Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 100

The search for this year’s Gone Girl

Our friend in the book trades reports that every publisher’s rep claims to have this year’s Gone Girl, i.e. a compulsively readable, twisty crime thriller that could become a hit movie and a cultural phenomenon (Do you know how many couples watched the Fincher together in order to reassure themselves that their relationship was not […]

Arbol de Fuego: Cherry Orchard transposed to Negros in the 1970s

Go see Arbol de Fuego, PETA’s adaptation of Cherry Orchard, it’s a hoot. (Why not Jardin de los Cerezos? Because there are no cherries in the Philippines.) We’re not sure it’s Chekhovian and it does not seem Russian to us—granted we are partial to anarchists and epileptics, but it’s certainly Pinoy, specifically Negrense, like a […]

Goodbye, Mr. Nimoy. You have been and always shall be our friend.

Ever generous, even in his final public message. Leonard Nimoy has died. To generations of nerds he was the uncle who would remind us to be logical when faced with ignorance, stupidity, meanness. Apart from playing the original Mr. Spock to perfection he was the host of In Search Of…a TV show that investigated the […]

House of Cards: Ruthless politicians, what a shock

Here’s Kevin Spacey saying “Chos.” Watching House of Cards, the Netflix-produced drama starring Kevin Spacey as American politician Francis Underwood, is destroying my faith in humanity, not that there was a surplus of it to begin with. Adapted from the book by British Conservative Party deputy chair Lord Michael Dobbs and the BBC miniseries based […]

T-Bird At Ako is a screwball comedy disguised as a drama

And we mean that as a compliment because we love screwball comedy. We saw the digitally restored and remastered Danny Zialcita movie T-Bird At Ako last night at the UP Film Center, and it is an absolute scream. Nora Aunor was in attendance, along with Odette Khan who owned every scene she was in, and […]

Watch Sesame Street’s brilliant House of Cards parody

This parody is more nuanced than its subject. We’re doing House of Cards in our TV column on Friday.

“It’s beyond my control”: Dangerous Liaisons at CCP’s Tanghalang Pilipino

According to some critics, the 18th century novelist and army general Pierre Choderlos de Laclos wrote the novel Dangerous Liaisons to expose the perversions of the French ruling class, which would shortly get their comeuppance in the Revolution. In the novel, which unfolds in a series of letters, the ex-lovers and combatants the Marquise de […]

Kingsman: Mr. Darcy goes berserk and we wonder what took him so long

Eyewear maketh man: Colin Firth and Taron Egerton in Kingsman. Kingsman: The Secret Service, Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the Mark Millar comics, is the most fun we’ve had at the movies this year so far, but then we enjoy onscreen violence because it saves us the mess of perpetrating our own. We are totally the […]

Outlander: The female gaze arrives on TV.

(Accidental time-traveller) Claire is rescued by Dougal Mackenzie (Graham McTavish), who leads a band of Scots from Clan Mackenzie, and it should be noted that this is one of very few times she is rescued. The rest of the time she lives by her wits, and since you can’t just tell people you fell through […]

Gabby Barredo’s Opera: Nightmare laboratory

We made sure to see Gabby Barredo’s exhibit Opera at Silverlens before it closed. Barredo’s work is always a blast, like fairy tales run amok. This show reminded us of cinematic nightmares. Like the giant with eyes on its hands in Pan’s Labyrinth. This one could be a dentist’s chair from Marathon Man. Dr. Zell […]