Saturday, April 15, 2006

of abstinence and dvd's

holy week is, for most filipinos, a time to look deep into their spirituality. for most of the week, i was off duty. good friday, i abstained from eating meat. we also went on the visita iglesia but we were only able to visit 4 churches, 3 short of the required number. but the kids loved seeing the various churches' statues of Mama Mary being readied for the procession.

it wasn't only meat that we abstained from. it was goodbye nicotine for most part of the week.

on maundy thursday, we spent the entire day watching dvd's and documentaries on natgeo. finally was able to watch brokeback mountain and crash. i definitely liked crash better than brokeback. brokeback started off slow and ended with a quiet pffftt... i don't get heath ledger's chracter's wife - not confronting her husband about that scene on the stairs. when the dvd stated playing, we were all laughing coz my dad had turned on the english subtitles but they were not in sync with the movie. the subtitles told a totally different story - some lines referred to patients in a hospital and satellites. our theory is that the subtitles were originally in chinese and from there, was translated to english. sheesh!

crash however was great! couldn't help but think of LOST - where everyone and everything is connected. i was really affected by that scene where the daughter ran to save her locksmith-father from being shot by the irate persian shop owner. she embraced her dad as the gun went off. the shot afterwards - a close-up of the dad's face with his eyes closed and mouth open, seeing but not hearing him scream and hearing instead the musical scoring - it was a very simple shot but it made my heart stop. it was a very emotional scene... however, i didnt like the scene where one of the 2 african-american guys was yakking about discrimination, the scene where they were walking towards brendan fraser and sandra bullock. i think it was "too spelled out."