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The fabulous and generous Ito Curata has made two gowns for actress Althea Vega, star of the British indie film Metro Manila. Althea is attending the British Academy Awards, the Baftas, on 16 February. Read about it here.

With any luck she’ll be walking the red carpet and getting photographed by the global media.

Here’s the earth-shaking question: Which gown should she wear, the red or the gold?

Althea thinks she should wear the gold gown. “Won’t I look like a floating head if I wear the red on the red carpet?” she says.

Our friends say: “Red, definitely. The red brings out the duskiness of her skin. Pag napicture-an siya, may dating ang red. Kebs kung red na ang carpet. Eh di magiging train niya ang carpet. Kanya na rin ang carpet.”

What do you think: Red or Gold? Post your choice in Comments.

Our original hair-and-movie review is here.

Second viewing with Noel
– What great acting by everyone! I love how it seems so messy but the director was in full control.
– The director loves Amy Adams: what a character intro! Irving spots Sydney, music rises, aaand close-up.

Music to our favorite character intro ever

Popcorn shot out of my nose when Jennifer Lawrence was dusting furniture while lipsynching.
– I know! I love the lipsynch part—na may galit! I have a strange feeling that what Jennifer Lawrence did in the scene with Amy Adams was pure improv—how can you script that? She’s so good! And pantay sila ni Amy! Puwedeng nerbiyosin si Dakota Fanning (private joke) kung kaharap niya either of the two.
– And everyone’s hair is a character! How can Christian Bale have that hair and still be hot?
– Pareho tayo ng inisip! I still found Bale hot with a pot belly and a bad hairpiece! May laban si Christian Bale, ha! Wala nga lang siyang equivalent to Leo’s cerebral palsy sequence in Wolf of Wall Street. And also Bradley Cooper—love love love! What great actors!
– I finally get what people see in Bradley Cooper. For starters, what a dancer.
– I love how Amy Adams danced in that scene—nakuha niya ang pagmamaganda 70’s style.If it’s true that Bradley’s gay, that just makes him doubly amazing to me.
– If rumors are to be believed, Christian Bale is the token straight guy haha.
– Tama ka umaarte nga ang boobs ni Amy Adams. At ang kuko ni Jennifer Lawrence! Hahaha! That JLaw does so many small surprising things as an actress. Like the way she said, “Sometimes, I think that I’ll die before I change” is so affecting! And it’s a small acting moment that’s so sincere—ang galing niya!
– “Master of passive-aggressive karate.” Brilliant! Naloka ako when De Niro started speaking to the sheik.
– Kurak! And finally, a decent de Niro performance! Nakakatakot siya!
– American Hustle is a child of Scorsese slaying his father. I think it’s a compliment to Marty.

Opening in local cinemas today. We’re watching it again!

The actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his New York apartment on Sunday morning of an apparent drug overdose, according to a law enforcement official who requested anonymity because he was not certain the actor’s family had been informed of the death.

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And remember to be honest and unmerciful.

The animated prequel to Snowpiercer. Movies #8 and 9 were Possession (Neil LaBute, 2002) and Conversations With Other Women, our Aaron Eckhart film festival at home.

While Snowpiercer, the science-fiction action movie adapted by Bong Joon-ho from the French comic book Le Transperceneige by Lob and Rochette, awaits a release date in the US—producer Harvey Weinstein is reportedly holding the film hostage until it is cut and voiceovers added (presumably so the slowest audience members can grasp what is unfolding onscreen)—it has quietly turned up in local cinemas. We caught it yesterday, opening day: an excellent decision because it means We Can Watch It Again.

It’s brilliant.

Snowpiercer is Marxist theory as thrilling pop cinema, adapted by a Korean director with a flair for action and economical storytelling, and powered by terrific performances by Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and the whole company.

Snowpiercer makes us want to resume long-abandoned French lessons so we can read the comic book in the original, because if this is the adaptation, the source must be wonderful. French comic books sound amazing (Blue is the Warmest Color came from comics), could they all be translated, please?

The film is set in the near future, after an attempt to fix global warming through geoengineering goes horrendously wrong and the earth freezes over. The last human survivors live on the titular train, which circles the globe once a year. All this information is dispensed efficiently in the opening credits, and questions as to whether a train would make the best Ark for the human race are answered shortly afterwards.

Of course the train is a microcosm of the world’s socio-economic structure: the upper class in front, with all the amenities; the underclass crammed together at the back, unwashed and subsisting on protein bars issued by the authorities. The upper class worships Wilford, the man who built the train’s perpetual motion engine and lives in the engine room. We are told that there have been previous revolts from the back of the train, but they were crushed by the police force of the people in front, led by Tilda Swinton as every hateful/laughable rich twit who’s ever existed.

This time the rebels are led by Chris Evans, a hardworking, seriously underrated actor who makes us forget that he is Captain America. (Though several pounds of grime on his face do not obscure the eyes and lips. Poor him, too luscious to be taken seriously.) This rebel is not some perfect idealist: he’s had to do unspeakable things to survive, and he doesn’t want to be a leader of men. But it is precisely those experiences that have honed him, and his old mentor Gilliam (John Hurt) points out that he has no choice. (We like the homage to Terry Gilliam—Snowpiercer is the child of Brazil.)

Evans’s loyal sidekick is played by Jamie Bell (a fine actor who will always be Billy Elliot to us); Kang-ho Song is an engineer who agrees to open the sealed doors leading to the front in exchange for a drug called Kronole. (The language barrier is hurdled in a funny, clever way.) It’s a white-knuckle ride as the rebels fight their way to the front of the train, car by car, and the filmmakers don’t stint on the casualties. We see so much carnage at the movies that we no longer feel anything: thousands of people perish in superhero movies, but they don’t seem real. In Snowpiercer the close quarters combat is made especially brutal by our sympathy for the filthy underdogs: every time one of them falls, our rage at the oppressors mounts. We are the rabble, and we are roused.

But there are more vicious things than close combat, as the rebels discover in their progress to the engine room. There’s the lure of comfort (being able to bathe everyday, we’d imagine), and the temptation to become the very person one has sworn to overthrow. And there are the demands of leadership, of maintaining the fragile balance in a system perpetually besieged by nature, of respecting chaos. Snowpiercer is an action movie, but it lands its strongest punches as a critique of class and power.

Lavrente Indico Diaz is the director of Norte, The End of History and the keenest observer of Philippine society and politics in the cinema today.

Benedict Richard O’Gorman Anderson is the author of Imagined Communities (Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism) and the most influential historian on Southeast Asia today.

It was imperative that we bring them together for drinks and conversation.

Between them, they have produced The Spectre of Comparisons; Melancholia; Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination; Death in the Land of Encantos; A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia; Siglo ng Pagluluwal (Century of Birthing); The Fate of Rural Hell: Asceticism and Desire in Buddhist Thailand; Batang West Side, among many others.

We were there to record this historic occasion.

Aaron Eckhart in Possession, Neil LaBute’s adaptation of A.S. Byatt’s marvelous literary mystery thriller. Critics tore into LaBute’s film for making changes to the book, notably turning the obscure English scholar into a ruggedly handsome American scholar. We love the movie, especially for its many scenes of Aaron Eckhart reading books and writing notes.

* * * * *

Write Here, Write Now, our Practical Writing Workshop, had its second session last Saturday at the Ayala Museum. We looked at the work the participants have done so far. Here’s a sampler.

Ryan Rivera ponders the minutiae of daily life.

Noel Pascual’s protagonist has been making film transfers from U-Matic cassettes to DVD for so long, it’s messing with his thought processes.

Momel Tullao was going to write a collection of trenchant observations of urban daily life but we said, Momelia, your forte is kink. Do that.

A passage from Mike Co’s science-fiction novel in which Filipinos have achieved world domination.

Angus Miranda is writing a novel about family and the faithlessness of memory.

This is the first edition of Write Here, Write Now. The class was selected from a pool of applicants last year. Participants have to submit chapters every week. By March when the Workshop ends, the participants should be well on their way to finishing their books, which are due six months later.

The second edition of Write Here, Write Now will be announced mid-year.

In October we will conduct a writing workshop open to all interested participants (a fee will be charged), also at the Ayala Museum.

Write Here, Write Now is made possible by a grant from the Ayala Foundation, Inc.