Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 313

Nothing but a blip

Film is a language, we often forget, with its own grammar and vocabulary. To watch The Tree of Life, the new film by Terrence Malick, is to visit a strange and marvelous country. It is almost lost to us, shouted down by a market that demands the familiar and reassuring. My review of The Tree [...]

The Weekend Playlist: Chris Everingham (Updated: What's Novak Djokovic doing here?)

All right, you've seen the Bench underwear ad with the members of the Philippine rugby team, you have the behind-the-scenes video on a loop, now you know what we've had to put up with all year—trudging after these troglodytes in different countries when we could've been watching the extended edition of Berlin Alexanderplatz or reading [...]

The Weekend Playlist: Chris Everingham

All right, you've seen the Bench underwear ad with the members of the Philippine rugby team, you have the behind-the-scenes video on a loop, now you know what we've had to put up with all year—trudging after these troglodytes in different countries when we could've been watching the extended edition of Berlin Alexanderplatz or reading [...]

Living Tree

After I bought the cockroach traps in the supermarket I went up to National Bookstore to see what was new. I was there on Wednesday, but stocks change fast. A few days earlier there was a stack of hardcover copies of Moondogs, a novel set in the Philippines, written by Alexander Yates who'd gone to [...]

Too exalted for cockroach-hunting

Koosi my eldest cat used to be quite scrawny. Here she is in 2006, aged 7, with our voodoo doll for World Cup. She was finicky about her food, rejecting several brands of kibble outright. We asked our vet Mayem (at Pendragon Veterinary Clinic in QC) what we could give Koosi to improve her appetite; [...]

Auntie Janey's Old-Fashioned Agony Column # 18: Snap out of it!

Dear Auntie Janey, I've been been dreaming of my 2 ex-boyfriends. I have not spoken to them for so long. I have been single for more than 3 years. Thoughts of them linger with me every night and I hate that. I don't want them in my dreams. But somehow, sometimes, I do miss one [...]

Pulitzer-winning Fil-American journalist outs himself as undocumented immigrant

Jose Antonio Vargas is a former reporter for The Washington Post and shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. He founded Define American, which seeks to change the conversation on immigration reform. He also wrote that New Yorker profile of Mark Zuckerberg that we linked to here. My Life as an [...]

Pulitzer-winning Fil-American journalist reveals he is undocumented immigrant

Jose Antonio Vargas is a former reporter for The Washington Post and shared a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. He founded Define American, which seeks to change the conversation on immigration reform. He also wrote that New Yorker profile of Mark Zuckerberg that we linked to here. My Life as an [...]

Spider-Man is dead.

Those with a sensitive disposition should look away now: Spider-Man is set to meet an unpleasant end in a new comic. The conclusion of the Death of Spider-Man story from Marvel's Ultimate Comics will see Peter Parker's alter ego succumb to his nemesis the Green Goblin, dying in the arms of Mary Jane following a [...]

"Sabihin mo sa driver ilabas ang Mercedes na charcoal grey." We worry about the Temptation Island remake but would watch it anyway.

The original cast of Temptation Island: Bambi Arambulo, Azenith Briones, Jennifer Cortez, Deborah Sun and Dina Bonnevie. In April I got an email from Erwin Romulo about Temptation Island. "I'm currently writing an article about 'Temptation Island' and also its planned remake," he said. "While doing interviews with several people, your name kept cropping up [...]