JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

In The Master, Joaquin Phoenix plays an ex-navy man with post-traumatic stress disorder who falls in with a cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who may or may not be based on L. Ron Hubbard of Scientology. It’s an amazing, puzzling movie and Joaquin Phoenix’s approach to his role is the opposite of Daniel Day-Lewis’s in Lincoln. Whereas DDL appears to be in control of everything, including his pores and facial hair, Joaquin doesn’t seem to know what Joaquin is doing—he keeps surprising himself. Where is it coming from? He must be hell to direct but the result is beautiful and terrifying. More on the The Master later.

Noel pointed out the early scene, set in Hawaii, in which Joaquin’s character is drinking his homemade brew with some Pinoys. Tagalog is spoken in the background. Someone sings Dahil Sa ‘Yo, and its composer who, funnily enough, shares the name of the leader of the religious group El Shaddai, Mike Velarde. All is well, until you hear this bit of off-camera dialogue:

“Katabi siya ng artista.” (He’s beside the movie star.)

The artista being Joaquin Phoenix. Apparently the extras were so thrilled to be in the movie, they talked about it during a take, and no one in the editing room could understand Tagalog, tsk tsk.

We have this. We love hotels, inns, bed and breakfasts (beds and breakfasts), five star, six star, dinky—as long as we have our own bathroom. Our ideal residence is a hotel—there’s always someone to pick up after you, if you’re hungry there’s room service, and if you’re bored you can change rooms or hotels.

We’re not quite there yet.

There are bad movies, then there are quisquillian movies.

Meowrrr

Saffy believes she is human. We’re not sure she’s wrong.

Contrary to our expectations, not one who eats Galactus.

Boggle someone today! Use these words at a meeting.

From Luciferous Logolepsy

And if your colleagues are being obtuse, do this.

How to deal with a mansplainer starring Hillary Clinton

According to the article, fame is like Aztec human sacrifice. To quote our favorite review of one of the later Star Wars, “Break me a fucking give.”

VICE has called Esquire’s interview with Megan Fox The Worst Thing Ever Written. Yup, it’s drivel. But is it sincere drivel, or is it meant to be a joke? Come on, Aztecs, leprechauns, Bigfoot…

Deep in her house, Megan Fox and I are discussing human sacrifice. I tell her about an Aztec ritual practiced five hundred years ago in ancient Mexico during the feast of Toxcatl, when the Aztecs picked a perfect youth to live among them as a god. He was a paragon, beautiful and fit and healthy, with ideal proportions.

Megan Fox will not go willingly to have her heart cut out.

Keep reading this drivel.

This breathless bad prose is grammatically correct, unlike many magazine articles we have read.

…is the chemical name for the giant protein titin. It takes 3 hours to pronounce. That’s half a Lav Diaz movie. Tell us how it goes.

(1) The Law of Conservation of Adjectives. In the old days, writers needed to burden themselves with an arsenal of modifiers adjectives that deliver subtly different connotation and emphasis. No more. Today, one only needs the adverb really, and the degree of emphasis is indicated by how many times it is used. Really, really happy would formerly have been elated. Really, really, really, really happy would formerly have been orgasmic. The really phenomenon is so strong that its limits cannot be plumbed even by the mighty Google search engine, which restricts inquiries to no more than 32 words. I can, however, report that people have used at least 32 reallys very often. How often? Really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really often. Thirty-two reallys, in quotes, returns more than 3 million hits. Here, some of the words following 32 or more reallys: like girls, hot guy, old, cool and want this (its a shirt). A quick anecdotal sampling suggests the most common word following 32 reallys is bored.

Read Prose and Cons. Good news: More people are writing. Bad news: More people are writing.

Etang Discher is second from the right.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com. Meanwhile, enjoy this video combining two of our obsessions.

Sounds like Azarenka. (That is not tennis-watching kittens behavior but kittens fascinated by laser pointer behavior.)