Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 106

New Yorkers discover embutido

Read The Rich Tradition of Filipino Embutido in the New York Times. After reading this piece we looked up Elvie’s Turo-Turo in the East Village and found out that it has closed. Nooooo! Good, cheap embutido: Teresita’s of Guagua. We haven’t been to New York in years. We should go this year.

Maggie Gyllenhaal rules The Honourable Woman as a drowsy baroness.

As Nessa Stein, the Anglo-Israeli title character of the BBC mini-series The Honourable Woman, Maggie Gyllenhaal looks like she needs a good, long nap. She enunciates each syllable carefully, draws out her sentences, slowly elongates her neck and stretches her limbs like a languid giraffe. She can’t even stand straight without clutching the rostrum, one […]

Every movie we see #6: The Babadook is a Bring Your Own Monsters horror feast.

3. Torn Curtain. In one of the Hitchcocks we’d never seen, Paul Newman plays an American nuclear scientist who is apparently defecting to East Germany. His plan is nearly foiled when his sniveling secretary/fiancee Julie Andrews thinks he really is defecting and follows him to East Berlin. “Somehow we couldn’t believe Paul Newman was a […]

Do you have an appointment in Manila on Friday? Reset.

It’s the annual procession of the Black Nazarene and 15 million people are expected to attend. More people will surely be present at the Papal visit. We’re going North.

Dear Uncle Haruki: Murakami to write an advice column

Haruki Murakami with cat. TOKYO, Jan 06, 2015 (AFP) – Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is to offer advice to troubled readers in an agony uncle column on his website, his publisher said Tuesday. The website, named “Murakami-san no tokoro” or “Mr. Murakami’s place” will solicit problems from fans of the surrealist, whose novels are published […]

Every movie we see in 2015. Bonifacio: Ang Unang Pangulo is a handsome diorama.

New year, new record. 1. The Green Ray. We had seen this a few years ago, but as with many Eric Rohmer movies we weren’t sure we had. We couldn’t recall the plot, because nothing much really happens in Eric Rohmer movies. A young man walks around the neighborhood where his crush lives, hoping to […]

Five songs we’ve been listening to all day

We have resolved to listen to more contemporary music and vary our usual playlist of bebop, Tom Waits and other singers who sound like escaped circus bears. The St. Vincent is Mat the cat’s favorite song. His other favorite song is These Days by Nico. (How to tell which songs a cat really likes: If […]

What is your New Year’s Resolution?

Photos: Cat and Hospital by Ricky Villabona 1. Finish second novel. (First one done, will never be published.) 2. Read Swann’s Way. Tell. If you make them public, the possibility of embarrassment might make you stick to your resolutions.

Every movie we see 2014: the final accounting

127. The Theory of Everything. Eddie Redmayne is spectacular, the movie not so. Reviewed here. 128. Maratabat. Reviewed here. 129. Stolen Kisses 130. Bed and Board. Sequels to The 400 Blows. They don’t live up to The 400 Blows, but we like them all the same. 130. Starter for 10. While organizing our DVDs (we […]

How much do you love the Cumberbatch?

Photo by Chris Buck for the New York Times Jana Prikryl, a senior editor at the New York Review of Books, had a poem about Benedict Cumberbatch published in the London Review of Books. Thinking of Benedict Cumberbatch and his mind (stay with me), I resolved on the importance of character, specifically as a function […]