SilverLining is now Walking.In.Colour.
Honestly speaking, I’m no fan of foodcourts — they’re packed, they’re loud, and you can’t help but rush because really, it’s not good manners to hog tables when other people have yet to be seated. However, foodcourts do have a startling advantage: food selection. From fast food to home-cooking to foreign cuisine, the wide array of food choices is their meanest card — trump card, and they’re out to win. Win customers, of course.
SM Bacoor Foodcourt, to which I owe yet another experience, is one of those things that will stay with me long after I’m done with food trips, not because of misplaced sentimentality but because of how I came to know of it: while having our house constructed years ago, SM Bacoor became sort of the mall to go to while my parents and contractor supervised the construction and SM Bacoor Foodcourt became that “hot spot” of weird cousin bonding with, well, my cousins and siblings. A good story to tell, that one, but I digress. This entry’s to talk about foodcourt dining experience, not the antics of crazy relatives after all.
Foodcourt dining is no dining experience to write home about, but the variety you are presented with deserves to go down in the history of food choices, if there were ever one. Of course, you can’t forget to take into consideration the simplest factor with which to judge food sold anywhere: taste. There’s just something so fundamentally right about simple food eaten at a simple location that the fanciest food establishment can’t possibly hope to imitate — some things just taste wonderfully different when consumed somewhere intrinsically Filipino. That’s not to say that foodcourt dining is exclusively Filipino, but, not to sound terribly cheesy, SM Bacoor Foodcourt dining is distinctly Filipino in that it cultivates an atmosphere filled with scents you grow up with and chatter that’s familiar due to years of having heard the tone in which it’s carried.
So, now that all those glitzy words and highfaluting phrasings are out of the way — dun dun dun, here come the drums, here come the drums — let’s talk about what we all love to talk about and indulge in: FOOD.
And first on the list is the most classic of classics — Tapsilog, with a side of banana, please and thank you. Tapsilog — tapa, sinangag, itlog — is supremely Filipino, and yep, SM Bacoor Food court has it with Pinoy Toppings providing the food.
Lechon, of course, is also high on the list. No meal is complete without that artery-clogging dish that’s distinctly Pinoy that foreigners think roasting pig the lechon way is a frontier not frequently visited. Lydia’s Lechon is quaintly settled in SM Bacoor Foodcourt for all and sundry to enjoy.
And whoever said that bibingka is primarily a Christmas delicacy? Of course not. And there’s goto, and Chinese food that’s been entrenched in the Filipino taste for as long as I can remember: siomai, siopao, and wanton noodles.
There are so much more to taste and to have, but sadly, I can only consume so much.
Today has been about a different kind of trip. I’m always lounging in coffee shops, ice cream parlours, and pastry houses, and experiencing “foodcourt foodtrip” once again is kind of nice. Kind of nice in that really nice way, with all the roundabout ways of describing it just to keep things interesting.
WARNING: SPOILERS
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li follows the story of Chun-Li as she finds — and fights — her way to justice. SFTLCL, casting Smallville Kristin Kreuk as Chun-Li, is the second movie to be inspired from the Street Fighter video game franchise, the first being Street Fighter starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as William F. Guile.
Chun-Li grows up as a talented pianist with a mother who’s suffering from cancer. After one of her performances, Chun-Li receives a scroll written in Chinese, and on her way home, she helps a beaten-up strange man with a web tattoo. Soon after, her mother loses the fight against cancer, and she has the scroll translated. Her journey begins as she follows the instructions in the scroll, and she later on meets Gen and learns of her missing father and Bison, the one who kidnapped her father when she was just a child. Her quest for justice and the truth helps her find her father, but it also makes her an unwilling witness to her father’s death. Filled with fighting thugs and eventually, the ultimate villain of all, Bison, this movie follows the same route most films of this genre travel, and in the end, good triumphs over evil.
There isn’t a lot of twists to keep you interested, and worse, the film makes you wish you were watching Van Damme’s Street Fighter again not because it makes you feel nostalgic, but because SFTLCL actually makes SF seem like such a good movie. Yep, Kristin Kreuk was better off being Superman’s leading lady, because not only is her newest movie choppy in its storytelling, but it also suffers from unforgivable clichés and a boring (BORING) flow. The acting is so-so, meaning that if you look at the actors’ acting skills individually, they’re all right, but together? They’re just not convincing enough. The fighting scenes are decent but nothing grand, and where the hell are all the cool poses that are cliché, yes, but fun to watch nonetheless?! The only redeeming factor is Kreuk’s hair buns during the club scene because that’s the only thing that will make you think that you’re watching an adaptation of Street Fighter (and mind you, it’s the only part where Chun-Li looks like Chun-Li).
If you’re looking for a movie that’s worth your money, this isn’t it. It’s as exciting as watching paper — nothing happens! And it being on its third week in the cinemas only means that there isn’t a movie yet to replace it; it’s not because it’s good that the title hasn’t been scrapped out yet from the electronic boards.
I don’t have any praises for this movie. Not a one. I even fell asleep at the beginning, and this is coming from someone who actually thinks the Resident Evil movies are good adaptations when the rest of the world disagrees.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is not legendary…it’s a mistake.
Confessions of a Shopaholic is brilliant author Madeleine Wickham's — more popularly known as Sophie Kinsella — hilarious, chic novel. It centers on Rebecca Bloomwood, a financial journalist whose finances are out of control, but whose addiction — shopping — ultimately leads her to millionaire Luke Brandon whom she’ll eventually fall in love with. And this basically is all the movie has in common with the book.
But it's not all bad; the film has its moments, and Isla Fisher plays Rebecca Bloomwood the way you would picture her in your mind if she were American. She makes the movie fun and brings just enough cuteness, kind of like Amy Adams in Enchanted. And Hugh Dancy, who plays Luke Brandon, is cute and loveable and can be Luke Brandon except he’s not as gorgeous and sharp and sexy as the book says him to be. Still, he’s acceptable and convincing.
The film is simple and shallow, and funny in its simplicity and silly in its shallowness. It’s not something you’d watch again and again, but it’s something you’d watch if you just want brainless romcom to destress. It’s your everyday chick flick, that’s what it is.
I’m not hard to please, and I’ve enjoyed movies that hardcore critics over at Rotten
Tomatoes have all but booed (The Women, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, what-have-you). I don’t look at the itty-bitty details that should supposedly “make a movie.” I don’t criticize the lighting, the script, the director to an inch of their lives. I’m your ordinary movie-goer, but that’s what makes my take on the movie — dare I say significant? — different. Most viewers are just like me, so I say, try it, watch the movie.Confessions of a Shopaholic is a film not meant to be taken seriously. It’s just something to pass time, something to make you laugh, and it does make you laugh (everyone in the movie house was laughing, including me). It is very far from the book, so if you want to enjoy it, don’t compare it. Take it as something totally separate from the novel.
The final verdict? It’s not worth your Gucci, but it’s worth your fake Fendi, and with the financial crisis afoot, that’s not such a bad deal.
~
Fake Fendi – Sex and the City
Music:
Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies opens with a boy sharing his date of death, and, if the title hasn't yet warned you of the mood the movie is taking, then the opening scene surely will.
Grave of the Fireflies revolves around two siblings who have been orphaned and are forced to live off their own meager means. With the constant fear of being bombed and the constant burden of relying only on each other to get through everyday life, the children face a never-ending battle for survival that it's a wonder these two children can still smile. Their fight for survival is even made harder because they are thrust in the world of adults that has no place for two orphans who have nobody else to fall back on but each other, and the saddest thing is that they don't come out as victors.
Set in the grueling days of World War II, the movie narrates the past of the boy, Seita, and his sister, Setsuko, with the boy's ghost narrating in the background and actually revisiting the places they've stayed at and, sadly, reliving every heartrending memory, from learning of their mother's death to the eventual death of the children themselves.
The movie is based on a semi-autobiography of Nosaka Akiyuki, a war survivor whose guilt over his sister's death nudged him to author a book. Both he and Takahata have agreed that the best way to tackle the content of the movie is to use animation. Real live actors would have hampered the depth of the film because of the pressures of special effects, dramatic shots that pan in and out at all the right moments, and pillow shots that depict mundane living but give the movie so much life. There are really just some aspects live action can't accomplish that animation can. The animation actually brings to life the film more so than live action ever could.
Different from animations that spew comedy, jokes, aww moments of cuteness, and bouncy characters that tackle moral, environmental, even political issues, Grave of the Fireflies explores an alley that's more human, that tugs at your heartstrings because you know that something like that actually happened, and that slashes across your reasons that justify war even when you know it victimizes even the innocent. It looks at the other side of the war, the side that is ignored in favor of the glorified experiences of soldiers, the side that makes you see war through the eyes of children whose perception of it is nothing political, or governmental, or worldly; instead, they are made aware of its existence through the horrifying sounds of klaxons that disturb the peace, the angry flashes, the abject sense of loss that overwhelms.
Grave of the Fireflies is the human side of every war movie, and it's the kind that opens your heart and stays with you permanently, drawing tears even long after the credits have finished rolling and the music has stopped playing.
Like the other day, I was excited to try the mandarin orange ice cream we bought (because, really, I've been looking for orange-flavored ice cream since forever and it's just now that I got my hands on it). Then when I got to taste it, I was kind of disappointed because it didn't taste as great as I expected. After the ice cream was all gone and I've brushed my teeth and realized that I might not be able to find orange ice cream in the stores anymore (because it's not that common so they might phase it out), I suddenly realized, hey, it wasn't half bad…it was actually good.
A lot of things in our life are like orange ice cream — at first they aren't anything especially good, but when they're gone, that's when you realize you should have enjoyed them while they lasted.
So I say…le's try to enjoy things that come our way so we don't end up regretting a lot of things.
One scoop of orange ice cream with my life on top, please.