Name: achievinghappiness
Most Recent Reviews by achievinghappiness
It was a happy, feel good movie that allowed me to forget my immediate problems if only for an hour or so.
Made to think of issues of personal potential and expanding one’s horizons, developing one’s abilities and gifts. It’s the sort of movie I want my nieces and nephews to watch.
The art and gift of great conversation; to communicate honestly, fully, deeply where you reveal yourself and your past and everything that you’ve been and are without pretense and worry of being judged. To wear not only your heart on your sleeve but your soul and your guts as well; and to allow another to see you, really see you.
This is why I appreciate ‘Before Sunrise’ and its sequel ‘Before Sunset’ so much. It reminds me of the various conversations I’ve had with people who became friends or became more than friends,argued with, broke up with, reconciled with, let go off, forgot, or rediscovered all over again in a completely different light but a good light all the same.
I’ve had conversations with people that I so wish that I was able to record and document! With friends who at the time felt expansive and then expounded on what they thought life meant or how life should be lived; with ex-boyfriends who shared their childhood tragedies and glories; kasamas narrating how they became activists.Life stories than were told the way some of the most compelling movies were created.
In my my journals I keep notes and descriptions of these various conversations, what made me feel amazed about them, what will forever make me remember them and the persons I had the conversations with.
I enjoyed the movie and I appreciated the effort the makers did in telling a genuine story with a genuine plot (although the last scene where Robert Angiers gives this confession about his obsession with fooling his audience, his wish to suspend their skepticism and disbelief about magic WHILE HE HAS A BULLET IN HIS GUT was way too corny for me. It was like something from a Pinoy action movie starring, say, Lito Lapid).
Anyways. The concepts of competition and obsession. I don’t care about the first (with whom do I have to compete and for what? Actually I compete with myself and try to rid my countless weaknesses and fears); but the second is quite interesting to me.
There are interests, hobbies, passions and obsessions. Under each category I have at least three entries; but under the last? I don’t know if I have anything to put there. Obsession, aside from being the name of an expensive perfume, is such a dangerous thing to have. It’s a force that is so overwhelming one takes leave of one’s better self, one’s logic and rationality and even concern for others, for one’s nearest and dearest even.
I haven’t made it a secret how much I love Emperor penguins; and ‘Happy Feet’ made me love them all the more. Imagine a penguin chick tapdancing; all fat and round and fluffy and tapdancing!
The movie tries for an environmentalist twist; but it falls a bit short because all it points out is that there’s too much fishing going on in the Antarctic and the penguins are starving because of it. Still and all, it was a good effort (kahit medyo pilit) because the children in the audience at least learned that ‘it’s wrong to throw garbage in the sea’ and ‘big ships catch too many fish that’s meant for penguins.’ In the documentary ‘March of the Penguins,’ it was pointed out that one of the biggest threats to the survival of Emperors and other species living in the poles is global warming and pollution.
I have a mug with a design of five penguins trying to rollerskate. It’s 10 years old and it’s my favorite mug ever.
‘Cars’ is my favorite cartoon movie of the year. My favorite character is the old, rusty tow truck Mater, Lightning McQueen’s best friend. I’ve seen the movie like five times on DVD, and I haven’t grown tired of it yet. It’s not hilarious, but it’s funny-comfortable, and it makes me miss my friends.
Saw Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s ‘Babel’ and went home depressed. I suppose that the fact that it makers chose topics like the ones exposed in the film already makes the film worthy of the awards and citations it has received; but for the most part it was like a series of scenes from real life. While it is true that I didn’t see much that I realize or learn anything new , it affirmed my belief that often, the problems of humanity spring from the fact that people frequently and tragically misunderstand each other even over the most simple things.
Misunderstand and deliberately, with the full doing of chauvinist and militarist governments and power systems, twist each person’s understanding of others.
I guess the strongest message of the movie for me at least is this: we have to listen to what each one of is saying. Listen, be compassionate, and always strive to keep our humanity when we deal with each other even during the most trying situations.
That’s pretty trite and corny, I guess; but sheesh,it’s really the simplest lessons that are most forgotten or ignored (Listen closely, pay attention, be open-minded even as you take a stand). And this is where the tragedy lies. Human nature?
It is to the benefit and increasing power of governments like that of George W. Bush that paranoia, mistrust and racism are maintained between peoples of different color and culture. That people blame the country’s or the world’s he way others are different in how they speak, how they dress, how they worship or work; instead of going to the root causes of conflict: unresolved poverty , injustice, ignorance.
All over the world there is hunger, disease and death due to war. How can it be that, say, in Hollywood, the likes of Paris Hilton can buy hundreds of pairs of diamond-studded shoes if she wanted to, but in countries in Africa, children literally fall down death because of starvation? How is it possible that the children of the business elite in the Philippines can get nose and breast jobs out of vanity, but thousands of children in Bicol and war-stricken Mindanao have never seen a doctor in their entire life?
How can that not be wrong? And how can such a state of things in the world be allowed to happen and continue? How can anyone who knows that such…twistedness in the world happens on a day-to-day basis not want to do anything about it?
So we sat there in the dark theatre, biting our lips and then muttering how we should have, gad, should have watched ‘Night at the Museum’ instead.
My reaction to movies such as Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s ‘Sunshine’ reveals so much about me, I think: I liked it a lot. It was a sad, uncompromising movie about life and sacrifice. And it’s a science fiction film.
What sound does the sun make when its light hits any surface? It’s an explosion of brightness and one expects deafening sound, but there isn’t any. There’s just immense heat and silence, but the sight is more than enough to make you go blind: it’s a blinding kind of sound; a deafening kind of sight.
What I like best about is how unhysterical it is. All the acting is understated, the dialogue plain and straightforward, and the plot unremarkable but serious. It’s about eight scientists heading towards the dying sun to send a nuclear payload the size of Manhattan and create a chain reaction that would jumpstart the said star. It’s a simple story well told and well showed. I demand nothing from it.
Right now I am thinking of my father whose favorite color was yellow and whose favorite flower was the sunflower. He would’ve liked the movie and its simplicity, the starkness of it and how the characters were able to see themselves in relation to the rest of the world, to humanity. Life means nothing if it meant millions of others losing others when you could do something about it. It was pretty zen-ny.
Watched Spiderman 3. Tangled plotlines. Peter Parker loses his best friend Harry because he chose to stay and chat with the Sandman instead of rushing to Harry’s aid as the latter dies of massive internal injuries caused by vicious stab wounds. Mary Jane cried all the time, and got on my nerves.
It was the best fun I’ve had in years. No, I don’t mean to imply that I haven’t been having fun in the last years, but that the movie was so amazing. Brilliant! Optimus Prime rules! The movie even had Peter Cullen reprise his role and give his voice to the movie Optimus! Eighteen billion stars!
I remember all those Saturday mornings my sister and I spent watching cartoons on RPN 9 (Saturday Fun Machine) and one of our favorite cartoons (bukod sa Gummie Bears, Pandamonium, Black Star and syempre, the Superfriends)was the Transformers. Ate Majalla’s first love (hahaha!) was Optimus Prime, and when he died in the movie cartoon about three years later, waaaah!
What I liked best besides the robots themselves and the goofy but lovable Witwickys was the fact 404pxtransformers07
that US military supremacy was dunked liked so many mushy donuts in a vat of boiling joe.
US military might took a serious beating in that film — the troops were reduced to reviving antiquated telegraphs and walkie-talkies that looked like car batteries for all their size and heft just so they could communicate with the Air Force and seek help.
The Decepticon attack in the first part of the film wiped out an entire US military base in Qatar — flattened and leveled everything. I had a hard time not cheering and yelling ‘Yay, Decepticons!’ because, of course, we are all supposed to be on the side of the the Autobots.
When Starscream (whom I particularly hated in the cartoons) shot a few military jets clear out of sky later on in the film, I wanted to hell ‘Stupid Airforce! How the hell do they think they can fight against a robot plane that’s like 20,000 years technologically more advanced?!" )
There were some reviews on Rotten Tomatoes saying that the movie was brainless and heartless.
On the brainless issue, well, if you lack an imagination and you take the movie too seriously, you won’t like the film (and you shouldn”t go because it’s all about crashing and twisting metal and debris flying every which way); but on the accusation that it’s heartless?
Sam and his family were pretty likable. They were a happy, normal and close family, their relations warm but never syrupy, and it felt good to watch the three of them interact (and how they took care of their pet Chihuaha, Mojo).
It was also touching how Sam fought for his car which turned out to be the Autobot Bumblebee (in the tv cartoons, Bumble Bee’s ‘owner’ was a younger boy named Spike)when the military swooped in subdued Bumble Bee by blasting him with cryogenic sprays.
I don’t really mind that the Autobots in the movie didn’t have carry their original car models as in the cartoon; pero I did feel a little annoyed that Bumble Bee wasn’t a VW Beetle.
So here I am and I keep making the sounds the Transformers make when they , uh, transform and i think it’s getting on the nerves of some of the people here.
Go watch Transformers and have a real blast. I am indebted to Michael Bay for bringing my childhood back to life. I’ve heard that there are going to be TWO sequels. Walang sinabi ang Spider-Man.
Beyond Good. Beyond Evil. Beyond Your Wildest Imagination. This was the theme of the Transformers movie cartoon.
‘Kamikaze Girls’ is such a fun movie, and it has heart. Improbable and hilarious, it nonetheless makes one feel that anything is possible if one has a strong will and self-confidence: be what you are, express yourself, and stand up for what you think is right. I wish I had seen this movie when I was in high school.
