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Saffy and Mat

Mat my white tabby with black markings is the sweetest, best-behaved cat; in the morning when I open my eyes he’s curled around the top of my head like a fur hat. The other night I heard a commotion in my room, and when I looked in my three cats were all acting casual but the closet door was open. “What’s going on?” I asked, and they looked away or started grooming themselves as if they didn’t know what I was talking about.

Obviously something had gone on because there were drops of blood beside the closet, though the trail ended by the door. “Have you been fighting?” I demanded, and inspected each one: I didn’t notice any cuts or wounds, although Koosi fled and leapt to the top of the bookshelf and Mat had a spot of blood on his paw. I’ve never seen a mouse in my apartment, but I inspected my room in case the cats had killed a mouse. Nada. I wiped off the blood but didn’t scrub the floor since the cleaner was arriving the following morning anyway.

At two in the morning I was reading in bed when I noticed Mat sniffing the floor where the blood trail had been. Then he got very excited; if he could talk he would’ve said “Yeah! I Am Cat!” Then he started running around the house, leaping onto tables and chairs and looking thrilled. I think he was celebrating having killed something or at least drawn blood. I have to remind myself that I live with natural-born killers.

Remember those fairy tales in which the evil giant cannot be killed unless his heart is destroyed, and his heart isn’t in his body, it’s in a secret hiding place no one can reach? You have to go to this lake far, far away. On the lake there is an island. On the island there is a castle. In the castle there is a well. In the well there is a duck. In the duck there is an egg. In the egg there is the heart of the evil giant.

This was delivered the other day: a huge volume of Alice in Wonderland.

It contains illustrations for the forthcoming Tim Burton film of Alice in Wonderland. Behind the pages, another book.

And in that book, another book. . .

containing another book containing a USB key.

As movie promotional items go, clever. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in Digital 3D and IMAX 3D opens in March.

* * * * *

The Alice book set is not for sale anywhere. However, you can win one in our Alice in Wonderland contest next month. I’d reread Lewis Carroll if I were you.

Our World Domination Tracker takes us to places few of us have visited, and as Stella Arnaldo just pointed out, “There are Filipinos in Haiti!”

Jo-Ann Cajigal is in Gniezno, Poland.

“Winter in Gniezno, Poland. If you draw a straight line from Berlin to Warsaw, Gniezno’s right smack in the middle.”

Suzy is in Inverness, Scotland.

“Being a huge fan of A Room with a View I always try to book a room in a hotel/inn/B&B with, well, a view. I took this photo on our first night in Inverness, Scotland.”

Earl Tayona is in Paris, Ontario.

“The only hotel in my second home: the Arlington Hotel of Paris, Ontario, Canada. Arlington Hotel appears in Michael Ondaatje’s novel In the Skin of a Lion. Paris is the small town in southern Ontario where Alexander Graham Bell made his first phone call from his town of Brantford. Paris downtown is old, so old that the floors of the stores creak when I take a walk during my week off from working as an aliping saguiguilid.”

Thanks to our Agents of World Domination for these terrific pictures. If you’re a Filipino living abroad (living and working, not just taking a vacation), send a photo of your location to koosi.obrien@gmail.com.

Now that everyone wants to be a vampire or pines for vampires but doesn’t have sex with them, where else can vampire movies go?

According to the Australian production Daybreakers, lots of places. Directed by the Spierig Brothers, Daybreakers stars Ethan Hawke as the chief hematologist of a corporation that farms humans for their blood. It is the year 2019, ten years after an outbreak that turned most of the world’s population into vampires.

But just because nearly everyone is immortal doesn’t mean they don’t need food: the much-reduced number of humans means there isn’t enough blood for everyone to drink. And if the vamps don’t feed, their bodies break down. If they feed on other vamps, they mutate. What’s a bloodsucker to do?

Ethan’s job is to synthesize an efficient blood substitute; unfortunately he’s having an existential crisis. He doesn’t want to be a vampire, doesn’t want to drink human blood. His brother (played by an actor who looks like Jude Law crossed with Ray Liotta) is a soldier whose job is to hunt down humans for farming. The population is starving, there are blood riots, and Ethan’s boss Sam Neill wants that blood substitute yesterday.

Then Ethan literally runs into a group of human rebels who claim to have discovered a cure for vampirism. The people can become human again! But do they want that? Who wants to grow old and die?

What we have here is a high-concept film that brings up existential questions, Malthusian economics, and parasite biology (For a parasite to be successful, it must not only refrain from killing off its host but also ensure that the host thrives. See the toxo that lives in cats. Compared to toxo the vampire organism is greedy and stupid). However the filmmakers’ skills are strictly B-grade: cheap shock tactics from the Salem’s Lot school, blood and gore splattered across the screen, and ham acting from Neill and Willem Dafoe as the human rebel leader. Ethan at least takes the movie seriously (We still love him, even if one shot caused Noel and I to gasp, “Malaki na ang balakang ni Ethan!”)

So Daybreakers is an entertaining mix of the clever and the cheesy; we’ll call it Camembert. My rating: If you can spot existentialism, Malthusian economics, and parasite biology in a B-movie, String! (The best way to enjoy the movies is to entertain yourself.) If you like fangs, blood, gore, Kibble. If you expect a prestige project, Litterbox.

*after 6. Celine and Julie Go Boating, 7. Anne of the Thousand Days, 8. The Bakery Girl of Monceau, 9. My Night at Maud’s, 10. It’s Complicated, 11. Sunflower, 12. Being Julia.

Today in our World Domination Tracker:

Paolo Maligaya was in Badakhshan, Afghanistan.

“These photos were taken last year in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan where I was deployed for a month as a long-term international election observer. We got the shock of our lives to discover that many parts of Afghanistan are actually very pretty and the people very warm and hospitable, a far cry from the images of Kandahar (in the southern region where most international journalists are assigned) that we are so used to on CNN and other media outlets.”

Samjuan is in Los Angeles.

“This is Broadway street in Los Angeles, California where I take my morning bus to work. The place channels the atmosphere of chaos and dirt from the streets of Quiapo, Manila.”

Kates Catan is in Osaka, Japan.

“This is Baron Fujita’s Garden, hidden in the hustle and bustle of Osaka Business Park. I think only the residents around the area know of this place. I happened to get lost one day and stumbled into the garden. It’s very pretty in the autumn and spring and it’s a good place to read a book or take the kids out for a picnic.”

If you are a Filipino living abroad, then you are an Agent of World Domination. If you did not know it, consider yourself activated. Email a photo of your present location to koosi.obrien@gmail.com.

The death of Eric Rohmer has moved the Lifetime Underachievement Awardee to muse on his films.

“My Night at Maud’s is my Groundhog Day” – Lifetime Underachievement Awardee.

“Each of his Moral Tales deals with ‘a man meeting a woman at the very moment when he is about to commit himself to someone else.’ In Ma nuit chez Maud, he responds by asking the interesting and interested woman, ‘Avez-vous lu Pascal?’ (Have you read Pascal?) Tyope!”