Pia, Paula, Bea, Aliah and Darren during happier times
(after which they were no longer allowed to watch Meteor Garder-- NYAHAHAHAHA!)

A while ago I went to Mandaluyong to pay Elad a visit. Don Bosco was planning a concert around November and was gathering information on the bands. Elad was approached by one of the organizers for help and so he turned to me because, thanks to the mailing lists that I have joined, I have the bands' contacts.
On the way home I got stranded in Starmall, thanks to the steady rainfall. In my annoyance and extreme boredom, I watched The League of Extraodinary Gentlemen. A few days ago I saw Finding Nemo, so I have two Nemo movies.



Finding Nemo

I had been waiting to see this cute fish tale ever since I saw its trailer. Pixar and Walt Disney, once again, delivered a colorful and enjoyable film that aimed for the whole family, in the tradition of Toy Story and A Bug's Life. The bida here is a clownfish camed Marlon, who at the beginning of the film loses, to a barracuda, his wife and most of their eggs; all except one which he named Nemo.
Fast Forward.
It is time for Nemo to go to school but Marlon finds that he worries too much for his son. Nemo, on the other hand, grows up with a deformity: a smaller right fin. He is, nevertheless, inquisitive and brave like most young boys in the Disney universe. Marlon is understandably overprotective, driving Nemo to touch the bottom of a boat (which the children called "butt") and things go haywire from there as he is captured by a dentist on his scuba diving holiday.
Marlon finds that he deprives Nemo of the independence that children should learn at an early age. Nemo, on the other hand, comes to understand his father's actions were all for his concern and learns to value parental love and self-confidence.
My favorite character here is Dory, a Blue Tang voiced by the funny Ellen Degeneres. She is sarcastic, honest and almost too giddy for her own good.


RATING: I give it a 4 out of 5.





The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

This is a splendid movie! It was originally a graphic novel by Alan Moore, (an equally extraordinary figure in comics). The concept is quite simple, a team of mostly European characters from stories and urban legends.

The Heroes
There's a character named Quartermainn, an aging legendary adventurer played by Sean Connery.

The Invisible Man here is not exactly the one in the books (he died according to the stories), he is an expert thief who stole the original formula from the mad scientist who created it.

Mina Harker, a scientist, who together with her husband, have tried to kill the monster Count Dracula. But in the end, she herself got bitten, but being a vampire in this film, she doesn't decay under the sun.

Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, the famed scientist who used himself as a lab rat is a part of the story as well. But here, he doesn't have the same predicament as the incredible Hulk when it comes to keeping the monster inside. There are bursts of pychotic conversations with the beast, but Mr. Hyda is not savage.

Capt. Nemo. Because I didn't read the book, I had no idea that he was Indian. Imagine my surprise when I saw his long beard and turban! Made me say 5-6 under my breath. Capt. Nemo fights with great agility and utmost expertise in the sword. Oh and he is the only person in the year 1899 who has a convertible. Spiffy!

Tom Sawyeris the only American member of the league. All grown up (and even tries to seduce Mina every now and then) and working for the American Secret Service, Sawyer is sent to Europe to acquire information on the "impending" world war, instead he finds himself joining the League. I find it very disturbing that Shane West plays the role. Someone who became Many Moore's leading man joins in the action? Well, I learned to give actors credit and to STOP judging. Who knows, maybe Mandy Moore could play a Russian spy in an action-packed film someday, malay mo...



The Baddies
The Phantom. He wears a mask just as the Phantom of the Opera but I seriously doubt that they are the same. He is not really scarred, by there is are twists to his character.

The stoic Dorian Greyis only one of the character I am less familiar with, though I have read of his immortality. His magic is based on an old picture of himself; every year the picture ages instead of him. But he killed in the end by Mina, who also happens to be an old flame.

RATING: I give it a perfect 5!!!

I just found a link to, Keka, a new film Directed by Quark Henares (after Maui Taylor's Gamitan, the guy's directing a Katya Santos starer?).

A kickass site for X-Men: Evolution fans.

Here's the link for The Animatrix site.

Just this morning I updated and changed the look of this blog.

I FINALLY saw THE ANIMATRIX and it's cool, in most senses of the term. Most of it involves blood and gore, specially the first two short films. The Wachowksi brother have drawn together a splendid series of short films that dwell around the Matrix mythos. And the Japanese animation was a clever touch not only because the brothers pay homage to their influence, but because the Japanes animation themes have always had that Matrix-y atmosphere and feel - way before the Matrix.



The Second Renaissance

This tells the timeless tale that happened prior to the Matrix films. From the time when artificial intelligence became a rampant and widely acceptable aspect of human life, up to the machine's ravaging vengeance upon the very species that created them.

A disturbing scene kept haunting me: when the first AI robot murdered a man by grabbing him by the cheekbones and literally ripping apart his face.


The Second Renaissance II

This is the conclusion to the origin of the Matrix. Starting off where the first one left off, The Second Renaissance II shows the triumph of the machines and how humanity's sheer anger and the evil that dwells inside his soul became the instruments to his own demise.
It is here where we learn that the dark and brooding atmosphere the film is mostly enveloped in is, in fact, man's own fault. In hopes of finally destroying the machines by cuttinf off their energy source; they launched an airstrike that permanently covered the sky with gas and completely cut off the earth's sunlight. But the machines were smarter. They had been studying man's bocied and used them like a battery.

If the first one had a disturbing scene, this one has a whol egamut of it all throughout the film. Obviously, war scenes have never been quite appealing to the eyes and this short testifies to that by engulfing it with images of blood, gore and death. But I'm still calling it eye candy, not only because they are all too realistic but because, in the deepest sense, the short brings forth a sort of enlightenment about the greed, wrath and evil in the human soul that may come out in a Bruce Banner fashion.



Program

Classic anime is the basic thought behind this. Set in the ancient Japan, this story is a good one, as it even explains all the flying and jumping in the old Japanese films that defied both gravity and physics. I find that this one is almost a remake of Neo and Morpheus' fight scene from the first film. Only it features a female character with the biggest hair I had seen - more than Storm's and Tina Turner's - and a dark Japanese-styled warrior, reminiscent of the old Imperial soldiers, called Duo.

As it turns out, it's all a simulation.



Kid's Story

This is a little more amusing. This features a high school kid named Popper, who realizes that the Matrix exists and is eventually pulled out of it by Neo. The amusing part is that Popper is a minor character (emphasis on "minor") from Matrix: Reloaded, he's that kid who severly idolizes neo and even follows him around during the scenes in Zion.
This tells his story.
Th graphics are highly detailed, making me wonder how long it took for this to finish. The movements are all too realistic that I am asuming that the scenes were traced, frame by frame, from actual footages.

The kid dies, only to ressurect in the real world - outside the Matrix.



Beyond

A cute story. Set in present-day Japan (assumingly Tokyo), it revolves around a haunted house, which apparenly was a bug in the Matrix. Weird things happen there: things float, blink in and out of existence among others. For the first half we follow around a teenaged girl, with red and blue-colored hair and a star under her left eye, in search on her cat, Yuuki. She soon meets a group of kids and they tell her that her cat may be in the "old haunted house."
She soon descovers the wonders of the haunted house, but a truck suddenly arrives, carrying a whole platoon of programs disguised as some sort of disposal unit. They have come to cerrect that bug.



Matriculated

Matriculated heavily reminds me of that old MTV Animated series, Aeon Flux, from the long-limbed, extremely thin characters, down to the very detailed imagery. The tale is an experiment: what if the humans have succeeded in pulling a machine into their own folds? Would this make for a great alliance, or it it simpy impossible? A group of people who are located in the surface trap a machine and using a simulation they influence it to be a part of them. the machine falls in love with one of them. Unfortunately, other machines arrive (including two sentinels) cutting their experiment short. A massacre is imminent.
They are located on the surfec, this fact simply contradicts the concept of Zion being the last human sanctuary located underground. But then, perhaps I have the timelines all mixed up; maybe this story took place a couple of years after the machines' complete take-over.



Detective Story

The only short with an actual major character from the Matrix films. This one plays around the 50's detective movies, complete with the dark detective office to the trench coat-hat detective, but obviously is in a couple more in the future. The detective here is bestowed the assignment of searching for the hacker simply called Trinity. As it turns out, the detective is used as a bait by the Agents to trap Trinity, while Trinity herself is thinking of recruiting the detective.
As it turns out, Trinity finds the detective unfit for recruiting and he is left alone with a gun pointed at the Agents, lighting a cigarette and mumbling to himself, "A case to end all cases."




World Record

It is safe to say that World Record is the least appealing of the shorts. It is done in the style that became popular in the early 90s, with the creeping shadows and exaggerated muscles.
The story begins with a narrator saying that some exceptionally intuitive and sensetive people recognize the existence of the Matrix without enlightment. This clearly explaines the situation Neo and the other characters from the other short films have gone through: the same biting sense of not being alone and the chilling belief that reality is not what it really is.
An olympic-winning athlete is the character, running the race. As this is shown, it is revealed that the machines have sensed something with this chap as they carefully watch him.

World Record explains the story behind people who experience stroke as those who momentarily are disconnected to the Matrix.



Final Flight of the Osiris

This, by far, is the most complicatedly animated and better looking of the bunch. Done in the tradition of the Final Fantasy film, in a highly detailed CGI animation, this is the one you'd probably see in the advertisements. A raven-haired woman falling while doing a couple of impressive gymnastic positions, and then landing on her feet.
Final Flight of the Osiris, is the most relevant and faithful to the Matrix movies, as it is mentioned as the missing ship at the beginning of Reloaded. It tells what has indeed happened to it.

After the carps have died (as did the goldfish, two shark-like things and even a pre-pubescent koi), we finally confined ourselves to the possibility that we were stuck with our two annoyingly loud, and overactive askals for the rest of our lives. James, our half askal, half labrador retriever who never grew taller than the askals in the street (was it something we fed him?), is now fully-grown but haven't exactly accepted his maturity has refused to take baths. And he is very violent whenever we attempt to even spray him with water. Pluto (blame my Dad for the lame nomen), is still a growing dog, and like James is completely immature.

I grew up with my family owning one dog after another.

There was XB, the only dog we owned who had a breed, a black Scottish terrier, was my favorite because it was excessively loyal. He was named after my sisters' favorite radio station that time. I was in grade school when one of my brother's girlfriends had gaven him as a gift, and everytime my sister or brother would leave for school he'd run after them. One morning, when my elder sister was leaving for work, she left the gate open and, having seen the opportunity, XB raced out of the yard -falling victim to a passing car. I had just awoken by that time and having seen my dog sprawled on the street (with the obligatory bystanders waiting for me to succumb to tears). I merely walked out and dragged XB's body into the yard, went to the bathroom to wash up and retreated to our room and cried my eyes out.

Then there was also Cookie, the only dog we owned from Mandaluyong that got to Angono. I even travelled with her at the back of the moving truck. She even had puppies, but being a dog lacking maternal skills - or even common sense - her puppies died one after the other because she refused to feed them, and the rest died because she slept on them. Her death followed, though the cause was still unclear; my Dad told me he just found her dead in her doghouse. We burried her beside her puppies.

Then we had three dogs from our new neighbors. All were named after our favorite rockstars, James after James Hettfield, Zach after Zach dela Rocha and Jet after Jet Pangan.

Dad thought we had too many dogs, to which I replied, "In a subdivision like this, you can never have too many dogs..." So he gave away our pure-black Jet to an old man I'd never trust. Dad told us the old guy owned a large compound in the next subdivision and he needed the dogs for security. We didn't believe it and even protested, but Dad had authority. We watched my Jet being dragged away onto the back of a pick-up truck, trying not to think of what meal he'd be cooked into. This made me decide to someday join PAWS.

Zach on the other hand, died because of my brother-in-law. Zach had been sick for two days, nothing really serious, he had gone through that same sickness before. We just gave Zach his usual medicine and had him rest, not knowing that he arose that night and slept under my brother-in-law's car. The following morning, Kuya unwittingly ran over my steadily recuperating Zach.

James is still alive.

Pluto is a recent addition into the canine members of the household. He was given by yet another neighbor, and remains as a hyperactive teen-aged dog.

For a week now, we own a grey, black, brown and white kitten wittily named Crookshanks by my niece Pia after Hermione's cat. Well, it's not really an extraordinary thing for most people, but in a house, of which 20% of the inhibitants have asthma, this is definitely a big no-no.

Crookshanks appeared one weekend afternoon under the empty fish tank outside the house. Dad, the bastion of the Oliveros Asthma pulled him (we have no idea how to determine gender in cats, so we're assuming Crookshanks is male for the meantime) out and we officially have a pet kitten. Mom was adamant, wanted to throw the cat out the fence, but Dad really wanted the cat, so did I and my nieces and nephew. The next morning, because Crookshanks kept on going into the house, Mom threw him by the creek. I was shocked at my own mother's own brutality and hatred for anything that could cough up furballs. The kids were grim. And we were almost ecstatic when the cat came back the the next day -AHAHA! He knows his home and even recognized me, he ran to me when he saw me.

I have always envied my friends ELAD and CHERRY because their longingness to own cats are quenched by the fact that Elad had a whole family of feline wonders and Cherry had her cats.

Now I have Crookshanks.

I found my way to this test to find out what kind of warrior I am. Turns out, I'm a little too volatile to fit in just one category, so the result gave me two classifications:

My sphere is Knight (Know Loyalty and Respect), and my class is Defender (Peaceful, yet Potent). I am a Retainer. To be a Retainer is to be the ultimate Knight. When the kings of old were threatened, or faced with any obstacle of special note, it was the Retainer they called upon to act in the liege's name. To be an excellent Retainer is to bring great honor to yourself and those you work for, while instilling happiness and security in the people around you.

My sphere is Knight (Know Loyalty and Respect), and my class is Champion (Self-Righteous and Confident). I am an Avatar. A rare breed. A person sure enough of their self-righteousness that they can take it upon themselves to act as an avatar -- an extension -- of that which they believe in. Though you might act as a delegate of someone or something else, there is no question that your faith and strength are powerful enough to instill in millions of people the deepest respect for you.

Yesterday I attended the second leg of Kontrabanda in the Don Bosco - Mandaluyong Gym. It was almost sweltering hot and by my third hour there, I badly wanted another bath. That's the problem when you attend a free gig; everyone has easy access and so the venue becomes terribly crowded.

The first band, the high school, Don Bosco-based band Braincloud, was a fair opening for the show. I understand that they are somewhat new, but having won the recent battle of the bands competition that school sorta assured them the front act slot for the gig. They play decent punk music and then a smattering of other sub-genres.

Moonstar 88 came up next and the whole gym began singing with each song Acel and her cohorts play. From "Sulat" to "Torete" and even others that I'm not really familiar with, everyone sang like anthems, sans the right hand to the chest.

Bamboo, the group, played rocking music with Bamboo, the person, at the helm, doing each song with his voice swinging from the agression of "Sunog" and the emotive melody of "Awit ng Kabataan." I was realy suprised that Bamboo is composed of Kapatid members; there's Bamboo's former Rivermaya bandmate Nathan Azarcon, Mylene Dizon's boytoy Ira, although I'm pretty unsure about the drummer because I couldn't him from behind the drum set.

Then Chico Sci walked up stage with the crowd screaming like hell at the sight of them. And we suddenly found ourselves singing along "Amen," "Takatak" and "Break Glass." And then something absurd happened when the band was playing "Paris" - their most successful song, having won Song of the Year from NU107, and staying in that station's chart for more than a year. The guitarist gave the vocalist his guitar and grabbed the mike. The bassist then went midstage and began dancing a shy version of breakdance with his bass guitar dangling off his shoulder.
With this, folks, I laughed my head off. Weird reaction to a weird scene, fits!


I am SO grateful that there are a lot of die-hard Chico Sci fans from Antipolo, because since the show ended 10:45, I was afraid I'd be waiting inside a half-filled jeepney for hours. By the time I got to JRU and crossed the street to the jeepney terminal, the jeepney was lacking only one passenger. OH JOY!




Chewist...You, biatch! That was the reason why I didn't even tell you in the first place, aside from the fact that you wouldn't have the slightest clue as to who the F they are.

Apol...love ur blog! "Mini Pillow" ahahahaha Sorry, that's not the Jessica Zafra site, it used to be, though. That was her domain, guess she forgot to pay for it and somebody bought it, o well, I'll remove the link.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I was hoping I'd get on my birthday...okay, ONE of the many things I wanted for my birthday. Unfortunately, I didn't get it.
It was because of two things:
1) Nobody knew I wanted to get it and
2) up until now, it's still not available in the country, althought it is a Filipino band, it's actually an EP intended for the US market.
But at least I have their full-length debut, local release...

Last year I got into a part-timne job as a tour guide. We handled the kids everytime there was a field trip within Rizal (our area), giving orientations about the different iteneraries planned for the day. Tiring ang monotonous most of the time. I left during the last quarter of 2002, got employment over at a call center, like most of my friends from The Flame (Cherry, Teza, etc). I have since been busted.
So now, in the middle of unemployment and my bummness (quite undistinguishable, folks!).
Four months ago, the tour company (the Rizal branch, anyway), called me up to ask me if I wanted to be an Account Executive, they saw my performance and how I have great PR skills (kasi madali kong nauuto ang mga bata, pati na rin mga teachers at mga parents, hehehe) so they figured I'd be great as an AE. I was happy...for a while.
For one, the term Account Executive is a very nice word, it has a very distinguished sound to it. But then, when I inquired further, they said that the opening for AE was for the Cavite/Bulacan area.
So I said NO.

A couple of months more, just three weeks ago, they called me up again. Apparently, the new tour season is about to begin and most of their tour guides have decided to leave the company, I declined. But agreed to train the new recruites.
So everyday I wake up earlier than usual (yep, earlier than 1:00 pm) to face the new people.
But as I was giving them some pointers and telling a few stories about my experiences in touring, I realized that I really had fun.

So I decided to be a tour guide again (I'm not really up to doing the Accn't Executive bit).