Anthony Lane Reviews Sex and the City

and now there are charges of misogyny. Hmmm

Casting the First Stone (Sharon)

Sharon Stone said that the China earthquake was a result of karma. Predictably, China called for boycott of everything Sharonian. Would that include Sharon Cuneta? Which reminds me, she looked like Louie Cruz, nowadays. But that's not what I'm afraid of. Because of karma, the US should now prepare for the Big One. No joke, the pain and suffering they caused us and the ignorance and hedonism of the people there?

OC

Who is this?

Leonardo de Caprio when he was young. There are other famous OCs like Alec Baldwin, David Beckham, Billy Bob Thorton, Cameron Diaz...

Sci-Fi

Solaris (both versions), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gattaca, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Alien (1979) are featured here for two things. One, all are great sci-fi movies. Second, they are great because their science is right. Right, Mr. Pasyon?

Who is the James Dean of the Philippines?

His name is James Also. Ha ha ha.
James Din.
Momentary silence because Lou Salvador Jr., the James Dean of the Philippines, died only recently.
Here's the obit.

Trees

You will not look at the trees or a tree the same way after clicking on this and even if you're on drugs.
And then if you are interested about the Kalinga bodong and the tribal wars they are trying to mend, then take a look at New Guinea. Here's anthropologist Jared Diamond's essay on the tribal wars there.
The UK Telegraph tries to give their best 100 films

The Movie of the Year!!!

HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY

Hitme(n)

You just adore Anne Parillaud as Nikita that you would want her to sic on your enemies as well. Also, Jean Reno as Leon and Alain Delon in Le Samourai. What is it about French hitmen?

Gabby Concepcion sparks 'Gabbymania!' at ABS-CBN; will do teleserye, films for Star Cinema

This is the headline of abs-cbnnews.com in a way to fan the dead flame on Gabby Concepcion, last seen singing in lounge bars in Vegas. Ramil Gulle, please stop this. You are embarassing me.

Are we seeing just the beginning of Gabbymania? Less than 24 hours since actor Gabby Concepcion set foot in the Philippines on Sunday--for the first time in 13 years --he already sent fans and production staff a-screaming when he came to ABS-CBN.

Didn't Gabby know? The Earth Hour was meant to silence him

Supahfweak

I bet you sang that when you read it. That's the beauty of an unforgettable opening line of a song. And Nash, can you guess the immortal movie lines in my other blog?

Breakable: Manny Pacquiao

Figures for Manny Pacquiao to think about:

$8.5 MILLION: est. money Manny will get from his March fight with Juan Manuel Marquez in Las Vegas. That comes out to about P350 MILLION

P2.4 MILLION: money raked in by "Anak ng Kumander," the movie starring Manny Pacquiao shown during the Metro Manila Film Festival last December when all theaters in Manila and many places elsewhere were required to show only entries from the festival. BTW that money was the total take from all theaters in the country.

The point, Manny, is, since you also endorse MagicSing, we now sing: I love you just the way you are. We want you bloodied and dizzy in the ring and nowhere else. Don't go tryin' some new fashion. Don't change the color of your hair. Who-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo

The Unbreakables

AV Club came out with an intirguing feature: who are the actors who are impervious to major flops which otherwise would have killed their careers. They listed 18. Among them are:
1) Bruce Willis. Flops: Sunset, Hudson Hawk, The Bonfire Of The Vanities, North, Breakfast Of Champions, The Story Of Us, and Perfect Stranger
2) Brad Pitt. Flops: Meet Joe Black, Spy Game, The Mexican, Seven Years In Tibet, The Devil's Own, Cool World, Kalifornia and lately, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Well, those were nice, high-minded flops anyway.
3) John Travolta. Flops: Moment By Moment, Two Of A Kind, The Experts, Perfect, Mad City, Lucky Numbers, Battlefield Earth, A Love Song For Bobby Long, and Lonely Hearts
4) Nicholas Cage. Flops: Next, The Weather Man, The Wicker Man, Lord Of War, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Windtalkers, Bringing Out The Dead, and Snake Eyes
5) Keanu Reeves. Flops: The Watcher, Sweet November, Thumbsucker, Constantine, A Scanner Darkly, and even The Matrix Revolutions

They may flop but they can return with some of the best-selling movies. The lesson is bankable stars are sometimes not enough to lift a movie in the box office.






Nicole Kidman was among the "Unbreakables" but then "The Wizard of Oz" was not a flop

The King of Philippine Comedy Takes High School Exam

Philippine Star wrote:

For comedy king Dolphy, nothing is ever too late. Dolphy, Rodolfo V. Quizon in real life, is this year’s celebrity taker of the Department of Education’s Accreditation and Equivalency (A&E) Test, previously known as the “Pep” test. Education Secretary Jesli Lapus broke the news yesterday when he spoke at the 1st Biennial National Congress on Education at the Manila Hotel. Lapus said that if the 2007 A&E test had world boxing champion Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao as its most famous examinee, “this year it will be Mang Dolphy.” The comedian was among the 80,000 people who have registered with DepEd’s Bureau of Alternative Learning System (BALS) to take the test scheduled this February. The A&E Test is administered by DepEd’s Bureau of Alternative Learning, to individuals who did not have formal elementary and high school education.

Dolphy, the King of Comedy at almost 80 years old, still needs to have a high school diploma? Nagpapatawa ba Kayo?

Tarantino Starbucked and Provoked by Paparazzo to Do Something Wild

Go! Hit me! Go for it again! Cmon! Quentin, come back to the Philippines! We will ignore you. Come back! Oh man!
Now if you agree with QT, here's a bonus: how to take off pen marks (even Sharpie) from your hand

Hate Ledger and the Idiots for Christ

Heath as Nick Drake

mtv.com came out with Ten Things You Don't Know About Heath Ledger and they uncovered things which will cast doubts about the accidental angle of his death:

3. He was obsessed with Nick Drake. Nick Drake was a British singer/songwriter who died in 1974 at age 26 after overdosing on antidepressants. One of Ledger's final artistic statements was a music video for Drake's song "Black Eyed Dog" that he directed and in which he starred. At the end of the clip, Heath depicts himself drowning in a bathtub.

"[In] ancient Greek culture, drowning was the worst possible death simply because your body couldn't be found," Dames said. "For a while in the 19th century, there was a fascination with drowning. ... Virginia Woolf comes to mind. ... There is this fascination [with drowning] as a method of suicide because it comes from Shakespeare."

The Filipino Song in Mothra vs Gojira

The lyrics are:
Naintindihan mo
Naiintindihan mo ba?
Mayroon ba doon?
Pumunta ka lang dito.
Halika't maupo.

Translated thus: Did you understand? Is there something there? You just come here. Come and sit. Of course, they made it "Japanese" by lenghtening the "na-i-i-intindihan mo." Thanks Ed Lejano for the very important trivia (ergo, no longer trivial)
The two girls are two tiny twin girls known as the Shojobin. They are trying to explain that the egg found by the three heroes came from Mothra Island and that the egg must be returned at all cost. So Mothra went on to destroy Tokyo. Why? Because the Shojobin were singing in Tagalog and people from the Mothra Island (re: Wengweng Island) are better left ignored.
This is all I got from the musical director Akira Ikufube. He was a composer of classical music. Note among his works: Overture to the Nation of Philippines (1944). Twenty years later, he came back with this haunting music in Mothra vs Gojira.

Watch the Oscar Nominees for Animation Shorts

The first two can still be found in YouTube until I don't know when. So be the judge and give me your winners.

Even Pigeons go to heaven (Meme Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis) (Samuel Tourneux)

I Met the Walrus (Josh Raskin)

The rest are trailers for Madame Tutli-Putli (NFB, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski),
My Love (Maya Lyubov) and Peter and the Wolf (Suzie Templeton)

Why I Chose Cate Blanchett in the Oscars

Because I believe in probability and there is a study made by sociologists Nicole Esparza of Harvard University and Gabriel Rossman of the University of California, Los Angeles using the Internet Movie Database (yes, the IMDB which you surf for a chance that you will find your name there) for every Oscar-eligible film made between the founding of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1927 and 2005.
They said that an Oscar nod can be ascertained before the cameras whirred.
So one unsurprising thing, you make them laugh? Sorry. You have nine times more chances if you make them cry. No chance at all if you wanted to make them cry but the audience ended up laughing.
The studies next observation is so obvious: the fewer movies shown, the bigger your chance to be nominated. Actresses were more than twice as likely to be nominated as actors for any given performance, so Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie had it so good. But the real reason is still probability: there were fewer roles for women.
Now the billing factor.
"Actors and actresses were also more likely to receive a nomination if they had a history of being named at the top of the credits, had been nominated for an Oscar before or if they appeared with previously nominated writers and directors."
So there: Cate Blanchett.

Norbit Wins, Because I Said So

Of course, the most exciting part is choosing the worst movie last year. Vulture, using the list of Washington Post and Village Voice and a bit of their own compiled this list:

The worst movie of the year: Norbit. Eddie Murphy played multiple roles in this misbegotten spring comedy, the awfulness of which is widely thought to have scuttled Murphy's Oscar campaign for Dreamgirls.

2. Because I Said So
Diane Keaton, Lauren Graham, and Mandy Moore are all cute as bugs, but they couldn't save this romantic comedy from being one of the worst of the year.

3. License to Wed
Robin Williams plays a creepy priest intruding on the lives of John Krasinski and poor, poor Mandy Moore, who clearly needs to fire her agent. Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Hunter liked it, though, which we counted as another vote against it.

4. The Number 23
Remember this one, with Jim Carrey as an obsessive Goth saxophonist who becomes obsessed with Michael Jordan's number? No? Lucky you.

5. Hostel: Part II
Eli Roth's movie was dead on arrival, like so many of his victims, when it became the poster child for critics' revulsion at "torture porn."

6. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
It's hard to believe that Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor are credited screenwriters on this gay-panic masterpiece. Hard to believe … but true.

7. Evan Almighty
Steve Carell is normally sure-footed in his choice of material — even his crappy romantic comedies, like Dan in Real Life, turn out surprisingly good — but this overbudget sequel was adrift from the start.

8. 300
This abs-and-ass-kicking epic was hurt by a lot of worst-film votes in the Village Voice poll. In honestly, the film might not have been so horrible, but its enormous success was.

9. The Bucket List
Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play aging cancer patients out for one final fling. No, no, that's not our sarcastic description — that's the sales pitch.

10. Southland Tales
Richard Kelly's crapterpiece, so memorably described as "like watching Howard the Duck with a high fever," is this year's love-it-or-hate-it movie for critics. (Eleven voters placed it among the best of the year in the Voice poll, and that doesn't even include Manohla Dargis!) But the ones who hated it really hated it.