Finally, the cheese was adjacent to the bread

Starbucks®’s Christmas Turkey Chicken on Cranberry Bread

THANKFULLY THIS time, all the unmitigated disaster was confined to the big screen.  And not in my fingers.

Sometimes, I live in my own world where I fancy myself known by some that when I show up at a café, I can throw comments like, “The usual please,” and trust that the wait staff would scurry and know exactly what to do.  That to me is one of those delusions that I create to capture my life in celluloid in my head.  I’ve always loved scenes where the protagonist says, “The usual.”  It doesn’t matter if it’s at the corner diner, a fancy café, or a hotdog stand in New York.  Now, as to who shall play me in a big-budget biopic, I’d cast none other than the Edward Norton to play me! I tell you, I’m delusional.  The wide range of roles he has played, from Primal Fear, American History X (my fave), Fight Club, all the way to Keeping the Faith (where he was a priest!) have prepared him to tackle the many personalities that make me up.  Besides, nobody can brood like he does!

Now back to my original point.  I’ve been frequenting the Starbucks cinema outlet at Town that it has become one of the locales of the movie in my mind.  While I think a couple of the staff already know me – based on the nameplate, Eden, and there’s this guy – I guess I still need a couple more visits before I could whip out my “The usual” line enough to demand their full service.  I think I’m getting there, because at this point, they already remember me as the “Hungarian-Sausage-with-Egg-and-Cheese-on-Ciabatta” guy.

On the night of the cataclysmic event that was “2012,” when Eden and the other guy ushered me to the counter, they beamed and said, “Hungarian sausage?  Sir, try nyo naman our Christmas sandwiches.”  Then they went on to rattle the scrumptious-ness of each of the three holiday featured creations.  The guy was very confident in presenting to me one particular sandwich enough to comment that it would make me forget all about my Hungarian Sausage fave.  I took him up on his offer and let the judgment happen in the darkness of Cinema 1 as the Earth’s crust got displaced, volcanoes snapped out of dormancy, tsunamis engulfed land masses, and a booming authoritative voice commanded in a thick Russian accent, “Engine…  Sta-a-a-rt.”

Starbucks®’s Christmas Turkey Chicken on Cranberry Bread lived up to the basic culinary science governing the proper assembly of a sandwich.  A slice of roasted turkey sat on top of chunks of grilled chicken generously dressed with a cranberry spread made out of mayonnaise, cranberry jam and raspberry jam.  Between the chicken and the cranberry bread was a slice of processed cheese.  Where was the science in something so simple?  In the way the cheese – being positioned adjacent to the bread – created a moisture barrier against the cranberry spread.

Check out the ingredients list. Scrumptious!!!

Did I love it as much as the guy purported it was going to be?  As I have said, my fingers didn’t have to handle any mess – even in the dark.

 

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Move fast kid, the end is near!

I paid 180 pesos for a guaranteed seat to watch "2012"... and get a major eyeball exercise!

AMERICAN DISASTER movies do not disappoint.  Please let me make that clear.  I mean, the very moment Danny Glover appeared on the big screen as the president of the United States of America, I knew exactly what was about to happen within the movie’s two-hour-and-forty-five-minute run time – a cataclysmic event.  Not that it was any surprise given all the hype about “2012,” but I could’ve placed a bet with anybody that up to this one, the US president would be black.  But unlike when Morgan Freeman was president, the apocalypse wasn’t about to come by way of a comet in a direct collision path with the Earth.

2012 was based by disaster movie director Roland Emmerich on the Mayan prediction that the planets would align on the 21^st of December 2012, bringing forth the disastrous movement of the earth’s crust – along with it volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis – and the ultimate shifting of the poles.  How was six billion people going to survive this?

With a premise that historical – at least at the way it sounds, tracing back to the Mayans – I had high expectations about how the story would be.  But sadly, all the story was lumped into the first few minutes, beginning at a discovery at 11,000 feet underground at a copper mine in India in 2009, to subsequent events and top secret efforts in 2010, 2011, all the way to 2012.  That’s when the year appeared as a title card on the screen.  It was downhill from there.

With paper-thin screenplay, the movie undoubtedly was just a very egotistical display of Emmerich’s directorial prowess – at using special effects.  Clearly, 2012’s ground-breaking eye-popping special effects have put to shame his previous efforts on “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Godzilla,” and “Independence Day.”  But with all those effects and attention to details, 2012 is simply Noah’s Ark for this day and age.  Only, animals were airlifted this time.  And the filthy rich could pay for seats in the ark for the staggering price of one billion euros – not dollars! – each.  Faith in God and a clear conscience wouldn’t get you a ticket to ride.

Fortunately, the movie didn’t employ the top actors.  Their lines, blocking and projections would be stolen anyway by all the catastrophic scenes.  Honestly, not one of the movie’s efforts to wring my lachrymal glands dry worked.  How could I be moved when I couldn’t get past why even after all those thousands-meters-high tidal waves and sinking land mass – all cellphones still worked!  Clearly that was fiction.  A couple of months back, we sustained a month’s rainfall in six hours… and most cellular communications shut down.

But I got to thinking, what if Meryl Streep were in it?  But what role would she play?  Certainly not Amanda Peet’s, it’s of a young mom.  Thandie Newton’s?  Too thin – and I’m not referring to her frame.  Oh, she could play the president of the United States.  After all, Hollywood had already succeeded in conditioning the mind of the people that it was high time for a black president.  They could divert their efforts now to putting a woman in the White House.

Quick, run a query on disaster urban legends, hire Roland Emmerich, and cast Meryl Streep as president!

 

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Julie & Julia and eNTeNG

I KNEW I enjoyed “Julie & Julia” tremendously the very moment I started throwing out “bon appétit” before meals – even when I’m eating all by myself.  I’ve dispensed with my review of the movie.  But I realize that I’ve left out my personal notes about it.

So here’s a list of things that struck me about “Julie & Julia,” and how they relate to me.

  1.  Boeuf Bourguignon.  Apart from the ampersand in the title that seems to act as the tie that binds the two women together, this dish – bouef bourguignon – deserves supporting non-actor credits.  It’s the dish that Julie’s mom prepared when her dad’s boss dropped by for dinner when she was a kid.  Only thing is that it wasn’t exactly just boeuf bourguignon but “Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon.”  When the Christian Science Monitor reporter asked for an interview, it was the same dish Julie whipped up – doing it twice over after the first batch burned.  But the most important role this dish played was that it was the one that the Knopf editor kitchen-tested – eliciting an improper, orgasmic “Yum!” (back then it was thought to be improper to utter “Yum” while eating) – making her decide on publishing Julia Child’s 700-page manuscript.

A copy of a Boeuf Bourguignon recipe. But this one's Rachael Ray's, the one I've been using.

  2.  eNTeNG’s Boeuf Bourguignon.  In 2003, I first saw this dish demonstrated on national television by none other than 30-minute meal champion herself, Rachael Ray.  How she managed to cut down the hours needed to simmer what simply translates to “beef burgundy,” was beyond me.  The dish looked sumptuous on screen!  I printed out the recipe and tried it the first time right around my birth month.  When my eldest brother visited, I actually made it, but just like Julie’s first, it wasn’t up to par so I switched to the very Filipino beef mechado at the last minute.  Eventually, I saw another domestic goddess whip it up onscreen – Ina Garten.

      Bouef bourguignon is simply a stew of beef in a reduced red wine sauce with pearl onions, carrots, and mushrooms, with the hint of thyme and parsley.

As you can see, the boeuf bourguignon recipe is one of many recipes I went crazy about for some time. Everything on this print-out pile, I have actually kitchen-tested!

Notice the time stamp on my boeuf bourguignon recipe print-out – July 16, 2003!

 3.  Salt over the shoulder.  In one scene, Julia attends to several pans bubbling up on the stove and proceeds to season them with salt.  It was one understated scene that can pass anybody by.  But not me.  I totally noticed Julia doing the “salt over the shoulder” thing – for goodluck!  I do that too.  Before, they thought I was just creating a mess at home.  But now they know what it means to me.  It bears mentioning that to my generation, it was Rachael Ray who told me about this.  In her other show “$40 a day,” she even chided a down-home diner owner-chef for not throwing excess salt over his shoulder.  I found it to be cute.

  4.  The Joy of Cooking cookbook.  I bought my copy of this landmark cookbook in a community garage sale.  My friends and I did the rounds of the cul de sac twice over before I decided to pick up the book.  I had since given it away.

  5.  Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook.  I saw this book on a days-long book sale at a community library in Sacramento.  It was lying down on its right side – the side that opens – with the spine and its title catching my attention.  It was huge.  Took me a second visit to decide getting it.  I had since given it away – to the same person.

  7.  Best sound bite from the film – “I love you so much I will let you take the first bite!”

Epilogoue:  I got introduced to Julia Child through two things – the “From Martha’s Kitchen” episode where she (Julia) and Jacques Pépin prepared the Chateubriand, the best part of the beef tenderloin; and much earlier on through the free 1995 Microsoft CD Julia Child Home-Cooking with Master Chefs!  (Interactive Cooking Lessons from 16 All-Star Chefs).  On that CD, my favorite part has been her guided tour of her “kitchen,” where she offers advice on stocking the pantry with her essentials, choosing the right cookware, cooking with wine, and working with knives and utensils.

The liner of my 1995 CD – Julia Child: Home Cooking with Master Chefs! (Interactive Cooking Lessons from 16 All-Star Chefs)

To have her pots and pans at the Smithsonian only means that she is that important a part of the American culture and heritage.  I’m so glad I got to know her through these.

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Julie & Julia

I first saw "Julie & Julia" on the "2009 First Look" edition (dated 09 January 2009) of Entertainment Weekly magazine. And yes, those are my movie tickets.

I LOVE good food and I love to cook.  And by the 14^th of this month, I will have been blogging for a year.  So this movie’s premise that it’s based on two true stories – that of culinary legend the Julia Child and blogger Julie Powell – appeals to me.

Writer-director Nora Ephron’s “Julie & Julia” opens in 1949 with Julia Child (played by the Meryl Streep) and husband Paul’s (Stanley Tucci) debarkation in post-World War II Paris where Paul is taking his latest American Embassy posting.  As their car sweeps past images of the City of Lights, I hear Julia practicing her French giddily, bursting with excitement over what life in a new place can offer.  In one of the first scenes, they feast over what can only be perfectly prepared sole meunière for lunch at a cozy bistro.  The scene gives a tight shot not only of the perfectly prepared fish – sizzling in sinful butter in the pan it was cooked in – but also of the great skill that is needed to fillet it tableside.  Julia takes a whiff of the dish, closes her eyes to take the experience in, and with the first bite revels in its taste and texture.  She shares the gastronomic moment with her husband and the scene tells me what I’m up for:  a story of love – for good food and between soulmates.  At least for the protagonist whose name appears after the ampersand in the movie title.

To a time fifty-three years later, the movie cuts to New York where another couple embarks on a change of their own.  Packing their things – with one scene showing fully stuffing a box labeled “cookbooks” – Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and her husband Eric (Chris Messina) drive to Queens to move into a dingy apartment, the most amazing quality of which is that it is (repeat after me) 900 square feet.  Plus, it is close to where Eric works as a magazine editor.  When she points this out, I definitely sense depression in her voice.  The following scenes showing her volleying a plastic bag blown by the wind, taking the commuter train to work, and juggling calls from understandably disgruntled 9/11 insurance claimants summarize the kind of underachievement that sadly hounds her.  She was editor at Amherst College and attempted to write a novel.  She shelves this dream – eight years later – and ends up at her current thankless mid-level bureaucrat job.

Julie’s life is nowhere near enviable especially when she complains – save for a marriage (to a genuinely loving husband) that seems to work.  It reaches its height when she blabbers almost incessantly about being duped by one of her friends to become a subject on a magazine cover story about the lost generation of the 30-somethings.  She is long-winded at times but when she gets into an exposition of what she loves about cooking, I was all ears.  I paraphrase: “Do you know that I love about cooking?  On a day when nothing is sure – and I mean nothing – you can go home and mix eggs, chocolate, butter, and milk and you know it’s going to be thick.  It’s such a comfort.”  The scene also allows me another lascivious close-up of food, this time a chocolate cream pie.

When Julie finally hits on the idea of cooking, in the space of 365 days, every single one of the 524 recipes from “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” the landmark doorstopper of a cookbook that Julia Child wrote with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, and blogging about it, the film’s structure becomes even clearer.  As Julie launches into and progresses with her project, the film seamlessly intercuts to scenes showing how Julia came to write a cookbook that revolutionized French cooking that was originally intended for the “servantless American cooks.”

As the movie progresses, the promise of parallelism between the lives of the two protagonists hits a fork in the road and diverges.  Julia Child expresses love through her cooking.  She emanates the kind of joie de vivre that can only come from someone who enjoys life and selflessly offers the same to others.  She actually brings to mind all my own sentiments about cooking for someone.  Julie Powell, on the other hand, is driven by a very narcissistic goal to finally “finish something” as she turns 30, competing with her equally narcissistic friends – all three of them.  With their assistants, multi-million dollar deals and Blackberrys, they possess egos bigger than the tri-state area.

Which brings me to how I truly feel about the movie.  Everytime the scenes intercut to Julia, I feel inspired.  Her sequences actually build up to something really aspirational.  It is like starting with the freshest egg whites and beating them to a frenzied snow point.  Beautiful, stands on its own, pure in its whiteness.  Which is something I cannot say about the Julie bits.  Her scenes are full of tantrums, frustration over an interview prospect that got called off because it was “raining cats and dogs,” and shrieking excitement over 53 comments on her blog post from people she doesn’t know.  Truth be told, it looks pretty self-absorbed.  As her storyline progresses, it brings to mind the soufflé Audrey Hepburn as Sabrina prepares.  It collapses.  Is reduced to a mess.

Towards the end of the movie, both women achieve any writer’s ultimate goal – publishing success.  But even in the depiction of these moments, Julia Child’s clearly outshines the much much lesser Julie’s.  From that pivotal simmering moment when Julia reads the letter from Knopf that they are interested to publish her book, to when Julia and her editor were deciding on the title of her 700-page manuscript – so that’s how some of them do it in publishing houses! – I couldn’t help but root for Julia so much that I wanted to applaud the moment.  Somewhere in Queens half a century later, Julie hears the same news about her imminent achievement as one message after another plays on her answering machine.  The book she eventually publishes provides the title of the movie.  But it all – yet again – feels so selfish and small-minded.  To make my point clearer, when Julia was reading the letter – even stumbling with pronouncing Knopf (“Is it kuh-NA-pf or NOFF? Who cares!”) – I was so overcome by emotion that I felt a lump form in my throat.

I had to pause and review what I’ve written so far especially after I realize that I have kept on referring to the character “Julia” and not the actress “Meryl.”  I belive this is a testament to Meryl Streep’s undeniable achievement in this film.  With her record-breaking number of Oscar nominations, every superlative has been used to describe her acting.  While she fearlessly toys with caricature and imitation – in the hefty build, the shoulders, the gait, the fluting birdcall voice down pat – she totally veers away from impersonation and actually presents a respectful image of the culinary legend.  It is all Julia Child I see – from an American woman struggling against gender bias at Le Cordon Bleu to an American woman succeeding in inspiring cooks with her familiar TV spiel “I’m Julia Child.  Bon apetit!”

Though expectedly imbalance in terms of subject matter, “Julie & Julia” is buoyed by a charismatic tour de force performance by an American acting living legend.  And like any home-cooked meal prepared by a servantless cook, it may not be perfect but it is so comforting and good enough just the same.

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

This fame drips with irony

Though the movie didn't live up to the hype, I'm considering getting the OST. Naturi Naughton and Asher Book were glorious in their songs.

THE TITLE of this remake – Fame – is dripping with irony.  Let me make that clear, this remake, NOT the original 1980 Alan Parker film.  And when I get reminded of lines from the title track – “Remember my name / Fame! / I’m gonna live forever” – I cringe then I laugh.

It started out promising.  I actually liked the opening scenes in which the characters audition for limited slots at the New York High School of Performing Arts a.k.a. PA.  Marco (Asher Book) could’ve very well been one of those aspirants on American Idol who unexpectedly sounds good and very much unlike the way he looks.  His “Ordinary People” (the John Legend original) was quietly seething with soul and managed to make me love the song right there and then.  As for the others, oh well.

With so many characters making it to programs on voice, classical piano, theatre arts, and dance, I expected to be let in on their lives – the backstories, the conflicts – and what led them to what could be one of the city’s highly competitive high schools.  But by the moment the title card “Junior Year” comes up on screen, I realized that all the story this remake has has been told with the auditions.  Three years into their programs, the characters are no better than when they were just avoiding to be cut and sent home.  You don’t feel their passion.  You don’t get a sense of what drives them.  I don’t think one scene of arguing with one’s mom about going to PA or with one’s dad about practicing ‘til midnight for the production of “Chicago” constitutes the kind of conflict that will make you root for a film’s protagonists.  Lauryn Hill in Sister Act 2 and the kids in High School Musical were so much more conflicted, I suddenly missed them.

The dance teacher (Bebe Neuwirth), in sending away a mediocre student – softening the blow by sugarcoating her message that said student will make a good teacher – unwittingly provides the best critique of the movie.  Like the student, the film is promising at the start but sadly fails to fulfill that promise.  As she says this, the film cuts to the dance extravaganza of the top female student in which she is crawling backwards with quite a seductive look on her face.  Sitting through it, I wished the whole movie would crawl backwards, ease out, and fade to black totally.

And oh, the mediocre student is so devastated by the put-down that he attempts to leap onto the subway tracks.  I actually rooted for him to jump.  At least that would’ve put his ballet training to good use.

Nobody – yes, nobody – seems to be concerned about mastering their potentials.  They are all preoccupied with being famous that they either get duped into an independent film venture, almost starred in their own sex video, turned down by a record label, dropped out to take a 22-city dance concert tour, or taken a bit role in Sesame Street.  “Sesame Street?!  Oh shit, that show’s still on?”  At that point, I scratched my head, checked out the time on my Swiss timepiece, and wondered to myself why the movie was still on.  And me sitting through it still.

Funny that something that doesn’t have a story could take almost a couple of hours.  I stood out and left even before the finale.  Why?  Simply because if I were their teacher, I’d flunk all of them that there wouldn’t be a need for a graduation show.  Okay, probably not all of them.  I’d have to give “mad props” to Denise (Naturi Naughton) for her impassioned “Out Here On My Own” and Marco for the couple of bars of “Someone To Watch Over Me” and that song he sang at the restaurant.

The rest will definitely not live forever.  I don’t even remember their names.

Whatever

OUR WIDE area network (WAN) at the office just had to have a force majeure all its own yesterday.  It seemed that natural causes wreaking havoc – making U-turns – weren’t enough.  Our private connection to the outside world just had to throw a tantrum.

So at 4:00 PM on the dot, I asked Spider-man if we’d have a walk last night (if “may lakad”…  hahaha!).  The Tycoon tagged along.

I thought it was one of those “movie night” nights, so we agreed to catch anything showbiz capitalists bankrolled and committed to celluloid.  I was keen on watching what a lot have already been calling a lame excuse for a remake of a cult classic – Fame!

We ended up catching something already on its third week – Yaya & Angelina:  The Spoiled Brat Movie.  I thought Spider-man could use a good laugh, especially since I think he is the most swamped among us.  If reviews on national broadsheets and movie critics’ quips quoted on the movie’s poster were to be trusted, I was in for a major treat.  But I kept reality in check and didn’t leave it at the door as I entered the moviehouse with considerably lower expectations.

I’ve never seen their segment on Bubble Gang so I felt I went in there with a fresh set of eyes.  The movie turned out to be good enough entertainment.  But I didn’t find anything that tickled me enough to let out really boisterous laughter.  The best lines for me were all of Yaya’s inadvertent efforts at murdering the title of the Duchess of Wellington (yes, the screenplay was able to throw in European royalty in the mix!)  My favorite was “Charges of Arlington.”  On that one I laughed.

Michael V. was unabashedly hailed by a respected Filipino movie critic as a comic genius by virtue of this role.  I’ll caution to do the same.  Though Michael V. was really good in the film.  His Yaya was really tempered and not loud.  I wasn’t bored.  The biggest surprise?  Ogie making the role of the spoiled brat believable and likeable.

There was just way too much orange in almost every scene.  The subtlety of the movie’s political inclination was just not refined.  But that’s just me.  It probably meant nothing at all.  Like the character of royalty, it could’ve just probably been thrown in in the mix, not helping at all in making the story plausible.

Kimmy Dora:  Kambal Sa Kiyeme was waaaayyy so much better.

———————————-

Epilogue:  After getting our stuff from Spider-man’s car, the Tycoon and I walked our own way.

 

eNTeNG            :  So Tycoon, can we now answer the question, “Jologs ka ba?”

(A teaser for a Jologs contest at the office was released earlier in the day)

Tycoon              :  Yes.

eNTeNG            :  Me, I’ll answer that with a resounding yes!

Tycoon              :  Whatever.

 

I was with a spoiled brat!  Hahaha!

Nothing like tap water to sway her opinion

Catch Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens and King Leonidas in an unconventional romantic comedy! The Ugly Truth stars Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. (Image is owned by the film producers)

 

THE DRY spell from seeing a movie with Spider-man – brought about by the Kimmy Dora debacle when a bedimpled smile fixed my way was euphemistic for a flat out, “No!” – has finally ended.  Spider-man, four other friends and I saw The Ugly Truth on its opening day.

Funny I should open with the allusion to a dry spell.  Because that was exactly what morning show TV producer Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) was going through on the screen.  Coming home from a disastrous arranged date one night – with a guy who has read The Great Gatsby twice – she stumbles upon “The Ugly Truth,” a show on public access TV hosted by the very cynical Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler).  Offended by Mike’s sneering disbelief at conventional views on relationships, and having to watch Mike set on fire self-help and how-to books she has clung on to that they occupy their rightful place on her nightstand, Abby called in on the show and practically told Mike to take a hike.

Nothing bites harder on the ass – her ass – than having to discover the very next morning that the network has hired Mike to do his segment on their morning show.  Faced by the threat of cancellation due to very poor ratings, she has to contend with having Mike on to bring them back up.

It was class vs. crass from this point on.  The uppity and control freak network producer Abby has to rein in the vulgar and disgusting Mike.  That was up until the opportunity to turn the tables in Mike’s favor presents itself.  Having found the “man of her dreams” – compliant to her “checklist” and met in a situation that literally caught the guy next door with his pants down – Abby took Mike up on his challenge to follow his lead and lure the guy – orthopedic surgeon Colin – into a relationship.  If she gets the man, she tries to make their professional relationship work.  If she doesn’t, he quits.

Mike’s “lead” turns out to be his set of relationship rules.  Rule #1 – Never criticize him.  Rule #2 – Laugh at whatever he says (even if it’s not funny).  In short, fake it if you have to!  Rule #3 – Change your look.  Men are very visual.  Rule #4 – Never talk about your problems (to him).

The taskmaster Abby is now the one being reined in.  And as she struggles to contain her inner control freak (now in a better push-up bra), she finds herself in one hilarious situation after another.  Consider them bumps on the road to landing herself her own man.  Who does she end up with?  The ending is as predictable as can be.  The poster leaves nothing to the imagination.

The movie is heavy with zingy banter between Abby and Mike that I didn’t doze off.  That alone is testament to it having passed my standards.  But somehow something was amiss.  The lead characters’ chemistry was there.  The raunchy dialogue that accounted for its R-13 rating was there.  Even THAT dinner scene had to be there!

The Ugly Truth is a good enough movie for the laughs.  It’s sometimes absurd but nevertheless fun.  I for one don’t totally agree with Mike’s rules.  You shall see that as the movie unfolds, Abby realizes that the way to finding that relationship and making it work is making the guy fall in love with who you really are.  The movie starts with Abby’s heart in her head and Mike’s in his groins.  But both end up where they are supposed to be.

I have to give it to the producers of this film for giving us a movie where – finally – it’s the guy who’s dishing out the love rules.  Quite nice for a change.  But as I have said, I’m not totally sold to Mike’s rules.  Except perhaps for Rule #2 – don’t tell me you don’t agree.  Hahaha!

By the way, I have on my bookshelf one of the books Mike burned.  That gave me the biggest laugh in the 95-minute run time.  And oh, I have read The Great Gatsby too.  Twice?  That’ll be too much information.

Portent of things that came about

Starbucks Dark Mocha Frappucino and Auntie Anne's Almond Pretzel

TO GET to Town on Friday nights, I cross Commerce Avenue from the Petron gas station where Spider-man always drops me off.  From the very moment my right foot hits the concrete shielding tons of dark hydrocarbon-charged fuel, I feel fullness in my belly as I most likely have snacked in the webbed one’s car while our conversations filled the air.  Last Friday’s was some sort of puto (Filipino rice flour cake) and a strawberry-grape smoothie for each of us.

After raiding the magazine wall of Powerbooks – and actually making a huge purchase – I went to the cinema to catch anything that was on celluloid.  I didn’t particularly like any of the two local films running.  So I settled for the one whose poster caught my fancy – Horsemen starring Dennis Quaid and Ziyi Zhang.  Notice how her name is now Westernized in the sense that her first name comes ahead of her last.

I texted Superman, Spider-man, Friendship, and Batman that I was only one of seven people seeing the movie.  Seven – three couples and myself.  I later figured that unlike the others, I didn’t need somebody close to clutch and hold whenever the gory scenes came up.  A lot of CSI, NCIS, Bones and Criminal Minds had prepared me for it.

But one thing I did find about the movie was that it was disturbing.  To think that the censors must’ve already significantly cut portions as the splices were so pronounced.  The audio faded in and out imperfectly.

What?! I paid 150 freakin' pesos for that movie?! Hehehe... At least the comfy seat was worth it.

Horsemen was so bad that I took consolation on what I was muching on – Auntie Anne’s Almond Pretzel (dipped – no! soooaked multiple times in their melted butter!) and Starbucks Dark Mocha Frappucino with Raspberry Syrup.

The pretzel and the coffee were so good that I kept on muching in spite of the first gruesome moment that made me nauseous.

I went out of the theatre wondering what a bad movie with reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could mean.

Then Ondoy came pummeling down the next day.

A superhero warned me about the rains...

Kimmy Dora

AND I thought nothing can ever put my friendship with Spider-man to the test.  He knows this too for a fact.  And we’d even always shamelessly brandish that nothing will ever get in the way of our friendship.  But then Eugene Domingo came along.  And nobody like the Philippines’ reluctant box office superstar can put a wedge between me and a superhero.

Armed with my sense of security that Spider-man will never leave me alone to be regaled by a Filipino movie – and owing to the fact that we’ve had this sort of tradition of seeing at least one Metro Manila filmfest entry every year – I asked him directly to see “Kimmy Dora: Kambal sa Kiyeme (Kimmy Dora:  Twins in Artfulness).”  His response was a bit enigmatic.  It was just a bedimpled smile, totally void of anything audible or anything that can be deemed intelligible.  I perceived hesitation.  I didn’t ask again.

As the movie was already on its second week – the point wherein if it were produced by Star Cinema the boob tube would have now been bombarded by hour-on-the-hour reminders from the cast that “’Kimmy Dora: Kambal sa Kiyeme…  now on it’s second week na!!!” – I acted on my firm resolve to finally see it.  Besides, it’s been eight months already and I haven’t seen a Tagalog movie yet!  I went to the cinema with a plan, brushing up on my understanding of the peculiarities of Pinoy movies, courtesy of thecorporateteener.

“Kimmy Dora: Kambal sa Kiyeme” tells the story of twins Kimmy Go Dong Hae and Dora Go Dong Hae.  It opens with a rooftop action scene with the twins dressed in identical garb.  The presence of a SWAT team and heavy artillery aimed at the two who are being demanded to reveal who the real Kimmy Go Dong Hae is, is an over-the-top overkill that, had not the audience been laughing already, made me think I was watching Sidney Bristow instead.  When the subtitle said something like “Earlier in their lives”…  that’s when the comedy really started.

Kimmy is the ruthless, over-achieving, manipulating, dominatrix diva.  Dora is the simpleton.  While Kimmy has spent most of her life growing their family’s wealth – so “second generation” of typical old rich families (where the first generation creates the wealth, the second grows it, and the third spends it) – Dora has found fulfillment in surrounding herself with stuffed toys, spelling out her first name in enameled trinkets she hangs around her neck, and rescuing a stray injured mutt.

Kimmy commands cowering, fearful obedience the moment she hollers, “I-ready ang Black Expedition…  2009!”  She hops into her car and I couldn’t help but notice that the upholstery is in Louis Vuitton monogram leather.  She makes excuses to turn down a golf invitation from the Jaime Zobel de Ayala.  But asks for the phone to diss at the Manny V. Pangilinan who she is buying out of his controlling share in a company, before propelling the phone through a trajectory that ends with a resounding thud against the SUV’s cushioned floor.  She dresses up in a white top that costs five times the monthly salary of a management trainee she later fires.  The offense?  For wearing an outfit she (the trainee) cannot afford in cold cash.  But just when I thought Kimmy Go Dong Hae couldn’t display excess any more blatant, I notice she is toting a black Hermes Birkin worth enough money to feed a small third world country – for a week.

Dora commands…  oh, didn’t I say she is the simpleton in this story?

Between the twins ensues a one-sided sibling rivalry for the attention and the affection of two men – their father (magnificently played by the Ariel Ureta) and the office nerd (played by that guy who broke the Divine Diva’s girl’s heart).  Kimmy’s loathing towards her simple-minded twin takes literal seething, boiling form when she realizes that the nerd she is after has fallen for her dumbed-down version.  And when their father suffers a stroke – and when he revises and finalizes his last will and testament – all hell breaks loose.  I am ushered into a world that involved a botched kidnapping attempt, a hilarious case of mistaken identity, an immersion in the hinterlands in the countryside, and a Dora-playing-Kimmy-playing-Dora spectacle that leaves me in stiches.

“Kimmy Dora: Kambal sa Kiyeme” succeeds as an intellectual comedy, anchored on a crisp, fast-paced, laugh-out-loud-per-sequence storyline and screenplay.  While its foundation is undoubtedly its simple but well-delivered story, its cornerstone is the tour de force performance of Eugene Domingo as both Kimmy and Dora.  She inhabits each character with intelligence and she delivers her lines with perfect diction and the amount of class each requires.  While movies she has supported in the past have shown how much of a scene-stealer she could be, “Kimmy Dora: Kambal sa Kiyeme” cements her rightful place in the very crowded constellation of Filipino stars.  Eugene Domingo’s charm is in the effective way she uses her impeccable comedic timing and her idiosyncratic phrasing to elicit laughter from the audience, which at that time when I watched, was still packing the theaters.  I have always considered her pivotal scene in “You Are The One,” when she accepts her fiance’s proposal, to be priceless.  Kimmy Dora finally shows she has come into her own.

I guess I will have to add Eugene Domingo now as one of the few personalities who do manage to fascinate me.  I did get a glimpse of it last year.

The date was the 4^th of May in 2008, at the Rustan’s Department Store in Makati.  I saw her enter the floor where Silver Vault is on, from the mall side entrance.  She was in a tight-fitting orange Lacoste polo shirt.  She looked gorgeous.  I was to be at arm’s length with her later at the cashier.

(She was waiting patiently while the sales associates resolve the issue on their malfunctioning card reader.  I was to pay in cash so they asked if it was okay to Ms. Eugene Domingo if they’d ring up my purchase first.  She said it was okay, and looked the other way.)

 

eNTeNG                 :  “Hi, Ms. Domingo!”

                               (I couldn’t help it, I had to rub elbows with celebrity!)

Ms. Domingo       :  “Ang pormal naman, iho.  Bakit, nagbukas na ba ang klase?”

                               (You sounded so formal.  Why, have classes opened yet?)

One of her eyebrows was raised and she sounded very much “in character.”  I scurried to the nearest exit with my purchase of a ToyWatch® wristwatch, the exact same model featured on one whole page on American Men’s Vogue.

Now you see him, now you don’t

“CLARE ABSHIRE, 31, It’s complicated™.”

If Chicago-based artist Clare Abshire (played by the luminously beautiful Rachel McAdams) signed up for a friendster account in the 2000’s, I guess that is most likely how she would have opted to summarize her relationship status with Henry DeTamble (the Eric Bana).

Theatrical poster for "The Time Traveler's Wife," as displayed at the Alabang Town Center cinema.

“The Time Traveler’s Wife” is the story of a girl.  Yes, the story starts with Clare as a young girl of six who meets and falls in love with a much older guy Henry who appears and disappears against his will.  Everytime he literally vanishes – leaving only the trail of his clothes and shoes behind (my fave being that one when he was running down the stairs) – he randomly turns up in another place and another time.  Either he finds the clothes he left behind, or he relies on his survival instincts – including developed skills like picking locks – to get clothes.  And then life at least for the time he stays in that frame of the universe goes on.

Clare very early on becomes fully aware of Henry’s “chrono-impairment” disorder.  And in spite of this very clear and very present deterrent, girl and guy manage to get into – and sustain – a relationship.  Though from that first scene in the Chicago library when an obviously thrilled Clare didn’t elicit the same level of excitement from the special topics librarian Henry, it really became clear to me that our protagonists are all caught up in a romantic situation that leaves them bewildered and confused at times.  But when the confusion sets in, Clare and Henry are still lucky that one of them has a good grasp of the time and the events, and will lead the other on.  Which was something I couldn’t say about me, seeing the movie alone.  There were points in the narrative when I would quickly glance at the couples and groups in the audience, trying to check if they looked as confused as I was.  I would chide myself that I didn’t get to read the novel first before I went to see the movie.

Yes, I haven’t read the novel but I decided to see the movie just the same.  I was abroad when I first heard about it when it was released, and when it later made the New York Times bestseller list.  The first thing that captivated me was the title – The Time Traveler’s Wife.  In the space of four short words, my neurons got all worked up with flashing scenes of romance and science fiction all muddled up by trips down memory lane and projections to the future.  I thought the author came up with a very clever – very prowerful – title that explicitly defined the main characters (a man and a woman), their relationship (husband and wife), and their greatest obstacle (someone’s traveling through the barriers of time).

Though the premise sounded straightforward enough, I have to say that it presents quite a challenge to the director tasked to capture hundreds of pages that, in Summit’s words, allow the reader to “linger on the possibilities and nuances of time and space.”    I will have to agree with Summit when she told me that “cinema doesn’t give you that leisure all the time.”  A part of me initially thought that the challenge posed to Robert Schwentke was pretty easy to deal with.  I thought it was akin to just weaving footages on a Windows MovieMaker storyboard with visually delicious video transitions dragged and dropped in between scenes of Henry’s vanishing and appearing.  But I thought wrong.  Having not read the novel, I found myself listening to the dialogue more intently than usual, trying to snatch hints of the current scene’s time stamp.

Yes, I can hear some of you may be saying, “Pay attention to the clothing, stupid!”  But my best guess is that the story unfolded within the time span of just three to four decades.  And if the production design of the movie is to be trusted, the lines between the 80’s, the 90’s and the 2000’s are as blurred as could be.  I didn’t see Clare’s posture enhanced by voluminous shoulder pads at any point to say that the time warp has brought us to the 80’s.  Besides, Henry having to contend with even Salvation Army fashion finds wasn’t any help.  And the haircuts really didn’t clue me in at all – except that I have to say only Eric Bana could pull off really bad hair.

But I think the biggest downside to not having read the novel first was that when Clare says that she and Henry is to have dinner at the latter’s favorite place, I swear I thought they were having Italian.  I totally thought the place was called “Bow Tie,” which I took as an homage to the farfalle (bow tie pasta).  Soon enough, a slowly spiraling camera shot from the top of their restaurant table caught a glimpse of the menu, revealing Henry’s favorite place to be “Beau Thai.”  Hahaha!  But at least I had the rare chance to really laugh at myself.

But having said these impediments, I still ended up texting my friends – just about every friend I think gives a damn about me and what I think – that I liked the movie.  I really did.

In any relationship, there is always one party that loves the other more.  While one decision made by Henry underscores just how much he cares for the welfare of Clare, I will have to give the unconditional love award to the latter.  For one, it takes so much – immeasurable even just how much – to love someone who just “will not always be there.”  And while Henry may have declared, “I don’t want you to wait.  I don’t want you to spend your time waiting.”  he knows better that any moment he zips past the time continuum, Clare will always be there.

And in one of the more poignant scenes in the movie, when Henry says that he has never wanted anything in his life that he couldn’t stand losing – but it was already too late for him to change his mind – I sincerely felt that he was speaking for both himself and Clare.

Now tell me if you could lay claim to a more complex relationship.

Another movie ticket for keeps