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Last week we decided that we would not watch The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part I because it’s the only movie that opened at the cinema last week and we hate not having a choice. Instead, we decided to watch our favorite dystopian science-fiction movie (tied with Blade Runner) Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron’s film adaptation of the novel by P.D. James.

We have not read P.D. James’s detective novels featuring the poet-sleuth Adam Dalgliesh, but we enjoyed Death Comes to Pemberley, which features characters from Pride and Prejudice.

The other day Deo mentioned that a contemporary English author whose name he couldn’t remember is writing mysteries in the tradition of Agatha Christie or P.D. James, he forgot which. “Wait, is P.D. James still alive?” he asked.

Today we read that P.D. James, Baroness James of Holland Park, has died at age 94.

Last year’s CinemaJam. Photo from gmanetwork.

Do you want four tickets to see Bamboo, Franco, Pedicab, Itchyworms, Urbandub and other top bands at CinemaJam on Saturday, November 29 at the Greenfields District Central Park in Mandaluyong?

Post your name in Comments to join our raffle. The winner will be announced tomorrow.

The concert will cap a full day of activities, art installations, and open-air screenings of Now You See Me and Letters to Juliet. The gate opens at 10am.

Tickets to CinemaJam are now available at Ticketworld. Call 891 9999, or go to www.ticketworld.com.ph. Part of the proceeds will go to World Vision.

CinemaJam is a project of Crizal Transitions, which has partnered with Essilor to develop Crizal Transitions Signature lenses, which provide more natural vision and true color perception in a variety of light conditions.

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The winner is Aida Cruz-Guinto. Congratulations! Please email saffron.safin@gmail.com to claim your four tickets.

Catch Urbandub and other great acts at CinemaJam 2014.

Bamboo, Franco, Pedicab, Itchyworms, Urbandub and other top bands will perform at CinemaJam on Saturday, November 29 at the Greenfields District Central Park in Mandaluyong.

The concert will cap a full day of activities, art installations, and open-air screenings of Now You See Me and Letters to Juliet. The gate opens at 10am.

Tickets to CinemaJam are now available at Ticketworld. Call 891 9999, or go to www.ticketworld.com.ph. Part of the proceeds will go to World Vision.

You and a friend can go to CinemaJam for free by joining our raffle. Just post your name in Comments. The winner gets two tickets to CinemaJam 2014. The Winner will be announced tomorrow.

CinemaJam is a project of Crizal Transitions, which has partnered with Essilor to develop Crizal Transitions Signature lenses, which provide more natural vision and true color perception in a variety of light conditions.

* * * * *

The winner is Rani Uy. Congratulations! Please email saffron.safin@gmail.com to claim your 2 tickets.

*Not to be confused with one of the mutants in The X-Men.

No one was free to watch Nightcrawler with us, and we didn’t think it would run for a second week, so we watched it alone. Excellent decision.

Dan Gilroy’s film, shot by the great Robert Elswit, follows a freelance videographer who prowls Los Angeles in the dead of night, shooting footage of urban crime scenes, grisly accidents and high-casualty fires, which he sells to a TV news program. Jake Gyllenhaal, so thin his eyes are popping out of his face, is absolutely compelling as a man in whom the rhetoric of self-help and the motivational industry takes the place of a self. Basically he’s a slithering, bottom-feeding insect in human form. This is what happens when the will to succeed is unhampered by a moral compass.

With Rene Russo as the TV news producer who becomes his enabler, and Riz Ahmed as his hapless “intern”.

Watch it any way you can.

Update: Aha since the new Hunger Games doesn’t open till tomorrow, Nightcrawler has been held over an extra day. Go!

This is a great week for the movies, and we haven’t even seen Nightcrawler or Esprit de Corps at the Cinema One festival (or Esoterika Manila, which we wrote but is totally an Elwood Perez movie).

The Drop is terrific. Tough, unsentimental, uncomplicated, brilliantly-acted, excellent use of the pooch. It’s directed by Belgian filmmaker Michael Roskam and based on the Dennis Lehane short story, Animal Rescue. We’ve never seen a Dennis Lehane adaptation we didn’t like—Mystic River, Gone, Baby Gone, Shutter Island. This time Lehane adapts his own story.

If you choosing between The Drop and Interstellar, here’s a comparison you may find useful.

The Hero
Interstellar: Matthew McConaughey with a space ship
The Drop: Tom Hardy with a puppy. They had us at “woof, woof.”

The Female Lead
Interstellar: Anne Hathaway, who can’t help but make us like her.
The Drop: Noomi Rapace, who doesn’t care what we think.

The Blonde
Interstellar: Jessica Chastain
The Drop: Matthias Schoenaerts. Did you see him in Rust and Bone?

The Ghost who sends messages across space and time
Interstellar: The ghost who moves the books
The Drop: James Gandolfini. We still choke up.

The Setting
Interstellar: The universe.
The Drop: Brooklyn.

The Threat
Interstellar: Desertification, famine, food riots
The Drop: Chechen mobsters with slicked back hair. Aiiieeeeee!

The Hole
Interstellar: The black hole near the planets they plan to colonize.
The Drop: The drop, the slot where bookies place bets.

Spectacle
Interstellar: Wow.
The Drop: Tom Hardy doing something we haven’t seen him do before.

The Emotion
Interstellar: Excitement, wonder, filial love.
The Drop: Dread.

The Future
Interstellar: Bleak.
The Drop: What future? And yet it is strangely uplifting.

Man Vs The Universe
Interstellar: We may not be alone in the universe.
The Drop: We are definitely alone in the universe.

Following the success of the first-ever movie and music festival in the country, Crizal Transitions promises an even more spectacular CinemaJam this year. A full line-up of outdoor movie screenings, fun activities (zipline, bungee, wall-climbing), art installations, and performances by today’s most exciting bands await festival-goers on November 29, Saturday, at the Greenfield District Central Park in Mandaluyong City. Gates open at 10am, with the action building to the concert at midnight.

Featured bands include Pedicab, Franco, Bamboo, Imago, Itchyworms, and Urbandub. On the double-bill on the giant LED TV are the romantic drama Letters to Juliet starring Amanda Seyfried and Vanessa Redgrave, and the box-office hit thriller Now You See Me starring Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman.

CinemaJam will also see the unveiling of Crizal Transitions Signature Green. Essilor, the world’s leading manufacturer of optical lenses, and Transitions Optical have partnered to develop the new Crizal Transitions Signature lenses in graphite green, which provide more natural vision and true color perception in a variety of light conditions. Free eyesight consultations will be offered in the Optical Village booth manned by eyecare experts and showcasing the latest innovations from Crizal Transitions.

Tickets to CinemaJam are now available at Ticketworld. Call 891 9999, or go to www.ticketworld.com.ph. Part of the proceeds will go to World Vision, a humanitarian organization focused on building a better world for children.