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Philippine Daily Inquirer

100. Philippine Daily Inquirer

Finally, I reached the 100th mark for my list of reasons to be happy and thankful that I am living in this lifetime. Since this is a record, it is only appropriate that the 100th reason would cross all boundaries. And what more could this be but our newspaper for more than 15 years (if I'm not mistaken).

This broadsheet has been a very big help not only to me but to my family as well. The information that this newspaper has giving us for the last 15 years or so has been very, very useful to us. It does not only give us the latest news (very, very credible I must say) but tips on practically every aspect of life - personal, financial, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. It's an all-in-one paper.

I can give short examples about those as I grew along with PDI.

Personal: I grew up reading the advices of Robbie, Rissa, and Raya Mananquil (now all models and professionals) when they were still teens in the 2BU! section of Inquirer. The advices of Tita Dulce also made perfect sense as I heed her advices and gave her advices to my friends who turn to me for advices (shhh...that's a secret).

Financial: The Business Section of PDI has more that just business news. It has featured and is still writing stories about the inspiring and success stories of the best entrepreneur the country has produced. Of course, on those stories it is clear that the success stories of these CEO's, COO's and taipans were not walk in the park. They encountered a lot of challenges, difficulties, and pains but they continue and succeeded. How? Read the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Mental: The Opinion Section of the Inquirer is another gem. This is where I read the best writers that the country has produced. Conrado de Quiros, Michael Tan, the late Adrian Cristobal are just one of the few many writers that I read in PDI that got me hooked on reading the most widely-read broadsheet in the country.

Emotional: A lot of stories in PDI had made me emotional. The stories of the youth in "Young Blood" and their counterpart, the uhmmm, sixty-something in "High Blood." Not to mention the real stories that appears in it's front page. The not so-good-things about our country and how we and I are not able to do something about it. But what makes this truly special is that because the stories always end up with hope. Hope that we should not abandon despite everything.

Physical:
Of course the Sports Section of the Inquirer is a class of it's own. Almost always on time (sometimes PBA results yesterday would not be included in the next day's issue). But in general, I could rely on PDI regrading results of sports tournament I watch. NBA, US Open, Super Bowl, you name it they got it. They also have the best sportswriter in town, Al S. Mendoza and Recah Trinidad (who came back after a fling with retirement). The Tuesday Section of PDI about Lifestyle and Leisure also gave me tips on how to live a healthy and happy life with articles about the latest exercises and how to have a happy disposition in life through the articles of Cory Quririno.

Spiritual: This is the best part.

PDI has Fr. Jerry Orbos in it's Opinion Section every Sunday. Fr. Orbos column is my must-read column of Inquirer every Sunday with his jokes and anecdotes about life and his practical tips in life on how to live life as a Christian.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer also has what it calls "radical optimism" every Sunday. This means that every Sunday, it's front page only features good news. Yes, only good news. If you read a bad news or headline, you will see the good news inside it. I have another good news. It's not limited to Sundays anymore, as you can see in my previous blog entries.

Now, how's that for news?

And The Oscar Goes To...

This is the second time in my blog that I used the title "And The Oscar Goes To" but this is really the only way to start a blog about the Academy Awards. I won't go into details about what happened and who won in this 80th edition of the highly-respected awards body and one of the highest-rating TV show in the US. However, I would just like to mention that I liked Jon Stewart's hosting this time. I am not really into Jon Stewart's brand of humor but he had me laughing several times. I also enjoyed watching the 80th Academy Awards as always.

40. The Oscars Awards

As any of my friends know, when I was young (up until now of course) there are two M's that really moves me like no other - movies and music. Since this is about the Oscar, let's concentrate with movies first.

By act of fate, my first "real" job is working in a video recording company called Magnavision. There I was able to watch countless great movies which I wasn't able to see since I wasn't born yet, I didn't have money, or I just didn't know that a such a great movie existed. These are the movies that won "Best Picture" in the Academy Awards. A few of them are "Kramer vs. Kramer", "The Deer Hunter", "The Godfather" series (although only Godfather 1 and 2 won Best Picture), and for the new ones "A Beautiful Mind", "American Beauty", "Shakespeare In Love", and a whole lot more. I will be listing down some of the great movies I enjoyed in the future to be included in my 2008 list.

In the meantime, the 40th in my 2008 list is, of course, the Academy Awards because of, among other things, the Oscar showed me that the movies above existed. I have come to know and watched these movies because the Academy chose them as the best in the year they were released. Indeed they were.   

Transformed

I managed to watch the movie "Transformers" yesterday in Trinoma. I'm glad I did. I was really looking forward to watching the movie because of the good feedback from some close friends and officemates. I also read Nestor U. Torre's review of the movie and it was good but not perfect.

I don't know if it was just the cinema (I really enjoy watching in Ayala cinemas), the good word-of-mouth feedback for the movie, or just me but the moment I entered the new Trinoma cinema, I was expecting a really good movie. I was impressed by the trailers of new and upcoming movies including the Tagalog movie "Ouija".

A lot of people were talking loudly and laughing in the small cinema at the start (pissing off a group of yuppies) but as the opening scene unfurled, they became quiet, and so did I. I was really impressed by the special-effects! I wonder when will Filipino movie makers create that kind of special effects? Talk about wishful thinking! Anyways, I was drawn not only by the special effect but also with the movie's sense of humor, courtesy of lead star, Shia Labeouf. The story line was reasonable enough. The climax and the ending not overly dramatic. I was hooked the rest of the movie. The only word that comes to my mind while watching the movie was "outstanding."

In NUT's review, he mentioned that at the end of the movie, a handful of moviegoers clapped at the ending credits of the show. There were also some people who clapped as the ending credits of the movie rolled and I was one of them. It was the first time I clapped at the end of the movie to show my appreciation. Not because It was the first movie I really enjoyed but because of a couple of reasons. Most of the best movies (in my opinion) was shown when watching movies was still cheap which was in late 90's to early 2000. I can name a few - "Saving Private Ryan", "Shakespeare In Love", Sleepless In Seattle", "Goodwill Hunting", "Titanic", etc. At that time I was still young and at that time clapping at the end of the movie was corny. Of course, very few Filipinos do that. Filipinos don't just clap or give standing ovations even if they did enjoyed what they saw. In my life, the only time that I saw Filipino fans stand up after watching a very good performance was last year, when Mau Marcelo performed her remarkable take on Shirley Bassey's "Diamonds Are Forever" on one of Philippine Idol's episode. I don't know why. Maybe we're just too hard to please or we just don't care. But from now own, if I really enjoyed a movie or a performance, I would stand up and clap to show my appreciation.

Anyways, the movie "Transformers", ignited my passion for movies again. That despite of the steep prices, going to the movies is still one way of chilling out. It's still worth the ticket prices to "relax and see a movie." Somehow, after watching the movie, it gave me a new lease in life. Don't ask me why.

Why Did I Cry While Watching The Movie Spider-Man 3?!

I have a confession to make: I shed a tear in one part of the movie, Spider-Man 3. This is not really a big deal since I almost always cry when I watch a movie or a TV drama show, especially when the scene is so moving that it gets to my nerves. It doesn't matter if it's an action, comedy, or a drama flick.

It's quite strange that I cried while watching Spider-Man 3 because I already know what would happen. Thanks to Fr. Joey Faller's homily just minutes before we were about to watch the movie. Fr. Joey Faller said in his homily that he was able to watch the movie and he cried in one of the emotional moments of the movie (the climax, actually) because it speaks of one of the most important lessons in life, which is forgiving. He even said that if we weren't able to watch it, we miss half of our lives (Yeah, sure Father but why did you tell what would happen?). So, I know what would happen and I know Father Joey cried so I didn't expect to be crying and raving about the movie. But here I am writing a blog about the movie which I failed to do with the movie "300" and the documentary "An Inconvenient Thruth" and the two movies deserved to be written a blog for they are exceptional in their own right.

I won't be writing what happened so that you won't be robbed of the excitement but I must tell you that the movie is really good. It might not be the best Spider-Man movie and critics may not be praising it but it still goes to my list of all-time favorite movies because the movie tells us  three of the most important things in life: friendship, love, and forgiveness.

Watching "Letters From Iwo Jima"

I was having second thoughts watching the movie "Letters From Iwo Jima." Not because I didn't want to, in fact I had it on my list as "to-watch" this year, but because the movie is exclusively showing at Glorietta Cinemas which is of  about an hour and a half away and I was kinda lazy and I thought it would just be a waste of time and money. But after a while I decided to go straight to Glorietta instead of going home after attending Sunday Mass at SM North Edsa since I gathered this would be a good R & R for me because I haven't watched a movie for ages that I can't even remember the last movie that I saw prior to "Letters From Iwo Jima." I arrived at Glorietta about 1:40 PM and lo and behold! The movie would start it's first screening at 4:30 PM! Again, I wanted to just eat and go home. But I just decided to wander around since I was already there and see how Glorietta looks now. After some eating, walking, window-shopping, girl-watching and wandering around, I didn't notice that it was 10 mins before 4 PM already and so I bought a ticket and watched the movie.

No, this won't be a review for the  movie. But if you are insistent to know my views about the movie, you can read it in my profile-I have a review of the movie there. Hehe. Let's just say it was a good movie, good enough to revive my interest in movies. Good enough also to say to myself that it wasn't a waste of time and money. It was worth it.

I was no longer interested in movies because of two things - steep ticket prices and low-quality movies. "Letters From Iwo Jima" is definitely not a substandard movie. It's one of the movies that would be a classic a few years from now. As for the steep prices, I always complain about the steep prices of the movie that I forgot it's already Year 2007. There has been some technological advances and the movies also has some of this to show movie-goers. And one of these is the sound system. The sound coming out of the theater was almost real whether it was the war scenes or the quiet scenes. I was astounded by the sound. I definitely can say that the sound in cinemas about 10 years ago is not the same as it is today.

I can say that after watching "Letters From Iwo Jima", it resurrected my interest for the movies. Now, I'm tempted to watch "300" next week. =)

Superman Returns in Imax

I just watched Superman Returns in Imax Theater last Sunday. I made it a point to watch the first full-length movie to be shown in Imax and boy I was disappointed. I thought the whole movie would be in 3D, I was wrong - there was only about four 5-10 minute portions of the movie that was shown in 3D! To make it worse, I didn't like the story. Maybe I was expecting too much, I forgot that it takes a million dollars to convert a movie for Imax, and I have been reading too much movie reviews. However, the experience in Imax was great. I enjoyed the 3D trailers of upcoming movies for Imax like the one with dinosaurs (I forgot the title). It was almost real, like the dinosaurs were in front of you. Jurassic Park should be shown in Imax, I'll definitely watch it! As for Superman Returns, I'll just watch Smallville tonight...

In Good Company

I have just watched the movie "In Good Company". But before I go with my "review", allow me to let out my feelings - i was shocked to see the price on the premiere tickets, it's eighty bucks. About five or seven years ago my hundred bucks goes a long way - i have a Premiere ticket, a Jollibee value meal, and i can still go back home. But now what?! I have a premiere ticket but can't get back home with the change?! Signs of the (bad) times! I really don't know what's going on with our country!!! But i'm not here to be the bearer of bad news....

A feel-good movie, although it's not really exceptional (in my opinion) it's a good movie. It's probably worth my eighty pesos. And it gives you a closer look of how a corporation runs (much like where i'm working now). From watching this movie, may those young individuals who strive to go up the corporate ladder get their priorities straight. I wish the high executives of the top corporation here could watch this movie. With their extremely bloated high salaries, they could afford to watch at the best cineplexes in the metro!

And as for me, I don't know if i'll ever get to watch another movie again (sigh)!