Month: February 2020

Since I managed to get a life this weekend, I will not be posting – I’m having a staycation at Astoria Plaza with my friends to celebrate the February-March birthdays.

On a happier note, I finished Crash Landing On You last night. As far as K-Dramas go, it was truly enjoyable with a cast of characters you get attached to in the end. The leading lady is not annoying, and the leading man is indeed G.G.W. (God’s Gift To Women). It was nice to have a K-Drama that had a message of peace and hopefulness towards the reunification of the Korean peninsula, and I’ll miss this drama a lot.

But come now, the nurse calls. I have to prepare to go. Ciao!

Hello, it’s been quite a week. I filed my resignation and am currently applying for another job, so I’m in the middle of a distorted headspace.

I don’t think I can write much today except for updates. I haven’t been following my resolutions strictly, so there’s that. I started watching the latest trend drama Crash Landing On You, and it’s really good so far.

There’s too much going on in my life to sit down and write, though some may argue that perhaps it’s best to write when life goes flapjacks. We’ll see. As always, let’s do our best and stay healthy!

Running Time: 135 minutes

And oh, what a wonderful 135 minutes those are – if you are a fan of the Louisa May Alcott books “Little Women” and “Good Wives” (which is probably better known as the second part of Little Women).

I think Greta Gerwig is a genius, mostly for how well she understood the story and the characters enough, that I – who has disliked Amy March forever – really loved her too in this film.

Most adaptations focus on Jo March, obviously – but giving Amy infinitely more dimensions (God bless you, Florence Pugh) breathed new life into it. I know the book pretty much by heart and I am mostly set in my ways and opinions on it; Greta Gerwig managed to change my mind and revisit things in a new perspective.

I think a major problem with the Laurie-Amy arc is that it felt too sudden. Like, yeah, Laurie spent time with Amy when she was at Aunt March’s house during Beth’s bout with scarlet fever in Book I, but Laurie was basically a babysitter. Then everything in Europe happened quickly and you just don’t feel like anything except that Laurie settled for Amy to become a legit member of the March family, just because he couldn’t have Jo.

In this film however, they really set it up at every turn so that Amy gets our empathy. Her adoration for Laurie is evident from the start, so much so that when he finally turns to her, it physically hurt me when Florence Pugh tells Timothee Chalamet (aka the most gorgeous Laurie ever, don’t @ me) that she will “not be second to Jo…. Not when I’ve (Amy) loved you my entire life.”

Did you hear that? The sound of my heart breaking? The tissues I used up?

ALSO this adaptation gave us the hottest Professor Bhaer. Good Lord, with his sleeves rolled up and dancing and laughing with Jo? I was dying. The actor’s name is Louis Garrel, I am told by Wikipedia, and he is French so he mostly stars in French films. But get this, he is super duper cute – so it makes you understand how Josephine “Jo” “I’m never going to marry” March would be charmed by him at least. He gave her a set of Shakespeare plays and critiqued her writing. S W O O N.

I need to get back on track now. Saoirse Ronan’s Jo is a lovely, relatable mess. Winona Ryder’s 1994 Jo was also very good, but Saoirse gave her more roughness and vulnerability, which is really very Jo. Her chemistry with Timothee Chalamet was on-point as well, all affectionate and sibling-like. (I should quit my day job and become a full-time Timothee Chalamet stan account – despite having only watched his performance here.)

As is tradition in the Little Women canon, we don’t get much of Beth. I was pleased to see more of the details of her story come to life, though. The dolls she always cared for, the slippers she makes for Mr. Lawrence, and all of that – really, they got most of the details on-point. They show us Amy pinching her nose, rather than using the clothespin too, which is fine I guess.

Emma Watson is always a victim of detail though. They turn her dress pink (again! like Hermione’s Yule Ball dress!) rather than blue. I also wish there were more Daisy/Demi antics because that chapter was a laugh. Truly, I appreciated that the story chose to focus on the aspect of Meg wanting the finer things, a struggle she had to contend with until adulthood, but I wish they also included the part where the society matrons gossiped about her and Laurie to show the expectations people had for Meg, and how she followed her parents’ footsteps and disappointed these in favor of true love.

I also loved the two alternate endings: the one the publisher wanted for Jo which was romance and marriage and babies, but also the one Jo won for herself: independence and a book baby. I’m thrilled Greta Gerwig and the cast really were able to condense such a vast source material and refine everything, even the characters, so that we get this shining example of a well-done and refreshed adapatation. Cheers!

Unpopular opinion: they did not deserve to win the Best Costume Oscar, however. I said what I said. The Oscars are suckers for period costumes, but they don’t see the faulty construction of it all. Ugh.

Song rec of the week: A Party Song (Walk of Shame) by All Time Low

I celebrated my 22nd birthday this week. I am… disheartened. Yesterday, I turned down a job I got accepted for, and the world is generally topsy-turvy. I was hoping someone would wish me a happy birthday, but I guess I’m just down on my luck for that friendship.

Tonight, I think I’ll watch the new Little Women. I wish for better days ahead.

Last night, I watched “Miss Americana”, the Taylor Swift documentary released on Netflix. There I was, in the cover of darkness – my tear-streaked face illumined by the screen of my iPad. Why was I overtly emotional, you ask, dear reader?

I was around nine or ten years old when “Love Story” was first released. I became a huge Taylor Swift fan after. I downloaded the songs on LimeWire (of course) and I would play those every Friday night, while I was playing Club Penguin and Disney Fairies while chatting with friends on Yahoo Messenger.

I’m turning 22 next week. (Yes, of course, I am fully aware that Taylor Swift’s RED album has a song called 22 and that it’s a jam.)  I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan for that long, and it kind of blows my mind.

The first concert I ever went to was for the Speak Now tour here in Manila back in 2011. All my friends, my siblings also loved Taylor Swift – she was universal to us. Fearless got us through the middle part of elementary school. Speak Now brought us to its end. RED guided us through sophomore year, while 1989 graduated high school with us. During one school carnival, someone put in a song request for “New Romantics”, and I remember dancing and singing with my friends through the halls.

Her songs grew with us – through joy and through pain, through heartbreak and the exquisite possibility of love that’s just around the corner.  I was especially keen on how Taylor would use her words and her stories. That was her biggest strength, she admitted in “Miss Americana”. No other musical artist can tell a story like she can.

That is one of my biggest emotional attachments to Taylor Swift. She is a writer. Like me, she has to find the exact words to fit, or else she’d explode. I also relate to the fact that she’s this perpetually misunderstood do-gooder who just wants to do everything right.

So it was painful for me to see Taylor have to undo her belief system and reconfigure her life. At some point, during college and during the time of the Kanye-Kim issue, I took a break from being a fan and she took a break too. I was disappointed with how she handled it, but I knew deep down that I can never stop supporting her. To do so would be like turning my back on a kindred spirit.

In “Miss Americana”, they also showed her writing the songs for Reputation – my least favorite of her albums. I realized while watching that this album was for her. It was her therapy album, a way to unburden all the dark feelings inside her, which is why most of it sounds raw and resentful. It vibes with the diaries I wrote back when I was an angry teenager in high school. But despite all of it, there were still bright spots – Delicate and Gorgeous were hopeful and brighter. My favorite track, Getaway Car, was an admission of guilt.

When Lover came into the picture, I was able to embrace the album openly because Taylor finally sounded happy. She was overcoming everything she had to deal with, and through that process, helped me overcome the everyday I had to deal with too.

I don’t think I will ever fully regret being her fan, because I know she is a person actively seeking growth and goodness. I guess this letter is a thank-you to Taylor, for being herself, all these years. It’s also a thank-you for her music and lyrics, and all the magic we made. Long live!