Tuesday, February 10, 2009

DVDx


Last month, I went through a personal battle and in an effort to ward off emotional demons the economy way, I bought a pirated 54-in-1 Brad Pitt movie collection in Blu-ray (just 17 full movies, actually) from one of the 2nd floor stalls of Traveler's Inn located in the notoriously perilous Carbon. **After seeing most of the movies in it (I refuse to watch Legends of the Fall), I swapped it with Sher Butter's 2009 Hot New Movies collection. I have about seen more movies than the previous two years combined. To prove that this is not an exaggeration, I will give you a list of the movies I've watched in less than three weeks' time: Contact, Interview with the Vampire, Spy Game, Snatch, Babel, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Ocean's 12, Ocean's 13, The Devil's Own, Se7en, The Fight Club, 24:Redemption, Eagle Eye, Vicky Christina Barcelona, Wanted, Juno, Dan in Real Life, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Taken, and Vantage Point. For somebody who is not a movie-goer, I say these are a lot.

While some of these were watched with only half the attention because the other half was focused on either nail cleaning or brow plucking, most were watched with an expression conveying enjoyment, and some even, with creased eyebrows and mouth ajar associated with total involvement and intense concentration. And where there's attention and/or concentration, there's also realization and/or observation, profound or not. I am sharing mine. Let me warn you though; they belong to the second category mentioned.


  • I am adding Brad Pitt to my list of deities. I used to be in the opinion that he's all good looks and no substance. I was so wrong.

  • Kevin Spacey has made it to my list of Creepiest Actors. So far, it's just him and Anthony Hopkins on that list.

  • The Fight Club and Babel are really good movies. Go watch them if you haven't yet.

  • Snatch is Pulp Fiction-ish. Benicio Del Toro is John Travolta and Brad Pitt is Bruce Willis. Pulp Fiction is, in my opinion, the better movie.

  • Benicio Del Toro looks a bit like Kevin Roy of Razorback. Here's a picture. This was taken by Kid A during the Villains Tour concert last Dec 12.

  • In Spy Game, a severely beaten Brad Pitt looked like Marc Abaya, former frontman of Sandwich and now of Kjwan.

  • I developed a certain respect for Shia LaBeouf having had seen Eagle Eye. Still, I am not watching Transformers.

  • Juno is a cool, cool movie with a great soundtrack. I'm pretty sure my parents, especially me ma (Snatch's Mickey), would react violently to it, though.

  • I am so looking forward to the new season of 24. Kiefer Sutherland is god. He is my *John Clark of the Clancy novels.

  • Lastly, I am still undecided as to whether Christian Bale is good-looking or not.

**I would have preferred traveling every weekend but that would have completely depleted my meager savings.

*I originally wrote Jack Ryan. Then I realized I like Mr. Clark better.

Toilet



I thought I was a fool for no one
But oh, baby, I'm a fool for you

Muse, "Supermassive Black Hole"



This is a formal admission. I am a Twilight-er.

I go against the flow most of the time. I lose interest on something that's liked by the major population. Considering the hype surrounding Stephenie Meyer's books and the Twilight movie, my normal reaction was to be uninterested. I refused to read the books even though my sister's been bugging me to death into doing so. I did not have plans of watching the movie in the big screen either, despite my officemates' persistent invitations.

But fate has it's ways. My landlady, who's in her early sixties, has one of those 36-in-1 movie collection, which was, of course, pirated. One Sunday last December, she knocked on my door and said "Jo, kabalo ka mu-operate aning DVD player? Gusto mi mutan-aw ni tatay nimo ug Twilight unya lahi man ang mu-salida." Oh, ok. So even THEY know Twilight. I assisted them and with time to kill, I decided to watch the movie along with them just to see what the fuss is all about. The copy was bad, the color was awful, and I sometimes couldn't understand what the characters were saying because my landlady would, every now and then, give a recap of the previous scene. With that being said, I don't know why I stayed until it was time for me to start preparing fpr work. It's maybe because I was busy deciding whether Rob Pattinson was good looking or not, or, it could be because I was finding it hard to understand why Kirsten Stewart got picked for the role and so I got occupied with convincing myself that surely, there must be something to her. Nevertheless, I found myself enjoying the movie and getting "kilig". Rob looked more handsome by the minute and I decided that, yes, Kirsten was fit for the role. By the time I heard Supermassive Black Hole during the scene where the vampires played baseball, I was already a dead fish.

So here I am, done reading all five e-books (including Midnight Sun--thank goodness for e-books!) and not getting enough of the soundtrack. My favorites are Collective Soul's Tremble for my Beloved and Blue Foundation's Eyes on Fire, aside from Muse's SBH. I've seen the movie quite a few times already (not once in the big screen, hehe) and I'm a sucker for anything Twilight. I am swimming with the current this time but, hey, what can I say? I'm just a girl and that's about everything you're gonna get.

***Toilet is how we refer to Twilight at the office. By the way, my landlady was sleepy halfway through the movie. Before she entered her room, she said "Boring man na uy. Wala may action!" I wondered what "action" she wanted to see.