jules pwns jenny

here's a little story about my spring cleaning. deciding to remodel my teeny weeny apartment without spending much (in fact i even gave away stuff), much of the weekend was spent moving furniture around and throwing/giving away stuff. like the CD towers. and the weaker-than-weak stand fan. i'm still weighing on the magazine collection (yes, soon). which then brings us to a few VHS tapes i still keep around. i'm still not done with the cleaning so there's probably a few more lying around somewhere.



so to wit, i kept the blank ones and separated the following:

- Pulp Fiction (solid gold)
- The Usual Suspects (solid gold)
- Striking Distance (back when Horse Face was still a Pony)
- Jenny McCarthy: The Playboy Years (please don't ask)

so i took them all downstairs and left them by the lobby. i had a feeling that the first two would be taken first (this is kinda like the ongoing NFL draft). i mean who would not want those two landmark movies, one resurrecting John Travolta's career and the other putting Bryan Singer on the map? in my case, i already have them in digital format, so no problem. soon, they'll be storing movies inside nanochips in our brain, effectively ending the media storage furniture business.

an hour later, i discovered i was right!!

the Bruce Willis cheap thriller was still there, along with Jenny. poor Jenny.

does this mean nobody wants a piece of Jenny McCarthy? (right, they probably want her sister, Amy)

still a couple of hours later, Striking Distance was gone, and there still lay Ms. McCarthy, lonely and unwanted.

should we cook up a few possible reasons why this happened?

- the people in my apartment have a bit more class and know which side their bread is buttered
- those that bothered to notice the tapes were of the age where the prurient stuff no longer holds any fascination with them
- they already have better copies
- they've seen the damn thing
- they want Amy McCarthy

eventually, the last tape was gone from the foyer, which then leads me to think that i just witnessed a female version of Mr Irrelevant.

actually, we can also explain this phenomenon using the immortal law involving Kevin Bacon.

- Pulp Fiction stars Samuel Jackson as the iconic Jules Winnfield.
- Jackson worked with Kevin Spacey in The Negotiator and A Time to Kill.
- Spacey is the twist villain in The Usual Suspects (if i spoiled it for you, boooohooo; you should've seen this about a million times already).
- Bruce Willis appears in both Pulp Fiction and Striking Distance.
- Jenny McCarthy has not worked with any of the aforementioned actors.
- there is also no proof that she dated any of them in the past.
- neither has her current beau, Jim Carrey, dated or worked with them in the past.


i wonder which of my neighbors picked her tape? hmmmmmmm .....

life is a box of ...

scenes from an afternoon along Park Avenue South ...


my boyhood idol (even more than Captain America) - those who want to tag with me on the opening screening, raise your hands.



Will Eisner lives!!!!



i don't care what you say, this is not to be missed as well.


how come no one told me about this?? that being said - photochopped!!! Jenna doesn't look like that anymore.



i read recently in Time Magazine that Howard Schultz has made a comeback to reclaim former glory. even better, he's trying to keep the Sonics back in Seattle (yes please).



i started doodling and drawing my current apartment, and invariably ended up trying to redesign the Iron Man armor. it kept looking like the Halo soldiers though (the paper below had more scribbles by the time i finished).

in case you're wondering ...

there's a point to these pictures. i thought i'd never see them again. and that's because i thought i lost my camera.

you know that feeling when you lost something valuable - let's keep our discussions on the material side of things, ok? - that you can't relax, your mind keeps drifting to it every 3 seconds, and you keep reliving and replaying the sequence of events leading to its disappearance? i couldn't sleep at all last night, after discovering its not in the places i've looked. i frantically emailed my friend time bandit, who's currently incognito in Ecuador to foment dissent and actually put a hit on that pig Hugo Chavez when he visits Rafael Correa, and there was a slim chance the object of my search may be in the stuff i left him back in Jersey last Friday. but none of that made me calm down, not even two consecutive missions in Hitman: Contracts that left a lot of Chinese gangsters and policemen dead, and sent my mass murderer rating soaring.

and then this morning, half-asleep and gears still turning in my head, the light bulb i was waiting to turn on - turned on.

you know that feeling too, right?

i stood up, walked over to a jacket i forgot i wore last Friday ... and viola.

24 hours of feeling distraught. oboy.


whom the gods would destroy, they first make senile.

who is sarah marshall, and why should i hate her?

i've been seeing this all over town, but as usual, i only get to check it out around 8 weeks later.

i thought it was some kind of horror/suspense thriller - turns out its a romantic comedy. the fake blog is a little hilarious, and it reminds of another douchebag blog whose URL escapes me at the moment.

i don't mean to be shilling for the movie, but hey, its Kristin Bell. duh. you won't see me lining up for tickets, but somehow somewhere it will find its way to my torrent queue.

the naked fist

i'm not sure why, but i was vaguely thinking of Filipino action stars from my childhood, and the first name that comes to mind is Dante Varona. maybe it was because of his infamous San Juanico Bridge jump. or because one of my grade school classmates misspelled one of his movies as "Hari ng Stand" (Stunt). or because i used to refer to my pal Jego as Bathala (from one of Varona's flicks, "Kung Tawagin Sya'y Bathala").

doing a quick YouTube search, i only found this parody:


argh! ba't bitin?? it would have been a hit in the magnitude of those Mark Lapid/saging videos.

i'm not sure which movie that came out of. a quick IMDB search yields:


i'm guessing its the second one ...

i think Ramon Zamora faked his death and became Babalu.


i'm not sure if i ever watched a Varona movie. or a Zamora one. maybe on TV. we always had Fernando Poe Jr. of course. and Lito/Jess Lapid. i just wish i had a crystal ball so i can peek back into my baduy past and laugh at what the heck i was watching back then. anybody remember "Assault Squad Scorpio"? (damn i'm too old for this stuff)


who's your childhood retro action star(s)?

broken ming vase

adios, Anthony Minghella.

have i seen your films? some i have. did i enjoy them? mostly. at least you got a reaction out of me, and that, is what directors aim to do.

The English Patient (1996)
i confess i never saw it. it seemed a snore from the get-go. but maybe one of these days, i just might.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
the complete title was The Mysterious Yearning Secretive Sad Lonely Troubled Confused Loving Musical Gifted Intelligent Beautiful Tender Sensitive Haunted Passionate Talented Mr. Ripley? really? is that where Fiona Apple got her inspiration?

truth to tell, this one got a rise out of me. i started hating Matt Damon after this. i knew i could kill him on sight (or attempt to). only when Trey Parker and Matt Stone deconstructed him for me, did i soften my stance.

Cold Mountain (2003)
saw it. twice. sad but engaging.

Breaking and Entering (2006)
ah. awaiting viewing on my media server.

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (2008)
ok, its still in post-production ...


i also enjoyed several you produced:
The Quiet American (2002)
the last good role of Brendan Fraser (Crash was an ensemble piece).

The Interpreter (2005)
two tightasses (Penn and Kidman) sharing the same screen is a little too much, but its still New York (hello, Pat Kiernan)

Catch a Fire (2006)
Michael Clayton (2007)

the last two are also on queue.

Minghella Moviefest, this weekend.

full stop

i keep seeing posters of this upcoming movie on the subway, and for some reason it keeps catching my eye. oh yes, Reese Witherspoon won't be at the premiere; she'll be busy swapping spit with Jake Gyllen-ho. speaking of whom, did he say anything when Heath Ledger kicked the bucket?


Stop-Loss is a drama about a soldier (Ryan Phillippe) who's about to be sent to his second tour of duty in Iraq. yelling, chest-thumping and crying ensue.

i'm not here to promote the film; am just here to be a smartass. looking at the poster - what were they thinking?

Abbie Cornish (Michelle)

"holy shit! i'm in a movie with my cool boyfriend Ryan Phillippe! hope i don't see Reese at the premiere!"

here's how sick this gets: Abbie Cornish -> swapped spit with Heath Ledger -> swapped spit with Jake Gyllenhaal -> swapped spit with Reese Witherspoon -> swapped spit with Ryan Phillippe -> swapped spit with Abbie Cornish

how's that for six degrees, eh? Kevin Bacon is ROTFL.


Channing Tatum (Steve)

"what the hell am i doing here? i want to go on the new Ricky Martin tour, dammit!"

Ryan Phillippe (Sgt. Brandon King)

"how i got to be a sergeant, i don't know. as long as i look cool. i'm the coolest of them all. you can tell by the way i pout."


Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Tommy)

"if you don't still get it that am the greatest actor of my generation (that's Gen 3rd Rock From The Sun), you need to get out more. did you see Brick? did you notice my fine acting chops? am not a sell-out. Heath Ledger just beat me to the punch! i can do death!"

"oh, by the way, see you in 2009 ... i'm playing Cobra Commander. eat that, losers."

cinema petit

there's an iFilm article about Brad Bird - sorry, Oscar winner Brad Bird (Ratatouille, The Incredibles, The Iron Giant) - bemoaning the death of the cinema experience in a 2005 Pixar lecture. it mentions how he "hopes the theatrical experience won't completely go away", and he is placing the blame on that on the onset of technology that includes iPods and on-demand movie downloads. i could say that this same wave of progress of the last 10 years allowed him to create the wonderful movies he is credited with, no?

Bird yearns for the days of his youth, where people used to line up and see the show, but now "... we have made it so that on opening day you can see a film on a big screen, or on a crappy screen, or a screen that is a bootleg on your computer [inches] big. To me it’s diminishing the show experience."

i agree with Bird for the most part, but i also agree that on-demand technology is very much a given. there's no way to stop that monster. the difference now is how you choose to watch your films. a big reason why people insist on downloading and watching on crappy screens (even though that crappy screen costs $400) is a revolution against the business model - movies and music - and why downloading has been a hot button issue for this new century. they'd rather choose songs they want rather than a full album that's 90% unlistenable. they'd rather download some movie (either waiting a few days after opening) than pay $12 in the theater (that's New York prices, and i am not traveling to the sticks just to save $4).

i have my own principles on the issue. i still prefer a big screen over a small one, and i would prefer to watch in the comforts of my home rather than go outside (the exceptions being, the movie is an event in itself and i don't mind paying $12). then again, there's a bunch of good movies that came out over the last few years, and i can't afford to be in the moviehouse every week (speak for yourself, Mr. Millionaire Bird), hence, i have a huge backlog of uhm, appropriated media. but getting to watch those, long after the box office receipts have been tallied, is still a joy that i liken to watching it for the first time on the big screen. i have gotten rid of that impulse where you MUST NEED to watch it ahead of everybody else. the blogosphere has pretty much taken care of spoilers.

and it rankles me as well, if i am in the cinema, to have the experience ruined for me. i appreciate going to a state of the art theater and be held in awe for two hours. that means manners and appropriate behavior. though i am not sure if it was appropriate in that one time where Time Bandit and i smuggled Dallas Mutant Texas Crispy Wings in to watch The Guru, but i can say that was an enjoyable experience.

going back to technology, despite what Jobs is smoking and pushing, i still am not convinced that i should buy an iPod Touch to watch my movies. i have no time to convert all movies to Apple's proprietary format, and then strain my eyes for the next couple of hours. it would help, sure, because of my commute. which is why short of opening my laptop on the subway (a sure no-no), i am kind of considering this alternative.

i am okay with buying tickets online (its the only way to guarantee seats these days), but that's for the few movies i make time for. i still prefer to watch in my sorry excuse for a home theater. sure, i'll get a big-ass HDTV down the road, and that still bolsters my principles of enjoying the cinema experience wherever, and in whatever form it makes you happy.


3.5 inch screens? bleeeh.

oscar nuggets

Shadowcat wins!



Best Actress, Juno.

ok, not. its Marion Cotillard for La Vie En Rose.