Happy New Year 12/31/2009
 
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from WikiMedia
 
Vincere 12/29/2009
 
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Poster for Vincere, a fim by Marco Bellocchio
A passionate tale of love and betrayal, made more riveting by Giovanna Mezzogiorno's portrayal of Ida Dalser, Mussolini's first wife who was abandoned by him and ultimately locked up for life in a mental institution.

Filippo Timi, who plays the role of Benito Mussolini and his son by Ida, also provides an outstanding performance in his role of Il Duce, which he later caricatures -- in his role as the grown-up son of Ida -- mimicking Mussolini rallying the troops and citizens.

As the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) puts it, the combination of "drama, archive footage, and music creating a highly cinematic oratorio of enormous emotional force" (synopsis) sets the heroic tone of the movie.

And, at the movie's end, makes the audience wanting for more.
 
Team America 12/28/2009
 
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Poster from Wikipedia
This is the film to show your class when discussing American foreign policy. Trey Parker, the creator of South Park, shows us the Ugly American in action -- stop-motion animation style.

See how Americans, thinking themselves as superheroes (perhaps because they grew up reading The Justice League), destroy the Parisian landmarks in a minute or less. Of course, they also pat themselves on the back for a job well done stopping terrorists from blowing up the city.

This 2004 comedy film skewers not just American politics (both Left and Right), but also Hollywood, action movies, and politically-vocal Hollywood actors. It also features one of the longest gratuitous and graphic sex scenes ever in movies using marionettes as actors.

Of course watching this film from so-called Third World lens, I couldn't help but nod in agreement at the ineptness of Team America's swashbuckling braggadocio.

On second thought, though, I realized that by parodizing through their film the incompetence of American foreign policy, Trey Parker and company were also underlining their country's value for freedom, and how that virtue qualifies them to indeed act as "the world's police."
 
Holiday feast 12/26/2009
 
Yes, I know what Christmas is supposed to be. But if you're Filipino, you know no other way to celebrate Christ's birth except by serving a feast for family and friends.

Look at it this way, then. The holiday fare is really a thanksgiving feast that family and friends can share. It's our way of saying thank you for all the blessings received all year round, and for the grace allowed us in overcoming the obstacles (seemingly insurmountable at that time) that this year brought.

And think of the intent and the preparation that went into this celebration -- the joyous prospect of gathering family members and friends from far and wide under one roof to partake of this feast with goodwill.
And because we're Filipinos, we cannot help but think of celebrations as events where we can share food with each other.

But then again, Homer wrote something about how feasting usually precedes moments of solemnity (and sometimes grimness). In the Odyssey, for example, he narrates how the shipwrecked warriors slaughtered and feasted on the cattle they espied upon reaching shore. Only when they were sated did these same warriors begin to mourn their drowned comrades.

So we, too, scratching our full bellies and sipping tea or coffee to aid our digestion, begin to ponder our fate and faith this season of Christ's birth and of the passing of the year into a new decade of this second millennium.
 
Underground 12/20/2009
 
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Emir Kusturica's 1995 film, Undergound (or, Once Upon a Time There Was a Country), plots how the madness of violence and war can change not just the landscapes of our lives but also the maps into our humanity.

Read the synopsis of the film from Wikipedia (where I also got the poster photo). And here's a YouTube video of the film's opening scene:

Here we see the film's two main characters, Blacky and Marko, two rogues of friends who start off from playing Robin Hood to becoming gunrunners before their passion for a stage actress tests their loyalties to each other and to their country. Their story parallels Yugoslavia's history from the German invasion to the Yugoslav wars (thus the alternate movie title).

This is a must-see movie not just for its storyline or theme but also for some memorable scenes, to name just a few: the bombing of Belgrade, right after that opening scene; Ivan's search in the underground for his pet chimp Soni; and the paradisaical ending with the ironic breaking away of an island.

 
Holiday break 12/19/2009
 
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Hark the herald angels sing
Here comes the holiday break for Christmas and the New Year. It's a two-week break for those in academe, as school resumes in January 4, 2010 yet.

I plan to spend the holidays catching up on my recreational reading and watching movies while in the company of family and friends back in Leyte.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year everyone!
 
Metaphor 12/18/2009
 
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Priestman Atkinson's Punch parody
All shook up, that's how James Geary describes how the metaphor allows us to understand life and how it provides new insights into life.

Here's his lecture on Ted.com:
 
 
The "war" between the Mangudadatu and Ampatuan clans that led to the massacre of at least 57 people in Ampatuan town left me speechless.

Early reports had the convoy of the Mangudadatu women, wife and relatives of Buluan town mayor Toto, accompanied by female lawyers and followed by the cars of journalists were stopped at Ampatuan town in Maguindanao.

The convoy was reportedly "kidnapped" by about 100 armed men. Then other reports filtered in about how the "kidnapped victims" were raped, beheaded, killed, then dumped into a pit in a remote village.

When the people in the convoy were found later, buried in a newly dug hole by the mountainside of Sitio Masalay, Barangay Saman, Ampatuan town, investigators excavated about 60 bodies. Included in the count were 30 journalists who accompanied the Mangudadatu party on their way to file the certificate of candidacy of Toto Mangudadatu for the gubernatorial position.

Other victims of the massacre included passengers in two vehicles that were not part of the convoy.

All the victims were brutally murdered and then buried, allegedly some were still alive, in a pit earlier dug up -- indicating that the execution had been planned.

The brutality of these crimes left me wondering if the Philippines was caught in a time warp and was back in the days when warlords ruled with impunity. And when the gruesome details of how the victims were killed began to filter in, I couldn't imagine how the individual among those armed group could have committed such crimes. Was it mob rule, or were they all hardened killers following the specific orders of their leader, or were they a pack of Himmlers?

Steven Pinker talks about violence in his Ted.com talk on "The Myth of Violence":
While Pinker provides a rather controversial take on the decrease of violence through time, what is interesting for me is how he proposes -- and at the end of his talk when he answers a question raised by the host -- how a more globalized information network allow human beings to imagine how the Other lives.

It is apparently in this ability to imagine the Other that allows each one of us -- to one degree or another -- to demystify the Other and to realize how the Other is really like us. And in this imagining, we are able to rise above our "barbaric" behavior and to live harmoniously with our neighbors.

As Pinker points out, throughout the centuries our standards for "civilized" life has outstripped our anarchic behavior. And that explains how we are appalled at the savagery that every now and then assaults us in the news.
 
 
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Can you imagine that? Plugging yourself into the pure energy of the universe?

That is what Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor talked about in her Ted.com presentation. She told her story of suffering from a hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain, and how that rendered her "like an infant in a grown woman's body."

Dr. Taylor described what that condition meant by showing the audience a real brain, demonstrating how the left and right hemispheres of the brain functions. Apparently the left hemisphere accounts for the rational, the logical, and the linguistic capability of the human brain. It categorizes, it names, it organizes what data the right hemisphere receives as pure sensations.

But losing the function of her brain's left hemisphere--her ability to function as a "normal" human being--opened up a new vista of "pure euphoria, nirvana." The comments posted in the Ted.com site compares her experience to an "acid trip." And the way she described that experience really seemed like it.

Just before the doctors went into surgery, she gave up "like a balloon losing its air, its soul," and said goodbye to her life. But then the realization that she was still alive and blessed with this "insight" into what the brain's right hemisphere could tap into, convinced her to fight for her life just so she could "spread the idea."

What was this insight that Dr. Taylor tapped into? It was this idea that half of our brain is connected to the energies of the universe, that it allowed us to be literally one with the cosmos.

Of course, like an acid trip, it can be the soaring experience that Dr. Taylor described or it could be a rapid descent into paranoia. But then, the way she told her story, it seemed that tapping into that pure energy can only bring that expansive feeling of love and peace. (Perhaps it is when we are pulled back into our rational selves that we feel paranoid.)

And so Dr. Taylor--neuralanatomist and intellectual--is spreading the idea of human beings tapping into the right brain to re-connect ourselves into the pure energies of the universe. Perhaps, she says, when we do that we will be able to project the peace and love that this universal energy emits.

 
 
Okay, that may sound flaky to some of you. But that is what Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, neuralanatomist and intellectual, discussed in her talk at Ted.com.

Speaking about the left and right brain, she distinguishes between the work of the two sides of our brain, and how the two are really different personalities.

She then illustrates what will happen to us if, just like what she experienced after a hemorrhage, her left brain stopped functioning.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You should listen to her talk first:
And so, wouldn't it be wonderful indeed to devote more of our time processing our right hemispheres, and as a result project the peace and love and kindness that makes up the energies around us? Now that sounds really flaky. Or is it just my left brain acting as censor and comptroller of my life?