monochrome optique

my ludovico project is near culmination. i actually feared i'd fail to hit the target what with the scarce personal free time of a working family man. i managed to finish the movies during bathroom breaks, idle time at work and several moments pre and post sleep. right now, the focus is on black and white movies, squeezing in one or two colored ones. if you're bored, interested, or insane and want to check my progress, you can flutter by my twitter by stabbing the chocobo on the right with your mouse pointer.

anyways, i bet this one's never crossed your mind: when people do countdowns, say 1-5, why do they always count like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 1/2, 4 3/4, 5? why not 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 1/3, 4 2/3, 4 3/4, 5?! why do they always skip 2/3?

i seriously think that a law against giving atm cards and driving licenses to idiots should be passed. what a quick cash withdrawal and diaper purchase turned into an expletive-laden test of patience due to these intelligence-deprived creatures. these imbeciles have some sort of belief that they're special and important and so they make you waste your time waiting for them as they struggle to accomplish a supposedly simple task. typical atm routine of a moron: insert card, check balance, get card, look at receipt, decide on amount to withdraw, insert card again, take a while to figure it how much to withdraw, time runs out, get card, look at receipt again, insert card again, withdraw cash, get card, look at new receipt, decide to withdraw again, insert card, withdraw cash, get card, look at receipt and for some apparent reason these motherfuckers have exclusive knowledge of, they complete disergard the long queue of irate people behind them and insert the atm card for the last time to check the balance again! somebody please murder these people.

p.s. yes. random shit again. but this relaxes my earlobes.
p.p.s. hmm i guess hard work does pay off sometimes. i hope this goes on so i wouldn't have to leave this country and my family.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER by jaiskizzy

gist: after many failed attempts to join the military, steve rogers' patriotic persistence and self-less valor make him the perfect candidate for the super soldier program. from scrawny to brawny, he becomes captain america, the country's bellwether against the nazis. mighty shield in hand and the howling commands right behind him, the star spangled man takes on the menace known as the hydra, led by the crimson craniumed agent schmidt. all together now: america, fuck yeah!

reaction: does anyone else rememer the old captain america cartoon with the stiff movements and the very catchy theme? how about the low-budget captain america movie in the '90s? beyond those two and a few comic issues, i really didnt know much about the guy with the capital a on his forehead. wasnt really into the character, probably because im pinoy. so, when the news of this movie being made broke out, other than solidifying the possibility of an avengers movie, i didn't know what to expect. will it be a great comic book movie in line with its marvel predecessors? will it be an indiana jonesy adventure flick? will it be chock full of action but story anemic or vice versa? will i stop asking questions and get on with the review?

it's really good. it's one of the best comic book movies ever made, with just the right amount of pulp and camp, action with impact, and a story that's rich and compelling. joe johnston directed the rocketeer, which was awesome, and he was able to infuse into captain america the positives that made rocketter one of my favorite guilty pleasure films. much like the super serum, he took the thin pages of the comic book and injected it with his vision and made it come to pulsating life on film. i love that he took time with the origin section to really capture the essence of steve rogers' character and give meaning to his every move as the blue boy scout. a satisfying spectacle from start to finish.

i admit, i wasn't initially convinced chris evans would fit the role. he's the guy who wore the whipped cream bikini in one movie and played human torch in the other, hard to take him seriously. but i guess i underestimated his acting skills because the dude delivered. with the help of seamless cgi tinkering, he embodied both versions of steve rogers to a tee. i cant even imagine now what the movie would have been like if will smith had been cast. also worth mentioning were the performances of tommy lee jones and hugo weaving.

speaking of mr. weaving, red skull was just superb. apart from the other obvious uses, the visual effects on the villain was amazing. the texture, contours, the lip movement, menacingly creepy but glues your eyes to the screen.  also, this is one of those films where you wonder if anything was left to gather dust in the cutting room floor at all because the narrative was smooth and fluid, with beat-perfect transitions between scenes instead of a firm chapter-based structure. heck, even the montages gelled well with the finely-tuned story progression.

marvel has done it once again. captain america is a testament that respect for the source material and the audience are the main components to a successful comic book adaptation. your move, dc.

good: the adaptation, pulp, chris evans

bad: peggy carter

ugly: hugo weaving

verdict: 9 vials of super serum

fucky barnes.

climbing mount molehill

day three of my battle with general sniffles and his mucous army and i decide to pick up my imaginary pencil and make the blinking cursor vomit words into a blog post. with the digital dust and web cobwebs cleared, i type the first thing that comes into my mind:

i hate the duke of bloomberg.

don't want to talk about that so let's move on to the second thing that enters the thought theater:

"practice makes perfect. nobody's perfect. so why practice?"

contrary to what you might be thinking, i do not approve this piece of flawed logic. i have seen and heard it countless times and frankly my dear, i think it's a crock of bull. the first time i encountered it was in grade school, read it off a pocketbook of jokes because that was the stuff i was into during those years, along with burning paper edges and discovering porn. back then, my young smoke-filled and porn-baptized brain believe it was brilliant. it was right. it was three puzzle pieces perfectly connecting. and then i grew up and realized i've been misled, round the same time i found out santa claus didn't actually exist.

anyway, i hated it when the gears clicked and rang "bullshit" and i hated it even more when it got passed around through text messages. (and may the flying spaghetti monster have mercy on the soul of any person who deems it proper to use as a facebook status today) but the instance i hated it the most was when a local movie used it in the main character's speech because the writers couldn't come up with their own and simply hoped someone who had lived under a rock would at least giggle at it. but the movie's facepalm-worthiness did not end there. i did not watch the darn thing, so how did i know that the quote was in it? because they had the gall to put it in the trailer. yes, they honestly believed that the most effective way to sell the comedy movie to the public was to use an overused quote that wasn't even funny.

so what makes this logic wrong? the fact that it assumes that the things described as perfect in the first two sentences are the same. let's look at the second one first. nobody is perfect. what this simply implies it that no "person" is perfect. now, to the first sentence. practice makes perfect. what do you practice? singing, dancing, murdering, etc. with enough time and effort, you can perfect the singing or dancing of a particular song. sure, the perfection is subjective to the viewer or listener but that song was made in a particular way and that by achieving the same level of performance the song was meant for is considerable as perfect. so practicing can in fact help perfect a certain "action".

so sentences one and two don't really connect as perfectly as i had once thought. both are true but do not contradict one another because they do not pertain to the same thing. practice makes perfect because you can keep practicing until you perfect an "action" but no one can't practice being a "person" because that's just who you are. so even though nobody is perfect, it has no relation to the question practicing because you still have to practice to be perfect at something.

yes, this is me overthinking the mundane. and yes, this was a long and pointless exercise, apart from the idea that i needed to update this decaying blog. so,  thank you for wasting your time with me.


p.s. most trailers of pinoy movies are badly edited. especially comedies, where they pack all the jokes they have in them. i admit to have watched these kind of movies before but when i did, i definitely did not laugh at the jokes previously showcased in the trailer. a large majority of the moviegoers did, however, and i was like, wasn't that in the trailer that was on tv every fucking hour?!
p.p.s. my blog has risen from the dead. it is now a zombie blog. or a zomblog.