Dollhouse and Role Models

Dollhouse

It's a new scifi drama series created by Josh Whedon (creator of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Firefly", and "Angel") about an organization called Dollhouse whose main products are so-called "actives", human beings who have no personality and therefore can be imprinted with anything their clients want. In short the "actives" will be anything the client wants them to be. It's an intriguing story, but the second episode seemed like an episode fit for a mid-season run already. Someone's not very confident with the show. That's probably the reason why it's on a Friday, the day of the week with the least number of primetime viewers in the US.

Role Models

It's a comedy film starring Sean William Scott and Paul Rudd. The two main characters work in the marketing department of an energy drink. They got into trouble and broke some laws. However, instead of a 30-day stay in jail, they're sent to 150 hours of community service. The community service happens to be the comedy world's answer to Jedi master-apprentice thingy. The two become unwilling mentors to two unwilling child mentees. And of course, half-way through the movie the two unwilling mentees got a change of hearts. They now like their mentors. In the end, the mentors finish their community service and nobody went to jail.

I'd say it's a light comedy, with not too many laugh out loud moments. It's a straight-to-video material and it probably was.

You changed my life.

Another one of those Tagalog movies, with a song title as its title that's remotely connected to the story. So what else is new? But I still went to see it anyway. We were supposed to be doing videoke, but then as the boring Friday at the office went on the consensus, somehow, shifted. And 13 of us from the office ended up watching "You Changed My Life". And I'm the only one in the group who hadn't seen the first one ("A Very Special Love"). These songs are forgettable in themselves and sadly so are the movies that were forced upon them to represent by the Pinoy movie industry.

I've read somewhere that the first movie was the top-grossing Pinoy film of 2008, and some say this could be the top-grosser for 2009. Contrast that to the 2008 top-grossers of Hollywood: "The Dark Knight", "Iron Man", "Indiana Jones 4", "Hancock", and "WALL-E". Okay, so maybe the local movie industry can't and shouldn't be compared to Hollywood. That would be comparing a third world country to a developed or highly-industrialized one. But how about those Hollywood romantic comedies that don't require state of the art special effects, stories like "You've Got Mail", "My Best Friend's Wedding", or "Definitely, Maybe"? Or the Korean stories like "Il Mare" or "The Classic"? Take note, I said "stories" instead of "movies". The local industry can't come up with movies like those due to budget constraints. But good stories are independent of budget. Surely these writers watched those American and Korean hits. They're popular here after all. But why do they time after time come up with movies with titles of forgettable songs as movie titles packed with equally forgettable stories?

Anyhow, the experience itself was fun. There were 13 of us. And we laughed at several corny lines and scenes, complained about the crappy audio track of the movie, notice a drastic change in the color grade between the first and the second half of the movie, and laughed and frowned at the awkwardness and deceit of the very last scene of this John Lloyd Cruz and Sarah Geronimo vehicle.

Shopaholic Movie

First, there was the book, which I haven't read. You see, years ago, I've read about this book on the internet. It was a best seller. Back then I was still working in Cagayan de Oro. And there really was only one bookstore in the city. Of course I didn't find the book when I looked for it. I bought a lot of other books since then and I guess I just forgot about this book.

And then there was the movie, which for some reason I really haven't heard it was being made. I only learned about it when we went to our company's Movie Night #1 for 2009. We passed by a big standee of a red shopping bag with Isla Fisher printed on it. Directed by PJ Hogan it says. Right then and there it became interesting. The director of Peter Pan (2003) is returning to chick flicks (he directed 1997's My Best Friend's Wedding). Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Again interesting. For some reason I always thought that his company only produces big, blockbuster films.

And so I invited the only one I know from the office who read and liked the book to watch the movie with me. She, of course, accepted the invitation immediately. She's a fan of the book (actually books because she'd read other titles in the series). So off we went to Ayala Cinema 1 on Thursday after office.

Well, it was funny and we had lots of laugh watching it. It's not the best romantic comedy by a long shot. That would have to be You've Got Mail, which starred Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. Or Definitely, Maybe, which also starred Isla Fisher. Isla Fisher is very good at comedy. I think she made Confessions of a Shopaholic work and made it watchable despite the very simple plot that would just drive any serious movie critic mad-crazy.

Just wasn't meant to be

I guess it just wasn't Federer's time to match Sampras's grand slam titles record (whatever that number is). I really don't follow tennis. Back in Cagayan where we had cable, I only watched The Wimbledon. So it's not surprising that I root for the Swiss, Roger Federer. I mean, how could you not when you only watch the Wimbledon, and for years he had always won the whole thing before Nadal defeated him last year.

There are still three grand slams left for the year (French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open). Three chances to match and then break Sampras's record. I still believe he'd do it this year. Nadal, with the win in Australia, is beginning to look like he has what it takes to win all four grand slams this year. But I think he still has a lot of things to proved before I root for him instead of Federer whenever they meet.

Movie night #1

The Company's Movie Night is back with Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the pick for January. It's back but for how long I don't know. Somehow in the light of the current state of the economy, in the light of what happened two weeks ago, of saying goodbye to laid-off friends, and the uncertainty of the rest of the calendar year and the next fiscal year, somehow it doesn't matter anymore whether there will be another such movie night in the coming months. The US economy got the colds and every other economy is feeling it, too.

Anyway, back to Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. I haven't seen the first two movies in the trilogy so I don't know how well its story blended with the stories in the first two movies. As it is, though, its story was easy enough to understand and to follow even without understanding the deeper impact of the events in this movie to the first two movies, this one being a prequel. I had one slight problem with it. The story was very simple and not much was happening with it that I'm not really sure if it should have been made into a movie at all, except perhaps to get a bigger budget than it would have gotten if it were just a tv-movie or a miniseries.