to the great perhaps

Birdy - Not About Angels | The Fault in our Stars Soundtrack

I've decided, since her Bon Iver's Skinny Love cover apart from her self-titled album, that Birdy's brand in music is "hauntingly beautiful while being beautifully haunting". And I've never felt so right about that until this ~yet again~ heart-breaking song. Did I say it's an original this time? Oh, and it's for the ‪#‎TFIOSMovie‬. Needless to say, it's going to tug your heartstrings.

So far, I cannot be more excited to leak legit water from my eyes if--and I hope--this song plays when Hazel reads Augustus' letter. I feel that the lyrics are aptly fitting on that part of the story because the song is sort of a juxtaposition of Hazel and Augustus' struggles in their relationship (or should I say their "little infinity") before and especially after Augustus' death. (Yes, he died. I'm not spoiling anyone here, am I? Either way, I feel for you.)

First time

T'was everything after me

That, too, was the last--

The last time

You had to stay awake

to watch me sleep until morn

You were never tired to read for me

The last time

Your hazel eyes weren't pure

the same time they were the purest

You cried me a river

The last time

When the sun shone out of you

When you swore to never love again

You begged me not to go

The last time you laid eyes on me...

The Crush (2010) | written and directed by Michael Creagh | review by Wea Pabularcon

When the Finger is Younger the Trigger

Assuming the role of an expert assassin, hardly ever in real life have second grader put a grown man into trembling knees, begging the mercy of the pistol-handed toddler.

With a nomination for an Academy Award Live Action Short Film during the 83rd Academy Awards in 2010 though, first-timer Michael Creagh who wrote and directed The Crush have magnificently managed to show just that like a crime scene of that sort is a typical stroll in the park.

Adorably told following the innocent life of Ardal Travis—played by Oran Creagh, the writer and director’s son— this eight-old wonder is smitten with his second grade teacher, Miss Purdy who is known in real life is known as the lovely Olga Wehrly. He pursues this admiration one day after class by sealing the deal about his feelings—what more charming way, you ask—by putting a ring on it, of course.

Not for long though, Ardal is left with an unfathomable jealousy and wrath upon seeing that Miss Purdy’s finger isn’t clasped by his hard-earned-money-costing toy ring and is replaced by a real engagement ring from Pierce—portrayed   Rory Keenan— her fiancé. As if enough trouble has been made, Ardal’s rival to the teacher is apparently a jerk—a character Keenan delivered only so well. With a hasty revelation of guts, Ardal confronts Pierce who is waiting for the lady in the parking lot, challenging to bring a gun and meet him the next day after school.

In a swift and straight manner, the camera spans quickly to the damned day and exposes Ardal’s firm and threatening plan. Although accused of being “too short” for Miss Purdy, Ardal faces Pierce as if no man in his right mind is remotely deserving to be standing in front of him. Right there and then, the man trapped inside the little boy’s body initiates a fight—to the death!

Taking the viewers to such safe points of juvenile adoration and then pulling a trigger to defy the norms of a largely stereotyped society where safe and safe and safe is the limit of the little ones, this film have touched all imaginable lines there are to cross, thrashed all the clichés about roles of children there are to rebuff and outstood all pretentious, complicated films—short and full-length—there are that have tried so hard to prove a simple point.

Looking for Alaska (2005) | written by John Green | review by Wea Pabularcon

Hardly ever have teen angst and profanity turn such a story around that a lot of people in all ages can relate to the characters. With a 2006 Michael L. Printz Award, John Green’s first young adult novel tells more than enough to rebuff that understatement.

Told from the protagonist’s perspective, sixteen year-old Miles Halter is a long- time non-event teenager who likes and has a knack in memorizing people’s last words. Heading off town to Birmingham, Alabama, he engages with one quotation from his collection of famous last words after his leaving-for-a-boarding-school party to seek Francois Rabelais’s “Great Perhaps.”

Leaving sweaty Florida for a lot hotter Culver Creek, he meets his roommate and soon-to-be best friend, Chip “The Colonel” Martin, a dirt-poor scholar genius who blows smoke rings to fight bugs and he who then names him “Pudge”.

Soon enough, he is introduced to The Colonel’s circle of friends. One of whom is Alaska Young. She is an over-thinking bookworm who lives within the admiring eyes of every guy in the campus, Pudge’s included—too devastatingly attractive, actually, for a self-destructive teenager.

Just as he is opting to find his great perhaps, Pudge is left with another puzzle to solve. Upon Alaska’s attempt to quiz him about her favorite last words, Pudge has to ponder an even bigger thought along the line of Simon Bolivar’s "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”—which, safe to say, makes an interestingly and equally big central point to dive into for a young-adult read.

During his stay, Pudge’s supposed-to-be-studying nights are spent on mischief and certainly young-and-dumb adventures. In bull nights, which is 1. when they need getting wasted, 2. when they need to get away and 3. just whenever, they dig liquors from a soil compartment and plot pranks to one-up the rich students they tag as the Weekend Warriors.

In all the overnight sessions, Alaska’s story unfolds, hooking readers nearer to the “day” Green refers to as [insert number of day here] days before in each part of the novel.

Chip and Pudge’s conversations are of a new dimension for a clever-for-clever’s-sakes talker. Internal monologues, however, are uncomfortably honest as Pudge’s actual spoken words are often too straight and simple.

Pudge’s narration is an awkward job but he’s overcome just enough obvious struggles to establish his believability. His way of speaking is sweet and sincere and all too innocent around the other characters’ humor, yet Green manages to sew the moods together as one until and beyond the breaking point of the only two parts of the story: before and after.

Emotional depth and troubles among teens are well-covered and sexual circumstances are sophisticatedly drawn; while placeholders of their every misgiving, mostly Alaska’s matter-of-factly caused deeds, can be viewed as loopholes during the [insert number of day here] days after parts of the book in light of understanding everything that has happened between the before and after.

Green takes both the characters and the readers to such safe points of discovery about what happened to that particular day and finally what Pudge got from his search of the great perhaps and his decoding of the labyrinth.  

A soul enlightening tale, I never want to read other people’s great last words more until I stumbled upon this one’s.

Like Crazy (2011) | Written and directed by Drake Doremus; co-directed with Ben York Jones

For the longest time that I've pride myself with adoring stories of love of real people in film and in real life, I have seen different lovers; different types of people loving, people not being loved; different kinds of love. All of them beautiful. All of them painful. And all of them the same. 

This film proved to me how a love story could be all those I had mentioned above and still be all the things that I had never seen in love. This film showed how real pain and unrestricted bliss of being love albeit with young people in young love could be portrayed and be real. This film taught me that while happiness could be achieved, it could never equate to love and love could never mean happiness nor sadness nor any other states of feeling.

My thoughts and feelings after the watching this could only be Anna's words.

"I thought I understood it, that I could grasp it, but I didn't, not really. Only the smudgeness of it; the pink-slippered, all-containered, semi-precious eagerness of it. I didn't realize it would sometimes be more than whole, that the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. Because it's the halves that halve you in half. I didn't know, don't know, about the in-between bits; the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of me." --Anna

Love is an ideal. Life with love is a scatter of gory bits of people; the gory bits of people you love, the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of all your smudgeness. 

Adam (2009) | written and directed by Max Meyers

Af first, I wanted to see Adam for Hugh Dancy. When I already did see it, I could only thank myself enough that I actually did---not for the dreamy gentleman, but more importantly, for I had been opened to yet another perspective I had never quite seen before. 

Adam is a sweet tale of how individuals work on togetherness and being present with each other together with and without the awareness of each other. On the other hand, Adam is an amazingly brilliant guy with Asperger's Syndrome  trapped in a body of both life's tragic and wonder. The story-telling is specific and deep-seated in much the same way that Adam is comfortably accepting of his disorder. Both Adams are an experience to my parched palate. 

Although, I refuse to believe that it's a love story even though that's how Adam's story had been told and without the Beth (the love interest), Adam's story would have been told differently. For me, not knowing anything about Asperger's ever before, I took it as more of light and compassionate approach to really show the society how people with disorder/s could be. I mean, of course, it's easy to think that they're only as normal as we would decide to look at them. But that's also the same for the disorder-inflicted people. We're only as streotypically normal as they would like to believe. 

Understanding Asperger's Syndrome as how Adam put it, "one thing about it is not knowing what people are thinking." And maybe that's the only difference that the disorder makes... that all other disorders make. We oftentimes mistake these people having unfortunate wonders in their bodies and mind with misguided judgments not knowing what these people may be experiencing--things that we'll never have a clue about unless we fall to the same situation they're in. But what we oftentimes skip is the counterpart of that act.

I can only imagine and go back to Adam's story in hopes that I could get a grasp of how social interaction and the lack of it affect everyone. And Max Mayers had done an incredible job in providing material to supply that understanding. 

"My favorite children's book is about a little prince  who came to Earth from a distant asteroid. He meets a pilot whose plane has crashed in a desert. The little prince teaches the pilot many things but mainly about love. My father always told me I was like the little prince. But after I met Adam, I realized I was the pilot all along..." --Beth

 Skinny Love (2011) | cover by Birdy 

Some Boys Don't Leave (2009) written by Maggie Kiley and Matthew Mullen; directed by Maggie Kiley

a 14-minute long film. "...the story of what happens when the break-up happens but the break does not." emotionally disturbing but heart-wrenchingly sad. awesome ost.

Also, It's going to have a sequel.  Or just the follow- up withthe whole story with a typical-movie length. Well, not really though. But it's connected to another film. It's sort of a version of the other which is going to be called Lights Years, I think, that's set to be released this year. Different actors are playing in each film so Jesse won't be in the 2013 version which stars Chris Lowell. 

Upside Down (2012) written and directed by Juan Solanas

(Tumblr won't embed the video so here's the link to it.)

"...special congratulations to you graduates. Before we get to the Life Advice You'll Soon Forget portion of the program, I want to engage in a time-honored tradition of American commencement addresses: Stealing from other commencement addresses, in this case one by the children's television host Fred Rogers. Think, if you will, of some of the people who helped get you to today, people who've loved you and without whose care and generosity you might not have found yourself here, graduating from Butler, or watching someone you love graduate, or seeing your students graduate. Think for one minute of those who have loved you up into this day. I'€™ll keep the time.

(1 minute of silence)

Those people are so proud of you today. We will return to those people soon, but first I have to deliver terrible news, which is that you are all going to die. This is another time-honored tradition of American celebration, the Raining on the Parade. I remember when I got married, the priest devoted most of his homily to telling me how challenging and laborious marriage would be, and I kept thinking, "Well, sure, but can'€™t we talk about that, like, TOMORROW?" But no, it simply cannot wait. You are going to die. Also everything you ever make and think and experience will be washed away by the sands of time, and the Sun will blow up and no one will remember Cleopatra ruling Egypt or Crick and Watson untangling the structure of DNA or Ptolemy fathoming the stars or even that improbably wonderful Gonzaga game.

So that'€™s unfortunate.

But I would argue that it'€™s good to be aware of temporariness when you are thinking about what you want to do with your life. The whole idea of this commencement speech is that I'm supposed to offer you some thoughts on how you might live a good life out there in the so-called Real World, which by the way I assure you is no more or less real than the one in which you have so far found yourselves." 

I love reading or hearing commencement speeches. It lifts you up from a bad mood and insisting frustrations and lack of faith in life or in yourself. Even I am heading nowhere in college. Although really, I'm doing good enough. But that's the point exactly, I'm doing just good enough. And with the pressure the society, family expectations and personal goals put, it's hard not to be hard on myself sometimes. 

But hell, I've been felling better even after discovering there's not much food in the fridge for me to munch on as soon as I've finished reading this. It helps to feel understood or heard by someone even if you first have to do the understanding on his part before yours. In the case of learning from others, that is.

It's food for the soul, knowing and learning from familiar yet new words from people of different fields and places. It keeps you grounded yet floating. A little enlightenment from time to time is not bad, I guess.

All exaggeration aside, I think what feeds the soul overrides the hunger of the body. Wow... Did. I. Just. Say. That. Yep, food for the soul working... digesting.

"When I was in college, I remember hearing the story of Dorothy Parker typing out the words, "Please god, let me write like a man." Even if I didn't know my own reading bias, I understood at once, instinctively. It was the way to legitimacy. Men wrote of Big Things that Mattered. Sure, some of them were endlessly introspective. Yes, the big things that mattered were often penises. Also, sex. Also sex with penises. Also, girls, and how difficult and incomprehensible and unattainable we are for some sex with penises. It was like the penis was literally the magical eleventh finger that allowed you to write, and if I could just GROW ONE SOMEHOW, or imagine it into being, I would gain the abilities I so desired." - Maureen Johnson on The Gender Coverup

I think I just fell in love with this penis-speaking awesomeness that is Maureen Johnson. True enough, I've read more male-written books than books written by women. For as long as I can remember, I have only dared read some by three different female authors.Two of which books, 10 books combined, were series though, so that's not so bad. But maybe it is... versus the even greater number of books by male authors I've read. There's something about penises. Really. Even my significantly top favorite author is a guy. 

But that shouldn't matter, as she very well said...

"Maybe this idea that there are "girl books" and "boy books" and "chick lit" and "whatever is the guy equivalent of chick lit"* gives credit to absolutely no one, especially not the boys who will happily read stories by women, about women. As a lover of books and someone who supports readers and writers of both sexes, I would love a world in which books are freed from some of these constraints. Maybe we should do boys the favor we girls received -- a reading diet featuring books by and about the opposite sex. Clearly, it must work.

We're told not to judge books by them, but... EVERYBODY DOES. That is what they are for. They are the packages that get your attention, that give you messages about what to expect."

What she said.  Made you think, didn't it? I  did.

(Here's the slideshow of a coverflip challenge she initiated. Pretty interesting.) 

Ruby Sparks (2012), written by Zoe Kazan and directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton

Liberal Arts (2012), written and directed by Josh Radnor

It's an hour and a half worth of liberal pondering without the heavy cerebral baggage; for people who 1. love books (not just reading) 2. find what most people find boring not boring (lol what) 3. like being traditional 4. are curious about how hobo-hipster/liberal thinker zac efron still looks like an attractive motherfucker nonetheless 5. can't separate josh radnor from ted mosby just because 6. know the man with the red hat 7. have or haven't seen (lest, I recommend you watch) HappyThankYouMorePlease 8. hate the Twilight Saga 9. need a good laugh or two and 10. admire humble story-telling.

Finally!