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Death is not an end but the beginning. . .of a new round of ridicule and mockery on mydeathspace.com. The site contains news of recent deaths, with links to the myspace pages of the deceased. Now friends and total strangers can sit in judgment on the departed. How can anyone rest in peace?

“When a person dies, his or her MySpace page and its assortment of photos, blog entries, songs, videos and other digital ephemera becomes a de facto shrine to the deceased — teenage life’s trivialities, dilemmas and existential crises packaged and displayed as a neat narrative. That narrative may continue well beyond death if victims have left their message boards open to the public, as friends, family members and even strangers add comments to the page. . .For some, it’s a form of reality-based entertainment, of the most morbid variety. MyDeathSpace’s avid fan base scours the news for recent tragedies and keeps the site current by submitting deaths for consideration.”

From the Department of Linguistics, Bahay Kubo in gayspeak.

Valer kuberch, kahit jutay
Ang julamantrax donchi ay anek-anek.
Nyongkamas at nutring, nyogarilyas at kipay
Nyitaw, nyotaw, jutani.
Kundol, jutola, jupot jolabastrax
At mega join-join pa, jobanox nyustasa.
Nyubuyax, nyomatis, nyowang at luyax
And around the keme ay fulnes ng linga.

The Swedish director of Smiles Of A Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, and Wild Strawberries died today at his house on Faroe Island. His last film was Saraband.

Bergman’s films are usually described as great, depressing, or great and depressing. We are allowed to admit that Bergman’s work is gloomy. In a Swedish television interview in 2004, he himself said: “I don’t watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry … and miserable.”

I must confess I thought he’d been dead for years. As a penance I will watch Persona without subtitles.

I’m sorry the Cinemalaya festival is over, not just because I won’t be seeing new stuff every day or hanging out with large groups of people inhaling gambas at Shrimps Ahoy, but because I enjoyed getting out of my neighborhood and going to the CCP, even if the atmosphere contains carpet mold, spores, and dust dating back to the Eighties.

At the awarding ceremonies last night, Tribu won the best picture, best actor (for the non-professional ensemble composed of Tondo gang members—excellent call by the judges), and best sound (after I’d just picked on it, ha ha) trophies. Endo got the special jury prize, best actress for Ina Feleo, and best editing. Pisay won for direction and production design; Kadin for cinematography and music. Tukso was cited for screenplay (I didn’t see it). Among the shorts, Rolyo was adjudged best picture, Eman de la Cruz was cited for direction for Gabon, and we were happy to see Nineball bag the special jury prize. Audience choice awards went to Pisay for the features, and Doble Vista for the shorts.If you missed the movies, you can catch them at the UP Film Center.

The most fun I had at Cinemalaya 2007 was watching the short film Nineball by Enrico Aragon. Gross, tasteless, and hysterically funny, Nineball is. . .a rumination on the Filipinos’ near-demented passion for billiards—which makes more sense than our demented passion for basketball, because we rule in pool. I have always maintained that every psycho-anthropological study should involve midgets, trannies, and booger jokes.

Was much impressed by Jim Libiran’s Tribu, a film about Tondo gangstas starring actual Tondo gangstas. Some of the film’s stars demonstrated their rapping skills in an extemporaneous performance before yesterday’s screening at CCP. The live show and the movie had the same problem: the sound engineering was awful, we could barely hear the words. A pity, as these guys are really rapping for their lives. I spotted Imee Marcos watching the show. Surreal.

Meanwhile, I can’t get “Spider-Pig” out of my head. The Simpsons movie—there’s a gut-busting work of staggering genius.

“American doctors are baffled by a cat that can apparently predict when nursing home patients are about to die.

“Oscar, who lives at a nursing home, curls up next to sick patients in their final hours. So far he has been right in 25 cases, leading staff at the home to alert relatives when he is seen settling on a patient’s bed. It usually means they have less than four hours to live. “He doesn’t make too many mistakes. He seems to understand when patients are about to die,” said Dr David Dosa, who describes Oscar’s uncanny knack for predicting death in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

Nice-looking cat, too, for a harbinger of death. My felines are more like identifiers of loathsomeness. When they show a marked aversion to a human, that human always turns out to be a creep.

From the Fortean Times, a piece on nightmare death syndrome, locally known as bangungut.

“A man who goes to bed fit and healthy is heard to cry out in his sleep, and the next morning is found dead. The same scene is repeated again and again. The doctors cannot find any physical cause for the mysterious deaths, but people mutter darkly about dæmonic beings and deadly dreams. The 11 victims were all Filipino sailors. . .”

A friend of mine swears that twenty years ago he experienced something very similar to bangungut, except that he was awake at the time. He was on vacation in his hometown, and after a heavy lunch of rice, tuyo, and chorizo bilbao, he felt a terrible pain in his midsection. Now this is what generally happens when you eat an entire kaldero of rice with salty fish and lardy sausage, but this pain so extreme he couldn’t breathe. He had all the symptoms of bangungut, only he was conscious.

He was was rushed to the town hospital, where the doctors were ready to open him up to see what was wrong with him. Fortunately, his friend happened to be visiting the hospital at the time. This friend, a veterinarian, had a look at him and declared that he’d seen the same thing happen to horses. His advice was to get a test for serum amylase.

My friend the patient suggested this to his doctor, who said, “Hmm, where’d you hear that?” The patient was too embarrassed to say the advice had come from a vet, so he feebly claimed to have read it somewhere. The test for amylase was done, and my friend was found to be suffering from “reverse peristalsis of the pancreatic duct”. Something about his stomach being so full of rice swollen with salt that it was putting pressure on his pancreas. So they pumped out his stomach as if he’d OD’d, and he survived his waking bangungut.

How prisoners at the Cebu provincial jail pass the time.

My sister did her university “immersion” thing at the Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa. She was assigned to teach inmates at the medium-security facility. I said, “What do you teach them, their legal rights?” She said, “No, reading and writing.” After one session, she asked an inmate to write an example of a sentence. “Sentence ko?” he asked. She said, “Alright.” So he wrote: “Ang sentensya ko ay murder.” (I was sentenced to jail for murder.)

On the last day of the program, the inmates prepared a variety show for the volunteers. Many prison dance groups performed, including one called “Dangerous Moves”. Philippine prisons: like West Side Story, but overpopulated.

1. Almost every time I go to a Cinemalaya screening, I have this conversation with the CCP ushers.

Usher: (Checking my media pass) I have to inform you that holders of media passes are on standby.

Me: But those rows are empty.

Usher: Alright, you may come in now.

After a few repetitions of this routine, I decided on a silent movie approach.

Usher: I have to inform you that holders of media passes are on standby.

Me: (Gesturing dramatically at rows of empty seats, while eyebrows collide with scalp.)

Usher: Alright, you may come in now.

2. Ray Gibraltar’s When Timawa Meets Delgado is enjoyably bizarre and inventive (but not in competition). It explains why so many Pinoys are taking up nursing as a second course, but has a lot more on its mind. The hilarious rendition of a trilingual poem (Ilonggo, English, and Baklese) by J.I.E. Teodoro had the audience crawling on the aisles. Timawa asks, If overseas Filipino workers are the new heroes, what do you call the people who stay and work here? Martyrs?

3. There should be a legal limit to the number of fade-ins and fade-outs in a single movie. You don’t just use them because you can’t figure out a proper transition. That means you, Ligaw-Liham (ligaw as in lost, not courtship), an interminable movie based on the premise that in the early 1970s, the age of snail mail, a village post office can shut down for months and no one will notice. Karylle’s character is reduced to staring anxiously into the distance, waiting for the postman all day. Apparently there is nothing else to do in the village. When a letter does arrive, she reads it while lolling in a field, strolling in a meadow, standing on a moving freight train with the wind in her hair. As my friend noted: “Ganyan din ako kung magbasa ng sulat.” (Yes, that’s exactly how I read letters.)

Today I am a happy moviegoer. I saw Endo, a story of modern love set in the world of temp labor. (Endo is not the Japanese author. It is short for “end of contract”. Temporary staff at fast-food restaurants, department stores, and supermarkets are employed for only three or four-month periods; this way their employers avoid giving them benefits such as social security and medical care.) Leo (Jason Abalos) is a good-looking, rather aimless young man who shuttles from one McJob to another; he doesn’t have the time or inclination to think about what he wants out of life. He just lets things happen to him—in his relationships, it’s the girls who take the lead. Then he meets Tanya (Ina Feleo), a fellow temp who has plans and dreams, and is not afraid to pursue them. Essentially it’s the story of a boy who realizes that he’s been a passive minor character in his own life, and must step up to be the lead actor.

Sure it doesn’t sound like a very ambitious premise for a movie, but it’s what filmmakers do with their premise that makes a movie fly. Endo flies because everything about it feels real. Its characters are the “invisible” people—the waiter who brings your coffee, the hotel staff who changes the towels, the salesgirl who gets the shoes in your size. The tables are turned; you eavesdrop on them. Writer-director Jade Castro nails his characters and their milieu. He has an ear for the nuances of everyday speech, and his cast tosses off the dialogue with excellent timing. The leads are delightful: you can identify each emotion as it flits across Jason Abalos’ face, and Ina Feleo manages to be tough and vulnerable, plain and beautiful at the same time. She can take a hackneyed line and make it sound fresh. There’s a scene that would normally make me run screaming out of the theatre, but these two make it work. Great work by the supporting cast, particularly the opportunistic ex-girlfriend and the younger brother. Jade Castro directs with intelligence and restraint: there are many things left unsaid, but we get them loud and clear.

Screenings of Endo at Cinemalaya at CCP: 24 July at 6.15pm, 25 July at 9pm, 26 July at 12.45pm, 27 July at 12.45pm, and 28 July at 9pm. (There are no screenings today, Monday.) For full screening schedules, visit the Cinemalaya site.

Auraeus Solito has three strengths as a filmmaker. One, he draws fine performances from his actors, even those who had no previous acting experience. Two, he can tell a story visually, unlike many Pinoy filmmakers whose movies look like radio drama serials. Three, he knows his strong points, so his confidence is evident even in scenes that might seem problematic. These strengths are on display in his third feature film, Pisay, the intertwined stories of six scholars at the Philippine Science High School in the ’80s. The screenplay is unwieldy—there must be a way to Robert Altman this structure so characters don’t just fall off the margins, the student body seems to consist of 20 kids, and an important character suddenly appears in the last 10 minutes, but Pisay has enough warmth and charm to float over these open manholes. Sure it’s schmaltzy, but high school IS schmaltzy: it’s the time when everything seems to be a matter of life and death, and you act accordingly.

True, I went to Pisay, so the movie had me when the physics teacher opened her mouth (Aiiieee, it’s Miss Basas!). Just to be sure, I polled some viewers who had not gone to PSHS, and they liked it too. Still, there is a moment in the movie that you have to be from Pisay to really get: when Matteo (my favorite actor in a terrific bunch) hears terrible news, his reaction is not horror or sadness, but relief.

Pisay screenings at Cinemalaya at CCP: 22 July at 9pm, 24 July at 9pm, 25 July at 9pm, 26 July at 6.15pm, 27 July at 10am, and 28 July at 3.30pm. For complete screening schedules, venues, and other information, visit the Cinemalaya website. Today, Sunday, I’m watching Endo by Jade Castro, When Timawa Meets Delgado by Ray Gibraltar, and Tukso by Dennis Marasigan.

You know that part in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep orders her assistant to get a copy of the next, as-yet unpublished Harry Potter book? It’s considered an impossible task, but the assistant manages to snag a copy through a journalist who knows the book designer. Well the new Potter won’t be out until tomorrow, the 21st, but despite the famed embargo the New York Times managed to acquire a copy from a bookstore, and Michiko Kakutani’s review appeared—gasp!—three days before the release date. It’s a positive review, and according to someone who’s actually read the books, contains no spoilers, but the book’s publishers, Bloomsbury and Scholastic, are miffed. If you want a career in publishing, do you side with America’s most powerful book critic, or the billionaire British author? “Wait for Oprah’s opinion” is not an answer.