Can you tell me, can you tell me what went wrong?
Guess I should have seen it coming all along
Gotta fight it, I gotta be strong
I gotta do something, can’t let it drag on and on …

Of all the people
Of all the people to let me down
Of all the people
Of all the people…why now?

- Dinosaur Jr, Said The People

***

* Finally, Skins Series 4 started Jan 28. First ep was Thomas. Frankly, I don’t give a shit — except that he cheated. Ugh.

* Of all the people, Naomi, why?!

* Episode 2 was Emily. Great acting, I’m totally sold on Kathryn Prescott and Lily Loveless. Totally loved the episode (except for the whole *cheating* thing again), but absolutely hated what happened. I also liked that scene in the football field with the cross-processed filter thing on again. Much <3. BTW, props for the awesome music again.

Kapag sinabi ko sa iyo na ika’y minamahal
Sana’y maunawaan mo na ako’y isang mortal
At di ko kayang abutin ang mga bituin at buwan
O di kaya ay sisirin perlas ng karagatan

Kapag sinabi ko sa iyo na ika’y iniibig
Sana’y maunawaan mo na ako’y taga-daigdig
Kagaya ng karamihan, karaniwang karanasan
Daladala kahit saan, pang-araw-araw na pasan

Ako’y hindi romantiko, sa iyo’y di ko matitiyak
Na pag ako’y kapiling mo kailanma’y di ka iiyak
Ang magandang hinaharap sikapin nating maabot
Ngunit kung di pa maganap, sana’y huwag mong ikalungkot

Kapag sinabi ko sa iyo na ika’y sinisinta
Sana’y yakapin mo akong bukas ang iyong mga mata
Ang kayamanan kong dala ay pandama’t kamalayan
Na natutunan sa iba na nabighani sa bayan

Halina’t ating pandayin isang malayang daigdig
Upang doon payabungin isang malayang pag-ibig
Kapag sinabi ko sa iyo na ika’y sinusuyo
Sana’y ibigin mo ako, kasama ang aking mundo

[ Gary Granada ~ Kapag Sinabi Ko Sa Iyo ]

Autumn’s here! It’s really frakking here and I finally got the time and the energy and the urge to drag my lazy ass out of my very comfy room to go walk around the ‘hood and finally get that chance to stop and smell the flowers, err, in this case, see the crunchy yellow leaves.

I also finally managed to watch 500 Days of Summer and got to see what the fuss is all about. Props for the awesome awesome writing. It was soooo real and it hits you real deep. And it comes with an awesome OST too.

Favorite exchange of the movie:

Summer: I woke up one morning and I just knew.
Tom: Knew what?
Summer: What I was never sure of with you.

You can fight the fire that’s in your head
Lay it down, the hour has come to end
Walk around without her just for a bit
Looking back upon the way things had been

Man, I’ve been wasting so much time
Walking the same street every night
Don’t you think maybe it’s about time?

You can light the fire that’s in your head
Put it off, tomorrow will come instead
We don’t watch the tower that tells us when
Pull the wicked flower out from its bed

Man’s been wasting so much time
Sending the children out to fight
Don’t you think maybe it’s about time?

- The Dodos | Walking

—

Chanced upon the song above while watching Skins Series 3 – a teen TV series about a group of Bristol kids that makes “Gossip Girl” a Parents Television Council gold star winner. Skins3 still offers the fluff (but not the icky kind), and the grit, and the unusual in-your-face feel to the episodes that I’ve liked since I watched Series 1. I particularly like the coloring (something looking vaguely like cross-processing and lomo~ing but I dunno) that they do on some of the episodes, particulary the Effy jumping into the lake scene and the Emily and Naomi biking into the woods one, as well.

“When you first arrive in a new city, nothing makes sense. Everythings unknown, virgin… After you’ve lived here, walked these streets, you’ll know them inside out. You’ll know these people. Once you’ve lived here, crossed this street 10, 20, 1000 times… it’ll belong to you because you’ve lived there. That was about to happen to me, but I didn’t know it yet.”

L’auberge espagnole (literally The Spanish Inn or The Spanish Apartment) is a 2002 French film directed and written by Cédric Klapisch. It is about Xavier, an Economics graduate student studying for a year in Barcelona, Spain as part of the Erasmus programme, where he encounters and learns from a group of students who hail from all over Western Europe. The story follows him as he decides to go to Barcelona and leave his girlfriend, Martine (Audrey Tautou), behind in Paris.

There are a lot of happenings in the story, not only those that are in direct connection to Xavier (like his story with the “not cool” French couple that he met on the flight), but also to the other occupants of the flat. Wendy, the English girl, probably had the best if not the most lengthy story other than Isabelle, the Belgian.

Some of the memorable lines that I managed to store inside my very volatile memory space are:

“I told you that because I knew it would hurt you. I know you loved me. But sometimes, we need to hit where it’s going to hurt.” - Martine, referring to what she said (“but you never loved me, because you’re not able to love anyone”) to Xavier when they broke up.

“All this complicated path, to arrive here today, without her,” - Xavier, after seeing Martine for the last time.

“I found myself in the streets of Paris where no Parisian go. I was a stranger among strangers, “ - Xavier, end sequence.

Title: Departures aka Okuribito
Genre: Drama
Director: Takita Yōjirō

Okuribito (Departures) follows the story of failed orchestra cellist Kobayashi Daigo who is forced to give up his 18-million JPY cello and move back to his hometown in Yamagata-ken. His wife Mika moves with him to the countryside to start their lives anew. While searching for a new job, he spots a newspaper ad from a “NK Agency” that says “Assisting Departures”. Mistaking this for a travel agency, Daigo goes for the job interview and finds out that the job is not really for a tour-guide type but instead is for assisting the “departed” (a.k.a. dead, gone, deceased, someone who will be pushing up daisies in the next collective amount of time). This is where the title of the film comes in — okuribito is roughly translated as the “departed’s assistant”.

Anyhoo, everyone around him, including his wife, hates this new job and the idea of handling corpses all day. Okay, we all get the Ick Factor there. But somehow, each and every death that Daigo handles for his job helps him discover how important life really and why people do what they do even if they will end up dead anyway.

What I liked about this movie

– Drama and humor seamlessly integrated in the movie. Each and every sequence is wonderfully transitioned into the next one. Awesome.

– Ironies of 運命 (fate) and destiny and all that jazz. Lots of symbolism here and there. I particularly like the part where it came full circle — from Daigo taking care of several dead people in front of those dead people’s families, he ends up taking care of his newly-deceased estranged father.

– Awesome pacing. I didn’t get bored. Must help, though, that I can sort of understand what they were saying and was not entirely reliant on the subs.

– Great soundtrack. Tsk :)

– It’s a soul-cleansing experience. ‘Nuff said.

Eliza Dushku (Faith of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is Echo, a member of a group of people known as “Actives” or “Dolls”. These Dolls are persons whose personalities and general existence in the real (read: outside) world had been wiped clean. Think tabula rasa — clean slate. It is done (the tabula rasa thing) so Echo and the rest of the gang can be imprinted with any number of new personalities — including memory, muscle memory, skills, language, etc for difference assignments.  I think I’ve seen this somewhere, maybe in The Matrix, where you can get your ninja skills by having the technician program it on your brain.

Anyhoo, after the Dolls are programmed, they are sent out for particular jobs — crimes, fantasies, police work, etc. On engagements, the Actives are monitored by Handlers (sort of like Watchers from BTVS).  When they are not in an assignment, the Dolls are mind-wiped into the tabula rasa state and they live in a hidden facility named, (what else) “The Dollhouse”.

The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

————–

Dollhouse is created by BTVS and Angel creator Joss Whedon under Mutant Enemy Productions.

…and by that, I don’t mean the real marathon. I’m talking about movies, man. Eversince I finally completed my mini home theater*, I’ve been watching a lot of movies (aside from the host of TV shows that I still have to watch) coz I felt like I’ve been missing out on, well, movies in general.

Okay, the following items (in no particular order, coz I don’t really remember the order I saw them) are those that I’ve watched since Suzie Derkins (my CPU) and Kim Samsung (the monitor) came into being:

High Fidelity

This movie’s about a guy — a record-store owner, who’s also a compulsive list-maker. Throughout the movie he recounts his top five break-ups, including one that is ongoing. John Cusack plays Rob the record-store owner with Jack Black ocassionally stealing the show as his employee. Catherine Zeta-Jones is also there somewhere. The tagline (according to IMDB) is “a comedy about fear of commitment, hating your job, falling in love and other pop favorites”. Despite the word “comedy” plastered in there, this movie was quite the trigger for an intense emotikon session (private, of course =))).

Anyhoo, this movie is alright. It also doesn’t hurt that it has an awesome soundtrack — of course it would have to be awesome, a movie with music geeks wouldn’t be complete without an awesome soundtrack.

Wall-E

Well, sorry, I really can’t wait for December (yes, that long) so I just scourged over the web for a copy. It’s been eons already since this Pixar film was shown in other parts of the world and it’s taking, like, forever to get here. Booo!

What did I get from the movie?

1. Last-dialog-syndrome. I’ve been blurting out “Eeeevvuh” and “Wall-Eeeee” in what could be passable as a robotic voice since that movie.

2. My sound card’s mic input is already making my voice sound like Wall-E. Drat.

3. A few minutes nap while watching the movie. Yes, I was half-asleep while watching Wall-E. Maybe because it was really late (around 330AM) or maybe I just got bored with all the “Eeeevuh” and “Wall-Eeeee” dialogs.

4. Aaaackk! All the fat people in space just lie around with screens in front of their eyes and just let the machines take care of their needs. I’m suddenly very very afraid, really afraid. I lie around all the time and I’ve made couch-potato~ing look like an art but I don’t wanna get bloated like that!

The Cinderalla Stories

[t] Hey napanood mo na ba yung A Cinderella Story?
[i] Ha? Yan ba yung may sumasayaw?
[t] Lahat naman ng teeny-bopper movies may sumasayaw!
[t] (Pause)
[t] Omigod, napanood mo rin yung “Another Cinderella Story”?
[t] Wahaha, yun may “Mary Santiagoooo”?
[i] Ahahahahahaha. Oo. Inferness ang galing niya magsayaw ha — yung Mary.
[t] Favorite ko yung nasa likod ng one way glass-mirror si vavae at parang mirror-image (malamang) yung steps nila ni lalake.
[i] Ay oo.
[t] “What’s your name?” “My name’s Joey Parker!” hahaha. Potek bakit ba alam ko yan?!
[i] Alam mo pa ang lines wahahahaha.
[t] Eh pero hindi yun yung tinatanong ko sa yo, tinatanong ko yung A Cinderella Story.
[t] Chad Michael Murray saka Hilary Duff nubuzz.
[i] Wahahaha.

Moral of the Story: Sadyang napakarami nang Cinderella stories sa panahong ito. Sheesh.

The Prince and Me : Trilogy

Yep, trilogy siya. Akalain mo yun? I remember watching the first one. It starred Luke Mably and Julia Stiles. Paige Morgan (Stiles) is a local farmer’s daughter attending Wisconsin University who falls for weird Danish exchange student Edvard (“Eddie”). Later on she discovers that he’s actually the crown prince of Denmark.

The second installment seemed to be released only in Australia and still had Luke Mably in its cast as the Prince but Paige Morgan is, well, not Paige Morgan anymore (or rather, Paige Morgan is not Julia Stiles anymore). It was about the royal wedding, I think. The third one was about the honeymoon in some remote European country covered in snow and ice. I suddenly couldn’t wait for snowboarding season to start.

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(Uh oh, I can’t continue this no more coz I got a lot of stuff to code and I’m already losing my head so, I’m just gonna list those movies that I’ve watched …)

→21 : Jim Sturgess+ Kate Bosworth+ Math = quite a viewing pleasure. Yeah, I know, nerd na kung nerd.

→Wanted: (for the nth time). One word = AWESOME!

→College: Three high school seniors visit a university and pretend to be college students.

→Garden State: Zach Braff (JD from Scrubs) plays a depressed brooding guy who goes back home because his mother died. He meets Manic Pixie Dream Girl Natalie Portman in a sort of hospital (forgot what kind coz I wasn’t really paying attention). And well, ya know, typical stuff happens. Guy meets girl, girl makes an impression and helps guy get out of his emo whatever shit, and they sort of live happily ever after. I dunno why but this movie didn’t connect to me better than Elizabethtown did.

→Don’t Mess With The Zohan: I’m 1/4-way into the movie.

… and others. I forgot about the rest. Might continue this later when I get home.

*** *** ***

*Mini Home Theater Specs:

[x] 22″ Samsung 2253BW widescreen monitor. Specs
[x] Logicool X-240 2.1 stereo speaker set. Specs
[x] Logicool wireless mouse and keyboard.
[x] A Frankenstein (read: assembled) CPU with the following innards:
[x.a] Gigabyte GA-G33-DS3R motherboard .Specs
[x.b] Video card (on board — for the meantime).
[x.c] Intel Core^TM Extreme Quad-Core.
[x.d] 4GB DDR-800 RAM.
[x.e] 500GB HDD (wahahaha — for now).
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