JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Since Friday there’s been nothing in the movie theatres but Twilight: Breaking Dawn, and that sucks on every possible level. Theatre owners complain that attendance is down and the industry is dying, so their solution is to take away our power to choose what we want to see. Brilliant. That’ll get us back into the movie houses.

Fortunately we don’t have to put up with their crap. We are not powerless; this is the 21st century and we have lots of options. Sure we prefer to watch our movies on the big screen while stuffing our faces with popcorn and drinking gallons of soda, but not if it means having our brains sucked out by emo vampires. We want more out of cinema than a choice between bestiality and necrophilia. For starters, we want Cinema.

So we’re going to have our own film festival at home.

Our opening film is 13 Assassins by the extremely prolific Takashi Miike, who seems to pop out a movie every month. All the ones we’ve seen are enjoyable, many of them are brilliant, and this one is masterful.

We met the Japanese director a few years ago at the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy. He was not at all what we’d expected, but then we were expecting a cackling lunatic wearing platform shoes and a dress covered in blood and entrails so it was probably for the best.

Miike’s movies are hilariously horrifying and horrifyingly hilarious. They are violent, perverse, gruesome and wonderful. 13 Assassins is the atypical Miike project: classic filmmaking that lifts you out of your seat.

Feudal Japan is enjoying an era of peace; it is so peaceful that the samurai have nothing to do. Some of their best spend their time drinking, gambling, whoring. Fortunately for them, unfortunately for the populace, the Shogun’s half-brother starts making trouble. He is only the vilest, most depraved, vicious shit to walk the shogunate, the kind of villain who massacres innocent peasants and leaves only one survivor—with no limbs. The following year Lord Shithead is going to sit in the Shogun’s Council, which is bad news for everybody.

The samurai Shinzaemon Shimada is called upon to rid Japan of this horror. He assembles a group of warriors and they plan an ambush on Lord Shithead on his way to Edo. Meanwhile Shinzaemon’s classmate and friend Hanbei is prepared to defend his boss Lord Shithead with his life. Shinza has 12 men, Hanbei has hundreds. Shinza knows that he will die; Hanbei knows that the world would be a far better place if his boss were separated from his head, but he will do what he must. Both men invoke honor and duty, but differ in their interpretation of loyalty.

On their way to the ambush the 12 samurai encounter a nutty bandit who guides them out of the woods and ends up joining them. The nutty bandit turns out to have a ginormous…sword, and the way he employs it is the Miike signature in this Seven Samurai-style adventure. He also has some very contemporary criticism of the samurai way: “Why are samurai so arrogant? Why can’t they be fun?”

The last 45 minutes contain some of the most spectacular sword battles on film. Gorgeous cinematography and choreography, and it doesn’t even matter if the subtitles on your copy are ungrammatical. 13 Assassins is satisfying, joyous filmmaking that will wipe all the whiny bloodsuckers out of your mind.

Next: As far from battles in feudal Japan as we can manage. An aristocrat and a working man get it on in Edwardian England, and a 12-year-old boy delivers their secret letters.

Kamakailan ay nabanggit ng isang manunulat na Ingles na si Alan Hollinghurst ay di lamang pinakamagaling na nobelistang bakla sa Inglatera nguni’t pinakamagaling na nobelista sa Inglatera. Maaaring totoo ito, pero paano kung ang mambabasa ay hindi Ingles? Mauunawaan niya ba at masasakyan ang bagong akda ni Alan Hollinghurst?

Subukan natin. Kasalukuyan naming binabasa ang The Stranger’s Child ni Hollinghurst at talaga namang kabigha-bighani ito. Ang nobela ay may limang bahagi. Pagkatapos ng bawa’t bahagi ay iti-chismis namin sa inyo kung ano ang nangyari para mapag-isipan ninyo kung ito ay isang kuwentong maiintindihan at magugustuhan ng mga Pilipino.

Pagpasensiyahan niyo po ang aming Tagalog, minsan lamang namin itong nagagamit sa pagsusulat.

I. “Two Acres”

Tag-araw sa taong 1913. Malapit nang sumabog ang Unang Digmaang Pandaigdigan nguni’t sa tahanan ng pamilyang Sawle, ang hacienda na tinaguriang “Two Acres”, tahimik ang lahat. Ang binatang si George, pangalawang anak ng biyudang si Gng Freda Sawle, ay nagbabakasyon mula sa kanyang pamantasan, Cambridge University. Panauhin niya ang kanyang kamag-aral, si Cecil Valance na di pa man nakakapagtapos ng kolehiyo ay tanyag nang makata.

Si Cecil ay matangkad, matipuno, matalino, magiliw, malakas ang boses at galing sa aristokrasya. Hindi katakataka na mahumaling sa kanya ang nakababatang kapatid ni George na si Daphne, 16 anos. Lalo na’t si Daphne ay di lamang mahilig magbasa ng tula; marami rin siyang ilusyon sa buhay. Ang medyo nakapagtataka ay ang madalas na pagkawala nina George at Cecil, na bumabalik sa bahay na pinagpapawisan, naghahagikhikan, may mga mantsa sa kanilang damit at dahon sa kanilang mga buhok.

Photo: James Wilby and Hugh Grant in the Merchant-Ivory adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel Maurice.

Ibinigay ni Daphne ang kanyang album kay Cecil at hiniling na lagdaan ito at kung maaari ay sulatan ng maikling tula.

Ang mga Sawle ay hindi kasing sosyal ng mga Valance, at mula nang mamatay si G Sawle ang tumatayong padre de familia ay ang panganay na si Hubert. Si Gng Sawle ay mahilig sa musika at malakas uminom, at parati nitong kasama si Gng Kalbeck, isang Aleman. Madalas nilang panauhin sa Two Acres si G. Hewitt mula sa kabilang hacienda. Mayaman si G. Hewitt at madalas magbigay ng regalo kay Gng Sawle at kay Hubert. Akala nila’y may gusto ito kay Gng Sawle.

Bago umuwi sa kanilang hacienda si Cecil, naglakad ito sa gubat kasama si George at naligo sila sa batis. Pagkatapos nilang magtalik pinuna ni Cecil na hindi lamang sila ang may…kakaibang interes. Tila si G. Hewitt ay masyadong malapit kay Hubert at palagi itong sinusunggaban at niyayakap. Hindi yata ang nanay ni George ang napupusuan nito.

Bigla na lamang nilang nakitang paparating si Daphne at muntik na silang mahuli. May nakita nga ba siya? Pagkatapos ng hapunan ay naglakad sa hardin sina Cecil at Daphne, at siniguro ng lalaki na wala itong alam tungkol sa relasyon nila ni George. May pagtingin ang babae kay Cecil kaya’t wala siyang napapansin. Hinalikan ni Cecil si Daphne.

Hindi makatulog si Daphne dahil sadyang kinikilig ang gaga (Ipagpaumanhin ang aming panghuhusga; nakikini-kinita na namin ang mangyayari). Paggising niya’y nakaalis na si Cecil; inihatid ito ni George sa istasyon ng tren. Iniwan ng Cecil ang album ni Daphne: nakasulat dito ang mahabang tulang pinamagatang “Two Acres”.

Ang tulang ito ay magiging tanyag sa buong Inglatera.

Source

Last week Metro Manileños had a choice between the Cinemanila film festival (Takashi Miike, Wim Wenders), the Cinema One Originals film festival (independent Filipino filmmakers) and the Italian film festival (talks by Dario Argento, films by Bernardo Bertolucci). Actual options! Almost as if we were living in a film capital! But did they all have to happen at the same time? Did the organizers get together and decide that 4 or 5 days was all that local moviegoers could handle?

This week we have no options: every theatre in every multiplex in our neighborhood is showing Twilight: Breaking Dawn, part 1. Meaning that sometime next year every theatre in every multiplex in your neighborhood will be showing Twilight: Breaking Dawn, part 2. Yippee, something to live for!

In case you have been in cryogenic suspension for the last four years and have no idea what Twilight is, here is a recap.

Read our column in interaksyon.com.

Unless you’re driving.

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Berlin and Paris, 1940. Jazz. Nazis. A mysterious letter revealed 50 years later.
Trade paperback, Php675

The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis
Crime thriller. Copenhagen. A boy found alive in a suitcase in a public locker.
Trade paperback, Php609

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.
Doorstop. Orwellian.
Hardcover, Php1039

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick De Witt
Deadwood western noir-comedy set in 1851.
Trade paperback, Php875

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu
He had us at the title.
Trade paperback, Php605

The Postmortal by Drew Magary
Humans attain immortality, shitstorm ensues.
Trade paperback, Php595

All prices quoted from National Bookstore.

Those writers seem even more a distinct literary cohort now in the wake of Wallace’s suicide in 2008; Wallace was the youngest of the bunch and the one most openly at war with himself over the way forward for fiction, and his death seems to have galvanized them all. Karr, who had a stormy relationship with Wallace in the early nineties, wrote him into her memoir-in-progress, Lit, though she used only his first name. Franzen sat down and channeled his anger over his close friend’s death into a fourteen-month sprint to write his sprawling 2010 novel, Freedom, which features a character with a likeness to Wallace. He also published a raw and searching New Yorker essay on their complicated friendship. “The depressed person then killed himself, in a way calculated to inflict maximum pain on those he loved most, and we who loved him were left feeling angry and betrayed,” Franzen wrote. “Betrayed not merely by the failure of our investment of love but by the way in which his suicide took the person away from us and made him into a very public legend.”

Read Just Kids by Evan Hughes in New York magazine. Thanks to Butch for the alert.

We wish The Marriage Plot had more to recommend it than Wink wink, guess who this character is based on. (We’d probably be kinder to its clunky, belabored prose if we hadn’t been blown away by The Virgin Suicides.)

There was something oddly familiar about this image.

Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, barred from leaving the Philippines to seek medical treatment abroad, arrested on charges of electoral sabotage.

Then we remembered this. (Of course the resemblance had been noted by others but it just hit us.)

Hannibal Lecter, psychiatrist, cannibal, serial killer from Thomas Harris’s novels and their film adaptations.

Is there a conscious effort to equate the former president with the famous fictional cannibal? If so is it meant to evoke admiration or revulsion? Because we are conflicted about Hannibal. On one hand he eats people, on the other hand they’re people we hate; on one hand he is an abomination, on the other hand he is so civilized that he would eat a mediocre flutist to improve the orchestra.

On one hand we want the rule of law applied, on the other hand we don’t want to get fooled again. On one hand we believe in the separation of powers, on the other hand the powers have screwed us.

This is why we prefer the movies.