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Shot in his native Holland and starring Dutch and German actors, the World War II drama The Black Book is supposed to be Paul Verhoeven’s shot at redemption after his infamous Hollywood career, during which he directed such. . .masterpieces as Basic Instinct and Showgirls.

(Noel: I don’t agree that he needed redemption after Basic Instinct. I liked that movie.)

Carice Van Houten delivers an audacious, no, a shameless performance as Rachel Stein, a Dutch-Jewish nightclub singer who is hiding from the Nazis. You know something is off when the house she’s hiding in is bombed—presumably killing the people who gave her refuge—and she is entirely unmoved. She’s even relieved that she doesn’t have to memorize any more boring prayers.

Rachel is briefly reunited with her family and they attempt to flee to Belgium with the help of the Dutch Resistance. That doesn’t work out, and before long Rachel is working with the anti-Nazi underground. In the name of freedom she must seduce a Nazi commander, Muntze (Sebastian Koch from The Lives of Others). She prepares for the mission by dyeing her dark hair blonde. All her hair. Muntze immediately falls for her, especially since she has the stamps he’s always wanted for his stamp collection.

The mission looks to be accomplished, except that Muntze turns out not to be stupid. He notices Rachel’s dark roots: Aha, you’re Jewish! She counters by taking off all her clothes and revealing that the carpet matches the drapes. You’re a perfectionist! Muntze exclaims, and decides not to rat her out.

The crotch shot: hallmark of the Paul Verhoeven oeuvre. Think of his films as gynecological exams.

Rachel discovers that there is a traitor within the Resistance and she must flush him out. Plans go awry, Muntze and Rachel are arrested by the Nazis, and her comrades think she’s betrayed them. Then the Allies liberate Holland, Rachel is identified as a Nazi collaborator and the townspeople humiliate her by dumping a drum full of human excrement on her head. It can’t be helped, this is a Paul Verhoeven movie! Luckily a comrade in the Resistance comes along, and Rachel walks out of there all shiny and clean, with no sign of physical or emotional trauma at having been drowned in a drum of human excrement.

But wait! The traitor in the Dutch resistance still has to be flushed out!

This is cheap, tawdry entertainment that should not be mistaken for historical fact, even if the credits claim it is based on true events. I am almost ashamed to admit that I enjoyed it. All right, I enjoyed it! It’s tacky and awful and fun as hell. I approve of any movie in which someone is given an overdose of insulin and she saves herself by gorging on chocolate. Chocolate is life.

Apropos of Verhoeven I remembered a story told by our friend The Count. Many years ago he was a guest at the house of a Filipino family in the US. They had a dog. “What a nice dog,” said The Count. “What’s her name?”

“Prookie,” said his host.

What a strange name for a dog, The Count thought. The following day he spotted the dog and called her by the name he remembered.

“Here, Prek-Prek. Prek-Prek!”

We still haven’t visited the Maitum anthropomorphic jars, created around 110 BC by unknown artisans and used as burial vessels. These jars were discovered at the Ayub cave in Maitum, Saranggani Province.

A page from 10,000 Years of Art by Phaidon Books.

When at brunch I heard that former National Museum consultant John Silva had fired a broadside at the former (short-lived) board of the National Museum, and that the recently-resigned museum director Jeremy Barns had returned fire, I allowed myself to entertain the hope that we were in the midst of a real, all-out Culture War. There’s nothing like a Culture War—Verbal battles waged by smart people with large vocabularies! Polysyllabic insults unleashed! (I blow my nose at you! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!)

Naah, it’s still about politics.

John Silva vs Jeremy Barns.

Bert wants to know why the newspaper’s website is still Beta.

Emotional Weather Report
Philippine Star, 8 August 2010

Every day I visit NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website to look at a picture of the universe. As I write this I am looking at a picture of M8, the Lagoon Nebula—brilliant filaments of gas and clouds of dust 5,000 light years away. Before today there were photographs of constellations, planets, solar flares, eclipses, all the things out in the unimaginable vastness of space. They’re beautiful.

But there is one element missing from these photos of the cosmos—something that would make them seem more real and less lonely. There are no people. I don’t mean extraterrestrials who look like humans, I mean humans like us. Manned space flight has all but ground to a halt.

Those of us who were kids in the 1970s took it for granted that we would go to the moon and beyond. We are the children of the Apollo space program; when we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, we routinely replied, “Doctor, Lawyer, Astronaut.” The direction we aspired to was Outward.

Since then, developments in digital technology have turned us Inward. For instance we don’t listen to music together anymore, we’re all plugged into our individual players; the cinema has become less and less of a communal experience. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the overall effect has been to make the world seem a much smaller place. As our world gets smaller, our dreams shrink in order to better fit in it.

What passes for dreams these days? Eight, nine out of ten people dream of becoming fabulously wealthy so they can live in total comfort and buy every luxury the mass media says they want. Quantitatively that’s a big dream, qualitatively it’s puny. It’s just an exaggerated version of survival, with designer trimmings.

Going out into that starry void, finding out what’s there and whether there are others like us—that’s a dream. Many will say that space exploration is a huge expense that will not result in practical applications. Dreams have no practical applications (Unless you paint them or make movies about them; though I heard that the double-helix structure came to Crick or Watson in a dream), but if you do not dream you literally go insane. They are for the maintenance of your mental health.

Besides, how do we know that the solutions to our current problems are not out there? Cheap, renewable sources of energy, cures for disease and aging, even someplace to move to after our planet is completely exhausted. Those are the possible tangible benefits. The real benefits are intangible. As a 2008 M.I.T. report on human space flight put it, the rationale for human space flight is exploration, which it defined as “an expansion of human experience, bringing people into new places, situations and environments, expanding and redefining what it means to be human.” In short, “We need to know.” Shorter still: The Vision Thing.

Yes, it is much cheaper and way safer to send unmanned probes out into space, and it is hard to sell and defend a vision given humanity’s more pressing needs. But when we stop dreaming, we die. The rest of our lives becomes a formality.

If you have the slightest interest in space exploration, there is a movie you need to see. Not Star Trek, you’ve already seen that. I mean a more down-to-earth view of human space flight: Philip Kaufman’s 1983 film The Right Stuff. Based on the book by Tom Wolfe, it dramatizes the beginnings of the space program from the fearless test pilots like Chuck Yeager who risked their lives with no expectation of reward, to the first American astronauts to go into orbit.

Sam Shepard as Major Chuck Yeager, and the actual Major General Chuck Yeager, who is still alive (and was stationed at Clark Air Base during the Vietnam War). Off-topic, Shepard in The Right Stuff had to be the hottest guy on the planet, and he was sharing screen time with the young Ed Harris and Dennis Quaid at their hottest.

The space program may have begun as a side effect of the Cold War, but it soon became more than a Soviet-US race to space. It gave a focus to humanity’s dreams.

There should be room in our mindscapes for both the dreamers and the realists. The realists keep civilization going, but it’s the dreamers who point out the destination.

Today was Megamall day—I had to get my cats’ supplies, meet my publicist friend for lunch, and check out Forever 21 with my sister (we had not been there).

My friend and I talked about renewing the National Bookstore sponsorship for the LitWit Challenges, and the possibility of a book. Then she mentioned that she’d organized a Haagen- Dazs event at the Megamall Atrium and would I like to drop by?

Of course I said yes, it’s Haagen-Dazs. My skills at bilocation were tested, but I managed to go shopping with my sister at Forever 21 and attend the press conference to launch the all-new menu of the ice cream brand.

At the presscon Haagen-Dazs reps Tess Panganiban and Cathy Castro noted that given the frenetic pace of urban life, today’s biggest luxury is not designer goods or snazzy cars, but Time. Women who juggle the demands of motherhood, wifehood, career, and general fabulousness need their Me moments. (Hah! I chose me over all of the above, so my entire life is a Me moment. But I do love the ice cream.)

Haagen-Dazs is helping women give themselves permission to put up that Do Not Disturb sign and indulge, Tess said. These are their new indulgences:

Joyful Party: mini-scoops of Vanilla, Green Tea and Strawberry ice cream, Raspberry sorbet, Mango Sorbet on griddle cake decorated with almonds, cherries, pretzel sticks and chocolate sauce.

Fruity Journey: Strawberry ice cream, Raspberry sorbet, Mango Sorbet, and Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream with fresh fruit.

The Create-Your-Own section of the new menu lets you design your dessert by combining the flavors and toppings you desire. Of course all the classic Haagen-Dazs flavors, fondue, ice cream sushi platters, and cakes are also available.

Interesting to note that earlier in our history, during the Spanish colonial era, ‘indulgence’ (indulgencia) was a grant from the Catholic Church giving you time off from Purgatory on the sins you had committed. It was one of the church abuses Jose Rizal satirized in his novels. Now ‘indulgence’ usually means ‘luxury’. Which is another way of viewing time off on your sentence in Purgatory.

In Forever 21 my sister noted the number of plainclothes security men patrolling the premises. Which sort of defeats the purpose of ‘plainclothes’. She bought accessories, I bought a white shirt. Then we ate ice cream.

The mystery of Caravaggio’s death solved at last – painting killed him. Remains found in Tuscany are likely to be the artist’s, proving that lead poisoning was one cause of his death 400 years ago.

He killed to paint, then painting killed him. Of course.

Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes

You were going to burn me at the stake? Hah!

Galileo’s fingers in museum
Galileo’s fingers — and a tooth — go on display in a Florence museum
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Two of Galileo’s fingers, removed from his corpse in the 18th century, have gone on display in a Florence museum dedicated to scientific discovery and now named after the astronomer.

Visitors can view what the museum says are the only surviving instruments designed and built by Galileo, including the lens of the telescope he used to discover Jupiter’s moons.