Beautiful

I found a copy of Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe in the last Fully Booked sale at 80 off. Of course, I bought it; it was one of my favorite story books back when I was that little squirt who thought Nancy Drew was a ghost hunter.

I liked this book a lot because the pictures looked so different from what I was used to; this is a fairy tale--not a Grimm Brothers', but it had the same elements: a good sister, a wicked sister, magic, adventure...handsome prince--the works! What made it so interesting was the fact that it was different.

Growing up reading western books, I was used to seeing beautiful princesses who had long blonde hair and fair skin, blue eyes and red lips. You can just imagine how a book with the word 'beautiful' in the title and a brown face on the cover would have stuck out like a sore thumb among the many typical illustrated fairy tale books on the shelf to a western-beauty-brainwashed kid like me.

I picked up the story and enjoyed it very much--it was mesmerizing to look at the African images; I especially remember how the beggar boy's ear curled at the tip. The story was about two daughters, both beautiful. One wanted to be queen and the other just wanted to serve her father. One day, the king gave a summons to all the unmarried ladies in the land to come and meet him--he was looking for a wife. On the way to the palace (the sisters did not travel together), there were "tests" and the wicked sister failed them while the good sister passed. It's a story about beauty within: kindness, sincerity, charity.

It's interesting also to note that, having a "realistic" art style, the book is not really the type I would have instantly picked off the shelf--I would prefer to get the ones with the cute cartoon-y illustrations because, by experience, they tend to be funnier. But this book I got intrigued with because, besides it being African, I wanted to see if there was an image in it where the daughters really did look beautiful. (You have to excuse this kid.) They weren't conventionally (biased word) pretty but by the time I finished reading, I agreed that they were beautiful. Perhaps that was why the illustrations were more on the realistic side?


In any case, this is a book about real beauty, overlooking skin color, eye color, nose shape, lip thickness, hair texture and lash length. Nowadays, pop culture insists that beauty has only one face--preferably one that went "under the knife." But even kids would know that isn't true, if you gave them the opportunity to think it over. Because no matter how hard a brainwashing the media gives a person, every one, deep down, knows that what makes a person truly beautiful is the virtues that dwell in the heart.

Cinemalaya starts on Friday!

"The Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival is a film competition and festival that aims to encourage the creation of new cinematic works by Filipino filmmakers – works that boldly articulate and freely interpret the Filipino experience with fresh insight and artistic integrity. It also aims to invigorate the Philippine filmmaking by developing a new breed of Filipino filmmakers. Each year, ten fresh talents are given a seed grant in order to create the film of their dreams. These films are then featured in a nine-day long festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines every July and compete for the coveted Balanghai Award. Awards are also given in twelve other categories, as well for the best efforts in short narrative features. Along with these competition films, are an array of exhibitions that include Tributes to Past Indie Mavericks of Pinoy Cinemal, a Cinemalaya Kids’ Treats, World Premieres of New Digital Works (the Cinemalaya/NETPAC Prize), and other modules."

I have no idea which of the entries this year are good to see, but it would be nice to go and discover for oneself! Click here to see what's going to show in CCP this July. Maybe after all that Hollywood-y Harry Potter 6 hubbub, we'll all need something a little different.

Where is Up???

It was released last May and it's still not being shown here in the Philippines. Maybe in August. Here's a little article about Up that someone shared with me. Perhaps it's the fact that a story about an old man is hardly marketable that it's been put off so much in our cinemas. Nauna pa Harry Potter 6. Sigh.

I'm sharing this not only because of its insights--I pretty much like the way it's written; it may look long, but it doesn't read so long, you'll see!
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Up

Why is an animated film from Pixar about a grumpy old man raking it in at the box office?

I think I would make you laugh if I said "Disney" and "artistic integrity" in the same sentence. But for once, at least, there might be a good reason. Disney must have known that a film featuring a lonely old man would not send toy companies scrambling for the licensing that makes successful children's movies so profitable. But they went ahead with Up all the same, and the result is a film more exciting to cinema buffs (it was the first animated feature ever to open the Cannes Film Festival) than to profit machines (Thinkway Toys passed on Up despite their long-standing relationship with Pixar).

Yet, if not quite a franchise, Up looks to be the biggest hit Pixar has produced in years; the weekend grosses for the first three weekends are much closer to Finding Nemo (Pixar's highest-grossing film) than Wall-E or Ratatouille. Why? How did Up shut up the Wall Street demographic analysts? Maybe behind his quality-first positioning, Disney CEO Rober Iger knew something Wall Street didn't. Maybe a positive, heroic vision of aging can ring true in spite of the standard narrative of the increasing uselessness of the elderly as a growing economic burden on the younger generations.

What exactly did T. S. Eliot have in mind when he wrote, "Old men ought to be explorers?" My guess is he wasn't picturing a squat codger towing a floating house and an overweight cub scout from one end of a vast Venezuelan tepui to the other. The plot of Pixar's latest movie might sound like an all too literal dramatization of that line from Eliot, but the beauty of it is that that's just the point of Up: the main theme of this movie is the moral danger of taking things too literally.

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I found where this article comes from! (Finally!) Read the rest at MercatorNet. :D

New Year Blues

...I mean 'blue' literally!

Isn't little Miguel Santino Fernandez just adorable? Here he smiles for photographer Ralph Alejandrino in Tumble Tots, E. Rodriguez Jr. Ave. Libis QC. For a more in-depth retelling of the story of Santino's shoot, click here.

We had quite a lot of fun making this issue (and we even saw the actual printed copies before the Christmas break began!). The editors gave me the fun assignment of interviewing the Alejandro siblings, the artsy folks behind Papemelroti. When I set the interview, I got all five of them to sit in a circle and share stories. (Most of what I recorded was laughter!) Days later I learned how RARE it was to get all five of these busy bees in one room! Because when we tried to pool them together for a shoot, we couldn't find a suitable date! To make the visuals possible, we asked the youngest, Tina, to illustrate for that story--and what a good result! I guess it takes some limitations to test the bounds of creative thinking.

This issue, as you can see on the cover, is all about toddlers. There's so much to do to prepare for your child's 'terrible twos'--but let's not focus on 'terrible,' shall we? Because toddlerhood is a terrific time for both parents and their tots to learn and grow together.

As an ending let me share a more recent photo of Santino. He's with his mom Ruth here. We met in Trinoma again last month. Just too bad the event we were going to attend got postponed!


Baby magazine is published by Marathon Publishing Co. and is sold at all National Bookstores, Babyland (Robinsons Galleria, Shaw Blvd. near Cherry Foodarama, Shoppesville, Baby & Co. (The Podium and Power Plant Mall), Bufini, Procreation Shangri-la mall, Big & Small Co. Shangri-la Mall. The January issue, though, would be late in SM stores this month for reasons beyond our control.

When you don't know what it is...it's Jazz!

Found this 1936 Merrie Melodies cartoon, which I am positive I saw in one of those cartoon channels I used to watch when I was kid glued to the TV (not that I was a kid in 1936!). It's about a baby owl, who didn't turn out to be the great classical musician his parents had hoped he'd be.

This little owl, called Owl Jolson, sings "I love to singa" in between voice lessons with his mom on the piano...until finally he gets caught by his dad. It's funny because the owls are so cute and of course, the theme of parents forcing the child to do what they do is universal.... Giving this all too true dilemma to a family of owls makes it easier to laugh at.

Watch the video (link above) to see how the family solves the problem (and don't overlook the cell animation--it's a long lost art...and still pretty impressive once you understand how much work was put into each scene).

...And to all those who hate jazz, peace!

Nutrition and Children's book month

Hello, Aeleina Resse Ocenar is this month's cover baby!

Because it's Nutrition month, we at Baby Magazine put in a lot of good stuff about the food we eat. Carbo-protein-fatty-discombobulations from chem class have never been clearer, thanks to Dr. Gidget Ortiz! Along with the lesson on what exactly "junk" food is, there are items on reading food labels (time to practice your math skills, math-phobes), smart-eating for two, food allergies, and a look at two random refrigerators to show just what foodstuff (and nutrition) you make so easily available to your kids.

Might seem so...disconnected, but July as Nutrition month does tie up nicely with the month's other face: children's book month. Nutrition is nourishment of the body, while books are nourishment of the mind. For book month, Baby Magazine features books on dyslexia and an article on understanding the difficulty in reading and writing, as well as two very interesting story book authors: May Tobias-Papa, an illustrator who can also write (she won a Palanca for Estrellita), and Russell Molina, a writer who can also illustrate (he won an Alcala Prize for Uuwi ang Nanay kong si Darna).

If you've been reading my older entries, you'll see I'm the privileged one to interview May Papa. I'm happy to receive a letter from her today, and am just so pleased that she liked my article! Here's a little something she sent me, a drawing of Nora Aunor she made when she was 3 or 4 years old. To May, thank you too!

Art imitates...art?

Here's an interesting idea for photography: re-enactment. In Korea, photo artist Yeon Doo Jung re-creates kids' drawings in photography--and the results are very surreal. (Click the link for more images.)

Then there's also the re-enactment of famous old photos in Lego version, though I can't be entirely sure who the photographer is. Maybe there are many of them.