XXVI

off the ledge

yes, yes, i know, this has been beaten to death ad nausea um. like anything i write here will be appreciated as an honest tip of the hat to someone we barely know of, much less know. 48 hours is already an eternity in the blogosphere/internet time, and by next week, it will be back to Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse and all that crap. by the way, i'm not alone in my wish that either of those two mentioned should have passed on instead to the Great Beyond.

but when i read things like these, it does make my skin crawl. profiteering is the norm and theme in these times. not to stay on the high horse, but my only sin was to ask "did they finish filming The Dark Knight?", selfish and geeky as it is. that does not compare to profiteering.

then we have things like this, where it kinda reeks of ... i don't know, mayabang at feeling? that they rubbed elbows with him, and we didn't? that we're just spectators and they're not? that they had the privilege of seeing him for the last time, and we're just dumb schmucks who just read it on CNN? gee. i could have gone to Broome Street and be an usisero and take a bunch of pics to share on the Web, but ehhhh ....

so when was the last time i saw Heath Ledger? well, that would be in a Park Slope cinema in 2006. like i noted, i didn't actually find his apartment.

whatever your demons were, hope you're at peace. i'll see you this summer. and don't worry, i'll keep watching A Knight's Tale till i grow old with my kids.

zzzz .... wha -? it's 2008 already?

wise man East

finally snagging a copy of Letters from Iwo Jima last weekend, i resolved to watch the great Clint Eastwood's two-barreled 2006 offering back to back. Flags of Our Fathers was sitting on my shelf for awhile now, gathering a bit of dust and begging to be watched. my pal time bandit saw it and went 'b-o-o-r-i-n-g.' i guess he expected another attempt to save Ryan's privates.

we all know about Saving Private Ryan and some elements are clearly recycled for this film (the visceral and bloody beach invasion, old men waxing poetic and looking back at the past, Barry Pepper), but they demand to be. plus with Steven Spielberg executive-producing - well, helloooo. that being said, its fun discovering the ensemble cast and what they can do - i picked out quite a few of them without reading the IMDB entry or the DVD insert - there's Robert "T1000" Patrick, Neal "Tin Man" McDonough, Ryan "I'll Always Look 19" Philippe, of course Barry "Blessed be the Lord, My Strength, Which Teacheth My Hands to War, and My Fingers to Fight" Pepper, and even poor Paul "I Don't Care About The Fast and the Furious 3, I Am Being Directed by Clint Eastwood, Dammit" Walker.

But the bulk of the dramatics go to Adam Beach, who's been here before with Nicolas Cage (Windtalkers), playing an(other) Indian whose unease in being labeled a hero was inversely proportional to his comfort in playing second fiddle to the white man, at least until showbiz and politics cross his moral lines, and he totally loses it. of the two other survivors of the second team that plants that flag as depicted in that immortalized Joe Rosenthal photograph, only Ryan Philippe's character (and author of the book which the film is based on) is grounded enough, despite being swept by the winds of history. but that's a valuable lesson in keeping your head about you and still feeling the earth underneath your feet.


on the other side of the coin, the Japanese point of view of that same conflict is explored in Letters from Iwo Jima. Ken Watanabe, the comeback artist of the last five years, agonizes with both pride and sadness as General Tadimichi Kuribayashi, the military tactician tasked to defend the chunk of volcanic rock before the Americans totally overrun Japan. Kuribayashi's injection of humanity in the face of war runs contrary to what made the Japanese military machine what it was then - brash, cold and calculating. this is a much better use of Watanabe's talents than in Memoirs of a Geisha. the young private Saigo (played by the revelatory Kazunari Ninomiya - a boybander! where's Wowie Cruz?) also presents a human face to what we would always assume would be the cruel army who occupied most of Asia for awhile and committed lots of atrocities. war brings out the best and the worst in anyone involved in it, and thankfully, both films chose to focus on the best parts.

it was really cool to watch these back to back, though Eastwood never cheats by recycling footage as some might do, and Iwo Jima is clearly superior to Flags. the clear winner here is writer/director Paul Haggis, who contributed much to both scripts and is clearly on a roll after his Crash victory.

here we go again

is it indicative of numbness and apathy that when you hear about this, your instinctive reaction, aside from the jolt of concern for anybody you know in the immediate vicinity, is ... a big yawn ... and then you go back to surfing the internet?

all i got for Black Friday was ...

... cheap dvds from a one day members' sale at Borders (sorry ha, wala akong $$$ for HDTV or even a PS3).

the best things about these, clockwise from the upper left are: Jenna Fischer, Maria Bello, Katherine Heigl and ... wait - there's no hot chick in Hot Fuzz. dammit!

time to hunt

wish this was the banned version. but it'll be enough to exercise the homicidal instincts festering inside you when idiots put you through the grinder for the last couple of months. it'll be easy to imagine killing said idiots in this game.


happy halloween.

oink is dead

long live free music!

this article kind of sums up how i feel.

since the early days of recording tapes off FM radio stations, using up my college allowance to buy cassettes, discovering CDs (and pirated ones), discovering Napster and MP3s, a flirtation with MiniDiscs, to the current fall of the music industry expressed through two iPods (and maybe more), i barely download anymore, much less buy CDs. i guess am stuck with the music i grew up with, but being around with a younger set does leave you sometimes with cases of the infamous 'Last Song Syndrome' ("you can stand under my umbrella ... ella ... ella ... ella").

it is interesting to see what business model comes out of this crash, if Rick Rubin and other progressives make the suits see the light. in the meantime, you have to excuse me, because i gotta go babysit my file copying from my Netgear SAN drives to a newer Western Digital MyBook before the former dies on me again. building that huge music collection ain't easy, you know.

axiom of the month

those who can't play, end up in the E.R.




corollary: spending time in the E.R. opens a can of worms.

enjoy life, however short it may be, but try to prolong yours as much as you can.

requiescat in pace. 9/11. never forget.