From the Theme of Love Affair to Love Affair, the Theme

(Note: This blogpost  is a belated Valentine post as it has been languishing in my drafts for months now. Thanks to interest in Love Affair by Facebook friends, I decided to polish it and publish it a month after Valentines Day.)

Love Affair (1994) is the remake of  Love Affair (1939) with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne and  An Affair to Remember (1957) with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. This version starred Annette Bening and Warren Beatty.

This film joins my very limited list of favorite romantic movies: Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Romeo and Juliet, Ghost, Sleepless in Seattle and Somewhere in Time.

Love Affair's plot was greatly enhanced by the musical score of Ennio Morricone, one of my  favorite contemporary composers. Throughout the film, a musical motif would softly play in the background during the scenes of the leading stars like in the final one shown above. I was so entranced by the music that after watching it in the cinema, I bought a copy of the original soundtrack where I was gratified to hear the entire score by Morricone. The musical motif was plainly titled Piano Solo in the CD.

Fast forward two years later, while watching Twister, a disaster/thriller film starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton based on a screenplay by novelist Michael Crichton, I heard a familiar melody. It turned out to be Love Affair sang by KD Lang. It was the same theme of Love Affair with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman.


The words so complimented the melody that I felt it belonged to Love Affair, the movie, instead of being inserted in a soundtrack for Twister that was filled with rock music by Van Halen.

Skies without stars, all the nights without you
I watch the world from a room without a view
For you left me with so few memories
I could close my eyes and cling to
Just a fading photograph I'd sometimes sing to

All those smiles unexplored, all the words left unsaid
We strung our dreams on and all to slender thread
For you left me with so few memories
I could close my eyes and cling to
Just a half-remembered tune I'd sometimes sing to

Now I found what we lost
Time was all, all it cost
Love's always there
Knowing someday I would share in a life-long love affair with you

Love was always there
Knowing someday I would share
In a life-long love affair with you, in a life-long love affair with you

This version of KD Lang became known as the theme song of Twister. 

In a twisted sense that could happen only in Hollywood, Love Affair bombed at the box-office while Twister became a $55-M blockbuster. Love Affair, because it was compared to its earlier two versions and Twister, because of the popularity of Helen Hunt's TV series, Mad About You.

However, Love Affair later went on to become a cult classic movie enjoying high DVD sales and a favorite Valentine and wedding anniversary date movie. It also was the last movie starred in by the great Katharine Hepburn.

And that's how a simple, memorable melody known as the Theme of Love Affair morphed into Love Affair, known as the love theme of Twister.

Eye-Popping, Mind-Boggling 3-D Experience in Shrek Forever After

I was ready to watch my fourth 3-D film, but NOTHING prepared me for Shrek Forever After 3-D! It was an eye-popping and mind-boggling movie experience. 

As a member of the SoCCSKSarGen Bloggers, I was invited to the 3-D Cinema Press Launch of Robinsons Place Gensan Movieworld on May 22, 2010.

A specially-prepared Press Kit with a t-shirt, bookmarks, stickers, press releases, and notepads was given to me. After reading the materials, I realized I was  going to have a 3-D experience literally. 

First, Robinsons Place Gensan is one of nine Movieworld branches equipped with a 3-D screen

through MasterImage Digital 3-D which provides bright vivid 3-D images using silver screen. 

Second,  Movieworld uses Dolby Digital 3-D single projector. Dolby has set a benchmark in total entertainment by providing crisp and clear images and sound.

Third, moviegoers are given individual specialized eyewear that is easy to wear (even if you have your eyeglasses on) and eliminates the headaches/nausea  brought on by cardboard glasses. These eyewear had to be returned when leaving the cinema though.

The bloggers were escorted to their reserved seats and given a set of burger, fries and bottled ice tea drink from Jollibee. And the instruction to put on the specialized eyewear was flashed on the screen. Shrek Forever After was about to begin.

The opening logo of Dreamworks which was already an animated boy on the moon fishing became more alive when he cast his line and the hook went out the screen into the audience! (Nervous giggles from the audience).

Soon a carriage pulled by horses went out of the screen and the audience felt like the horses were passing through the cinema! And the movie delighted everyone with one eye-popper after another.

Many scenes drew Oohs and Ahhhs from the moviegoers. Laughters and giggles rang through the theater as the movie unveiled the antics of Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, Puss, Gingerbread Man and Rumpeltiltskin.

Overall, my fourth 3-D film experience was exhilarating and fun-filled. And I look forward to more 3-D films to be shown in Movieworld!

Thank you to Pre Carcillar and Bing Velandria of Robinsons Place Gensan for inviting me to this unprecedented movie event in Gensan!

Three 3-D Movies seen and counting

1976 was a memorable year because of the films I've watched while studying at UP Diliman. One of these was Frankenstein 3-D. 

Frankenstein 3-D was the first 3-D film I'd seen. It used the Polarized system in which two images are printed over-and-under on the same strip (Po). I had difficulty wearing the 3-D cardboard glasses so an usher helped tape it to my eyeglasses. The gory scenes were so vivid especially the part when someone  was speared and it went through his body and the screen with a piece of bloody liver dangling from it.  Loud shrieks went up from the audience when that piece seemed to fall on them. After the movie, a lot of moviegoers left the cinema feeling disoriented and nauseous, including me.

The second 3-D film I saw was Jaws 3-D, also using the Polarized system. Set in Seaworld, the whole film looked like a living aquarium with various types of fish swimming about. The killer shark seemed to jump out of the screen and in the climactic part, when it exploded (just like in the original film), pieces of it appeared to be thrown at the audience. The seawater and the 3-D glasses made me seasick. 

The third 3-D film was Spy Kids 3-D Game Over which used the Anaglyphic system in which  two images are printed in different colors on the same strip. I saw it with my godson to introduce him to his first 3-D film experience. Action-filled, the movie caused the two of us to move constantly in our seats.  From time to time, he would reach out and try to touch objects moving towards us. He couldn't stop talking about the realism of the scenes we saw.

Now, I'm looking forward to my fourth 3-D film and it seems that Shrek Forever After is it!

Vignette 2: Baby niece inside a drawer

When I saw the scene in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button where Queenie, baby Benjamin's adoptive mother, put him in a clothes drawer right after finding him on the steps of the old folks' home where she works, I was reminded of the same thing I did.

Our first niece, Nerissa Joy, who was 6 months old then, was staying with us that time. She was left in my care while Mama went to the market. Mama was taking a long time coming back and it was almost time for my class. So I packed some linen and one bottle of baby formula and rushed to school.

I cleared the top drawer of my desk at school and placed the sleeping baby gingerly inside. No one was in the faculty room so I had no one to ask to look after the baby. Already late for my one-hour class, I left for my classroom.

When some co-teachers arrived from their classes several minutes later, baby Nerissa Joy was awake and gurgling. The teachers were frightened by the sounds the baby was making. They thought it was a tiyanak (a Philippine monster in the form of a baby) as they weren't able to see baby Nerissa Joy inside the slight open drawer.

Coming back to the faculty an hour later, I was surprised to hear them talking about a tiyanak haunting the room. I laughed upon hearing them and proceeded to take baby Nerissa Joy out of the drawer and show her to them.

The room was filled with laughter and cooing sounds when I proudly passed my baby niece around.

Vignette 1: Papa snoring in Golden Cinema while "The Fiddler on the Roof" was playing

In my final year in high school, Mama was able to persuade Papa to give me a rare treat for being the second honor in one of my periodical exams. Papa gave me several choices: merienda at our favorite Chinese restaurant, cash, or a movie at the then newest movie house. Since I knew he also liked watching movies, I went for it.

The movie house was showing double programs then, two English movies for the price of one. Papa got us tickets to the balcony. There were only a few people inside the cinema. Papa sat through the first movie, the title of which I had already forgotten. The second movie was another story. It was The Fiddler on the Roof, the film version of a Broadway musical. From the first frame showing the fiddler on a roof playing a melancholy tune on his violin, I was entranced. However Papa slept through it, punctuating the soundtrack with his snores that sounded like a boat sounding its horn as it departs from the wharf.

When the lights were lit at the end of the movie, I shook Papa to wake him up. He saw in my face how much I enjoyed the movie and that was enough for him.

The first SciFi film that gave me nightmares

Our store was beside a movie theater and so it was no surprise that I and the rest of the neighborhood kids got to spend much time seeing movies during our free time. It was not uncommon for our mothers to stand at the curtained entrance and call out our kids' names for supper.

One SciFi movie I saw when I was about 6 or 7 gave me many nightmares -- Village of the Damned. Based on The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, the film starts ominously as people of Midwich became unconscious at the same time. Much later, the women were found pregnant and gave birth on the same day to children with the same platinum blond hair, golden yellow pupils and silvery white skin. When the kids grew up, they were discovered to have telekinetic powers. When they used their powers on the locals, a doctor an a government agent tried to stop them.

For weeks after seeing the film, I had nightmares about children with glow-in-the-dark eyes. I often woke from these drenched in cold sweat.

In 1996, while looking over several video cds, I saw the John Carpenter-remake of the same film starring Christopher Reeve. The image of the blond children with glowing eyes on the cover almost gave me a nightmare while still awake.

Talecraft, Dom, Hoovenson & Spro

I have been looking for Talecraft, the card deck for story tellers and writers since summer. A co-teacher tried to find it in Metro Manila to no avail. Out of Stock!

So when I recently googled it, I was led to Dom Cimafranca's blogpost on Talecraft. I posted a comment asking him if it was available in Davao City. And it was! And Dom sells them! Yay!!!

So on August 10, he told me more about Talecraft, introduced me to Hoovenson Haw who owns Spro Cafe where we met and other cafe habitues.

It was a fun night even if I was initially oblivious to the java/wifi-charged ambience and of Spro. The following week, I tried the Cafe Amerikano (which Hoovenson recommended to lactose-intolerant moi) and liked it.

I felt instantly at ease with fellow Tsinoys Dom and Hoovenson who, like me, love books and movies.

As I am trying to cut down on smoking, methinks I now have the next addiction to feed: coffee!