Cashing In

Now that I’m doing most of what I want, studying Philosophy again and bumming around, it’s easier to live through the day thinking my life is meaningful and pleasant despite its aimlessness. Without having any definite agenda for the day, I revel in the thought of all those days in the past four years when I didn’t want to work, when coming to work actually --- ached. Life’s already paying off. I’m accumulating all these days for the future, for the days in the next few years when I will not want to go to work. When I snap out of this and start working, I’d simply say, I already used up the happy days. It’s simple and just.

Recent Movies

Melinda and Melinda. Wordy and well-told as a Woody Allen film could be. Both a tragedy and a comedy, the movie is terrifically amusing with its seemingly endless dialogues and stories with well placed elements.
Will Ferell should have a best actor nomination.

I love Huckabbees. With the way the actors portrayed their roles, with the way the script was delivered and how the story unfolds, one would have thought this movie was a Tanghalang Pilipino production on stage.
Philosophical issues were raised in the film. Some of the characters themselves were philosophical projects, and at the same time, philosophers. This movie staged philosophy into life.
This movie is how philosophy ought to be: available to a wide audience, applied in human drama, funny, and able to enlighten you on how wrecked people are, and how screwed your own life is.

The Incredibles. It’s more fun that I expected. This lives up to, if it’s not a step ahead, the usual Disney-Pixar movies. It’s going to be worth watching again especially when you’re entertaining children.

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. This is the perfect movie to perk-up your spirits if you’re feeling all losery. It’s one of those turn-off-your-brain comedies, the type that could make your head split out of laughing, instead of making your head split out of thinking. But if you think about it even more, the movie is an emancipation of actors marginalized into “token” roles from their “token” roles. They finally have a movie of their own.
A week after watching it, I still laugh at Harold and Kumar’s Wilson Philips song number.

La Visa Loca. The film has its shining moments. In a metaphor, this shows how Filipinos would do everything to get a US visa, including --- literally being crucified. The movie even has dream sequences, and the characters can honestly make you laugh.

But it didn’t have any unexpected turns, since the plot was quite easily predictable. The filmmaker also falls into the trap of the usual happy ending identified with local comedy films. In the end, we just can’t help but be chummy.

Work Hard, Play Hard. (French Film Fest) This is the story of how a neophyte in the corporate world becomes a shark-in-a-suit. The beauty of the movie is that it was able to display the conflict, seemingly without exaggeration, of two possible outcomes in life. First, there’s a life driving a BMW and laying-off people from their jobs. Second, there’s living a life of principle, keeping your girlfriend genuinely happy, and other simpler joys. The conflict and its development are shown in absolute detail, balanced with a moderate amount of drama. It even included the interviews with workers and odds and ends of their life outside the office.
Having watched this after a dinner (mint/lemon appetizer, glass noodles, grilled shrimp, pork slices) with D. at Pho-Hoa Greenbelt, this would’ve been a perfect after-work movie, if I didn’t get laid-off myself. I almost missed working.