FEED Validator

for Atom and RSS and KML

Congratulations!

This is a valid Atom 1.0 feed.

Recommendations

This feed is valid, but interoperability with the widest range of feed readers could be improved by implementing the following recommendations.

line 1, column 0: Use of unknown namespace: http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008 [help]
```
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blog ...
```
line 1, column 0: Unable to validate namespace: http://schemas.google.com/g/2005. See the Google Data specification at https://developers.google.com/gdata/docs/1.0/elements [help]
```
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blog ...
```

line 1, column 24663: Self reference doesn't match document location [help]

... eds/8879518290175104767/posts/default'/><link rel='alternate' type='text ...
                                             ^

line 1, column 33318: content should not contain data-original-height attribute (25 occurrences) [help]

... nd.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' ty ...
                                             ^

line 1, column 33318: content should not contain data-original-width attribute (25 occurrences) [help]

... nd.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' ty ...
                                             ^

line 1, column 89510: content should not contain iframe tag (19 occurrences) [help]

... ;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</content><link rel='replies' ty ...
                                             ^

Source: http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/posts/default

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blogger.com/styles/atom.css" type="text/css"?><feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/' xmlns:blogger='http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008' xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss' xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0'><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767</id><updated>2024-04-27T09:06:11.352+08:00</updated><category term="Travel"/><category term="Television"/><category term="Film"/><category term="Budget and Itinerary"/><category term="Hollywood"/><category term="Blog"/><category term="Filipino"/><category term="Theater"/><category term="Darna (ABS-CBN)"/><category term="Philippines"/><category term="United States"/><category term="Game of Thrones (HBO)"/><category term="Tagalog"/><category term="A Beautiful Affair (ABS-CBN)"/><category term="European"/><category term="Self-Study"/><category term="Broadway"/><category term="2007"/><category term="2014"/><category term="Español"/><category term="Japan"/><category term="한국어"/><category term="China"/><category term="La casa de las flores (Netflix)"/><category term="Germany"/><category term="Stranger Things (Netflix)"/><category term="中文"/><category term="Deutsch"/><category term="Mexico"/><category term="Santa Clarita Diet (Netflix)"/><category term="The Umbrella Academy (Netflix)"/><category term="Brazil"/><category term="Dark (Netflix)"/><category term="Malaysia"/><category term="South Korea"/><category term="Sense8 (Netflix)"/><category term="2006"/><category term="Visa"/><category term="日本語"/><category term="별에서 온 그대 (SBS)"/><category term="49일 (SBS)"/><category term="Australia"/><category term="Latin American"/><category term="New York"/><category term="푸른 바다의 전설 (SBS)"/><category term="Atlantis Theatrical"/><category term="Tanghalang Pilipino"/><category term="Thailand"/><category term="Heartstopper (Netflix)"/><category term="Morocco"/><category term="Repertory Philippines"/><category term="마이걸 (SBS)"/><category term="미스 리플리 (MBC)"/><category term="2013"/><category term="Manhattan"/><category term="Taiwan"/><category term="Honduras"/><category term="Nicaragua"/><category term="Canada"/><category term="Italy"/><category term="Austria"/><category term="Indonesia"/><category term="Loki (Disney)"/><category term="Português"/><category term="Vietnam"/><category term="2009"/><category term="Camarines Sur"/><category term="Colombia"/><category term="Seoul"/><category term="Xiamen University"/><category term="California"/><category term="Costa Rica"/><category term="Hankuk University of Foreign Studies"/><category term="Hindsight (VH1)"/><category term="Kansai"/><category term="Mexico City"/><category term="Peru"/><category term="Portugal"/><category term="Batanes"/><category term="Florida"/><category term="Guatemala"/><category term="India"/><category term="Kyushu"/><category term="New Zealand"/><category term="She-Hulk (Disney)"/><category term="Singapore"/><category term="WandaVision (Disney)"/><category term="What If...? (Disney)"/><category term="1899 (Netflix)"/><category term="2011"/><category term="9 Works Theatrical"/><category term="Asian"/><category term="Beijing"/><category term="Croatia"/><category term="France"/><category term="Israel"/><category term="Metro Manila"/><category term="PETA"/><category term="Russia"/><category term="United Arab Emirates"/><category term="Bangkok"/><category term="Berlin"/><category term="Bolivia"/><category term="Cagayan"/><category term="Cebu"/><category term="Chubu"/><category term="Guam"/><category term="Hong Kong"/><category term="Macau"/><category term="Manila"/><category term="North Korea"/><category term="Osaka"/><category term="Pyongyang"/><category term="Sabah"/><category term="Shanghai"/><category term="Taipei"/><category term="2008"/><category term="Bhutan"/><category term="Cuba"/><category term="Cyprus"/><category term="Hawkeye (Disney)"/><category term="Iceland"/><category term="Iran"/><category term="Literature"/><category term="Los Angeles"/><category term="Moon Knight (Disney)"/><category term="Ms. Marvel (Disney)"/><category term="Netherlands"/><category term="North Rhine-Westphalia"/><category term="Palawan"/><category term="Poland"/><category term="Quezon"/><category term="Rio de Janeiro"/><category term="Saudi Arabia"/><category term="Secret Invasion (Disney)"/><category term="The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Disney)"/><category term="Trese (Netflix)"/><category term="2003"/><category term="Armenia"/><category term="Baden-Württemberg"/><category term="Bahamas"/><category term="Batan"/><category term="Belarus"/><category term="Belgium"/><category term="Bogotá"/><category term="Busan"/><category term="Caramoan"/><category term="Coron"/><category term="Cusco"/><category term="Cuzco"/><category term="El Salvador"/><category term="Georgia (US)"/><category term="Kazakhstan"/><category term="Lisbon"/><category term="Lunchbox Theatrical"/><category term="Mongolia"/><category term="Nepal"/><category term="New South Wales"/><category term="Ontario"/><category term="Paris"/><category term="Sabtang"/><category term="San Francisco"/><category term="Spain"/><category term="São Paulo"/><category term="Tokyo"/><category term="Ulaanbaatar"/><category term="University of Macau"/><category term="Uzbekistan"/><category term="Yu Yu Hakusho (Netflix)"/><category term="Île-de-France"/><category term="2012"/><category term="Accommodation"/><category term="Amsterdam"/><category term="Argao"/><category term="Atlanta"/><category term="Auckland"/><category term="Bangladesh"/><category term="Batangas"/><category term="Belize"/><category term="Bohol"/><category term="Brandenburg"/><category term="British"/><category term="British Columbia"/><category term="Cagayan de Oro"/><category term="Capul"/><category term="Cebu City"/><category term="Dili"/><category term="East Timor"/><category term="Fujian"/><category term="Fès-Meknès"/><category term="Ho Chi Minh"/><category term="Ilocos Norte"/><category term="Jongno-gu"/><category term="Kanto"/><category term="Kathmandu"/><category term="Kota Kinabalu"/><category term="Kyoto"/><category term="La Paz"/><category term="Laguna"/><category term="Meknes"/><category term="Melbourne"/><category term="Minsk"/><category term="Misamis Oriental"/><category term="Myanmar"/><category term="Naga"/><category term="North Holland"/><category term="Northern Samar"/><category term="Pili"/><category term="Potsdam"/><category term="Quebec"/><category term="Resorts World Manila"/><category term="Serbia"/><category term="Slovenia"/><category term="Switzerland"/><category term="Sydney"/><category term="Turkey"/><category term="University of Vienna"/><category term="Victoria"/><category term="2004"/><category term="2010"/><category term="2016"/><category term="Aachen"/><category term="Aichi"/><category term="Aklan"/><category term="Albay"/><category term="Algarve"/><category term="Andong"/><category term="Bali"/><category term="Barcelona"/><category term="Berry Islands"/><category term="Boracay"/><category term="Bosnia & Herzegovina"/><category term="Brussels"/><category term="Bulgaria"/><category term="Cambodia"/><category term="Camiguin"/><category term="Cancun"/><category term="Catalonia"/><category term="Central Java"/><category term="Cologne"/><category term="Czech Republic"/><category term="Delhi"/><category term="Dhaka"/><category term="Donsol"/><category term="Draa-Tafilalet"/><category term="Ehime"/><category term="Emilia-Romagna"/><category term="Fars"/><category term="Fort Lauderdale"/><category term="Freiburg"/><category term="Gifu"/><category term="Guatemala City"/><category term="Haeundae"/><category term="Hamburg"/><category term="Hanoi"/><category term="Harbin"/><category term="Havana"/><category term="Heilongjiang"/><category term="Hokkaido"/><category term="Hualien"/><category term="Iloilo"/><category term="Istanbul"/><category term="Jaipur"/><category term="Johor"/><category term="Kyrgyzstan"/><category term="La Habana"/><category term="Labuan"/><category term="Laos"/><category term="Lazio"/><category term="Legazpi"/><category term="Liaoning"/><category term="Lima"/><category term="Lucban"/><category term="Mambajao"/><category term="Massachusetts"/><category term="Merida"/><category term="Miami"/><category term="Minas Gerais"/><category term="Montreal"/><category term="Moscow"/><category term="Nagoya"/><category term="Nassau"/><category term="National Autonomous University of Mexico"/><category term="New Delhi"/><category term="New Providence"/><category term="New Territories"/><category term="North Gyeongsang"/><category term="Okinawa"/><category term="Ouarzazate"/><category term="Pathum Wan"/><category term="Peñablanca"/><category term="Potosí"/><category term="Prague"/><category term="Quintana Roo"/><category term="Rabat"/><category term="Rabat-Salé-Kénitra"/><category term="Rajasthan"/><category term="Rattanakosin"/><category term="Rome"/><category term="Salzburg"/><category term="San Salvador"/><category term="Santa Ana"/><category term="Sapporo"/><category term="Seattle"/><category term="Selangor"/><category term="Shikoku"/><category term="Shinjuku"/><category term="Shiraz"/><category term="Sintra"/><category term="Sofia"/><category term="Sorsogon"/><category term="South Cotabato"/><category term="Sri Lanka"/><category term="Tajikistan"/><category term="Tasmania"/><category term="Thimphu"/><category term="Uyuni"/><category term="Valladolid"/><category term="Vancouver"/><category term="Veneto"/><category term="Washington"/><category term="Xiamen"/><category term="Yangon"/><category term="Yucatan"/><category term="Abu Dhabi"/><category term="Addis Ababa"/><category term="Adelaide"/><category term="Agra"/><category term="Alabama"/><category term="Albania"/><category term="Albany"/><category term="Albufeira"/><category term="Alexandria"/><category term="Andorra"/><category term="Andorra la Vella"/><category term="Antigua"/><category term="Antioquia"/><category term="Arlington"/><category term="Armavir"/><category term="Astana"/><category term="Atlántida"/><category term="Ayutthaya"/><category term="Ba"/><category term="Bagmati"/><category term="Bahrain"/><category term="Bahía"/><category term="Bandar Seri Begawan"/><category term="Basel"/><category term="Basel-Stadt"/><category term="Bayern"/><category term="Belem"/><category term="Belgrade"/><category term="Belo Horizonte"/><category term="Bethlehem"/><category term="Billund"/><category term="Birmingham"/><category term="Bishkek"/><category term="Bologna"/><category term="Bolívar"/><category term="Boston"/><category term="Brisbane"/><category term="British Virgin Islands"/><category term="Brunei"/><category term="Bucharest"/><category term="Buffalo"/><category term="Bukhara"/><category term="Bukidnon"/><category term="Calbayog"/><category term="Cali"/><category term="Cambridge"/><category term="Capas"/><category term="Carinthia"/><category term="Carmen"/><category term="Cartagena"/><category term="Cartago"/><category term="Casablanca"/><category term="Cascais"/><category term="Cavite"/><category term="Cayo"/><category term="Ceará"/><category term="Central Macedonia"/><category term="Changhua"/><category term="Chaoyang"/><category term="Chefchaouen"/><category term="Chiba"/><category term="Chicago"/><category term="Chinandega"/><category term="Cholula"/><category term="Choluteca"/><category term="Chonburi"/><category term="Chongwen"/><category term="Chuncheon"/><category term="Coimbra"/><category term="Coloane"/><category term="Colombo"/><category term="Comayagua"/><category term="Connecticut"/><category term="Copacabana"/><category term="Copán"/><category term="Corella"/><category term="Corn Islands"/><category term="Corregidor"/><category term="Cortés"/><category term="Cotai"/><category term="Dalian"/><category term="Dallas"/><category term="Dammam"/><category term="Datong"/><category term="Davao"/><category term="Davao del Sur"/><category term="Denmark"/><category term="Doha"/><category term="Dominican Republic"/><category term="Dubai"/><category term="Dumaguete"/><category term="Dushanbe"/><category term="East Java"/><category term="Eastern Province"/><category term="Egypt"/><category term="Estonia"/><category term="Ethiopia"/><category term="Faro"/><category term="Feldkirch"/><category term="Fengbin"/><category term="Fez"/><category term="Fiji"/><category term="Flensburg"/><category term="Flores"/><category term="Fortaleza"/><category term="Francisco Morazán"/><category term="Frankfurt"/><category term="Freedom of the Seas"/><category term="Friuli-Venezia Giulia"/><category term="Fukuoka"/><category term="Gangwon"/><category term="General Santos"/><category term="Georgia"/><category term="Geumjeong"/><category term="Granada"/><category term="Grand-Est"/><category term="Graz"/><category term="Greater Poland"/><category term="Greece"/><category term="Guanacaste"/><category term="Guanajuato"/><category term="Guangdong"/><category term="Gyeonggi"/><category term="Ha Long"/><category term="Haifa"/><category term="Haiti"/><category term="Hallstatt"/><category term="Harju"/><category term="Hat Yai"/><category term="Hebei"/><category term="Hesse"/><category term="Hidalgo"/><category term="Hobart"/><category term="Iguig"/><category term="Ilha Grande"/><category term="Illinois"/><category term="Iloilo City"/><category term="Islas de la Bahía"/><category term="Jacksonville"/><category term="Jaco"/><category term="Jakarta"/><category term="Jakarta Pusat"/><category term="Jeddah"/><category term="Jerusalem"/><category term="Jiangsu"/><category term="João Pessoa"/><category term="Jung-gu"/><category term="Kaliningrad"/><category term="Katoomba"/><category term="Kedah"/><category term="Key West"/><category term="Klaten"/><category term="Ko Phi Phi"/><category term="Koh Lipe"/><category term="Koror"/><category term="Kosovo"/><category term="Kowloon"/><category term="Krabi"/><category term="Kuala Lumpur"/><category term="Kuala Perlis"/><category term="Kumamoto"/><category term="La Ceiba"/><category term="Lake Sebu"/><category term="Langkawi"/><category term="Laoag"/><category term="Larnaca"/><category term="Las Vegas"/><category term="Latvia"/><category term="Launceston"/><category term="Leyte"/><category term="León"/><category term="Liberia"/><category term="Liechtenstein"/><category term="Liege"/><category term="Limassol"/><category term="Limburg"/><category term="Limón"/><category term="Lithuania"/><category term="Little Stirrup Cay"/><category term="Ljubljana"/><category term="Lombardy"/><category term="Longyan"/><category term="Lower Silesia"/><category term="Lukang"/><category term="Maasin"/><category term="Maastricht"/><category term="Mabini"/><category term="Magdeburg"/><category term="Magelang"/><category term="Makkah"/><category term="Malacca"/><category term="Managua"/><category term="Manama"/><category term="Manolo Fortich"/><category term="Maribor"/><category term="Marrakech"/><category term="Marrakesh-Safi"/><category term="Masaya"/><category term="Masovia"/><category term="Matalom"/><category term="Matanzas"/><category term="Mauban"/><category term="Medellín"/><category term="Mexico State"/><category term="Miagao"/><category term="Miguel Hidalgo"/><category term="Milan"/><category term="Missouri"/><category term="Montenegro"/><category term="Morelos"/><category term="Munich"/><category term="Münster"/><category term="Nadi"/><category term="Nadroga-Navosa"/><category term="Nagasaki"/><category term="Nantou"/><category term="Natal"/><category term="Nativitas"/><category term="Nazareth"/><category term="Negros Oriental"/><category term="Nevada"/><category term="New Haven"/><category term="New Jersey"/><category term="Niagara Falls"/><category term="Northern"/><category term="Northern Marianas"/><category term="Novi Sad"/><category term="Oberösterreich"/><category term="Occidental Mindoro"/><category term="Ohio"/><category term="Oita"/><category term="Olinda"/><category term="Orlando"/><category term="Osrednjeslovenska"/><category term="Ottawa"/><category term="Ouest"/><category term="Ouro Preto"/><category term="Pagudpud"/><category term="Pahang"/><category term="Palau"/><category term="Palestine"/><category term="Panama"/><category term="Panama City"/><category term="Panglao"/><category term="Paphos"/><category term="Papua New Guinea"/><category term="Paramaribo"/><category term="Paraty"/><category term="Paraíba"/><category term="Paro"/><category term="Pará"/><category term="Pattaya"/><category term="Pennsylvania"/><category term="Perlis"/><category term="Pernambuco"/><category term="Perth"/><category term="Petén"/><category term="Philadelphia"/><category term="Podgorica"/><category term="Podravska"/><category term="Poprad"/><category term="Port Moresby"/><category term="Poznan"/><category term="Prešov"/><category term="Primorje-Gorski Kotar"/><category term="Princeton"/><category term="Priština"/><category term="Providence"/><category term="Providenciales"/><category term="Pudong"/><category term="Puebla"/><category term="Puerto Rico"/><category term="Puerto Viejo de Talamanca"/><category term="Puno"/><category term="Puntarenas"/><category term="Putrajaya"/><category term="Qatar"/><category term="Qinhuangdao"/><category term="Quang Ninh"/><category term="Queensland"/><category term="Queretaro"/><category term="Quetzaltenango"/><category term="Ratchadaphisek"/><category term="Red Turnip Theater"/><category term="Reykjavik"/><category term="Rhode Island"/><category term="Riga"/><category term="Rijeka"/><category term="Rio Grande do Norte"/><category term="Rivas"/><category term="Riyadh"/><category term="Roatán"/><category term="Romania"/><category term="Sablayan"/><category term="Sacatepéquez"/><category term="Saga"/><category term="Saint Thomas"/><category term="Salvador"/><category term="Samar"/><category term="San Ignacio"/><category term="San José"/><category term="San Juan"/><category term="San Marino"/><category term="San Mateo"/><category term="San Miguel"/><category term="San Miguel de Allende"/><category term="San Pablo"/><category term="San Pedro Sula"/><category term="Sandusky"/><category term="Santiago de Queretaro"/><category term="Santo Domingo"/><category term="Sarajevo"/><category term="Sariaya"/><category term="Satun"/><category term="Saxony-Anhalt"/><category term="Schleswig-Holstein"/><category term="Settat-Casablanca"/><category term="Shanxi"/><category term="Shenyang"/><category term="Shenzhen"/><category term="Shibuya"/><category term="Shizuoka"/><category term="Shymkent"/><category term="Siem Reap"/><category term="Siquijor"/><category term="Slovakia"/><category term="Sogod"/><category term="Songkhla"/><category term="South Australia"/><category term="South Bačka"/><category term="Southern Caribbean Coast"/><category term="Southern Denmark"/><category term="Southern Leyte"/><category term="Split"/><category term="Split-Dalmatia"/><category term="Spotlight Artists Centre"/><category term="St. Louis"/><category term="St. Petersburg"/><category term="Sta Rosa"/><category term="Stockholm"/><category term="Strasbourg"/><category term="Stuttgart"/><category term="Styria"/><category term="Surabaya"/><category term="Suriname"/><category term="Suyeong"/><category term="Suzhou"/><category term="Suðurland"/><category term="Suðurnes"/><category term="Sweden"/><category term="Taito"/><category term="Tallinn"/><category term="Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima"/><category term="Tarlac"/><category term="Tashkent"/><category term="Tbilisi"/><category term="Tegucigalpa"/><category term="Tehran"/><category term="Tel Aviv"/><category term="Texas"/><category term="Thessaloniki"/><category term="Tianjin"/><category term="Tirana"/><category term="Tlaxcala"/><category term="Toronto"/><category term="Tortola"/><category term="Trieste"/><category term="Tuguegarao"/><category term="Tula"/><category term="Tulum"/><category term="Turks & Caicos"/><category term="US Virgin Islands"/><category term="Ubatuba"/><category term="Uttar Pradesh"/><category term="Vaduz"/><category term="Valle del Cauca"/><category term="Varadero"/><category term="Vatican City"/><category term="Verona"/><category term="Vientiane"/><category term="Villach"/><category term="Vilnius"/><category term="Virginia"/><category term="Vorarlberg"/><category term="Wanhua"/><category term="Warsaw"/><category term="Washington DC"/><category term="Wellington"/><category term="Western Australia"/><category term="Wilmington"/><category term="Wroclaw"/><category term="Xiulin"/><category term="Xochicalco"/><category term="Yamanashi"/><category term="Yerevan"/><category term="Yogyakarta"/><category term="Yongin"/><category term="Yuchi"/><category term="Zadar"/><category term="Zurich"/><category term="delaware"/><category term="4th Wall Theatre Company"/><category term="Ajman"/><category term="Almaty"/><category term="Alor Setar"/><category term="American"/><category term="Anonymous"/><category term="Baltimore"/><category term="Bang Rak"/><category term="Barrie J.M."/><category term="Beppu"/><category term="Bradbury R."/><category term="Budapest"/><category term="Bunkyo"/><category term="Butterworth"/><category term="Cairo"/><category term="Canberra"/><category term="Canterbury"/><category term="Castile-Leon"/><category term="Chingeltrei"/><category term="Christchurch"/><category term="Da Nang"/><category term="Dalanghita Productions"/><category term="Dongcheng"/><category term="Dubrovnik"/><category term="Dubrovnik-Neretva"/><category term="Finland"/><category term="Gangnam-gu"/><category term="Genting Highlands"/><category term="Georgetown"/><category term="Gianyar"/><category term="Giza"/><category term="Gombak"/><category term="Greenland"/><category term="Guangzhou"/><category term="Helsinki"/><category term="Herzegovina-Neretva"/><category term="Huangpu"/><category term="Hue"/><category term="Hungary"/><category term="Incheon"/><category term="Irazu"/><category term="Jakarta Selatan"/><category term="Jakarta Utara"/><category term="Jingan"/><category term="Kaafu"/><category term="Kalibo"/><category term="Khan-uul"/><category term="Kien Giang"/><category term="Las Piñas"/><category term="Luang Prabang"/><category term="Luxembourg"/><category term="Madrid"/><category term="Maldives"/><category term="Malta"/><category term="Mandalay"/><category term="Maryland"/><category term="Mediacorp Vizpro"/><category term="Monaco"/><category term="Mostar"/><category term="Nam"/><category term="Nasugbu"/><category term="Neihu"/><category term="Nice"/><category term="North Macedonia"/><category term="Norway"/><category term="Nuremberg"/><category term="Nyaung-U"/><category term="Oslo"/><category term="Otago"/><category term="Paoay"/><category term="Penang"/><category term="Petaling Jaya"/><category term="Phahonyothin"/><category term="Philippine"/><category term="Phnom Penh"/><category term="Phu Quoc"/><category term="Phuket"/><category term="Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur"/><category term="Puerto Princesa"/><category term="Queenstown"/><category term="Recife"/><category term="Royal Caribbean"/><category term="Saipan"/><category term="Salamanca"/><category term="Samarkand"/><category term="Samarqand"/><category term="San Antonio"/><category term="San Jose"/><category term="Savannah"/><category term="Scenario"/><category term="Shakespeare W."/><category term="Sharjah"/><category term="Shilin"/><category term="Sindhupalchok"/><category term="Skopje"/><category term="Sliema"/><category term="Songpa-gu"/><category term="Sukhbaatar"/><category term="Syjuco M."/><category term="Tacloban"/><category term="Tagbilaran"/><category term="Takeo"/><category term="Talisay"/><category term="Theater Mogul"/><category term="Thua Thien-Hue"/><category term="Umm al-Quwain"/><category term="Uusimaa"/><category term="Valletta"/><category term="Vang Vieng"/><category term="Venice"/><category term="Vienna"/><category term="Werfen"/><category term="Woolf V."/><category term="Xinyi"/><category term="Xochimilco"/><category term="Xuanwu"/><category term="Xuhui"/><category term="Yeongdoungpo-gu"/><category term="Yongsan-gu"/><category term="Zagreb"/><category term="Zambales"/><category term="Zhongsheng"/><title type='text'>ihcahieh: Depressed | Demented | Deranged</title><subtitle type='html'>How do you vanquish the enemy when the enemy is yourself?</subtitle><link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/posts/default'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/'/><link rel='hub' href='http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/'/><link rel='next' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default?start-index=26&max-results=25'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><generator version='7.00' uri='http://www.blogger.com'>Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>2560</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-8655125341525865693</id><published>2024-04-21T00:16:00.003+08:00</published><updated>2024-04-21T00:23:11.877+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Barrie J.M."/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="British"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Literature"/><title type='text'>Peter Pan</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Wendy" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="201" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5MBv1TtBzZV8z4AyeR3EHOo2aD0TL9y5_8VPLtgt4hy2MoFyyVGyYhUak3MaKwk8cgonthUiJG1l7kjeTlsxiKyb3dPgDPUahNZjeBcqzpTSnaTp0Ypz5hppNMw_kCUGj3aHX9EhbOLwGTpxYsO1EIm6akgpb_5N6Ge5y7OabX_fmNyGa4SF0V_TOQOIS/s320/Screenshot_1.jpg" width="195" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Mr. and Mrs. Darling are the proud parents of three wonderful children named Wendy, John, and Michael. Also part of the family are their nannies: a dog named Nana and a househelp by the name of Liza. The family lives a rather ordinary life in London without much fanfare, at least not until the arrival of Peter Pan. Peter Pan is a young boy who still has all his first teeth and is part of the Lost Boys, a tribe of youngsters like him who reside in Neverland. Peter visits Wendy’s room one night and convinces her, along with her brothers, to fly with him back to Neverland to be his and the Lost Boys’ mother. Despite the initial hesitation of Tinkerbell, Peter Pan’s fairy sidekick, they all make it back to Neverland and face off with Captain Hook, a villainous ship captain who has an axe to grind with the young boy.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">This is an enjoyable read, short and silly most of the time. However, I found myself inexplicably a bit choked up and depressed as I reached the last few pages. Peter Pan has always been and will always be an ode to growing up, the character itself a personification of the refusal to become an adult. After all, isn’t that the biggest tragedy of the human condition: Leaving childhood behind along with the innocence that you know you will never ever regain? It is sad indeed, but that doesn’t make it any less true, yet makes it all the more relatable since nobody can really skip childhood, despite some having to leave it earlier by necessity.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Maybe this is also one of the charms of fiction aimed at children. I cannot remember when I first read Peter Pan. I don’t even know whether I even read it at all decades ago. I mean, the character has seen a lot of reincarnations in different mediums through the decades and is such a pop culture icon. In any case, you know a writer is good when (s)he can cater to both young and adult readers with the same material but having them leave with different takeaways from the story. The storyline might have been simple fantasy that tickled your imagination back in the day, a harmless fairytale that made your childhood happier.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As an adult, though, the story becomes more metaphorical and just hits you differently. Old Wendy’s inability to fly is a lonely metaphor for becoming an adult, Peter Pan himself representing that lost imagination, or innocence, or whatever lost gem of childhood that you could think of. Neverland is your good old made-up world that played a large role in your carefree existence before adulthood snatched you away from it, for good. That is the conclusion I ended up with after trying to come up with other theories that might give a better interpretation of the story but just didn’t.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As for the writing style, what you get is playful prose, perhaps owing to the original material being a stage play. The way the characters deal with one another is always theatrical and you can just feel the exaggeration trying to grab you through the written word. As such, it is a good read for children who have short attention spans. For the adult reader, it transports you back to your childhood, and the reminiscing that it results in is just as fun an experience as the reading. The characters are high-spirited most of the time, Tinkerbell standing out for being the tiny firebrand that she is. It is silly, but it makes sense.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The novel also comes across as an existential dilemma. Peter Pan does not seem to have a notion of a past or a future and can be argued as the personification of YOLO, a life without responsibilities focused only on the present. Of course, we all know that real life is simply not like this, and perhaps that is what Peter Pan really is, the stubborn holding on to an ideal that is neither realistic nor practical. Maybe that’s what makes it all the more tragic, because we all know that the boy is bound to be forever floating around with no awareness of his reality’s difference to those of the people around him, always ending up getting left behind.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In the end, Peter Pan will always be a gem and a worthy part of any child’s library. It is a tale that will never lose its appeal as long as we have children who remind us of the innocence and carefree days we have left and they will eventually leave behind.</span></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/8655125341525865693/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/peter-pan.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/8655125341525865693'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/8655125341525865693'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/peter-pan.html' title='Peter Pan'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5MBv1TtBzZV8z4AyeR3EHOo2aD0TL9y5_8VPLtgt4hy2MoFyyVGyYhUak3MaKwk8cgonthUiJG1l7kjeTlsxiKyb3dPgDPUahNZjeBcqzpTSnaTp0Ypz5hppNMw_kCUGj3aHX9EhbOLwGTpxYsO1EIm6akgpb_5N6Ge5y7OabX_fmNyGa4SF0V_TOQOIS/s72-c/Screenshot_1.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-9180350156580507128</id><published>2024-04-20T21:27:00.008+08:00</published><updated>2024-04-21T00:38:11.606+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="American"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Bradbury R."/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Literature"/><title type='text'>Fahrenheit 451</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="201" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIkyp2BMxPXhv3X_DTh-1-qQT8lOe6-99BTIWQo9HLHdz9DD6Sh0PhIkFzVfP1g7M4Qnl2kNmSkEfLqkKk9b5pidpb7AvP-caZRBGgAK5Hs0IUGZCo-XSts6uCzRV8xvgW5t4JbVSf2I2LK6IBrjg9oiiJ3857HRy8wkOeMmEMq2cB3r7YbHrcCdGCcFCM/s1600/Screenshot_1.jpg" width="201" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In a dystopian future where houses have become fireproof, the concept of a fireman is repurposed to serve a more sinister role, which is that of starting fires instead of extinguishing them. The unfortunate victims of such raids are not people but rather books, which society and the current powers-that-be have deemed useless and too dangerous for everyone’s sake. Anyone caught harboring books gets a visit from the firemen and are put under arrest right after the arson, with some opting to burn with their library instead. One such fireman is Guy Montag, who comes home from work on a seemingly normal day running into an eclectic young girl called Clarisse who makes him reflect about his choices in life as well as his role in the status quo’s tyranny. Once he starts asking questions, much to the chagrin of his suicidal but mostly aloof wife Mildred, he begins to search for answers for a reality he does not remember ever signing up for.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">When a book is banned, make sure to read it. When books are being burned, you can be sure that some serious shit is going on. Why do these bound pages hold so much power anyway? Because books are not fodder for your fireplace during winter. Books are vessels of ideas, and while those pages might burn or get torn eventually, the ideas they host live forever. In our minds. Have you ever wondered why in most revolutions, the intellectual class and their books are almost always the first to go? Because anyone in power benefits from a predominantly dumb populace that has no inherent ability to ask questions.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The scary thing about Fahrenheit 451 is how it was written back in 1952 and yet it, in a manner I find to be quite baffling, managed to predict the society we sort of currently find ourselves in. Books are antagonized and Mildred carries on with her miserable existence through wall panels in their house that serve pretty much as your modern day smartphone providing you with an endless stream of distraction and misinformation. Ray, why do you have to rub your imagined future, our current reality, in our faces like this? Does an anti-intellectual society ruled by airheads with large followings online sound familiar to us? Anyone?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Except that Bradbury does not really expound on that. The chase scene in act three is carried out via broadcast television, but he doesn’t totally miss the mark. Had he been more imaginative, that could have been a Facebook or Tiktok livestream. Nonetheless, the mechanics are the same. Fine, I digress. If we are to look for parallelisms, the burning of books in Fahrenheit 451 is simply a more literal take on the pushback against field experts in our day and age, because your average joe who did not get any quality education would rather believe a YouTube influencer whose lack of expertise is made up for by clout, as if that counts.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">What makes Fahrenheit 451 a great read is the fast pace action that Guy Montag finds himself in as he transitions from predator to prey. Bradbury has a knack for vivid chase sequences that make you feel as though you were there watching it all unfold. The guy also has a gift for poetic imagery. The way he describes books and their burning pages as if they were birds being burned alive is just so cinematic. Perhaps that is my overall assessment of the book. I don’t feel like I am reading. I feel like I am watching a movie. It’s weird, but his narration just has that effect, and it is fun.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The only thing I am not happy with is Clarisse’s early exit, never to be mentioned again. Maybe this is because I was expecting her to play a bigger part in the story. I was also half expecting a twist where she is revealed to be an important part of Montag’s past life that he just doesn’t remember. None of that happens, so it feels like a lost opportunity somehow. The ending is depressing but realistic. It also benefits from the remaining characters refusing to participate in communal despair and instead seeing everything as a catalyst for a future in which they have a say. Revolutionary.</span></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/9180350156580507128/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/fahrenheit-451.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/9180350156580507128'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/9180350156580507128'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/fahrenheit-451.html' title='Fahrenheit 451'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIkyp2BMxPXhv3X_DTh-1-qQT8lOe6-99BTIWQo9HLHdz9DD6Sh0PhIkFzVfP1g7M4Qnl2kNmSkEfLqkKk9b5pidpb7AvP-caZRBGgAK5Hs0IUGZCo-XSts6uCzRV8xvgW5t4JbVSf2I2LK6IBrjg9oiiJ3857HRy8wkOeMmEMq2cB3r7YbHrcCdGCcFCM/s72-c/Screenshot_1.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-2259366673764579470</id><published>2024-04-13T22:14:00.007+08:00</published><updated>2024-04-13T22:36:05.556+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Anonymous"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="British"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Literature"/><title type='text'>Beowulf</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="202" height="309" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbF0juZLXgI6ZZQUoZFhCDWo3soUgx9LFhO30tNeb4Fqpl5gqa1HZ9w3zlHCJABS-MwnUuugcdWCEjfDysEqR82q9H3QseUIHcHCvsmOVqlgjxOJ-ZP8VPcbM04yj3hRSzLOs3xQfsuMi_PrkZPz6N-fcIgeLMhB1gUPmKibmCBPIpiPDIR2Bo1bA9ZSOd/s1600/Screenshot_1.jpg" width="202" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">King Hrothgar of the Danes has had a long and prosperous rule, but is now left to worry in old age as his great hall, Heorot, is terrorized by a monster named Grendel whose emergence from his lake is becoming more and more frequent as he feasts on the king’s men. The horror is felt throughout the kingdom and all hope now seems to be gone when a brave warrior from the north docks on the king’s shores. Beowulf comes from the land of the Geats and has a debt to pay to the Danish king dating back to their forebears. He gives his word that he will get rid of the monster. The king promises fortune and fame in exchange. True enough, he accomplishes his mission and everyone rejoices, celebrating his bravery and heroism, until Grendel’s equally monstrous mother decides to pay Heorot a visit to avenge his son.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Poetry is not really my cup of tea. How I wish meter and alliteration would tickle my fancy, but they just won’t. Luckily, reading Burton Raffel’s translation is an easy task that prioritizes efficient translation over poetic shenanigans. What you get is a simple introduction to Beowulf’s lore, accentuating the story in its core which remains to be your typical Germanic Heroic Legend. Once you are done familiarizing yourself with the characters and the storyline, you can always proceed to tackle the many other Beowulf translations from various scholars of Old English, in the original, with hefty notes to aid your linguistic training.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Considered to be the oldest masterpiece of English literature, Beowulf does not seem to introduce anything new, because it is considered as one of the prototypes of this genre, or at least the oldest that managed to survive centuries in manuscript form. Most of these legends were passed down via oral tradition, making it difficult to ascertain who the real author is. Although short, the story gives you a good glimpse of how life must have been back then. Which values were considered as positive or negative? How did those people view life and success? What was their society like?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Of course, we cannot take everything at face value here. Beowulf feels more like historical fiction more than anything else. What makes some people confuse it for actual history is the presence of familiar place names, actual historical figures as well as legends shared among other Germanic traditions. That is one fun aspect of this tale as you get engrossed in trying to find real life links based on archaeological evidence. Real or not, the real value here is the medieval worldview you get to obtain from peoples who lived a thousand of years ago. One that I particularly enjoy is the religious aspect.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Beowulf seems to have been written at a time when the pagan tribes of the British Isles were transitioning to Christianity, and the resulting work highlights the role of religion in nation building. There are plenty of mentions of God and glory. Even Grendel’s origins are linked to Cain, obviously a biblical reference. And yet, much of the plot points hark back to a more ancient tradition that emphasized a different set of values that at times just do not jive well with the religion they are trying to promote. Now we get a glimpse of how divine ordinance as a mandate to rule a kingdom had evolved over time.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Going back to the issue of prototypes, there are a lot of literary tropes here that we have seen recycled all the time in various eras and various forms of media. The fire breathing dragon guarding a lair full of treasure. The brave and bold king who dies and is immortalized as a hero. The quest to defeat a horrifying and powerful villain in its own lair. Reading Beowulf feels as though you’ve already seen bits and pieces of it somewhere else before, from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones. Perhaps what’s even more fascinating is how the popularity of medieval storylines like this doesn’t seem to die down. Where does its appeal come from?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">I have no answer for that, unfortunately. The eras in which these stories unfold were turbulent ones that should be unattractive to the modern reader/viewer, but perhaps it is the backdrop that makes them conducive to tales of heroism and legendary quests that draws people in, especially now when such conquests have taken on a more figurative form confined in one’s imagination. When the Grendels and dragons you fight have been reincarnated in the form of monthly bills and taxes, sometimes it’s just hard to resist the allure of an old-fashioned tale of heroes and monsters, in a world that is as alien as it is familiar.</span></div></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/2259366673764579470/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/beowulf.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/2259366673764579470'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/2259366673764579470'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/beowulf.html' title='Beowulf'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbF0juZLXgI6ZZQUoZFhCDWo3soUgx9LFhO30tNeb4Fqpl5gqa1HZ9w3zlHCJABS-MwnUuugcdWCEjfDysEqR82q9H3QseUIHcHCvsmOVqlgjxOJ-ZP8VPcbM04yj3hRSzLOs3xQfsuMi_PrkZPz6N-fcIgeLMhB1gUPmKibmCBPIpiPDIR2Bo1bA9ZSOd/s72-c/Screenshot_1.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-6434709027514901627</id><published>2024-04-06T22:16:00.008+08:00</published><updated>2024-04-06T22:44:18.128+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="British"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Literature"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Shakespeare W."/><title type='text'>Hamlet</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="311" data-original-width="203" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPWsQrtBr5lI27lBLB8rGM5vUNR-Vspe37Y5bEvnvytbDaCyAYbAtf5QqinMveQB8nonnYE7O_cB0kNwWky1Z0-JAtF5eIr05afLNTyx3iVjhDeIUuqV9rPRo4MNUHuI9qKk5Z2zN_eSWcdBicBrIIPgIrYvYOYOyowrRQYwQJXwj_rW3prQoCIhDkrgDE/s1600/Screenshot_1.jpg" width="203" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">One cold night at the castle of Elsinore in the Kingdom of Denmark, two guards see a ghost at the ramparts that they assume to be that of the previous king. His son Hamlet, prince of Denmark, is led to see his father’s ghost and ends up having a conversation with him. The old Hamlet tells the young about his brother Claudius, the new king, and how he murdered him so he could take over the kingdom and snatch his wife, Hamlet’s mother Gertrude. The young prince then undergoes a cycle of psychotic visions and rants, contemplating whether to avenge his father and depose his uncle. His madness spirals out of control, resulting in an accidental death and the souring of his romance with Ophelia, daughter of Polonius, the chief counselor of the king. The king decides to send his nephew to England for execution, but he eventually makes his way back to Denmark to settle things between them for good.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">To be or not to be, that is the question! However, the more popular question appears to be that which questions Hamlet’s sanity. Do they really see a ghost or is Hamlet and his bros just plain nuts? If not, does he just end up gradually becoming more insane as the plot unfolds? Is he just masking his revenge plot as madness so he could carry out his plans without a hitch? If so, why did he delay his uncle’s murder for a while? Those are just some of the questions that people are still asking up to this day.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As much as I would like to weigh in, I think what I agree with the most is how this seems to be the prototype of the ever entertaining madman as the hero kind of storyline. Here you have a character that can be a hero or a villain. Which is which is decided upon depending on the point of view of whoever is doing the critique. The play has been analyzed through various perspectives, from Freudian to Feminist through the centuries, and it seems as though there is no stopping literary pundits from fleshing out this play in madly distinct ways.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">While the debate on how Shakespeare was viewed back in the day will always be controversial, what cannot be denied is how his works have effectively captured the zeitgeist of the Elizabethan era along with its vernacular, preserving noticeable traits of the transition from Middle English into its early modern form one step behind what it is today. Among these are archaic personal pronouns such as Thou and Thy as well as obsolete inflections of verbal forms like Hast and Canst, among others.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">There are also some linguistic idiosyncrasies here that hark back to English’s Germanic heritage, evident in the ever changing position of verbs when accompanied by another one or the absence of the helping verb “do” in the case of questions that used to be asked by simple inversion of the subject and verb. The likes of “I shall the effect of this good lesson keep” and “What said he” are a throwback to when English used to be more like its other Germanic cousins as far as sentence structure is concerned.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">But let’s not bore ourselves any further with matters of linguistics. My point is that if you do not end up liking Hamlet, or Shakespeare’s other works for that matter, there will always be something for you to look forward to if you are interested in the evolution of the English language. As for the reading experience, I must admit that I avoided Shakespeare for the longest time, my defense being that a play is written to be seen on stage, not read in book form. I still maintain the same opinion, although I must admit that I am pleasantly surprised how Shakespeare ended up being an amusing read. I thought I would be bored to death!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">And perhaps that is the next step in this journey to rediscovering Shakespeare. Go watch the plays. Rest assured that Hamlet will be the first on my list if ever I find myself one day on the West End. Language and plot aside, I am curious to witness how innovations in mounting stage plays at present have influenced the presentation of a play made for theater four hundred years ago. Surely, there must be some reinventions as well as modern touches or tweaks to make the play more palatable to a contemporary audience. After all, every one of us is a little bit mad, aren't we?</span></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/6434709027514901627/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/hamlet.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6434709027514901627'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6434709027514901627'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/hamlet.html' title='Hamlet'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPWsQrtBr5lI27lBLB8rGM5vUNR-Vspe37Y5bEvnvytbDaCyAYbAtf5QqinMveQB8nonnYE7O_cB0kNwWky1Z0-JAtF5eIr05afLNTyx3iVjhDeIUuqV9rPRo4MNUHuI9qKk5Z2zN_eSWcdBicBrIIPgIrYvYOYOyowrRQYwQJXwj_rW3prQoCIhDkrgDE/s72-c/Screenshot_1.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-2752227242306422412</id><published>2024-04-05T15:14:00.001+08:00</published><updated>2024-04-06T22:30:20.757+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="British"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Literature"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Woolf V."/><title type='text'>Mrs Dalloway</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Dalloway" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="201" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-hOiOy6sTSZ7D96slU9-ZK8JN4r3LAWlwyvUDD2ck1QOuGy7Z-hEBoN49jhNosMqZ9FcvqGyk556LRIQ4L6kiW3Gf9YNDzbgEzxMdkYdB-UUue-g6XNtez_-ueE0DSJJsrHYkRHiK0u_v9RaP60dYBVxQ6-phS3RZ5Xlzb3zHXrp5eJwfOiZD2U_rW2F/s1600/Screenshot_1.jpg" width="201" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Clarissa Dalloway goes for her early morning walk as she contemplates how her day will unfold. The wife of a politician, she is accustomed to hosting parties attended by the who’s who of London society. The beautiful yet mundane morning prompts her to reflect about the choices she has made in life, in particular her marriage to Richard instead of her childhood friend Peter Walsh, an Anglo-Indian who has proposed to her back then who is now on the verge of divorcing his wife to marry another woman he met in India. His unannounced visit in the afternoon comes as a shock to Clarissa, disturbing her party preparation and repair of her dress. Meanwhile, WWI veteran Septimus Warren Smith is suffering from PTSD after his harrowing experience in the war. His Italian wife Lucrezia gets the brunt of his husband’s hallucinations and misses home, wondering whether she made the right decision to marry him.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">I was curious about all the raves regarding the author’s gratuitous use of the stream of consciousness technique so I had to see it for myself. True enough, Auntie Virginia does go to great lengths to give us a glimpse of what’s going on in all of her characters’ minds. The result is a short novel that feels like a tug o'war of internal monologue with you, as the reader, serving as the rope. What you get is almost 200 pages of being spaghettified by contrasting blackholes of incoherent thoughts. At times it feels fun because it fuels the inner gossipmonger in you, but most of the time it just feels borderline voyeuristic, like, TMI.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In any case, anyone wanting to master such literary technique should read this book and learn from the best. However, I would be lying if I said that the reading experience hasn’t been tedious. Mrs Dalloway is a character-driven novel where you just enjoy listening to the characters’ inner thoughts and marvel at the contrasts of opinion coming from different points of view. The plot is not that interesting and unfolds in just a single day of preparing and hosting a party. Nothing much happens. Somehow the experience comes across as being hostaged by a bunch of people and listening to them complain about their first world problems.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">But that is putting it unfairly. After all, some of the characters’ woes are timely and universal enough to be relatable. Septimus, for example, survived the war but is haunted by its ghosts forever which eventually leads to his tragic demise. Clarissa herself is, perhaps, a bit of an autobiographical take. While circumstances then and now differ, the dilemma of reconciling life purpose as well as familial and societal duty with femininity and its repercussions to mental health is still quite the enigma for women in today’s world. 1920’s London might be a century ago, but you will always find something or someone to relate to.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In my case, the blur of stream of consciousness that I inexplicably enjoyed the most was Miss Kilman’s jaded worldview. Along with Septimus’ PTSD, it was during Kilman’s turn to share her inner thoughts that I really sat down and got engrossed in the book. Maybe this is the case because we just&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">both</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">happen to have the same stance on society’s crème-de-la-crème ranting about their “miserable” existence. Oh no, another party to prepare for! Woe is me, I hate my life. But then again, everyone is entitled to their own problems in life, we are just dealt a different set of cards most of the time.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The funny thing about it is how Mrs. Kilman and I both seem to believe that we are exempted from that, when we actually are not. This is where Mrs Dalloway succeeds, in my opinion, by focusing the spotlight on the human condition. We just end up with an anchor that belongs in a sector of society different from ours. Anyway, just to reiterate, there are parts of the book where the frequent change in perspective becomes a tedious read and sometimes you just get lost in that free-for-all blur of stray thoughts that there are instances when you even forget who you are following.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: white;">In the end, I did not enjoy Mrs Dalloway as much as I thought I would. Some readers online with the same experience do mention that they ended up liking Woolf’s other novel, Orlando, more. I will give that a shot, but perhaps not too soon. I need a break from Auntie Virginia for now. I guess that this is that kind of novel that will hit differently when reread at a different point of one’s life. As such, we will meet again down the line, Mrs. Dalloway. But not today</span>.</span></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/2752227242306422412/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/mrs-dalloway.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/2752227242306422412'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/2752227242306422412'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/04/mrs-dalloway.html' title='Mrs Dalloway'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz-hOiOy6sTSZ7D96slU9-ZK8JN4r3LAWlwyvUDD2ck1QOuGy7Z-hEBoN49jhNosMqZ9FcvqGyk556LRIQ4L6kiW3Gf9YNDzbgEzxMdkYdB-UUue-g6XNtez_-ueE0DSJJsrHYkRHiK0u_v9RaP60dYBVxQ6-phS3RZ5Xlzb3zHXrp5eJwfOiZD2U_rW2F/s72-c/Screenshot_1.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-3803106379534531698</id><published>2024-03-30T20:12:00.010+08:00</published><updated>2024-03-30T22:27:09.009+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Literature"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Philippine"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Syjuco M."/><title type='text'>Ilustrado</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6905480" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="201" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEJ_ae5d0E-bHcWyEt63pqPr_JSlHtYAypJHnHhAObwQ1T6jjtRSt9N7fVuDVGaQZcuWCZPNRHlLPlVTvE1A2MZySzA5pQIkUUgZDCtz5iqVxyirkYHoY_1-5_ojZML3JLOFpkv_ZvbD-0-3IsBJP5JrTvqK1NUKZIAK5YKhxFK9o0fyCLCEvLumPnjB2/s1600/Screenshot_2.jpg" width="201" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Self-exiled “Panther of Philippine Letters” Crispin Salvador is found lifeless and floating on the Hudson River. His untimely death is met with nonchalance back in his native Philippines, quickly dismissed as a suicide by both his detractors and rivals alike. The investigators arrive at the same conclusion, but not everyone is convinced. One of those with doubts is Miguel, his protégé at Columbia who has become more than a close acquaintance through the years. The plot thickens when the student receives an email, presumably from his recently deceased mentor, asking him to fly back to Manila to find his daughter Dulcinea who might just be in possession of his unfinished obra maestra, a manuscript with the working title “The Bridges Ablaze” that promises to expose prominent figures back home. As Miguel deplanes, he is confronted not just by the quest for finding his teacher’s estranged daughter, but also by the life he has decided to leave behind when he decided to settle in New York.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Is the death involved here real or simply metaphorical? Is this novel just one of those self-jerk pseudo-autobiographies manifested in the form of narrative prose? Does Crispin have multiple personality disorder? This is where the fun speculations begin as you draft some possible sellout plot twists in your head, if you have the patience to sift through the book’s 304 pages, that is. It would be a lie to say that it was easy for me to do so, because the way this novel is structured is just so inconvenient, basically a messy literary bricolage, which is unsurprising since word has it that this served as Syjuco’s PhD dissertation.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The chapters are a hodgepodge of paragraphs in diverse fonts meant to distinguish among the many articles, interviews, and snippets of Crispin Salvador’s published body of work, all meant to develop a character in absentia. This is joined down the line by interviews with people who knew the guy, and through those accounts we end up getting a disjointed picture of the subject matter despite his early exit in the book’s prologue. The constantly changing fonts are a direct affront to the senses, which just adds to the already chaotic structure of the plot.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The materials are diverse, some of which: YA novel chapters about a kid named Dulce who befriends supernatural entities of Philippine lore; excerpts from Crispin’s autobiography recounting the exploits of his clan headed by a landed Spanish immigrant; and a running gag about the life of an AMA student told through recycled lowbrow jokes you have already read elsewhere many times before. While some of them prove to be essential in introducing the life of a dead character through his written work, many of them just digress from the main plot, which develops at a rather glacial pace.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Halfway through the novel the parallels between the lives of Crispin, the subject of the story, and Miguel, our anchor in it, start to mirror each other too suspiciously for all of it to be mere coincidence. After all, aren’t we dealing with writers here? The dead guy is a writer. The guy investigating the death of the dead guy is a writer. The author who also goes by the name Miguel is also a writer. Miguel the acolyte even openly admits in one chapter that the conversation he had with a person on the plane did not really take place, something he just pulled off for narrative convenience. In short, how reliable are these writers?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Rest assured that the ending involves a decent twist for a debut attempt from a newbie novelist. The question here is, is it worth it, though? After all, you have to go through those 300 pages of incoherent write ups and stream of consciousness narrations to get to that epilogue. Luckily, what the novel lacks in storyline, it makes up for through its not so veiled critique of Philippine society and politics as well as the dilemma of being an English writer or novelist in a country where the go-to popular forms of written prose for the masses are Precious Hearts Romance novels and self-deprecating novellas in the vernacular.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: white;">Eventually, Miguel the author just ends up in similar circumstances with his characters by coming up with a novel about Filipinos instead of for them. It is left for the appreciation of a western audience who have no real stakes in the country’s socio-political realities. Perhaps this is also the reason why most reviews from locals are in unison in deeming Ilustrado as pretentious. To some extent, it does come across as such. As a narrative, it could’ve been more exciting, had the author tackled it in a more cohesive and less gimmicky way</span>.</span></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/3803106379534531698/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/03/ilustrado.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/3803106379534531698'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/3803106379534531698'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/03/ilustrado.html' title='Ilustrado'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEJ_ae5d0E-bHcWyEt63pqPr_JSlHtYAypJHnHhAObwQ1T6jjtRSt9N7fVuDVGaQZcuWCZPNRHlLPlVTvE1A2MZySzA5pQIkUUgZDCtz5iqVxyirkYHoY_1-5_ojZML3JLOFpkv_ZvbD-0-3IsBJP5JrTvqK1NUKZIAK5YKhxFK9o0fyCLCEvLumPnjB2/s72-c/Screenshot_2.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-7110190615255716832</id><published>2024-02-21T15:19:00.012+08:00</published><updated>2024-02-22T22:43:52.280+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="European"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Poor Things</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Things_(film)" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLIhtDeLjoQia9kGEPxcB0w0mgnuv6yorkTS7BYy8bOw2tuTjYrlSp2FNP-t4jR05-pzy1Ds0hIhR8z27exEbv0zgVZZPxgH0zgk1AAJKH2m46j1jvqfQTtM2GbrcZwfRZuC3Fd1OeLsFtc2CnPf4AFkmo49YM3BqpeEn0cCJKNKC7kdQtRDRBlktnrC9g/s1600/Poor_Things_poster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">What’s supposed to be the end of a life becomes the beginning of a new one after a failed suicide attempt, albeit with some mental degradation involved that requires relearning the basics. Now known as Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), she becomes the experiment of renowned surgeon Godwin “God” Baxter (Willem Dafoe) who tries to treat her as a mere science project yet can’t distance himself enough emotionally to not serve as her new father figure. He enlists the help of his best medical student Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to chart her progress and is eventually designated as her fiancé after witnessing their fondness for one another. Due to the unique and delicate condition of his ward, God employs promiscuous lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) to draft a special nuptial contract. Out of curiosity, he goes out of his way to get to know the subject of the document and is immediately smitten by her, taking advantage of her naivety and convincing her to run away with him to Portugal, which serves as her first stop in discovering the world and, in effect, rediscovering life itself.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">With Stone sweeping awards left and right, we just have to wait a few weeks to find out whether she is on her way to her second Oscar, if she doesn’t get edged out by a diversity pick should last year’s shenanigans suddenly reoccur, that is. This says a lot about director Yorgos Lanthimos seemingly following the footsteps of Woody Allen with the tendency of their films to propel their actors toward awards season glory. Should this be the case, then Stone would end up vindicating herself against those who believe that she didn’t deserve her first Oscar for La La Land. Either way, her performance as Bella is easily the better of the two.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Had Dafoe campaigned harder, Poor Things would’ve been a repeat of Lanthimos’ The Favourite as far as acting accolades for one lead and two supporting actors are concerned. With critics favoring Ruffalo and Dafoe only clinching a SAG nomination so far, it makes you wonder who deserves it more. After watching the film, what’s clear is that Ruffalo ended up with a more flamboyant character that easily annoys you as misogyny personified. The feeling of annoyance he evokes from the moviegoer is proof that he did his job well. Dafoe, on the other hand, got a boring but more interesting role, portrayed with subtle bravado.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">But pitting the actors against one another is a moot exercise. Suffice it to say that Lanthimos has a gift for motivating his actors to do their best and provide an ensemble performance worth watching. Acting aside, the production design is as quirky as it gets and really helps set the mood for a world that is familiar yet otherworldly. Somehow, that also offsets the rather controversial subplots and themes that those fascinating visuals try to hide from plain sight, like arguments of pedophilia and the like. Such odd designs that just pop out of the screen do aid in the suspension of disbelief. Arguably surrealist, even.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As Stone already mentioned in a speech, Poor Things is a romantic comedy, in a sense that Bella falls in love with life itself. We can agree to some extent, although my interpretation of the film is that of a midlife crisis with Bella serving as its very personification. Despite the strange delivery of the premise, the core theme here is the deconstruction of life and its supposed meaning as you approach a certain age. True enough, Bella ends up giving life another go, literally, but with a different perspective this time around. In a way, we all have to die in our late thirties just in time to be reborn in our forties, knowing better and with less fvcks to give.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The film might be difficult to watch for some considering the abundance of gratuitous sex scenes and the idea of having a toddler in an adult’s body and everything that could entail. If you get over those barriers, though, what you are in for is a good critique of the human condition, a colorful ode to life and how we are expected to go about making sense of it versus the way we want to do so, based on our own terms. It’s existentialist AF, but perhaps that is just the curse that our species have to put up with for inhabiting this wonderful world of ours. Life is what you make of it. Hopefully, we’ll all see everyone on the other side with a book in one hand and a glass of martini in the other, just like Bella ends up doing.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vjm0udI77KU" width="320" youtube-src-id="vjm0udI77KU"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/7110190615255716832/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/02/poor-things.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/7110190615255716832'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/7110190615255716832'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/02/poor-things.html' title='Poor Things'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLIhtDeLjoQia9kGEPxcB0w0mgnuv6yorkTS7BYy8bOw2tuTjYrlSp2FNP-t4jR05-pzy1Ds0hIhR8z27exEbv0zgVZZPxgH0zgk1AAJKH2m46j1jvqfQTtM2GbrcZwfRZuC3Fd1OeLsFtc2CnPf4AFkmo49YM3BqpeEn0cCJKNKC7kdQtRDRBlktnrC9g/s72-c/Poor_Things_poster.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-1835311589858895061</id><published>2024-02-15T17:01:00.021+08:00</published><updated>2024-02-22T22:49:15.884+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>I Am Not Big Bird</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Not_Big_Bird" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwxtWSNqxypNU6kk2PtCoPXgXwy1_fjX3TBG1Bv4nO_xgUuAPL2JZfc4EMzNs1Q4GUL9BtAAcb5V_xKAZ6VC2LImiqenbDKlPCElpcbDXHmFgeaKU1l166DaAiUl0Pdb7BaYn7Lj6jXD7z31sJwIDyG-dqe_hO27Am8qR0GcDiprzMpWjFzC-Oozt7jMS7/s1600/Screenshot_1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Bank clerk Luis Carpio (Enrique Gil) is proposing to his girlfriend of five years only to be turned down because of his small dick and vow of celibacy before marriage that he is committed to. Feeling dejected, he turns to his two best friends for solace. July (Red Ollero) mans an internet card stall at some random highway while Macky (Nikko Natividad) is a closeted homosexual who is outed to his military officer father out of the blue after a botched hookup. Looking for an escapist getaway to avoid facing their problems in life, the trio decide to book a flight to Thailand in order to forget. They find themselves a tour guide in Prajak Tithi (Pepe Herrera) who lures them to a shady nightclub to be scammed. Things go awry when Luis is mistaken for legendary porn star Big Bird (Enrique Gil) who is wanted by his scorned business partner Deborah (Wipawee Charoenpura) for one final hit porn flick.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">For millennials like us who bore the brunt of the raunchy sex comedies of the early aughts, I Am Not Big Bird feels like a nostalgic blast from the past, back when the brand of comedy available was far more risqué than the more politically correct one prevalent right now after a two decade paradigm shift to Gen-Z sensibilities. That generation might have a collective heart attack watching this film. For us, though, who ended up straddling both eras of modern cinema, what we end up with is a conflicting opinion on whether we should enjoy a style of comedy that is a remnant of the bygone era of our teenage years or shun it to conform to current norms.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In my case, I just can’t decide. I Am Not Big Bird is 50-50 for me, personally. The irreverent jokes feel like a trip down memory lane, somewhat refreshing when viewed vis-à-vis today’s more restricted cinematic landscape as far as comedy is concerned. Some make you laugh. Some fall flat. I don't really know whether I did not like this movie as much as I should have because of my altered sense of humor or because it is just a brand of comedy that I already outgrew and left somewhere in 2004. If you are in your late 30’s and have already seen the movie, let me know what you think about it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Even then, I believe there is enough reason for the movie to not really connect to an audience because the material just seems lacking. Having seen the trailer, it makes you want to ask if a childish joke about dick size could really provide a good foundation for an hour and a half screenplay. In the end, it just doesn’t, even with lower expectations coming into the theater. It has the same energy as those Scary Movie films back then which you would gladly rewatch on streaming on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but would think twice if you had to pay 400 pesos for a ticket to see it in a cinema.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Despite the silliness of the premise, you can still unearth some interesting themes if you dig deep enough, like a critique on how the porn industry was back in the day and how it raised unreal standards of masculinity as verbalized by a Thai actor in one funny scene. Other than that, this is nothing more than your stereotypical bro sex comedy that need not be fleshed out because, seriously, it’s not that profound and does not really have to have meaning. You just leave your brain at the door and laugh as much as you can.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Perhaps our best conclusion here is to treat I Am Not Big Bird as a mere comeback vehicle for Enrique Gil to remind people that he is not dead. As an attempt to revive his career after his loveteam with Liza Soberano, it does let everyone know that he is still active. While we know that he is a capable actor, his dual character here does not really give him any favors considering the more interesting one is basically just a caricature of Robin Padilla, which in itself is already annoying. Congratulations on your comeback, but perhaps the best way to move forward is via serious indie flicks that can challenge your range even more.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eSltWVaxt1I" width="320" youtube-src-id="eSltWVaxt1I"></iframe></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/1835311589858895061/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/02/i-am-not-big-bird.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/1835311589858895061'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/1835311589858895061'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/02/i-am-not-big-bird.html' title='I Am Not Big Bird'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwxtWSNqxypNU6kk2PtCoPXgXwy1_fjX3TBG1Bv4nO_xgUuAPL2JZfc4EMzNs1Q4GUL9BtAAcb5V_xKAZ6VC2LImiqenbDKlPCElpcbDXHmFgeaKU1l166DaAiUl0Pdb7BaYn7Lj6jXD7z31sJwIDyG-dqe_hO27Am8qR0GcDiprzMpWjFzC-Oozt7jMS7/s72-c/Screenshot_1.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-9100249412366038728</id><published>2024-02-14T19:33:00.019+08:00</published><updated>2024-02-22T22:53:20.885+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hollywood"/><title type='text'>Madame Web</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Web_(film)" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4u5P7XbbFU46279E088MRJN7RuHV_87XihizqCtUKiZgfFPVmgfDZV7Pa4iIjQhWhhWUQiszD5pwN10DU9rKxlZqRzU2Ug99k9uaQO5IUlGaeS3kQt9tzBIoHPV2HY17eGB5BksMWUaPy1E34WzDQ4IaR89LbpyJgTmAoRxYXZOof6sQBVPWRojUVFxXs/s1600/Madame_Web_(film)_poster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">1973. A pregnant scientist doing research on radioactive spiders in the Peruvian Amazon is betrayed by her guide and fatally shot. A group of tribesmen with spider-like abilities takes her in and saves her unborn child through a spider bite. 30 years later, Cassandra Webb (Dakota Johnson) believes her life has turned out just fine doing the rounds in the foster care system. A near death experience as a paramedic triggers something within her, resulting in heightened senses and precognitive visions, one of which is the murder of three girls by a man in a black spider suit. Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) has not aged in the last three decades but is hounded by recurring nightmares of three young Spider-Women teaming up to murder him. Soon, all of their paths finally cross. Cassandra takes it upon herself to be the protector of Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie (Celeste O’Connor), and Anya (Isabel Merced), who will all grow up to be a different variant of Spider-Woman.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">What a terrible mess, but then again this is Sony so perhaps this isn’t that much of a surprise anymore. Madame Web is a flick that is more slasher than superhero. In fact, there are only two scenes where you see the Spider-Women trio in costume and in action: one instance is already shown in the trailer; the other is a really short montage that serves as an epilogue. What the hell do they do in the film’s two-hour runtime, then? They play hide-and-seek with evil middle aged Spider-Man while Johnson's Madame Web keeps herself busy trying to ram him with vehicles ranging from yellow cabs to ambulances. That’s about it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Needless to say, I was bored AF. Slasher flicks are supposed to be fun, but part of the thrill is the unpredictability of survival. Madame Web does not have that luxury because we are well aware that all four of them are going to survive anyway. And so, where is the thrill in that? The chase scenes should be enthralling&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">somehow</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">but immediately become repetitive, what with Cassandra constantly cheating because of her visions. What you end up with is a hodgepodge of deja-vu snippets that serve as minute-long plot retcon devices.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In effect, we can say that this is an origin story for Madame Web, except that her storyline is rather boring. Have they considered turning this into a three-in-one origin story for the three Spider-Women instead? Instead of falling into the trope of de-aging yet another grandma character, they could’ve kept Madame Web old and used her already with her full powers to guide the other three in their combined cinematic origin stories instead of boring us to death.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">One thing to admire despite it being rather moot is the commitment to the 2003 setting, which in itself is a bit confusing. Was it their original plan to connect this to one of the existing Spider-Man franchises? With Adam Scott as Uncle Ben and Emma Roberts as Mary Parker appearing as supporting characters and Peter Parker himself being born right before the ending, it seems as though they had a timeline they wanted to follow. Whatever that is, this Peter can’t be Tobey Maguire’s because he was already a teenager in the 2003 film. Tom Holland’s, perhaps?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In any case, there is no point arguing over that because Madame Web does not really connect to any other MCU or Spiderverse property. There are no mid or post credit scenes to do so and there are no cameo appearances to fuel speculations. In short, Madame Web appears to be a standalone film, which makes the dedication to the 2003 setting even weirder. Or perhaps they are already angling for yet another Peter Parker reboot within THIS very universe?&nbsp;Oh well, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that given the early negative reviews already coming out. With such a boring movie, it wouldn’t come as a surprise should this flop hard at the box office.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s_76M4c4LTo" width="320" youtube-src-id="s_76M4c4LTo"></iframe></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/9100249412366038728/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/02/madame-web.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/9100249412366038728'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/9100249412366038728'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/02/madame-web.html' title='Madame Web'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4u5P7XbbFU46279E088MRJN7RuHV_87XihizqCtUKiZgfFPVmgfDZV7Pa4iIjQhWhhWUQiszD5pwN10DU9rKxlZqRzU2Ug99k9uaQO5IUlGaeS3kQt9tzBIoHPV2HY17eGB5BksMWUaPy1E34WzDQ4IaR89LbpyJgTmAoRxYXZOof6sQBVPWRojUVFxXs/s72-c/Madame_Web_(film)_poster.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-3445823181471157297</id><published>2024-02-07T20:15:00.025+08:00</published><updated>2024-02-18T10:14:05.725+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hollywood"/><title type='text'>Mean Girls (2024)</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Girls_(2024_film)" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJw4lti63pJ3Th7Mk9Uu7vbKE0Aa1eHn7fDeFDc9d-d5J1DfU6B7F0dg3WMiC_24NLw_OpjdFPqKl1U9mIAmmEoYcNegk6KKdQ80x5XXRVnuOuKw8tTqUutoBLy9_fFW0h8f9NMq4ENmL2N3y6oZklh3eeDbVg7h7L91DD0FLEFh36ntMvR9ttPevrHLeI/s1600/Mean_girls_2024_poster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Homeschooled for much of her life, Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) returns to America after spending most of her childhood in Kenya. She immediately feels out of place in a typical high school setting ruled by cliques. Eclectic duo Janis (Auli’i Carvalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey) are about to reluctantly adopt her when the queen of the plastics herself, Regina George (Reneé Rapp), lays eyes on her. The rest is history. The trio hatches a plan to knock Regina off her ivory tower by turning her drones against her, namely: confidante extraordinaire Gretchen Wieners (Bebe Wood); and not-so-bright Karen Shetty (Avantika). As their scheme wreaks havoc on the unsuspecting high school populace, it is up to Math teacher Ms. Norbury (Tina Fey) and Principal Duvall (Tim Meadows) to do their best to patch up the delicate web of high school drama. Will their intervention be enough or does someone have to be run over by a big yellow school bus to drive the point home?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Mean Girls 2024 is a cinematic rendition of 2017 Mean Girls, which was a musical theater reimagining of Mean Girls&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">2004</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">, which was a movie adaptation of 2002 self-help book Queen Bees and Wannabes. In short, you will be watching a remake of a remake of a remake. Yes, this version is a musical, which was curiously left out in the trailers. This is NOT a sequel of the 2004 film despite Fey and Meadows returning to play their same iconic roles. Only Lindsay Lohan appears in a cameo totally unrelated to her 2004 character. If a sequel to 2004 Mean Girls is what you want, the closest you can get is Walmart’s Mean Girls ads for Black Friday.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The original plan for Mean Girls 2024 was for it to be released directly to streaming on Paramount+. The sudden big screen detour has proven to be profitable, though. Despite not matching the unexpected box office success of the 2004 film back then, the 2024 remake has managed to break even and has found a home among Gen-Z moviegoers who seem to be the primary target audience anyway. Since we do not have a clear breakdown of the demographics, we can only speculate as to how this evaded being a box office flop.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Since the film is more of a Gen-Z adjusted remake rather than a sequel, it is already expected for some of the iconic 2004 dialogues and one-liners to be repurposed to cater to a more politically-correct crowd. Borderline racist and sexist jokes are toned down or scrapped altogether. If you are a millennial who has never seen the Broadway musical and only has the 2004 film as a point of comparison, you'll most likely find this remake to be reductive, a subpar version that retains some of the original's charms yet fails to hold a candle to it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Since I fall within the bounds of that Millennial crowd who has the tendency to gate keep the 2004 version, my appreciation for Mean Girls 2024 is rather limited. I thought that belonging to another potential yet niche target market (fans of the 2017 Broadway musical on which this is based) would make a difference. In my case it did not, but perhaps it has more to do with me not really being a diehard fan of the theater version. I remember it as an entertaining musical, but none of the songs really made it to my core memory.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As a musical, Mean Girls 2024 puts those song-and-dance numbers to good use as transition devices as well as a method of keeping a cohesive sequence of otherwise unrelated scenes by containing all of them in one song. Since musical showstoppers in film only tend to work when they are integrated into the scenes instead of being dreamlike sequences which is what happens here, the setlist eventually begins to feel gimmicky after half an hour or so. As for the acting, let’s be nice and just not go there.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fFtdbEgnUOk" width="320" youtube-src-id="fFtdbEgnUOk"></iframe></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/3445823181471157297/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/02/mean-girls-2024.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/3445823181471157297'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/3445823181471157297'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/02/mean-girls-2024.html' title='Mean Girls (2024)'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJw4lti63pJ3Th7Mk9Uu7vbKE0Aa1eHn7fDeFDc9d-d5J1DfU6B7F0dg3WMiC_24NLw_OpjdFPqKl1U9mIAmmEoYcNegk6KKdQ80x5XXRVnuOuKw8tTqUutoBLy9_fFW0h8f9NMq4ENmL2N3y6oZklh3eeDbVg7h7L91DD0FLEFh36ntMvR9ttPevrHLeI/s72-c/Mean_girls_2024_poster.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-1837234260572938343</id><published>2024-01-28T22:47:00.022+08:00</published><updated>2024-02-20T01:19:57.838+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="European"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Anatomie d'une chute</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_a_Fall" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKAXBbCvhfqfhAfKPkPtbkRKmSt4GbYWi5JNFSOjfKux8jzK9Mh1PN7UDWJwv9EsGrjZi29guGtNqb606An15nMSA7zkufpm6f6aKitp_4_Am_SoJpJuJurGj7aNtyxugiL1lHFmIjIDZeG0XQIEr_C3LLAy6DDzvWenJmstZHM9Qyj4ttMyQWwa3gzdR3/s1600/Screenshot_2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">German novelist Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is being interviewed by a student in her Grenoble home when Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis), her husband, begins playing disruptively loud music from their attic that effectively cuts the interview short. Their blind son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) goes out for a walk with his Border Collie and later finds his father’s dead body on the snow when he comes back. As mother and son call an ambulance for what seems to be an accidental fall, the police enter the picture and an investigation begins with Sandra as the main suspect. As the prosecution presents evidence after evidence that what occurred might have been premeditated murder, the couple’s marriage and dirty laundry are displayed for an entire jury to dissect. Did he kill himself? Did she? Or was it an accident? Those are the questions, but the answers are simply too hard to come by.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">While the French justice system serves a verdict at the end of the movie, the elephant in the room which is whether Sandra pushed her husband off their attic window or not is left wide open for debate. Maybe that’s what makes Anatomy of a Fall all the more intriguing. It is that kind of film that you just want to discuss right and long after you’ve seen it. True enough, its subreddit is on fire with plenty of opinions that are either Team Suicide or Team Homicide, although seemingly leaning more toward the former. Procedural narratives tend to be boring especially if the runtime is over two hours. Fortunately, this isn’t one of those.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">But that isn’t to say that this film has zero chance of boring you. We don’t even see the husband jumping or getting pushed off the attic window. We just flash forward to his bloody cadaver on the snow. Much of the action you will see here are not really actions per se but rather an emotionally-fueled exchange of lines in a court hearing. As such, what will keep you watching is the intriguing premise as well as the acting which has already been praised all over from Hüller herself to Machado-Graner. Even the dog actually won the Palm Dog Award at Cannes. In fairness to him, that Aspirin scene is a bit traumatic alright.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Another strength of the film is its ambiguity. Those who have seen it strictly as a procedural drama appear to have the tendency to believe that she is guilty if you base your conclusions on the forensic evidence and how it is presented in the courtroom. On the other hand, those who take into account other aspects of the narrative such as the marriage dynamics involved and focus on the couple’s personalities and conflicts seem to end up sympathizing with Sandra. In the end, there really is no conclusive answer because the director conveniently leaves that out to mess with our minds.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">A lot more can be said but one thing I would like to point out is how the flashbacks seem to help in giving you a glimpse of what might have truly happened until you realize that they are being shown through the perspective of whoever is narrating them, and we can’t really be sure that either Sandra or Daniel is a reliable narrator. At all. One flashback in particular that is quite intriguing is that scene where Samuel and Daniel are driving to the vet. While it is the father’s mouth that is moving, it is the son’s voice that we hear, which makes you want to question whether it really happened or it is just a false memory.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">But then again there are those who argue that maybe the truth as to whether she is guilty or not is not really the film’s point after all. Perhaps what the writer wanted us to witness is a crumbling marriage that just happens to be complicated even more by an unfortunate incident. In a way, my first impression of Anatomy of a Fall while watching it was that of an alternate version of Marriage Story if one of them died instead of the two of them getting a divorce. Both films have similar themes and are both brilliantly acted. The only difference is that this movie is basically a solo effort with Hüller giving you a masterclass in acting.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4vomBbFSs8g" width="320" youtube-src-id="4vomBbFSs8g"></iframe></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/1837234260572938343/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/anatomie-dune-chute.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/1837234260572938343'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/1837234260572938343'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/anatomie-dune-chute.html' title='Anatomie d'une chute'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKAXBbCvhfqfhAfKPkPtbkRKmSt4GbYWi5JNFSOjfKux8jzK9Mh1PN7UDWJwv9EsGrjZi29guGtNqb606An15nMSA7zkufpm6f6aKitp_4_Am_SoJpJuJurGj7aNtyxugiL1lHFmIjIDZeG0XQIEr_C3LLAy6DDzvWenJmstZHM9Qyj4ttMyQWwa3gzdR3/s72-c/Screenshot_2.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-1607687981989257230</id><published>2024-01-27T23:04:00.013+08:00</published><updated>2024-02-21T13:28:54.636+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hollywood"/><title type='text'>Past Lives</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_Lives_(film)" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8wWTrrzX7zvUV6lhKLx1U1O5W-N9nTOQN1L87J1dWAYFZkcvVkg4NjlLlnoeLO1oA_3HP6JcTV_WG8ZfCRRpmY35S73tVmB8wIyMW6W11Ttc4DQV0y5ia94b7QncLq9cJ2gOg6Y4_eBj-6LTXNK-csyUrZjVvrkr2DoyhCSbM1f7CZzKKBNTf7pZvRfKq/s1600/Past_Lives_film_poster.png" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Nora Moon (Greta lee) have found a soul mate in each other early on in their lives, evidenced by their inseparable bond as adolescents in early 2000’s Seoul. Their puppy love is short-lived, though, as Nora’s parents find an opportunity to migrate to Canada. While the two teenagers attempt to keep their budding relationship alive despite being separated by time zones and an ocean, they eventually drift apart. 12 years later, he has just concluded his mandatory military service while she, on the other hand, moves to New York to pursue her dreams of becoming a writer. An unexpected Facebook comment reconnects the two and they immediately rekindle their friendship through frequent video calls, but never get to convince one another to actually meet. After falling out, another 12 years pass. Nora is now married to fellow writer Arthur (John Magaro) while Hae Sung finally gets the courage and the ticket to fly to New York, but is he 24 years too late?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">And then they had lots of sex. Nah, sorry. Not that kind of movie. If anything, Celine Song’s film debut is a curious showcase of restraint, inundating you with suggestive looks full of yearning never acted upon, as well as distance in a variety of forms that frustrate you with a so-near-yet-so-far narrative. Past Lives is a teasing look at the perfect love story that is just not meant to be. Proponents of the Tagalog “Pinagtagpo ngunit hindi tinadhana” will have a field day watching this movie. Like, seriously.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">An aspect of filmmaking you have to admire is Song’s use of distance, both as a concept and as a framing device. For 24 years you watch these star crossed lovers pining for each other from afar because of the literal geographic distance separating them. Flash forward to two decades later and you finally see them in one location at the same time, in one frame, yet the distance between them in most scenes just visually reinforces the widening gap between them due to their unfortunate circumstances. This is something that you usually don’t see but rather just feel yet the director manages to reiterate in the way she frames her scenes.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">One takeaway from this is the role that fiction plays in our lives as human beings. Depending on the school of cinema you subscribe to, a movie can either serve as a form of entertainment that takes you as far away from real life as possible in its role as a form of distraction or mirror reality as closely as possible to serve as a critique of humanity itself. The premise of Past Lives is the perfect romantic screenplay, a love story that you can rally behind, only to slap you with a hardcore realist ending as if pulling the rug from beneath you and yelling IZZZZZAAAPRANK! This is real life, baby. And you leave the cinema rather conflicted.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In fact, one of the scenes I loved the most was Arthur going meta and telling Nora what the audience are already thinking, that he is the villain in this perfect love story 24 years in the making. In the end, the writer had the hard task of choosing between a fairytale ending that will make people feel good and a realistic conclusion that crushes your fantasies as a moviegoer but gives you a lot of realizations about life as it is. That’s why that ending hits so hard, man. Do you choose the fairytale (what could be) or your current reality (what is)?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Personally, I liked how it all turned out despite some people finding it to be too depressing. Come to think of it, aren’t all current realities fairy tales once upon a time before they transitioned into the daily, the routine, and the mundane? If Nora runs away with Hae Sung, down the line won’t their love story just end up being yet another boring but real love story like the one Nora and Arthur share right now? Bottom line: appreciate what you have instead of holding on to an ideal that has the potential to become real but might just never be. Risk analysis, children. After all, the grass will always be greener on the other side regardless where you end up.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kA244xewjcI" width="320" youtube-src-id="kA244xewjcI"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/1607687981989257230/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/past-lives.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/1607687981989257230'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/1607687981989257230'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/past-lives.html' title='Past Lives'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8wWTrrzX7zvUV6lhKLx1U1O5W-N9nTOQN1L87J1dWAYFZkcvVkg4NjlLlnoeLO1oA_3HP6JcTV_WG8ZfCRRpmY35S73tVmB8wIyMW6W11Ttc4DQV0y5ia94b7QncLq9cJ2gOg6Y4_eBj-6LTXNK-csyUrZjVvrkr2DoyhCSbM1f7CZzKKBNTf7pZvRfKq/s72-c/Past_Lives_film_poster.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-8727391327813159971</id><published>2024-01-05T13:29:00.012+08:00</published><updated>2024-01-22T19:31:26.824+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Mallari</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallari_(film)" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw12NnjiqEENsIeJQe8RDsfBsAofr4HiW_LRDSc1y3oNKEpjBq5c4oA8fucS9fEIdn70dsvn6WARDkF30bNJQeMgpkxWS42ok1AOK6BNuSUrNOnUQTlC45Rxq52zWRmn7EHNN_InnXO2DSX7YXVy3Cltc5eutepbQ1Hy7pfdFyz-xftUHTmwmSYAJpeNHP/s1600/Mallari_MMFF.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">1812. Doña Facunda Mallari (Gloria Diaz) arrives in Pampanga to accompany her son Juan Severino (Piolo Pascual) who will soon be ordained as that parish’s priest. They are welcomed by Maria Capac (Ge Villamil) who will be instrumental in the mother-and-son’s descent to madness. 1940. Photojournalist Johnrey Mallari (Piolo Pascual) meets an older Maria Capac (Vangie Labalan) and her assistant Conching (April Sangco) as he moves into the ancestral home. He finds out that he can time travel via astral projection to the past and future, observing the older Mallari in 1812 and meeting a boy from the future who is his descendant. 2023. Doctor Jonathan Mallari de Dios (Piolo Pascual) heads back to their ancestral house accompanied by Brother Lucas Alarcon Segundo (JC Santos) in search for answers as he is persistently hounded by a nightmare involving his fiancé Agnes’ (Janella Salvador) death.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Bro, there’s a manananggal, bro. But even before her upper body detaches from the lower half, we are already warned that this narrative will be taking us for a ride as a plot device for time travel is introduced early on. Blame me for not watching the trailer and expecting that this would simply be a period slasher flick. Mallari is more speculative fiction than historical biography. The sole link this film has to the actual serial killer Severino Mallari who murdered 57 people during the Spanish colonial period is his name and the anecdote that he killed all of them to find a cure for his “cursed” mother. The rest? Artistic license. Wild creative license.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">This is perhaps due to the rumors that the producers were refused access by Spain to their archives. Common knowledge about Mallari the serial killer is quite limited. Crafting an entire story from that bit of info that is more hearsay than fact can only get a scriptwriter so far. Even then, a psychological thriller could have been another path taken. After all, aren’t stories like this just primarily rooted in issues of mental health? It would’ve been enlightening to see how this societal taboo was handled back in the day. Maybe we can&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">instead</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">expect that of the Mallari TV series that Dennis Trillo will be headlining soon.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As for the acting, they have quite the ensemble here with Santos, Salvador, and Diaz in scene-stealing supporting roles. Pascual, on the other hand, was probably the early favorite to win Best Actor if not for GomBurZa’s Cedrick Juan, who is also equally deserving, suddenly snatching it from him come awards night. Playing four different roles is hard. While Pascual’s portrayal of those four is far from perfect, he does carry the film on his shoulders, which makes you believe that the producers who gave in to his rumored absurd demand for a talent fee must feel so vindicated right now.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Curses and superstitions are part of culture alright, and seeing them showcased on the big screen is fun now that most of us have moved on from this as a society. Seeing the Warner Brothers logo during the OBB also shows how that film outfit must have believed in this material so much as to decide to take care of its distribution worldwide. With an alleged budget of 80 million pesos, this is the film to beat in this film festival as far as production values are concerned. We just wish that they could have polished the special effects more. That manananggal reveal could’ve been epic instead of odd and laughable, you know.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Was Mallari weird? Yes. Was I amused? Hell yes. Did the Filipino audience enjoy it? I suppose so. After all, this film is always mentioned along with Rewind as one of the two most watched films among the ten Metro Manila Film Festival entries this year each time a box office update surfaces. The real winner? Enrico Santos. Who the hell is he? He is the screenwriter for both Mallari and Rewind. I guess it’s safe to say that Mr. Santos has caught the fancy of the Filipino movie going public with two of his works dominating the same film festival. Does he offer workshops? I’d like a peek into that weirdly creative writer’s mind of his.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MlxxhaggsfM" width="320" youtube-src-id="MlxxhaggsfM"></iframe><br /></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/8727391327813159971/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/mallari.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/8727391327813159971'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/8727391327813159971'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/mallari.html' title='Mallari'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw12NnjiqEENsIeJQe8RDsfBsAofr4HiW_LRDSc1y3oNKEpjBq5c4oA8fucS9fEIdn70dsvn6WARDkF30bNJQeMgpkxWS42ok1AOK6BNuSUrNOnUQTlC45Rxq52zWRmn7EHNN_InnXO2DSX7YXVy3Cltc5eutepbQ1Hy7pfdFyz-xftUHTmwmSYAJpeNHP/s72-c/Mallari_MMFF.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-6027811038687785993</id><published>2024-01-04T20:50:00.023+08:00</published><updated>2024-01-06T20:21:44.795+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Penduko</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penduko" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIEfhOfzx1kUgZ646FUm5bXMdXgTFrWgoWA_bshorC1B9LpMuHrfiYwx11AZX26pCl8cVTM1xU1SIGkMocyd5K3esjtcmRsC2xXYLHQOq3vS_4UgUEblySoEFin_poneShMCVCNonrQnxTotQiWpqrwNskOlKmoWTWzWA2Tw0hzlwm-bPmVYC3XXhde-3r/s1600/Penduko_MMFF_film.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></span><div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Gifted with supernatural abilities, Pedro Penduko (Matteo Guidicelli) lives his life as a bum despite having good potential, using his powers for what would be considered as petty crime if discovered. Things change for him when he is stalked by a recruiter working for Hatinggabi, an agency hosting an underground magic academy and providing income opportunities for people like him. Headed by enigmatic Gat Blanco (Albert Martinez), the school consists of instructors teaching the likes of sensing spirits, creating talismans, and healing those who are maliciously attacked by other gifted individuals that use their abilities to inflict harm. Pedro trains with strong willed Liway (Kylie Versoza) who becomes his buddy as they transition from students to field agents. Meanwhile, their other classmate Saki (Arron Villaflor), who has dark inclinations, fails to graduate and is hired by competing agency Takipsilim, also headed by Blanco but conceptualized for more sinister purposes. In the end, Pedro comes face to face with his father Apo Tisot (John Arcilla), a powerful gifted individual who prefers to help rural indigents instead of capitalizing on his gifts.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">I was ready to give this film four stars because I put more weight on the screenplay as well as the style of storytelling. Penduko’s plot unfolds just like any other magical adventure that involves a hero who taps into his potential after squandering it. Even the themes and conflicts are oddly familiar, which means this movie could have been great, had they played their cards right. Unfortunately, two aspects just draw away from that potential: the mediocre CGI that makes everything look cartoonish; and lead star Guidicelli thinking he could overact his way out of this without us noticing. Surprise, Matteo. We noticed. You were distracting AF.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">It starts off with ticks and nuances that are a bit annoying but initially dismissed as character flaws. At least that’s how it is during the first half. And then everything just devolves into overacting as he reaches the second half. Guidicelli has several scenes where he just yells out of the blue resulting in an awkward execution that is just so out of place. As a viewer, you can feel that the director has something in mind as to how Penduko should be, and then Guidicelli tackles it in a way where their respective visions simply don’t meet. Since he plays the main character and he is on screen all the time, there is no escaping from it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">More workshops or hiring an actor with more depth could have solved that issue. As for the special effects, it is not bad per se, but not something you would like to see on the big screen. It looked like it was just a notch higher from fantasy soap opera VFX, meaning we wouldn’t be having a lot of complaints had this been a TV series shown on a local channel. This is a movie, though, so the points of comparison, and there are so many of them both local and foreign, would just be hard to evade. Better effects would’ve made this movie a little more epic but as mentioned, it ended up looking a bit cartoonish.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As for the storyline, it is always fun watching such a premise but localized to give tribute to the country’s folklore and mythology. Superstitions and the like are the enemy of progress so we usually frown upon this in real life. Despite the negative view, these still form part of our rich heritage as a nation and the best way to preserve them is through film, literature, and TV. AS FICTION. As such, it is nice to witness how the writer/director really laid down the mechanics for whatever magic was involved and have us watch them over and over. This material would’ve been better off as a TV series so they could’ve expounded even more. I'd watch.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As for comparisons with old renditions of the character, I’m afraid I’ve never really seen any of them. I know that a character called Pedro Penduko exists, but I have zero knowledge about his lore. With the absence of comparison, I must say I still enjoyed the film because there is a serious attempt at legit storytelling here, and very Pinoy to the core, to boot. At least they tried, despite knowing that this might just be dismissed as a ripoff of this or that Hollywood franchise. I also really loved the "what-if" concept of "old school Pinoy witchcraft meets modern-day capitalism."</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RNlhIuBdeoo" width="320" youtube-src-id="RNlhIuBdeoo"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/6027811038687785993/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/penduko.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6027811038687785993'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6027811038687785993'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/penduko.html' title='Penduko'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIEfhOfzx1kUgZ646FUm5bXMdXgTFrWgoWA_bshorC1B9LpMuHrfiYwx11AZX26pCl8cVTM1xU1SIGkMocyd5K3esjtcmRsC2xXYLHQOq3vS_4UgUEblySoEFin_poneShMCVCNonrQnxTotQiWpqrwNskOlKmoWTWzWA2Tw0hzlwm-bPmVYC3XXhde-3r/s72-c/Penduko_MMFF_film.jpeg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-6744281649970849621</id><published>2024-01-03T11:33:00.015+08:00</published><updated>2024-01-06T19:40:36.343+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Kampon</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kampon_(2023_film)" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9vooKUrPRSYSXBjCa8bokcU_lUs5xNnvcLyBSwzOnmMh8ok5GNYqQlX37u6CB4uXSzZf7Fxv4Phs2mHX_wgPk2JeQH2MySbDD3LHoeSq-K4X3YqroXf-b7dEodVa6z1MycocyekGDxSYukmmZ8dqedHZGJas_V40nXq7tIr91URyKPL_UTrXk5Z9vao9i/s1600/Kampon_MMFF.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Married couple Clark (Derek Ramsay) and Eileen (Beauty Gonzales) would love to have kids and are constantly bombarded with questions as to when they will finally have one. The problem is his impotence. While they have already consulted various doctors at her behest, even the wonders of modern medicine just couldn’t help them. And so imagine her surprise when one rainy night they find a little girl named Jade (Erin Espiritu) at their doorstep who inexplicably bypasses the fortress-like defenses of their home to introduce herself as his daughter. Not only is Jade creepy, she also has some cryptic messages at hand, talking about how her mother Loreta (Zeinab Harake) could not “come back” and, thus, necessitates Clark’s help, even though she could not verbalize how. The plot thickens when the paternity test turns out positive and the couple are now forced to keep the kid. Soon enough, zombie-like individuals start haunting them inside and outside their house.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Kampon is that kind of movie that willingly invites you to ask as many questions as you can because it has no intention of answering them. While we have complained that some films at this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival are spoon feeding their audience by spelling everything out as if they were idiots, Kampon is on the opposite side of the spectrum assuming that moviegoers would want to decipher whatever the hell it is trying to tell them. That works if your storytelling is exciting and the audience gives enough of a damn to care. Unfortunately, those elements are missing, so this movie feels like a total waste of your one hour and thirty minutes.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">I still want explanations, though, and in yearning for them, I tried piecing the puzzle together. The opening scene is that of Loreta being rushed to a quack doctor because she is dying. She dies anyway after the old hag tries some Catholic voodoo on her. And so she turns to demonic inspirations instead and the woman gets revived, but not before she levitates into the air a la Exorcist and gains an instant demonic-themed tattoo on her abs. The next time we see her is after the jeepney crash where she gets beheaded but what is left of her torso is still breathing.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">She already has that tattoo when she slept with Clark, which happened before the vehicular accident, obviously. So my assumption is that whichever demon that old hag summoned was reincarnated as Loreta’s daughter Jade, which I suppose explains why she can revive the dead but with zombie-like tendencies (kampon = henchmen), make people’s heads explode, and levitate at will. We can also speculate that Clark is really impotent but what happened was an “immaculate conception” of sorts. Wow, this is a stretch, a tedious fill-in-the-blanks exercise that no ordinary moviegoer would voluntarily subject himself to.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">That still leaves some questions. Like, what the fvck is that creature Clark found in the container van while he was still part of the police force? That creature killed his entire team and left him with PTSD. Jade wouldn’t have been born yet by that time because Clark claims he slept with Loreta when he closed his first contract AFTER he left the police force. This makes the story even more confusing, especially because it isn’t made clear whether this is all supernatural and demonic or we are just dealing with freaks of nature here.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As far as acting is concerned, Ramsay and Gonzales bring their A-game and it shows that they committed to their roles. The kid manages to command several facial muscles to look creepy, but the character does not really give her much to work with aside from being a wannabe demon child, which has already been done before a lot of times both in Hollywood and in the local film industry. In any case, it doesn’t matter what performative acting gymnastics they do here, because that kind of plot execution and lousy storytelling would need divine intervention to not be one heck of a bore.</span></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hF3vP9KQeTo" width="320" youtube-src-id="hF3vP9KQeTo"></iframe></div></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/6744281649970849621/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/kampon.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6744281649970849621'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6744281649970849621'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/kampon.html' title='Kampon'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9vooKUrPRSYSXBjCa8bokcU_lUs5xNnvcLyBSwzOnmMh8ok5GNYqQlX37u6CB4uXSzZf7Fxv4Phs2mHX_wgPk2JeQH2MySbDD3LHoeSq-K4X3YqroXf-b7dEodVa6z1MycocyekGDxSYukmmZ8dqedHZGJas_V40nXq7tIr91URyKPL_UTrXk5Z9vao9i/s72-c/Kampon_MMFF.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-6939685911654007505</id><published>2024-01-02T13:48:00.018+08:00</published><updated>2024-01-04T17:29:19.053+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Rewind</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewind_(2023_film)" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK4nJ0Iz4AIBbnoc63wSvPXO_qWZnwf7qHnKf6aX4la_IFMKImUuI4OZrcji2LW9xzxNAAP8XAdv_oXY8_4OeRr2J5_mrOuaakpc-OZe2JruBtf1QLQKnCQHyFsUa6w8ozDIOtn-IrimnsZ2AWm7ISNwlki4mqn4AiSEiC8YZ7AA_EU-rWsEOGUYA4f3px/s1600/Screenshot_1.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">For married couple Mary (Marian Rivera) and John (Dingdong Dantes), it was love at first sight. Their love story begins at primary school and continues to grow stronger through the years until it ends in a marriage proposal followed by a whirlwind romance leading to family life. Blessed with a piano prodigy for a son whom they name Austin (Jordan Lim), it should be happily ever after for this family of three, but life just happens. There are career promotions to pursue and childhood grudges to hold. After a vehicular accident claims Mary’s life, John is visited by the electrician she hired to install lights for his surprise birthday party, a guy named Jess (Pepe Herrera) whom he mistakes for Lods, his son’s moniker for Jesus Christ. But is he really? In any case, he grants him a favor so he can go back in time to save his wife, if he is willing to die in her place.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">How did Rewind end up beating the other nine entries at the box office, by a wide margin, at this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival? Does this mean it is the best movie of the 10? Not necessarily. Rewind left every other entry in the dust because Star Cinema understood the assignment and followed the formula to a tee: a family friendly movie that will leave its audience feeling good as they leave the cinema. As a moviegoer, I did leave the cinema feeling good. As a frustrated storyteller, though, I have some thoughts.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The idea behind the MMFF has always been to generate cash by zeroing in on Filipino families flocking the metro’s many malls during the holidays by making them watch a movie. Whether your film entry is a slasher flick, a sexy comedy or a feel-good drama with a rehashed storyline, as long as that family leaves the cinema on a cinematic high, then that’s MISSION ACCOMPLISHED for you. Rewind ticks all the boxes. Big names as headliners. A good balance between drama and comedy.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As for the acting, both Dantes and Rivera deliver. The display of emotion is genuine, perhaps because they are a real life couple and so the dilemma of the film hits close to home. I am just disappointed that Rivera’s Mary somehow ended up being more of a supporting character because in the end, the story revolves around John. With Dantes already given a lot of opportunities to work with many film outfits through the years, I guess I was just hoping that Rivera would have been given the brunt of the heavy lifting as far as acting is concerned. We’ve already seen Dantes in such a role many times before. Rivera, on the other hand? Not that much.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">It seems to be a collective inherent defect of ours, as a species, to dwell on past mistakes and fantasize about going back in time to correct them. The premise is not new. Playing it safe, Rewind does not go bonkers like what The Butterfly Effect did to traumatize us two decades ago. Instead, it settles for a singular time jump. All this time-hopping is a mere storytelling device that serves as nothing more than a metaphor for grief. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Acceptance. Most of the time, these narratives end on a bitter but realistic note, because in reality the only way to get over grief is to move on with your life.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">This is why it is a bit surprising when Rewind suddenly throws a curveball which, although hinted at, you wouldn’t think they'd actually pursue. Reliving a day in the past could be a creative metaphor for grief, teaching your audience that they can take as long as they want to grieve, but life always moves forward. And so should they. By introducing a switcheroo twist, Rewind totally ends up in the realm of fantasy because in real life, when a loved one is at the brink of death, there’s no such thing as bargaining with Jesus, the doctor or Chuck Norris to take you instead. It doesn’t work that way. What message is Rewind trying to convey, then?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Sometimes, we lose sight of what is important and do not realize what we’ve got until it’s gone. This is so common that it has already become a cliché, yet doesn’t make it any less true. My interpretation of that twist ending is that it’s yet another metaphor for a loved one’s capacity, or willingness, to make a sacrifice play. While such a dilemma is mostly hypothetical in real life, it does make your audience reflect whether they are capable of such a selfless act as proof of unconditional love. Even then, reality or fantasy, the core message of appreciating what and/or who you have before it’s gone, remains.</span></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_31Tod1VvLM" width="320" youtube-src-id="_31Tod1VvLM"></iframe></div></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/6939685911654007505/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/rewind.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6939685911654007505'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6939685911654007505'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/rewind.html' title='Rewind'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK4nJ0Iz4AIBbnoc63wSvPXO_qWZnwf7qHnKf6aX4la_IFMKImUuI4OZrcji2LW9xzxNAAP8XAdv_oXY8_4OeRr2J5_mrOuaakpc-OZe2JruBtf1QLQKnCQHyFsUa6w8ozDIOtn-IrimnsZ2AWm7ISNwlki4mqn4AiSEiC8YZ7AA_EU-rWsEOGUYA4f3px/s72-c/Screenshot_1.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-5483042143176864171</id><published>2024-01-01T22:05:00.013+08:00</published><updated>2024-01-02T23:04:04.558+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Family of Two</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_of_Two" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW4XXC2LbC9dTJ3GXhuVTds8J-XX21SZECcfpZ2ijyWrpURkJTk6B_kx3XXSqUhWmjys9rHffW_Om_iMCpVL_nZVQ7t-N4mSd-c4vsZEKv5rFOBi5gIU66Q9b6PQzAH0xLhaUrwJGDT87UVYoBx-iODzpP1XrXD15ebiQDTMc0xrOOwuiaQgOoZrNsLMhx/s1600/Family_of_Two_MMFF.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Widowed single mother Maricar (Sharon Cuneta) has dedicated much of her life to raising her only son Mateo (Alden Richards). Now that he is almost in his 30’s and ready to take on life alone, he begins to question her unconditional love even though he is grateful for everything she does for him. When he finally gets the courage to ask his office crush Czarina (Miles Ocampo) out, they immediately become a couple. Issues arise when both of them are offered a lateral transfer to Singapore by their boss. She quickly says yes, but he is reluctant due to his mother. In preparation for such news, he decides that the best way to make the separation less painful for her is to have her continue her life without him at the center of it. And so he creates an online dating profile for her in hopes of finding her a love life. She doesn’t take it well. At first.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Cuneta and Richards must have spent some time bonding prior to filming because they are just so believable as mother and son. Unfortunately, that rapport is bogged down by too much drama. Oh no they are fighting because of the online dating profile, so sad, do you want to cry now? Oh no they are crying buckets of tears while the camera is zoomed too close for comfort on their faces, so sad, do you want to cry now? Oh no we are playing the musical score in full blast because they are fighting and the camera is on extra zoom on their faces, so sad, do you want to cry now? Do these people have no concept of subtlety? Seriously?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">That happens a few times. While we can argue that the ordinary Pinoy moviegoer is inherently stupid, it would be much more offensive to assume that they are emotionally inept. Dude, this is a nation used to watching three to four soap operas in a row every night. Training citizens to be emotional trainwrecks is done from early childhood in this country. Do not decide on their behalf when they should cry or not while watching motion pictures. They should know. Anyway, that subtlety is lost in this film, and the end product is a drama that should be endearing, if done right, but ends up unnecessarily too extra to be taken seriously.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As mentioned, Cuneta and Richards have great chemistry as mother and son. Perhaps the characters were really just written to be a bit too extra or maybe it is just their interpretation of their characters or maybe it’s just the director. Who knows. Rest assured that they tone it down a bit as the story moves forward. Ocampo offers solid support and we congratulate her for her Supporting Actress win, even though our personal choice is not her. The rest of the cast are just there as NPCs or plot devices.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">If there is one thing we like about Family of Two, it is the path that Maricar decides to take to complete her character arc. Women in this country are mostly reminded from time to time that their success as a human being relies on how faithful they can be to the trifecta of giving birth, raising the kids, and basically giving up their identities for the family, so they can realize their womanhood. And so it is a breath of fresh air for Maricar to be, like, nah I don’t need Tonton Gutierrez’s dick or farm to make me happy, give me a business degree instead.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Just to clarify, we are just celebrating the power of choice by telling people that getting married and annoying your kid until they are senile enough to annoy you back is not the only option you have in life. If you are a proud parent and a single mom to boot, then you will really appreciate Family of Two for the love letter that it is to single parenthood. Of course, kids who grew up in such a household will also appreciate their single moms/dads even more. That message is clear enough. Perhaps, it is just the film’s choice of delivery that comes across as a bit weird, but it still works.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t7Te6FSF0sc" width="320" youtube-src-id="t7Te6FSF0sc"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/5483042143176864171/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/family-of-two.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/5483042143176864171'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/5483042143176864171'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/family-of-two.html' title='Family of Two'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW4XXC2LbC9dTJ3GXhuVTds8J-XX21SZECcfpZ2ijyWrpURkJTk6B_kx3XXSqUhWmjys9rHffW_Om_iMCpVL_nZVQ7t-N4mSd-c4vsZEKv5rFOBi5gIU66Q9b6PQzAH0xLhaUrwJGDT87UVYoBx-iODzpP1XrXD15ebiQDTMc0xrOOwuiaQgOoZrNsLMhx/s72-c/Family_of_Two_MMFF.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-4893552624355759026</id><published>2023-12-29T15:23:00.016+08:00</published><updated>2023-12-29T17:42:54.446+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Becky & Badette</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_%26_Badette#" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv-P0lz6C3f9HXPM7AuotAQqIirK98xyMK9rQ7ugMni8-2xDAOASsUDGxoaKFeJJ-Q47fLUao_CedrC390hDMyPjmTD_VWfMxMUmpwPRu2m336WDZxevNYlRXB1aqulir4IwOjZwSmOECF7LB8cCClsizEi2aLGoIduiZ1MAjRLc0G2dMDZeI29N0eIrI7/s1600/Becky_&amp;_Badette.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Bestfriends Becky (Eugene Domingo) and Badette (Pokwang) were voted most likely to succeed when they graduated from high school, but despite their own share of talents, life has not been kind to either one of them. Now middle aged and still living with their moms one floor above a gay bar, the two are hesitant to go to their class reunion knowing they have nothing to be proud of. After class bully Nirvana (Agot Isidro) convinces them to come, she hatches a plot to make fun of them at the party. Being their usual selves, the duo comes up with an impromptu skit pretending to be lesbian lovers, just for show. As the video of their fake public confession becomes a viral hit around which many lesbians decide to rally, the two BFFs are suddenly inundated with opportunities that dramatically turn their lives around. As they enjoy their new status as the country’s prime lesbian power couple, their lie stares them in the face demanding for authenticity. Will they give in?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Jesus Christ. That “Finggah Lickin” jingle just takes on a life of its own after the premise becomes clear, now doesn’t it? All the related references just had the cinema laughing out loud afterwards. I was starting to wonder how Becky &amp; Badette beat Broken Hearts Trip for the Gender Sensitivity Award. Now, it all makes sense, and this film is indeed more deserving. While the movie seems irreverent and often pokes fun on the subject matter it is dealing with, the message still reaches the viewer loud and clear. In a film festival where LGBTQIA++ equates almost exclusively to gay storylines, it’s high time that the L finally got repped.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">What message is that, you might ask? While LGBTQIA++ representation is already a given, the film actually provides a good critique of queerbaiting and the lengths people would go to nowadays all for the sake of clout, which has become the main currency that takes online content creators places. Becky &amp; Badette also sheds light on the strange dynamics involved when it comes to society’s incessant demand for idols to represent them, and how some people capitalize on that collective demand to further their own interests, like some weird sort of socioeconomic commensalism.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">People seem to have ended up just dismissing this as a mere attempt at a big screen comeback from two comedians who are no longer that visible lately. The trailer makes it clear that this’ll be the typical slapstick comedy that brought Domingo and Pokwang to the peak of their careers. Lest we forget though, Becky &amp; Badette was penned by Jun Lana. While the guy does have a propensity for slapstick, you can rest assured that his screenplay will not let you down. With his wit still intact coupled with the rollercoaster ride of a plot, Lana offers a familiar brand of comedy that shouldn’t be enjoyable anymore but, somehow, oddly, still is.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As for the acting, Domingo is given more material to work with thanks to the twist regarding Becky’s character towards the end. The subtle change in nuances as she goes through her character arc shows you that, damn, she is showing off some serious acting chops here which would probably be overshadowed by the mere fact that this film is a comedy. Pokwang, on the contrary, still has perfect comedic timing but not given enough opportunity to showcase anything else. Isidro decides to go full-on campy, which works well with her role as the primary antagonist but comes across as nothing more than caricature.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The premise, to those who have no intention of watching, is similar to that of Dear Evan Hansen. What happens when a lie so big blows up and you are forced to stick to the lie for all the good things that it brings along while knowing quite well that its foundation will crumble once the truth is revealed. While the storyline is not that original, it gives the director many subplots to play around with, making sure that the film has few dull moments to deal with. However, the ending is quite predictable because of this, but easily forgiven thanks to the good time the movie offers.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8AYzfGVYO8w" width="320" youtube-src-id="8AYzfGVYO8w"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/4893552624355759026/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/becky-badette.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/4893552624355759026'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/4893552624355759026'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/becky-badette.html' title='Becky & Badette'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv-P0lz6C3f9HXPM7AuotAQqIirK98xyMK9rQ7ugMni8-2xDAOASsUDGxoaKFeJJ-Q47fLUao_CedrC390hDMyPjmTD_VWfMxMUmpwPRu2m336WDZxevNYlRXB1aqulir4IwOjZwSmOECF7LB8cCClsizEi2aLGoIduiZ1MAjRLc0G2dMDZeI29N0eIrI7/s72-c/Becky_&_Badette.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-2966606782840532938</id><published>2023-12-28T21:49:00.003+08:00</published><updated>2024-01-02T00:21:20.637+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>GomBurZa</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GomBurZa_(film)#" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYFL2eZ0YBdMU7oig2N6TDQWFA7PR8l7E19aEBrL3UaB_nhlRdFITJ0CM4EPDOJnpGHih8knMQFl2sA44K2TXcz7CgMXj5zGli7evGLAPagj_zcFhmf3PbxKlI7vL2vR-AvkRlT7ELCOQRb7c-6Gz5MUlLWpGymKOzFgCu_FGEGT6T4iK9Socxz3nMBLmj/s1600/Gomburza_2023_MMFF.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">A brewing turf war for the control of the prosperous Antipolo parish pits Spain-born friars against their local born secular counterparts. Leading the charge for the Filipino clergy is Pedro Pelaez (Piolo Pascual), the liberal diocesan administrator of the Archdiocese of Manila. When he is fatally buried under the rubble in the wake of the great earthquake of Manila in 1863, his advocacy is continued by his apprentice Jose Burgos (Cedrick Juan), who instigates reforms by instilling nationalist values in his students’ minds, among them Paciano Rizal Mercado (Elijah Canlas) and Felipe Buencamino (Tommy Alejandrino). Aided by the elder Mariano Gomez (Dante Rivero), Burgos becomes the primary target of the friars. As the tides turn brought upon by the arrival of a conservative governor general, Gomez, Burgos, and gambler Jacinto Zamora (Enchong Dee) are falsely charged with mutiny and end up condemned to death via garrote. Witnessed by a young Jose Rizal, their death serves as the inspiration for his novel El Filibusterismo, dedicated to three martyr priests dubbed as GomBurZa.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">But who are Filipinos, really? The first ones to be referred to as such were Spaniards and creoles discriminated against by their own kind who were residing in Europe, simply because they were born on the island colony. We would’ve been just INDIOS without rights in our own land had we been born back then. Perhaps we should take that into consideration the next time we throw a tantrum because some half Filipina half something else was sent to represent “us” at Miss Universe. After all, before “we” became oh so possessive of the term FILIPINO, “they” were the first ones to actually own it even before we did. Ain’t history fun?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">My only problem with GomBurZa is how it only ever seems to revolve around Bur(gos). If they were a pop act they might as well be Destiny’s Child, because Gom(ez) and Za(mora) definitely got Beyonce’d by Bur(gos) out of the spotlight. While it is understandable that Gom(ez)’s backstory would be inaccessible in the past since he is way older and exploring that would mean digressing from the current timeframe, Za(mora) who is just as old as Bur(gos) does not really contribute anything significant to the plot other than playing cards and always looking miserable and lethargic like all of us on a Monday morning.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Or maybe that’s just all that they can squeeze out of the other two priests’ storyline that is relevant to that time period? This is the problem when history classes in school curriculums are all about memorizing random names and dates so you can pass an exam. Such historical tidbits are useful if you are joining a quiz show, but do not help much in getting to know, and urging students to get to know, who these heroes really were. In this regard, films of this genre accomplish something by raising awareness and humanizing them. Should history refreshers be of particular interest to you, it can always come later by purchasing the relevant history books.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Given the uneven distribution of screen time and relevance in the main story, neither Rivero nor Dee are given even the slightest chance to shine. Instead, they both just serve as side dishes to the main course, served with panache by Juan and peppered with his impressive trilingual dialogues. While his Best Actor win could always be debated, there is no doubt that he did this homework and aced his role. His win is not just a big win for fans of history films, but also for theater actors trying to make it to the big screen. Give the guy more projects!</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">It gets even weirder when it’s not just Bur(gos) who ends up eclipsing Gom(ez) and Za(mora) but also Pascual’s Pedro Pelaez and Canlas’ Paciano Rizal Mercado as far as acting in terms of the actors and plot relevance in terms of the characters are concerned. Pascual inadvertently unleashes some scene stealing shenanigans here and both the actor as well as the way his character has been written can be thanked for commanding such attention with his mere presence alone, in spite of his limited screen time.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lXnZ6FiRdJ4" width="320" youtube-src-id="lXnZ6FiRdJ4"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/2966606782840532938/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/gomburza.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/2966606782840532938'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/2966606782840532938'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2024/01/gomburza.html' title='GomBurZa'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYFL2eZ0YBdMU7oig2N6TDQWFA7PR8l7E19aEBrL3UaB_nhlRdFITJ0CM4EPDOJnpGHih8knMQFl2sA44K2TXcz7CgMXj5zGli7evGLAPagj_zcFhmf3PbxKlI7vL2vR-AvkRlT7ELCOQRb7c-6Gz5MUlLWpGymKOzFgCu_FGEGT6T4iK9Socxz3nMBLmj/s72-c/Gomburza_2023_MMFF.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-4700242311441262952</id><published>2023-12-27T22:22:00.008+08:00</published><updated>2023-12-28T15:17:22.213+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Firefly</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(2023_film)" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwmohyphenhyphencqPzdo-CTiq3AS8JDjOvmtKjfeXLAtB8rpZv6AtdIwbqV5zJZZRwUq45AFF2NNCZrrCtjPjiQPaS-OXCIWzSNyEyj_279WAMO6H0fKHZZY0g2pjXJBXBFOy6omQYpsav4yoyrFFSwI5nWGBuH23rhDijcqeASU19SC0f4ZMa4vRoG71NTMrzY4xA/s1600/Firefly_2023_MMFF_poster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As he prepares to receive a literary award, children’s book author Antonio Alvaro (Dingdong Dantes) is grilled by an inquisitive journalist investigating claims of alleged plagiarism. To prove his innocence, he recounts his childhood as a scrawny kid everyone referred to as Tonton (Euwenn Mikaell), back when his world revolved around his grand auntie Linda (Cherry Pie Picache) and his mother Elay (Alessandra de Rossi) as well as her stories about a mystical island of fireflies. Forced to find the island on his own using her clues and a colorful map he himself drew, the young Tonton relies on the kindness of strangers along the way. Reluctant at first, ex-convict Louie (Epy Quizon), heartbroken teenager Billy (Miguel Tanfelix), and scammer Erika (Ysabel Ortega) all end up helping the young boy as he ventures out into the unknown to prove to everyone and to himself that the island does exist.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">This movie made me cry. Twice. Not ugly crying but more on sniffles and a teardrop each. Considering only one other film has managed to make me cry in the last ten years, this says a lot. Either I am becoming a softie or maybe director Zig Dulay really just made an emotional film that is so damn good. While having an unlimited budget is desirable in crafting a cinematic masterpiece, sometimes all it takes is limitless imagination. Firefly transports us back to the carefree days of our childhood, a time in our lives when innocence and imagination served as barriers sheltering us from the very cruel world that we inhabit.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Our main takeaway from this is we perceive stories differently at different stages of our lives. Narratives focusing on children make you see them from a child’s perspective, by default, when you are young. As you get older, that shifts to an adult perspective. What makes Firefly so moving is how, as you get older, it seems to be an innate trait of our species to be naturally protective of the younger ones in the pack. Even though we are aware that those children will end up just as jaded as they eventually fall prey to the unavoidable trap of growing up, we want to delay that for them as much as we can; preserve that innocence, as long as we can.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">This is probably the reason, too, as to how scenes so simply rendered can easily tug a heartstring. The beating around the bush, the euphemisms, the detours, the lengths we go through in order to break something serious and/or life-altering to a child in a way that it wouldn’t break them because we’ve been there before and we know how difficult it could be to process. In this regard, we have to give kudos to Mikaell for being a credible actor at such a young age. Dantes also offers a lot of feels despite his limited screen time.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As for symbolisms, the film does spell them out for you in the end, but it is fun to speculate while that information is still withheld from you. It is evident from the get go that Tonton is the firefly and Elay is the butterfly. The scary black dog following them around, I initially theorized to be death, which I later changed to the loss of will to live. The firefly’s light that it loses to give to the butterfly, on the contrary, could be hope or simply purpose in life. It can be interpreted in many different ways depending on your imagination and this ambiguity is just one of this film’s many charms.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Where they could have easily gone wrong was the CGI, but the sweeping panoramic views of the countryside are just so harmoniously juxtaposed to their imagined supernatural entities that they are so aesthetically pleasing to look at. While the black dog could’ve been polished more, it still serves as forgivable VFX, along with the pink butterfly and the firefly, to achieve their intended effect of subtle magical realism. After all, this is not a hardcore fantasy film and they are not there to impress, but rather to manifest concepts that are too magical for words, rendered through the eyes of a child.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jirj0dfEUR4" width="320" youtube-src-id="Jirj0dfEUR4"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/4700242311441262952/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/firefly.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/4700242311441262952'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/4700242311441262952'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/firefly.html' title='Firefly'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwmohyphenhyphencqPzdo-CTiq3AS8JDjOvmtKjfeXLAtB8rpZv6AtdIwbqV5zJZZRwUq45AFF2NNCZrrCtjPjiQPaS-OXCIWzSNyEyj_279WAMO6H0fKHZZY0g2pjXJBXBFOy6omQYpsav4yoyrFFSwI5nWGBuH23rhDijcqeASU19SC0f4ZMa4vRoG71NTMrzY4xA/s72-c/Firefly_2023_MMFF_poster.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-9018745767989513763</id><published>2023-12-26T19:51:00.017+08:00</published><updated>2023-12-28T02:21:22.627+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Broken Hearts Trip</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Hearts_Trip" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv197Q4B-8nDybI3oOVfQ8I0wL_7gjfjb1Kqb1gd2fIOgLhGwn4BI9dKGofknd5xXvR5sLEyvFs5_7FKS1OVcSSdAwLBTiVt6B2w82g0Y7c8lMqwHAMZD8jWYuUCoeN1a8Mdwq8lp0PLmmAQERy9zeTXXDLGOv_1S7PlwvDh7tCzLZyeZt8etWFSGFQMS1/s1600/Broken_Heart's_Trip_poster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Reality show host Alfred (Christian Bables) spearheads a new TV show, putting together an ensemble of broken hearted gays to compete for a one million peso prize by completing challenges set all around the country. Mark (Petite) is left to take care of his boyfriend’s daughter after he abandons them. Ali (Marvin Yap) loses his restaurant and basically everything in his life after his foreigner boyfriend ditches him for another guy, sending him on a downward spiral. Bernie Varga (Iyah Mina) is a gay beauty pageant veteran who has never won a crown and is caught in a love triangle with his boyfriend and the boyfriend’s pregnant girlfriend. Alex (Andoy Ranay) is a go-getter executive who is scammed by his boylet, the total&nbsp; amounting to five million pesos. Has-been matinee idol Jason (Teejay Marquez) aims to use the exposure to regain his career after falling out of grace for being outed against his will.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Was this film sponsored by the Department of Tourism? Those drone shots of Kawasan Falls and the attractions that followed were gorgeous! The best way to describe Broken Hearts Trip is if the DOT and that defunct reality show Extra Challenge had a baby, and the baby came out of the womb waving a rainbow flag. It’s too bad that the movie already disappeared from cinemas after just the third day of the festival. Is this movie fun? Yes. Is it worth the 420 peso cinema ticket and the 1,400 peso roundtrip Grab fare to and from Ayala Malls Manila Bay which is one of only seven cinemas left in the metro still playing it? Probably not.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">And that is one of Broken Hearts Trip’s problems. The only faces you will recognize here are Jaclyn Jose’s and Bables'. The former only appears for the first 15 minutes and later on as the credits roll. It is only the latter who is visible all throughout because of his role as the host of the reality show. While Bables has already proven time and again that he can act, he has been typecasted ad nauseam in gay roles like this, at least as far as his film credits are concerned. He is a good actor, so here's hoping he could score more challenging roles outside his comfort zone.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Another problem with the movie is how it seems lost in what it really wants to be. The reality show format is exciting alright, if you are watching it on television. Something just tells you that this would have been a really fun TV series on streaming. Even though it is fictional, they could have followed the episodic reality show format and given the characters more wiggle room for development. Since the way the shots are filmed have to go back and forth between film and reality style, it makes you want to wish that they should’ve just gone with the reality TV style all the way to make it more exciting.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As an LGBTQIA++ story, the narratives involved are legit but have the tendency to devolve into tropes and clichés. While there is a lot of truth to what these gays are going through, it just feels repetitive at this point, at least what cinema elects to show to the masses about the community. Surely there are other more uplifting stories out there to share. But then again, the title itself is already a dead giveaway as to what the storyline will tackle. For what it is worth, they are still able to inject some comedy in there as the film parodies reality shows in general.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Talking about reality shows and parodies, that musical number in the end is plain atrocious. The thing is, I can’t really decide whether it was just made in an amateur kind of way or whether it is intentional as part of the lampooning of the industry itself. Whatever it is, the film still manages to poke fun at reality shows in a way that does not even require subtlety. The sob stories. The in-your-face product placements. Jason James being an industry plant. It is clever, in a way.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Where Broken Hearts Trip goes wrong is it looks out-of-place in a festival where big names are deciding factors in a movie’s success. Despite the unique format and fun storyline, all this effort does not really mean much when you couldn’t find an audience at all. Anyway, perhaps their biggest triumph here is revealing in the end that the show itself and the destinations themselves are all part of the host’s own journey to move on from his own heartbreak. It gives a new appreciation of the character as a genuine person in a production that seems fake and all for show. In doing so, he becomes the film’s heart.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jIsEodccvDo" width="320" youtube-src-id="jIsEodccvDo"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/9018745767989513763/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/broken-hearts-trip.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/9018745767989513763'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/9018745767989513763'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/broken-hearts-trip.html' title='Broken Hearts Trip'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv197Q4B-8nDybI3oOVfQ8I0wL_7gjfjb1Kqb1gd2fIOgLhGwn4BI9dKGofknd5xXvR5sLEyvFs5_7FKS1OVcSSdAwLBTiVt6B2w82g0Y7c8lMqwHAMZD8jWYuUCoeN1a8Mdwq8lp0PLmmAQERy9zeTXXDLGOv_1S7PlwvDh7tCzLZyeZt8etWFSGFQMS1/s72-c/Broken_Heart's_Trip_poster.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-6751839541698601071</id><published>2023-12-25T22:10:00.014+08:00</published><updated>2023-12-26T23:11:27.007+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Filipino"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>When I Met You in Tokyo</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_I_Met_You_in_Tokyo" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAMNCfb3Ez-iNNgyWZb0Aov6Wfu0U5xRcxdJpIy9UoGZbge0xf067xL7aNfu9JtUCsoGeNzDXSR4dA6h7cowsMYlVWYnZrPGXQfXDNf8W8o6LoE2qx9uwJhpUet_F3W4CkjbP9OUDHR5emqIlMwADkq9bydIn8P0feGFGg_xoPnXbViCJ3BFf4h6cmvBeZ/s1600/When_I_Met_You_In_Tokyo.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">OFWs Azon (Vilma Santos) and Joey (Christopher de Leon) meet in Tokyo in not so ideal circumstances, starting off with mutual animosity. She has been working in Japan for quite some time already but it seems as though her efforts are for naught as her younger brother Marlon (Gabby Eigenmann) spends all her remittances on gambling. He, on the other hand, is annulled from his wife Susan (Gina Alajar) and finds it hard to forgive her for leaving him for another man even after all this time. As Azon and Joey continue to bump into each other almost everywhere and share their personal problems with one another, they find a reason to start anew. Encouraged by their respective friends to give each other a chance, they end up seeing each other in a different light. Thus begins a late romance, perhaps what she would like to refer to as a “soulmate”.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Vilmopher or Christilma, or whatever their fans would like to call them, need not be another KathNiel or JaDine, because once upon a time they already were. These two filled entire cinemas during their heyday, we can even argue that they were one of the prototypes of these love teams, which leads us to our next question. Why the need for a teenybopper formula? Is it because love teams of old were only given heavy drama films back then until such genre got relegated to television in the advent of soap operas? Are they trying to catch up on lost opportunities to star in a romantic comedy because they didn’t have those in the 70’s and 80’s?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Whatever the reason is is rather moot because this film does not do them any favors. For an onscreen power couple whose last movie together was two decades ago, this kind of anticipation from their fanbase will probably never be replicated, so it just feels like a squandered opportunity to not give them better material that could showcase their acting skills. Or maybe that is exactly the point? Maybe this film is just an excuse to have a reunion and have fun, fun that just pervades the cinema because you can really tell that Vilmopher, or Christilma, are having one hell of a good time. They are like two friends just enjoying each other’s company.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">But then again, that does not help the movie. They are having fun alright, but the 7:15 PM screening we went to was half empty and most of those who were there were old. Observing their reactions, there were indeed giggles and light laughter. It’s cute to be honest, but the problem there is, how are you going to draw in a younger generation of moviegoers who neither know who these two are nor will give up their hard-earned peso for a storyline that they’d rather have a younger love team deliver to them? Hey, movie tickets are so damn expensive nowadays. For a film to draw in a crowd, it has to be an event, which this film is simply not.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">It does not help either that the film drags on for too long without accomplishing much. There is a blink-and-you’ll-miss six-year time jump that is just mentioned in passing. It’s a genuine WTF moment because Japan is probably the best place to do a flash forward montage through the gorgeous cityscapes of its four seasons, but no, they really opt to just tell you, hey it’s been six years. Since the initial subplot is resolved early, the ending also comes across as a dead giveaway. Pun intended. And so you are there just watching it all unfold at a glacial pace wondering whether you should wait for an ending that you can already smell from a mile away.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Since I don’t really want to rain on Vilmopher’s, or Christilma’s comeback parade because I love them and they are just so adorable, perhaps one good takeaway from this movie is that love stories between sexagenarians and septuagenarians need not be depressing and gloomy all the time, and this film does a good job in showing us that. However, given the mundane nature of such narratives, creativity in exposition and storytelling is really key to capturing your audience’s attention, creativity that this movie unfortunately doesn’t have much of.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DHvrBfDhsBM" width="320" youtube-src-id="DHvrBfDhsBM"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/6751839541698601071/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/when-i-met-you-in-tokyo.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6751839541698601071'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/6751839541698601071'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/when-i-met-you-in-tokyo.html' title='When I Met You in Tokyo'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAMNCfb3Ez-iNNgyWZb0Aov6Wfu0U5xRcxdJpIy9UoGZbge0xf067xL7aNfu9JtUCsoGeNzDXSR4dA6h7cowsMYlVWYnZrPGXQfXDNf8W8o6LoE2qx9uwJhpUet_F3W4CkjbP9OUDHR5emqIlMwADkq9bydIn8P0feGFGg_xoPnXbViCJ3BFf4h6cmvBeZ/s72-c/When_I_Met_You_In_Tokyo.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-7344375236308498447</id><published>2023-12-23T02:23:00.006+08:00</published><updated>2023-12-23T03:11:34.316+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="European"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><title type='text'>Saltburn</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltburn_(film)" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxGGbkWg7XoyhEuwAvbhB-oFwBknbQK4AgfhgDNE-yGawt2mgi11uUfof4Z_i7-kQiX65EavyUgOuFIxzkXXi2upMfNai3LWp8_E65gbAxW_60uz0oQyeb7a5HtqnsA5vTIrpf7k5p8eKLkLTbeUlwwtBarcBNGwoPdvGc5sCz1wzdx5qnDc9G1chYFUqH/s1600/Saltburn_Film_Poster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Socially-awkward Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) gets into Oxford on a scholarship and immediately feels out of place in a crowd of privileged peers. He is quickly smitten with co-freshmen Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), towards whom the entire college appears to gravitate. He falls into his orbit through a random act of kindness and next thing he knows, they are suddenly operating within the same social circle. Receiving news of his father’s passing, Oliver is consoled by his newfound friend and invited to their massive estate called Saltburn to unwind for the summer. There Oliver meets Felix’s eccentric family: his father Sir James (Richard E. Grant); his mother Lady Elspeth (Rosamund Pike); his “sexually incontinent” sister Venetia (Alison Oliver) as well as his poor American cousin Farleigh Start (Archie Madekwe) who constantly bullies him. Amused and bemused by the barrage of opulence, Oliver starts to charm his way into the family dynamics, but can he really force his way into a world where he obviously does not belong?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Deliciously psychopathic. Sorry, a one-word description wouldn’t have given it justice. Have you ever felt an insanely pervasive obsession towards someone so ridiculously intense that you could no longer even begin to fathom whether the attraction you are feeling is romantic, sexual or psychotic in nature? Like, do you want to be with this person? Do you simply want to fvck this person? Or do you want to BE this person? If ever you’ve had such a phase in your life, then understanding Saltburn’s Oliver should not be that implausible a feat.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">On the contrary, you might even find the film to be cathartic. Somehow it serves as some sort of fantasy/curiosity fulfillment, by proxy, served to you on a silver platter by the magic of cinema. And let’s admit it, you wouldn’t go to such lengths just to pursue an obsession in real life. Ain’t nobody got time for jail due to shit like that, bro. Nonetheless, Saltburn has the tendency to bask in the vulgar and the obscene that will, guaranteed, make your prude friends flinch amidst all the onscreen feast of bodily fluids. People are said to have walked out of various screenings of this movie. You certainly wouldn’t be the first to do so.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Diving deep into the annals of Reddit, some kind Brits would lecture you about class dynamics in the UK and how wealth and status are perceived through the lens of peerage, a spillover of the country’s aristocratic past that still weighs down heavily on the very fabric of British society. Tackled from this angle, Saltburn can be argued to be a British rendition of South Korea’s Parasite, to some extent. Much of the discourse online revolves around this aspect as everyone seems to be in a mad scramble to decode the film’s central message.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">In doing so, what everyone seems to be glossing over is the possibility that beneath all the semen and menstrual blood, perhaps this film is not really a thesis on the dynamics between the leftovers of British aristocracy and the middle class, but rather a case study on Limerence, if one decides to analyze it through the tenets of psychology, that is. Google the term. I’m quite sure we will end up in agreement. Either way, there is room for both classist and psychological undertones. Just don’t overanalyze it.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">If Oliver’s sole intent was to be a hardcore social climber then the bathtub and grave scenes, where he didn’t have to put on a show because nobody was watching, just do not make sense. He was OBSESSED with Felix. Plain and simple. Obsession is what this narrative is all about. As an unreliable narrator, he could lie his way out of his own story that he is trying to tell us verbatim. Those actions of his when he was alone and just being himself, though? That can’t be faked. Everything else is just collateral damage.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">It would be fun to see Keoghan get a follow-up nomination for his supporting nod for Banshees of Inisherin at last year’s Academy Awards, this time for consideration in the lead category, but this one seems to be up in the air. Unlike Fennel’s directorial debut in Promising Young Woman where Carey Mulligan’s eventual nomination was buoyed up by the MeToo movement, there really is no strong social movement backing this film&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">up</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">&nbsp;</span><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">despite the brilliant ensemble acting of the cast. Perhaps the Golden Globe nominations Keoghan and Pike received are already a win for both of them. We’d love to be surprised, though.</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fNYepvUtYGA" width="320" youtube-src-id="fNYepvUtYGA"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/7344375236308498447/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/saltburn.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/7344375236308498447'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/7344375236308498447'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/saltburn.html' title='Saltburn'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxGGbkWg7XoyhEuwAvbhB-oFwBknbQK4AgfhgDNE-yGawt2mgi11uUfof4Z_i7-kQiX65EavyUgOuFIxzkXXi2upMfNai3LWp8_E65gbAxW_60uz0oQyeb7a5HtqnsA5vTIrpf7k5p8eKLkLTbeUlwwtBarcBNGwoPdvGc5sCz1wzdx5qnDc9G1chYFUqH/s72-c/Saltburn_Film_Poster.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-5408935014457642033</id><published>2023-12-21T23:30:00.007+08:00</published><updated>2023-12-22T01:23:32.623+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hollywood"/><title type='text'>Maestro</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maestro_(2023_film)" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDT9VQ3NFaY3X6-8n6-OwAyn-kfzGAqCXCIs4vhTt3dGzahQhvVlSr2N3gt4ljxoFH-UA027vPAdCG6DYFycPhVmkjPfiyeFLbg6S6EvoMda6D1Fxyh87LnXaLMC30MjvYyOd5F8uhka_W2XuE7T1JW9Lgna4nX3__d9dfraxkLPJwJA5Uq6TcCIWinUtN/s1600/Maestro_poster.png" width="200" /></a></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: justify;">♣♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</div></span><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">"A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers." 70-year-old Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) looks back at his life as a conductor and composer which leads him all back to his wife. 1943. Felicia Montealegre Cohn (Carey Mulligan) meets Lenny at a party right after his conducting debut at the New York Philharmonic taking over for a conductor who got ill. Despite knowledge of his sexual orientation, the two hit it off right away and form a relationship. By the mid-50’s, they would become a fixture in New York’s high society scene: him as a successful conductor; her as a Broadway actress. Soon they welcome three children and face the challenges of married life. Despite staying married to one another, they begin to pursue separate lives but are brought back together when she is diagnosed with lung cancer.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The acting is top notch. That, we can guarantee. Cooper starts off as a septuagenarian aided by heavy make-up to look believable. He totally vanishes into the role after a few scenes. As Cooper the actor vanishes, all you see onscreen is Lenny the conductor. The suspension of disbelief comes a little bit later for Mulligan because she still looks like Carey Mulligan, but the accent and the physicality of the role eventually takes over. With neither actor outshining the other, Maestro ends up as a labor of love with a balanced distribution of nuanced acting between its two leads.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Both Cooper and Mulligan are likely to be shoo-ins for acting nominations at this point, with Cooper also in contention for either writing or directing nods. Perhaps one underrated crew member would be Matthew Libatique, whose cinematography just leaves nothing to be desired when it comes to setting the mood as the film shifts to classic black and white before transitioning to color that just transports you outright to the 60’s and 70’s. While Cooper definitely had the vision, Libatique went all out with the ambience to match.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">We have had our fair share of Oscar contenders in composers and conductors as of late. We had Cate Blanchett in Todd Field’s Tár just last year; Andrew Garfield in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick… Boom a year prior. Maestro shares some similarities with both projects: the cutthroat world of conductors with the former and the biographical slant of the latter. What makes Maestro stand out is its equal focus on the craft and the family, which allows the narrative to have two lead actors share the spotlight and create a curious case study on the interplay among sexuality, relationships, and career.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Perhaps that is the reason why the film is able to keep your attention despite the subject matter appearing to be a bit niche for a wider audience. Who really wants to know more about the life of a conductor/composer, right? While Bernstein’s immortal compositions do lend a lot in giving you goosebumps as they are utilized as the film’s score, it is his love story with Felicia that serves as the beating heart of the film. Although the couple did not jive well as lovers, it is poignant to witness the friendship and companionship that endured between the two of them even when romance was no longer on the table.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Maestro is an endearing composition that might lose its audience by drowning them in one crescendo right after another, but it serves its purpose well as an ode to the life of a musical legend whose contributions you might be hearing on the daily but just do not recognize. It is nice to put a face to the music, and then realize that the face is that of an interesting human being after all who had led a successful but questionably satisfying life. If you are a fan, you will love this film. If not, you will still appreciate it for the story that it wants to tell.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gJP2QblqLA0" width="320" youtube-src-id="gJP2QblqLA0"></iframe></div></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/5408935014457642033/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/maestro.html#comment-form' title='0 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/5408935014457642033'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/5408935014457642033'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/maestro.html' title='Maestro'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDT9VQ3NFaY3X6-8n6-OwAyn-kfzGAqCXCIs4vhTt3dGzahQhvVlSr2N3gt4ljxoFH-UA027vPAdCG6DYFycPhVmkjPfiyeFLbg6S6EvoMda6D1Fxyh87LnXaLMC30MjvYyOd5F8uhka_W2XuE7T1JW9Lgna4nX3__d9dfraxkLPJwJA5Uq6TcCIWinUtN/s72-c/Maestro_poster.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>0</thr:total></entry><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8879518290175104767.post-3687904834059716240</id><published>2023-12-20T20:54:00.016+08:00</published><updated>2023-12-22T13:15:57.240+08:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Film"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="Hollywood"/><title type='text'>Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom</title><content type='html'><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaman_and_the_Lost_Kingdom" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7EH6cpgDQTArZTsz0f89iHszziDjf0MuGjalaPJvAcKraSwpjSnL3oxdAr-7-_QdZnkW_Tg7PW9_U8i4AhEMVM83zf1ulPC6S_8yCqVB_7f7Rj-MKGmYYoif6ssEqhgA-GeVAEU0B3mAEZ1fcDUJLH3YYRE-sJ6n0_VcnYXOHFsm2Ft0-YmBHnICbVIv7/s1600/Aquaman_and_the_Lost_Kingdom_poster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">♣♣♣♣/♣♣♣♣♣</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Dr. Stephen Shin (Randall Park), a marine biologist obsessed with Atlantis, leads an Antarctic expedition for David Kane (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) where they stumble upon the remains of Necrus, the lost 7th kingdom of Atlantis led by a tyrannical ruler who made a vow to come back from the dead. They stumble upon a mythical black trident that links its wielder to the lost civilization and grants supernatural strength, which Kane plans to use to exact vengeance on Aquaman (Jason Momoa). His mining of Orichalcum, a substance that can be weaponized to accelerate global warming, poses a risk to both land and sea-dwellers, prompting Arthur to leave his now busy life as father and king to pursue the enemy. He breaks his brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) out of his desert prison to team up so they can defeat Black Manta, but can he really trust the former king of Atlantis who wants nothing more than his demise for usurping his throne?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">I enjoyed this film more than I should. Considered by many as the DCEU’s final, dying, gasp for breath, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom totally detaches itself from the bigger shared universe and instead dives deeper, literally and figuratively, into Atlantis and beyond to come up with a sequel that actually works. Expanding its worldbuilding by showcasing more of James Wan’s alluring underwater world, this sequel allows its characters to complete their respective arcs and leave us with an enjoyable swan song.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">The conclusion makes the prospect of a threequel more exciting because of Atlantis’ decision to surface. This ending makes you think of all the possible subplots, from politics and diplomacy between those two different worlds of land and sea all the way to Arthur’s journey as a father. The DCEU unfortunately ends here but James Wan can, rest assured, sleep well at night with a grin on his face knowing that his two Aquaman films can both stand out and serve as the bright spots in a rather chaotically shared cinematic universe.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Mera is still in this movie. She appears alongside the rest of the characters but is framed in such a way that makes her look like a secondary character. It is a clever way of distancing the franchise from Amber Heard without totally getting rid of her. She has lines but are far and few between. Her character is still essential in moving the plot forward but, once again, is given the supporting character treatment along with Nicole Kidman’s Atlanna. The main characters here are basically Arthur and Orm.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">Yes, this is a bro movie, and the finished product is way better off because of it. Most of the banter is derived from the unexplored dynamics between the two brothers, giving us more of sibling bonding that was overshadowed by sibling rivalry in the first film. More exposure is given to this subplot because the movie just recycles its villain anyway, what with only one new character introduced who is pivotal to the plot but not central in the grand scheme of things. Orm’s is literally a fish-out-of-water story. A spin off entirely based on him and his misadventures on land eating more cockroaches would be an interesting HBO Max series.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: white; font-family: arial;">As always, it is James Wan’s underwater world that always shines. I have always used Aquaman as a barometer for underwater-themed films that came after it. While The Little Mermaid and Black Panther II came close to giving us their own versions of dreamy underwater kingdoms, it is perhaps only James Cameron through Avatar II (which I haven't seen) who comes close or arguably surpasses what James Wan has accomplished here as far as deep sea worldbuilding is concerned. Bye, Aquaman. It has been a fun journey!</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FV3bqvOHRQo" width="320" youtube-src-id="FV3bqvOHRQo"></iframe></div></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/3687904834059716240/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/aquaman-and-lost-kingdom.html#comment-form' title='1 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/3687904834059716240'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='http://www.blogger.com/feeds/8879518290175104767/posts/default/3687904834059716240'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='http://www.ihcahieh.com/2023/12/aquaman-and-lost-kingdom.html' title='Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom'/><author><name>ihcahieh</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/03679524174484441585</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='32' height='24' src='//blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nYFbB2KFfGvXBwz4G6YUkdAA1l9U-l1XsQvMgsAtzrJZ7ue-wZdvgwwo2BmqBwbsbFS7SwEqTe9DoTHsj4icAvpbysDxqV2u5burN0D9aCj7eKYkTXaEMxFOZkc0aJU/s151/*'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7EH6cpgDQTArZTsz0f89iHszziDjf0MuGjalaPJvAcKraSwpjSnL3oxdAr-7-_QdZnkW_Tg7PW9_U8i4AhEMVM83zf1ulPC6S_8yCqVB_7f7Rj-MKGmYYoif6ssEqhgA-GeVAEU0B3mAEZ1fcDUJLH3YYRE-sJ6n0_VcnYXOHFsm2Ft0-YmBHnICbVIv7/s72-c/Aquaman_and_the_Lost_Kingdom_poster.jpg" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>1</thr:total></entry></feed>

If you would like to create a banner that links to this page (i.e. this validation result), do the following:

Download the "valid Atom 1.0" banner.
Upload the image to your own server. (This step is important. Please do not link directly to the image on this server.)
Add this HTML to your page (change the image src attribute if necessary):

<a href="http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A//www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/posts/default"><img src="valid-atom.png" alt="[Valid Atom 1.0]" title="Validate my Atom 1.0 feed" /></a>

If you would like to create a text link instead, here is the URL you can use:

http://www.feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=http%3A//www.ihcahieh.com/feeds/posts/default

Home · About · News · Docs · Terms