When the songbird sings

Original:

Unoriginal:

Note to whoever made the my|Phone ads: Please don’t insult our intelligence by passing your ads off as originals, assuming that consumers will not know the similarity to Mac ads anyway. I haven’t switched to Mac and I think that Globe’s iPhone 3G deal is insanely overpriced, but I don’t see myself getting a my|phone anytime soon especially because of this dumb attempt at advertising. *coughplagiarismcough*

Dumb lines from Narinig Mo Na Ba ang Latest? (Have You Heard the Latest?):

“Hindi na uso ang gentleman ngayon. Kung gentle yan, hindi yan man.”
(Gentlemanliness is so old-fashioned. If he’s gentle, he’s not a man.)

“Kapag hindi mo ginagamit, malalaglag “yan”. Cancerous daw yun.”
(If you’re not using “it”, it will fall off. They say not using “it” is cancerous.)

Sister: Cancerous yan kapag 30 ka na.
Me: Ows?

So it has been over six weeks since my last post, and even that wasn’t my own. As with most bloggers, there are things that are better left said through other people’s (dead or alive) words or music or poems…whatever. I wanted to put lots of reviews or regurgitate some nice finds other than the Youtube videos, songs, or poems, but it has not been easy to put my thoughts together and turn them even into quasi-intelligent compositions. The juicy bits are in my Multiply which allows for posting of FYEO blog entries. At this point, feel free to run shrieking for your sanity as I make a run-down of what has been done/have happened in the past two months, and it could take you two months to finish reading the long and winding entry.

A post-Philippine summer of sometimes great and oft-times overhyped movies.

Thanks to the Hollywood summer extravaganza of big films and the not-so-unfounded paranoia that movie pirates will spread illegal copies via torrent networks and dibidi bazaars, major films are released on this part of the globe almost always nearly two days head of US weekend showings. When our schedules allowed, one would easily find my sister and I at Greenbelt cinemas on Wednesday or Thursday nights catching late screenings of whatever is a must-see movie of the week.

Iron Man was cool, and half the reason for its success was Robert Downey Jr. Indy IV was so-so. Sex and the City was, just as expected, a blown-up version of the series. It didn’t provide fresh content or ideas even as the story took off from where the series ended four years ago, and for all that it was worth, fashion was the only thing that…sort of…saved the flick if only one could actually wear the clothes. I didn’t notice anyone in NYC wearing anything that resembled the ensemble that the cast strutted in in the movie. Ponders. I love Ed Norton, so no matter how lame the CGI and the fight scenes were whenever he turned into the green giant in Incredible Hulk, I liked the movie. I liked hims so that I always wished he wouldn’t lose it at all.

Hancock was ok. It offers a different twist on the superhero genre, but in the end still fell flat on its backside because no one has an idea of what he really is (okay, an alien, but seriously!), what the we-can’t-be-together-although-we’re-meant-for-each-other complication is about, or the flimsy excuse for the bad ‘tude and poor hygiene. But maybe because it’s just difficult to hate Will Smith and Charlize Theron did better as superhero in this flick than in that MTV-produced flop she starred in a few years ago, so the film’s got some saving grace. Still, thanks to Keiichi, for the movie treat, and I’m still embarrassed about the popcorn-flavored butter.

I missed Narnia-2, so that means I’ll have to wait until the DVD or a decent dibidi copy comes out. I still have to catch Mama Mia and The Dark Knight this week. It’s quite difficult to pass on the chance to see Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan exchange musical notes. Did Colin Firth sing too? That would be like Mr. Darcy serenading…well, Lizzie Bennet’s mom. And don’t start about Heath Ledger’s creepy Joker. I know. He could be creepy with or without Joker’s mask. And Wanted? I don’t want it.

Books!

Good Lord, there’s just no end to my love affair with books, that I kept buying titles even when I have half a dozen others waiting to be read. I’ve read the first three of Twilight saga, and have to say that the first one is the best if you hate the complications of lost love and found again, or of love triangles and feisty suitors who don’t understand the meaning of the word NO. And contrary to what others say, Twilight, the first book, is more Pride and Prejudice than Rome and Juliet. The third one channels parts of Wuthering Heights, and Bella actually read a passage from the book to explain her actions to Edward. If only things would always be solved by quoting from books, maybe this world would be a better place. (But then, there are some books that just do.not.solve.problems.) The fourth title, Breaking Dawn, is coming out on August 2, and at this stage, I don’t care much anymore about what other powers the unconventional vampires in Meyer’s universe have, but what I want to know is whether Bella ends up being “turned” or walks down the aisle with Edward. I’m on Team Edward, by the way.

Sometimes, that’s the beauty of YA fiction–you could just skip to the end. Or wait for the last installment and skip to the last chapter before bothering with the rest of the story.

I also got myself suckered into buying The Host, which is Meyer’s attempt at sci-fi romance. I’m halfway through the book, and I can say that there’s a lot of Pavlovian and Skinner(ian?) conditioning going on in the story which mostly happens in a jazzed up cave somewhere in the middle of an Arizona desert. I’m starting to think that religion also has something to do with the story, although the concept of God is not mentioned anywhere…yet? On the outset, it’s as if humans should be thankful for getting its entire population used as hosts by aliens (as souls) because they’re bad anyway.

Others on the shelf: A Biographer’s Tale by AS Bayatt, Microtrends by Mark J. Penn, The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl, The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield, The Physician’s Tale by Ann Benson, and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. I’m still halfway through Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Sussanna Clarke’s one-thousand-plus pager Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norris, Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and Jeffrey Euginides’ Middlesex. And then there are other tomes on project management, writing, communication, and how to navigate the corporate jungle which I am too embarrassed to say I’m reading, but because I have to take some refresher.

By the way, I chanced upon a Star Movies showing of the film based on Patrick Suskind’s Perfume some three weeks ago. I remember having major creeps when I read the most “interesting” novel way back in college, and the film wasn’t any different. Ben Whishaw’s Jean Baptiste Grenuouille should be up there with Andy Serkis’ Gollum, and possibly, Heath Ledger’s Joker in the creepiest movie psychos Hall of Fame.

Series and great digital finds

Thanks to the networked world, I have watched the 2008 remake of Sense and Sensibility and the 2006 Jane Eyre miniseries. After watching the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie, the 1995 miniseries was a bit of a disappointment, except for Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy. If you’re a fangirl of historical romance genre like me, then I highly recommend that you get copies of these series. The orig DVDs are pricey, so be creative in getting copies.

Badminton

I didn’t play badminton for over 8 weeks, thanks to the sudden downpours in the last weeks of May. Instead of hitting birds, I took much comfort instead in flipping through pages of the books I mentioned above. Surprisingly, I enjoyed the break from this sport and even considered hanging up my rackets for good. Maybe tennis would be a better alternative because at least on TV it’s so posh. Or get into some other physical activities, like yoga, boxing, or just sweating out at a gym (eww..dullsville!) But now that the rains had so far abated, I figured it was time to get busy again, pick up my racket and push myself to just try running around the courts like I was pretending to catch a flying something. I joined the BR queueing since the venue was the most convenient place to go to right after work.

What can I say, on the day I started playing, the BR organizers invited me to a dual meet with Prima, and like most not-so-smart decisions I made, I agreed to wear their jersey. I used to join Prima back in summer, but for some reason I just couldn’t warm up to the idea of playing with them regularly. They’re ok, of course, and the people are mostly nice. Also, if you have joined their games for 40 times, you’d get a free badminton bag, and if I remember correctly, a shirt; both have the team’s logo.

As luck would have it, I busted my already creaky shoulder on the first day of practice. I was sluggish, gasping for breath, and had only met my partner on the last practice day before the meet, so predictably, we were slaughtered.

Retail therapy

Geek glasses, shoes, jeans, shirts, bags, grocery…

Tennis

Holy mother of anything grassy! I nearly had a heart attack watching the epic Fed-Rafa showdown. Too bad, Rafa outmuscled and outplayed the Fed. Shit.

So, is the problem that’s been plaguing Fed this year mental? Is he truly human after all? What is mononucleosis? Should I watch Fed’s exhibition games with Borg, JMac, and a yet to be identified but hopefully not Rafa fourth party in Kuala Lumpur in November? (And can I afford it? Why isn’t there a link from the ruddy Axcess home page for the event?) And what’s with Rafa’s tugging at his trousers pedal pushers anyway?

Tennis v. stressful.

(I try not to write about work specifics. Most employers past, present and future have non-disclosure clauses, and I’d rather not ruin my chances. )

I first read about Flight of the Conchords way back in 2003, at the height of the Lord of the Rings movie fever, thanks mostly to the attention earned by Bret McKenzie. The artist first rose to fame among hard-core LOTR movie fans when someone dubbed him, “Figwit,” as in, “Frodo is great, (but) who is that?” And “that” happened to be the cute elf cursing at a group of dwarves at the Council of Elrond scene. To please the fan girls, Peter Jackson revived with Figwit a four-line scene in film 3 as Arwen’s guard of sorts.

Four years later, McKenzie and band partner, Jemaine Clement, have their own comedy series on HBO titled, what else, Flight of the Conchords. The series features the folk music parody band hit New York in hopes of making it in the American music market. So far, they have hired a manager whose day job is as a staff member at the New Zealand embassy, and a fan. Now all they need is a gig, a record deal, and girls.

As they muddle through their music career, they also experience rejection, mugging, selling music out to a birthday card company, falling for the same woman, and getting odd jobs to get by. FOTC’s music is hardly LSS-inducing due to the irregular rhythms mish-mashed with retro, punk, rap, and electronic tunes. However, the songs eventually catch on you as the humorous lyrics roll in. Falsetto does not suit every one either, but it obviously works for the duo band.

In between scenes of each episode, the “band” breaks into songs that poke clever fun at some of life’s harsh realities, like falling in love, racial issues, body image, and their chosen profession. You will see Jemaine fall in love with a girl at a party who turns out to be Bret’s ex-girlfriend. Bret finds a co-worker “flipping hot…like a curry” in another scene. Among the most hilarious is still the piece, “Humans Are Dead,” which is about humans being replaced by robots (”It is the distant future/The year 2000″) as performed by the duo dancing the robot dance in their cardboard robot costumes. As it is a parody, the music video is recorded by their clueless manager with a camera phone.

It is the distant future
The year 2000
We are robots
The world is very different ever since the robot uprising of the mid-90s.
There is no more unhappiness.
Affirmative
We no longer say yes. Instead we say ‘affirmative’.
Yes, affirmative.

The band takes pride in being from New Zealand (”Just like Lord of the Rings,” as written in a travel poster) through self-deprecation. One episode shows the duo being denied their apples and bananas by an Indian street fruit vendor because of a cultivated racial distaste. It turns out that he thought the white guys were Aussies. When the issue is resolved, the next scene finds the musicians and the vendor abusing the guard at the Australian Embassy. In fact, the running jokes are not about the challenges of getting gigs or a record deal, but for being mistaken for another nationality or when even English-speaking people hardly understand their words because of the interesting accent.

My personal favorite is “Issues (Think About It)”:

They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers
But what’s the real cost, ‘cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper?
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got them made by little slave kids?
What are your overheads?

Season 1 is already on DVD, I hope that the cable network will revive the program for Season 2.

Looks like the Ugly Betty episode where Victoria Beckham appears is going to be interesting. However, what makes this preview more attention-grabbing is not the footballer wife’s bit but the one whose crown Monique Lhuillier slowly snags. I didn’t know Vera Wang could work it in front of the camera. Girl’s got it good.

I’m not a fan of Posh, but she can be cool when she makes fun of herself. Last week, she gave tips on Ryan Seacrest’s radio program on how to “dress up” like her for the Halloween: Don’t smile. You have to look absolutely miserable.

I like it when people don’t take themselves too seriously.

The vampire folklore offers a plethora of fascinating possibilities for expanding a universe of blood-sucking immortals, flesh-eating beasts, and their innocent victims. Thanks to the compelling performance of Alex O’Loughlin as Mick St. John, “Moonlight” has been gaining traction in the fall ratings war in spite of its initially flimsy premise.

The gist is pretty simple: Mick is a private investigator whose bride, Coraline (Shannyn Sossamon), turns him into a vampire on their wedding night 60 years ago. He has no prior idea that his bride is not exactly human. Desperate to build a family and keep her husband, Coraline kidnaps a young Beth to, sort of, make her a part of her household. Because Mick does not warm up to the idea, a vampiric domestic fight ensues which results in the death of Coraline. Beth (Sophia Myles) eventually grows up and starts to build a name as feisty online video news reporter under whose charm Mick falls. Unfortunately, Beth is already with perfect goody-two-shoes lawyer boyfriend.

The first four episode’s hook is the unspoken attraction between Mick and Beth. Each scene involving these two is rife with romantic/sexual current, they’re eye-f***ing nearly all the time. But as all series start with establishing the lives of their central characters, the first episode introduces Mick as a vampire, but one that is different in so many ways from what people usually believe about his kind. He does not hunt humans (even the bad ones) for food; stakes only paralyze him; garlic doesn’t repel him; he does not burst info flames when sunlight hits him. It is too much or prolonged exposure to it, though, that can kill him.

There is nothing much, or nothing at all, that is unique about this series. Both TV and movies have churned vampires-turned-nice in Blade, Angel and Underworld. Moonlight’s superhero is expectedly a flawed character who corrects his ways by using his “special abilities” to save the world from criminals and protect the innocent against rogue vampires. He may be sleeping alone at night (in a freezer, to boot), but he earns the confidence of his secret love, Beth, and the friendship of Josef (Jason Dohring), a 400-year-old babyfaced billionnaire kindred.

Moonlight is your cookie-cutter investigative-slash-superhero TV fare complete with an eye candy main character blessed with super abilities (doesn’t die, runs super fast, is super smart, has super sense of smell), a smart and smashing sidekick chick with a perfect boyfriend to provide enough tension to the love triangle angle. When LAPD cannot solve a crime, the undead P.I. comes to the rescue and solves the mystery. One would wonder, though, how the weird crimes come about or why someone always beats them into the case. On the other hand, I wish it were darker and didn’t veer too much from the folklore. While getting blood supply from a blood bank is practical and more logical in the present-day context, the diminished effects of stake and sunlight is just too convenient.

If this were not a vampire fare, one would think it was yet another comic superhero knock-off. As usual, the hero is torn between lady-love and the need to just be his humanity-protecting self. Beth, just like any object of many a hero’s affection, inspires Mick while at the same often falls into trouble. The hero-press reporter partnership reeks of Superman-Lois Lane affair; replace the guy who plays Beth’s perfect boyfriend with James Marsden, and all you’ll need is a Lex Luthor to complete the picture. Oh wait, the baddie in second episode is a bald psycho with a penchant for killing his wives.

Still, Moonlight is entertaining and offers enough conflict to push the story forward. It effectively humanizes the vampire who makes a living by eliminating those that cannot be caught or punished according to society’s conventions and dilutes his messianic tendencies through his friendship with the rather world-wise Josef. Another thing that I’d like to see is a back-story to their friendship, such as how they met and came to trust each other.

Beth’s character will start to be uninteresting if all that is going for the character is her is her job or her feelings towards her boyfriend and Mick. The only background that is known about her is that she is the girl that Mick saved from being turned into a child vampire. Right now, she’s Mick’s object of affection, sidekick, and on two occasions, savior.

It’s refreshing to see Daniel Radcliffe without the Harry Potter glasses for once. Although sporting a not-entirely-convincing Australian accent, the actor best known as the boy who lived can act.

December Boys tells the story of four orphans–Maps, Spit, Spark and Misty–who are all born in December. To celebrate their birth month, the nuns at their outback orphanage send them on a summer vacation at a cove hundreds of miles away through a benefactor who they soon figure out is dying of cancer. When information leaks that a young couple at the cove is planning to adopt one of them, a fierce competition arises among the boys whose only reason for living so far has been to be adopted. Maps (Radcliffe), the eldest of the four, has given up hope of finding a new set of parents, thinking that they are “overrated anyway”. He instead finds comfort in the company of a young woman with whom he, as expected, falls in love.

The cove where less than 20 people reside offers so much story to fill up the boys’ time amid fighting over who will be adopted. There is the old fisherman who has developed an affinity that borders on obsession to a gigantic fish that he calls Henry. It is not clear at all why the character developed this regard for the creature. On the other hand, the boys’ religious benefactor appears too strict at times for their own comfort, but eventually emerges as a loving woman whose reason for inviting them into her house is to fill it with “young energy”. And then there is the young couple who can’t have a child. The husband tells everyone that he is a motorbike racer only to be discovered by Maps as a helper at a nearby circus. Lucy, the young tempest who gives Maps his first sexual encounter, eventually leaves him without even saying goodbye.

The boys soon figure out that they already have a family, and that they don’t need to be adopted by new parents since there already had one–the eldest among them, Maps, who has always acted as their older brother and leader, the one who willingly saves one of them from drowning even though he cannot swim himself.

December Boys is told from the recollections of Misty, the most competitive among the boys. Set in the 50’s, the events of their summer vacation at the cove tells how seemingly simple things appear in such a small place. But events soon unravel to unmask the people in that community, that no matter how serene life appears, it almost always is not. However, more than anything, the film gives an alternative description of the word “family”.

• It Was “Like A Huge Asshole Nest”
  This story offers a good lesson on how to deal with assholes and problem clients (not often one and the same), and how to wade through office politics. Project managers, rank and file, and consultants of all stripes should learn from the story.
  (tags: assholes consulting officepolitics books)
• Microsoft Excel Fails Math Test
  According to the NY Times report, MS Excel 2007 incorrectly multiplies “…six numbers from 65,534.99999999995 to 65,535, and six numbers from 65,535.99999999995 to 65,536.” Better get your good ol’ calculator handy.
  (tags: excel math bugs)
• A Visual Guide to Version Control
  Getting acquainted with version control applications probably was one of the toughest parts of my technical writing training simply because it was easy to foul up versions or copies. But the drill got easier eventually. The open-source version control application, Subversion, is still a favorite.
• Microsoft extends Windows XP’s stay
  I’m sooo installing XP on my laptop. Vista sux, as far as I’m concerned, as it eats up too much resources and asks too many questions even for the minorest operations. And yeah, XP is more user-friendly. Like, totally.
  (tags: WindowsXP vista)
• Say ‘Whaaaat?!?!’ North enforces DRM by executing K-drama fans
  “There have been two or three reports of public executions of North Koreans…as punishment for having illegally copied and distributed South Korean visual material,” said Kang Chul Hwan of Committee for the Democratization of North Korea. Good grief, to think that I enjoyed Lovers in Paris in a friend’s 21-disk bootleg VCD…
  (tags: kdrama northkorea entertainment)

There are times when I can’t thank the dibidi vendors enough for their collections of film gems that I would not get a hold of if I opted for the mall video shops or waited for them to be shown in cinemas. A short trip to MCS two weekends ago produced a well of hard-to-find titles all saved in just.one.disc at the measly sum of PHP70.

One of the titles I found was Starter for 10.

“…you can’t hide in your room forever, feeling sorry for your self. It’s not practical. At some point, you’ve got to get back out there, face yourself, and confront your demons.

“And yes, i’ve made some bad choices, lost my head, let people down–people I cared for. But there still might be time to get something right.

“Ever since I can remember, I want to be clever. Some people are born clever in the same way some people are born beautiful. I’m not one of those people. I’m gonna have to work it, put in the effort, and if I mess it up, I learn from it. Besides, sometimes it’s not about knowing the right answers. Sometimes, it’s about asking the right question.”

Starter for 10 stars one of my new favorite British actors, James McAvoy. It’s another coming-of-age story about a young small-town but very clever teenager who pursues his passion for learning by taking a course in English Literature at Bristol University. Inspired by his father, he cultivates interest in quiz shows and gathers bits and pieces of trivia, sometimes thinking if all the knowledge he collects are useless.

“As Francis Bacon once said, “Knowledge is power.” Which is why I want to know everything. I want to know about Plato and Newton, Tolstoy and Bob Dylan; what the words eclectic and peripatetic mean. I want to know why people actually like jazz. If I want to know the answers, I have to be in a place where people have a passion for knowledge. I think it’s important; sacred, even.”

While at the university, he meets a couple of eccentric flat-mates, a domineering quiz team captain, an activist Jewish student named Rebecca, and the blond bombshell of his dreams, Alice, who is also a member of his team.

As he attempts to help his friends to win the championship of University Challenge, one of Britain’s longest-running quiz shows, he also falls for the beautiful Alice. On the other hand, Rebecca keeps by his side throughout the turmoil that he goes through with the team, his friends, his mother, and his romantic disappointment, believing that he can actually make a difference. He and Rebecca’s faith are put to the test on the day of the championships. So close to winning the title, he disappoints his team by giving a correct answer even when the question has not yet been asked. The judges decide to kick him out immediately.

Embarrassed, he goes home to stew in his disappointment and eventually discovers that those who seem to have moved on still care for him: his widowed mother who has found a new partner and his best friend who still believes in him and the value of his education. When he returns to the university, he also realizes that his adviser has been waiting for him to turn up and, best of all, Rebecca is waiting for him to ask “the right question”.

The university does not disappoint in nurturing his passion for learning as it supports his quiz team, stirs his zeal for poetry, as well as introduces him to student activism through Rebecca. However, sometimes the best kind of knowledge is not that which is learned within the hallowed walls of the university, but through other people. Those he meets in college teach him the value of loyalty, respect, and forgiveness, and the dangers of falling in love.

“Starter for 10″ is pretty much your typical, cookie-cutter coming-of-age movie. However, it successfuly delivered a quirky cast of characters set in the backdrop of 1985’s social discord and identity discovery.