Photograph taken one October day at Universal Studios (LA), 2008.

Anywayy, J, M, and I — we love talking and analyzing movies (and TV series) whenever we get together, among other things. We can dissect Lake House to no end and still have more to discuss the next chance we get. Sometimes, we would talk about fictional characters as if they’re our friends, and contemplate about their fictional lives with a passion. And that’s just the thing with movies. They move us, wimmen (maybe not all, forgive me for generalizing), into feeling as if we’re somehow involved, making us analyze our own lives in comparison.

But what really makes me sad (or frustrated) about watching movies is the element of time.

In movies, 20 years is something that can be jammed into a 4-minute video montage ala music video. (Think Ellie & Carl’s life together, my most favorite 4 minutes in the history of Pixar). In movies, you only have to endure 2 hours to know what’s going to come out of a story. Letters sent back and forth over a period of three years while trying to keep a long distance affair (ala Dear John) are made to look endurable. Ten years in Carrie Bradshaw’s life becomes a mere 2-minute narration.

In movies, it’s easy to just insert a blank screen with the words “after [so-and-so number of] years”, and conveniently leave out those years off the story altogether. But truth is, that transition, that part which gets cut off from the movie, is the most agonizing of all.

I kinda feel like I’m in that part of my life right now — that blank screen. I know I’m heading towards my “somewhere, someday,” but waiting and working for it is soo agonizing that I sometimes wish I have a golden thread so I can skip through parts, or, just like the movies, pull out that transitional blank screen. Except that this is real life, and one life can’t be all defining moments happening one after another, it has to have the long monotonous moments in between too. I mean, sure I don’t want to skip through 10 years of my life and miss out on actually living it. It’s really just the transitions that make me anxious and impatient.

It’s like.. Blahblahblah, zzzzz, blahblah, WOW! Blahblahblah, zzz, blahblah, WOW! Rinse, repeat. Meh, that’s some seriously disturbing alien talk right there, but you do get what I’m saying right? Can we just skip to the WOWs? :)

And this, my friends, is what I mean by Hollywood’s way of making me over analyze things. And frankly, I’m quite not sure yet if that’s a good thing or not.

Also, I blame this to the hormones, poor defenseless hormones. And the coffee.

1. Awakened my long forgotten childhood crush on Joseph Gordon Levitt, the then-little boy who made me believe in Angels (in the Outfield), and made me wish I was Larisa Oleynik in 10 Things I Hate About You.

2. Made me doubt my gender, at least for 2 hours, especially whenever Zooey Deschanel looked straight at me the camera through her long eyelashes, or sang a song (*to die by your side is such a heavenly way to die*), or smiled, or laughed.

3. Left me hanging on my seat until the credits ended, partly because I wanted to see the titles of the songs that were used in the movie, mostly because the entire 2 hours made me feel like I needed extra 15 minutes to absorb what just happened there.

4. Made me download The Smiths,

5. the entire (500) Days of Summer OST,

6. a (500) Days of Summer wallpaper,

7. and Ringo Star’s Octopus’ Garden.

8. Prompted me to schedule a trip to the mall as soon as it opens tomorrow later to finally get a bed frame and Christmas lights to put up in my bedroom. I don’t know why I’ve put that one off this long.

9. Made me want to sit in a crowded park and scream words I don’t dare say in front of our Pastor. And my Mom.

10. Made me want to watch it alone. No, wait. Done that.

11. Made me google photos of Zooey’s pretty dresses, skirts, vests and jackets. (And think about when to go dress-shopping again.) ♥

12. Made me miss riding buses and trains.

13. Made me want to laugh like no one’s watching and say with confidence, “Who cares, I’m happy.”

14. Inspired me to appreciate beauty in random places (like old buildings and empty park benches and cheesy greeting cards).

15. Inspired me to be like Summer, who knew when to give all or reserve some for herself, who had the courage to decide when to step back or take the leap, who knew when the answer was “no” or when it was time to say “yes”.

16. Made me want to be someone’s Summer, to feel how it’s like to be someone’s obsession again.

17. Inspired me to be like Tom, who loved like he’s not scared of getting his heart broken, who found strength to get out of whatever rut he’s in to find (and fight for) what made him happy, who had the courage to love, to get hurt, to feel.

18. Made me accept the grim reality that I’m uncool (because watching romantic comedies are, to me, life-altering experiences), a masochist (because I enjoy movies that end with broken hearts), and a closet romantic (because movies like this *points to the photo* make me like this *points to myself*), rolled into one misunderstood human being.

It’s quite a relief to blurt these things out. You know.

Watching T.R. Knight in the previous seasons made me feel both sad and sentimental, knowing he won’t be in Season 6 anymore. Especially since they *killed* George’s character in the story, unlike the other former GA characters — Preston Burke, Erica Hahn — who just left the hospital but not died. Shonda Rhimes has given George a grand exit, something that comes with finality, no possible comebacks in the future, no resurrecting the dead (I’m pretty sure they won’t do another Denny Duquette).

Which is sad, because I’ve always loved George, and losing one of the original “interns” in the show is just.. tragic.

Tomorrow on Grey’s Anatomy Season 6’s 2-hour pilot episode, George O’Malley’s burial:

Christina Yang (Sandra Oh), Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl), Alex Karev (Justin Chambers)

Alex and Izzie

Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo)

Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey)

Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd)

Richard Webber (James Pickens, Jr.) and Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh)

Amanda, the girl George sacrificed his life for (Shannon Lucio)

*Weird that I couldn’t find Chandra Wilson in any of these spoiler photos.

Looks like this one’s going to be one sad story.

I know it’s crazy to be mourning over a fictional character, but if you’ve been following a TV series and wasting bandwidth over downloads for the past 5 years, it just doesn’t feel right to not be sentimental over fictional deaths, and to not feel like you know them, and to not miss their clumsiness, and loyalty, and laughter, as if they’re real people.

George O’Malley’s death aside, I thought Season 5 was Grey’s Anatomy’s best season so far, and it would be interesting to find out how Shonda Rhimes and the GA writers would follow through, with Izzie Stevens’ continuous battle with cancer, and Alex Karev (the jerk who’s been sleeping around and once transmitted syphilis to a bunch of people) now being married, and Derek & Meredith together forever at last, and Christina Yang’s new relationship with Owen Hunt, and Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, etc, etc.

I’m excited to find out what’s next.

Four books (all old titles) for barely P100 each. I was happy with my buys. I would’ve gotten more but I didn’t want to waste all night with Ivy and R following me around. LOL.

Now I’ve never really been one to have her nose in a book all the time, but I’ve been trying to get back to the habit lately for the sake of online-offline life balance. And how can you read books and not think of being a writer, right? The more I read books, the more I come face to face with my frustrations as a writer. And that’s just the case with me lately.

I’ve always wanted to be a *real* writer. I feel like a fraud, claiming that I am a writer at one point in my life when every single day for the past 5 years I struggle being one, groping for words and getting my tenses confused all the time, thinking of other career options I could pay my bills with but couldn’t find any.

In my frustration, I had this really short and sweet conversation with R in the car on the way back from MOA:

Me: I want to be a writer!
R: But you are a writer! You write! In your blog!
Me: *rolling my eyes* But that’s just a blog! I write yucky posts!
R: Then write a.. yucky book.

I’ve always thought R was a genius. In all fairness to him, he was driving at that time.

*Sigh*

The frustration continues.

That part when Carl Fredricksen was flipping through the pages of his wife Ellie’s Adventure Book (right when he finally reached the Paradise Falls) — that part did it for me. For the first time, Carl found out that the empty pages he thought Ellie was reserving for the “stuff she’s (I’m) going to do” when she reached the ultimate destination of her childhood dreams, she was actually filling with photos of their life together.

That was my aww-moment, the one part in the movie that brought tears to my eyes, the scene that made me look into my life and ponder on my dreams and wonder what the pages of my book would look like when that time of my life came by.

I have a soft spot for anything that brings forth thoughts about dreams and destinations. Now give me a Disney/Pixar animation made up of dreams, places, photographs, balloons, talking dogs, and *cough* a shy little boy who fell in love with a bossy little girl (Ellie: “You don’t talk very much. I like you!“) *cough*, and I’m all there.

There’s much to say about the movie and its characters, but for this post I shall focus on Carl, the old man who hooked his house to strings of balloons. I see a great deal of myself in his character, save for his being autistic and introverted (shut up, I’m not autistic and introverted). His perseverance and stubbornness are so familiar that I feel like I’m the 26-year-old female version of him. Actually, consider yourself lucky if you’ve read that last sentence because I’m usually too stubborn to admit that I am, uh, stubborn.

So you know the story, because I’m sure you’ve seen it already. (No, wait, you haven’t seen it? Go away, you wouldn’t want to read the next sentence.) When Ellie passed away, Carl did everything in his power to make their childhood dreams come true, and went all that way to Paradise Falls only to realize that they, in fact, for so many years, were already living their dreams.

Sometimes we have to reach that one destination to appreciate that the journey was the true realization of our dreams.

I reckon that’s the beauty of chasing after your dreams (*ehem* self-plug). Sure, you need to focus on the goal (”begin with end in mind,” my Dad would often quote), work hard for it, take the plunge if you must. But you also have to keep your eyes open because surely, something amazing (like, I dunno, meeting a little boy scout who’s as stubborn as you are, or discovering a colorful Ostrich-like bird who loves chocolates, or finding the love of your life) is bound to surprise you along the way and change your life forever.

You gotta learn a thing or two from cartoons, you know.

Watch Up, if you haven’t yet. The talking dogs will blow you away. ;)

DAY TWENTYEIGHT. Confession: I had nightmares of real-life friends committing suicide during the few weeks that I was reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides. No drama, just them doing their normal day-to-day activities with slashed #wrists. It wasn’t really creepy, mind you, it was more of funny really, but still weird.

This morning, on my desk

I’m not saying that The Virgin Suicides was so disturbing it brought me nightmares, nope. I reckon it’s really just how it is with books. Compared to watching films, reading books allows you to imagine the story yourself and create your own pictures in your head, and it just so happened that my imaginations involved my real life friends. Er.

Now movie-fying a novel is something else. Sometimes, we really have to stop comparing a book to its movie version (and vice versa) if we don’t want to disappoint ourselves.

Exhibit A: I remember reading Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk To Remember long before there were news of a film version. My high school self cried over the pages of Jamie Sullivan’s life, and I remember it well because I didn’t read a lot in high school (save for the Sweet Valley High and Love Stories phase we all had to go through) and AWTR was the first book I ever really shed tears over. The only other book I couldn’t put down in high school was Catcher in the Rye, but that’s a different story. Watching AWTR’s movie version was a disappointment, I remember clearly, because I kept comparing it to the book, and I didn’t like how the movie ended with Jamie’s death. To me, the book had a create-your-own-ending thing going on, and in my ending, Jamie survived cancer and lived a full life with Landon. In the movie, she died.

Exhibit B: It’s just like how I didn’t enjoy watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince the first time around. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy these movies. It’s just that comparisons between the book and the movie are inevitable and they can make or break the movie altogether.

Now there are movies, on the other hand, that are better than their book version.

Exhibit C: P.S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern is the most boring book ever. (I only took time to read it because the other P.S. I Love You by Barbara Conklin — the real P.S. I Love You where P.S. was Paul Strobe — was an integral part of my adolescence, and anything with the same title is subject to serious scrutiny). Then again, however sucky and dragging and emotionless the book was, the movie (featuring Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler) is something I wouldn’t mind playing over and over again.

Exhibit D: I didn’t get to finish reading The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger because I thought the chronology of events was confusing. Mae, however, after reading the book, declared it to be “the greatest love story ever”, but that’s Mae, and she’s a masochist, so her thoughts are not counted. Hah! (Just kidding, I trust Mae’s judgment with all my heart.) And because it’s the “greatest love story ever”, Joni, Mae and I watched it last night and we all agreed that the movie version was better than the book.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is pretty much “up there”, joining the ranks of the classics — Casablanca, Titanic haha, Gone with the Wind, and Romeo & Juliet. Rachel McAdams was the perfect Clare, and Eric Bana’s tushy was indeed interesting to.. uhm, watch. Seriously though, TTW is one of the most awesome love story I’ve ever seen in the past decade. It’s the kind of film that makes you confused if you’re going to cry or smile, so you end up doing both. It’s the kind that makes you ponder about life, and how love is tested by time, and time measured by love; the kind that makes you want to embrace the consequences of your choices in the past without having regrets long after the closing credits have gone and you’re back home in your bed with just your thoughts.

And you know how romantic comedies that reach this certain level of awesome are rare, especially when the book it was adapted from was mediocre. So yeah, kudos to The Traveler’s Wife, the movie.

Lastly,

..there are movie adaptations that are just as you read in the book, spot on.

Exhibit E: So now I try to transition back to The Virgin Suicides after such a long introduction (LOL, I really started this post with the intention of writing about The Virgin Suicides, and there I was ranting a truckload about other books and movies). Ugh. So.. The Virgin Suicides. I read the book, had a couple of nightmares, and the other day, when I finally watched the movie I just recently finished downloading, I was so amazed that I did what I’d always do about these important matters of my life: I twitted about it. (Oh, and Mara agreed in an instant!)

You just can’t NOT TWIT about watching TVS. No really. Try watching it.

Kirsten Dunst played the role of Lux Lisbon so perfectly, justifying her very description in the book as being “the stillpoint of a turning world.” Josh Hartnett was the omyy-is-that-you-Josh-Hartnett-perfect Trip Fontaine. (The long retro hair did it, IMO). The boys and their proper manners, the high-waist jeans and printed neckties, the prom night and the girls’ matching dresses that were sewn out of the same fabric, Cecilia and her laminated photos of Virgin Mary, Bonnie’s first kiss under the bleachers, Lux waking up alone in the football field after the prom — they were all *almost* as they were described in the book. More importantly, the Lisbon sisters were just as I imagined them to be — not psychos, but happy and beautiful kids enjoying their youth as best as their situation would allow them. (Other than Lux, Mary Lisbon will always be my favorite). Even the narrations were exactly as in the book!

The Virgin Suicides, however ancient the film is, is something worth waiting days to download for. Trust me.

I’m not sure if I enjoyed the book or the movie more than the other. If something this rare happens to you, then the story must be really good.

30 Days of Awesome,  28/30.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is, one can’t help it when the best times to get engrossed in a book are while in transit or in bed before she sleeps. How awesome is it that LightWedge actually thought of creating something to aid this form of rebellion?!

12/30. Reading a Book in the Dark

The LightWedge Book-Light is probably the greatest invention since toasted bread. (No wait, was it sliced bread?) Would you look at that:

Isn’t that the most awesome thing? :)

It’s another one of R’s gifts. It still makes my heart flutter how he would be supportive of the things I’m obsessed about — like finding a typewriter, or collecting toy cameras, or sitting through a 3-hour movie not just once but twice — you know? ♥

Okay, I wasn’t blogging about him, although I think he’s awesome too. I was blogging about this awesome book-light that he *secretly* got and paid for while I was wandering around the area where the pretty notebooks are in one of our trips to Fully Booked.

(By the way, can I just say that Fully Booked is heaven?)

Since then, I’ve been carrying around my book and this lightsaber, er, book-light, to bed at night, and everywhere I go lest I get stuck in traffic somewhere — at least I get to spend the idle time doing something worthwhile.

I’m still reading The Virgin Suicides right now, but I like having a stack of books ready anytime I’m finished with the current one. I recently got a Murakami and a Nicholas Sparks, so I have a choice between something philosophical and something that doesn’t require too much thinking. And woot, I tell you, these books are much more interesting to read in the dark! Think Inkheart, minus the part where the characters come to life, of course, that part’s creepy in real life, not awesome.

Hi, Mom. Hi, Lola. Proud of me? :)

Okay. Enough of this. I go read now.

30 Days of Awesome, 12/30.