ben and sera with an 'e'

i watched leaving las vegas again last night (last night, which happened to be christmas still, haha). i found the film extremely shocking the first time i saw it. the brutality of alcoholism and sex combined in a single movie - brutal not because of the subject matter, but because of a powerful cast and a very talented director (mike figgis, who also took care of the music and wrote the screenplay) - is almost too much to handle.

i remembered not wanting to watch it again; and leaving las vegas is a bad movie, on the contrary, it shocked me that bad (that would make it an outstanding movie) that to see it again would be to have that same shock i just had. or at least, i thought it would.

it was like requiem for a dream, which i saw some years after i first watched leaving las vegas. the themes were very similar, and also the use of style as a sort-of signifier. these are movies that you admire, you tell your friends about it, but you do not watch it again and again. repetitions are for friends episodes, or for almost famous, or for the silence of the lambs.

and then i watched it again last night, found the dvd while pretend-cleaning. and i realized - leaving las vegas is probably the best love story i had ever seen. forty minutes and i was already crying. i think it was when ben tells sera she cannot ever force him to stop drinking, which would mean she will have to see him die. the movie sometimes borders on camp, with the conversations and the music but it feels so real.

nicolas cage and elizabeth shue star as ben sanderson and sera. ben goes to vegas to drink himself to death; there he finds sera, a hooker who, despite everything, appears to have a passion for living. they meet, they talk instead of having sex, ben moves in with sera, they fall in love. everyone would know that that would never ever end well. and it does not. t think it was not figgis' intention to make his audience cry, but when sera cooks for ben (in an effort to keep him alive), one can't help it but shed tears.

an alcoholic and a hooker. disregarding the definition of tragedy, what could be more tragic?

jird

pasky called it barugan, i guess that's the proper word for it. alanah, glenn, kathryn, pasky and i had our annual (it began last year so it is annual, fyi) christmas party at kyusinero, this place where alanah and i used to drink almost every night before and where pasky saw me barf. details details.

it was like the ujp tambayan again: we were loud and politically incorrect and, you got it, judgmental, insensitive and un-judiel nieva-ish. i received great great gifts. sorry for just the books guys. promise to get you better gifts next time.

so sad that i had to leave early; why do we have to grow up! why are some things forced on us! why are we supposed to be responsible! i hope the next jird thing happens tomorrow because i miss my friends so much. and you steph. we terribly miss you. bumalik ka na! you made us all cry (inside, haha). thank you beks. photos here.

float face up

the death of memory is about the past as limbo - dull and white - and making prisoners of its subjects. the keeper guards time, memory, and the four people in misericordia - each with terrible memories they cannot bring themselves to face. the play develops on this paradox and asks us how memories can both be abstract and concrete, distant but engulfing.

the scattered yet coherent violences in the play serve as reminders of the destructive powers of memory left to itself, memory allowed to devour the human instead of human action over it. the situation appears helpless at first. one could not help but think of camus' man - shouting and longing for sound in a world that could only answer in silence.

and then one character realizes that through will and strength - violence against violence - maybe the keeper can be put to rest. by summoning memories maybe they can be overcome. and even when it ends with another victim, another memory, the human still triumphs over the irrationality of the world, imagined or not. the keeper, and she may have a thousand rebirths, can always be conquered and killed.

i, too, can

elizabeth: the golden age would be a terrible film if one is to compare it with elizabeth. i don't want to. compare. yeah, maybe i will, but i will have to remind you that i like the golden age, despite what almost every critic out there is saying. michiko kakutani once derided (derided!!) toni morrison's paradise. toni morrison: winner of the nobel prize, author of beloved - possibly the best book of the century (possibly, possibly). paradise was inferior, but loved toni still. why am i writing about books?

i liked the golden age because i will always like every cate blanchett film. an error in personality, i guess. what can i do, i like her. i am myself. elizabeth was terrifying in its violence, seriously did not expect that much violence in a movie about a queen (am i sexist? tell me). the golden age is visually compelling. and it had its moments too. samantha morton did an amazing job (the accent! the accent!) and her beheading scene was quite marvelous.

i believe people when they say one shouldn't rate every film as if they were made by tarkovsky. not every film is la règle du jeu. so in this case, a shekhar kapur film is not always a shekhar kapur film. not that kapur is an auteur or anything, but then he made elizabeth. don't judge me, writing at 1 am, need sleep.

no money, still spending

latest purchase: harold bloom's shakespeare: the invention of the human. am not required to read it (and i don't think i will be able to finish reading all of it for next saturday's class). *sigh, the things we do. had dinner with alanah the same night i bought the book, her reaction was a big eeww when she saw the harold bloom. haha, i get it. the best jacques derrida quote i know is this: to pretend, i actually do the thing. i have therefore only pretended to pretend.

also have to pay for a good scent from a strange mountain, ordered a signed hardbound copy of the book two months ago. the bookstore informed me earlier today that the book had arrived.

and then i look at all my books and wonder how i had spent so much and have so little. are we still talking books here?

loser, baby

i need to clean my room; last night - technically it was this morning, but i love the sound of coming home at night - i think i saw roaches. it might be the beer, but i only had two, so the thing i saw may really be roaches. there were two, i think. there's paper everywhere - i've only read less than half of what i am supposed to. today is a school holiday, that's my excuse for not reading. next saturday i'll think of another.

katt and lawrence went to eastwood last night. hmm, ok i won't say it, won't say anything. katt will for sure, in the future, keep reminding me of that night when she went to eastwood all the way from makati. peace, pasky. be happy. yihee, you have a thing today. *inggit. (where's the butler book, think i lost it).

the office christmas party's tomorrow. no white stuff to wear yet. i'll go out later, maybe later. tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. and oh, christmas - i checked the mail earlier and there's one for me, yey! it's from my dentist. she sent me a card.

save me

so i looked (i think i chose to) at old pictures of jird and sinag, friends that i terribly terribly miss (thanks to my good friend katt's multiply - she has this album with different photos from different times, naks, different times). i remember hating school so much during my senior year; wished i were working, hoped that that day where i'd wear the sablay would come, and come fast.

i guess it did. it came fast. now i miss everything; i actually feel that school has become an excuse for spending time with my friends. ok stop already, you hate melodrama remember. and you usually don't use the second person whatever when writing. save me, erm, aimee mann, i guess.

the deferred

i suspect the kingdom is a great movie, never mind cultural studies or whatever you want to call it - pc, sensitivity, i don't know. i liked the ending, liked it so much. yeah, cliche, but then again this is not a film by fellini so quit it.

almost fell asleep in the middle of the movie though, and i don't sleep in cinemas. not the movie's fault, it's just i haven't slept in a very long time - slept of course meaning slept for not less than seven hours each night. been working twelve hours for the past two weeks - twelve's the minimun. sometimes there are extensions, self-imposed. you know my reasons.

i should have slept all weekend but then there are readings to be, yeah, read. i am still loving school, thank you very much. (notice the use of still before loving; in anticipation of future complainings and what-have-yous). for my drama class i read palutus' miles gloriosus, aristotle's poetics, some writer's the death of tragedy, and edward albee's the goat or who is sylvia.

not an albee fan, not a fan of drama, actually. knew albee only from who's afraid of virginia woolf, the film, and that was more mike nichols/elizabeth taylor than edward albee. in the goat or who is sylvia, a man falls in love with a, right, a goat. the title says (notes toward a definition of tragedy). tragedy alright.

at least now i have a venue where i can talk about genre and postcolonial thought and maybe deconstruction without boring people. maybe i do bore people. the week after next it's shakespeare.

lambs leading lions

as we were leaving the movie theater, the topic was those little things meryl streep did which make her meryl streep (and that was the worst sentence ever written).

the point was: acting has had a sort of template, hell, acting has become such a cliche. put several people onscreen and they'll imitate some performance by some previous actor. now here's the part where i rave, and this is a repetition of what others have said before. those tiny gestures by meryl were so amazing we could only count the ones we spotted - one leg scratching the other, the hand checking the armpit.

and lions for lambs was great by the way; what's particularly good about it is that the conversations are not dialogues but are in fact monologues - the characters are speaking their minds; they seem to be conversing with the other characters but they are more concerned with what they have to say that with what they are hearing. did that make sense? after watching a film full of articulate people i should have learned something.

before we watched the movie we all had this idea we were watching it for meryl streep. and as with all her other movies, the disappointment never came.

to pretend, i actually

so i finished a semester (is it technically a semester? is it called a semester?) of violin lessons, despite, well, everything. teacher josh tells me it takes at least seventeen years for one to perfect whatever is supposed to be perfected when one plays the violin. so that's sixteen years, seven months more for me. someone shut me up.

not that big a fan of jewel but what's trivial is true; yeah simple, whatever.