Although what is disclosed by the press about Victor Basa is focused on his showbiz career, an astounding population of young members of the local music scene, clubbing circuit, and internet subculture are well-informed and always interested about his personal life. After his shift into showbiz, he has made tremendous efforts to conceal his personal life. He also made a relationship with Hannah Hernandez, asimple non-showbiz girl. Basa have been fond of her within 30 daysonly. They broke up because of a third-party insertion.

"A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for [Captivity], which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. [...] Pretty much all you learn [from the trailer] is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

"“I’m sorry.”

"What is wrong with women? I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

"How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence-- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

"I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college --- shared by many I’m sure --- is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will.

"Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death?"

There is a reason why I should never get myself excited over any movie that isn't being carried by a major distributor, local or otherwise: It's too daunting to try to monitor all the local outlets for them --- university screenings, foreign film fests, Titus Brandsma, Cinemanila, et al --- that it is likely that I will never get to see them until they become available at your friendly neighborhood Quiapo.

Anyway, I am really excited to see Baburu e Go! Taimu mashin wa doramu shiki or Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust, a Japanese sci-fi satire from Baba Yasuo, starring Wasabi's Ryoko Hirosue and model turned comedic actor Hiroshi Abe. Both Hirosue and Abe had small roles in Shunji Iwai's Hana and Alice, but here they are the headlining stars of this movie.

Hirosue plays Mayumi Showa, whose deceased mother (played by Japanese Academy Award-winning Hiroko Yakushimaru) was an inventor. Her no-good gambler boyfriend has skipped town, and now she's hounded by creditors. but also at the funeral is Shimokawaji (Abe), a Finance Ministry employee who reveals that her mother is alive --- in 1990 --- on a government sponsored mission to change history.

Mariko was sent back in time through a time machine of her own invention --- a modified Hyundai washing machine that quite naturally, needs detergent to operate --- and prevent a disastrous policy decision by then-Finance Minister Serizawa (Kazue Fukishii of One Missed Call) that plunged Japan's economy into its present state. But she's dropped of the radar, and now Shimokowaji wants Mayumi to rescue her mother.

With the promise that her debts will be cleared, a wetsuit-clad Mayumi enters the machine and emerges soapy in the smugly prosperous days of 1990s Japan. There she meets the younger Shimokawaji, a wealthy womanizer who 'believes' her story of economic collapse and coming from the future as much as she believes in her sexually potent 2007 manner of dress. Now she must rescue her mom, save the economy of teh future, and give career advice to various pre-fame celebrities.

The film is supposedly built on Japanese cinema's reliance on nostalgia, directed towards making poignant cultural contrasts: Hirosue's character is humble and frugal, as she comes from a time where job loss is common and the economy is depressed, a stark contrast to the spend-happy denizens of 1990 who brush off the warnings of Teh Fiscal Apocalypse with remarks like "Banks don't fail!" as they truly believe that the present prosperity will never end...

...and OMG look at all the cheesy disco pop and bad clothes they wore back then, LOLz.

Things I am thinking about right now, but can't seem to find the writerly means to talk about them at length: