#topfives

[globepouncing]

Globepouncing Top-Fives: 2019

Need a quick jolt of travel inspiration? Here are forty(-one)! These are our all-time favorites by category as of winter 2019.

Need more ideas than you know what to do with to go along with your morning coffee?  Here they are, served up fresh!

[ezramaria]

Top Five Things I love and hate about live action Beauty and the Beast

Love - 1. Belle, the song. Loved it in the trailer, loved it in the film. Loved Emma’s singing voice in general. It was simple and British. Wouldn’t mind listening to it when I get a hold of the soundtrack. When she started with “little town, it’s a quiet village,” my heart was filled with glee and I had goosebumps all over. Autotune schmautotune, she sang sweet. 2. Maurice. Cartoon Maurice was a little neurotic, while Kevin Kline Maurice was a little subdued. That he was an artist and not an inventor worked for me. I also really liked his song and its continuation sang by Belle in Paris. How does a moment last forever? How does a story never die? 3. Be Our Guest. the whole scene was so psychedelic and Emma was so pretty. I don’t mind that they decided to forego Human Again cos Be Our Guest was too big a production already. 4. Something There. Perhaps my favorite part in the movie is when Belle put up her hood, just like in the cartoon, and sang “there’s something sweet and almost kind, but he was mean and he was coarse and unrefined,” cos this time, the writers put extra effort in showing how Belle and the Beast grew to like each other. Now, I’m a little less convinced that Belle has Stockholm Syndrome. 5. The lynching scene. Crazy Gaston and his mob were on point as they lit their torches and stormed to the beast’s castle. For me, it was the most well-performed number in the movie. Hate - (okay, I’m going to rant) 1. Emma’s acting. I really believed she could have been a perfect Belle. I was ECSTATIC when I first learned of the casting. I’ve had my fair share of the Emma Watson craze and as a person, you can tell that she’s more of a Belle than Belle herself. She has the same look, the same ideals, the same easy character, but put her in a costume and let her act like the Disney princess and ironically, you get disillusioned. Her acting in BatB was a little underwhelming and a little reminiscent of her subpar acting in the Sofia Coppola mistake that was the Bling Ring and that over-the-top meltdown she had in Goblet of Fire after the Yule Ball. She has got to learn how to snap out of her annoyed Hermione face cos she tends to set it as her default angry/anxious/worried face and it doesn’t make me happy. 2. The musical score. There was something off about it. I love Alan Menken; he writes such beautiful Disney songs that transcend generations, but there was something so uncomplimentary about the score for the live action version that didn’t sit well with me. Maybe the volume? Cos there were parts which required a grand orchestral sound but the music always fell short, killing potentially great scenes. I know, I’m nitpicking, but music ALWAYS makes or breaks a movie for me. Sorry, but this time, I just wasn’t awed. 3. The set. There’s a good reason why I get so giddy with live action versions of my childhood favorites; I love having my disbelief suspended every now and then and I don’t mind venturing into fantastical worlds, even musical ones. Having real actors play beloved characters bring me closer to the fairy tale that my 10-year old self so aspired to be a part of. I mean, the best thing about bringing the cartoon to life is the fact that you can put yourself in the actor’s shoes and picture yourself in a different world, right? They did it with Cinderella and Jungle Book (and even Tarzan), but Beauty and the Beast, the movie which could have really set the bar, felt a little too staged for me. The little town was too crowded and the castle was too Whosville-esque. It felt like a skit on film. Les Miserables 2012 was as broadway as it could be, but it was set in the real world. Why couldn’t they have done it with Beauty and the Beast? 4. How little it added to the cartoon version. In the words of my thesis adviser during the early stages of my project, “there’s no added value.” No spoiler alert for this post cos there’s nothing to spoil. It was exactly like the cartoon version, give or take a few songs and tweaks. I mean, yeah, the Paris scene was cool, but that took like, what, 5 minutes? Maybe even less. And I understand that Belle and the Beast are pretty dynamic characters and we can do away without the dramatic adjustments, but they could have given Belle more zest and the Beast more humanity. The effort was there, you can see it, but they did not pull through. Why, writers, why? Lynch me like they did the Beast but even Vanessa Hudgen’s Beastly had a more novel approach than Emma Watson’s Beauty and the Beast. 5. Beast’s transformation. There’s only one word (non-word) that I can describe it with - MEH. Admittedly, the magical transformation from beast to prince in the cartoon is one of my favorite Disney moments (others being Simba’s cub’s christening and the restoration of Pride Rock, Ursula’s defeat, and Mulan’s display of extraordinary strength rivaling that of a man). I love Dan Stevens and I’ve always had a crush on him, especially after watching The Guest, but in this film, I hope he stayed as a beast. The transformation was so anti-climactic and rushed, it bombed what I hoped would be the film’s saving grace.

[ezramaria]

Top Five thoughts about Arrival

SPOILERS AHEAD 1. What a mindfuck. It was slow, but the good kind of slow, cos it takes you to the destination with a constant reminder that the journey is just as interesting to indulge in.

2. Amy Adams was amazing. She had chemistry with Jeremy Renner, she had chemistry with the aliens. I watched her in Nocturnal Animals and she was perfect. I think the other nominees for Best Actress were really good in the films they starred in but I see now why people clamored for Amy to be part of the roster. She always delivers.

3. I’m always a sucker for time travel sci-fi pieces. Anything that concerns time, actually. Donnie Darko, Interstellar, 12 Monkeys, About Time, Back to the Future, la di da. I think I’ve always believed in the flexibility of time and for Arrival to present a relatively unique theory about the space-time continuum is, for me, refreshing. That the past, the present, and the future are happening at the same time sounds crazy and impossible, but the movie made it seem real. I was floored when it came to the final minutes of the film; the loose ends were tied and everything just made sense.

4. The take on aliens was refreshingly different. I mean, aliens with a benevolent cause - a gift - may be against our usual notions of extra-terrestrials, but it worked. For some twisted reason, I trusted the dementor-looking heptapods. Despite the language gap, I believed that they came to us with good intentions.

5. If there’s one thing I would change, it would probably be on the relevance of the gift. Obviously, the ability to tell the future and act accordingly may be useful, but how it can be useful wasn’t shown. The end was what the lead character used as a means to keep things at bay, which explains a lot of things in the story, but other than that reveal, what other purpose is for humans to know these things?

[ezramaria]

Top 3 worthless pseudo-grownup opinions which I compelled myself to write about

Been MIA from tumblr since bar review started which was half a year ago. I had a few ideas here and there but I never got to concretize all of them completely. Now that my brain is taking its well-deserved break - finally, after more than 4 years of nonstop mindfuckery - I felt like validating my position about certain seemingly random but important things. Why? Cos inside of this 26-year old body is a self-indulgent pubescent teen who can’t help but find solace in her own thoughts. This is actually more for my convenience cos I have learned quite recently that I suffer from the pestilence that is indecisiveness, and sadly, my stoicism, which I arrogantly think is my redeeming quality, no longer complements my age. So here’s my best attempt to put into words certain things that I don’t necessarily feel strongly about but I feel I should verbalize in the hope of curing what my friend properly refers to as my “vanilla”-ness.

1. POLITICS - I went from idealism (high school) to frustration (college) to apathy (now). Maybe it has been a series of subpar governments that has desensitized me. I have a few biases for and against some politicians, but I feel no urge to follow their lead mainly because I have already reached a state of learned helplessness. Am I hopeful? Maybe. To quote Jyn Erso, “rebellions are built on hope.” (Although historically, a revolutionary government never did produce the intended ripple). One can genuinely place confidence in a poseur messiah, put him in power, clothe him with undue authority, and end up being embarrassed for making that choice. Disappointment is tiring and even in the field of politics, trust is not something one should indiscriminately give away. As my Constitutional Law professor would always say, “we’re in the results business”. I will not be fazed by promises and unsolicited opinions. I will believe in government when I see (good) results. And despite the actualization of our Chief Executive’s electoral banner statement that “change is coming”, it is not the change that breaks the stigma and it is certainly not the change that my conscience sits well with. 2. RELIGION - I don’t exactly ascribe to the nitty-gritty facts of every religion as they are all just stories to me. But yes, I believe in a supreme being, in fate, and in magic, and since I have a very distorted understanding of causal determinism, I frequently cross the line between faith and superstition. Plus, coming from a country where politics is intertwined with religion in spite of the expectation (and mandate) to separate Church from State inevitably makes one a traditionalist in many certain aspects. However, while religion (Catholicism, to be more precise) dictates our actions, we should never lose sight of one, if not the only, valuable thing that religion teaches us - KINDNESS. My most meaningful takeaway from every Friday Mass has always been the importance of compassion, temperance, humility and service to others. You don’t need religion for that. All you need is a little bit of humanity and the grit to disprove that one philosopher who said that humans are inherently selfish. Because we aren’t. 3. CARPE DIEM - This is more of a rant than an opinion. Two nights ago, I made the mistake of watching Dead Poets Society with my sixteen-year old sister. My intention was to impart some Hollywood-cultivated wisdom by movie-cating her with some coming-of-age favorites, and since Thoreau’s “Walden” once lit a fire in me that propelled many years of go-getting, I knew I had to include it in the roster. But I also knew that with the state of things, delving deeper into the references would not do me any good, and yet the masochist in me gave the least bit of resistance. And here she is again, torturing me - 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

The last spontaneous thing I did was probly 7 years ago, plus, my responsibilities nowadays hardly give me time to “seize the day”. Naturally so, reading Thoreau put me in a slump. God save me from this reverberating quarter-life crisis I’m in.

Top 3 only cos nostalgia is exhausting

[musicnerdfamily]

#musicnerdfamily #music #TopFives #MyFaves Can we talk about some of my favorites from this year?! Now, you might be saying... Didn't we already do the best albums of the year? We did! Thing is, there's a difference between what I consider the best and my favorites. The best are what I consider the leaders of thier genres that year... My favorites are the albums that I loved the most. The ones I kept coming back to. The ones that really stuck with me. This is a small preview of those albums. There are usually a few repeats, but there are also some albums that spoke to me more than other people. I usually cop the vinyl copies of these albums. I'll post one a day for the week...

[ezramaria]

Top Five films that aggravate a quarter-life crisis

1. Reality Bites 2. Wild 3. Laggies (obsessed with this film!) 4. Happythankyoumoreplease 5. Garden State

[ezramaria]

Top Five tweaks I would have done with X-men Apocalypse

Possible spoilers ahead I love love love the X-men series, mainly because they’re comprised of superheroes who aren’t as much as superheroes as they are humans in an existential crisis (which always makes for a very good story in my book. Even sans the superhuman abilities). But the other night, after watching Apocalypse, I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this installment since that post-credit scene in Days of Future Past (which is the best X-men, imo) and to sit in my movie chair for 2 hours plus and still feel.. uhmm... unconvinced, saddens me a great deal. I caught the last full show of the film the first day it was shown in Manila and I have basically shut myself off of social media, so my feelings about it are untainted by reviews but validated by discussions with a friend who was equally excited to see it. So these thoughts are pretty raw. 1. Apocalypse was a rushed villain. For someone who’s supposed to be the most powerful mutant in the world, he came off as an old spoiled brat who only wanted to live forever. I would’ve wanted him to advocate his vision some more and show us that his cause was worth joining. He was a less impressive Voldemort when I expected a more engaging Ozymandias. 2. The Horsemen were meh. They could’ve retained that ancient horseman girl and the others who fought tooth and nail to keep Apocalypse safe during his last transference. Angel was meh. Psylocke was meh. Even Storm was meh. I would’ve wanted to see good backstories, especially Storm’s, since she was going to be part of the X-men. I would’ve wanted to see their lives changed by Apocalypse. I would’ve wanted to see them convinced to devote their time and effort to a mutant, who while wise and ancient, was helpless for centuries. They joined the reigns so fast, it seemed like everything they did was merely for convenience and blind faith. 3. I love Peter and I love his scenes. That explosion scene in the campus was amazing. It’s just.. we’ve already seen that in Days. We know what Peter can do and we know how charming he can do it. That was a good 5 minutes which I would’ve wanted spent on dynamicizing (is that a word?) the newer characters. Jean Grey, Scott, Nightcrawler - such good characters, but a little flat. 4. - 5. - Okay, I guess those were my only complaints about the film. Pretty short considering how my friend and I talked for hours about what we would’ve done different if we were Bryan Singer and the writers. But I guess that’s the gist of it. Everything else I would retain. Well, except maybe that last scene when Professor and Apocalypse were telepathically fighting and X was like, ‘you won’t win cos you have no friend’ or something to that effect. It felt a little too Harry Potterish for me. I mean, I love HP and all but this is X-men. They’re mutants, not wizards. The acting was good tho. Oscar Isaacs - from Poe to Apocalypse - dayum dude got me hinged. And Sophie Turner, what a babe and a half. X-men always has a good cast. It’s a shame 2 hours weren’t enough to utilize such talent. But James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.. ugh what great boys. Would endure the whole thing again for my babes. Despite all this, I’m still excited about Mr. Sinister! (There’s a post-credit scene in this one, guys. Don’t leave the theater just yet.) Please please please Bryan, make it work. Caveat: I’m only a fan of the movies. I have yet to read the comics. After the Bar maybe.

[ezramaria]

Top Five Winona movies

1. Mermaids 2. Heathers 3. Girl, Interrupted 4. Reality Bites 5. Edward Scissorhands Cos nostalgia