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The trailers told us everything we needed to know about What’s Your Number and Dream House.

They said, “Don’t watch this.” And still we went to see them! We have no one but ourselves to blame.

Yan ang kapitbahay mo. Ano kaya ang mangyayari?

We watched What’s Your Number because we thought Anna Faris was brilliant in Smiley Face and because there was a 110 percent probability that Chris Evans would take his shirt off. What’s Your Number is about a woman who goes into a tailspin because she reads in Marie Claire that women who have had sex with more than 20 partners never marry. How does she deal with this earth-shaking information? By looking up everyone she ever had sex with. Meanwhile she becomes friends with her neighbor who lounges around her apartment in various states of undress. Hmmm, what could possibly happen?

Well, there are three separate renditions of Three Times A Lady by Lionel Richie, which makes three separate reasons to run screaming out of the theatre. This is the kind of movie where the daffy heroine and the hunky neighbor will play strip basketball for no reason whatsoever and New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle will start blasting for same. Chris Evans does take his shirt off and hold it over his naked crotch, but full frontal nudity could not save this piece of crap.

Yan ang kapitbahay mo. Di niya alam kung ano ang nangyari.

We watched Dream House because it stars Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz and Naomi Watts and is directed by Jim Sheridan who made My Left Foot. Plus there was a 90 percent probability that Daniel Craig would take his shirt off. Dream House is about a man who quits his publishing job in New York and moves to a house in the country with his wife and two daughters. For some reason everyone in the village looks at him strangely but no one will say why, probably because they’re all hoping he will take his shirt off. It is revealed that a murder took place in the house he bought, but no one thinks of chasing the realtor with an axe.

This is the kind of movie where things go bump in the night and strange men turn up at the window and the hero goes outside alone in the dead of night to investigate a noise. The twist doesn’t even qualify as a twist because we saw it in the trailer. Daniel Craig does take off his shirt and pants and get into the bathtub but full frontal nudity could not save this piece of crap.

Leaving us with the question: Which is the bigger piece of crap? What’s Your Number is badly-written, insipid and flat, but Dream House is badly-written, insipid, flat AND made by people with actual talent. So the “winner” is Dream House, a movie that does not help its own case with a poster that calls to mind Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Skip them.

Dear Reader. Years ago Star Wars was defiled by its own creator. Now we beg you to help us in our struggle to recover what was great about Star Wars. We regret that we are unable to convey our request to you in person, but our site is having technical problems and we’re afraid our mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed because we live in the future and Darth Vader has already blown it up.

But information vital to the survival of the Rebellion is contained in the memory systems of every child who ever sat in a movie theatre and heard about The Force. That child is you, and you will know how to retrieve it. You must see Star Wars safely delivered back to the people who love it. Its creator has been amply and most generously rewarded.

This is our most desperate hour. Not really, but that’s the line. Help us, Reader. You’re our only hope.

This week’s LitWit Challenge: In 1,000 words or less, summarize Star Wars Episodes IV to VI. Yes, the first three to appear, the last three in the chronology: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi.

Don’t just rattle off the plot points, make us relive the moment Luke turned off his computer and fired.

Best entry wins a Limited Edition Star Wars Moleskine notebook. Post all entries in Comments by 1159pm on Friday, 14 October 2011.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

We need theme music for this, and the opening crawls. Maestro?

The Limited Edition Star Wars Moleskine notebooks have arrived at selected National Bookstore branches (Greenbelt 1 and Power Plant Rockwell for sure). Available in two sizes, plain or ruled.

Each Star Wars Moleskine comes with a print of the 1977 movie artwork.

Pocket notebook PHP995, journal PHP1380.

Do not underestimate the power of Moleskine users raised on Star Wars. The good Star Wars, not that Jar Jar Binks crap.

Tsk tsk is this beyond your powers?

Note that the stats don’t appear anywhere. We checked our stats on the advertiser’s site, there is no report either. And we just crossed 5 million hits last Thursday, where are they?

We know there are new hits because we get Comments and the “Like” thing has gone up.

It’s not a browser issue. We thought our browser might be the problem so we updated Safari. Nope, same problem. We tried Firefox. Same problem.

Oddly enough, we accessed WordPress on our older Mac running on OSX version 10.5.8. Why, it works! We can add new posts and media!

What’s going on.

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Reader ifrico reports that the daily feed stopped after The Daily Gazette 3. That was Wednesday. Work, people.

by the Gaz News Network. Please link to this post; do not cut and paste.

We’re having technical problems so the photos will be posted later. Here’s the trailer.

Last month when the Gareth Holgate media blitz was being organized we informed Gareth Holgate of the planned guest appearance on Party Pilipinas, the Sunday variety show on GMA-7.

“Can you sing with Solenn Heussaff and Lovi Poe?” we asked.

“No way I’m going to sing on TV,” Gaz said.

“Can you dance with Solenn and Lovi?”

“No way I’m going to dance on TV.”

“Can you play guitar while Solenn and Lovi sing?”

“I’m not good enough to play guitar on TV.”

“What are you going to do, stand there while Solenn and Lovi sing at you?”

“I can do that!”

And that’s what he did today.

The wonderful choreographers of Party Pilipinas devised some very basic steps for him which he could execute easily enough in rehearsal, but he did not feel comfortable doing anything that might be construed as dancing on national TV. As we do not wish our friends to hurl on-camera, all hip-centric movements were removed, leaving a literal walk-on. Solenn, Lovi, the Party Pilipinas dancers, fire and smoke did all the work; Gaz’s assignment was to stand there in a tank top and jeans and smile.

And that is how Gaz Holgate was introduced to the general Filipino public.

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We’ve acquired a new respect for our homegrown performers after seeing Party Pilipinas live in the studio. Clearly the days when you could plonk a random good-looking mestizo/mestiza in front of a camera and make them move their lips to a recorded track while shuffling left and right are gone.

These guys can dance. Not all of them have great voices, but when they have to sing they do it with verve and conviction. Hard work overcomes all deficiencies. They’re professionals. (Fortunately Gaz is not going to do this for a living. He already has a career.)

So showbiz is no longer the quick and easy way for the pretty and white to make big bucks. You’d better have something extraordinary. You’d better be compelling. You have to sing and dance better than the average Pinoy on the street, and you know Pinoys rule at this. We are the people who watch American Idol and X-Factor and say, “Ha? Yan lang? Mas magaling pa yung tindero ng kwek-kwek diyan sa kanto.”

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Conversation of the day

Them: I would never do anything like that (i.e. Appear in a production number on a variety show with the two hottest women in showbiz).

Us: Yeah, who asked you?

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The We’ll Make This About Ourself Department: Any day that requires us to crawl out of bed 3 hours early after a day of hurling our guts out (food poisoning) in order to assuage people’s fear and doubt while missing two quarterfinal matches of the Rugby World Cup is a hellish day. This is why we work alone, as we keep reminding people and they keep not listening. We would have imploded without the help of Bubbles Magpayo, Leo Dominguez and his staff, JJ Henson, Jon Morales, Noel Flowers, and our super-cool BFF. Thanks.

And that commencement speech from 2005