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Peru, May 2010. Photo by JAZ.

At lunch today Boboy stunned us with this challenge.

“Aber, tingnan natin kung kaya ninyong mabuhay nang isang araw na walang opinyon.”

(Let’s see you survive one whole day without expressing an opinion.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Corollary: There’s still no electricity in most neighborhoods and Cinemalaya is cancelled today. Would you rather have electricity but not be able to give your opinion, or no electricity but unlimited expression of opinion?

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Noel and I have the biggest hair of all our friends, and I mean BIG. When people with hair issues see us they want to commit suicide. Stormy weather makes big hair huge, and today Noel’s hair can be seen from outer space.

“Wow,” I tell him. “Did you shower and shampoo, then run out of the house?”

“Yes,” he says.

“So did I.”

“But your hair is behaving. Did you use conditioner?”

“Yes, I’ve been using that Sunsilk Expert stuff.” (Not because of the concept but because Michael told us a funny story about Teddy Charles. This is how I form opinions.)

At that moment some guy walks into Wild Ginger and WHOA! THAT’s big hair. Hair like that hasn’t been seen since the 1970s.

“Is it possible his is bigger than ours?!” Noel says.

“How dare he invade our territory!”

We stare at his hair, he stares at ours, and for a moment we have a Mexican stand-off. Then he gets up and leaves.

“Couldn’t take the heat.”

“His hair was causing a disturbance in the Force.”

Thanks to Wild Ginger for giving me sanctuary and letting me use their electrical outlets.

Eat at Wild Ginger! My favorite items on the menu: Wild Ginger Spicy Chicken and Pork Adobo, and Deep-Fried Tawilis, which I always have with the Mongo with Malunggay.

Wild Ginger is in the basement of Power Plant Mall in Rockwell, Makati.

1. Bert distrusts Christopher Nolan because he is gimmicky. Really, a movie you can play backwards? And if the amnesiac in Memento is tattooing the facts onto his skin so he won’t forget them, do the tattoos have to be so pretty?

I enjoy Christopher Nolan’s movies very much, but I also suspect that he might be a pretentious twat. His movies sound like they were written by someone who swallowed a Philo textbook.

All Christopher Nolan movies are about how smart Christopher Nolan is. They appeal to people who think they are smarter than everyone else. Which is not necessarily a bad thing if you Are smarter than everyone else (and tragic if you aren’t).

2. Urgent message from Bernard-Henri: “Stop the wall-to-wall music! This has been going on since Dark Knight and we are not amused! Make Hans Zimmer shut up! Shuuuut uuuup!

“Zimmer’s music is there to tell the non-nerds what they’re supposed to be feeling about all these ideas they do not understand at all.

“But I liked the M.C. Escher stairs and the Zabriskie Point ripoff.”

3. I’ve read early reviews that rave about the movie without mentioning what it’s about. Inception is about a crew engaged in a specialized form of corporate espionage: they steal ideas right out of the subject’s mind while the subject is dreaming. It gets complicated because there are dreams within dreams within dreams, which you know because sometimes you dream that you’ve woken up, taken a shower, and gotten dressed for work when you’re still snoring in your pajamas. Also, the subconscious is a minefield laden with issues, memories you don’t want to have, memories you can’t let go of, and tons of junk.

In sum: for this movie Christopher Nolan swallowed a Psych textbook. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I was thrilled! Though I don’t trust Christopher Nolan entirely.

4. I like the idea of a militarized subconscious. My own is patrolled by an army of neuroses, each with their own neuroses. Try breaking into my brain, I dare you.

5. This is how I think Christopher Nolan came up with the concept for Inception (and he does love a concept). “I want things to fly apart in slow motion. I want cities to fold in on themselves. I want people to walk up a wall and grapple in mid-air. I want down to be up and up to be down. I want the viewer to be so boggled he can’t tell his ass from his forehead. Oh, and I want all the actors to look fabulous. Now what story would cover these?”

And the actors do look fabulous. Thank you, Wally Pfister. I wonder if it’s a relief for Leonardo DiCaprio to no longer be the most beautiful human in the room. The crown and sash go to Cillian Murphy or Joseph Gordon-Levitt or even Tom Hardy from RocknRolla. Ellen Page looks lovely. Of course Marion Cotillard is so beautiful, looking at her is like being slapped.

6. My advice is, Don’t Think. Don’t go into the theatre prepared to puzzle out the movie and find the trick. Dreams have their own logic, as Franz Kafka and David Lynch have taught us, except that they never open the curtains and announce, ‘It’s all a dream! Ta-daa!’

Dreams don’t have to make sense. Just go into the theatre and enjoy the ride. It’s not an IQ test, it’s entertainment!

Plus if you don’t commit to one system of logic, you cannot be wrong.

The full review in the paper on Sunday.

Blast, when is the electricity coming back, I have to write my column.

Inception opens in regular cinemas and IMAX theatres on Thursday, 15 July 2010.

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Nerdiest Review of the Week, from Bernard-Henri: “Inception is Last Year At Marienbad with CGI, including the obsession with dreams and architecture.”

Recommended reading after you watch Inception: A Scientist Takes On Gravity in the NYT.

Illustration by Elwood H. Smith.

This year Leonardo DiCaprio is specializing in movies that screw with your head. First there was Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, two or three levels of reality occupying the same frame, with a truly dazzling turn by DiCaprio. Now there’s Christopher Nolan’s Inception, which has been described as indescribable. And next month another head trip: Leo goes to Albay.

Watching the press preview of Inception tonight at IMAX MOA. I’ll be the one with the tub of coffee.

The review when I get home, assuming my neurotransmitters aren’t fried.

Inception opens in regular cinemas and in IMAX on Thursday, 15 July.

Today’s reviews are by the vivacious vuvuzelic Vivien.

My must-see movie of Cinemalaya 2010: Mario O’Hara’s Ang Paglilitis Ni Andres Bonifacio. There should be a law compelling Mario O’Hara to make at least one movie a year. – JZ

Ang Paglilitis Ni Andres Bonifacio (The Trial of Andres Bonifacio): Fantastic. Masterful. Essential. This is filmmaking as vital historical tract. Nakakawasak.

Meryl Soriano in a scene from Mark Meilly’s Donor.

Donor: A fine black comedy that transcends its social realist costume. Mark Meilly’s, Meryl Soriano’s, and Baron Geisler’s best work yet.

Sampaguita by Francis X. Pasion.

Sampaguita: After the hilarious opening, a wicked music video sendup of our national anthem, all goes to shit and irreverence gives way to incredibly cheap sentimentality. Feels like a school project gone wrong. Bad bad bad, shockingly so because this is the kind of drivel that this particular filmmaker is so apt to lampoon to death.

Something was wrong with the link to the chart so here it is again: The Cinemalaya 2010 Quickie Reviews in Handy Chart Form.

Thanks to our buddy Bert for this brilliant chart, which should save us several hours of our lives.

It’s Tuesday, and we’re already planning to flee!

If you work in Makati and you want to escape from the office for a couple of hours, but you don’t want to go to the mall where you will run into all your colleagues escaping from work, I suggest a short trip to the galleries of Pasong Tamo Extension.

Last month SLab featured the work of Alfredo Esquillo.

If my apartment were big enough, I’d buy this. Note the hood ornament.

Next door at Manila Contemporary, Alwin Reamillo and Juliet Lea were setting up their joint exhibit, Clouds and Wings.

There are a lot of pianos and piano parts in Alwin’s work. He explained that for four decades his family manufactured Wittemberg pianos locally. In the late 90s NAFTA killed local manufacturing, and today no more pianos are manufactured in the Philippines.

While you mull over the tangled relationship of art and economics, you can have merienda at Terry’s (Tawilis deep-fried in chorizo fat! Tocino de cielo, excuse me, tothino de thielo!), Cantinetta (Pasta with truffle oil, which technically hasn’t got truffle in it, but is delicious anyway), or Kitchen’s Best (where Starbucks used to be) where you can have

a slice of rich, gooey chocolate cake for only P80, and a good cup of coffee (or a glass of cold milk).

Start inching towards the exit.

Here’s an efficient way to remove annoying people from your consciousness: The Ex-Blocker.

I found it through that excellent site, The World’s Best Ever. The Ex-Blocker is a plug-in that banishes your exes from the Internet so you never have to endure their dramas again. Let them get their own therapist.

Technically she’s not your ex. But you’ve heard every single detail of her personal life, every thought that’s flitted through her head, every minute trifle that the media has blown up into artificial significance, so she might as well be The Ex.

It’s time to break free of her gravitational pull! Use the Ex-Blocker. It might not catch everything, but it may reduce the tsunami of information about her that threatens to engulf you on a daily basis.

It should also work for stalkers, desperate attention seekers, and bloggers you can’t stand but feel strangely compelled to check out every day. Use it, Juan!