JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

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.)