Someone to Dance with You

One of the perks having a grandmother in the States is to be given original movie video tapes.  I’ve became a young fan of Disney movies watching classics like Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. What’s great in Disney movies, which is still prevalent until now, is their use of memorable songs. I grow up singing “Time as old as time…”, “Part of your world…” and “A Whole New World…” and it is embedded in my DNA as Filipinos are 

inherently fond of singing. It also helped that the latter was sung by well-beloved music icon, Lea Salonga.

Aside from Disney movies, live action musicals were also part of my grandma’s balikbayan box. Most noted  are the ‘Sound of Music’ and ‘King and I’. To say it was mesmerizing is an understatement. The visuals and sounds formed my early love affairs to movies. I appreciate all kinds of motion 

pictures but musicals had always left a strong impression to me. 

Forefront in my favorite musical is ‘Les Miserables’ which earned a bucketful of tears from me. It just skins you with raw emotion about human suffering, social injustice, love, sacrifice and 

redemption. “On My Own” never fails to shred a bit of my heart, actually even way before when Joey Potter (Katie Holmes) sang it in Dawson’s Creek as a cry for longing on her unrequited love to her best friend, Dawson.

Nicole Kidman with her glittering outfit in a swing swarmed by men was also winner in Moulin Rouge.  I remember being incredibly impressed with their rendition of “Like A Virgin”. The part with the song “Come What May”, without any spoken words, just the eyes of the forsaken lovers staring at each other promising that “I will love you, until my dying day…” and end up accepting their tragic fate.

There is a long list of musicals like Mama Mia and Burlesque which I also enjoyed but paled in comparison with the top 2 that I’ve mentioned. Dirty Dancing, with the famous line “Nobody puts baby in the corner.” and its song “Time of My Life” is a cult classic which I am meaning to watch one of these days.

Most recently, LaLaLand had joined my list of unforgettable musicals. Though strangely, I felt detached on some of its scenes. Like the people in the highway stuck in the traffic. Probably because the last thing that I thought of doing when I am in the claustrophobic confines of a vehicle is to sing and dance. Frankly, it seems corny and contrive. And also when Emma and her friends went to a party. It just did not earn a smile from me. I was thinking of the party thrown in the ‘Great Gatsby’ instead which I think is more fun. The circling camera shot and the throng of people just did not do it for me. Maybe when I watch the movie the second time I will appreciate it more.

Other than that, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling had portrayed unforgettable characters that everyone can relate to. We all have struggles and aspirations like them. We all want to do what we love. We all want to be validated. We all want to make our dreams come true. The movie gained redemption when Emma and Ryan are both on screen doing their song and dance numbers. The best for me was when they were elevated in the stars, dancing around the observatory. It creatively illustrates how intense their feelings are for each other. It is as if they don't have care in the world and everything is beautiful, peaceful and magical. 

Their scene in the view park that they both remarked “they’ve seen better” was fun, they just look too good, too graceful together. All their emotions emanating with the rhythm of their movements with the song.  The song “City of Stars, are you shining just for me?” will be at the LSS list of movie goers for some time as it is synonymous to the dreamy Ryan Gosling.

The best part in the movie was already the last scene. Emma together with his husband went to the jazz bar of the still bachelor Ryan. Ryan singing while playing the piano. All the moments that could have been in the times that they were together was shown, of course with mesmerizing song and dance number. The artistry was beyond brilliant. It was a montage of different art forms and treatments. It was colorful but subtle. It was edited in a way that it sums up everything that could never be between them. It was a flashback but in an alternative universe where there is a happy ever after for them. It was painful that it was not their reality. There was grief that they were not meant to be. Nonetheless, there is also happiness that they both had gotten their life long dreams. They just said good bye with their eyes with a nod. It was incredible that there was no longing on it, instead, they are grateful that they loved each other, and always will.

WELCOME 2017!!!

No Way Out from the Labyrinth

Hannah Baker’s audio tapes had been very relatable for me who, in the 90’s had collected my very own cassette recordings of my favorite singers. I am too familiar to the sounds from the audiotape; the crisp voice, the anticipated static; what were described on the novel.

So there was an extra chill when a dead girl’s voice would be heard from the tapes. Especially if that girl holds a grudge against you that you were one of the “thirteen reasons” who pushed her to kill herself. And just imagine the confusion of Clay Jensen while waiting for his story to unfold on the tape, knowing that he did not do anything wrong to Hannah. Added to the grim tale was that he followed her footsteps alone throughout their small town. The author was successful in making his novel a suspense treat on how he knotted the characters and events altogether, his dual narrative and chain letter-esque style.

In a unique way, Hannah was able to haunt and take revenge to those people who she thought were responsible for her death. There were no unanswered questions on why she took her own life. How these people “ruined” her, were sordidly described. The consequences of their actions had “snow balled” that left her nothing as they rob her of her belief in love, her security, her thoughts,  faith in others, hope, and at the end, her will to live. Likewise, the author also exposed the shortcomings of Hannah. That she could have asked for help directly and not just hinted it. This is a grave reminder for everyone that bullying and “petty cruelty” have severe effects on others more than you can ever know. And also, in difficult times, it is wrong to presume that everyone had abandoned you, because your family will always be there for you.

Alaska Young’s death however, was ambiguous. It could be either because of a car accident, or she really drove straight to her grave. I think the answer to that is relevant and the dialogue that it would illicit will be intriguing. But I remember the almost same question to the director of The Wrestler; if the protagonist died at the end. The answer was: “What was the point of the story if he did not die?” In a literary point of view, it may be suicide; it was the culmination of her self-destructive tendency that she harbored through the years. But if it was not, then her being unstable and an emotional mess had made her a careless driver that fateful night.

Pudge, as one of Alaska’s closest friends, had been thrown into the conundrum of making sense out of the tragedy. His insights about death, (“And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.”) forgiveness (“I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her.”), afterlife (“It’s very beautiful over there.”) and hope (“We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.”) as he write his final essay for school were really enlightening and inspiring to the readers, teenagers and adult alike.

It was not a coincidence that the female and male protagonist from the two novel share similar characteristics. Hannah and Alaska were beautiful, lively, promising but troubled and scarred; while Clay and Pudge are their friends, who secretly love them but were powerless and helpless to save them. It was a representation how weak you are being alone; you need others to tread with on this dark and cruel world. Keep on reaching out because someone would always care enough to never let you go.

Le Mee In

I’ve been watching the Korean make-over-show “Let Me In”. The show offers a life changing physical transformation of a participant who will be entitled to an extreme evasive surgery. After he or she had gone under the knife, it would be difficult to trace his or her old self. The ugly duckling had transformed into a swan. The face size had become smaller, the eyes bigger, the nose narrower, the cheeks sharper. Whatever maybe the “defects” can be “fixed” by their talented doctors.

Before the surgery and the “big reveal”, the lives of the participants were featured. It was always a life full of hopelessness, misery, anger, pain, self-loathing and discrimination that was brought by their physical “imperfections”. Most notable of the stories are the daughter who is abused by his father because she looks like her ugly mother who left them, a wife who is being neglected by his husband because she is no longer the attractive woman he married, a young woman who cannot get a job despite her high school grades because she is not “up with the standard of beauty”, a guy who hid in his house for five years because of his large chest, a suicidal girl because she was bullied in school because of her appearance. There are other sob stories that will illicit the sympathy of the audience who had, more than once, had experienced or experiencing the same things.

In defense to the show, it never claimed that it can resolve the problems of the participants. What it promised was “hope”, a “fresh start” to the sufferingparticipants.Not a few will claim that that hope is fleeting and false given that it is from an unnatural process like plastic surgery. But I would say that whatever it is, it is still hope, and it is now up to the participant how he or she will use his or her newly constructed beauty to turn his or her life around.

What can’t be denied, though are the implications in this show. This is when the old-age question “What is the true standard of beauty?” persists. The media being the purveyor of “what is beautiful”, and in Korea that is the K-pop artists and actors. You need to conform to them or else you will not be considered as “beautiful”. What happens now to the celebration of uniqueness and individuality? We are all born different with varied genetic make-up, therefore, there is no certain “mold” of beauty.

But still, forcing yourself on a “mold” which you are made up through dangerous processes like extreme plastic surgery is the individual’s personal decision that others just have to respect. The same equal respect due to those who decided not to alter themselves to “fit in”, without maltreatment and bullying. Hence, a more accepting society must prevail for those who decided to change or not change themselves.

The bottomline of this is a healthy self-image. Once you realized that there is no need to look like the “perceived” epitome of beauty that proliferates the mainstream media to be loved and valued, then that is already a good start for self-acceptance and inevitably, self- esteem.



Best of Haruki

There are varied recurring themes and styles to the collection of stories of Haruki Murakami in his book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. The best six stories that I had chosen is what I think best represented a certain theme and style that I favor.

Birthday Girl

This is one of my favorites because of the seemingly simple story, but the context had been richly entangled with fate, magic and mystery. If you can make one wish for your birthday, what would it be? The story had a narrative that was easy to follow, from the girl needing to work on her twentieth birthday, to the events that had lead her to be in front of her “fairy-godmother” and offering her an opportunity to ask for a birthday wish. It did not directly reveal what was the birthday wish of the girl, but it was implied at the end. It is one of the few stories in the collection that has a happy ending and who would say no to a birthday wish to be granted when it is offered?

The Mirror

I would say that I am not the bravest audience of horror movies. I would not pay for movie ticket that would scare me and I would not be able to watch properly because I will just cover or close my eyes. Even in cable TV, I will change the channel when I know that something scary will come out. But it is different with books, probably because it does not offer cheap thrills of prosthetics and tired twists. Just like in the story The Mirror, there is a certain engaging development of the story; it is like the reader was transported to the eerie setting and had become one with the character. Moreover, it is a kind of scary stuff which is more on our mind as it points out: “…the most frightening thing in the world is our own self”

A Folklore to My Generation: A Pre-History of Late-Stage Capitalism

The author had already made the disclaimer that this story represents his generation. It was his take on how he perceive the youth at that age that he belonged to. I was able to relate to this story because I also have a strong opinion about my generation, kids who were born in the 80’s, grown up in the 90’s and working the 2000’s. In our time, the development of technology had been rapid it was hard to keep up, there was an absence of world war, working in abroad is the trend. I would say that it is an era in my country that opportunities were available for those who want it, that social mobility is possible through hard work and a good education still holds the key to success. Another good thing about this story is that it was neither critical nor patronizing on his and the other generations, it acknowledges the difference of each and just tells it as it is.

The Seventh Man

This is another rarity in the collection because the character achieved hope and salvation at the end. The story was about a friendship that was lost and life riddled with guilt. The giant wave best represents the events that will ultimately changed one’s life. Even though life had been difficult, hope, no matter how minute, will always be there. And that propelled the character to continue on living on the best possible way, despite his grief and burden. And I think that that was the beauty of this story, even if darkness looms over us, there will always be a certain moment that it will be cleared off, and that the horizon will once again be bright.

Chance Traveler

“Romanticizing serendipity”, this is why I think this story is the anti-thesis of the whole book. A brother and sister fell apart; they had not kept in touch for a very long time. But a “series of coincidences” had paved the way to their reunion, incidentally, on the time that the sister had needed his brother the most. In an observation that the author’s theme had leaned towards alienation and lost, this story had been an irony of it all. It was an unexpected tale in the collection that shows the other side of the author that reconciliation and acceptance must prevail so that genuine happiness in this lifetime will be achieved.

Justice for Cuckoo

Compassion