By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

WHAT if blindness is an infectious disease that is contagious as the common cold?

This is the basic storyline–adapted from a novel by Nobel prize-winning author Jose Saramago–behind the latest film from rising Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener, City of God).

Don’t expect this to be something like “Outbreak”, though. There’s no use getting engrossed so much in how an antidote is discovered in the end. No other animal even appears in the movie except for a dog.

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By Izah Morales
INQUIRER.net

WHEN time ticks counterclockwise, how would life be?

This is the challenge faced by Benjamin Button as his life unfolds in reverse. In the middle of World War I, Benjamin is born in an 80-year-old man’s physique. His shocking condition leads his father Thomas Button (Jason Flemyng) to leave him outside a home for the aged. In the caring hands of Queenie (Taraji Henson), Benjamin finds a home among the elderly. There, he finds the love that makes him “grow” young.

Brad Pitt plays the protagonist’s role of Button in David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Fincher’s film is an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920s short story. In the film, Benjamin Button was physically old but mentally young. But in Fitzgerald’s story, he is physically old and mentally old as he is capable of talking right after being born.

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By Clarence Yu

CLINT Eastwood proves that he is at the top of his game with his latest effort, Gran Torino.

Revolving around the story of Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), a retired Ford employee and decorated Korean War vet, the movie explores themes of loss, coming to terms, friendship, and ultimately, sacrifice and redemption.

Here’s a trailer of the movie:

Set in the present day, the film begins with Walt burying his wife of many years. His grown-up children have strained relations with him, and he sets to living out the rest of his years wandering about in his home, tinkering around in his garden, sitting on his porch drinking beer and taking care of his prized possession, a 1972 Ford Gran Torino. He refuses to fulfill his wife’s dying wish, to confess to a “27-year-old, over-educated, virgin priest.”

He is bitter about many things, mainly about how the world has changed from his viewpoint, and how his neighborhood has slowly been encroached upon by a group of Asians known as “Hmongs.” He has a fast and dirty mouth, and isn’t the type of guy who would waste a second of his remaining days on anything sentimental.

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By Gerry Plaza
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines—A spellbinding victory indeed for Philippine cinema.

Visitors to the Cable News Network entertainment web site voted Ishmael Bernal’s “Himala,” which starred Nora Aunor as a simple provincial girl turned faith healer, as the Best Asia-Pacific movie of all time, outclassing such greats as Akira Kurasawa’s “Seven Samurai” and Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

The Filipino classic, originally released in 1982, emerged as the top online vote-getter in the popular vote that ran in October.

CNN announced “Himala” as its Asia Pacific Screen Awards Viewers Choice Award winner on Tuesday in a ceremony in Gold Coast, Australia.

By Clarence Yu

JUST as mysteriously as he came into the American movie industry as “The Man With No Name” in his “Spaghetti Western” trilogy and as Dirty Harry in the landmark cop drama “Dirty Harry,” reports have been leaking over the Internet that his latest starrer, “Gran Torino” (originally thought as a last sequel to the Dirty Harry franchise) would be his last film as an actor. Might I mention again that word, actor.

I found this official trailer for “Gran Torino” on YouTube:

For Eastwood has, in his storied career spanning over 40 years, been not only an actor, but a director who has had to work his way up the ladder for recognition, culminating with his Oscar wins in 1992 as Best Director for “Unforgiven,” and in 2004 for “Million Dollar Baby.”

Once dismissed as a “lazy” actor, most of us now know better that Eastwood’s technique is minimalist in nature, using gesture instead of words to convey meaning. And being lumped in with Charles Bronson and Burt Reynolds did not exactly help, but Eastwood eventually proved critics and fans alike wrong. As one of my personal heroes and directors/actors, the notion that Eastwood, at the ripe young age of 78, would be retiring from acting is quite sad. He still has the presence and capability to act, and a physique that tells you instantly that he could probably beat you up with his fingers even if you were a third of his age.

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