visitor cute

i hate fag lingo. i was supposed to title this post "cuteness" but thanks to the gender-confused populace who have claimed their own freaking language, using any word with the -ness suffix feels like an insult to my oozing masculinity. anyways, the real intent of this entry is to spike my dark gloomy blog with one ginormous dose of cute. and since i am still prohibited to exhibit the oozing femininity of my "kalahottie", here instead is a picture of my goddaughter, jaja, trying to bite off kratos's ear:

kratos: zeus, release me from this torment of my life!
jaja: goo goo ga ga slobber slobber.
zeus: aaaaaaawww...

BLINDNESS by jaiskizzy

gist: during rush hour, a japanese guy goes blind behind the wheel with no apparent cause. the mysterious disease seems to be contagious and soon enough, every person he comes into contact with, the optometrist he consults and the other people in the waiting room, suffers the same fate, except for the optometrist's wife who pretends to be blind just to be with her husband. the "white sickness" spreads and the infected are quarantined in a facility where some have lost their sanity as well.

i wouldn't know what to do if i suddenly became blind. i rely too much on my vision, no matter how poor it has gotten. without my eyes, i wouldn't be able to watch movies, read, write, play video games and see my girlfriend's disarming beauty. hence, i wouldn't be able to live. anyways, so i took advantage of my working optic nerves and saw what it would be like if sight was taken away from people in an instant. no explanation, no symptoms and possibly no cure. needless to say, and yet here i am about to say it, it's a disaster. and that's what this film feels like, a disaster movie without floods or meteors or tornadoes and such but is every bit gripping. there were teeth-clenching moments that you'd think im watching a guy about to fall off a cliff but it's just a woman trying to keep her groceries away from the other "shoppers". intense. i guess i shouldn't be that surprised since the movie was directed by the same guy who did city of god and the constant gardener.

i was surprised to see casshern as the first victim. it's obvious that the filmmakers wanted to make the city generic by casting with different races, but this japanese man and his japanese wife and the chinese prime minister seemed out of place. i dont know. maybe it's just me being used to watching asian movies the way they are made. anyways, the story doesn't pick up until the infected are forced into the quarantine facility, where the effects of the sickness are represented by the three wards: the good-natured people, the neutrals, and the sick, evil bastards in ward 3, led by self-proclaimed king, gael garcia bernal. the moment these animals took over, even though they were the last batch to arrive, i was like, if that happened in the philippines, the greedy fucks wouldn't take that long to surface. you just know that even in a small group of pinoys, there's at least one who would immediately horde the supplies for himself/herself.

good, good movie. whether you take the message literally or metaphorically, you'd get it, well, if you're smart enough cause some people would probably just go, so, you'd go crazy if you're blind and shit?! anyway, i wish i could recommend this for family viewing but it has sex and violence so sorry, kids.


good: story, cinematography.
bad: what it all amounts to.
ugly: julianne moore crying.
verdict: 7 phoropters.


skizzy wonder.

2009 watchlist

or the list of 13 movies i must not miss this year. screw new year resolutions.


1. transformers 2: revenge of the fallen
gimme more giant robots fighting! more michael bay assplosions! gimme soundwave! gimme devastator!!!

2. the wolfman
did you see that pic of benicio del toro strangling a guy? he looked like a werewolf without any makeup. creepo. anyways, this hopefully will be the new definitive werewolf movie.

3. slumdog millionaire
oh danny boyle, danny boyle. you gave me trainspotting, 28 days later and now you've got this highly acclaimed movie about who wants to be a millionaire. versatile.

4. the wrestler
the mickey rourke film that everyone's buzzing about. no surprise there since it was directed by darren aronofsky. not sure how this would impact the "realism" of wwe but mankind/mick foley says it's close to the real deal so, i dont know.

5. terminator salvation
even more robots, only this time they're out to kill bruce wayne! jumpin jupiters!

6. where the wild things are
a movie that seemed like it would never see the light of day is finally on its way to the theaters. yay, spike jonze.

7. g.i. joe
cant wait to see how they'll pull off cobra commander, destro's gold noggin and a swordfight between snake eyes and storm shadow. if knowing is half the battle, seeing is three-fourths?

8. the curious case of benjamin button
three things: weird premise. david fincher. and the guy who shot some other guy because his son wouldnt shut up and then just sat right back in his chair to finish the movie. i am sold. let's see this next week, love?

9. wolverine
here's hoping they don't fuck gambit or deadpool up, ma cheri.

10. up
pixar. nuff said.

11. sherlock holmes
i still feel i made better casting choices in a previous post but who the heck am i? rdj, i can get down with. but jude law as dr. watson?!

12. inglorious basterds
when i met quentin tarantino and shook hands with him a few years ago, i swore to him that i will watch every movie he makes for as long as i live. ok, so i actually didnt say that because i couldnt even speak at his presence, but im pretty sure i was thinking it, among other things.

13. watchmen
the guy who gave us 300 has just torn the pages off the best graphic novel ever made and transferred the panels to film. yet the legal battle continues and the future looks dim. if you have no idea what's going on, here's a great article written about it. basically, fox had the rights to the movie gathering dust for 20 years and they sued warner bros for making it. it's a money thing and sadly the law just might side with fox. basterds.


p.s. not looking forward to: akira, friday the 13th, dragonball, whatever shit they got for the next manila film festival.
p.p.s. my stomach hurts.

BOLT by jaiskizzy

the gist: bolt is the dog superstar of a tv show, the success of which is built upon the fact that the dog believes everything is real. bolt's person is a girl named penny and he is highly devoted to protecting her. when he is accidentally shipped to new york following an episode cliffhanger of penny being kidnapped by their arch-nemesis dr. calico, the green-eyed man, bolt travels across the states to save her, picking up a sardonic alley cat named mittens and his number one hamster-in-ball fan named rhino along the way. can disney make a great cgi movie without using pixar powers?

well, looks like they can, folks. not all cgi films are rendered equal. many have tried to top the home of luxo jr. the jumping lamp, but most have failed (shark tale, robots, the shrek sequels), only cashing in on the darn kids who'd throw tantrums just watch them. the throne still belongs to pixar but disney was able to deliver a 3d animated film almost at par with their sibling company's brainchildren. almost because, it has quality and great story, the characters are cute and memorable, but it's a traditional disney yarn for the family just woven in glorious cgi. it's exactly what you would expect from a disney movie. not that it's a bad thing per se, i like most of disney's stuff, it just doesn't break the old mold. the moment you enter a screening of a cookie-cutter disney flick, you know that there'll be tearjerking and heartstring pulling, that everything's safe for kids to see and that it's gonna end happy no matter how dire the situation would get. so, yeah, no old yeller ending here.

i really liked the character designs. im always for uniqueness. they're pretty simple--white dog, black cat, furry hamster--and yet they bear no resemblance to anything done before. i dont know, but i just found it cute the first time rhino releases himself from his plastic ball. my favorite though were the pigeons with various accents. they oughta have a spinoff movie. anyways, also, the singularity of the characters owes partly to the voice talents, i guess. john travolta as the voice of the heroic hound was glove. also, i've always been fond of the way the animators incorporate the celebrities voice actors' features to the their animated counterparts and in this case, bolt had john travolta's mouth. cant say the similar to the cat and the hamster because i have no freakin idea who voiced them. mittens kinda sounded like zoeey deschanel but older. whoever did rhino did great in capturing the orgasmic glee of a fan thrust into a once-in-a-lifetime dream adventure.

this film reminds me a lot of an old tv movie entitled c.h.o.m.p.s., about a robot dog (anyone else seen that?!). always liked it when the guy opens up the dog to check the stuff inside. anyways, like a lot of the good stuff from days of long ago, it should never be raped(remade). just watch bolt. and its sure-as-pups eventual sequel.


the good: story, characters
the bad: predictability
the ugly: that penny was voice by bucktooth cyrus
the verdict: 8 sicilian pigeons


dr. calicot, the green-minded man.

kicking it again

i was listening to some music on one of my burns when i heard the mp3 song lifted from a classic flash animation which i have embedded below. i first saw it and downloaded through dial-up internet about 10 years ago. man, i am old.

*might not play properly on slow connections...

hi, blood.

you know you are surrounded by idiots when:

you're working your buttcheeks off in order to leave on time and then your coworker messes around with the router because the connection on her side is slow and then the device falls to the floor and everyone's internet is gone and you stand up from your seat and exit the room because you're knot-pissed that they'll obviously turn to you once again when avoidable shit like that happens and after spending a long time outside, you come back to find them standing around and the connection's still busted. idiots, i tell you. people who'd drink the kool-aid no question. they're everywhere and i have more than my allocated share.


anyways, same day this happened, i headed straight to ayala after shift. i wasnt actually planning to buy what i did eventually buy. merely i was there to check its current price out. i hopped from shop to shop and happened upon this normal-looking dude with a normal, non-sales talky attitude. he spoke the same way a friend would talk to you about shit and stuff, unlike the others i passed through because they sounded like bored robots with their annoying rehearsed lines and weird you're-not-gonna-buy-anyway demeanor (i think probably it was because i looked worldwide angry). this guy, however, had the nice buddy approach. with the lowest package-wise pricetag in the area, i was sold. so, a couple of long-queued atm machines later, a wad of paper pesos migrated from my wallet to his hand, and in turn, he endowed my mitts with this electronic encasement of ecstasy:

blood.

my personal goddess and i have played need for speed: undercover against each other through ad hoc and i have had her dust for breakfast, lunch and dinner so far. no surprise since im still using my pathetic 1 hearsepower two-bit starting car and still learning the ropes of psp gaming (it isnt quite the same with a ps2). pretty soon, blood will be kicking that cute little pink butt off the curb.


p.s. will somebody please stop giving atm cards to idiots?
p.p.s. i love you, love. let's do that thing that we did the other day again some other day.

cgi jai

thanks to my girlfriend who spent enough time and effort to make a nigh-exact digital replica of my ugly mug. the one thing wrong with these renderings is...

...i don't do this in front of a mirror like that. i never spend more than 3 seconds in front of a mirror and that is only to see if my hair is messy the way i like it.