TOO many CHOICES, just MOVIES and STUFFS

 I am checking my Netflix account (paid by my daughter) and I notice that I have accumulated scores of series and movie  titles in the "continue watching" panel. These are titles that I clicked, watched, a few seconds later got bored with, then clicked another title, got bored and so on.

  

This is frustrating because it seems that my attention span has dwindled to a few seconds, and I can not get to the point where the interest builds up.

I miss the days when I could focus on one movie, one book, one task. Now, I can't decide on a choice whether it be a movie, a book, and musical piece to study and learn because there's just too many of them available online now.

There must be name for this condition. I mean, everything has a name now.

I Googled "I cant decide disorder" and there it was:

 Aboulomania (from Greek a– 'without', and boulē 'will') is a mental disorder in which the patient displays pathological indecisiveness. It is typically associated with anxiety, stress, depression, and mental anguish, and can severely affect one's ability to function socially. 

Well, maybe not that bad. Its just that.

I don't want to waste my time watching  a bad show. The Last movie I saw in full in weeks was "I Care a Lot" with Rosamund Pike and Tyrrion Lannister (yup, he is Tyrrion to me now), and I had to fast forward it by 10 seconds every time the scenes became dragging. This is not good. Just like in music, silence is important, it builds up anticipation that leads to the climax. 

I have lost appreciation in the art of anticipating, of waiting for the denouma, the revelation, whatever it is called,  because the power to fast forward movies, music and even books has been granted to me by technology.

REMINISCING:

I grew up in the 80's and 90's before ICT era. We had a cabinet type Zenith vacuum tube TV which was later replaced by the transistor type NIVICO 12 inch TV. This was the boob tube that I had spent my teen age and adulting years with until it conked out in 2000s. It served the family for almost two decades.

There were only five channels then BBC 2, Maharlika TV 4, IBC 13, RPN 9 and GMA 7. Almost all of them had limited airing time with the exception of RPN that screened midnight movies. I was an insomniac, so I had the TV by myself and since there were no other channels that aired on graveyard shift, I had no choice but to watch what's being shown. 

I saw eclectic collection of movies from Mel Brooks classic Young Frankenstein, The Last Time I saw Paris with Elizabeth Taylor, Bertollucci's The Last Emperor, to Richard Attenborough's Life on Earth. 

I also devoured paperbacks like there's no tomorrow, I could finish a James Michener novel in a day but now I could hardly get through a 2 minute Esquire article.

Anyway, I think most people have indecisive moments and get by normally. Its just that this is made worse by the fact that there too many options now especially with the internet. So unlike 20 years ago when it was so boring in the afternoons that one can learn and play a musical instrument within a week, or read a tome in a day, or got to have a lot of good and unforgettable time with friends chatting in street corners just wasting time hanging around, looking at the surroundings, observing people, listening to music, singing along to the accompaniment of a badly tuned guitar, being in the moment, things move so fast now. 

People still hang around now but they are trapped, mesmerized by a small screen. Like me.

Boredom is important, the right one, that is. The time to think about nothing for ithout it, we cannot declutter the mind. Boredom is the space and playground where the mind gets creative.

Transformer the last knight

I watched Transformers the Last Knight on my cellphone yesterday. The movie was released last year and from what I have read, the movie sucked. 

Saw the last four movies in the series and to tell the truth I can not remember much about the stories except Megan Fox. Sorry about that.

Maybe viewing the movie on a 5.99" screen does not give me the right to criticize the cinematography but even at that screen size the CGIs do not blend with the environment and the human actors.

They are cartoonish and  they stick out. Even the lighting do not interact with them realistically. Enlarge that to a giant screen and you could see the details.

Anyway, my main gripe is the story line. It started in a dystopian sci-fi fashion, then morphed into an Indiana Jones story with humor a-la-Marvel franchise interspered here and there, then it tries to forced the Arthurian legend into the cybertronian resurrection story.

The thing is the transformers are giant robots. Why in the hell did the writers choose the chivalric King Arthur to prop up the story, the bacground myth? The central theme in King Arthur story is the search for the holy Grail. It would be more convincing or smoother to use myths that contain references to beings that correspond to the transformers size and powers. 

King Arthur and the transformers, unfortunately for me, don't mix.

An artists renedition of a Greek Titan.

Greek mythology for one. There are titans and Giants in the hellenic saga that could do well to give justice to size and power of the cybertronians. Primitive people would treat them as gods.

Norse and even biblical myths could do as well. 

But I guess the writers saw that these are overused too. 

I think the writers had stonehenge at the center of the story.

Also, the humor did not work. 

The movie is boring even with all the explosions and the robots. I quit after one hour of watching. 

Maybe, I'll continue when I'm in the mood 

Is Jesus too sexy? Danny Trejo as Jesus, anyone?

Is he hot or is he gay? Naahh..just

joking. I couldn't even pronounce

the guy's name. Critics have a point 

in saying that he maybe too sexy for 

the role because it may distract movie 

goers, especially the abs worshipper,

from the central message of the movie.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a

religous and biblically and historically

accurate (or well researched) movie.

But that's the way it is. I have neve 

seen a movie with an ugly Jesus in

it, maybe there is..

There's a new Jesus movie "The Son of God" , and I heard on the news (I think its Inside Edition on Solar TV) that this Jesus was too sexy , or too hot, as the hosts put it.

Of course movie producers don't know how Jesus looked like. The Bible gave no physical description of him. Maybe because it was not important and what was important was his teachings.

Maybe another thing was that Judaism, the faith of Jesus,  implicitly  did not allow any graven image or any likeness to be made; the taboo of idolatry.

Greek philosophers, emperors and other  great men way before Jesus have busts or statues or icons and other representation made for and about them but for the Christian messiah, none. Maybe it was because he was not really that known outside the small Jewish community that had him arraigned before Pilate, or that what happened to him, in the eyes of the ordinary simple folks then, was nothing out of the ordinary.

They ate crucifixions for lunch, so to speak.


But the Bible did describe the actions of Jesus. He was nice and understanding with women. This may not be much to us today but during the time of the messiah, women were inferior to men. They were treated as chattels. (I don't hate Jews in fact I admire them. Gotta make that clear.) 

Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene.
Read an interesting book about Jesus and Women
and it showed how Jesus uplifted and liberated women
during his time on earth.

The Jews then beleived that women were the cause of the downfall of men and hence the cause of human misery. (Even Paul wrote about this in one of his letters). I could only surmised that this was based on the myth of the downfall found in the book of Genesis. It was religious misogyny. There were a lot of rules on dealing with women and most of them were discriminatory and derogatory.

Jesus was revolutionary with his view and treatment of women during his time. He talk with them, defended them. Remember that when Jesus was resurrected, he first appeared to three women.

Jesus walked and dined with taxpayers (in today's Philippine setting it's like eating with senators and congressmen, taxpayers were the epitome of thievery and corruption then), he healed, he exorcised demons, he fed the hungry; he showed compassion and love especially to the downtrodden but he could also be tough. He lashed and drove away the temple peddlers, he  cursed and dished out sarcasms to the corrupt priests and religious leaders.

So after reading about good stuffs about Jesus, it is only natural to picture a good looking Jesus. It is only natural to translate internal goodness to external goodness. It has something to do with how we understand good to be. We connect the word "good" with something that is pleasant to look at, pleasant to the taste, to the ears, etc. Our understanding of good is something that stimulates us positively, something that produce pleasant sensations.

Not only is this true with movies, this is true through out much of  history. Jesus has always been pictured as a good or pleasant (long haired, sometimes feminine-ish, sometimes rugged, sometimes haloed, sometimes of different skin color) looking man.

Have you seen your carpenter neighbor? Maybe they dodn't
that different from Jesus.

As to how Jesus really looked then? I will speculate but let us look at the background.

1. He came from a time where life expectancy was 40. Times of wars, famine, pestilence, hard labor etc. So, one thing can be deduced here, he looked old before he was old. He could be sunburned and may not necessarily wear his hair long and he had no access to hair conditioners.

2. He was carpenter. Imagine a time when there was no electricity, no power tools, the metallurgy was primitive so the iron tools were not that sharp and they blunt easily, no plastic and rubber handles so his hands and fingers were not only calloused, they were enlarged and may even deformed by labor, etc. So he was not soft and he may not necessarily be perfectly toned-- as in having perfect abs. He could look like a carpenter. How does a carpenter look like? I don't know, but they definitely don't look like movie stars.

3. He was also passionate and very smart. Its all in the eyes.


Hmmmm...doesn't have much to work with even on speculations.Well, I'll leave it atthat.

If I were to be asked who could be a most believable actor to play Jesus?

You may not agree with me but I definitely would like to See him play it:

I like Danny Trejo and his life story is inspiring. I would
like to see him play Jesus becuase I saw his soft side on
Kick-Ass. He is not your usual Hero but he did play good
guys quite convincingly, if I may say so.

Now I'm definitely in trouble.

But just like Noah the Movie, the Son of God is also a movie. The difference with Noah though is that this movie and the TV mini series from where this was adapted from was advised by scholars and church (Catholic and evangelicals) leaders and the producers are avowed Christians. This mvie is also endorsed by church leaders.

So, there's this orthodoxy thing going with it. But this is still entertainment.

I am sure the "Son of God" ,pirated version, will be shown in the gyms and in the streets during lent here in the Philippines together with the other lent staples:  10 commandments and "The Passion of the Christ."

The Life of Jesus is not a audio-visual spectacle but a spiritual one. It is not meant to arouse  outrage at what happened to our Lord. It is not meant to elicit rage to his persecutor. It is not even there to remind us of our sins. The story is meant to be read and to be reflected upon and to share to us the gospel: the gospel of hope, grace, forgiveness and redemption.

Watch the movie personally I have nothing against it-- I haven't seen it yet--but read the gospel first.

And again, Hollywood is not a good source of Christian edification, the Bible is.

Iron Sky

Yesterday I had nothing to do and I envied my neighbors DVD marathoning, so I went to the nearest bootleg dvd vendor and bought a movie collection. I opted for European movies some of which are in Germanic or Nordic languages with English subtitles superimposed on Chinese subs that, unfortunately, gave me headaches for the rest of the day and up to now I still feel a little hangover.

 Anyway, one of the movies I saw was Iron Sky. The US sent space mission over the darkside of the moon. Two astronauts, one a model and the other a real astronaut,  was sent there as a propaganda to boost the re-election campaign of the President of the US, who by the way was a lady with treadmill addiction.  Unknown to the president and the model astronaut, the other mission was to look for Helium 3.

While exploring the darkside of the moon, the astronaut discovered a Nazi base.

The Nazis evacuated to the moon in 1945 and constructed a base. There they continued on their plot to re-conquer the world in 2018.

Anyway, better look for the movie to enjoy it. The movie was low budgeted but it had good CGI effects and the space battles between the Nazi's space zeppelins and saucers vs. the US, Japan, UK etc. space ships was quite entertaining. There was also some racist stuff in the movie which was really inevitable since this was a movie about Nazis.   

There was funny scene about computers. The astronaut was caught and the nazi scientist, who by the way looked like Einstein, took a look at his iPod and asked what it was. The astronaut told him that it was a computer. The scientist laughed and showed the astronaut his computer which occupied the room. Anyway, the ipod was the key to run the space Nazi's giant space warship.

If you're a sci-fi fan and really love movies that doesn't take itself seriously, watch this movie.

So bad it was good: Nazis at the Center of the Earth

So bad it's good!

I watched Nazis at the Center of the Earth this afternoon and it was so bad that I could not stop from watching it.

Just before the WW II in Europe ended a group of Nazis led by Dr. Josef Mengele (an attempt at historicity)escaped from Germany to a secret base in Antarctica. These   Nazis survived by regenerating their bodies by harvesting organs from captured people.

Hitler being transported. Of course, at the beginning of the movie I did not think this was Hitler. I thought it was a bomb or a virus or something.

This guy's skin was ripped off and then transplanted to another Nazi.

Then there's a group of scientists in  a research station in Antarctica led by Dr. Adrian Reistad played here by Jack Busey, the only actor in the film that I knew, who was captured by the Nazi's. Unsuspecting, these group scientists later found out that Reistad was part of the Nazi conspiracy to revive Hitler or what remained of him, a head on a mechanical body, by injecting stem cells into the Hitler-robot.

The operation to get the brain stem cell was quite primitive, no anesthetics and no  sterilization. But the stem cell of an adult did not work.

Dr. Reistad found out that his girlfriend was pregnant. He got an idea, why not use a fetus' stem cells. So, here he vacuumed the fetus out of his girl friend's ovary  to obtain   the stem cells.

When Hitler was revived, the Nazi's fly out of Antarctica using the Orion (maybe with reference to Project Orion) the Nazi flying saucer (there were NAZI experimental flying saucers) to re conquer the world by releasing flesh-eating bacteria that Dr. Reistad brought with him to the Antarctica station.

Hitler giving a speech to the Fourth Reich composed of around twenty people.

The Nazi flying saucer: Orion

Of course, as expected: the breast exposure.

The Nazi flying saucer was destroyed by a grenade and Hitler was killed by injecting some chemical into his terminal or outlet or something.

Anyway, the plot was a spoof. The CGI was bad. But this movie had no pretensions of anything but fun.

Terra Nova

Summer, hot, with nothing to do...instead of dreaming of sand, beach, water, rivers, ice creams and other anti-summer-heat stuffs that needs (a lot of) money to realize, I chose to do the next best thing: electric fan, reading, blogging, and DVD marathon.

There's a new sci-fi series that I saw on my sister's cable TV titled Terra Nova. Of course, I could not stay in Baguio to watch the whole series, so I did what I always do, hunt for the DVD from my favorite vendor. To tell the truth, I am amazed by the titles being sold by my favorite illegal DVD vendor. I was looking around when, as if he knew, maybe he sort of like studied my preferences like Google's algorithm or something,  he showed me this.

The story was set in 2149. The planet was on the verge of death because of environmental catastrophe and overpopulation and the people survives on filtered air and artificial food and population control.  The people of 2149 discovered a fracture in time going back to 85 million years that can be opened and passed  through. Scientists sent a probe to explore and they found out that the time stream was different from 2149  time stream so it is possible to migrate and inhabit the time and place without disrupting the 2149 flow of time--the butterfly effect. There was  a catch though: the fracture in time goes only one way, it is not possible to go back to 2149.

There was waves of migration to the new colony called Terra Nova. (terra=land, nova=new) or (terra=left over, nova=grain chips). I'm in episode four...anyway...Terra Nova was a growing community of pilgrims from the future that have established a growing colony in the past.

Faced with the dangers of large prehistoric animals like dinosaurs and other prehistoric carnivorous reptiles, insects, diseases, parasite and other unknown dangers of an unexplored land, they survived by   being resourceful and living a spartan life. 

But the real danger was from the sixers. Sixers are pilgrims that came with the sixth wave of immigrants who are working with the industrialist from 2149 bent on stripping and exploiting resources from the past to be used in 2149  thus repeating the error of the future, the rape and destruction of nature. To realize this, the sixers are   working on a way to make the time fracture to go both ways but the Tera Novans are bent on stopping this.

So, there's this conflict between the sixers and the terra novans.

Anyway, still watching...

Who am I?

I read my nephews post asking this question: who am I?  A question I have asked myself to which I identify with my nephew.

While reading, I hear in my mind's ear the song now being sung during drinking sessions "Who am I?" (sounds like Creed to me) by casting Crowns. Lately, I have been hearing these "Christian" and Hellsong errr...I mean Hillsong praise and worship music being sung during drinking sessions and this gives me that strange feeling, a cross between shouting blasphemy while saying praise God for the bums and the alcoholics are being reached out! But depends on which side of the planet one is on, as for me, who cares! 

Maybe this and maybe that, but I don't know if the Holy Spirit of God can work side by side with the spririt and spiritum of San Miguel Beer and Gin to bring about repentance and salvation. But just the same, maybe in their hour of hang overs, head aches, expiration (of the alcohol and what have you's effect) and flash backs these people may come to the realization of the lyrics that they were singing and in that hour of vulnerability the Holy Ghost could do his works...who knows. 

But they may simply be singing because they like the melody and the guitar riffs, the basslines, and the drum rolls and none of that spiritual blah, blah,blah...

                                                            Who am I? (Casting Crowns)

                            

      When I first heard this song, I thought this was a Creed song. Good song and I understood why it became popular: the lyrics and the style.

How many times have I heard, the most popular of which was Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life", that who we are is that we are God's children and that our purpose is to worship, serve, surrender--our existence is grounded upon God, the ground of our being  (Tillich), the fact from which all facts arises (from CS Lewis and I don't like the way it sounds) and that our existence is not an accident, blah, blah, blah...words that could inspire confidence and to some may prove the final answer to the question of existence: the Bible drama, so to speak.

But it would be dishonest to say that this is not the case for many who asks about the existential-ontological question and for some this answer maybe or is worse than saying our existence is an accident because the God-answer smacks of determinism and helplessness in the face of planned existence as opposed to the existentialist's understanding of an absurd but free existence: we are who we want to be (or something like that) as Sartre expressed it. God: Purposed but Determined; Accident: Absurd but Free. The existentialist believes that the latter is the brave choice to which I agree, to some extent.

I don't know, up to now I still ask this question and if one really delved into this kind of thinking or asking, the mind would go into a loop an endless loop which may prove unhealthy in the long run. Our existence is determined, as can be seen by the laws of nature that governs our existence, but this is not the whole reality because there is also an element of indeterminism at the sub-atomic level of our existence, so, there are two seemingly opposing realities within and without us both working harmoniously. 

Anyway, the problem is not really the question, it's really how we think. Our mind has been programmed to thinking in an either or manner that we cannot accept or it has become counter intuitive to think of possibilities existing at the same time. 

Who am I? To quote God: "I am who I am." 

Doesn't matter...watch the movie The Nines starring Ryan Reynolds and be entertained how the question of existence was tackled.

I don't think life would be fun if we all know the answer...

Cowboys and Aliens, American Idol Tra-la-la

One may be confused by my last post, but be not: I saw Battleship and Cowboys and Aliens (bootleg and downloaded of course) and I fused them into one sort of a criticism to save bytes. Battleship was one visually good movie but the story was starchy-corny while Cowboys and Aliens was one veerrryyy long movie about alien gold prospectors--2 hours for that crap....the movie gave me sore eyes. Why did Harrison Ford...really...two hours for that story! Really its more like Twilight Zone episode that was stretched too long. For what? Indulgence...

________________________

I could be wrong and I want to be wrong! Jessica Sanchez made it into the top 5, and the guy that I thought teen-age girls would vote to be this year's American Idol, the guy with the weird hair, Colton Something was eliminated. I think the judges' drama (of course my gut kept telling me it was a staged drama or something) paid off: the climbing into the stage and saving Jessica made the voters realize that the search was about talent and not about hmmm...face value. (It's so hot today that my butt was sweating.) 

But...butt...my man is Joshua Ledet. I have nothing against Jessica, I mean she's Filipino and whether a person or any creature has 100% Filipino blood or .000000001% Filipino blood, Filipinos are supposed to root for them. I mean, this is our way of showing our love for our country and our race and our nationalism and our hopelessness. Just look at our national football team. Anyway...Jessica's style is too diva and too predictable: heard one, heard em all.

But there's something about black musicians and singers; They have this hmmmm....unexplainable something, pain, or persecution, or this primal energy or emotions of some sort that wants to come out. Listen to Joshua sing a Percy Sledge song "When a man loves a woman." (This song is not a Michael Bolton song!) so you may have an idea what I'm talking about.

I was disappointed to find out that Elise Testone was eliminated. 

Elise's performance of Led Zep's "Whollata Lovin" was the best rock performance. I mean, she rocked!

Here she performed a Jimi Hendrix classic "Bold as Love. I have to say that Hendrix' songs were not meant to be contest pieces for American Idol or any of that cheezy-corny talent stuff. Hendrix's songs were meant to be performed with the guitar and most of them told something of a confused-hallucegenic-melancholic emotions, but Elise's impressive vocalizations of Hendrix' power (which was for vocally challenged Hendrix expressed through his guitar playing) drove home the point (whatever that is). Anyway, she's too rough or too rock for AI. I was hoping that Dave Mathews clone Phillip Phillips would be eliminated because he was not that good vocally and performance wise. 

__________________________

I am giving Showtime till the end of the quarter. The hosts are starting to sound like broken records.

Anyway...am supposed to prepare a sermon for tomorrow. Ciao!

Battleship

Saw Battleship the movie on the bus en route to Baguio. Judging from the quality of the sound and the video, the DVD was obviously pirated (or bootleg DVD if you're a native English speaker). Anyway, the movie was interesting but though the writer/s tried to put emphasis on the story of the protagonist Alex Hopper played by Taylor Kirtsch, the movie was really about the retired battleship USS Missouri and some old retired US Navy personnel who went back to active service to man the old-vacuum tube-analog battleship in its campaign against the aliens. Of course, the movie was also about a group of stupid scientists who sent signals into an earthlike planet not thinking that there maybe some hostile lizard-like aliens with superior technology and superior insecurity living out there bent on mining gold and fighting cowboys and destroying the earth by  kidnapping Indians and cowgirls  and terraforming the planet by venting out farts.

The signals sent by the scientists were received by the aliens, but since they could not speak English nor did they know binary machine language, they thought they were being threatened by cowboys. They sent ships to recon the planet. The aliens had superior technology and what was worse was that they were also hostile. So, the aliens attacked and tried to destroy humanity but one old vacuum tube-analog ship manned by retired Korean War veterans, some cowboys and a few Japanese, the USS Missouri, was able to destroy the alien mothership using its big guns. Incidentally there's some sort of historical play in the movie like including Japanese characters among the crew of the ship. The Missouri was the ship were the Japanese signed their surrender to the US.

Anyway, the movie was entertaining enough. The special effects, even through the bootleg disc, was good. Well, about the sound, I could barely hear the movie...What the? Why am I talking a bootleg DVD? Not fair...this is illegal!

Missouri was ordered in 1940 and commissioned in June 1944. In the Pacific Theater of World War II she fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa and shelled the Japanese home islands, and she fought in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. She was decommissioned in 1955 into the United States Navy reserve fleets (the "Mothball Fleet"), but reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, and provided fire support during Operation Desert Storm in January/February 1991. (Wikipedia)

The movie had a touch of Japanese something in it. I didn't know if it's only me but the movie was reminiscent of the seminal  old Japanese anime called "Space Battleship Yamato" or its English version "Starblazers."

Yamato, lead ship of a class of two 65,000-ton (over 72,800-tons at full load) battleships, was built at Kure, Japan. She and her sister, Musashi were by far the largest battleships ever built, even exceeding in size and gun caliber (though not in weight of broadside) the U.S. Navy's abortive Montana class. Their nine 460mm (18.1-inch) main battery guns, which fired 1460kg (3200 pound) armor piercing shells, were the largest battleship guns ever to go to sea, and the two ships' scale of armor protection was also unsurpassed.

Anyway, just thought about Yamato when I saw USS Missouri fighting it out with an alien ship. Anyway, Harrison Ford's and David Craig did a very gooey job in the movie. Why did Liam Neeson agreed to play a cowboy in the first place? He's better off playing an admiral or something....

Satan, Demons and heroes

                           Today, this movie would be considered cheap and poor. Funny rather than scary.

When I was in my grade school, my father, a pastor, brought me along to our church’s evangelistic crusades. The most popular way to evangelize during that time, the 80’s, was through film showing. I could never forget the movie that was being shown then, Burning Hell. I could not remember the story of the movie or the actors, what I could remember was the fire, the worms, the suffering, the pain—it was a graphic movie about what the sinner would expect when they go to hell. 

After watching that movie for many times, I started to have nightmares. I slept alone on my cot (or papag in tagalog) and each night I would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating, afraid and sometimes feeling cold because of the fear of hell; I was wishing that I had my parents beside me. To battle this fear I would pray for the Lord Jesus Christ to come into my heart to be my savior. This happened for most of my childhood, the nightmares, and every time I feel afraid, I always invite the Lord Jesus Christ to come into my heart until I outgrew the fear of hell in me and until I outgrew the belief the name Jesus Christ was a powerful talismanic-incantation for dealing with nightmares.

Of course scare tactics work i.e. for a time until one becomes too scared to the point of numbness. It was never my father's intention to scare the hell out of me. I am not taking this against my late father, I loved and still very much love the man. He was a pastor and all pastors suffer from, different degrees, messiah complex.

Anyway...

Graphic illustrations of the devil as a horrible creature having horns and tails are used to scare the hell out of people. It was effective before in the middle ages, dark ages where people are superstitious, ignorant and illiterate.  But in this age of cyber tech and relativism (whatever the hell is that word), cgi effects and the internet especially you tube where anybody may see gross videos of photo-shopped creatures that looked very real, I mean visually speaking, Satan or the devil has never looked better, and realistic, may I add.

In movies and in computer games, these creatures that look like satan or the devil are now heroes. Maybe people are starting to realize that because a creature is ugly, scary and gross, it does not necessarily make them evil. Really one of the faults of giving satan or the devil an animal-human description is that people focuses more on the look than on the nature of satan. I have a friend who looks like satan and he was called demonyo or satanas by everybody, but he was far from being evil. Take the snake for example, because snakes were thought to be the serpent that lured eve into the fall, they are killed out of fear because they are thought to be treacherous and fierce animals.

Lochner’s depiction of a horrifically beautiful scene seethes with the realistic bodies of the naked damned who scream as they undergo torture by legions of distorted, animalistic creatures.

Jahrakal, the troll warlord, one of the heroes in the Warcraft DOTA game.

Hellboy, A demon, raised from infancy after being conjured by and rescued from the Nazis, grows up to become a defender against the forces of darkness.

Anyway, my break is up...maybe I'll come back later and talk about what this beautification and heroification of demons etc. blah, blah, blah.....

Bourne Legacy and other films shot in the Philippines

Rachel Weisz on the set of The Bourne Legacy in Manila.

The shooting of the fourth installment of Ludlum's Bourne series The Bourne Legacy started yesterday. Many Filipinos are excited about the film; it's not everyday that a big budgeted major Hollywood production is shot here in the Philippines. Aside from the prestige, the shooting of the movie would create job opportunities for the community where the film is being shot and also generate revenues for the involved local government units and government agencies.   Another benefit of Hollywood movies being shot in the country is that it would promote the Philippines as a tourist destination, sort of a product placement.

The story of Boracay, I think, is the best example of what a movie could to do in promoting a tourist spot in the country. Boracay then was an unknown beautiful island where the 1970 Hollywood WWII movie Too Late the Hero, starring Michael Caine, was shot. Since then, foreigners took notice of the island especially the powder white sand beaches and soon after that Boracay became a favorite destination for foreign tourist especially for the budget conscious backpackers. And because of this popularity among the foreigners, many local investors saw the potential of the island to become a world class tourist destination and the rest, as they say, is history.

I am a bit at a lost about the tourism hype of the  Ludlum movie because it is being shot in the areas of Marikina City Market, San Andres Market, Navotas Fishport, Ramon Magsaysay Blvd., Ayala Avenue, Nagtahan, Pasay Taft, Intramuros and Jones Bridge. I don't want to douse cold water into the enthusiasm about the potential exposure the movie could generate for tourism because many (if not most) of these places are not your typical tourist destinations . That is, unless the expected tourist market we have in mind  are urban survivalists interested in simulating post-nuclear war survival scenarios or journalists who are interested in doing documentaries about Metro Manila's nefarious taxi drivers (not all of them of course).Or, I could be wrong, maybe there are tourists interested in third-world- urban tourism, sort of.

Anyway,  the movie is not yet finished, and there maybe beautiful places that would be included in the movie like Palawan, Boracay, Bohol etc. Or,  they would pan the camera so as to avoid the eyesores, etc.so its too early to tell. I maybe wrong of course!

I expect that the DVD of the movie would be available from your trusted DVD Bootleg vendor way before the shooting is over. Also one of the benefits....early, early, pre- screening.

Anyway I am curious about  Hollywood films were shot here in the Philippines. Here are some of them: (Wikipedia)

1. Missing in Action (1984) : Chuck Norris, Directed by Joseph Zito

2. The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) : Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, Directed by Peter Weir

3. Platoon (1986): Tom Berringer, Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen, Directed by Oliver Stone

4. Thirteen days (2000): Kevin Costner, Directed by Roger Donaldson

 4. Apocalypse Now (1979): Marlon Brando, Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

5. Enter the Ninja (1981): Franco Nero, Sho Kosugi, Directed by Menahem Golan

Twin connection, Sangtwaryo, Frustrations

I was teaching Music when I noticed that Nhedi Jade was crying. I asked why he was crying. One of the pupils told me that Nhedi was crying because someone teased him. I was not concerned since this was just one of those things that happen regularly in the classroom. But then I noticed that another pupil, Nhedi’s twin brother, Nhedi Lloyd was also a tears. They were identical twins.

 One of the pupils told me that when one of the twins cries the other cries too. I was intrigued because according to the class this always happens. Psychical connection...

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The grade chairman and I chaperoned two grade six sections to a film showing at SM Taytay Theater 3. The film was supposed to be an environmental awareness film which according to the credits was funded by the World Bank.

The film was bad. Everything about the film was bad. The acting was and the story was worse than bad.

The story revolved around a family who lived in an island inhabited by fisher folks who made their living by the bounty of the sea. As the years passed and because of illegal fishing methods, fish became scarce and the living condition in the island worsened.

Then a government agency moved in to inform the people that the island would be a marine sanctuary. There were oppositions because this meant that fishing would be banned for a period of time. The government people held seminars and conferences to convince the people. Some family joined the program while some family resisted and resorted to dynamite fishing so that they could earn more.

The protagonist in the film was an idealistic fisherman. He knew the damage done by illegal fishing methods to the environment and swore not to get involved with it. Another reason was that he saw his father died from an accident while dynamite fishing.

Then the idealistic fisherman’s baby got dengue. Being poor, he has no money for hospitalization. In desperation, he borrowed money from a friend, who was dynamite fisherman. His friend convinced him of the profit he could make with dynamite fishing. Thinking it over, he was convinced and asked his friend for two packs of dynamite. Just this once he told himself.

But he was not an expert dynamite fisherman so he lost his balance and the dynamite exploded near his boat. The accident  killed his son and left him disabled. He was not able to raise the money to help his baby in the hospital. His baby died and another son was dead because of the dynamite accident. He could not take what happened so he resorted to drinking. He became a drunkard and a wife beater.His wife left him because she couldn’t take it anymore. After a non-stop sermons from his mother and realizing that there was still hope,  he changed his ways, became involved with the sanctuary project. In the end, his wife returned and things got better.

The story was not suited for elementary pupils. Its like eating a lumpiang shanghai wrapped in thick newspaper. The message of environmental awareness was poorly wrapped and presented in a badly written TV drama.

Finding Nemo would have been a much better film to watch to promote ecology.

Also the theater was filled that pupils had to sit in the aisle. 

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It’s frustrating to see how pupils retain very little or none of what has been taught to them. This is frustrating and stressful for the teachers because when pupils perform badly with their assessment examinations, it is directly correlated with the teachers’ performance.

There is a direct correlation of course and it is only logical to think that the teachers may not be utilizing teaching techniques or strategies that could challenge and motivate learners. Or worse, the teacher may be accused of being incompetent.  

One thing I can tell from experience is that once a teacher enters a classroom full of fifty pupils all the educational and psychological theories fly out of the window and the teacher has to start from scratch assessing and analyzing the situation and in the end he/she would, as is most often the case, use the traditional direct method of teaching because it is still the most effective method to use  given the  challenge of balancing an overpopulated classroom with classroom management and the effective presentation of the lessons.

 

Matrix, Quantum Physics, Principle of uncertainty, Schroedinger's cat...Gutom lang

After watching the Matrix I was dumbfounded for a while. The scene where Neo achieved the level of consciousness where he could see the reality in the matrix in binary numbers, thus achieving a higher consciousness of reality enabling him to suspend or even break the physical laws of existence that governed the reality contained in the Matrix may allegorize actual state of consciousness achieved by individuals through transcendental practice or through their giftedness. Maybe that's how prophets or sages saw reality too.

Even the reality in the Matrix may not be as different as that of ours. In the matrix reality is built upon by programs. It is not so different from ours. Most people still believed that atoms are materials. Of course, this is because the physics still being thought in school is the 17^th century Newtonian physics which is governed by deterministic laws. Newtonian physics is also characterized by its materialistic and mechanical view of the universe. But with the advent of quantum mechanics brought about by the theories, discoveries and experimentation on subatomic level of particles, our classical view of reality must change. The Newtonian or the classical view of reality, unfortunately, will be superseded by the new physics. Of course it does not mean that the Newtonian physics is useless; on the other hand, it is still relevant in the study of reality on the large scale or at the macro level of reality but at the atomic and subatomic level, classical physics loses its coherence.

In the schools, it is still taught that atoms are particles. Atoms are pictured as miniature solar system giving the impression that they are solid-materials. But that is not so, atoms behave like a particles but they behave like a wave too.  This is called the wave-particle duality. This has many implications but the most shocking implication of this is that reality or the universe may not be composed solid atomic particles but may be composed of waves or even probabilities-reality may be an illusion-residues. Here is Neo looking at binary figures with the idealist and Cartesian philosophers smiling.

Also another problem that makes quantum mechanics weirder than science fiction is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. This means that an observer affects reality. It means that just observing realties, we are actually changing it.  An experiment was done on how subatomic particles behave, measuring devices were used. According to our classical understanding of reality, an observed result will be consistent trough out. For example, if ball a moves to point A, given the same parameters like speed, gravity, and friction, would move to the same spot but this is not happening at the sub atomic level. Just by observing the ball, the ball changes its direction as if aware that it is being observed-the observed and the observer have a direct relationship. And each observation produces different results. Thus calculations breaks down here and one can only talk about probabilities and not exactitude. Also subatomic particles may occupy the same space at the same time thus collapsing our classical perception of space-time.

Alternate reality is another area of quantum mechanics that have spurned a lot of sci-fi stories. To put it simply alternate reality is the many world interpretation of quantum mechanics. One thought experiment that illustrates this is the famous Schrodinger’s cat. To put it simply, a cat is put inside a box lace a living cat into a steel chamber, along with a device containing a vial of hydrocyanic acid. It will be killed at a specific time. According to Schrödinger the cat is both dead and alive until the box is opened. But there is also the possibility that two realities may exist, one where the cat is alive and the other where the cat is dead. To stretch it further, it is also proposed that for every choice we make we create an infinite number of alternate worlds or realities. Wooohhhh….

Do not ever think that quantum physics is purely theoretical because most of our technologies now uses quantum principles, look at your computer..

New Physics is exciting though I cannot understand its mathematics yet its hmmmm…implications are profound, freeing us from the deterministic yoke of classical physics. This also provides a more open and harmonizing insight on the relationship between freewill and determinism. Determinism do exist in the macro level of reality where Newtonian laws applies, and freedom subatomic level where the principle of uncertainty rule, or does not rule , or there are no rules at all.

Of course believing in these stuffs, though there are those who believe them and there have been researches and experiments that support one or more of these propositions made by quantum physicist, requires more faith than believing in God.

That is why faith must be deconstructed, criticized and must survive….because in reality, we may all just be residues of probabilities.

Heeee……gutom lang.