Don’t.Give.Up!

I’m talking to you, Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. Give us X-Files 3. Bring on the aliens!

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet

Director: Chris Carter

Writer: Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz

Runtime: 105 minutes

Genre: sci-fi, mystery

Trailer The X-Files: I Want to Believe

The movie has already premiered at SM Megamall last August 7, but there are still two more scheduled on August 11. This is by invitation only, however, so if you want to get advance screening tickets, better join the following radio promos [source: pinoy x-philes.org]:

August 11, 2008

• NU 107
  Powerplant Mall Rockwell, Makati City

• RX 93.1
  Glorietta 4 Mall, Makati City

I’m waiting for August 13. See you at the movies!

The Dark Knight and Heath’s Millions

The Dark Knight has reportedly reached (and exceeded) the $400 million mark in less than 20 days. I actually thought that it is fast becoming the top-grossing film of all time until I’ve read that Titanic’s worldwide box office gross was $1.84 billion. Wow! Now that one seems unassailable.

Probably the biggest draw the Batman movie had is that it was Heath Ledger’s last completed film. His superb performance as The Joker is now being speculated to possibly get him a posthumous Oscar. Too bad he couldn’t see the fruit of his hard work nor enjoy the wealth this movie could’ve provided him. Speaking of his wealth, his daughter Matilda is reportedly entitled to his $20 million fortune even if he wasn’t able to list her on his will. I wonder how Michelle Williams will handle this. Will she claim it or even get an Advance on inheritance on her daughter’s behalf? Ledger’s former partner, Williams, is now rumored to be getting close with his bestfriend who’s now acting very much like a father figure to the little girl.

Classic MSR

I’m not trying to shove this movie down everyone’s throats. Well, maybe a little bit (reminder: August 13 is the opening day of The X-Files: I Want to Believe). General reception to the new X-Files movie has been lukewarm but from everything I’ve read, it’s apparent that the movie is a gift to fans (read: X-phile “shippers”). Granted, some who might have been expecting a grander cinematic offering like the first film, Fight the Future, were disappointed to see a smaller-scale thriller with underdeveloped plot. The X file, they say, took a backseat to character study and the exploration of Mulder and Scully’s relationship. It’s The X-Files at its core - the ever-precarious balance between faith and science. It’s a love story, although in the true X-Files sense (ambiguous and repressed). I’ve spoiled myself with the actual movie clips that fans have uploaded at YouTube and I realized that although the words and the looks that these two gave each other brought out the totally squealing fangirl in me, I don’t think anybody who’s not familiar with the show will understand why those seemingly typical scenes that depict two people in a relationship are pivotal in a decade-long wait for tying up loose ends.
MSR, the Mulder-Scully relationship as fans call it, has been nothing like anything depicted on TV before The X-Files and nothing ever since, partly owing to the actors’ much-raved-about chemistry and partly owing to Chris Carter’s (the series creator) initial insistence to keep the two characters’ relationship strictly platonic and professional. I am watching a season 3 episode as I am typing this post, The War of the Coprophages. Without getting into the plot that pretty much revolved around metallic killer cockroaches, I love this episode because Mulder gets to flirt with a scientist named Bambi while Scully acts jealous and territorial. As if to emphasize the silliness of this episode, my favorite (spooky) duo ended up both covered in dung and insulting each other. It was goofy and funny and reminded me of classic exchanges such as the phone conversation below.

Mulder (sitting in a car parked in nowhere land): Did you ever look up into a night sky and feel certain that not only was something up there, but it was looking down on you at that exact same moment and was just as curious about you as you are about it?

Scully (at home, cleaning her gun) : Mulder, I think the only thing more fortuitous than the emergence of life on this planet is that through purely random laws of biological evolution, an intelligence as complex as ours ever emanated from it. The very idea of intelligent alien life is not only astronomically improbable, but, at its most basic level, downright anti-Darwinian.

Mulder: Scully, what are you wearing?

Oh, the humanity! Have you ever seen a more geeky pair than these two?

Parallel Lives of Woe

Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours. - Virginia Woolf to her husband Leonard

The lives of quiet desperation tend to roar more deafeningly even when they cease. Loneliness lingers - in their art, in the lives they’ve affected and shattered, or in the ghosts of memories. The Hours is a film that offers no absolution. There is no joy whatsoever here. But there is beauty in the way everything was laid out, even in the lack of hope or just the mere illusion of it. You can expect nothing less from actresses of the caliber of Meryll Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman (who won the Oscar for portraying Virginia Woolf). Each was effective in her own role; each was affectingly pathetic. In the words of Virginia, each was “living a life I have no wish to live.”

One critic wrote that “Stephen Daldry’s The Hours suffers from misleading ideas about love, life, and death, some of which stem from its source novel by Michael Cunningham. But it remains the best-acted film of 2002, boasting one of the most spectacular casts I’ve ever seen in one movie. It seamlessly sews together three complicated and emotionally demanding storylines. And it works like the best poetry, giving us room to explore ideas and issues instead of narrowing itself to simple moral lessons.”

I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then. - Clarissa Vaugn

Happiness, they say, is fleeting. But it is what everyone wants. What everyone is ultimately demanding from life in whatever form it may come. And when it hides its face, some people make drastic choices, convinced they don’t have any. Some choose life. Some choose death. If one is leaning towards the latter, then stay away from this movie. It can be more than just disturbing. For even when one chose life, she didn’t find happiness.

It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It’s what you can bear. There it is. No one’s going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life. -Laura Brown

SciFi, Really?

Somebody asked me once, “So you like SciFi?” I was about to shake my head and vehemently say “No!” I’m not a StarTrek fan. I don’t even like Star Wars. I then did a little mind inventory:

Favorite TV show: X-Files, Taken

Favorite movie: Contact

Must be the aliens.

Truth is, I’ve always been fascinated by the thought of extraterrestrial life. It’s not necessarily about the little green men, or gray ones, or their supposed powers and advanced technologies that we exploit for entertainment. Contact summed it up the best for me when Ellie Arroway said, “The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything that anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.”

When you look at the sky, what do you see? How do you feel about the vastness of the space beyond this planet? It always humbles me, in the most lucid moments, how small and insignificant we are against the grander scheme of things. Let’s skip religion, but are we not to agree that we, as a race, are part of something greater than ourselves? But people can be self-possessed and egotistical, lusting over the power of gods, even when we can’t even agree where we really came from. That may very well be how we survived. And if you’ve watched “An Inconvenient Truth,” that’s also what will spell our doom.

It’s easier to think that “the world is what we make of it.” It’s easier not to look for answers, because that’s what humankind has been doing since the beginning of time. Looking and failing mightily. Are we not in a better position now to enjoy our lives and accept that it’s all there is to it?

I don’t think I have an answer to that. I even think that Occam’s Razor (”All things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one”) is a very complicated principle.

People will always look at things differently anyway. Consider these different viewpoints from the movie Contact:

Ironically, the thing that people are most hungry for — meaning– is the one thing that science hasn’t been able to give them … Is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology? We shop at home, we surf the Web… at the same time, we feel emptier, lonelier and more cut off from each other than at any other time in human history. - Palmer Joss (a spiritual leader)

You’re an interesting species, an interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other. - Alien from Vega

So it turns out there’s life on other planets. Boy, this is really going to change the Miss Universe contest, you know what I mean? - Jay Leno in his TV show

Gad, I love the movies! I love how they mirror real life even when they’re trying to be grand and fantastic and out of this world.

Believe, Again

Spread the word. Bring back the 90s! It’s coming this July.

My Blueberry Nights

“a story of a woman who takes the long route instead of the short one to meet up with the man she loves”

Moira MacDonald of The Seattle Times said, “My Blueberry Nights is not for those who like movies in which things happen; rather, it’s for those in a mood to float, sometimes deliciously.”

Next to seasoned actresses like Rachel Weiss and Natalie Portman, Norah Jones looked bland. Which isn’t a bad thing because that’s what her character, Elizabeth, is supposed to be. You can look at this movie as a love story, an extended music video, an exhibition on stylized filmmaking, or a lesson on some life characters you’ll meet along the way. The movie was directed by Wong Kar-Wai, a Hong Kong-based filmmaker famous for his highly stylized films, music videos, and commercials.

Elizabeth is a heartbroken girl who ended up spending nights over a cafe run by Jeremy (Jude Law), munching on the blueberry pie nobody else ever orders. Thoroughly unhappy and hoping to find herself, she decided to leave New York one night without saying goodbye to Jeremy. Traveling by bus, she first ended up in Memphis where she juggled two jobs (in the morning she is Betty, working at a cafeteria, and during the nights she is Lizzie, a waitress in a pub). There she met a cop (David Strathairn) who drinks every night because his wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weiss), left him. She then moved to Arizona, where she took a job in a casino, as Beth. Here we meet Leslie (Natalie Portman), a girl with daddy issues. She’s a card player who totally trusts her own capacity to read people, but never trust others. Throughout her road trip, Elizabeth sends Jeremy letters, sharing with him her experiences while Jeremy tries to call every diner in the cities of her letters to reach her.

Elizabeth looked at Sue Lynne and Leslie with untrained but curious eyes. These are women who represent what she will never be - self-assured and walking the earth as if the world owe them something for their beauty. But she only wants one thing - a car. Probably so she can drive herself back to New York and back to Jeremy. The last letter she wrote is my favorite:

Dear Jeremy,
In the last few days I’ve been learning not to trust people. And I’m glad I failed. Sometimes we depend on other people’s mirror to define ourselves and tell us who we are. Each reflection makes me like myself a little more.

Elizabeth

In the end, of course, she came back to New York for the blueberry pies.

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