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I just got a text message from film director Elwood Perez, who wishes it known that news of his death have been greatly exaggerated. In a newspaper today, he is referred to as “the late Elwood Perez.” I think the author may have confused him with his close friend and colleague Joey Gosiengfiao, who died last year. Perez and Gosiengfiao are the campmeisters of 1970s Filipino cinema.

What’s interesting is that Elwood has been having visitations from dead people for over a year. In April last year, Zed and I ran into him at the mall, and he told us that various dead persons, including Rolando Tinio and some entertainment reporters, had been appearing in his dreams. And then last Saturday I got this text message from Elwood (the longest SMS I’ve ever received):

“Include this in your prayers: That spirits of the dead stay away from me. If a few nights ago, Joey Gosiengfiao told me in my dreams that he still ought to direct, how can you explain that I woke up this morning realizing that the person who paid me a visit last night was food critic Doreen Fernandez, who knew me but was never close to me. There must have been a connection: Last night I was profuse with praise for the orphaned host—a Perez, but Tito’s first cousin, not mine—for the sumptuous dinner that was served rather late, after a late evening mass for her late father and brother who died years ago before her mother, two sisters and only niece perished in a fire that gutted their house. Needless to say I overstuffed myself with big helpings of roast, stuffed turkey, wild rice risotto, vegan spaghetti, melt-in-your-mouth lengua in cream sauce, praline and chocolate cake and Godiva chocolate cookies and red wine. I went to bed bundat na bundat.”

And now he’s referred to in the papers as “The Late”. Spooky.

My diagnosis: If you’re a filmmaker and you stop making movies, your life turns into a horror movie. Aiiiieeeee.

On Saturday we caught a preview of the new Ang Lee film, Lust, Caution.
1. It’s gorgeous to behold. Shanghai in WWII is recreated in fabulous detail, like a killer Vogue spread.
2. The posters state that the previews show the uncut, R-18 version, which suggests that the movie will be cut/censored and the graphic sex scenes deleted, and therefore serious filmgoers/viewers curious about the sex scenes should run to the previews before the censors/distributors seeking a wider audience get their scissors on the integral version. A clever ploy, because there is no other version, no pale truncated R-13 movie; Ang Lee does not allow cuts. Lust, Caution will be shown whole, or it will not be shown at all. [Oops. Just heard that Ang Lee cut a few minutes for the versions to be screened in China and Malaysia.]
3. It’s gorgeous to behold. The cinematography is by Rodrigo Prieto.
4. Lust, Caution, also known as Tony Leung, Leehom Wang.
5. I could not forget Anthony Lane’s review in The New Yorker, where he points out that the grappling begins 95 minutes into the movie. So when the first, brutal sex takes place, we checked our watches. Lane is correct. 95 minutes, then five minutes after that, then ten minutes.
6. Many critics found the movie too slow, but we found the long build-up to be perfectly justified, no, necessary. Juan notes that several American critics, including Roger Ebert, were confused as to which scenes happened in Hong Kong, which scenes in Shanghai. Pay attention, people.
7. It’s gorgeous to behold. The leads look amazing. Tang Wei in her first screen role: a star. Leehom Wang: beautiful. Tony Leung: older, not particularly handsome, not the charmer of the Wong Kar Wai movies, but scorching.
8. Long discussion over whether the sex was simulated or real.
9. The plot reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious with Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains. Interesting to compare Hollywood’s take on the female spy and Ang Lee’s, which is based on a story by Eileen Chang, who was married to a Japanese collaborator, and which was inspired by actual events. In Lust, Caution, the spy likes watching Cary Grant movies.
10. I found the movie both cold and intense, a combination only masters can achieve. Ang Lee’s trademark: the passion that kills.

#17 on the New York Times Bestseller List (trade fiction) on September 30: Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos (Plume). “A cafe manager falls for a Cary Grant-like charmer, then learns he has an 11-year-old daughter.” I googled Marisa de los Santos, and I was right: she’s Filipino-American, based in Delaware. I’m guessing this makes her the highest-ranking author of Filipino descent ever on the NYT Bestseller list, though I have to check the stats for Dogeaters, Fixer Chao, Umbrella Country. Reviewers have described Love Walked In as a smart contemporary romance, or at least chick lit of the non-nauseating variety. The film rights have been acquired by Sarah Jessica Parker. I saw the book in hardcover in National Bookstore: there’s a half-Filipino half-Swedish character in it named Teo. One of the blurbs is by David Schickler, author of that lovely book Kissing In Manhattan. Here’s the Bookslut review of Love Walked In.

Tales of Chimay-I, originally uploaded by 160507.

Tales of Chimay-I. A graphic novel. Story by Jessica Zafra and Jay Lozada. Artwork by Steph Palallos. Flying into stores in 2008.

Over the years I’ve heard of all sorts of mythological monsters, and they have certain similarities (gryphons and sphinxes, for instance), but the manananggal appears to be unique to the Philippines. In Borges’ book of imaginary beings, there’s a creature called nasnas that is also divided in half, but vertically, from crown to crotch. It hops around on one leg, whispering nasty things into children’s ears. It is not nearly as scary as the creature who sits on the roof turning babies into balut.

At a film festival I saw a Thai horror movie called Ghost of Valentine. It features a monster called kraseur, basically the head of a woman flying through the air with glowing intestines attached to it. It was supposed to be terrifying, but each time it appeared the audience members burst out laughing.

Monsters and Metaphors in Emotional Weather Report, today in The Star.

A note on the wing design: The manananggal is traditionally portrayed with batwings, but Steph decided to use angel wings instead because angels are scarier and more badass.

Stella said I should not be so quick to flush the Glorietta 2 case down the toilet; there may still be something to the conspiracy/bombing angle. I said, Alright, you’re the journalist, I respect your instincts. I believe in the explosive power of shit, but I’ll consider the possibility of another explanation. As long as you’re not blinded by Fernando/Jaime Augusto’s beauty. Then we laughed hysterically.

This is a little late, I wasn’t paying attention. It turns out that the explosion that hit Glorietta 2 mall last Friday may not have been a bomb blast, but a combination of diesel gas fumes and methane from sewage ignited by electrical switches. Read The Washington Post, then Carlos Celdran’s tirade on the shit that urban developers pass off as progress.

Shit literally blew up. It wasn’t terrorists, it was crap. The mall was full of shit. GMA-7’s “Glorietta Ground Zero” was a pile of caca. All those paeans to urban development: they were talking shit.

So shit is a metaphor for shit. Horrendous enough that 11 people are dead and over 100 injured, but the absurdity.

The mall may have committed a suicide bombing.

Ricky, there’s your South Park episode.

For centuries sleep was viewed as an annihilation of consciousness. Now scientists regard the sleeping brain as “an active, purposeful machine, a secretive intelligence that comes out at night to play—and to work—during periods of dreaming and during the netherworld chasms known as deep sleep.”

I’ve long suspected that writing actually gets done in your sleep, and what you do when you’re awake is basically transcription.

“Now, a small group of neuroscientists is arguing that at least one vital function of sleep is bound up with learning and memory. A cascade of new findings, in animals and humans, suggest that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, both intellectual and physical, and perhaps in seeing subtle connections that were invisible during waking — a new way to solve a math or Easter egg problem, even an unseen pattern causing stress in a marriage. The theory is controversial, and some scientists insist that it’s still far from clear whether the sleeping brain can do anything with memories that the waking brain doesn’t also do, in moments of quiet contemplation.”

Lashing rain and howling wind, my favorite weather. As long as I’m snug indoors and not desperately flagging taxis on the side of the road with my shoes soaked while gusts tear the umbrella out of my hand.

I was talking to Mike, who’s helping to set up a new restaurant, when a brilliant idea whacked me upside the head: Bottomless drinks and topless waiters. At the mall. True, this would not be fair to the guys, but I’m sure they’ll think of something.

Mike reports that Roger Federer lost to David Nalbandian at the Madrid Masters—I haven’t been following the news, I tend to tune out when the slams are over. The Fed is vulnerable to clay court grinders who speak Spanish: Nalbandian, Cañas, Nadal. There are super-slow motion videos of The Fed on Youtube hitting mostly forehands. You see how so much stuff happens in a second, there’s simply no time for conscious planning. As the strings make contact with the ball—or is it right after?—he twists his wrist. Which imparts the ball with extra zing, and may also account for tendency to shank the ball.

Do you play tennis? Mike’s looking for opponents. He just realized that his trainer has been letting him win, what a bummer. First we’ll have the Spinstermike Vs Spookbob match, then we’ll schedule your matches. Hey, let’s have a tournament! You don’t have to be particularly good, but you will have to endure cruel and relentless heckling from the spectators. Players who burst into tears, have tantrums, or get pikon automatically lose the point; however, bonus points will be awarded for creative insults and curses.

Update: Sign up for the First Annual Z Cup! Winner gets. . .absolutely nothing! Well maybe a stuffed toy Zebra and all the chicken she or he can eat at JT’s Manukan. I will present the trophy as patron and more importantly, as someone three degrees of separation from Roger Federer. How it happened: I used to hang out with Ettore, who used to get beaten at tennis by Diana, who is Roger’s sister. Ha, my cheap thrills.

Went to Cine Europa at Shangri-La last night to catch the two French movies. I’d gone early, expecting a crowd, but there were fewer people than usual—I think the recent event has made people a little leery of malls, or maybe they were all crammed into Megamall for the weekend sale.

You know how many people mentioned the bombing to me today? One. Everyone else went, “That was awful” and changed the topic, cause what the hell are we supposed to do. No one claims responsibility for the blast, so we just assume the usual suspects. There’s a bit from Casablanca that sums up the state of things around here (Hmm that’s two references to that movie in three days). Police captain Louis (Claude Rains) orders Rick’s closed, ostensibly for gambling. “I’m shocked, SHOCKED that there’s gambling on the premises,” he declares, then the croupier hands him a stack of cash and says, “Your winnings, sir.”

I’ve seen The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on DVD, and I wanted to view it on the big screen with the lush colors and the big, swoony Michel Legrand music. Turns out they’re projecting from the DVD at the festival, but if you haven’t seen Jacques Demy’s musical, catch it anyway. Umbrellas addresses the basic absurdity of the movie musical—people bursting into song—by having the actors sing all their lines. So Catherine Deneuve and her mom are arguing in song, and the postman interrupts with the mail, and he sings as he hands it over. The mom sums up the movie thus: People only die of love in the movies. In other words, You may feel like love will kill you, but most likely you will go on living.

Next I saw La Mome, the Edith Piaf biopic (US title: La vie en rose) starring Marion Cotillard, who’s brilliant and will likely be Oscar-nominated. I sat with Ronald, Raymond, and the Lav Diaz, who recently won a prize at the Venice festival. Piaf: What a life, pink is the last color I would associate with it. I realized that Piaf’s songs must be played very loud in order to get their full visceral impact. She is not a crooner or a whisperer; she’s in your face, you can smell the wine on her breath.

Afterwards we got to talking about how Piaf’s life was so Extreme Nora Aunor, and how singing icons like Piaf, Judy Garland, and Nora Aunor have histories that rival the most outrageous movie melodramas. Apparently you have to plumb the emotional depths, get battered by life and endure the kind of shit that would kill a lesser mortal. You don’t just sing the pain, YOU HAVE TO BE THE SONG. Hmm, a Nora Aunor biopic produced by Ronald Arguelles, written by Raymond Lee, directed by Lav Diaz—there’s a 15-hour movie.

Then Raymond, Ronald and I ran into Eric Ramos, who’s setting up the local edition of Playboy, and I offered to write for him. That’s when we established definitively that if you’re thinking of potential Playboy covers, don’t ask two gay guys and a girl for suggestions. I don’t think a Temptation Island (Jennifer Cortes! Bambi Arambulo!) 30th anniversary reunion would work in a men’s magazine, although we had some spectacular ideas for Playgirl.

At midnight Raymond and I headed to Martinis Bar and gatecrashed Martin’s birthday party. Alright, I was invited, but gatecrashing sounds more fun. I learned that it’s best to show up late, when everyone is already hilariously drunk. I have to check with legal before I blog the party, but Manny, you gave us a blank cheque, don’t think we’re not going cash it as soon as we figure out how many zeroes.

From Popbitch: Thriller from Manila—What definitely didn’t happen to Maddie

“One of the least likely explanations for the disappearance of Madeline McCann was that she had been kidnapped by the People’s Liberation Army of Manila. Yet that is what the group claimed to Portuguese police, for the publicity. It didn’t quite have the effect they were expecting. Just a visit from local police and arrests for making false claims. Expect to see them wearing orange jumpsuits and dancing to Thriller sometime soon. FYI: We’re told the next Filipino inmates dance video will be released on Youtube around 25th October.”

Is the People’s Liberation Army of Manila the same as the Manila People’s Liberation Army or a splinter group of the Army of Liberation of the People of Manila or are they all factions of Manila’s Liberation Army of the People? Suddenly I want to watch Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

I wasn’t at Glorietta, thank you for asking. I was thinking of going there for lunch, but I was wearing these girly shoes I’d forgotten I owned because I’m always schlepping around in sneakers and you know how it is when you put on shoes you haven’t worn in ages, they hurt, so I didn’t feel like walking. Then I couldn’t drag anyone to lunch, and I thought everyone was at a shoot, so I went to the Coffee Bean in Salcedo Village and at 1248 Ricky called me from the gym in Glorietta to ask about lunch. So we ended up at Paseo Center, and Grace called at about 1330 to say a bomb had gone off in Glorietta. Then Lee texted at 1339 with news of the blast and I forwarded it to various people. It turns out Bob was at Glorietta when it happened but was evacuated, which is just as well because a blast at a mall is bad enough for our image but an American casualty would be catastrophic. At 1406 I got the gas leak theory, and from 1418 I’ve been getting apocalyptic news and conspiracy theories. So I was saved by purple snakeskin mules. I hope you’re safe wherever you are. (Yes I do know the problems of one blogger don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.)

It’s 1914, I’m watching the news on Channel 7, and police still don’t know what caused the blast. They’re ruling out a gas leak, and they’re saying it may have been a bomb. Really? Ya think? So 8 people are dead, more than 80 injured, and we’re not quite sure what happened, but police officials are telling the stores in Glorietta to stay open and the public to go on shopping. May I just say, WHAT? As if anything could keep Pinoys from going to the mall. On second thought that pretty much sums up Pinoy political life: Let’s pretend nothing happened!

From the BBC: An Australian ad campaign aiming to reduce road deaths by questioning the manhood of speeding drivers has proved a great success, a survey suggests. The TV ads show women shaking their little finger - a gesture used to symbolise a small penis - as speeding male motorists race past. In a government-commissioned survey, about 60% of young men said the ad had made them ponder their driving habits.

What an excellent idea! I think it would really work in Manila, where I suspect penis size is also inversely proportional to the size of one’s SUV, i.e. The more humongous the gas-guzzling space-hogging environment-raping machine, the teenier the wiener. In fact loud and ostentatious public displays of manhood are often forms of compensatory behavior. True, this may be an unfair generalization, so we should get a grant to look into this in a more objective, um, scientific manner.

So maybe the MMDA could put up signs saying, “Bakit ka nagmamadali, maliit ka ba?” After all they put up those signs that said, “Driver, nakasapatos ka ba?” (Are you wearing shoes?) to encourage cabbies to dress properly, although it sounded like they were having phone sex with motorists (What are you wearing?). Seriously, sizist signs would really deter speeding, although with the traffic, speeding only happens late at night or on the expressways. For maximum effectivity—to really reach the target audience—the signs should feature a hot actress or Piolo Pascual.