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Usually we hate it when people are talking during the movies, and we have issued picturesque threats to viewers who won’t shut up, but when we saw Before Midnight last week we were surrounded by chatty moviegoers and it felt right. These were not hipsters demonstrating their familiarity with the oeuvre of Richard Linklater (a group that may be even more annoying than fanboys loudly declaring their in-depth knowledge of the source material—If they knew so much, why weren’t they discussing in Klingon?); these were senior citizens at an afternoon screening, married couples who could really relate to the onscreen couple. They weren’t talking amongst themselves, they were talking to the screen, to Celine and Jesse.

“Ayan, inungkat na ang nakaraan!” (There, they’re raking up the past!) someone chortled as Celine reminded Jesse of some fan she had suspected him of sleeping with. “Di pa rin matuloy!” (Interrupted again!) someone else cried as the bickering couple started putting their clothes back on. “Ang ikli!” (Too short!) was the general conclusion as two hours of onscreen talking came to a close. They were into it, they were engaged, they saw themselves in the characters. And they laughed a lot. It was great.

In Before Midnight, the third in the trilogy (Who knows, maybe they’ll make some more) of largely two-character talkathons by director Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, we catch up with Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) nine years after the events in Before Sunset. That one ended with a cliffhanger: Will Jesse miss his flight home to the US and stay in Paris with Celine whom he met on the train to Vienna nine years earlier and spent the night with?

The fact that this movie exists answers that question. Before Midnight rounds out the trilogy beautifully: the first movie is about young love, the second about the possibility of catching the one that got away, and this one is about what happens when you have achieved your romantic ideal. You have to live together, a situation that entails dealing with the fact that the ideal is a real human being with real failings and annoying habits that can drive one to distraction. This is why fairy tales end at “They lived happily ever after”—nobody’s interested in what happens next. What for? Arguing about chores and who gets to pick up the kids from school and living within a budget is not romantic. It is, however, the stuff of comedy, and Before Midnight is the funniest in the trilogy.

So Ethan Hawke looks a bit run-down and paunchy, and it turns out Frenchwomen do put on weight (Butter spares no one), but that’s life. Not those incredible Hollywood romcoms where everyone is perfectly plasticine in their 40s. This is what comes after that sexy Nina Simone impression that changes people’s lives hahahaha! We recommend this movie highly. Unless you don’t like talky movies, in which case: Shut up, no one wants to hear about it.

Yellow bead earrings from Iloilo and red bead crocodile earrings made by T’boli women in Lake Sebu.

Very large blue and gold glass ring from Murano in Venice. Also serves as portable crystal ball.

We recommend The Dark Colony: Book 1, Mikey Recio and The Secret of The Demon Dungeon by Budjette Tan (story/script), Bow Guerrero (art/story), and J.B. Tapia (script/story). It’s got an ancient secret society, a plot that conflates adolescent turbulence and paranormal phenomena (Buffy!), medieval weaponry, and yes, demons.

The comics introduce the protagonist Mikey, who is disgruntled because he has to spend Good Friday driving his Lolo when he could be frolicking on the beach with his friends. There is definitely no frolicking on this school holiday, unless your definition of frolicking involves malign beings from the chasms of hell. (That’s not a metaphor, we mean literal malign beings.) The short story is presented as an archival case file that takes the reader into the mythology of the Dark Colony.

The writing is crisp and engaging, the illustrations clean and elegant. The tension begins right on the first panel and continues till the final page. As an over-reader we were disturbed by what we thought were clerico-fascist bits in the story, but then we don’t have the whole story yet (For more clerico-fascism, read the news). We’re looking forward to the next issue…which we hope won’t take a year.

The Dark Colony: Book 1, Mikey Recio and The Secret of The Demon Dungeon is available in bookstores.

Another comics staple: Superheroes. Vigilantes with extraordinary powers, they exist outside the criminal justice system. How do you know they’re on your side? Watch this short by Marcus Alqueres, via Dangerous Minds.

The Flying Man from Marcus Alqueres on Vimeo.

Toms, you were a good pair of shoes to walk around in, and we traversed vast distances comfortably. Unlike most trainers you were light and never made us feel like we were clomping around. Unlike tennis shoes we could wear you in the summer. You went well with everything, although we don’t particularly care whether our shoes match our clothes. Plus you had that Buy-a-pair-and-we-donate-a-new-pair-to-a-child-in-need hook, which made us feel virtuous even if we didn’t know if the shoes donated to needy children were also Toms.

But after one year of infrequent wear—we’d wear you every day for a week and then forget you for two months—we noticed a hole in the fabric. (Note: We only wore you on paved surfaces, not mountain crags or rocks.) Okay, maybe our little toe is too sharp so it poked out a hole. And then we saw the rip right across the top, exposing the lining. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Is that intentional, like pre-torn designer jeans? Is it supposed to rip, to enhance that socially-responsible world traveler look?

Fine, you’re a year and three months old and maybe this is what you consider normal wear and tear, but you cost around Php5,000. That’s more that we ever paid for Doc Martens, and our 15-year-old Docs are alive and fighting. That’s more than we usually pay for shoes, actually (We got you with GCs, the legal tender of the freelance writing set). If you had cost, say, Php1500 we’d think, Well, we got our money’s worth. In this case we feel a little gypped.

We’ll probably keep on wearing you till you fall apart completely, ignoring the stares of the finicky and fashionable, but we’re disappointed.

Our friend Juan was on vacation in Milan the other week, to our everlasting envy, and he took these fabulous photos. Above: The rooftops of Milan, seen from the top of its most famous architectural site, the Duomo.

At the Milan Cathedral and other famous churches in Italy, visitors are enjoined to wear “proper” attire. The guards turn away visitors who are wearing tank tops, short shorts, and other outfits they deem disrespectful to the sacred place.

Outside the Milan Cathedral—on the very walls—anything goes, apparently.

Milan is one of the world’s fashion capitals, home to Prada and other famous couture houses. Not surprisingly, the natives are well-dressed. It’s a good policy when traveling to try and do as the natives do, so dress up.

The Castello Sforzesco was the residence of the Sforza family, rulers of the Duchy of Milan. The Sforzas followed the previous rulers, the House of Visconti (as in the filmmaker Luchino’s ancestors). One famous Sforza was Caterina, who ruled Milan, defended her castle against the army of Cesare Borgia, and was also painted by Leonardo and Botticelli (in Primavera she is one of the Three Graces, the one on the right).

As with many great fortresses, the Castello now belongs to the cats.

On a side street Juan wandered into a church which, unlike most Milanese churches, did not have a long queue of tourists out front. It was the Church of San Bernardino Alle Ossa, which was built in the medieval period over an ancient cemetery. It contains the Ossuario, “whose every architectural detail is clad in human bones.”

Juan reports that he was the only visitor in the chapel, and it was quite dusty. Then it occurred to him that he may have been inhaling the bones of dead people.

All together now, Tolkien fans, sonorously: “The way is shut. It was built by those who are dead. And the dead keep it.”

Juan wanted to see Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper at the Convent of Santa Maria della Grazie, but tickets are limited and have to be booked online weeks in advance.

According to the excellent BBC series The Private Life of A Masterpiece, The Last Supper began to deteriorate a few years after Leonardo completed it. Apparently our genius used the wrong materials, plus behind that wall was the convent kitchen so the painting was constantly exposed to heat and moisture. The Last Supper is vanishing right before our eyes. Over the centuries, attempts to restore the work have not succeeded, and some were botched horribly.

Of course, replicas of The Last Supper—in a wide assortment of materials—may be viewed in the dining rooms of many Filipino homes.

Juan did get to visit the Leonardo Da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology, where you can see machines built from the sketches in Leonardo’s notebooks.

Travel advisory: When taking a train in Europe, be paranoid about your belongings. Even—or especially—when you’re in first class. Our friend put his bags on the overhead rack and went to the washroom for a few minutes. One bag contained an envelope with his hotel reservation forms and an envelope of cash. When he returned to his seat his bags were still there. He didn’t notice anything missing until he got to Venice. The police called his hotel and said an envelope containing his hotel forms had been found in the train station.

In the three minutes that he was in the train washroom, another passenger had taken his bag down from the rack and stolen the two envelopes, including the one that held cash. Fortunately his passport and credit cards were not taken.

We’ve heard that this also happens on airplanes.

So lock your bags, especially the outer pockets, and take your valuables with you when you go to the washroom. Yes it’s inconvenient, but times are hard. Butt-bags exist for a reason. Okay, that’s too extreme, yiiiii. Bring a bag/man-purse. It’s Italy, they’ll understand.

These and more in Anong Pangalan Mo Sa Gabi? at iba pang tanong sa mga LGBT, a publication of the UP Babaylan and the UP Center for Women’s Studies. This witty and illuminating book is edited by Tetay Mendoza and Joel Acebuche, with photographs by Rod Singh of the Babaylan members and alumni.

Oops, reflection.

Anong Pangalan Mo Sa Gabi? is available at the UP Women’s Studies Center, Php250 each (and until Friday, July 12, at the Academic Book Fair at SM Megatrade Hall 1 in Megamall).

Enlighten the obtuse! Whether you’re LGBT, heterosexual, pansexual, self-pollinating, omnisexual, amoeba, or spontaneously-generating, you need to have this book around the house.

Thanks to Allan for our copy! (He’s in the book.) For more details, read Question and Answer Portion.