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Hot guy, check. Reading (until he fell asleep) a book, check. Cats, check. Cats who like him well enough to shnuggle, check.

Fine, I’ll wake up early on Monday for the live telecast. I don’t want to watch 10,000 commercials on free TV adding an extra hour to the show so I’m going to Ricky’s house to see it on cable. But we all know who the likely winners are so it promises to be a thrill-free awards night. And I don’t think awards are an accurate measure of a movie’s worth. Most importantly I think all the nominees should be forced to pick their own outfits, though they may consult Cher or Bjork.

Robin Tomas’s winning t-shirt design will be launched at a cocktail reception at Bloomingdale’s New York on March 19, in time for the Spring Season kickoff. The design, a v-neck tee in layered tonal Supima cotton knit, was picked from among 6 finalists in last year’s competition. The TOMAS t-shirt will be sold as a special edition shirt in Bloomingdale’s flagship store in Manhattan.

Founded in 1954, Supima (short for Superior Pima Cotton), is a sumptuous cotton fabric unique to the U.S. that is used by luxury brands. The design contest was inspired by the legendary Wool Secretariat competition that launched the careers of designers Yves St. Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld.

Robin Tomas is a graduate of Parsons School of Design in New York, and has interned for Anna Sui and Valentino. He is presently showing his Fall 2011 collection in New York.

Robin Tomas photo by Giulia Piccari

For more information: info@robintomas.com, or visit www.robintomas.com and www.supima.com.

Check out Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s outfit: prints on prints on prints! No one can say he’s not a brave man. He makes Pareng Barack look boring.

Name another dictator who can carry off that ensemble with the matching headgear with such panache. True, it helps to know that no one will laugh at you, humans in general being much attached to living.

The crown! No wonder Gaddafi got along famously with former First Lady and now Rep. Imelda Marcos. Maybe if he goes into exile she could host him at her place in Makati. But can one place accommodate two astonishing wardrobes?

The Philippine Tamaraws

The national development team, nicknamed the Tamaraws, is off to Kota Kinabalu today to play matches against teams from Sabah. The team is composed of Manila-based players Arnold Aninion, Jerrylou Branzuela, Aaron Briddon, David and Warren Carman (All Philippine rugby teams have at least one pair of brothers in them), Paulino Chiu Jr., Sergio Coronel Jr., Glenn Denton, John Faburada, Noel Flowers, Dino Gonzales, Francisco (Kit) B. Guerra IV, Christopher Hettel, John Paul Jordan, Reanito Lawas, Lester Loma, William Leysa, Daniel Melrose, Jon Morales, John Odulio, Jeepy and Jovic Paypon (brothers), Edwin Ramos, and Joselito Talosig. Matt Cullen is the Coach.

Go Tamaraws! We’ve asked Captain Jon to keep us posted on the Tamaraws tour of KK, if he’s not too stressed. The matches will be held tomorrow at Likas Stadium—if you’re in the area we hope you’ll support the team.

Sons of Lapu-Lapu: Coveney, Stephenson, Everingham. Sounds like a scary law firm. Full team photo later.

Meanwhile in Australia, a Fil-Aussie team that includes several national men’s team players and is coached by national men’s team coach Expo Mejia competes at the Kiama 7s on Saturday. The “Sons of Lapu-Lapu” (Guys, why is your logo a turtle?) squad is made up of Justin Coveney, Casper Aniversario, Christian Desacola, Chris Everingham, Michael and Jake Letts, Simon Morgan, Peter Smith, Ted Smith, Ned Stephenson, Reggie Teagle and Jake Smith. We’ve asked Justin and Jake to update us on the results (Yay, correspondents) and send photos.

The tournament will be held tomorrow at the Kiama Showground NSW Australia. If you live around Sydney you have to go.

The schedule:
9:06am vs. Avondale Rugby Club
12:18pm vs. Hunters Hill Rugby Club
1:54pm Cup or Bowl Round of 16

Read Philippines Got Talent, Coach Expo Mejia’s column on rugby players of Filipino heritage getting recognition in the US and Australia.

Keith Robertson photo from HK Rugby. Of course he’s cute.

Incidentally Keith Robertson, captain of the Hong Kong men’s rugby team at the A5N in 2010, is half-Filipino on his mother’s side. We wonder if Keith will be on the Hong Kong side that will meet the Philippine Volcanoes in two test matches this April in Manila. That would be so interesting.

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P.S. We’re looking for a UK-based Filipino videographer to work on a documentary about Philippine rugby. She or he has to speak Tagalog and be available to film in May this year. If you know anyone, drop us a line.

Dear Auntie Janey,

If you are Bea Alonzo and the guy is John Lloyd Cruz and you are screaming at each other while Toni Gonzaga is singing in the background on the MRT platform, that would be slightly entertaining. However the possibility of being a protagonist in such a scene is very remote for ordinary mortals who are not connected with Star Cinema.
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I expected True Grit to be good but I didn’t expect it to be so funny. Which is strange because it’s a Coen Brothers movie; you know there will be laughs, especially the horrified kind (ex. In No Country for Old Men every time Anton Chigurh appeared I would start laughing at his hair. Then he would produce that compressed air bolt pistol, a ridiculous weapon, but I also knew something terrible was going to happen so my face didn’t know whether to laugh or cringe.) Maybe because it’s a western and to me western says Serious. A western that starred John Wayne, whom my parents loved, so doubly Serious.

The Coen Brothers’ philosophy may be boiled down to a single tenet: People are stupid. The smarter they think they are, the stupider they turn out to be. The more thorough their plan, the more they are foiled. And when it looks like they might get away with it, Fate steps in. In the Coen Brothers universe, thinking that you can win against Fate is the height of stupidity.

The three most recent Coens movies have an Old Testament thing going: No Country, A Serious Man—a film adaptation of the Book of Job, and True Grit, a tale of retribution in the Wild West, complete with High King James Bible English. A man is robbed and murdered by a hired hand named Tom Cheney. His 14-year-old daughter Mattie Ross wants revenge. She raises funds and goes looking for a man to hunt down her father’s killer. Finally she settles on Rooster Cogburn, a hard-drinking, trigger-happy, fat, one-eyed marshal who accepts the $100 bounty ($50 down payment). They go into Choctaw Nation with a talky Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf to find Cheney. It is a simple story that the Coens, their cinematographer Roger Deakins and their cast have invested with a primal grandeur. This is a movie for the ages.

Of course Jeff Bridges is brilliant, he almost can’t help it. His Rooster Cogburn is a very long way from the traditional concept of a hero, but Mattie’s assessment is correct: this is a man with true grit. Matt Damon is the Jason Bourne of big-name actors: quietly, lethally efficient even when he’s playing a man who won’t shut up. Josh Brolin is a worthy addition to the Coens’ pantheon of criminal idiots, and an almost unrecognizable Barry Pepper shows up to menace the heroes. Hailee Steinfeld (yes the Filipino-American girl) makes her film debut in True Grit, and the moment she appears onscreen with her tight braids and nerdy self-possession she has us rooting for her. This is a movie full of excellent actors and she carries it.

That is a lead performance. Hailee Steinfeld should be in the Best Actress category.

For years we have been inflicted with cute, cloying, vain, insipid, inexplicably famous teenage non-talent; Hailee Steinfeld redeems adolescence. Her Mattie Ross is strong-willed, intelligent, courageous, articulate and steadfast, and we do not doubt her for a second. That baroque dialogue sounds natural coming from her. And yet this is not a young girl trying to act like an adult: we never forget that she is a 14-year-old. We have witnessed something wonderful. Bravo.