International Mood

First news, I found a site with museum-worthy Polish screening posters. Whoever made them is a genius. It takes a while to load though, there are 200 JPEG pictures in one page. They are very stylistic and cultural. Some make the flick more disturbing that it really is though, but I'm not complaining. Who still knows how to make 'em?
Here are some of my favorites:


Apocalypse Now (1979) and Sunset Boulevard (1957).


Empire of the Sun (1987).


Jaws 2 (1979) and 12 Angry Men (1957).

I'm Into Something

So I need around Php10,000 for an event during the semestral break I have to attend, and I don't have time to take on a job. I don't know how this blog network works yet, this is my first tracked post, but I'm awfully excited. I'll be posting sponsored entries from today onwards, but hopefully not consecutively, 'cause it would mean like repression of freedom of expression. But then again, it's worth it. I can take a challenge.

Welcome to the real world. People need money. I thought I never would, but now I do. I'm growing up.

My friend Clara suggested this site as our racket. It'll earn, she said. Since I've been blogging since November 2003 in this very site, I'm overqualified. That's the main requirement of the network, that a blog should be a bit old. And you might wonder where my first 2003 posts are. Well they're gone. I already said before, I was a different person, and it's unbearable to know people might still see them. Ewww ...

I haven't made friends in this network yet, I'm new. But it's cool though. I love the layout, and the opportunities, and how much they patronize loyal bloggers. I can be loyal, especially if there are such rewards behind it. I said I need money. No, I'm not that desperate.

Where is ...

David Anders?
Last time I heard he'll be another in Heroes. Another Alias actor in the cast, huh? It would be a heartfelt reunion with Greg Grunberg. Along with Jennifer G, they're my three favorite characters in the dead series. I don't watch Heroes though, just a couple of episodes. I've no time for anything anymore, but Alias would always have a little corner in my heart. I love David Ander's Julius Sark, so sinister yet so appealing. His being on Heroes would be like cliché, but I hope he'll transcend his character. Take off the faux Brit accent and anything Sark and maybe it would work. Grunberg would always be Eric Weiss for me, even though he's more famous now for his Matt Parkman cop role. Why are TV actors given almost the same role as their last? I'm sure they can do more than that.

Joshua Jackson?
Last time I heard he had a small role in Emilio Estevez's Bobby (2006). First time they worked together was in Mighty Ducks. Anthony Hopkins and Demi Moore and Lindsay Lohan and other biggies starred, but where was Jackson? I guess he will always be Dawson's Creek's Pacey. Now he has been here and there, attending premieres, social-charitable functions, lead-starring in lesser known films, and part-starring alongside big names. Being Dawson's Creek's main attraction is one-time, big-time for him.

Lucy Lawless?
I used to think I was the kid reincarnation of Xena the Warrior Princess. Thanks to her, I almost broke my neck and my playmates' necks imitating her stunts. She was such an icon to me. Xena, I mean. So where's the Lucy behind the Xena? Last stint: Battlestar Galactica. And now she's blond. Lawless' other projects are not severely typcasted. There's no mistaking her speaking voice though, it would always be Xena's, and maybe that's the main reason why she hasn't done anything too sweetie. She always plays strong, powerful women. Maybe the lightest major title in her résumé is EuroTrip (2004).

Jake Lloyd?
Two words: Anakin Skywalker. I'm only a year older than Lloyd, who last appeared alongside James Caviezel in Madison. It was filmed in 2000 and premiered at Sundance, and when it was widely released in 2005 he had already grown. How funny. He still looked like Anakin in the film of course, but now he looks like this (this is the latest photo I could find). I'm sure I won't like the grown Lloyd as much as Anakin Lloyd. For the record, I never liked Anakin, especially Anakin Christensen, but Anakin Lloyd is just cute. He had more chemistry with Natalie than Hayden, and looking at him, maybe even now - as a younger brother.

Cameron Crowe?
The only non-actor in my entry. What is his next move? I look up to his art, not very much his filmmaking per sé. I thought he was a deviant, but after Vanilla Sky, oh my. But I can't wait for his next film. I haven't heard anything, no news at all. I'm planning to rent a vid of Singles, but I can't find his first flick some Ridgemont High or whatever. I believe he's one of the most talented multitasker in the industry today. Who can write articles, make films, write screenplays, and produce songs in one body? Name me someone.

The GPs, Ps, PGs and Rs

I've been a big time video consumer for about 9 years now. Yes, since I was 10. I started renting VHS tapes one day when my cousin, Matthew, and I found ourselves in utter boredom while at my grandparents' place in the city. I could still remember the titles: Tales from the Cryptkeeper, Ghosbusters, Casper, Men in Black, and all the disaster-creature movies with giant snakes, sharks from hell and jillions of roaches creeping out of the toilet bowl.

I've been a good girl. Before I turned thirteen, I always looked for the shiny stickers on video cases with ratings on them. GPs and PGs and PG-13s and Rs. Of course I didn't rent those with PG-13s and Rs. It was the time when they still put those things on vids so parents could watch out what their children are watching.

When I reached high school, and thirteen too, and the web was already very much a part of life, my first destination was CARA - The Classification and Ratings Administration. www.filmratings.com. A really simple, minimalistic site that has all the ratings of almost any film after 1968, and the reasons for them too.

Rejoice for PG-13s -- it was time for a wider selection of films. I felt like a big girl. If I really wanted to watch Rs, I made sure it was an R only for language or drug content or some violence. Even Rs like this disturbed me. Like I wanted to murder Hitler all over again, with my own hands. It was that bad.
And I also wrote about the torture and inhumanity of World War II death camps for my high school term paper. The starvation, the malevolent medical experiments, the gruesome manual labor, the burnt corpses -- I knew them all. I was that interested.

Of course when I turned 18, I could pretty much watch anything. But really, I still felt like 18 is too young an age to be allowed to watch explicit material. If it's harmful for children, isn't also harmful for adults? It might even be more so for them.

But the dilemma many of the best movies like The Godfather Part I and II and Pulp Fiction are Rs. So I say there are bad Rs and there are good Rs. The reason I already stated. These two films are of course good Rs. Bad Rs are like Alexander Payne's Election (1999) which almost made Time Magazine's 100 all-time movies but I thought was a ridiculous, nonsensical film.

So anyway, my whole point is, after a lot of rambling, is that they should still put those shiny little ratings stickers on videos. Though some DVDs have ratings on them, it's so small, who would bother looking for that? What's the use of all that fuss in security in movie houses when don't regulate purchase and lending of vids? It's stupid.

But then again, it would entail extra effort. Pirated discs are sold off the streets to anyone who has P50 to P80.

The Phenomenals

I'm a sucker for film reviews, but I read them after I see the movie. Most of the time, my judgment equals theirs. They just know how to write it and point out what's wrong, while I generalize. I just know it, and I don't know how. Maybe I should take more film classes, I only had 6 units so far.

I love the Chicago Sun-Times team Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper. Ebert is like my soul mate. We almost always think the same way, he's just more brilliant. While Roeper is incredibly brutal, and I love him for that. Another one is Eleanor Gillespie of Atlanta Journal, the big momma of film reviews. She's, more often than not, right on target.

I respect these guys so much. Many people hate them - Hollywood people, independent filmmakers (though film critics give indies generally better reviews than commercials ones), and hardcorest fans. I partly draw from them here, but I will commit no plagiarism in any form, I promise.

Spidey 3 was a disappointment. I saw it in the big screen, and unfortunately!
I was seated so near the screen that I could see Tobey Maguire's pores, but the film still left me with blank spaces. High-up special effects of course, but the movie itself is down there. Two and a half words: horrible sub-plots. I only watched it because everyone raved about it. It's Spider-man, it's Spider-man! But really, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman. That's what it is.

300, according to Roeper (I knew Ebert won't commit this kind of mistake), is the "Citizen Kane of cinematic graphic novels." Ah-huh. It can be, but is he forgetting something? Sin City might just be as worthy. But why is it so easy to forget, unlike 300? I asked myself that when I was browsing through our pirated DVD collection. Why have I forgotten we have the treasure that is Sin City? Lemme see, maybe because 300 has been so exposed and I never heard anyone not talk about it. My uncle said, "Sobrang ganda." Alright. I agree, but not completely. And I didn't know how to justify that, until I remembered the word Gladiator. It was like déjà vu.
So anyway, director Zack Snyder created something so distant from his Dawn of the Dead remake kindergarten, and that's a good thing. He has grown into a big boy now. That's what 300 is, a big boy - still steps away from being a man. Like Gladiator is a man. And Frank Miller is so brilliant a man that there's almost nothing left to be imagined in making 300's film version.

Shrek the Third should have been entitled SHRED the Third. Really. It almost made the first two films look bad. And I'm thinking if only the makers left Shrek alone, he would still be cinema's legendary character - to be remembered by future film students even a thousand years from now. The Third is like a stupid boy named after his father, who invented an anti-global warming machine, and after his grandfather who discovered a definite cure for cancer. Somehow he has to live up to their names but fails in the end.

These have been the phenomenal titles so far, and according to trend most films that have been raved, crazed, and hailed about by many moviegoers as perfect are really so flawed. The right word for that is "overrated," which reminds me of Titanic. Let me guess, Transformers is following the trend by the looks of it. And I know you hate me now for saying that.