JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

The Boysen KNOxOUT Project: EDSA mural by Tapio Snellman, Aurora Underpass, Quezon City.

No glowing sunsets. No rustic nipa huts and grazing carabao. No flowers in full technicolor bloom or children splashing about in amazingly unpolluted rivers or women carrying baskets of fruit. Just the chaos, the clangor and the rush of the city we hate and love in equal parts. THIS is the Metro Manila we live in. It may not be beautiful enough for you, but to us it’s home.

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Good to know that you like the mural by Jose Tence Ruiz on the San Lorenzo Wall. Here’s a composite.

Before we review Snow White and the Huntsman (SWATH), directed by Rupert Sanders (his first feature) and starring Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin and Kristen Stewart, let’s get this out of the way.

It’s Chris Hemsworth! Hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi hihihi.

Now the review.

1. Snow White and the Huntsman gets the essential quality of fairy tales: They’re scary. They speak to something primeval and primitive in the human psyche. They take us back to an ancient time when danger lurked in every shrub and the world was full of things that would eat you. Fairy tales may have happy endings, but to get there the heroine must endure dark and dreadful trials.

Disney movie musicals have taken the terror out of the old tales and replaced it with sweetness, fluff and the reassurance that everything will be all right. They are an insult to the tales. Wonder is less wonderful without the emotional kick of terror. SWATH recovers some of that ancient dread. Terrible things happen that cannot be undone.

2. We love Charlize Theron, a gorgeous actress who is at her best playing monsters (Monster, naturally, and Young Adult). Here she isn’t just the stock evil stepmother jealous of Snow White’s youthful beauty. Her Queen Ravenna is a woman who has weaponized her beauty and fears losing it. She is an aberration in the fairy tale world: a feminist who has bludgeoned men into submission with her looks. Beauty is power and she will do anything to hold on to it. This makes her far more interesting than Snow White.

Notice the parallel between the careers of the evil queen and of the actresses who have played her lately—Theron and Julia Roberts. Both are fabulous Oscar-winning stars who have reached the age where there won’t be as many lead roles open to them in the youth-obsessed movie industry. So they’ve started taking on villain roles to prolong their careers, and they end up in supporting roles to actresses who are less beautiful and talented than they are. Beauty—youthful beauty—is power.

3. As Snow White, Kristen Stewart will have to deal with all the snarky “Who’s the fairest” comments. She’s not a bad actress, but the Twilight flicks have exsanguinated (Don’t you miss this word from The X-Files? Our sister used to date someone we referred to fondly as El Chupacabra) her career. Ignore all the mean people who point out that the Queen, the Duke’s son, and especially the Huntsman are prettier than you are; that’s your name above the title.

That said, Stewart is typecast as the one who rises from the dead.

Ricky notes that Stewart has a Jodie Foster quality. (She did play Jodie’s kid in Panic Room.)

4. Zero chemistry between Snow White and The Huntsman. More chemistry between The Huntsman and (your name here).

5. Thank you, Chris Hemsworth, you bring us great happiness just by existing. That presence. That hair. That voice. We used to think it was the work of a sound engineer but no—you need a voice box buried deep in muscle to get reverb like that.

6. When Snow White and The Huntsman meet the seven dwarves—digitally shrunken Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone and others—the movie turns into The Fellowship of the Ring. When nine of them are walking up the mountain we nearly yelled, “The Pass of Caradhras!”

Has Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister liberated dwarves from having to be the cute comic relief in movies? Discuss.

6. Queen Ravenna turning into a murder of crows (or are those ravens) = Madonna’s video for “Frozen”.

7. It’s more atmosphere than action, but worth the two hours of your life.

Bonus: The cast of SWATH reading 50 Shades of Grey.

Jessica Zafra with rugby player Matty Saunders of the national team. Photo by Nigel Saunders. Fred Perry shirt that does not match Amy Winehouse’s vision for it from Ricky, earrings from Jeffrey.

In photographs we usually look like some mutant gnat under an electron microscope. So when Mr. Saunders sent us this photo which he took at the A5N championship in April, we were amazed at our resemblance to a human being and immediately posted it as evidence.

How do you take a good picture?

a. Support a winning team so that you are genuinely happy in the photo and not just pretending to be a good sport.

b. Sit next to a good-looking person. That way he is automatically the focal point of the picture and with any luck, no one will notice you are in it. When they do notice you there is the inevitable unflattering comparison, but at least the pressure is off you while the photo is being taken.

c. Use your vast forehead as a reflector to ensure optimal illumination. The bright flash aimed directly at your face will erase any spots or lines.

Of course there’s nothing like a good skin care regimen. Ours is 1) Sleep 9 hours a day; 2) Eat meat; 3) Don’t have children, adulthood is very bad for the complexion; and 4) Don’t have long-term relationships, only short, aggravating ones you are relieved to escape.

d. Make sure the sporting event is held outdoors on a frizzling hot and humid day. Everyone will sweat buckets. They never mention this in commercials, but sweat is an excellent conditioner. You can’t smell photos.

e. Get Jay Lozada to cut your hair. Look for him on Facebook. He’ll probably decline so make him an offer he can’t refuse (i.e. “I know Chris Hemsworth.”) Also, stay away from hair dryers and accept that not everyone has long straight perfect hair like in shampoo ads, not even the girls in shampoo ads.

f. If you’re fat, don’t lose too much weight because your skin will sag. You’ll never be a model, but you can eat whatever you like. Hold your big arms close to your sides and compress. Also, if you have a wide face, you need proportionately large eyeglasses.

g. Hang out with fabulous gay people in the hope of picking up style by osmosis.

h. We should’ve remembered to keep our mouth very slightly open to produce the illusion of fuller lips. The stretched closed mouth makes us look smug. Or smugger than usual.

i. “How come you get to hang out with guys we want to see naked?” Because we’re a bro. Read You Are Not His Girlfriend: How To Know When You’ve Been Bro’d. It’s educational and hysterical!

Consider their children’s books as noted in the Guardian.

The Weight of Disappointment. Yeah, tell them the truth about life as soon as they learn to read. Don’t coddle the little bastards.

The Revenge of the Rabbits. They boil Glenn Close! Aaaaaaaaa

The Visit from Death. Sounds cheerful. Hmm, isn’t ‘la petite mort’ (the little death) the metaphor for orgasm? No wonder the French act so jaded about sex!

The Alphabet of Anger. We could’ve used this as children. When we ran out of stuff to read in our parents’ house we had to settle for the Old Testament. Have you read the OT? Tons of gory violence and sex. Totally changes your world-view at age 8 and, ironically, inoculates you against the religious hooey you’re taught in school.

The Day Father Killed His Aged Aunt. They’re going to read L’Etranger in a couple of years anyway, might as well get them started.

If we’d read these French children’s books when we were kids we might have become a cool existentialist type smoking three Gauloises in each hand, wearing Vionnets from thrift shops and overthrowing everything. Instead we watched old Woody Allen movies on TV and became a neurotic urban Jew who wants to kill people spouting their putrid opinions in movie queues. (We have confirmation from neurotic New York Jews.)

We thought it was Bronn singing The Rains of Castamere over the credits of GOT 2.9. That would make him so cool, Tyrion should marry him immediately. But it was The National singing that Lannister song. So that’s what it sounds like. Reminds us of ‘Who By Fire’ by Leonard Cohen.

Lovely, but we dread to hear it again. But there is that other wedding…