“This is better than Armageddon!”

Jawdropping CGI! Awesome action sequences! Cars! Giant robots! Cars transforming into giant robots! Optimus Prime! Shia LeBeouf! Self parody! What’s not to like about Transformers? Maybe Michael Bay, the guy responsible for such cinematic bores as Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, but alright let us admit, he has probably crafted the most entertaining summer film of the year so far (along with 28 Weeks Later and ahead of the tiresome trio of threequels).

Eyeroll Count: a surprisingly low 2. Goosebumps Count: 6 (mostly CG-related). Net sensory response count: +4. Film Rating: 8/10, Bay’s best by a mile.

“This is better than Armageddon!” says a character in the film and we all nod in agreement. 

To be, or not to be, is all I gotta be…

Kris Aquino received a gold record award earlier for selling 15,000 copies of In Your Eyes. She sang not a single note in that album. Also, she will be handing out free copies of ‘her record’ to the Deal or No Deal players during the next fortnight.

In somewhat related news, new literary acquisitions:

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (post-apocalyptic road novel about America)
• The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene (white people with pink knees in West Africa)
• James Joyce’s Ulysses by Stuart Gilbert (a supplementary work to make us smarter, snobbier and more pretentious)
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare (oy!)

Bloomsday (7 Days Late)

An atrocity, I know, but once again I had allowed 16 June to pass by without according the proper due this date deserved.

June 16, 1904 was the day of the first date of James Joyce with his eventual wife, Nora Barnacle. This date is immortalized in his grand novel Ulysses, which chronicles a day in the life of a modern day Homeric hero named Leopold Bloom, a Dublin-wandering Jew. Though the plot is quite simple and the actions quotidian (Leopold buying kidneys for his wife’s breakfast, Leopold relieving himself in the john, Leopold attending a funeral, Leopold pissing in the yard with drunk Stephen Dedalus, the artist whose portrait as a young man Joyce had painted in an earlier novel), Ulysses is a modernist, experimental classic famed for its wealth of allusions and references, its countless witty wordplays, and the apparent impenetrability of its prose. As such, it is no surprise that many frustrated non-fans have found other more useful uses for their useless copies of the thick book (as paperweights maybe or pillows or doormats or footstools or kindling papers or tissue papers or toilet papers and so on).

Indeed ’tis time to reJoyce (7 days late)!

Propensity for Prospero

Click on the Prospero link, make sure your speakers are on, and enjoy!