Somewhere (2010)

I like it how, in Sofia Coppola's films, time is expansive. She lets the camera linger- the pole dancers spin until the man is lulled to sleep, the girl swims until she absolutely has to stop to catch her breath, leisurely tea parties are had underwater, long drives are long drives, and conversations are not condensed- that the audience cannot help but share in the characters' lethargy and boredom.


If I were to rank her movies:

1. Life Without Zoe
2. Virgin Suicides
3. Somewhere
4. Lost in Translation
5. Lick the Star
6. Marie Antoinette

My summer in books

After my final examination, to celebrate: Adam Gopnik's Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York
Alone in Palawan: Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent: Travels Across Small-Town America
At Work, to kill time: Anton Chekov's Short Stories
During Holy Week: DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover (I am realizing only now how terribly inappropriate this is!), James Carse's The Religious Case Against Belief, and Through the Children's Gate continued

*

I have a dear friend who, every time she would feel hopelessly lugubrious or frustrated, would scream into the window of her 11th floor apartment at the top of her lungs. When she joins the rest of the world below afterward, she would be all smiles and sunshine again and no one would suspect a thing. When I first met her, I admired and envied her invincibility; when I found out that it was all but an appearance, I admired her even more. Here is a woman who manages to control her emotions long enough to keep everyone out of her throes.

The mean reds

Tonight, Ice told me that I'm the saddest person he knows. I indulge in more sadness than I am entitled, and spend more time sulking than people with bigger, actual predicaments. I know I'm hardly the happiest person in the world, but this still took me by surprise. I have always thought- and, yes, with gratitude- that other people have it worse than I do-- how come I am sadder than them?

It is possible, Ice said, that I am clinically depressed. Apparently, I somehow manage to transmogrify even the happiest of situations into an intense discussion about death. While I cannot help but acknowledge this obsession as true, I don't think I'm quite capable of explaining it just yet. All I know is that I feel for Ice. Imagine being with someone who constantly has a dark, ominous cloud over her head. I'm not sure he realizes what he has gotten himself into.

In Coron, Palawan

In the middle of my Palawan trip with friends, I found myself suddenly alone in a seaside restaurant by the hotel intent on occupying myself with Bill Bryson's rants about small-town America and a disappointing glass of fruit shake. Around me were foreigners who were alone, too, sipping their own fruit shakes, reading their own books and taking in the view of the sea, and I wondered about their reasons for being alone-- reasons which were probably very unlike mine. I struggled to blend in with these people and be unobtrusive and so I buried my nose deeper into my book, but I wondered about them. I thought about those who choose and are comfortable in their solitude, those who are in a strange land because their fear of the unfamiliar is thwarted by their irremediable desire to explore the new, and I realized that I cannot imagine myself in their shoes. Afterward, I went to the hotel's sun deck to lie on the hammock and read my book and it was lovely, but I knew that I cannot, all by myself, brave a new land and culture for the hammock. For now, at least.

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

Bertolucci is a genius. I wonder how one conjures something so powerful.




Paul: It's me again.
Jeanne: It's over.
Paul: That's right. It's over and then it begins again.
Jeanne: What begins again? I don't understand anything anymore.
Paul: There's nothing to understand. We left the apartment, and now we begin and love all the rest of it.
Jeanne: The rest of it?
Paul: Yeah, listen. I'm 45. I'm a widower. I own a little hotel. It's kind of a dump, but not completely a flop house. Then I used to live on my luck and I got married, and my wife killed herself.

Brothers and sisters

I rarely have anything good to say about myself but ask me about my siblings and I'm the most immodest person in the world.

Let's see.

My youngest brother Nico is in the top 15 percent of this year's ACET passers and was admitted into the economics honors program. But he never studies! All he ever does is watch re-runs of FRIENDS with me and sleep. When he starts college this coming school year, I doubt he'll change his study habits-- but I can bet you he'll top his every class.

My little sister MM is just brilliant. She's freakishly good in math (ask her classmates!), and writes amazingly well, too. This afternoon, she let me read a short story she recently wrote and I was in utter awe-- such profundity, such insight into the human condition! I remember, when she was just a freshman in high school, she was set apart from the rest of the student body and given the excellence in creative writing award. I remember feeling like the biggest person in the room the day of the awarding. I remember thinking, "My freshman sister writes better than all of you. Yes, you, seniors!" She later went on to snag the excellence in filmmaking award, too. Now that she's in college, taking the same course I did, her professors constantly describe her as brilliant. I completely agree.

My brother Alec, who came after me, breezed through college and got into St. Luke's College of Medicine on scholarship just as easily. I don't think I have ever seen him study or bring a bag to school in his four years in Ateneo. What he did, actually, was party incessantly, and yet he was consistently a dean's lister.

My older brother Alvin is a genius in math. When we were much younger, he used to compute inhumanly large sums in his head for a pastime, and he always, always gets them right. He never studied, and yet he aced all his math exams. He's an excellent artist too, and is the best sketcher I know. The best I know.

My oldest brother Carlo is as passionate about learning as he is smart. He speaks French, Latin, Italian, and Spanish fluently. He was number one in his course when he graduated. He's a walking encyclopedia, you can ask him about any subject. Come on, try.

What's even more amazing about my siblings is that they are as kind as they are talented and smart. They have the biggest hearts I know, you wouldn't believe it. I envy them, yes, and terribly so. Often, I wonder why they are so talented and smart while I am hopelessly normal. Most of the time, though, I am just filled to the brim with pride for them. God could not have chosen a better set of people to shower with brilliance. When you meet them, I'm certain you'll agree.

Woody Allen Movie Checklist

29 out of 45. Midnight in Paris will make 30. Titles in bold are those I have already seen. TV movies are excluded from the list.:)

2010 You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
2009 Whatever Works
2008 Vicky Cristina Barcelona
2007 Cassandra's Dream
2006 Scoop
2005 Match Point
2004 Melinda and Melinda
2003 Anything Else
2002 Hollywood Ending
2001 The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
2000 Small Time Crooks
1999 Sweet and Lowdown
1998 Celebrity
1997 Deconstructing Harry
1996 Everyone Says I Love You
1995 Mighty Aphrodite
1994 Bullets Over Broadway
1993 Manhattan Murder Mystery
1992 Husbands and Wives
1991 Shadows and Fog
1990 Alice
1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors
1989 New York Stories (segment "Oedipus Wrecks")
1988 Another Woman
1987 September
1987 Radio Days
1986 Hannah and Her Sisters
1986 Meeting Woody Allen
1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo
1984 Broadway Danny Rose
1983 Zelig
1982 A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
1980 Stardust Memories
1979 Manhattan
1978 Interiors
1977 Annie Hall
1975 Love and Death
1973 Sleeper
1972 Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask
1972 Play It Again, Sam
1971 Bananas
1970 Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You
1969 Don't Drink the Water
1969 Take the Money and Run
1966 What's Up, Tiger Lily?
1965 What's New Pussycat

The Story of Oliver's Discharge

He liked to lose himself in the labyrinth of shelves where no one could see him, and there he would take his lunch. Yesterday it was a grilled cheese sandwich, which he nibbled slowly and leisurely, while flipping through Camus. He picked the philosophy section yesterday, and it was at precisely twelve o’clock in the afternoon that he took his sandwich from his bag and proceeded to eat.

At one, he glimpsed people pass by his shelf and eye his sandwich. They looked at his hand pointedly, and then at the crumbs circling his mouth. They tried to catch his eye and point to the sign that forbade eating in the library, but he continued to munch his sandwich until it was finished and he continued to flip through Camus until it was finished, and so they decided to leave muttering under their breaths.

At two in the afternoon yesterday, he sat yoga-style on the floor with a thermos of black coffee and flipped through Nietzsche. At three he plucked Sartre off the top shelf and lay down resting his head on a stack of de Beauviors, and at four he strolled back and forth the aisles with Heidegger and a bar of Mars. It was only when it was already five in the afternoon and the library was finally to close and the lady who was behind the desk told him that he absolutely had to go that he realized that he had, once again, forgotten to return to his work.

I said I will write

I have always found it most difficult to write when I am engulfed with emotions. The trick, I suppose, is to learn how to temper passion so that words may contain it, otherwise, feelings will remain unnameable and inexplicable. The trick is to learn how to temper, and not simply wait, for when I wait until my emotions have faded and fleeted away, I find that I cannot write about them still for I do not know them anymore.