Oscar Nods Out in the Open

Let the ferocious film fanatic in me share this year’s Oscar nominees in the major categories, which I got from the live BBC broadcast a few hours ago:

Picture: Brokeback Mountain; Capote; Crash; Good Night, and Good Luck; Munich.

Director: George Clooney, for Good Night, and Good Luck; Paul Haggis, for Crash; Ang Lee, for Brokeback Mountain; Bennett Miller, for Capote; Steven Spielberg, for Munich.

Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, in Capote; Terrence Howard, in Hustle & Flow; Heath Ledger, in Brokeback Mountain; Joaquin Phoenix, in Walk the Line; David Straithairn, in Good Night, and Good Luck.

Actress: Judi Dench, in Mrs. Henderson Presents; Felicity Huffman, in Transamerica; Keira Knightley, in Pride & Prejudice; Charlize Theron, in North Country; Reese Witherspoon, in Walk the Line.

Supporting Actor: George Clooney, in Syriana; Matt Dillon, in Crash; Paul Giamatti, in Cinderella Man; Jake Gyllenhaal, in Brokeback Mountain; William Hurt, in A History of Violence.

Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, in Junebug; Catherine Keener, in Capote; Frances McDormand, in North Country; Rachel Weisz, in The Constant Gardener; Michelle Williams, in Brokeback Mountain.

Original Screenplay: Crash, by Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco; Good Night, and Good Luck, by George Clooney and Grant Heslov; Match Point, by Woody Allen; The Squid and the Whale, by Noah Baumbach; Syriana, by Stephen Gaghan.

Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain, by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana; Capote, by Dan Futterman; The Constant Gardener, by Jeffrey Caine; A History of Violence, by Josh Olson; Munich, by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth.

Foreign Language Film: Don’t Tell, from Italy; Joyeux Noël, from France; Paradise Now, from Palestine; Sophie Scholl—The Final Days, from Germany; Tsotsi, from South Africa.

Animated Feature Film: Howl’s Moving Castle, by Hayao Miyazaki; Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson; Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, by Nick Park and Steve Box.

Overall, not bad at all. There were some mild surprises, chief among them Keira Knightley’s nomination, bumping Ziyi Zhang from the lineup. I had hoped that David Cronenberg’s superb A History of Violence would fare more strongly in the major categories. In any case I’m glad William Hurt and Josh Olson’s screenplay were recognized. It’s better than nothing.

For the complete list of nominations, check it out here.

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Like a pilgrim fulfilling a lifetime promise, I went to Chinatown (specifically, Ongpin Street) today for the third year in a row to observe the Chinese New Year festivities there. But this time, I went by myself. The late-afternoon celebrations have nothing new to show me, but there’s still something exotic (and therefore attractive) about how Ongpin becomes a red light district of sorts. You see red (and gold) everywhere you turn from the moment you join the river of people painting the town, well, red and watching blinking, colorful and grotesque dragons dancing amid the deafening sounds of cymbals and gongs and exploding firecrackers.

The pictures below are just a couple of the, well, interesting things I spotted along Ongpin. I’ve posted some more pictures at The Photo Groupie. Check them out. In the meantime, KUNG HEI FAT CHOI!

Another singular victory for incorrect English.







You don’t want to know what’s dumped here.







Um, I’m not so sure about that.







I bet this bar knows the secret to achieve nirvana.







I won’t be surprised if this shop sells half-pure gold.

Tanghalang Pilipino's Terrific Twinbill

Wooden chew wonna wotch cumdeez???

Please watch Tanghalang Pilipino’s latest offering, J. Dennis C. Teodosio’s Gee-Gee at Waterina and Chris Martinez’s Palanca-winning Welcome to Intelstar, at the CCP’s Tanghalang Huseng Batute. The twinbill will have a matinee performance later today at 3 p.m., as well as on January 27 (8 p.m.), 28 (3 and 8 p.m.) and 29 (3 p.m.). This marks the second time the plays have been staged: Gee-Gee at Waterina won raves at last year’s Virgin Labfest, while Welcome to Intelstar had the audience laughing hard at the last Palanca Awards ceremony.

I finally got to watch them yesterday afternoon, and I’m happy to report that both plays are as fresh and funny as before. Under Martinez’s direction, Eugene Domingo gave a vibrant performance as Chelsea, Intelstar’s engaging call-center trainor who conducts a hilarious orientation for successful call-center applicants. And Roobak Valle’s deft helming elicited first-rate performances from Lou Veloso and Paolo Cabañero as Gee-Gee and Waterina, two longtime friends who, prompted by the arrival of a check, reflect on their lives and their gayness as they engage in side-splitting, witty banter. In both plays, language played a powerful role.

Go ahead, give yourself a treat by watching TP’s terrific twinbill. It’s worth it.

Wicked Stories from a Witch of a Writer

For a clear lack of something better to post now, below is a slightly revised version of a book review I wrote, which was first published in the May 31, 2004 issue of The Philippine Graphic. Later that year, this book earned (with Rosario Cruz Lucero's Feast and Famine: Stories of Negros and Vicente Garcia Groyon's The Sky Over Dimas) the National Book Award for Fiction.

Title: Daisy Nueve: Stories Weird, Wonderful, Whatever (2003)
Author: Menchu Aquino Sarmiento
Publisher: Anvil Publishing

Most stories tend to invite readers to come and watch how the challenges or circumstances their characters confront change them, and they do so calmly, softly. But with the ten stories Menchu Aquino Sarmiento gathers in the startling Daisy Nueve: Stories Weird, Wonderful, Whatever, that invitation turns into a challenge. One may read them and find pleasure in the pain the cha­r­acters feel or find comedy in the cruel circumstances they are compelled to cope with. That’s astounding, and so’s the way Sarmiento renders them with a cynical eye.

Oddballs and outsiders dominate the stories, like the troubled title character with a very depres­sing and dysfunctional homelife in “When Ben was Ben.” How troubled? Consider this passage: “He placed the family of rag dolls in the Tonka dump truck, and made them fall out. He ran ov­er them again and again: on their limbs, faces, backs, necks. Each time the truck’s rubber wheels make scrunching noises on the dolls’ stuffing which was probably made of beans, Ben repeated like a magical incantation: 'Now you’re dead, dead, dead.'”

Loreta de Dios, the pathetic schoolgirl in “The Frog Princess,” is also an outsider, and Sarmiento shows the reader how she turned out that way, and she does so quite objectively, without much sentiment. It turns out she became one very early on: “When the bell rang for recess, all the Kin­dergarten classes knew: Loreta de Dios had made poo-poo in her panty during Miss Battung’s class. The news was greeted with excited squeals of shock and delight. Then with the spontaneity of a flash flood or a brush fire, a chant grew and spread through the throng of little girls: `Lo­reta eh-tat! Loreta eh-tat!’” Children can be cruel, even at the age.

Not all the characters in Daisy Nueve are like them, though. There’s the distressed and disap­pointed daughter in “When They Were Cool,” for one. The reason for her dismay? It seems that her dear Daddy has a young mistress, and Sarmiento renders this information with cutting humor: “That’s why it was such a letdown for me to find out that Dad was having an affair with a girl from his office named Teena. Teena—that’s how she spelled it. Isn’t that just too cute? I im­a­gine that her little friends must be named Trixee, Cheree, and Peechee. You know the kind. You see them all over in Makati. Some specialize in foreigners.”

And then there’s the condescending business executive whose life takes an unexpected turn one night in “Zechariah in the Gloaming.” The story shows how much he belittles his colleagues du­ring a corporate bash: “What fools these corporate drones be! They parroted the words like little children, pidgin speakers experimenting with grownup speech. What pretenders they were des­perately trying to be proactive, and interactive, interfacing paradigms, merging synergistically-- what a lot of crap all of it was!” Strong words from a fellow pretender.

None of the stories in the book, though, could compare with “Good Intentions 101: SY `72-`73.” Here’s a story set during Martial Law, and here Sarmiento’s bitter humor and dark vision are at its strongest. Using the third-person point of view of a 14-year-old middle-class girl, the story shows the hilarity and the horror of that awful time. Like when a busload of high-school students went on a field trip to a filthy palengke for study, only to have the insulted vendors throw market garbage at them, staining their oh-so-clean clothes. Like when the milita­ry arrested an innocent Engineering student, whom they mistook for a Huk commander (!), and tortured him before releasing him. It’s a perceptive, remarkable story. Local literature textbooks should anthologize this story one day.

These stories, and the rest of the stories in the collection, don’t exactly make for comfortable and easy reading. That fact is clear at every page: the characters are hardly sympathetic, and any hope for improvement in their lives or relief from their anguish appears very slim. The language is so sharp, it could almost slice; and the cynical humor pierces the gut as much, if not more, as it hits the funny bone. Some may find all this off-putting.

Still, the stories work, and astoundingly, for just about those exact qualities. The way Sarmiento sees the world with a sharp, stern eye, always steady and never flinching, without a hint of illusion or romance; the way she uses language to instill her bleak vision into her troubling stories; the way she deftly handles different points of view and tones—they allow her to stand out from most Filipino writers. The risks she took in her stories are great; fortunately, they pay off. She is sort of like Jessica Zafra in her fictionist mode, but better, edgier.

As a writer, Sarmiento is a witch: she wields great magic, but that magic is dark, hardly comfor­ting. She concocts stories with it, fraught with irony, coupling humor with horror, pleasure with pain. The effect is wicked, but in a good way. That’s quite a feat, and quite uncommon. For that, she’s a unique and undeniably fascinating fictionist, and Daisy Nueve: Stories Weird, Wonderful, Whatever is a unique and ultimately worthwhile book. (Copyright © 2004 by A.I.D.)

A Feline's Unfortunate Fate

Until today, very few people know that I’m a softie when it comes to harmless and helpless animals.

Earlier this morning, after my mom, brother and I bought some foodstuffs from the Marikina City wet market, we went to Macky’s to buy some goto for my dad. While my brother and I waited in the car, I noticed a thin kitten straying very dangerously along J.P. Rizal Street. It looked confused, lost. The street wasn’t that busy, but now and then a number of vehicles would speed through. Then and there I feel worried for the poor thing, wandering aimlessly, clearly disoriented. It was like watching a suspenseful movie. I dreaded what might happen next.

And it did. A jeepney unavoidably ran over one of the kitten’s legs. I cringed at the sight. I saw it cough blood. I also saw a few people at the other side of the street watching the kitten passively, silently. It was as though they were waiting for another vehicle to run over it completely. I was half-wishing they would do something about it. But they didn’t. That irked me. I finally couldn’t stand it. Then and there I got out of the car, dashed for the kitten and picked it up. At first I placed it at the far side of the sidewalk, but I reconsidered, thinking that it might drift once more into harm’s way. So I left it almost squarely in the middle of a small grassy lot, not far away. At least it wouldn’t die on the street. When I got back into the car, my brother had just told my mom what had happened.

“Cat savior ka pala,” my mom remarked. She sounded as if she never expected that of me.

I won’t be surprised if others also didn’t expect that of me. But I felt I have to do something. Why stand by and watch something bad unfold when you can do something about it? The whole thing reminded me how we have become way too used to becoming passive, silent witnesses to things far worse than that. And I think we’re all the sorrier for it, more so than that kitten.

A Funny Thing Happened Last Night

Early evening. In an air-conditioned classroom in U.P. A handful of graduate-level students sit around a table, enjoying a 15-minute break: AID, a freelance writer; NYB, a seminarian; JRL, a middle-aged lady; BJP, an English teacher and amateur photographer; and PPL, a chinky-eyed, big-bodied weirdo. They are preparing for the next story up for discussion.

NYB: (Looks at AID.) What’s Arvin’s surname again?

AID: Mangohig.

NYB: (Scribbles the surname on his copy of the story.) I thought his name was Alvin Yapan. Who’s Alvin Yapan?

AID: He’s a teacher at the Ateneo. Filipino Department.

JRL: (Looks at AID.) Oh, I thought you’re Alvin Yapan. But who’s Alvin Yapan again?

AID: He’s a teacher at the Ateneo. He has won Palancas for Fiction in Filipino.

PPL: (Suddenly, eagerly.) I know someone who writes for the Graphic named Alvin Dacanay. (Looks at AID.) You know him?

BJP looks at AID, then at PPL and widens his eyes in disbelief.

AID: (A beat.) Uh, I’m Alvin Dacanay.

PPL looks at AID, looking stupid. NYB and JRL stare at PPL in disbelief. The Twilight Zone theme music is faintly heard in the background.

New Year, New Account

A HAPPY, HEALTHY AND HEARTY NEW YEAR, everyone!

To mark the new year, I decided to create a Buzznet account. Check it out here, but don’t expect much; there’s only one picture at the moment. I may look like a poseur in it, but I like how the light glows. Ü Rest assured, I’ll post some more in the coming days and weeks.