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I’ve invented a new way to gauge how much I like a movie. I measure how long it takes from the end of the movie to the time I can properly put my reaction into words. And I mean complete sentences, as opposed to “Wow” or “Holy crap”. It’s easy to mock a movie I hate, but a movie I like needs a bit more thought. One wants to accurately convey what she feels about it, and describing a feeling is harder than applying the rules of logic.

I’m going to call this The Floorage Index or TFI. TFI is directly proportional to Recovery Time (RT), or how long it takes for me to get up from the (metaphorical) floor. RT is the amount of time between T1—the end of viewing—and T2—the moment at which I can efficiently verbalize an opinion. I’m still working on the value of the constant.

The Floorage Index of movies I’ve seen recently.

Atonement. Recovery Time: 3 hours. Beautiful to behold, valiant effort, pales in comparison to the novel it was based upon. Which I really don’t mind. I find it comforting that the written word trumps the film adaptation.

Michael Clayton. RT: 6 hours. Much of the Recovery Time was taken up by the realization that George Clooney has acting talent.

No Country For Old Men. RT: 24 hours. Compelling, taut, bleak, the blackest comedy. I had to deal with the discovery that compared to Cormac McCarthy’s and the Coen Brothers’ take on the human condition, my world-view is close to Hallmark greeting card. That said, I’m not usually convulsed with laughter at the line, “Mister, you got a bone sticking out of your arm”, but here I was hysterical. I hope they win the Oscar, but you never can tell with those voters.

There Will Be Blood. RT: 48 hours. The movie makes good on the title’s threat. Weird, original, apocalyptic, wildly ambitious—the dream of industry and progress descends into a nightmare of madness and violence. It’s not for everyone, but if you want to see something new, something visionary, this is the one. I’d never seen a thrilling oil strike before this, and I’ll never hear the words “I drink your milkshake” again without repressing a shudder. And I don’t like dissonant, atonal music, but. . .wow.

Contracting Love, an interview with the makers of the indie movie Endo (opening on Wednesday), in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.  I recommend you read the print version where the Qs and As are clearly indicated. Online it sounds like I’m talking to myself. Which may have been the case.

It was pointed out to me recently that I am acquainted with someone who might be the next president. So I began searching my memory for anecdotes about Senator Mar Roxas. We had co-hosted a TV talk show called Points Of View with Cher Calvin and Mo Twister. Mar was pinch-hitting for Teddy Boy Locsin.

One Sunday, before a live broadcast, we were sitting in the dressing room looking over the sequence guides. Mar was humming a song under his breath, and then he started singing to himself: “And so you’re back/ From outer space. . .” Yes, he was singing the classic disco song, I Will Survive.

“Manong Mar,” I said, “That’s a gay anthem.”
“Naah,” he said. “You’re kidding.”
“It’s a gay anthem, I’m sure of it.”
“Really?” He did not believe me.

The following week I saw him at the studio and he said, “You were right!”

I once heard him sing You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling at a fellowship night. It was incredible. It was like that scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding where Cameron Diaz does karaoke.

Basket of Saffy.JPG, originally uploaded by 160507.

Saffron Sassafras Zafra Safin-Sprungli, who was born the year Marat her father won the US Open, wishes you a Happy Lunar New Year and reminds you to chew your tikoy thoroughly. Saffy has not had a bath in years, but for someone who only bathes in her own drool she always smells like freshly baked bread or something you buy at L’Occitane. She is sweet and cranky, usually at the same time. Click on the photo to see pictures of our readers’ cats reading books.

You think because you’ve seen Dirk Diggler and the rain of frogs, read the rapturous reviews, and expect greatness from Daniel Day-Lewis that you are prepared for Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie There Will Be Blood. You’re not.

P.T. Anderson has the chutzpah to aim for Treasure Of The Sierra Madre and Citizen Kane territory, and the result is ASTONISHING. He is going for nothing less than a new narrative form. On his fifth attempt, he has made A Great American Movie.

And I love the ending. It’s weird, and it fits.

Now I have to collect myself, but you get my drift. First I’m going to listen to the Radiohead discography from Kid A onwards.

There Will Be Blood opens February 13 only at the Gateway Cineplex in Cubao.

Apparently the safest way to clean your ears is with your pinkie. How do you get the gunk out? (True, the gunk is probably imaginary.) And what if you have really long pinkie fingernails like bus conductors?

According to this report, a guy in Quebec died after puncturing his eardrum with a cotton swab. 

I’ve been told that cotton buds are dangerous, but I can’t not use them to clean my ears, I would feel icky if I didn’t. Same way I’ve been told that you’re not supposed to shampoo everyday (In Manila?! Are you kidding?!). My scalp itches just to think about it.

Budjette alerted me to the Wired explanation of Why Things Suck, customer service-wise:
Bangalore, India
The locals speak English, they’re educated, and they’ll work for 85 percent less than equally qualified US employees. But they’re not exactly emotionally invested in the product you bought.

Manila, Philippines
English is spoken here, too (the Philippines were an American colony). Plus, the island nation is wired with optical fiber, meaning cheap voice-over-Internet calls. And they work even cheaper than the Indians (so that’ll ensure quality!).

Tell me again who outsourced the jobs because their profit margins are way more important than customer satisfaction and a familiar accent? Are the customers really dissatisfied, or do they really prefer to speak to an American? And was their locally-based customer service so great to begin with?

Juan pointed us to this account of an American’s experience with a Manila-based call center.  

You know Last Song Syndrome, where the last song you hear keeps playing in your head and you can’t make it stop? Well I often have First Song Syndrome—I wake up and there’s a song already playing in my head and it just keeps on going. It is usually a song I have not heard in a long time. Days later, I hear that same song being played somewhere—in a restaurant, over the end credits of a movie, that sort of thing. Could be just coincidence, yes, but I’m inclined to think otherwise. I’m from the school of “Everything means something, the refusal to say anything means something, nothing is something.” (See the Coen Brothers, below.)

Sometimes I remember conversations I haven’t had yet. For instance, I distinctly remember Chus telling me that Myrza (of Marie-Claire) had won a Palanca for short story. He ran into her, and she told him the good news. (This would be in August 2006.) I remember which restaurant we had this conversation in (Segafredo Greenbelt, now closed), where we were seated (by the window), and what time it was (around 6.30pm). Weeks later, I told Chus I was gatecrashing the awards dinner the next day (September 1), and I’d probably see Myrza.

Why, Chus asked, Did she win? Of course she did, I said, You told me. No I didn’t, he said, I didn’t know she’d won. We spent the next 15 minutes arguing over who said what. Finally Chus called Myrza and asked her if she’d won a Palanca.

Myrza said, No, I haven’t heard from them. Chus said, Maybe you should call their office to make sure. Meanwhile I’m sitting there thinking, Did I imagine this? Am I going bonkers? But I’m certain that Chus told me that Myrza had told him. There was no one else I could’ve gotten the news from—I wasn’t privy to the judging process and I’m not in with the awards people.

The following morning Chus called me. Myrza had called the Palanca office, he said, and it turns out she did win a prize! (The guard in her building put the letter in a drawer and forgot it.) So the information I “remembered” was correct, except that it was delivered backwards. Weird, but according to Special Relativity, everything that will happen has already happened anyway.

Back to FSS. I woke up this morning and “Jacksons, Monk and Rowe” by Elvis Costello and The Brodsky Quartet was playing in my head, loud and clear. It’s a very pretty song about divorce, not likely to have been blaring out of a passing jeep, not on the typical radio playlist. It’s on my iPod but I haven’t listened to it in a long time. But there are worse things to have in your head.

The Coens’ No Country For Old Men is a hoot and a half. No, it’s a veritable hootenanny. This adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel is riveting, impeccably-crafted, and often horrifyingly funny. The tension builds to an almost unbearable degree. You cannot tell where this movie is going—the filmmakers are constantly kicking the chair out from under you, so you may choose to remain standing.

Much has been written about Javier Bardem’s performance and his character’s hair— the ruthless assassin in a pageboy cut. The killer Anton Chigurh is a cypher. We know nothing of him other than his brutality and his bizarre choice of weapons: a compressed-air device used for killing cattle (Wouldn’t a bazooka have been easier to carry?) and a sawed-off shotgun with a humongous silencer (What’s the recoil on that thing?). So the hair becomes shorthand for Chigurh’s history, motivation, total lack of humor. It IS his character: anyone who looks at it has a 90 percent chance of dying. Occasionally he’ll flip a coin to illustrate the randomness of fate. Basically Bardem is playing Death.

Considerably less has been written about Josh Brolin as Llewellyn Moss, the Vietnam vet (the movie is set in 1980) who finds the satchel of money at the scene of a drug deal gone wrong. This is not fair, as he IS the story. Moss takes off with the money, pursued by Chigurh, and to our surprise, he’s a worthy quarry. He’s a sharp guy and he’s familiar with violence. Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones’s Sheriff is also tracking Moss, but he’s more interested in making pronouncements about the bleakness of the human condition as mirrored by the Texan landscape. (Someone once said, If I owned Texas and Hell, I’d live in Hell and rent out Texas.)

So the scene is set for a climactic confrontation between Moss and Chigurh. And then. . .

Question: Did the Coens set out to subvert the conventions of narrative, or are they just mucking with our heads? Are they being revolutionary, or mean? Or both? Bonus questions: Is this movie saying anything, and if so, What? How much of a factor is “universal critical acclaim” when you form an opinion?

P.S. 2007 was the year of the sudden ending: No Country, The Sopranos, even Endo cut to black. We live in an age where the clear resolution is no longer possible.
P.P.S. Filipino movie about the discovery of a satchel of money that triggers hair-raising violence: Misteryo Sa Tuwa by Abbo de la Cruz (1981).

Now sold at Cibo.JPG, originally uploaded by 160507.

We can’t stock the bookstore shelves fast enough, so TWISTED 8 IS NOW ALSO AVAILABLE AT CIBO AND CAFE BOLA. Have your TWISTED 8 straight up, or with a tiramisu and espresso, or a spinach gorgonzola dip and mint iced tea, or a chicharon pizza, or anything on the menu, as long as you get it. Cibo is open at Greenbelt 5, Glorietta 4, Shangri-La Plaza, Alabang Town Center, Promenade Greenhills, ABS-CBN in QC, Power Plant Rockwell, Gateway Cubao, and Trinoma QC. Cafe Bola is at Greenbelt 3 and Araneta Coliseum, Cubao. Andiamo!

If you missed the reading and book-signing at Ateneo last week, you could get your organization or your class to invite me back. Just email zeusbooks.twisted8@gmail.com.

Is your romantic history a strange mash-up of Fatal Attraction (Meet, boink, stalk, kill rabbit, rethink big hair), Letter From An Unknown Woman (They meet, he seduces her, they meet again years later, he seduces her again. . .having forgotten than he had already seduced her), and Kill Bill (He kills her, she kills everyone)? Or maybe The Exorcist (The 360-degree head spin, projectile hurling, speaking in deep voices and all the symptoms of demon possession) and The Crying Game (She’s a dude)? Or is it in a more literary vein, like Wuthering Heights (Obsess, obsess, obsess, die) or The End Of The Affair (Obsess, obsess, die, obsess, obsess)?

Then it’s not a total catastrophe. You could write a novel, or make a movie, or join My Bloody Twisted Valentine contest and win a heart-stopping cake created by the Dessert Diva! (Picture to follow as the cake is still being invented.)

Beginning today until February 12, tell us your true Horrible/ Heinous/ Heart-rending/ Hilarious (or Horrible, Heinous, Heart-rending And Hilarious) love story in the Comments section of this entry. The Jury composed of various characters who have appeared in this blog will choose One Winner of My Bloody Twisted Valentine Cake, to be delivered within the Metro Manila area on February 13. If you live abroad, we can deliver it to your ex/crush/anyone you nominate within the Metro Manila area.

Happy endings are allowed. Pseudonyms are recommended to protect the not so innocent. No minimum or maximum word count, let it bleed.