Next month marks the fifth year that I would be in Blogger and a blogger. So I'm changing a few things around the blog to reflect its original name. The Smaller Picture. It better represents what this blog was all about from the get go. It is meant to keep for posterity the small thoughts that occasionally pop up in my mind. With this changes I hope to save more small thoughts here. I used to put poems and reflections here along with the occasional movie, tv, and book reviews. Lately it had been mostly about the latter stuffs. But I hope to change this in the coming days. This probably wouldn't mean that I'll be posting more frequently, but rather that I'd be striking a balance between using this blog as a life journal (which is what is currently happening) and a place to keep creative writing exercises. Of course, I'm not known to keep goals I set out for this blog in the past, but that doesn't mean that I should stop trying.
Right. Now off to sleep.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
T2, Harry Potter
T2
I watched T2 with my co-workers last night. Earlier that day another co-worker told us it was not scary at all, so if we went there for the scare, we'd be disappointed. But we weren't there for the fright. We went there because we wanted to see a movie, any movie, and relax after a week's work. By the time we arrived at the theater "T2" was the only option, with the other movies being 30 minutes into their last full show already. "T2" at least was just 10 minutes into its last show.
Claire worked for an organization whose goal was to reunite orphan children with their relatives. By the time we took our seat she'd already reunited a boy to his far-flung relatives in most likely a very northern town of Luzon some thousand miles away from Manila. On their way home, she and her driver/assistant encountered a roadblock, forcing them to stay at a convent that happens to have an orphan ripe for delivery to her long lost aunt in Manila. The long lost aunt lived in a building called "T2", of which there's something more than meets the eye. The journey to Manila quickly became a journey full of bizarre events that were supposed to lead to a climax of scary events to occur when they arrive at building T2.
Ultimately, the bizarre events during the journey was so visually disconnected to those in building T2, and the "creatures" so visually different from those in the scare-o-building. It felt like the script was being written and the costume and makeup being designed while filming was in progress. You'd be forgiven to think that the "journey home" was an unnecessary setup for the events in "building T2". Remove the "journey" act and you'd still have a movie and you lose nothing but 40 or so minutes of footage.
Harry Potter
The full trailer to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has just been released. Can't wait to see it.
I watched T2 with my co-workers last night. Earlier that day another co-worker told us it was not scary at all, so if we went there for the scare, we'd be disappointed. But we weren't there for the fright. We went there because we wanted to see a movie, any movie, and relax after a week's work. By the time we arrived at the theater "T2" was the only option, with the other movies being 30 minutes into their last full show already. "T2" at least was just 10 minutes into its last show.
Claire worked for an organization whose goal was to reunite orphan children with their relatives. By the time we took our seat she'd already reunited a boy to his far-flung relatives in most likely a very northern town of Luzon some thousand miles away from Manila. On their way home, she and her driver/assistant encountered a roadblock, forcing them to stay at a convent that happens to have an orphan ripe for delivery to her long lost aunt in Manila. The long lost aunt lived in a building called "T2", of which there's something more than meets the eye. The journey to Manila quickly became a journey full of bizarre events that were supposed to lead to a climax of scary events to occur when they arrive at building T2.
Ultimately, the bizarre events during the journey was so visually disconnected to those in building T2, and the "creatures" so visually different from those in the scare-o-building. It felt like the script was being written and the costume and makeup being designed while filming was in progress. You'd be forgiven to think that the "journey home" was an unnecessary setup for the events in "building T2". Remove the "journey" act and you'd still have a movie and you lose nothing but 40 or so minutes of footage.
Harry Potter
The full trailer to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has just been released. Can't wait to see it.
Susan Boyle
Afternoon, April 14, Tuesday. I took a logical break from work and checked what's trending in Twitter. People are twittering about "24". I clicked. Immediately I was bombarded with spoilers from the latest episode, which I planned to watch that evening. The episode was spoiled, but the spoilers made me anticipate watching the episode even more. After checking out other familiar stuffs that are trending in Twitter, I went on (like I usually do) to check the unfamiliar trends, things that don't ring a bell. One of those trends that afternoon was "Susan Boyle", a 47-year old hopeful in the regional auditions for Britain's Got Talent and in the tweets are links to the same Youtube video. Video streaming is blocked at work. So I sent an email to my personal email account containing the link to the video so that I could check it when I went home. "Susan Boyle" wasn't really trending very high then, and I figured she wouldn't be trending anymore by the time I check twitter trends at home. I couldn't have predicted how unnecessary that was. It's Saturday already and "Susan Boyle" is still one of the top trends in Twitter.
That audition clip, uploaded to Youtube, which as I wrote this has 19.6 million views, was truly one of a kind. It got all the elements working for it: Susan Boyle's life story and the perfect song choice. I have seen my fair share of American Idol episodes, and in that type of competition, song choice often made or break you. Boyle couldn't have chosen a better song to sing in that audition. She was there in the auditions to try to lived her dream of becoming a professional singer. And she chose to sing I Dreamed A Dream from the musical Lés Miserables. The orchestral accompaniment, which the editors have used as background music in the post-audition interview and the "three yesses" and then in Boyle's exit of the stage, where she blew a kiss to the audience was perfect. All these elements coming in together made for some very dramatic moments that rivaled any scripted TV. It's the best feel-good moment I have seen from any reality series or competition so far (at least from those that I watched).
Of course, song choice was just one factor. She still had to have the voice. And her voice was amazing. Some people would say it was nothing extraordinary. That maybe, she herself admitted on television that there's room for improvement, but I have heard several versions since I watched her Youtube clip, and her's is still the best that I have heard. A recording she made in 1999 for her local town's charity cd (only a thousand copies were produced), in which she sang Cry Me A River surfaced on Youtube recently. And it, too, was brilliant. I could just imagine what it would have been like if she was "discovered" at the age of 20. She would have by now 27 years of singing career under her belt. She would probably have been one of the judges in Britain's Got Talent. Although, considering how beautiful her voice still is at 47, she'd probably be busy touring the world to judge a talent competition.
That audition clip, uploaded to Youtube, which as I wrote this has 19.6 million views, was truly one of a kind. It got all the elements working for it: Susan Boyle's life story and the perfect song choice. I have seen my fair share of American Idol episodes, and in that type of competition, song choice often made or break you. Boyle couldn't have chosen a better song to sing in that audition. She was there in the auditions to try to lived her dream of becoming a professional singer. And she chose to sing I Dreamed A Dream from the musical Lés Miserables. The orchestral accompaniment, which the editors have used as background music in the post-audition interview and the "three yesses" and then in Boyle's exit of the stage, where she blew a kiss to the audience was perfect. All these elements coming in together made for some very dramatic moments that rivaled any scripted TV. It's the best feel-good moment I have seen from any reality series or competition so far (at least from those that I watched).
Of course, song choice was just one factor. She still had to have the voice. And her voice was amazing. Some people would say it was nothing extraordinary. That maybe, she herself admitted on television that there's room for improvement, but I have heard several versions since I watched her Youtube clip, and her's is still the best that I have heard. A recording she made in 1999 for her local town's charity cd (only a thousand copies were produced), in which she sang Cry Me A River surfaced on Youtube recently. And it, too, was brilliant. I could just imagine what it would have been like if she was "discovered" at the age of 20. She would have by now 27 years of singing career under her belt. She would probably have been one of the judges in Britain's Got Talent. Although, considering how beautiful her voice still is at 47, she'd probably be busy touring the world to judge a talent competition.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter 2009
It's day 9 of the very long weekend that I talked about in my previous post. It's the last day of that weekend, which means I go back to work tomorrow, which means I'm sailing back to Cebu tonight. I wasn't able to do much of the things that I thought I could do during the long hiatus from work. I didn't read any book, didn't watch much TV or DVDs, didn't buy a digicam, didn't write anything at all, and didn't even surf the net that much. I did watch some TV and surf some, but certainly not as much as I did the previous long hiatus from work back in December. Odd thing was that every night (except for a couple ones), I actually slept one to two hours earlier than I normally do back in Cebu. And I didn't compulsively check my work emails, only quickly went through them once every day (mostly at the end of the day and only if I happen to go online that particular night) unlike the previous long hiatus where I checked my emails everytime I went online. I made an effort to give myself a real break and I believe I achieved it.
Happy Easter!
Happy Easter!
Saturday, April 4, 2009
A very long weekend
What does a member of the working class do for a weeklong break?
Should I read books? Be transported to a world so different or so similar to my own. Should I watch a lot of TVs? And just sit around and eat and doze off. Should I watch lots of movies? And still sit around and eat and doze off. Should I buy a digicam? And shoot pictures to my heart's content. Should I write a lot (and not just blog posts)? Create a world where I'm in total control of the fate of the characters. Where happy endings are a sentence away.
Whatever I end up doing, so long as it isn't work. So long as I'm near my parents. So long as I am home. I need this rest and somehow I feel I deserve it.
***
I wasn't very busy when I started writing this earlier Friday. And then I got busy. Thus, the late post.
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