Saturday, March 29, 2008

HORTON HEARS A WHO! by jaiskizzy

the gist: jim carrey voices horton, a fanciful elephant who hears a voice from a speck only he could hear. he immediately believes that tiny people exist in the speck and starts carrying it around nestled on a flower, much to the chagrin of a kangaroo who thinks horton is poisoning the minds of children with his delusions. meanwhile, the mayor of whoville (steve carrell) notices odd happenings in his town and soon learns that whoville is the speck that horton has which, of course, the whovillians think is bulldung. with the fate of whoville upon his trunk, horton braves the nool jungle to put the speck in a place safe from harm. will horton accomplish his mission? will the non-believers find enlightenment? will jim carrey ever talk out of his ass again? ace ventura 3 please!!!

the reaction: the first time i came across dr. seuss's horton the elephant was in a looney tunes cartoon where horton is bamboozled by a bird into sitting on her egg while she goes on a vacation or something. horton, who meant what he said and said what he meant, climbs on the tree and stays with the egg until it hatches (in a cute little twist ending) because an elephant's faithful 100 percent. i could still remember the fish that shot itself. any-who, this movie is a ginormous step from that 2d short, a 72-page book inflated to a full-length film. it's as good as kiddie cgi movies can go, with the humor, the movements, the moral lesson(s) fit for the little ones, but you may find something to ponder about in it if you pay enough attention. i mean, the existence of an imaginary being speaking from the heavens who has the whole world under his care will surely have the religious roaring with their rosaries. heck, even the line "a person is a person no matter how small" pulled pro-life activists out of their abodes and had them picketing the theaters with their anti-abortion clamor. but that's taking the fun out of watching horton prance around, holding a flower. and saying that the previous sentence meant horton is gay.

now, since i had a non-dr. seuss childhood, i really dont know what elements from the book made it to the movie and was given justice, except maybe the elephant, whoville, and the rhymes. the obligatory villain comes in the form of a kangaroo that pouch-schools her son and wants to be in control of everything. her evilness worked, at least not too much to scare the kid viewers, which is why it was pretty hard to digest the fact that she turned face quite easily. in whoville, the villains are a team of grinch-lookalikes who have the same agenda of disregarding anything that would cause change (kinda like what's happening in our country now, dont you think?). anyways, there are a bunch of other characters worth noting like the speedy blue creature morton, which is like horton's conscience, and jojo, whoville mayor's emo son, who was my favorite character up until the ending where he [anti-spoiler] the [anti-spoiler] by [anti-spoiler] so that [anti-spoiler] them. and then there's this weird cute yellow...uh, thing named katie who, along with the others' imaginary speck-worlds, says "in my world everyone is a pony, and they all eat rainbows, and poop butterflies." now that is some crazy shit.

speaking of shit, voices, yes, jim carrey owned horton. at first, before seeing the film, i couldn't really imagine him as an elephant so i surmised he'd play around with his voice to match, but his real voice worked just fine. it is jim carrey, however, so he still got to play around with his voice in some parts. steve carrell did pretty well as well as the mayor. that's about all i can distinguish because i couldnt quite recognize everybody else. props to will arnett for voicing vlad the vulture (or bald eagle, not sure). i made guesses that maybe it was jim carrey as well and at some points, antonio banderas. i had no idea who it was 'til i saw the credits.

the animation is nothing short of impressive, which isnt saying much because there's really nothing new cgi-wise introduced here. except for the water, the cg is seamless, especially horton's movements which made it seem like jim carrey had a motion capture suit on the whole time. there are a couple of non-3d scenes in there, one resembling dr. seuss illustrations, the other, hilariously anime-inspired, both of which represent horton's imaginings. imho, it would have been better if a third one was squeezed in there, maybe stop-motion, just to play more on horton's wild mind and not come off as plain fillers which im sure a good number of whiners will point out as. more jim carrey: i dont know if anyone else noticed this but this film had some pretty obvious jim carrey references. exhibit a: when the mayor talks about their genealogy to his son, he inhales a big breath of air to speak nonstop, which is like the videoke scene in cable guy. exhibit b: when the mayor is about to have his root canal, the anesthesia is accidentally injected on his arm, which then becomes limp, definitely from ace ventura: when nature calls.

best viewed with some kids in tow, horton hears a who! is a nice little cgi movie replete with nice little laughs. whether the philosophical jabs were intended by dr. seuss or not, try to keep the debate ammo at bay and just enjoy the film as it is. i mean, fudge, it's a talking elephant for chrissakes.

the good: animation, story, voicing, humor
the bad: "can't fight this feeling anymore"
the ugly: not-the-bunny-with-cookies vlad
the verdict: 7 banana cigars


skizzy is hateful 100%
or
skizzy hears a boo!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

keywords

*edited
with nothing to do at work today but think of questions for the interviews, i tripped through the interwebs and i found this:

the imdb keyword meme
- go to imdb
- pick out 10 movies you like (i picked 13 though)
- pick out 4 plots keywords for each
- post them and have your friend guess

1. photographer, megalomaniac businessman, wrestling, suspension bridge
2. head butt, elevator, belly button, spoon (the matrix)
3. priest, wetting pants, masturbation scene, crucifix
4. heartbreak, amnesia, beach, experiment gone wrong
5. based on book, group therapy, soap, twist ending
6. briefcase, boxer, foot massage, biblical passage (pulp fiction)
7. night vision goggles, moth, basement pit, cannibalism
8. artificial human, suburb, ice sculpture, waterbed
9. husband wife relationship, elasticity, frozen, sucked into jet engine (the incredibles)
10. axe, snake bite, billboard, landlady
11. department of defense, urination, cube, ebay
12 pit, absurd violence, topless, rhinoceros
13. ice pick, novelist, cigarette smoking, leg spreading

no cheating!

p.s. rest in peace, arthur c. clarke...

Saturday, March 15, 2008

q&a and t&a

in the spirit of putting a picture of a hot girl to open a blog post, i present to you, from phoenix, arizona, nanda:

damn i'd love to make that white dress dirty.

last tuesday, i had the opportunity of seeing and interviewing nanda in lesser clothing when she, along with two other babes, did a photoshoot for us somewhere in pasig. she was my instant crush the moment she entered the door and lounged around with her shirt raised mid-torso because of the heat. i always find the "mataray" look very attractive. while she was being made up, i threw questions at the brazilian named sharon, whom i had a bit of a hard time with because she couldnt understand them and had very short answers. after nanda's bonerific pictorial, i waited for her to get dressesd up and approached her for the q&a. up until the point that i said "hi, i'm jai" to her, i was so afraid of her being a snob. turns out she's even more gorgeous inside and i had a great conversation with her, a very, very nice girl who had a cute laugh. when i admitted that i stuttered a lot because it was my first time to attend a photoshoot and interview models, she told me i did fine and that it was her first time to be interviewed for a magazine. so, it was both our first time and we high-fived on that one. what an angel. i wish all models are like her. so anyways, i didnt get to interview the third girl, cinthia, the most beautiful of them three, because she said she struggled with english and had to leave at once. cinthia looks like alyson hannigan with a pinch of mena suvari. anyways, here's a pic of ugly me with nanda and sharon.

mom, meet my new girlfriends, m-w-f and t-th-s.

the following day, there was another shoot and this time i had to interview five girls. of those five, i enjoyed talking to the tsinay one named lorraine and the kana named nicole. lorraine is the typical pretty girl meant for campus crush status. her beauty is simple and easy on the eyes. a couple more hours with her and i'd have fallen in love. sadly, she's taken. it was only with her that i felt shy looking at when it was time for her to put on lingerie and do some sexy posing. nicole, on the other hand, resembles rebecca romijn but with bigger eyes, which is kinda cool since we were in the x-men room, which is waaayy cool. i'll take someone there one day. anyways, the interview with nicole was like with nanda. it went easy and fun. she even said so, although she could be pulling my leg. but what the heck.

those two days of ogling at half-naked girls and talking to them has brought me to this conclusion: american girls are easy to talk to. not easy like effortless, no sweat easy. easy because they open up more, they respond better, they connect with you, they dont give you shit if you dont give them shit. and among all those girls i interviewed, only the two americans, nanda and nicole, approached me to say goodbye when it was time to leave and said it was nice meeting me, accompanied by a handshake. i dont know. maybe i was just lucky with those two. but they sure helped me out at something im not really good at: socializing.

masturbation technique #13: pretend to be reading.

that's it for my first photoshoot experience. um... yeah. that's it.

p.s. i looked through my very old emails and found the welcome email from blogger.com, which i apparently received on february 14, 2003. i wonder who i dated on that day...or if i even did have a date.
p.p.s. it feels good to forget my insecurities for a while and have reason to be proud of myself. my editor-in-chief has used the words "very good" and "fantastic" as adjectives for the articles i submitted to him, which now have a great chance of appearing in the april issue. yay.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

march angel

this is ellen adarna. i have no idea if she can sing me to sleep and shit me to stone but, jesus-h-christ-in-a-harley, this girl looks yummier than chocolate chip cookies handpicked from the chocolate chip cookie tree.

i tried, folks, but it's hard to type captions with one hand...

if you havent heard of ellen adarna, the face that launched a million clicks, then you most likely have never ventured outside of your own web page, you narcissistic camwhore (hate that word). im looking at my multiply inbox right now and the first three pages all contain photo albums of only one person. i mean, fuck, do you really have to post every single picture you take in your life? have a little creativity with your photographic endeavors and spend a little time picking the good ones for posting. if you really need to keep the rest online because of your 1 gb hard disk, then throw them over to photobucket or flickr where nobody receives updates of your every upload. or better yet, help reduce internet garbage and delete them.

anyways, so, ellen is the uno cover girl for march. buy a copy and you'd also find my name in there. unfortunately, none of my work made the issue because it was basically done when i got hired. the april issue then will be my debut as a published writer (yay!). i wrote quite a bunch for that one.

later, alligators.

p.s. click here if you wanna whack your boss.
p.p.s. judy, why did you have to be 16 years old?