October 2008 Archives

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine THERE are just some words which are downright sexy. Not sexy in the sense that they connote physical urges, but sexy in that they capture your fancy and induce obsession. There are words which are just supple, with the sound they make, even if you have no idea what they mean. I’ve had that kind of relationship with words for a while now. In the middle of reading or listening, I will encounter a word, familiar or unfamiliar, what I can’t quite forget. Often it is a word derived from foreign languages, but sometimes, it’s just a damn sexy word. A consonant flashes like a glimpse of an impossibly long, graceful leg. The curve of a surprise vowel is like a momentary image of a flawless neck. Some words stun even from afar, their very silhouette evoking desire. One word I remember obsessing about for a while was “fusillade.” I fell for this word the very first time I read it. It means, according to the ever-dependable The New Oxford Dictionary of English, it’s “a series of shots fired or missiles all thrown at the same time or in quick succession.” I would often slip it into whatever I was writing at the time; it was harder to use in conversation since it was French and I didn’t actually know how to pronounce it. I do now: it’s fju:zi’leid. I’ve had dalliances with other such words. “Gadabout,” for example. There were also brief flings with “unequivocal,” as well as “ersatz” and the voluptuous “inexorable.” There’s “erstwhile” and “antediluvian,” as well as “eponymous” and “harbinger.” Right now, my current word of the moment is “fungible.” I have never had the occasion to actually use this word, in either conversation or writing. For the longest time, it’s very sound entranced me, even as I wondered to its meaning through amateur etymology. Does it have anything to do with fungi? Of course, the Oxford says it’s “able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable.” Still, it’s a sexy word. I’ll figure out how to use it later. Meanwhile, have you met “lackadaisical?” Read about Pornography and other expressions of lust in the November 2, 2008 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

By Pennie Azarcon dela Cruz, Executive Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine SOME people don’t scare easy. I’m not one of them. If you were watching a horror movie and heard someone hyperventilating at the back just as the background music swelled to the inevitable horrific climax, that would be me. If you caught “What Lies Beneath” in a Makati theater and recall hearing someone squeal during that crucial bathtub scene, that would be me. That click of teeth biting cuticles into a bloody pulp during the “Sixth Sense” premiere? Yup, me! Now you know why I don’t watch scary movies all that much; I don’t fancy having a cardiac just as the bug-eyed zombies catch their prey. I can imagine people discreetly kicking my prone body to hide it under the cinema seats while they relish the gory scenes that they’ve paid good money for. Even my kids would be annoyed. This is the best part and you have to die now? Blame my yellow streak on a potent imagination fueled by generous doses of mythical monsters from Pilipino komiks, the “Gabi ng Lagim” TV series of the mid-60s and a succession of chatty househelp from the South who regularly threatened us with sanguine tales of kapres, aswang, manananggal and other local ghouls to get us to finish our food, take our naps and keep still. The Taong Tuod of Mars Ravelo’s Darna novels similarly haunted me years after they chased the townfolk of Barangay Puntod. Just when I thought I’ve wrestled them down to oblivion, they resurrected themselves in my dreams. I remember how I once had a spider plant hanging on my bedroom window that I had to banish after a week-long series of nightmares. In nightly succession, the plant morphed into a giant octopus about to attack me, a hairy spider crawling towards my bed, a cauldron of writhing snakes, and an alien life form whose blood-sucking tentacles were slowly circling my inert form. I don’t know what psychiatrists would make of these Freudian images, but they scared me enough to swear off exotic plants forever. Then there was the time I caught “The Blob” on Million Dollar Movies, shuddering as the red amorphous gel from outer space gobbled everything on its path. I don’t remember how the lead characters managed to rid the planet of this menace, but the image of the voracious monster stayed with me when I went to bed that same night. Covering my head with a blanket, I managed to doze off awhile when suddenly, I felt something crawling up my leg. I almost screamed when I saw The Blob heaving its massive form at the foot of my bed. But as I shook the blankets off to make a run for it, I was suddenly jerked awake. I looked down and found -- not The Blob, but my knitted maroon sweater lying crumpled on my bed. As for “Gabi ng Lagim,” the mere howling of a dog to herald the start of another episode was enough to have me bury my head into the nearest sofa, occasionally peeking at the TV screen through the parted fingers curtaining my face. This was how my siblings and I got to know the White Lady at Balete Drive, the tyanak, the form-changing giant bat, the headless nun -- all staples of Philippine ghost stories and horror movies. Having an impressionable subconscious that absorbed every thought, wish and fear and regurgitated them hours later in the form of dreams and nightmares made the dark a fearful and mysterious force. And so us siblings would approach our darkened bedroom with bated breath, clutching each other tightly and sticking close like compound Siamese twins, with one of us bravely reaching out a hand to grope for the light switch. Only with the lights on could we breathe easy again. As we grew up, we graduated to the more sophisticated chills offered by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Wait Until Dark,” “Psycho,” and “The Birds,” fighting off the urge to hide every time we espied birds clumping together on a neighbor’s roof. “Carrie” was as memorable, with the whole theater erupting into a surprised scream at the twist towards the movie’s end. Today, “The Ring,” “The Grudge,” and similar Asian horror movies make much of the fact that horror flourishes even in this techno-savvy age and that evil resides even in the most quotidian items -- like the cellphone. The scare, I hear, are just as cathartic, the imagination given free rein as the darkened screen suggests shadows, foretells death and deals out thrills and chills in labyrinthine surprises. It is this element of suggestion, the powerful nudge to the imagination and its endless stock of wraithlike creatures let loose in our mind at the slightest hint of malaise that I find sorely lacking in the slew of slasher movies, those bloodfests that feature serial killers on the loose and zooming in to show them stab, torture, stuff and/or eviscerate their victims. Not just gory but utterly predictable: you know the ditsiest cheerleader will go first, while the rest follows until only one manages to escape, or help finally comes when a maverick cop or a nerd finally figures out the cryptic message left by the pattern of macabre killings. Sure they scare me; but it’s disgust that keeps me away. If I wanted to be traumatized by real-life characters, I only have to read the news, open the tabloids or watch the news. Unscrupulous politicians, junketing police generals and their wives, rich thrill killers who get premature pardons, bandits and kidnappers who prey on humanitarian workers -- why, it’s a regular rogue’s gallery, a veritable collection of monsters who have apparently made a Faustian bargain. Like zombies, they’re the undead who cannot be slain and they visit and revisit us, relentless in their bloodlust, shameless in their greed. Now that’s real scary. To unearth more tales from the darkside, check out the Sunday Inquirer Magazine on Oct. 26, free with your copy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine THE tenuous connection between All Souls Day and scary things gets even more muddled every year as the Philippines seems to move closer and closer to a Halloween that is American in almost every single way. What has always been interesting is how TV revels in this by sending up their "scary" stuff. Remember the "Magandang Gabi, Bayan" Halloween episode? Spooky. The channels would also roll out their menagerie of Filipino horror films, including some very old and some very funny ones. So let's ask ourselves what are the ten scariest films we have ever seen. Take note, if I seem to be missing a scary movie on this list, it's because I probably haven't seen it. Horror movies seem to be the single most profitable genre now, so everyone is making them one after the other, especially Asian countries. I simply haven't been able to watch all of them despite my best efforts. Plus, I try to tune out the Hollywood adaptations. You will also notice a preponderance of zombie movies on this list -- that's because I simply can't stop watching them. Here they are, in no particular order: 1. "Night of the Living Dead": I’m talking about the original 1968 version. What George Romero distilled was a new way of projecting fears about the era we lived in. But what has endured is a fear of flesh-eating corpses that shamble around, waiting to turn you into one of them. The 1990 remake may have been in full-color, but the original black-and-white experiment carries an edge and moodiness that defy time and taste. 2. "28 Days Later" and "28 Weeks Later" (Counts as one): Just as Romero defined zombie movies, these two movies redefined them, unleashing two innovations: 1) zombies which run very, very fast and 2) the zombie movie as art. Both British products with quite an artistic pedigree: 2002's "Days" was directed by Danny Boyle and written by novelist Alex Garland while 2007's "Weeks" was helmed by Spaniard Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. The movies took advantage of millennial dread and used a virus called Rage; note that the zombies are never referred to as such, they are simply "The Infected." Between the empty London landscapes and the eerie music by John Murphy, these movies prove that the horrifying can be beautiful. 3. "Dawn of Dead": This time, I'm referring to the 2004 recreation by Zack Snyder. Back then, Snyder was a hotshot video director, but it was this movie that established him as a kinetic, visual filmmaker who would go on to helm both "300" and "Watchmen." Totally owning the idea of the mall as apocalyptic shelter, this movie runs at ten times the speed of the Romero original, pushing the speedy zombie to its maximum, while pushing the envelope with zombies of all shapes and sizes. 4. "Life Force": This 1985 production is British in feel and spirit -- yet it was actually directed by Tobe Hooper, the Texas-born mind behind the original "Texas Chain Saw Massacre." Sleek if somewhat ludicrous, it brings what can only be described as space vampires into the forefront with a surprisingly good cast (Patrick Stewart before he was Picard! Peter Firth! Mathilda May!), it mixes a bit of sexiness and a lot of sci-fi into a modern gothic movie. 5. "The Thing": There is no more grotesque, more paranoid product that John Carpenter's masterwork. That "thing" (really what other way can it be described) waiting under the arctic ice in this 1982 screamer really carries out its mission in the goriest, grossest way Possible -- taking the whole "it disguises itself as you" aesthetic to new depths. And that last scene -- craggy Kurt Russell and granite-hewn Keith David back-to-back, clutching their weapons as the snow comes down, listening to the darkness, clutching their weapons just in case, all the while we've hearing Ennio Morricone's (yes, that Ennio Morricone) heartbeat of a theme ticking way -- is a reminder of how mindbending these movies can be. 6. "The Sixth Sense": M. Night Shyamalan's first movie was his best, and the twist awaiting Bruce Willis at the very end, mixed with Haley Joel Osment's eye-opening performance, make this a solid movie, period. But it is what Shyamalan does with movement -- just a little – that makes this a winner. The sudden, furtive movement behind Osment as he's peeing in the bathroom. The rustling under his bed. The slow rocking of something in the rafters. Scary. 7. "The Others": Just perhaps the most underrated, underappreciated horror movie imaginable, this 2001 movie from Chilean writer/director Alejandro Amenabar is the exact opposite of "The Sixth Sense." It is a very still movie—and has a whopper of a twist at the end that rivals that of "Sense." It uses shadows and stillness instead of light and movement. Nicole Kidman and her kids make this a horror masterpiece that is sad as well as scary -- and quite possibly the single movie you should not alone at night. 8. "Shake, Rattle & Roll": The granddaddy of all Filipino modern horror—and the best of them all. This 1984 trilogy featured the definitive combination of séance voodoo (and a cautionary tale for all Spirit of the Glass sessions) with Emmanuel H. Borlaza's "Baso," a fear-the-aswang chase in Peque Gallaga's "Manananggal," and—the most inventive idea of all—haunted appliances in Ishmael Bernal's "Pridyider." Janice de Belen's turn as the victim dared viewers to go and get a cold drink after watching this. The tenth "Shake" comes out this year, but the original is still the mightiest of all. 9. "Jaws": Any movie that makes you scared of jumping into the swimming pool has to be on this list. This is the movie that made Steven Spielberg big and essentially created the event movie. Yet it is uncanny how a malfunctioning mechanical shark and Spielberg's decision to shoot around it made for unforgettable seaside violence. 10. "The Exorcist" and "The Omen" (Counts as one thematically): A confession: To this day, I cannot watch the originals from start to end. These devil-oriented movies remain as terrifying today as when they first came out (William Friedkin's "Exorcist" in 1973 and Richard Donner's "Omen" in 1976) and the names Regan and Damien became scary forever. Read about the scariest movies in the October 26 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

By Pennie Azarcon Dela Cruz, Executive Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine FOR the longest time, the concept of living in absolutely made no sense to me. As guys crudely put it, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Yup, I thought smugly; living-in is for women so desperate to snag a mate they’d willingly give away samples of the goods to entice potential takers. Until I got married. Getting hitched is when you realize that you never really get to know someone until you’re actually living together. Eight years of dating, dining, and whining didn’t prepare me for my partner’s inner life and darkest secret. Nope, he’s not with the mob. Neither is he a cross-dresser, a werewolf, or a fan of Willie Revillame. A perfectly decent guy, he is also, to my horrified surprise, a pack rat. Nothing ever gets thrown out. Not the old turntable missing its arm, not the chest of drawers that was falling apart, not the moth-eaten shirts already outgrown, stained or faded. Not the balding car wheels that we’ve replaced months back and which were probably breeding dengue mosquitoes. Not the rusty filing cabinet whose contents nobody was brave enough to examine, since it had once sat on fetid floodwaters for a week. For the longest time, it sat desolate in the backyard along with the car wheels and the turntable. In the library, occupying three glass-enclosed shelves, is a pile of 1950s book-bound Readers Digest that plays host to a whole colony of termites. Nope, the resident pack rat (RPR) once declared, we’re not junking the 50-year-old solihiya bed given his parents on their wedding night. For some ten years, RPR would have the sagging solihiya rewoven into a firm staging pad for the lumpy mattress, spending what could probably buy us a sumptuous opium bed. Recurrent back pains finally convinced him to let go, but not before he extracted a promise that I wouldn’t dump the old thing. So there it was -- leaning against the wall with no takers because not even the househelp could be coaxed, strong-armed and bribed into allowing it into their room. Months later, when we had the house repaired, he suddenly had a brainwave. So now the solihiya stands grandly in our cramped sala, converted into a makeshift divider separating the phone from the TV watching area. Cleeever, guests would gush, to the Cheshire cat grin of RPR. Thus encouraged, he has since lovingly sealed in saran wrap his latest trove of rare books that, he tells me, would be worth a fortune some hundred years from now. A hundred years from now, I tell him wryly, we’d be pushing daisies. That’s why we go to the gym, RPR counters. “So we can live to be a hundred plus by which time we’d be rich, rich, RICH!!! Bwaaaahaaaaahaaaa!!!” Unable to match that diabolical laughter, I’ve since resolved to quietly get rid of as much junk as I can, donating outmoded shirts to fire victims who come a-begging for old clothes, making dishtowels of the stained camisa chino and pajamas, selling the car wheels to the itinerant junkman, donating old books to public libraries and orphanages, and so on. Not that I’m OC when it comes to tidying up. I remember once tacking a sign over my work station that read, “A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind,” to ward off remarks about my messy table. I’ve been known to hold on to clutter for a good two or three years until rats found my stash and shredded them or, later in my married years, until the termites made a feast of it. Still, I have my limits. When the pile of books and assorted papers start moving on their own, like the glob of jello in “Jurassic Park,” I start weeding out. When the leftovers in the ref take on the countenance of alien forms, I cheerfully sweep them into the trash. And once, when I found roaches (God, I hate them!) crawling between pages of my never-finished novel, I decided I’d rather be tidy than famous. So whatever happened to that frugal, parsimonious and prudent homemaker who would keep and reuse disposable party cups from children’s parties to save a few pesos? Not to mention convert old bed sheets into curtains, tatty socks into dusting bunnies and last year’s calendar pages into telephone memo pads? Alright, alright, I confess: it all has to do with age. Having senior moments every few minutes can be very persuasive. You misplace your glasses and find yourself hauling out an entire drawer whose contents, to your horror, fills up the entire kitchen. You know you kept the keys to the safety deposit box in your closet, but discover that the tons of outdated clothes you’ve kept for charity have eaten them up. And where, oh where, in this plethora of unlabelled boxes, did you slip in the guide to last year’s Christmas gifts so you don’t wind up giving the same stuff to friends and relatives? So now I adhere to my two-year rule: anything that doesn’t get used within two years gets discarded, recycled, donated or, oh well, slipped into the plethora of heretofore unlabelled boxes -- to be sorted out later. So sue me; old habits die hard. Or it could RPR’s dusty habit rubbing off on me. Didn’t they say that married couples eventually get to resemble each other? Eeeeewwww, hand me that trash bag! --------------------------- For recycling tips and how to de-clutter the world, check out the Oct. 19 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine. Free with your copy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine I REALIZE I've broached this somewhat in an earlier blog entry, but I think it is important to emphasize how books can have a second life. Instead of just lying somewhere in your abode gathering dust or (worse) being used as appetizer by rats, books can begin a new journey, be appreciated by another person. Here are a few suggestions: 1) Give them to someone specific: Books can sometimes be valuable precisely because they are used--by you. When you give them to a friend, it is an act of affection for both the friend (only good friends would have his experience) and the book (precious enough to be given to someone who will take care of them). It is just a matter of finding the right book for the right person; blindly giving your books away is fine if the whole point was to be giving them to just anyone. Irrepressible readers can appreciate pretty much any book. But the closer the book to the nature of the recipient the better; cookbooks for that aspiring chef, biographies for that friend in HR, and so on. Popular books like the Harry Potter or Twilight books work for pretty much anyone as long as they don't hav e those yet. Your scribblings among the pages serve to make the book even more personal; do make the effort to write a dedication. 2) Sell them: It may feel like a cold-blooded act, but selling books is part of the cycle as well. Booksales are common enough events on college campuses, but now you can sell your books to either second-hand bookstores or on eBay. Just remember the key is to price the book accordingly, the more worn, the lower the price. Also it should not have any dedications and such; those actually lower the price. Popular or rare books will be easy to move; more obscure ones less so. Just remember, even if you paid this much for a book, you cannot base the new price on that. This is particularly true for comic books and graphic novels. The book travels to the hands of someone who will appreciate it and you get a bit of cash to buy more books. You will have to decide which titles you have that can sell and it helps to have someone who already sells books to begin with. Otherwise, you will have to either sell them yourself or learn how to do it on the Internet. 3) Donate them: High schools, grade schools and colleges still do have actual brick-and-mortar libraries and they still welcome books to add to their collection. This is one case where obscure titles might find a home, but remember to keep the books appropriate to where you're donating. Good childrens lit titles for grade school, textbooks for high school, and so on. This is the way by which you can move the most books, but you have to ask the libraries first if they are accepting contributions. You should look around for a library that really needs your books. You will also have to bring the books to the library yourself. By the way, complete encyclopedias make great donations. Feel free to suggest more. Any of these would be better than either burning the books (never!) or to just throw them away (gasp!) to clear space. Save a book today and your soul will thank you for it. Get more ideas for recycling with the October 19, 2008 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine THERE'S an interesting buzz surrounding Lav Diaz's eight-hour film "Melancholia," which, it must be noted, is NOT being shown in Metro Manila. The MTRCB has, apparently, not been able to watch it and thus give it a required rating, even while the MTRCB chair Consoliza Laguardia denies it's not because it's too long. The buzz is interesting because Diaz's film received the Orizzonti Grand Prize of Mostra 2008--yet we won't get to watch it. The other buzz comes from the sheer amazement of people that someone actually made an eight-hour film. It boggles the mind for some. So we think of the longest movies ever made. According to Wikipedia, Diaz's film does not even come close to the longest movie ever made, the 27-hour long Chinese silent film "The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple." The movie was released in two parts, in 1928 and 1931. One can only imagine there was not all that much to watch at the time in China, but I'm just guessing. There is a bunch of European films ranging from 25 to 5 hours or so. Length isn't always a bad thing. Many of the greatest movies made were long. In fact, there was often an intermission between the two parts. The movie musicals even had an overture at the start. "Gone With the Wind" is over three hours long. So is "Lawrence of Arabia." Running just under three hours are "The Sound of Music" and "West Side Story." Of similar length are "Dances with Wolves" and "Saving Private Ryan." Of most recent vintage, "The Dark Knight" clocked in at two and a half hours. The movie with the highest all-time gross, it has to be noted, is 1997's "Titanic," which ran just over three hours. Of course, length is never an automatic sign of a good film. Kevin Costner's "The Postman" ran over three hours long and even if "Waterworld" was much shorter, it sure felt longer. Wolfgang Petersen's "Troy" is almost three hours long--I mean, it is about the Iliad. But when it's three hours that deviates ridiculously from the Iliad (how the heck does Agamemnon die in Troy? How do we go from there to Medea? Is he resurrected as a Greek zombie?), that has to be considered a bit excessive. For all the people who complained about the length of "The Matrix Reloaded" (two hours plus) and "The Matrix Revolutions" (almost the same), consider that most of that time was taken up with big machines going klank, people going whoa and cars going crunch. Besides, I actually like all three Matrix movies (then again, I might be the only fan of Keanu Reeves' earlier steampunk joint, the universally reviled "Johnny Mnemonic"). What it boils down to ultimately is your enjoyment will of course vary on your taste. Maybe it is time to go back to the grand three hour movie, with the intermission in between. Maybe it really did make movies a true night out, an event. I would argue in fact that people feel much better about long movies than short ones--you surely won't feel shortchanged for an eight-hour movie if you pay the same as for the hour-and-a-half variety. I just like having the choice, so I hope "Melancholia" is eventually shown in theaters here, no matter how few viewers there are, once it passes MTRCB rating, of course. After all, we should count ourselves lucky. Wikipedia says that the 2006 German experimental film "Matrjoschka" which ran 95 hours long. Whoa indeed. For more about Lav Diaz and his film "Melancholia," check out the October 12 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine I HATED school. From the very first day of Kindergarten when my mom had to drag me from the chair in front of the TV (“Sesame Street” was on) to the waiting school bus to the day I graduated from college, I hated it. And I hated college the most. Work was revelatory for me. I savored working on my own, judged by the last and the next thing you did, and, most of all, I loved getting paid. In the back of my mind, it seemed weird to pay and be forced to work -- in other words, like being in school. I returned to school a year after working, but to teach, not to study. Ironically, I enjoyed teaching and got better at it (after the first years of being incompetent at it, of course). It had a lot to do with the fact that I could remember what I hated about my teachers -- and tried to get away from that. Going back to school for my master’s degree was something I kept juggling in my head. I always dismissed it because of the time and monetary constraints. It did occur to me that a master’s degree would be very useful in the teaching career -- plus the MA toga is way cooler than the AB toga. I finally got my chance in 2003 when I did finally go back to school. The opportunity came when the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Ateneo Center for Journalism offered its first ever Masters in Journalism program, a melding of traditional classroom instruction and progressive online instruction. I approached this with huge trepidation, of course. The big thing that drew me in was the generous scholarship that came with being part of this pilot program. I should have known when I took the entrance exam for grad school (yes, you have to take another one) that some things never change. Case in point: the math portion of the exam completely stumped me. Luckily, I still made it to grad school but, man, math tests are still the bane of my academic existence. Online classes took some getting used to, and the computer glitches that came with hilariously frustrating. But it was very cool to have classmates in other countries, as well as instructors who braved the difference in time zones with aplomb. I also realized that meeting deadlines as a grad student made me every bit as neurotic as when I was an undergrad. In one word: arrrrgh. If I thought sitting still for the online classes was hard, it had nothing on actually sitting still in actual class. As an undergrad, I desperately avoided any class before 10:30 a.m., as I would literally be a zombie prior to that. So it only made sense that, as a grad student, I would have a 7:30 a.m. class. Luckily, my teachers were awesome, the classes cool and the work diverting. It was still hard, but I have to say that I learned more in my two years as a grad student than I had all the years I spent in school prior to that. The weird thing was that I would sometimes regress into old habits to keep my mind from wandering: I still talk too much in class, then and now. I often hear people in grad school say this: “If I was this diligent as a student back when I was in college, I would be an honor student.” It’s true. Grad school takes a completely different sense of organization and cerebral work ethic. The biggest element is that nobody will bug you to do it. You have to figure it out or just fall away altogether. The fact that I was part of the start of something really big (Ateneo’s MA Journalism program) really pushed me. That day I marched to get my MA diploma remains one of the proudest of my life. Seriously. I was also ridiculously happy to be done with school again. Three years later, I find myself a different teacher as well, as the time I spent in grad school actually changed me as an instructor, hopefully for the better. Hmmm. A doctorate sounds interesting…Argggh.