the Japanese “Tobio” into “Toby”, Astro fighting for robot rights, guns coming out of Astro’s butt, and the presence of Dr. Tenma and Dr. Elefun) still in the film that kept a hardcore anime guy like me glued to the screen. Yes, there were little plot developments such as Astro ending up with a bunch of kids ala-Peter Pan’s Lost Boys and the “robot gladiators” that were different, but those weren’t necessarily bad things.

The CGI is, of course, excellent. It was nice to see characters such as Astro Boy, Dr. Tenma, and Dr. Elefun rendered in 3D and it was also interesting that Bill Nighy made a rare appearance as a good guy here playing Dr. Elefun. Hearing Cage’s distinctive nasal voice coming out of Dr. Tenma’s mouth was a bit distracting, but after a while, I got used to it. I’ve only seen Highmore in live action films with his native British accent and before puberty hit so I wasn’t so distracted with his lower voice and American twang here. Sutherland is at his best when he plays villains, so his President Stone was fun to watch and hear.

Overall, I enjoyed watching this version of Astro Boy. Again, there were just enough old school elements and a decent mix of modern animation and plot updates that kept me interested. I think it’s time the kids of today met my old friend too. I still sing along to that 80s theme song every now and then, “Soaring high in the sky, he may be small, but only in size, Astro Boy! Astro Boy! He is brave and gentle and wise!”

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done

2009-10-22T15:31:00.001+08:00

He should always be there. You know the line… up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman! But there was a time when he just stopped. The Man of Steel left Metropolis and nobody knew where he went. This isn’t the plot of the latest Superman movie. It’s the premise behind Absolute Kingdom Come.

Kingdom Come was a momentous comic event when it was first released in 1996. The combination of Alex Ross’ photorealistic art and Mark Waid’s ominous script had comic fans of all ages stand up and take notice. “How could Superman ever leave Metropolis?” “What do you mean Batman has turned Gotham City into a police state?” “A new generation of heroes is abusing their power?” “How did Captain Marvel turn into a bad guy?” Such statements were a mere sampling of the reactions to Kingdom Come. Ten years after the mini-series was released, DC Comics published an oversized hardcover slipcase edition in Absolute Kingdom Come loaded with special features.

In a possible future, Superman has left Metropolis and most of humanity behind. Batman’s secret identity has been found out, and he rules over Gotham with an army of Bat-robots. Meanwhile, a new generation of metahumans has been abusing their gifts. As a result of their carelessness, a nuclear explosion wipes out a portion of the USA and public distrust is at an all-time high. Entangled in all of this is Pastor Norman McCay. Norman sees visions of conflict and destruction, and is approached by the entity known as The Spectre. The Spectre enlists Norman to bear witness to the developing crisis, and eventually judge if humanity and our so-called heroes will survive.

When the original Kingdom Come came out a decade ago, its powerful message and breathtaking art caused mainstream media to take notice. Waid and Ross examined the role of superheroes and the incredible responsibilities we have put on these “imaginary” characters. When they did that, they also ended up showing the all too human frailties of larger-than-life characters such as Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc.

In their sad view of the future, humanity has pushed the heroes we grew up with to the sidelines due to what was perceived as their being too “nice” and not issuing the vigilante justice that has been associated with other comic characters like The Punisher or Wolverine. Yet when the world faces its greatest crisis and when all the chips are down, it is those same heroes, the first heroes to ever see print in comics, who come to the rescue. However, it is a rescue that comes at a price.

The characterization of the characters stays true to both their origin stories, as well as what writers have shaped them to become in the past six decades. Ever the farmer's son, Superman honestly thinks he can save everybody and change things by just being somewhere. Batman's cynicism and callousness since his parents' death extends to even his friends like Superman. The Amazon princess in Wonder Woman shuns her role as envoy of peace, instead becoming a vengeful warrior who will do things others might fear to do.

Absolute Kingdom Come comes replete with Ross’ sketches, creator notes and annotations, as well as an extensive image gallery. This edition is bigger and is a feast that is guaranteed to satisfy old fans while enticing new fans to witness what is undoubtedly one of the most important comics ever published. You'll see how some of Ross' designs from his childhood found their way onto the Kingdom Come stage. You'll also see the detail and dedication he put into this project. This was a true labor of love, something both creators affectionately call their "love letter" to these superheroes.

Originally posted on November 6, 2006

Blame Yeng Guiao

2009-10-22T08:55:00.000+08:00

I’ve seen a lot of basketball in my life. I’ve watched the NBA, Euroleague, Olympic basketball, the World Championships, the PBA, PBL, UAAP, US NCAA and even Philippine NCAA. I’ve witnessed basketball players do some amazing things with a little ball in their hands that sent jampacked arenas into a frenzy. All that being said, I had never seen anything as despicable as what Burger King team captain Wynne Arboleda did in a game against the SMART-Gilas RP Team on October 15, 2009. Much has already been written and said about Arboleda’s attack on Gilas fan Allain Katigbak.

SMART-Gilas versus Powerade-Pilipinas

Let’s put things in proper perspective. On October 5, 2009, the SMART-Gilas RP Team composed of mostly recent collegiate basketball stars and one American candidate for naturalization (CJ Giles) played the Powerade Team Pilipinas composed of professional PBA players to raise funds for victims of Typhoon Ondoy. Gilas was coached by Serbian coach Rajko Toroman while Powerade had BK coach and Pampanga vice-governor Joseller “Yeng” Guiao in charge. Most expected the pros to obliterate the amateurs. After all, these were just kids while the pros were supposed to be the best ballers in the country. Instead, Coach Toroman’s boys blitzed their elders to the tune of 98-69. A thorough ass-kicking that had many people wondering if Guiao was indeed the right man to handle the Powerade squad who didn’t even crack the top 5 in the recent Asian Basketball Championships in Tianjin, China.

In that same tournament in China, Guiao included the PBA’s number one draft pick for 2009, former Ateneo basketball player and 6–foot 9-inch tall Japeth Aguilar, in the lineup. Aguilar was drafted number one by Burger King, and Guiao wanted to see if his future superstar could immediately contribute to the cause. Now if you’ve watched any PBA over the years, you’ll know one thing about Guiao: he loves cussing out his own players and the referees. He screams at them to the point that the players look like castrated sheep after a few games under Guiao. Guiao is also credited with being able to maximize players who might not be the most talented into a cohesive unit. Of course, this also means he’s often gotten these players to play rough in order to beat the more talented squads. This was especially evident in the years that he handled the Red Bull Barako team in the PBA. With players like Jimwell Torion, Junthy Valenzuela, Homer Se, and the like, Guiao’s teams dished out a combination of elbows, knees, and punches that opposing players dreaded. And he was given the national team to coach as a reward.

The Amazing Disappearing Aguilar

After the Powerade team was embarrassed in Tianjin, Aguilar announced that he’d rather play for SMART-Gilas than Burger King, despite the Whoppers drafting him number one. I didn’t like that move because Aguilar effectively spit in the faces of every other PBA team and player because he wanted out of his contract after he had already been drafted. Why didn’t he do so before the draft and spared us all from the circus that followed? Apparently, some quarters have said that young Aguilar hated being constantly disparaged and cussed out by Guiao. The coach’s winning personality was grating at the youngster, and he tried to get out of it to play for Toroman, someone whom he had played for before, and someone who didn’t demean him.

In a few weeks’ time, Aguilar and Burger King management came to an agreement: Japeth would play one game with the Whoppers, then he would be traded for draft picks to Barako Bull who then would trade him to Talk ‘N Text (BK’s sister franchise). The Tropang Texters then allowed Aguilar to sign a contract with SMART-Gilas, and once the contract is done, he would be welcomed into the TNT fold. Imagine how well Guiao felt after being given the runaround by this kid.

Guiao’s pre-game message to BK

PBA sportscaster Patricia Hizon talked to Arboleda before the game started and he related what BK coach Yeng Guiao told his players. Hizon mentioned on Twitter on October 17 that it was something along the lines of “malayo pa bago nila makuha spot nyo. Pero ipakita nyo that this is your spot. Put them in their place and have pride.” Every Burger King player just had to read between the lines and understand that their coach wanted to send a message to these kids. Now how rough the message is, well that’s subject to the context by which Guiao said those words to his team or how his players felt Guiao wanted the message sent.

Soon enough, Arboleda had delivered a forearm across the face of Jvee Casio on a drive. Rookie Ronnie Matias dropped Chris Tiu with an elbow to the face on a rebound play. It was becoming obvious that there were marching orders for the Whoppers to get rough with the Gilas kids. We can argue all day long on the level of roughness the PBA has allowed their players to play over the years, but the past few seasons, the league has been trying to cut down on too much physical play.

When Arboleda went under Mac Baracael clearly trying to take out the forward’s knees, all hell broke loose. You see, undercutting is one of the worst things you can do in basketball. It makes your opponent lose their balance, it puts them in such an awkward position that they might fall badly. It’s the kind of thing that ends careers. Arboleda has had a reputation for rough play in years past . The son-in-law of Burger King co-owner Lito Alvarez has been a bruising player since his days in the defunct MBA and their Laguna Lakers. Putting Arboleda under the guidance of a temperamental and vindictive coach in Guiao was like putting a firecracker next to dynamite, you knew an explosion was going to happen sooner or later.

Who’s Afraid of Yeng?

Mr. Katigbak can’t be completely blameless in this incident. After all, he supposedly screamed all kinds of invectives at Arboleda. However, there is absolutely no excuse for a PBA player to attack a fan. We are the paying customers who expect that when we go to the arena, we’ll get some good basketball and we can scream our hearts out to support our team while haranguing opposing teams and players. We can blame Araneta Coliseum security for not being fast enough to react to Arboleda’s assault on Katigbak. We can blame Arboleda’s dirty play for setting the dirty tone throughout the game. What I find fascinating is that so few people have called out Guiao for his headhunting call.

Don’t you think the rookie Matias would be scared to deliver a flagrant foul unless he knew his coach had his back? I have hardly seen any sportswriters point to Guiao as the person who initiated hostilities with his little tongue-in-cheek speech. In fact, Guiao defended BK’s style of play as mere preparation for what Gilas will face in international competition. Eh gago pala itong si Yeng eh, how will the players compete in international competition if you have your headhunters trying to end their young careers? Coach Toroman has gone on the record to say about that game against Burger King, ““In my 46 years of watching basketball, I’ve never seen anything like it.” Indeed, unless you saw the early days of the PBA, you’ve never seen anything as dirty as what Burger King did in that first half. It took a reprimand from PBA chairman Lito Alvarez for Guiao’s team to stop the roughhousing.

Governor Guiao?

There is a fair amount of blame being given to Arboleda, he’s even made international news (I bet the PBA just loves the international notoriety!) Now that the PBA has suspended him without pay for the rest of the season, there’s even been an online petition to have the income Arboleda would have been paid by Burger King to instead be given to victims of the typhoons . That’s well and good, but I still say we can’t place all the blame on the player or the fan. Look at the bald dude who smugly issued the directive to put the Gilas players in their place. That same guy plans to run for governor of Pampanga in 2010. It might be better if he did win, at least then, he’ll spare the PBA and the rest of the country from the embarrassment that his petty vindictiveness has left in his wake.

Battle Lines Are Drawn

2009-10-22T01:17:00.000+08:00

Director John Woo made a name for himself worldwide with action films like Hard Boiled, The Killer, Mission: Impossible 2, and Face/Off so when I heard that he was going to take on the task of making an epic war movie in Red Cliff, I was admittedly skeptical. After all, I kind of viewed epic romantic films set in China as more the realm of Tsui Hark, Ang Lee, or even Zhang Yimou. I was intrigued enough however to give it a shot. Boy, am I glad I did.

Based on the legendary Battle of Red Cliffs during the end of the Han Dynasty in China, the film depicts Prime Minister Cao Cao’s (Zhang Fenyi) plan to lead the the 300,000-strong Imperial Army over the southern part of China. Cao Cao wields more influence than the emperor and marches over the Guangzhou province governed by Liu Bei (You Yong). Liu’s chief advisor Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is sent to negotiate an alliance with the Southern region led by Sun Quan (Chang Chen). Zhuge is a brilliant strategist who teams with Sun’s viceroy, Zhou Yu (Tony Leung) to formulate the battle plan that can repulse Cao Cao’s invasion through the use of tactics, knowledge of the weather in Southern China, some intuition, and a lot of luck.

Too often, the Filipino film viewer is exposed to war movies from America, whether it be World War I, World War II, or even the American Revolutionary War. We’ve also seen wars fought in the United Kingdom, France, and the like on film. It is quite rare to see a war movie set in Asia with a budget as big as evident here in Red Cliff. The battles are indeed epic, even grander than some of the big battles I’ve seen in Braveheart, The Patriot, Pearl Harbor, and Saving Private Ryan. Woo was able to capture the grand scale of the Battle of Red Cliffs and it is a delight to see on the big screen.

Despite the huge scale of the battle scenes, Woo is also able to deliver some very up close and personal scenes for his actors. Leung has been a favorite of mine since I first saw him in Hero and subsequently in the Infernal Affairs trilogy. His onscreen chemistry with Kaneshiro is crucial in the film’s success, and they do manage to come across as equals who have the potential to be rivals but end up working well together during wartime. Lin Chi-ling has a pretty impressive film debut here as Leung’s wife who actually acts and is not limited to being mere eye candy. Zhao Wei, also an old favorite of mine from So Close and Shaolin Soccer doesn’t resort to just batting her eyelashes and cashing in on her cuteness in this film as she plays the tomboyish Sun Shangxiang. There is such an impressive ensemble of actors in Red Cliff that it’s easy to get drawn into the story.

However, what really pumped me up for this film were the huge battle scenes shot by John Woo. A few Woo trademarks are evident again here (flying doves, lots of slow-motion, montage to highlight a climactic scene) but unless you’ve seen a John Woo film in the past, they come off as quite seamless and integral to the picture. From my perspective, Woo obviously used some CGI to enhance the numbers of Cao Cao’s naval fleet and the soldiers on both sides, but he was still able to get a large number of extras to actually participate. To see the detail in the ships, the armor, and the weapons from that period in Chinese history is astounding and much appreciated.

I have no idea if the real historical figures did study how the southwest and northeast winds would blow before they organized their plan of attack. I don’t know if the legends were indeed almost superhuman in their fighting ability and their use of spears and swords. Despite all that, I was more than happy to see how Woo showed all of these on film and made them all look amazingly cool. It did seem a bit strange though to watch Chinese and Japanese actors dubbed with seemingly Indian voice actors. It may have indeed been better than getting American actors who could have used American colloquialisms, it still took me a little while to stop noticing their accents and just listen to the words being said instead.

Red Cliff is a real tour-de-force for Woo, breaking him out of the “action movie” mold that we’ve all placed him in. It’s based on legendary historical figures with great actors and some jawdropping action thrown in as well.

The J's Have It

2009-10-18T00:11:00.000+08:00

I never saw Julia Child on her old TV show. I was too young and I don’t recall it being broadcast on Philippine television. We had Nora Daza and her kids Sandy and Nina, as well as Sylvia Reynoso-Gala to regale us with their culinary expertise. We even had Martin Yan and the unrelated Stephen Yan back in the day. But it was Child, with her distinct voice, 6’2” height, and warm personality who was supposedly the first real chef who became a television star. All who would follow owed a debt of gratitude to Julia Child.

In the film Julie & Julia, director Nora Ephron presents two films that have a few things in common: specifically Julia Child and French cuisine. We see Julia (Meryl Streep) and husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) adjusting to life in Paris in the late 1940s while she tries to find something that she really enjoys doing. Meanwhile in 2002, Julie Powell (Amy Adams) is accompanying her own husband Eric (Chris Messina) in moving to Queens from Brooklyn. While working out of a government cubicle, Julia decides to start a blog by writing about her experience with Child’s masterful book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Even as we are shown Child learning the ropes of French cooking herself and the long ordeal to get her book published, Powell sees her blog gaining an audience despite her initial misgivings.

What more can I say about Meryl Streep that hasn’t been written or said before? She truly is one of the finest actresses ever, and her performance as Child was spot on. Reuniting with her The Devil Wears Prada co-star Tucci (this time as husband and wife), the two actors have such amazing chemistry together, you literally feel them syncing with one another as actors and as spouses on film. The very pretty Adams was already deglamorized as a nun for her last film with Streep, Doubt. Here, she’s not as breathtaking as she usually is, but that’s probably to keep the focus on the food and her struggles as someone with serious dreams of being a real author. Her own scenes with Messina are pretty strong, especially when she’s on the verge of giving up her blogging due to the stress it entails.

Ephron veers away from her usual romantic comedic tendencies for Julie & Julia. She somehow finds a way to merge these two stories of two different eras into one coherent and fluid piece. Though Streep and Adams have no scenes together, the writing is so tight and pacing so well thought out that I didn’t find myself getting bored at any point during the screening. Based on Child’s book My Life in France and Powell’s Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (the result of her blog), I didn’t feel any real disconnect as the two stories just synced.

Powell’s story, in particular, got my own creative juices flowing as I was once more inspired to get in front of a keyboard and write something down. I may not have Julia Child as a role model and I may not commit to writing about a subject like food for 365 days, but this film clearly touched a nerve for me that I hope to continue tapping in the future. Writing about anything that you like can’t be a chore. It has to be fun because otherwise, there is no point in getting yourself to write about it. So whether I write about sports, or a book, or a movie like Julie & Julia which I highly recommend, I hope that I have as much passion for it as both Powell and Child did when they wrote their respective works.

Gaiman in the Graveyard

2009-10-17T23:18:00.001+08:00

I’ve read so many Neil Gaiman books, it still amazes me how versatile a writer he is. From his roots in The Sandman graphic novels, to his epic American Gods and the unofficial sequel Anansi Boys, all the way to his more “youth-oriented” work like OtherWorld, M is for Magic, and of course, Coraline, he’s just shown such a rich imagination and a mastery at storytelling. In The Graveyard Book, Gaiman (accompanied with art by frequent collaborator Dave McKean) once again proves how good an author he is as he tells the story of a boy raised in a graveyard by ghosts.

The book begins with a murder. A father, mother, and their daughter are killed by a figure known only as “the man Jack”. Unfortunately for the man Jack, the baby boy is somehow able to escape him. This toddler ends up in the neighboring graveyard and is adopted by a Mr. and Mrs. Owens, who never could conceive a child when they were alive. Over the course of time, the boy (whom they name Nobody or Bod) is educated by the various spirits and ghosts who reside in the graveyard. They’ve granted him sme supernatural abilities to make sure that Bod is protected by harmful creatures such as the ghouls who reside in the evil city of Ghûlheim. Silas, the guardian of the graveyard, provides a counterbalance to the spirits as he teaches Bod about the humanity that most of them have forgotten.

Young Bod eventually makes friends with a living girl named Scarlett Amber Perkins, but their curious friendship and a frightening incident involving “The Sleer” forces her family away, leaving Bod alone with his ghost family once more. As he grows up, more responsibility is placed on Bod by Silas and his teacher, Ms. Lupescu while the man Jack and his associates seem to have found a way to finish something they should have taken care of years ago.

The Graveyard Book has elements of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book in the sense that Bod mirrors Kipling’s more famous Mowgli. Just as Mowgli grew up in the jungle protected by Baloo while evading the dangerous Shere Khan, so does Bod grow in the graveyard with Silas and his ghostly parents, the Owenses. Every chapter moves forward two years in Bod’s growth, eventually leading to adolescence and his inevitable need to be with his own kind. Though Gaiman acknowledges these parallels, his piece isn’t limited to merely being a mirror to the earlier work. His ghouls in the chapter “The Hounds of God” are downright terrifying in their attempt to seduce and corrupt Bod into joining them. I found that chapter disturbing enough, can you imagine what kids (Gaiman’s target audience for this book) would think?

In the chapter “Danse Macabre”, the author really goes to town as both the living and the spirits participate in a bizarre tradition wherein they interact with one another. Tht’s was probably my favorite part of the book since it seemed like something Gaiman used to do on a regular basis on his seminal The Sandman graphic novels on a regular basis. Yes, I still miss Gaiman weaving his way around characters like Dream, Death, Calliope, and the rest of them. But it’s also nice to know that his imagination continues to develop new characters for us to root for and to cheer on like Bod and his ghostly friends.

From the Dark, Into the Blue Light

2009-10-15T18:42:00.000+08:00

It’s been a week now since the Ateneo Blue Eagles won their second straight UAAP Seniors Basketball Championship. A back-to-back feat that we all cherish, particularly since my college years were spent during the Dark Ages of Ateneo basketball. The early-mid nineties saw the program suffer through one- or two-win seasons, when archrivals La Salle would step all over our team, when my friends and I would go to Araneta Coliseum or Loyola Gym to cheer for a team that had one single bass drum from the Blue Babble Battalion to lead the cheers.

It was unfortunate that my years at the Katipunan Avenue campus were spent during this era because it was undoubtedly the lowest point in the storied history of the Ateneo de Manila’s proud basketball program. Yes, there were names such as Red Camua, Junie Rentosa, John Verayo, and the Sison Twins who tried their best to give us something to cheer for. But, in all honesty, those teams were just too weak, too short, too easy to push around by the likes of DLSU, UST, FEU, heck even UP was stronger than Ateneo then. Even the lowly National University Bulldogs, perennial UAAP whipping boys, could pull off wins against the Blue Eagles, effectively ripping our collective hearts out in the process. No amount of shouting “Fabilioh!” or “Get that ball!” could salvage our team from the bottom of the standings.

Why did we still watch? Because this was our team, this was our school, these were our classmates and friends who were playing for the school that we all loved so much. After all, not all of us were as skilled as they were on the court, not all of us could shoot as well or defend or rebound like they could, so those who were lucky enough to make it to the varsity team must have been so much better than us to merit having the words “ATENEO” emblazoned on their jerseys. If they were going to fight for us, the few of us who believed in them would cheer for them. Unfortunately in the 1990s, the losses were more than the wins.

Much has been said how Mr. Manny V. Pangilinan pumped money back into Ateneo and helped reinvigorate the dying basketball program. Here was a guy who loved our school as much as we did, but actually was willing to help finance the program so that they could recruit the best players possible to come to Loyola Heights. Through the efforts of MVP and former Jesuit Fr. Tito Caluag, Ateneo finally became a basketball powerhouse albeit through a painful, but ultimately rewarding route. In 2001, a team led by Rico Villanueva, Rich Alvarez, Paul Tan-Chi, and Wesley Gonzales entered the UAAP Finals for the first time since the Eagles won it all in 1988. We lost to the hated De La Salle Green Archers.

In 2002, when it seemed that ACL injuries to Magnum Membrere and Paolo Bugia in the preseason looked like it would once again doom the blue-clad faithful, Villanueva, Alvarez, LA Tenorio, Ebok Quimpo, and Larry Fonacier instead delivered the long-awaited title back to our aerie. Gec Chia delivered the most unforgettable shot I’ve ever seen, a jumper over UE in the Final Four that would bring us to the Finals against our long time rivals. Winning it against La Salle only made the victory sweeter, especially since it seemed as if the Green Archers always seemed to be the team that stood in our way, the team that would laugh in our faces because we just weren’t good enough, the squad who would recruit the top talent in the country because it seemed as if they had bottomless pockets. It was indeed a magical time for we who had lived through the Dark Ages as we could finally hold our heads high once more as sportscaster Mico Halili screamed “Once again, the Blue Eagle is King of the UAAP!” From my seat in the General Admission section of the historic Araneta Coliseum, I cried with my brother Jek and my old friend Homer over this title. I truly felt like I could have died in peace already because I saw an Ateneo championship live, and it wasn’t a dream.

That 2002 team coached by Joel Banal went on to have their own UAAP Championship DVD produced, as well as countless TV and newspaper appearances. Each of those young men would forever live in Ateneo lore as individuals who broke the long title drought and renewed our faith that praying and believing that our team could win a title was indeed possible. Of course, being Ateneans, we were greedy. We wanted another title the following season. The Eagles, without the graduated Villanueva, made it to the Finals by stomping La Salle in the Final Four, but couldn’t stop the powerhouse FEU Tamaraws of Arwind Santos.

2004 was a year that began with promise, but quickly ended in tragedy when team captain Larry Fonacier suffered a season-ending ACL injury (yes, that dreaded knee injury once again) against UP in the first round. Ateneo returned to the Finals in 2006, this time led by legendary American coach Norman Black, in a season that saw La Salle suspended for academic violations. Despite leading UST in the Finals 1-0 after Doug Kramer’s unforgettable buzzer-beater, the Blue Eagles fell to the Growling Tigers 2-1 in Game 3 in the last game for Kramer, JC Intal, and Macky Escalona. The last connection to the 2002 Championship team was now gone.

I hardly remember the 2007 campaign because that was the year my father died and my girlfriend left to study abroad. Despite having a weak team, the Blue Eagles led by Chris Tiu and Ford Arao still made it to the playoffs, only to be defeated by La Salle (who went on to win the championship after serving their suspension).

Last year, I saw something unbelievable: an Ateneo basketball team that just couldn’t be beaten. The 2008 version of the Blue Eagles suffered one loss throughout the season, one fucking loss to FEU in round 1. They had an overall record of 16-1, including the regular season, the Final Four, and the Finals against La Salle. Everything came together for Coach Norman Black’s crew as Chris Tiu provided the steady leadership while Rabeh al-Hussaini had his coming our party and brought home a regular season MVP award in the process. But it was Nonoy Baclao’s defense that stood out throughout the tournament. His crippling block of DLSU big man Rico Maierhofer in Game 1 encapsulated the Ateneo credo for everyone to see: defense wins championships. Baclao would be awarded the 2008 Finals MVP award, and basketball glory was ours once again.

When the dust had settled and the championship was won over La Salle, a lot of us who watched the series-clincher in Araneta Coliseum braved the rains and the lack of a proper dinner to go back to the Ateneo campus and celebrate the way only we can: with a thanksgiving mass at the Church of the Gesu. We didn’t mind getting a bit wet, we just wanted to give thanks for this team that excelled and sacrificed in order to bring home the title to Loyola Heights. It was definitely still a sweet feeling to win that title, though I will always say that 2002 was still the best of them all due to the 14-year gap and it being the first that I witnessed live. I wanted to see the traditional Ateneo Bonfire celebration because I missed the one from 6 years before due to work. Despite the horrendous traffic and the muddy Bellarmine Field, I didn’t mind so much. After all, championships are such a rare commodity, I wanted to make sure I relished every moment to the last drop.

For this 2009 UAAP Championship, it was again another dominant season for the Blue Eagles. If somebody had told me when I graduated college in 1996 that the day would come that the Ateneo team would lose a combined three games in two UAAP seasons, I probably would have died laughing. But that is exactly what this team did. After losing to UP, Coach Norman’s lads went to work, rattling off 12 straight wins before UE tripped them up in Game 2 of the Finals. The tried and tested formula of giving the ball inside to al-Hussaini while Jai Reyes took his outside jumpers and Eric Salamat forced turnovers worked as the back-to-back titles were secured in a 71-58 rout. Again we went home to the Ateneo, but this time, my brother and I made sure to get take-out food first. We were becoming veterans of championship celebrations, something I definitely didn’t mind.

I was too tired to go to this year’s Bonfire, and honestly, I didn’t really feel like going anymore. I’ve been to one, it was more than enough. What mattered most to me was that I was at the games live, cheering “One big fight!” as my team won their second straight title. I lived through those dark times, now I can truly appreciate the blazing Blue and White hue of a championship trophy. The novelty of an Ateneo championship still hasn’t worn off as I know that I’ll be at the forefront of the screaming and cussing all over again next year. Ateneo Blue Eagles: Back-to-Back UAAP Champions. Who would’ve thunk it?

The Formula Still Works

2009-10-08T01:22:00.000+08:00

After the success of both The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, there was a lot of hype surrounding the release of Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol. I wasn’t really supposed to buy the book so soon, but on the eve of its release, I was already in the area of Fully Booked at the Promenade in Greenhills, so I figured that I might as well purchase a copy for myself already. I even ended up first in line to get it. Did it live up to the hype?

Robert Langdon is summoned to Washington, D.C. by his mentor, the Director of the Smithsonian Institution, Peter Solomon. A 33rd degree Mason, Peter asked Robert to keep a package for safekeeping years before and asks him to bring it. Upon arriving at the U.S. Capitol, Langdon is shocked to find a severed hand tattooed and pointing to the painting The Apotheosis of Washington. It turns out that Solomon has been kidnapped by the mysterious Mal’akh, a diabolical, tattooed villain who has devoted his life to unlocking the secrets of the Masons. In trying to get Solomon to reveal where the mythical Masonic pyramid is located, Mal’akh hunts down Peter’s sister Dr. Katherine Solomon, an expert in the relatively new Noetic Sciences. As Langdon and Katherine attempt to find Peter’s location, they go around Washington, following clues that America’s forefathers planted to hide their most ancient secrets.

Brown has obviously found a formula that works for him. His two previously mentioned books were so engaging and fast-paced, they were eventually adapted into two films directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks. The Lost Symbol follows most of the formula but it still develops into a more than decent page-turner. Instead of the Vatican, Rome, London, or Paris, Brown sets Langdon this time in the good old U.S.A. Rather than the Opus Dei, the Knights Templar, or the Illuminati, the secret society is now the Masons. Forget Silas the infamous Albino from The Da Vinci Code, Mal’akh is more menacing, more intelligent, and has an even more scarred past. Sophie Neveu and Vittoria Vetra have now been succeeded by Katherine Solomon.

These “replaceable parts” aside, I still found this novel engaging. My friends and I didn’t really like the short chapters (resulting in 133 chapters for a 500+ page book) but it did make it easier to stop for breaks while reading. As in his previous two books, Dan Brown makes you want to visit Washington, D.C., or at the very least, look for pictures of the paintings, sculptures, and buildings he points out online. He also makes you curious to know more about the Masons, their history, and their influence on the development of the United States. The author obviously does a ton of research and manages to weave together some seemingly unconnected pieces into a more coherent whole thanks to some coincidences sprinkled with a little healthy artistic license. I really liked the surprise twist at the end of the book as it was something that completely caught me off-guard.

As in any formulaic book, you’ll end up looking for something new that the author brings to the table. But again, since it follows a tried and tested formula, The Lost Symbol lacks that. If you’re one of the few who haven’t read either The Da Vinci Code or Angels & Demons, then this book will probably seem fresher for you. It’s not necessarily a bad thing that Brown follows a formula as when I hit about the halfway point of the book, I found that I couldn’t put it down anymore. With the success of the film adaptations of those two earlier works, I couldn’t help but see and hear Tom Hanks every time that Langdon was featured. Before those movies were made however, I used to envision Harrison Ford playing Langdon. I’d still recommend The Lost Symbol whether you read the previous books or not and whether you liked the film adaptations or not. On its own, this novel definitely has enough of a good premise and pacing to merit checking out.

What's My Line?

2009-10-04T23:25:00.000+08:00

I absolutely hate lining up for UAAP basketball tickets. As much as I love watching my team, the Ateneo Blue Eagles, play basketball, I hate lining up at the Araneta Coliseum or at the Ateneo campus to get tickets. I’ve been watching Ateneo basketball since 1992, my freshman year of college. In that amount of time, I’ve seen the worst Blue Eagles that have struggled to win a single game in a season, and I’ve seen amazing Ateneo teams that have won two UAAP Championships.

Thus, when I line up for tickets, I carry 17 years worth of experience with me every single time. I’ve seen all kinds of systems implemented by both the Araneta Coliseum management as well as our own Ateneo College Athletics Office.

The thing that continues to bother me about Araneta in particular is the prevalence of scalpers who are trying to put one over on the paying public. These sons of bitches are willing to line up for tickets that will be released at 9:00 a.m. from 12:00 a.m. That’s a nine hour wait that they’re willing to endure because they believe they can turn a profit by being privy to those hard-to-come-by Patron, Lower Box, and Upper Box A tickets. Never mind that they will push people out of the way and sneak ahead of other people who lined up at around the same time, these jerks will do whatever it takes for those tickets.

To be fair to Araneta Center security, they have taken measures in recent years to clamp down on scalpers. Nowadays, the Big Dome requires people to bring either a school ID or alumni card that proves that you came from whichever school is playing before they sell you tickets. In the absence of those, an authorization letter with a photocopy of one’s ID will usually suffice. This past Friday, October 2, 2009, my brother and I were at the Yellow Gate of Araneta at around 5:00 a.m. to line up for Game 2 of the UAAP Finals between Ateneo and University of the East (UE). Some older folks told us that Araneta security dispersed a group that tried to line up earlier, so we just sat down in front of the closed Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. By around 6:00 a.m. though, the security people allowed a line to be formed. In a matter of seconds, my brother and I were lined up behind approximately 10 people. However, as the time started nearing 8:00 a.m., we both noticed that there were now close to 30 people ahead of us. The classic Pinoy sickness of “singit” or trying to sneak into a line popped its ugly head once again. When other people pointed out the sneaky bastards, these assholes had the gall to start causing a commotion and screaming to high heavens that they lined up just as early as the rest of us did.

Thankfully, by the time the ticket booth opened, the Araneta Center staff turned these scumbags away because they couldn’t provide the proper identification and their authorization letters were clearly false. A major point against Araneta though is that they never issued any directive on what their ticket-selling policy was for these UAAP Finals. Thus, there were parents who lined up with their kids (current Ateneo students) whom the security personnel were refusing to sell tickets to because the parents didn’t possess Ateneo IDs. Clearly, information dissemination is a problem at the Big Dome.

Over in Loyola Heights, the College Athletics Office tried a new wrinkle for this UAAP season: separate selling of tickets for Grade School students and faculty, High School students and faculty, college students and faculty, and alumni. In all of these situations, no proxies would be allowed to line up in lieu of the student, faculty member, or alumni concerned. This information was disseminated via e-mail to alumni, Facebook posting, as well as on the goAteneo.com website. In other words, it was made known to any Atenean who cared about the basketball team early in the season that this was the new policy. Yet, there were still a few assholes who refused to acknowledge this same policy.

A certain Mr. Cancio and his associates tried having their driver line up for him and his family during the first round game between Ateneo and La Salle scheduled for August 9, 2009. This Mr. Cancio is probably in his late 40s-early 50s, has a son who is in college in the Ateneo, yet acts like he’s still the big man on campus who’s used to bullying people around. Despite everybody in line knowing the “no proxy rule”, this bastard and his friends kept insisting that the driver lined up for him, he was paying the driver to line up for him, and that he was in the right. Needless to say, this rubbed a lot of people in line the wrong way. We were all cranky because we lined up from approximately 1:00 p.m. for tickets that would only start selling at 7:00 p.m. in Loyola Gym, but Mr. Cancio only served to piss all of us off more because he was stubborn, disrespectful to the College Athletics Office personnel, and belligerent. Jerks like this think that they are entitled to have any of their employees line up for them without regard for the current rules.

On the same day that we got out tickets from Araneta in the morning, namely October 2, 2009, Mr. Cancio and his friends were at it again, in Loyola Gym that afternoon. He once again insisted having his driver line up for him so that he could get more tickets. This time, Cancio completely disrespected a member of the College Athletics Office, Mr. Benjo Afuang, threatening him bodily harm and even challenging Afuang to a fistfight outside Loyola Gym. Mr. Cancio did all of this in full view of everyone who was in line, and even though his own wife was telling him to calm down and that he was wrong. What did Mr. Cancio tell his wife? “You shut up!” is what this classy gentleman told his spouse. Mr. Afuang had been dealing with Cancio and his antics as calmly as possible since August, but even he has a boiling point. When Cancio got in Mr. Afuang’s face and even bumped his chest, Mr. Afuang told the ass to put his money where his mouth was and engage Mr. Afuang right there in front of everyone. If cooler heads had not prevailed, Mr. Cancio would probably have had his ass handed to him by the younger gentleman. Di ka na nahiya, eh ang tanda mo na.

The point is this: no matter where you line up for UAAP tickets, whether it be in a public venue like Araneta Coliseum or in a private institution like the Ateneo campus, assholes are everywhere. They may not be just scalpers who are trying to make a profit by jacking up ticket prices, they might just be fellow Ateneans who think they are entitled to tickets and the rules don’t apply to them. Shame on all of you.

Going Away and Coming Home

2009-10-04T01:54:00.000+08:00

In any relationship, both sides have wondered at some point how they will end up in the future. It’s just natural to wonder if they’ll even be together five years down the road, if they’ll be married or have children, or even if they’ll grow old together. In director Sam Mendes’ Away We Go, a young couple’s road trip gives them insight into different examples of relationships and how they can make their own relationship work.

When Burt Farlander (John Krasinski) and Verona De Tessant (Maya Rudolph) accidentally get pregnant, they learn that Burt’s parents have sold the house they were supposed to live in. Burt and Verona figure they don’t have to live in their little town, so they begin to visit friends and family across the United States (and Canada too!) to find the right place to raise their family. Along the way, they meet a couple who hate being parents, New Age-y parents who don’t like strollers in their house, a couple who love adopting kids because they can’t have any of their own, and Burt’s brother whose wife just abandoned him and their daughter.

Despite this film being directed by a big name like Sam Mendes, Away We Go feels like a very small movie in the sense that the main protagonists are in pretty much every scene. Although they go on their road trip, it’s mostly done through car rentals and even by train, adding to the intimate feel. Maybe it’s because the dialogue from the writing couple of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida talks about the anxiety that thirtysomethings feel when they start considering if they’ve accomplished a lot at their age that resonated with me. When Verona asks, “Burt, are we fuck-ups?” It struck a major chord for me.

Seeing all of these different kinds of relationships in their natural habitats allowed Burt and Verona enough distance to assess what they liked and didn’t like in each sample. LN (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Roderick (Josh Hamilton) are total dicks while espousing their New Age ideas of raising kids. Lily (Allison Janney) and Lowell (Jim Gaffigan) seem to have lost the spark in their marriage and that was hilarious too. However, it was the Montreal couple of Tom (Chris Messina) and Munch (Melanie Lynskey) that breaks your heart. They have all of these adopted kids to shelter, but their own efforts to conceive have been unsuccessful.

Krasinski is so different from his usual role of Jim Halpert in The Office here and it’s not just because he’s got a beard and glasses. He actually does some solid acting as the guy who wants to marry his girlfriend and provide a future for their baby that he’s willing to drive around until they find the perfect spot for that future. Maya Rudolph made a name for herself on Saturday Night Live copying different celebrities, but in this role, she comes across as vulnerable, scared, and very believable. It’s a nice contrast to see these two break out of their familiar comedy molds and try their hand at a little drama, and this is an excellent vehicle for them to show that they are so much more than what we’ve seen them do on their respective series.

The soundtrack, with songs mostly performed by Alexi Murdoch, is excellent. The songs capture the road trip feel as well as the fear and uncertainty that Burt and Verona feel about their future. They both share a lot of uncertainty and anxiety over how they are going to raise a child with so many bad parents around them, but that’s also part of the adventure that they experience together on this trip.

Tech Gone Wrong

2009-10-04T01:41:00.000+08:00

More and more movies and TV shows are going on and on about how technology has made real human interaction virtually a thing of the past. Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools have allowed us to connect with friends and family that are far away from us, but they also tend to keep us indoors rather than meeting each other face-to-face. Video games like “The Sims” and other role-playing games allow us to live virtual lives even as our own real lives take a backseat.

Bruce Willis’ latest film Surrogates takes that to a whole new level as it proposes that people in the future will be staying almost completely indoors while realistic robot “surrogates” live their lives for them. It’s been 15 years since the last murder has been committed worldwide, but when the son of surrogates creator Dr. Lionel Canter (James Cromwell) is killed with a surrogate-killing weapon, it’s up to FBI agent Tom Greer (Willis) to find out who’s behind the killing and why. A group of surrogate-hating humans led by the enigmatic man known merely as “The Prophet” (Ving Rhames) has created reservations dedicated to living technology-free. When Greer’s look-alike surrogate chases the suspected murderer onto the Dread Reservation and is hit with the Overide Devic weapon, the real Greer has to step out into the real world to find the killers.

Like the recent film Gamer, this motion picture offers a commentary on how even in today’s world, too many people are living virtually online instead of in the real world. I really liked how the filmmakers made the surrogates’ skin look near-perfect, with no pores or blemishes on their faces while regular humans had all sorts of defects on their skin. This helped show the difference between the synthetic in contrast to the real. Willis’ Greer portrays another cop who seems to have screwed up his relationship with a spouse but whose dedication to justice and beating the bad guy ends up still making him a hero. In that sense, it’s not much different from his more famous role as John McClaine in the Die Hard series, but when Greer tries to reach out to his wife Maggie (Rosamund Pike), we remember that Willis does have acting chops, they just tend to be forgotten due to his roles in action flicks.

This film is based on the graphic novel “The Surrogates” written by Robert Vendetti and drawn by Brett Weldele. Although I’m not familiar with the source material, the creators supposedly came up with the concept for the comic after reading about numerous individuals who lost their spouses or their jobs due to their addiction to the internet and their online personas. Thus, one would see why both the graphic novel and film have roots in today’s technology-loving world.

I for one enjoyed the pace and concept of this film. Willis is generally a likable actor, and the contrast between his acting as a synthetic, nearly-indestructible surrogate and a flesh-and-bone human almost has him playing a dual role. Director Jonathan Mostow’s film has good pacing and the whodunit element coupled with the technology-versus-humanity subplot kept things interesting. I also liked how the surrogates often showed ideal versions of the humans who were either emotionally unstable, physically defective, or just enjoyed living vicariously through someone else rather than actually living their lives. I realize that a lot of people hated this picture, but I’m not one of them.

Creeped Out by Coraline

2009-09-18T19:46:00.002+08:00

With Coraline, author Neil Gaiman once again shows his versatility. From the mind of the man who gave us the entire “Sandman” collection of graphic novels, as well as “American Gods”, “Anansi Boys”, and “Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” clearly wrote this novel with the intent to entertain a younger demographic. Of course, he gets to scare the little buggers in the process too. Gaiman has proven in the past that he truly knows what buttons to press in order to send chills down one’s spine. In this particular book, he preys on the fears everyone has as far as loneliness, abandonment, abduction, rats, and of course, the darkness.

Coraline Jones has just moved into an old house with her parents. The house is divided into four flats, and as Coraline goes exploring, she meets former actresses Mrs. Forcible and Mrs. Spink, Mr. Bobo who trains mice, and an arrogant black cat. When she finds a key to the drawing room, she enters a dark corridor and sees, strangely enough, a house similar to the one she just moved into. Here she meets The Other Mother and The Other Father, people who look almost exactly like her parents, save that they have buttons for eyes. Coraline finds these mirror parents more interesting than her own but when she returns to her own home, she can’t find her real mother and father. Discovering that the Other Mother had kidnapped them so that she could keep Coraline forever, the young girl has to find the courage to rescue her parents while avoiding the creepy-crawlies in the night.

There are definite echoes of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” here, particularly when Coraline enters the other world as Alice did in “Through the Looking Glass”. Instead of a Red Queen, Coraline must instead face the menace of the Beldam, a creature who claims to love Coraline but only wants to collect her. Rather than a White Rabbit, Coraline talks to the nameless cat, a haughty feline who acts as her mentor.

Just like “Alice”, Gaiman weaves a creepy story that has as one of its themes the idea of growing up. He touched on it in his novel “InterWorld” a few years ago, but in “Coraline”, it is a bit more subtle. Everyone goes through times where they wish their parents were cooler or that they hopes their lives weren’t quite so boring. But, when they are presented with the alternative, one really should be careful with what one wishes for because nothing comes free.

The novel version of “Coraline” features a few illustrations by frequent Gaiman collaborator Dave McKean. As one who is used to McKean’s work, he’s not your typical comic book artist. The art that accompanies the novel is abstract and (to put it simply) on the weird end of the spectrum, but in this case, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. McKean’s illustrations give just the right amount of creepiness and menace to send chills down any reader’s spine.

In P. Craig Russell’s graphic novel adaptation of “Coraline”, what we once could only visualize with our minds, Russell draws Coraline’s strange adventure in sequential form. Since he has also collaborated with Gaiman a few times in the past, there is no drop off in quality of art in this graphic novel. Though not as abstract as McKean’s art, Russell draws Coraline and the rest of the characters in the novel as real people. When he gets to the monsters like the Beldam though, Russell gets to let loose. These aren’t just creepy anymore, they’re downright dangerous and destructive. It’s a nice contrast from McKean, and it doesn’t take away from the appreciation of either version.

Game Off

2009-09-18T01:06:00.001+08:00

As an avid video game player for over 20 years, I’ve seen the evolution of gaming firsthand. From the old Atari console to the Nintendo Family Computer all the way to the sleek Playstation 3, I’ve seen them all and I’ve played them all. With games like The Sims and Second Life being prevalent in recent years, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that a lot of people have been escaping their rather mundane existence by participating in video games instead. But if instead of playing as simple pixilated, computer-generated characters, we controlled real humans instead, could that be the next step in video game evolution?

That’s the main premise behind Gerard Butler’s action-adventure Gamer. In the near future, game developer Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall) has created two hugely popular games: “Society” is like The Sims except that gamers control actual people through nanites in their brains. In the case of “Slayers”, gamers play a first-person shooter (ala-Doom) by controlling ex-convicts with the same nanite-infected brains. If a slayer wins 30 battles, he goes free. A former military man named Tillman (Butler) is accused of murder and forced to participate in “Slayers” as the character Kable. Controlled by 17-year old trustfund baby Simon (Logan Lerman), Kable is three wins away from freedom. However, an activist group called Humanz claims that the nanite technology has a more ominous purpose. Can Tillman escape the game and reclaim his life?

Clearly, Gamer has been influenced by films like Death Race, The Matrix, The Running Man, and even Tron. The vision of a dystopian future where people are used for violent entertainment has been shown on film many times before. This film’s draw for me (aside from the über-cool Butler in another action flick) is the concept of humans as videogame characters. I particularly enjoyed the “Society” segments where the people actually acted like “Sims”. There was a lot of gratuitous violence here, and the script isn’t all that inspired. Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor are the same people behind Jason Statham’s action flick Crank, so Gamer is in the same vein. Lots of jump cuts, and dirty action kind of left me feeling dizzy after a while. Maybe it was because the filmmakers wanted to emphasize how first-person shooting games are supposed to make you feel.

I was surprised with the many cameos in this film, particularly with actors like Milo Ventimiglia, Sam Witwer, and especially the great John Leguizamo. I mean, this isn’t exactly going to be remembered as a classic of the genre, if you know what I mean. Kyra Sedgwick, Keith David, and John de Lancie were also severely underused in this film, a real shame considering how the movie desperately needed good acting and actors to lift it from its not so lofty perch.

No More Bad Games?

2009-09-17T22:45:00.001+08:00

It disgusts me when I hear of stuff like Far Eastern University's star guard Andy Barroca being accused of game-fixing. I'm disgusted not only because the concept is so reprehensible to me, but also because it spits in the face of the integrity of basketball. For the Tamaraws basketball program to pick on one of their own and leave him out to dry, let's just say it smacks of people refusing to take responsibility for why their team couldn't win a game and looking for a scapegoat instead.

Since time immemorial, basketball in the Philippines has been marred by rumors of players throwing games or shaving points in order to satisfy some unscrupulous people. Whether it be professionals in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA), or amateurs in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) or National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), when a particular player doesn't play like he's expected to, people start saying that "he's on the take" or colloquially speaking, "nagbenta siya".

In simplest terms, "benta" literally means selling games. That could refer to a player only scoring this number of points as agreed upon. It could also refer to a team not scoring more than a certain number for a quarter or for the entire game. These are, of course, supposedly agreed upon between the player and certain shady individuals.

Taking all of these into consideration, FEU has accused Barroca of the time-honored tradition of game-fixing, particularly in their game against Ateneo de Manila on September 12, 2009. Barroca burned Ateneo and smaller point guard Jai Reyes for 8 first quarter points, but never scored again after that. The Tamaraws led the Blue Eagles by 18 big points late in the third quarter, yet were bombarded by a 22-4 run in the fourth that they never recovered from. Ateneo won the game 74-73, and within days, Barroca was accused of game-fixing.

In recent years, FEU has been embroiled in controversies similar to this. Just two years ago, swingman JR Gerilla was among the Tamaraws accused of game-fixing as FEU dropped most of their Team A roster. Last year, team captain Mac Baracael was even shot (!) outside the Morayta campus because he either fixed a game, or refused to fix a game (depending on who you ask). That case has yet to be resolved and, happily for Mac, he's actually okay now. University of the East's Bonbon Custodio was also called a game-fixer some seasons ago when his play would dip after exploding on offense in other games. A lot of De La Salle University alumni still claim that their superstar point guard Mike "Cool Cat" Cortez received a huge payment in order to throw Game 3 of the UAAP Finals against Ateneo.

It's like nowadays, in the UAAP particularly, if you're a proven big time performer and you suddenly have a bad game, "eh di malamang nagbenta 'yan!" One is not allowed to have any sub-par games anymore. Every player is held to such unbelievably high standards that any slippage is deemed due to shady dealings. Again, history tells us that this kind of stuff has happened in the Philippines in the past. But should every circumstance of poor on-court performance be given the nefarious game-fixing label? Now, Barroca has supposedly chosen to get out of the FEU team altogether. In the midst of a playoff run and 30 units away from completing his degree, he is leaving the basketball team because his integrity has come into question.

My question is: what happens the next time a supposedly "reliable" scoring option on FEU falters at a crucial moment? Will the team hang him out to dry as well? Will he also be accused of game-fixing and lacking the integrity to play college basketball?

Prawns Among Us

2009-09-09T15:21:00.000+08:00

As a long time fan of science fiction, I'd like to believe that I've seen a lot of crazy shit in that genre. From the big budget blockbusters in Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings trilogy to old school sci-fi like Tron and even TV series like Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, and Fringe. I've seen all of these and I'd like to consider myself a pseudo-expert on the subject. Therefore when I heard that LOTR director Petr Jackson was going to produce a new sci-fi film called District 9, I was curious about how this new offering would shape up.

In 1982, a large alien ship arrive on Earth and settled above Johannesburg, South Africa. The aliens from the ship were discovered to be malnourished, leaderless, and generally undesirable. They were eventually forcefully removed from their ship and relocated to an area in Joburg called District 9. Over the course of two decades, the aliens (derogatorily called "prawns") have turned District 9 into a slum. The South African governments assigns a private military contractor named Multinational United (MNU) to evict the prawns from their dwelling and relocated again to smaller, even less familiar territory. Leading the MNU team is Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlton Copley), who has spent most of his career behind a desk. While evicting the aliens, Wikus accidentally stumbles upon a canister that one of the alien scientists (whom the MNU people have called Christopher Johnson) has been using to extract fuel. Exposure to the canister affects Wikus' physiology, suddenly making him the most wanted man on the planet.

Director Neill Blomkamp definitely takes some risks with District 9. In interviews, he said that he chose to set his film in South Africa as that is where he grew up and it is indeed fascinating to see a science fiction setting that is not in the United States or the United Kingdom. There are of course undercurrents of racial tension in post-apartheid South Africa, and placing the prawns there certainly doesn't decrease that tension. By turning the old "alien invasion" formula on its head, instead placing the aliens on Earth forcibly and treating them like second class citizens, Blomkamp provides social commentary on how racism continues to rear its ugly head worldwide.

Copley's Wikus does come across as the everyman who is forced to go on the run, resorting to such disgusting acts that he himself once made fun of. The desperation on his face as he pleads with the prawns and tries to reconnect with his wife is also palpable. Making the aliens prawn-like and unintelligible save through subtitles only enhances the experience of seeing them as less than human, and thus expendable.

The main draw of this film for me is that the filmmakers made the presence of a hovering alien spaceship and aliens among humans seem like an everyday occurrence. It was as if they had really been there for two decades already, and everyone had gotten used to their presence. The "dirty" special effects also add to the illusion of realism that Blomkamp and the special effects crew wanted. Clearly, there is a place for sci-fi epics like the ones mentioned earlier. However, District 9 proves that, thankfully, there are still new and exciting stories waiting to be told within the genre.

Nowhere to go but Up

2009-09-09T14:38:00.000+08:00

Over the years, I've come to really love the movies by Disney-Pixar. From Toy Story to A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, you name it. The animation has been cutting edge from the get go, but it's always the plot and the characters that carry these films. Of course they're created for kids, but there's always enough of a plot and something to pull at your heartstrings that will give adults enjoyment too.

With Up, the latest offering from Disney-Pixar, that certainly holds true. Carl Fredricksen is a shy boy who dreams of adventure and following his idol, the explorer Charles Muntz. He meets the outgoing Ellie who shares that dream, and even wants to move her clubhouse to Paradise Falls, somewhere in South America. The two eventually grow up, fall in love, and marry. Even though they can't have children, they have each other. Carl the balloon salesman wants to keep his promise to Ellie, but she gets sick and passes away. Old and irritable, Carl (now voiced by Ed Asner) still wants to keep his promise, even if it means outfitting his house with thousands of balloons and flying to Paradise Falls. Of course, he didn't count on young Wilderness Explorer Russell (Jordan Nagai) to complicate things.

As I mentioned earlier, Disney-Pixar films always feature amazing animation. The attention to detail is stunning, and seeing Up in 3-D just adds to the experience. Pixar big boss John Lasseter certainly doesn't skimp on that end. Director Pete Docter and his crew also manage to find ways to show old newsreel-like footage in modern animation when young Carl watches Charles Muntz's adventures in a moviehouse. Later in the film, as old Carl goes through Ellie's adventure book, the book also shows texture and age, just like old photos do. Needless to say, the sight of thousands of balloons rising up to lift a house and the massive Spirit of Adventure dirigible (and dog-piloted planes) were magnificent to behold as well.

Again though, the key to any good Disney-Pixar movie is the plot and the characters. Within the first five minutes of the film, you already start to feel a possible tear about to drop as you feel Carl's love for Ellie and the pain he can't hide when she dies. The later scene of going through Ellie's adventure book brings back those decidedly "adult" feelings, yet there is no shame in shedding a tear when watching a Disney-Pixar film.

The character of Russell is such a delight, especially in contrast to cantankerous Carl. Curious, talkative, and obviously intelligent, one can't help but laugh at how he bothers Carl so much. Yet there is also some sadness in Russell's life, as evidenced by his wish that his father would pin his final Wilderness Explorer badge on him someday. Other characters like Dug the talking dog (Bob Peterson), Kevin the rare bird, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma all provide nice comic relief without taking too much away from Carl and Russell. On a personal note, it was also hugely entertaining for me to hear the great Christopher Plummer's voice in Charles F. Muntz. After all, what fan of The Sound of Music wouldn't be thrilled to hear Captain Von Trapp as a bad guy?

Of all the films that I've seen so far in 2009, Up unquestionably stands out as the one with the most heart. It's pulling of your heartstrings isn't manipulative, it is genuine, it is pure, and it will make you wish that you too can find true love and that you can fulfill your dreams of flight.