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1. FINALLY Ryan Reynolds can be a star. Deadpool showcases Reynolds’ best attributes: his comic delivery, his torso, and his ass. They’re not coy about it, either: the poster reads, “Smartass, Badass, Great Ass.” In some scenes he wears no pants. It’s rated R-16, go away, children.

2. It refers openly to the Green Lantern debacle.

3. It is a superhero movie that makes fun of superhero movies. The jokes fly so fast, we have to see the movie more than once to get everything. The credit sequence itself is hysterical.

4. It is horrifically violent, smutty, immature and hilarious—like our teenage comic book-reading selves.

5. Deadpool is obviously low-budget (for a superhero movie) so they can only afford two X-Men and the special effects look cheap, but they make up for it by being extra-nerdy. “The fourth wall just broke the fourth wall,” Deadpool notes, “so that’s like, sixteen walls.”

6. There are no amazing weapons of mass destruction or super-scary villains (Though Gina Carano as herself is not someone you want to cross), but there’s a ton of dick jokes. Final battle. They’re out of weapons. Lead villain Rejected Daario Naharis says, “Fine. Fists.”

“Sounds like your Saturday night,” Deadpool says. Again: Children, go away.

7. It is directed by Erlich from Silicon Valley (who also plays Deadpool’s best friend), and it shares that show’s combination of juvenile humor and intelligence. The action scenes are fairly straightforward and comprehensible.

Correction: Tim Miller the director is not T.J. Miller who is Erlich Bachman on Silicon Valley. But it would’ve killed if he were! Thanks to the readers who pointed this out.

8. There’s a post-credit sequence that makes fun of post-credit sequences.

9. You don’t have to have read a single Deadpool comic book to enjoy it.

10. Excellent use of cheesy pop ballads.

Illustrations for Tolstoy’s War and Peace by Leonid Pasternak (father of Boris)

Changing Genres
by Dean Young

I was satisfied with haiku until I met you,
jar of octopus, cuckoo’s cry, 5-7-5,
but now I want a Russian novel,
a 50-page description of you sleeping,
another 75 of what you think staring out
a window. I don’t care about the plot
although I suppose there will have to be one,
the usual separation of the lovers, turbulent
seas, danger of decommission in spite
of constant war, time in gulps and glitches
passing, squibs of threnody, a fallen nest,
speckled eggs somehow uncrushed, the sled
outracing the wolves on the steppes, the huge
glittering ball where all that matters
is a kiss at the end of a dark hall.
At dawn the officers ride back to the garrison,
one without a glove, the entire last chapter
about a necklace that couldn’t be worn
inherited by a great-niece
along with the love letters bound in silk.

“Changing Genres” by Dean Young, from Fall Higher. © Copper Canyon Press, 2011.

Maybe one of the less miserable Dostoevskys.

Consisting of three identical stacked trays, this aesthetically pleasing litter box just needs you to lift the top tray to separate the waste from the clean, useable litter, which would fall into the tray beneath and be ready to use again. After throwing the waste away, simply turn the top tray around and place it at the bottom of the stack and you are done.

Not only is this an incredibly easy and quick way to clean out a litter box, it is also a method that ensures zero wastage as you would never have to throw away clean cat litter again.

Read about it at DesignTaxi.

Thanks to Noel for the alert. At dinner the other night he reminded us of that soap ad where the model takes a leaf and slathers half of it with lotion. Then she crushes the dry half and says, “See how it crumbles?” The slathered half doesn’t, ergo buy the soap. (Somebody send us that ad.)

That commercial used to drive our Physics teacher nuts. “What kind of experiment is that! It has no control group!”

In our section freshman year there was this guy who used to move his head from side to side constantly, like an Indian dancer, and our Physics teacher said, “What’s wrong with you? You look like the dog at the back of the car!”

Uro dela Cruz, who died on Thursday, was a brilliant fictionist, screenwriter, film and TV director, photographer and amateur anthropologist. He was 64. He had shelves full of awards, including seven Palancas, that he was grateful for but did not talk about. Crowing about his achievements embarrassed him — the important thing was the work, and even that he barely discussed. It became a running joke: ask him how many TV shows he was directing at the same time, and he would say, “None.” “You don’t direct Bubble Gang anymore?” we would press him. “That show practically directs itself,” he would shrug. After we had peeled away layers of semantic obfuscation, we would learn that in addition to the comedy show he helmed for two decades, he was directing two game shows and a sitcom starring Manny Pacquiao. No wonder it took him ages to reply to texts and phone calls.

All these accomplishments — the shows ranging from Battle of the Brains to Bubble Gang that defined pop culture and Pinoy humor (he wanted to set up a website called Wackipedia as an archive of jokes); the now-classic films he wrote, including Virgin Forest and Scorpio Nights; the amateur urban archeology that led to a trove of photos by Teodulo Protomartir; the novel Antyng-Antyng (Kwadrisentenyal), which remained unpublished until we kidnapped the manuscript and sent it to a publisher — these are sidebars to the life of Rosauro Quevedo Dela Cruz of Lucban, Quezon. What Uro really excelled at was being a human being. He was a devoted husband to Anna, who runs the household with military precision, whom he described as the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. He was a terrific father to Tata, Toto and Dodong, whom he deprived of any issues they can report to a psychiatrist later in life because they could talk about everything. He was a marvelous friend — kind, generous, deadpan funny, fiercely intelligent, a human Google of arcane knowledge, and he would be the first to point out that there are too many adjectives in this sentence. Uro was one of the finest people I’ve ever known. It’s all downhill from here.

Continue reading in the Philippine Star

Screenwriter, fictionist, filmmaker and photographer Rosauro Quevedo Dela Cruz died of liver failure this morning at 0530.

(He did not drink. We know this for a fact because he was the most unpretentious foodie, and if wine came with the meal, we drank his portion as well. He had diabetes for many years, and the medication he was taking gave him fatty liver which eventually became cirrhosis.)

He is survived by his wife Anna and his children Tata, Toto and Dodong. And many, many cats.

Friends who wish to see him one last time can come to Santuario de San Jose in Greenhills. Take the Connecticut gate.

The funeral is on Sunday, 7 February, 3 pm at Manila Memorial Park in Sucat.

He should’ve gone to Paris.