Nanay with National Bookstore’s area managers. Photo by JZ.
Today is the birthday of Nanay Socorro Ramos, the founder and the face of National Bookstore. No one is more qualified to be our birthday oracle, but as we all know Nanay Coring is very busy. Happy Birthday, Nanay! From all of your anak (and we are legion).
The Guardian website is giving away seven John LeCarre audiobooks absolutely free this week. Download them now. Each book is available for download for 6 days only. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is only available until tomorrow, the 23rd. Registration required.
Here’s the link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/john-le-carre-free-audiobooks
Thanks to reader ronaldcs for the alert.
Not as Buffy, but as twins in Ringer, which sounds Hitchcockian. We’re glad she pointed out the ludicrousness of doing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie without Joss Whedon.
Never an ill word will be dragged from me against Sarah Michelle Gellar, the star of the new CW series Ringer, which debuted last week but which I only saw last night on iTunes, because I have no TV where I am, my idea of “roughing it.”
Anything SMG does post-Buffy will seem anticlimactic and it can’t be said that she’s expanded her acting range in the meantime, or carved deeper channels of implication and filigreed her facial expressions. And yet it doesn’t matter. As an actor Gellar is a compelling anomaly. She has a somewhat toneless voice that tips up at the end of sentences and rhetorical questions to denote bittersweet sarcasm, her movements are mostly shoulder-propelled, and her raccoon eye makeup seems like an homage to Lisa Marie Presley–Gellar ought to have all the presence of a sad emoticon on the screen, a flat drip.
And yet she’s never less then compelling and sympathetic, and believable in everything her characters do–there’s a vulnerable note of pathos in SMG that always rings true, pun perhaps intended. It doesn’t hurt that she wears clothes beautifully, her wardrobe as an ice-queen socialite the perfect marriage of money and monastic hauteur…
The FEU campus in Manila
The Lamp, the official publication of the FEU Institute of Nursing, invited us to give a talk on writing to its editorial staff. We’ve given many talks, some of them quite eventful (People bursting into tears), some underscoring the fact of our irrelevance (“What do you have against tweeting that we went to a Mini Stop and had a Coke?”), some laugh riots (Teachers are an easy audience, esp if the speaker is the child of a teacher). The worst talks are the ones where you feel like you’re blabbering in a vacuum and everyone is having an out-of-body-experience from sheer boredom. We never want to be part of those again.
So before accepting the invitation we requested that we be made to talk for 5-10 minutes, and then answer questions from the audience. That way we’d be certain that at least one person at a time was interested in the topic under discussion. This turned out to be an excellent format.
Thank you to the alumni and staff of The Lamp for the invitation. We enjoyed the talk so much we’ve decided to give more talks to students—provided we follow the 10-minute speech followed by 1 or 2 hours of questions format. Here are some of the things we talked about.
If you’d like to invite us to give a talk at your school, please contact Michael Jimenez, mychael@hotmail.com.
The floor of the College of Nursing
The soul-sucking reality of indie movie distribution, and the sweet triumph when it works.
By Jessica Zafra
You love the movies so you become a screenwriter. You write scripts for Star Cinema, the number one movie studio in the country. It’s an arduous process, like giving birth to a baby that is raised by total strangers so that when you see him again you barely recognize him. But you keep at it and you end up writing some of the biggest box-office hits of Star Cinema.
Then you get together with other writers and start making your own movies outside the studio system. You scrape together the funds from grants and generous friends. You make the sort of movies you want to watch. One becomes a small hit, one not, but these babies are truly yours. You learn that finding the money to make your movies is a trip to purgatory, but putting them in theatres and getting people to watch them is a tour of the Nine Circles of Hell.
This is the life of the Indie Filmmaker.
Read Stars vs Zombies in interaksyon.com. A hair-raising, totally true story.
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“Ayus, a. Beinte-uno ka na sa pecha abeinte-uno.” (sabi kay Remington ng kainuman niya sa isang eksena sa Z1:PSSSR)
Tomorrow, 21 September, Zombadings 1: Patayin Sa Shokot Si Remington goes into its 4th week in theatres!
On its 4th week in theatres, Zombadings is showing at 21 theatres:
1. SM Manila
2. SM Centerpoint
3. SM North EDSA
4. SM Fairview
5. SM Megamall
6. SM Mall of Asia
7. SM Southmall
8. SM Novaliches*
9. Gateway
10. Robinsons Galleria
11. Glorietta
12. Trinoma
13. Festival Mall
14. Lianas Alabang
15. Lianas Pasig
16. Gotesco Grand Central
17. Gotesco Ortigas
18. Lyric Vigan*
19. JTC Vigan*
20. Sunstar Theater Sta. Cruz, Laguna*
21. Silverscreen Ozamis*
*opens tomorrow
Our favorite Steven Soderbergh movie is one of his earliest: King of the Hill, in which little Jesse Bradford is left to fend for himself in a fleabag hotel during the Depression. Based on the memoir of A.E. Hotchner.
We asked readers what advice they would offer if they ran into themselves at age 10. Read the entries.
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Hey Jessica. I know, I get that a lot! Other than getting a bit taller, we look the same. It sounds like doom right now, but later you’ll be grateful. Listen carefully, there are things I have to tell you about our life, vital stuff…
On second thought, you don’t have to hear it. Carry on exactly as you’re doing. There’ll be crappy parts, but when we get to my age we will look back and laugh at them. Umm, yes, but apart from Starfleet General Order #1, it’s what makes us us, you know what I’m saying? Seriously, I almost wish there were more crappy parts so we’d have more material. Well, they don’t get us now, and they still won’t get us in the future, but some people will. I’d say don’t worry so much, but see, our neurosis kind of…becomes a career. So don’t get too sane, kid.
Oh yeah, he’s going to make some excellent movies after Take the Money and Run. The Lord of the Rings will be filmed, and it will be wonderful. Dune, not so much, but still very interesting. Do me a favor and buy every Laurie Colwin book you see, because later it’ll be harder to find copies. Read everything by James Salter and tell everyone to read him. Don’t worry, nobody understands Finnegan’s Wake.
When you start working, save money and buy stock in a company in Cupertino called Apple. Hang on to your stock even when it seems to fall apart and the guy gets eased out. He’ll be back.
Wait, here’s something. When she graduates from college, start hounding our best friend to get medical exams every year, okay? Her lungs in particular. Write that down.
When you discover Rickie Lee Jones, look up one of her associates, Tom Waits, so we can get started sooner. Don’t lose faith in Goran Ivanisevic, your belief will be redeemed. And on the year it is redeemed, you will spot a player who causes you to leap out of your seat and call your friends yelling, “Did you see that?” Bet on him. His record the following year will suck, but you will have an excellent five-year run after that.
When you book hotels on the Internet—yes, you’re going to travel a lot—never believe the words “centrally located”. If you still decide to go to Duino, get off the train at Monfalcone, not Trieste central station. Yup, we’ve been to Venice five times. Try to pay in cash, plastic will cost you.
You’ll be fine. Always trust your first impression of people. You’ll do stupid things but you’ll live, and anyhow embarrassment is better than regret. Yes we’re actually happy, and complaining is our way of saying it without being annoying. And cats are brilliant.
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The winners of the Weekly LitWit Challenge 7.0 are: noelz, jeromeshuny, evan, greeneggsnham, kratienza, stellalehua and Momelia.
But we only have one prize, so we go into Sudden Death! One winner gets the book, the runners-up get consolation prizes, and if for some reason the winner cannot fulfill his/her obligations etc etc.
Answer the same question in ONE SENTENCE. You have 24 hours. Go!
The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.
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We just saw Zombadings for the fourth time and we’re in a good mood so we’re not even going to try to name one winner. The winner iiissss. . .Everyone who joined the Sudden Death competition: noelz, jeromeshuny, evan, kratienza, stellalehua and Momelia. Please post your full names in Comments (They won’t be published) and we’ll alert you when your prizes are ready (and tell you what they are!).
The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.
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