Tag Archives: Netflix

When the world shut down

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This book/TV series by DC Comics and Warner Bros is about an apocalyptic world, shut down by a virus that caused the Sick. Remember, this story was published in 2018 but the scenes are very 2020/2021. When the world shut down, chaos reigned, it was every man for himself.

The main protagonist, Gus, is a hybrid human-animal. His kind started appearing alongside the virus that has killed millions worldwide. They still don’t know what it is and how to cure it. But somehow they thought killing and harvesting the organs and bone marrow of these hybrids would lead to a cure.

Mind you, these hybrids were children of humans who had just the bad luck of being born during the pandemic that has lasted for 10 yrs. They were born from human parents. Dissected for cure. Get that. So Gus and his kind were hunted down.

So anyway, the scenes played in the series would have been preposterous pre-COVID-19. But having endured the pandemic chaos here, yeah, I can say everything is possible as the scenes played in the DC Comic/TV Series are all too familiar to us. ✅ The world is run by military guys/militia of some sort who think the way forward is ham-fisted rule, killing at will, and no care for the little people. And pretend they know what they’re doing. (Oh lord, sounds like the Philippines). ✅ People suspected of being infected by the virus were shunned, vilified, or worse, sent to summary execution (sounds like the early days of COVID-19 pandemic here) ✅ food and durable goods scarcity ✅ the privileged live like the world hasn’t changed and deluding themselves that they can keep the world from changing ✅ everyone has lost loved ones either from violence or the disease ✅ flora and fauna flourished in the absence of humans who hunkered down as they quarantined. For years. ✅ As humanity rode waves upon waves of the virus attack. (oh yeah, we’re now just emerging from a long lockdown due to COVID-19 Alpha strain. And it seems like the vaccines in Indonesia aren’t working that well on the Delta strain that has brought India to its knees so God help us if Delta starts to overwhelm us here).

But in the utter darkness of the world, there is still some goodness left. In Gus’ pandemic, goodness is in the form of Jepp, the ex-American football star who became an unwilling protector of this hybrid. Alongside is Becky, a.k.a. Bear, whose family died of the virus and the only family left was a hybrid who was taken away by the militia known as the Last Men. In our current situation, the goodness comes in the form of… common people like us who come to the rescue of those who are less fortunate. Those who had been unselfish. Those who had been giving whatever they could for those who are hungry and dying. In the Philippines, it can be seen in the rise of the community pantries to feed those who did not have safety nets.

After bingeing on 8 episodes of Season 1, I come to the conclusion that: 1) It’s really handy to know how to drive a manual transmission vehicle. I have always known this, that’s why my family insisted on driving manual cars. Because living in the Philippines is like surviving the apocalypse where every disaster imaginable occurs regularly. 2) DIY skills should be in everybody’s priority of things to be acquired during a pandemic. 3) We should rough it out more so we can survive in some isolated forest in case we need to keep ourselves from being attacked by zombies or bad humans. 4) Learn how to survive with less luxuries 5) Grow our own food. 6) It sucks to live in a condo so better invest in a little cottage somewhere you can survive a pandemic. 7) Preppers are right all along. They’re not crazy.

I am working on these things now because we’re still dealing with Alpha and Beta strains of COVID-19. The Department of Health said that Delta is already here but it hasn’t overwhelmed us yet like it does India. The rest of Southeast Asia is still on a lockdown as they battle it through another wave of the virus resurgence. As long as we haven’t found the right vaccine to overcome COVID-19, we will continue to suffer from these waves.

Trese: A review

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Well, what can I say? I was full of trepidation about Trese being brought to life as an animated series but good that I was wrong about my fears. It was better than I expected. The animation could be better (since I am more of a Japanese animation fan) but the storylines per episode are good representations of what Philippine myths and folklore would look like in modern Manila setting. The nuno sa punso though would be hard in Manila since we don’t have enough soil here as everything else is concrete. But the writer of the comics (Budjette Tan) and the Netflix series were able to transport the nuno into sewers and popping up from manholes, which made sense. I didn’t like how this season ended, kinda cliche but the preview of the next season is more intriguing because it seems like the manananggal here is cunning.

I like that the scenes are so familiar, like the MRT breaking down in the middle of Guadalupe, the Meralco building, Dela Rosa Avenue in Makati, Ortigas Center buildings, Megamall, Manila Bay nightscape and I could make out the buildings along Roxas Boulevard, and ABS-CBN front entrance.

My girls and I watched the entire Season 1 in English and it was…so-so. The cadence of the English language was clumsy. Maybe because the scriptwriters are Filipinos in the Philippines, so the conversations in English don’t flow naturally I guess? The accents were off, especially with the spells, which will not bother non-Tagalog speakers but it was grating to me. The English cast was comprised of Filipino-Americans or Filipino-Canadians and it is understandable that they may have trouble with the original language. However, I find it disturbing that Lou Diamond Philips (Mayor) sounded more Mexican while Carlos Alazraqui sounded like a cross between a South American or Spaniard.

When I rewatched snippets of Episode 1 again in Filipino, then it made more sense now. Liza Soberano was better than Shay Mitchell, even just in the monotone. Mind you, Liza grew up in the US (and she gets a lot of flak here for sounding more American than Filipino in movies and TV series) so both actors have that American twang but Liza’s monotone was similar to that of the Japanese voice actor of Kusanagi Motoko in Ghost in the Shell, which fit Alexandra Trese better. UPDATE: I will watch the entire Episode 1 to judge it better.

In the Filipino version, conversations in Tagalog were not the everyday Tagalog we use but it somehow fits. As others commented, this is not the Filipino dub/sub of Naruto, which was cringey.

I like the Ifugao chanting that they use as opening music, which gives it a more ancient, folklore Filipino flavor. The music of Up Dharma Down (UDD) at the end of the every episode is a good foil to the ancient music as UDD is the best representation of modern Filipino music today (yes, I’m a fan).

Filipino folklore is rich but was bastardized by the Spanish, who have demonized women–just look at what they did to the babaylan (Philippine shamans, usually female). The origins of the tiyanak in the colonial Spanish context is one example of that. The banishment of Mariang Sinukuan and Maria Makiling (some versions of the tale) is another one. Neil Gaiman is also a fan of Philippine folklore, which is a treasure trove of literary material. Even the local ones we have like the legend of the Seven Lakes of San Pablo, and the Mt Maculot (originally Mt. Maculog) in Batangas can be manipulated in so many ways, which I did in that novel that I wrote but burned.

Anyway, this is just the first attempt of the Trese team, I hope they get better support and better story telling next season.

Trese

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There’s so much hype surrounding Trese, an animated adaptation of the Filipino graphic novel of the same name that will be shown on Netflix. I haven’t had the opportunity to read the series but I will find time to watch the animated series.

From what I gather, this is about a Filipina, Alexandra Trese (trese is thirteen is Spanish, believed to be a number of bad luck) who is some kind of detective who deals with the underworld/supernatutal. It gave me the Witch Hunter Robin vibes but Trese looks like she is more kickass than Robin.

Photo from Goodreads

Based from reviews of the graphic novel series, readers are introduced to Philippine mythology, the stuff that terrorized us kids at night like:

1. tiyanak – a blood-thirsty baby monster that started out as an aborted fetus, or so what the elders told us;

2. mananaggal – a monster that takes human form by day and splits in half during full moons; the upper body splits from the lower body and develops bat wings to fly and feed;

3. kapre – a giant that resembles a man that hangs out in huge trees and smokes a lot. When you see a tree at night billowing smoke, most likely that’s a kapre on that tree. I’m not really sure what this creature does but maybe it has something to do with bringing you with him to the underworld

4. wakwak – a vampiric bird, similar to manananggal. We don’t call that kind of monster wakwak here in Luzon, most likely it’s referred to as manananggal especially if you’re in an urban or semi-urban area.

5. tiktik – it’s a small creature probably like a troll or something that makes the “tik tik tik” sound on rooftops, especially when there’s a pregnant woman in the house. The creature bores a hole through the roof with its razor-sharp tongue to reach the pregnant woman’s tummy to feed on the fetus inside.

5. tikbalang – a half-man, half-horse creature that is said to make people get lost in the woods, never to be found again. The old people said that when you’re in the woods/mountain and you get lost, it’s most likely you’re being toyed by a tikbalang. I don’t know if they feed on humans but I think they’re some kind of foot soldiers of the underworld. When we were kids, we were told that if we get played by the tikbalang, we should turn our shirts inside out so we can reverse the spell cast on us by the creature so we could find our way home.

6. duwende – dwarf or similar to leprechaun I think; they said they live inside earth mounds and sometimes they live outside old homes; they can put curses on you. We’ve had stories in our family about being played upon or cursed by duwendes because they got offended for some reason.

7. aswang – a shape-shifting monster. This is one I feared the most when I was a kid. This creature can be anything. Like a vampire, it feeds on humans but not just blood, it devours humans like how big cats shred their preys. Unlike the other creatures above, the aswangs aren’t brainless zombies that you can easily outwit. They’re diabolical or basically demons in human form, if they want to manifest in that form. Sometimes they can be huge black dogs that chase motorists at night and grab people from their vehicles. Sometimes they make a doppelgänger of your friend or family to trick you and mislead as you have become a prey. Sometimes they said some witches are aswangs and they steal bodies of the dead during a funeral to feed on. When they steal a body, they replace the body in the coffin with a banana tree trunk. This is one of the reasons why people in the rural areas hold 24-hr vigils during funerals so that the aswang will not steal the body. They also said that aswangs, if they live among humans in a village, do not socialize and they do not come out during daytime. They do not have philtrum, or the indentation above the lip.

I did a research on these mythical creatures more than a decade ago as I was writing a novel based on Philippine mythology. I almost didn’t finish my thesis for my MA because I was so preoccupied writing this novel. One of the major antagonists, if not the main antagonist, was Maria Makiling, a diwata (a nature spirit, like a minor goddess or a fairy, based on the Sanskrit word devata = god), who is said to inhabit the mountain of the same name in my hometown. This diwata was said to be antagonistic towards foreigners to the area (i.e. non-residents) and make them go around in circles in her mountain, similar to what tikbalangs do, to be forever lost. One version of the legends we have of her was that when she was in her human form, she was raped by a foreigner whom she snubbed because she already had heart set on a native suitor. She has since become vindictive. Hence, the volcanic nature of the mountain.

I won’t go into details of what I wrote as I burned all copies of it. It was causing me literal nightmares. Like nightmares of aswangs circling overhead inside the church next to my childhood home. Regular nightmares. My novel involved occult rituals and I don’t know how they came about or how I conjured them up in my head. But considering how the paternal side of my family was into occult, like the really bad one, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had it buried in my brain all along.

I want to watch Trese but I’m afraid of summoning again the nightmares. Even if it’s just an anime.

Review: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards

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Photo courtesy of Vogue

The beauty of having Netflix cannot be summed up in just one word. The streaming service is heaven-sent for somebody like me who is really not much of a cinema-goer and I get to discover a ton of documentaries like Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards, which made me appreciate the man whom Carrie Bradshaw adored so much.

I do not care much about stilettos and uncomfortable-looking shoes but I do understand women’s obsession with beautiful shoes (I’m more of a bag hag). At first I thought of Manolo Blahnik as some guy who doesn’t care about women and their comfort as long as they ooze with sex appeal because one look at some of his creations is enough to make me wince in imagined discomfort and hours of pain. Women suddenly became very insecure about their feet and had some cosmetic procedures done to theirs so that they won’t look ugly in Manolos (yup, read that in Vogue, almost 20 years ago). I thought it was very sexist.

This documentary somehow softened my opinion of him.

Once upon a time, during the early 2000s when I could barely make ends meet, I bought months-old issues of Vogue that were sold in small magazine shops and at the SM stationery section (when they carried magazines a long time ago) at a deep discount. I wanted to learn about a world that is far-removed from me. I reveled in Jeffrey Steingarten’s chronicle of his search for the best sole meuniere in France and steak in Argentina. Vicki Woods’ sojourn in Bali and the magical massages she had there. But Manolo Blahnik shoes? They are so alien to me because as I said, I don’t care much about shoes and they cost USD 1000 a pair. For a girl who only received a salary of PHP 10,000 (USD 188.50 in today’s exchange rate) a month, that is just crazy. There are Manolo Blahnik shoes that I could not understand. So I tended to skip the articles that featured him or his shoes. I was not emotionally invested in them, unlike articles that featured Carolina Herrera (who always wore crisp white shirts and toss them after because they cannot be maintained pristine white after one or two spins) or Alber Elbaz for Lanvin, Helmut Lang (suits!), and at some point, Karl Lagerfeld (who spoke several languages but has some sort of disdain for the English language).

Manolo Blahnik was a mystery, until now.

This documentary showed me how he became enamored of shoes, how he is obsessed with them, how it occupied his life and dictated his work ethic. He grew up as a very privileged boy in the Canary Islands and he moved around in the right circles during the heady ’60s and ’70s, bringing him in close contact with the beautiful people of London (Bianca Jagger!) and New York. That was part of his luck and his success.

But then his love for shoes was the driving force for what he is now and his love of them was appreciated by women all over the world. Never mind that they were hideously uncomfortable at the start but he learned how to make his shoes hug women’s feet later on. He worked closely with his employees in his factory. Shoes are his life. If you are a craftsman or an artist, you would appreciate this documentary. If you are a lover of fashion, you would swoon at the shoes shown here.

I liked the man himself, how quiet and proper he is, despite the seemingly hedonistic life he led during the ’60s-’70s. He is very private. No mention of lovers or how he spends his life outside shoes. His life is very quaint, I should say.

I would be a little bit sad if he dies, even though I don’t own any of his creations. I think I won’t own a pair ever.

Note: I think they already removed Manolo, cannot find it anymore on Netflix