Big Hero 6: Balalala

From Wreck-it-Ralph to Frozen, Disney has finally redeemed its reputation of being one of the most loved movie productions when it comes to children's films. 

Pan to the city called San Fransokyo. San Fransisco Bridge with torii designs: a mix of Japan setting. Hiro Hamada with his fighting bots: Real Steel. Hiro side by side with the huggable, marshmallow-like Baymax: Hayao Miyazaki's Totoro and Satsuki. Baymax in an armor suit: Marvel's Ironman. There are a lot of familiar scenes you could see materialize in Disney's newest movie release Big Hero 6, and yet it has pulled off a very unique and heartwarming film that you'd want to watch over and over again. Directed by the makers of Bolt Chris Williams and director of Winnie the Pooh Don Hall, and produced by Pixar's legend John Lasseter, the movie would definitely make you laugh off your seat and give you tears for the heartwarming story of friendship and of not giving up that you would never forget. 

"I will never give up on you. " In a semi-futuristic setting that closely resembles that of Lewis's world in the movie Meet the Robinsons and even Ironman, the story revolves around a genius 15-year-old Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter), who is addicted to bot fighting using his small but terrible micrbot. His older brother, Tadashi (Daniel Henney), on the other hand, is an equally genius guy who goes to college and makes unique inventions, and is always saving Hiro from trouble with his bot bouts. He invites him to his school and meets his classmates, Go Go (Jamie Chung), who works on electromagnetic fields and suspensions, Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez), who is a chemist-freak, Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.), a neat-freak genius and Fred (T.J. Miller), who is addicted to becoming a real fire-breathing dragon inspired by his comic books. Tadashi introduces Hiro to his latest invention, Baymax (Scott Adsit), who is a personal health care assistant robot. With much delight, Tadashi was able to convince Hiro to enroll in his "nerd school" and present an invention of his own in an annual science fair. Using his microbots, he was able to wow the audience with his invention, but things took a change for the worse when the school was caught in a big fire and Tadashi, who wanted to help rescue his mentor, died. 

All the hope and the purpose of going to the school went with the fire as Hiro lost his interest and grieved over his brother's death. On that moment in his room, he met again Baymax who was still active. He also noticed his microbot which seemed to be attracted to another microbot, and with Baymax's help they were able to pinpoint the origin of the attraction. There they met a man with a "kabookie" mask, who made more microbots and attacked them. The action to search for that man started, with the help of his brother's friend to find out the truth about the incident and give justice to his brother's death. 

When they found out that the man in the kabookie mask was Tadashi's mentor, Hiro raged and tried to kill him, but Baymax and his friends tried to stop him. In a heartwarming scene where Baymax insisted that Tadashi was still with them, he showed Hiro the times when Tadashi was still experimenting on the success of Baymax, and Hiro finally had his inner peace and went off with his friends to end the evil plan of the notorious man who was the mentor of Tadashi. They found out that he was seeking for revenge for the loss of his daughter in an experimental procedure of a teleportation portal. They were able to stop him and even save his daughter, but Hiro lost Baymax in the process. 

What I loved about the movie is the lesson that Tadashi portrayed; that is, he never gave up on inventing Baymax, and on his brother Hiro, just as Baymax did not give up on Hiro on their friendship. Big Hero 6 is the first animated Marvel film that was theatrically released by Walt Disney Animation Studios. 

Big Hero 6 is truly an epic film with a lot of mix-ups and twists and turns, from the unique incorporation of San Fransisco and Tokyo, which was Executive Producer John Lasseter's idea to the must-awaited end-credit scene where we find out that Fred is the son of the Marvel creator Stan Lee. The design of Baymax was also inspired by the "soft robotics" research at Carnegie Mellon University. 

Movie: In a Corner of this World (この世界の片隅に )

"If I can die with the memory of the person I love, I'm satisfied."

好きな人の思い出しと死にしたら、本望じゃ。

I have always loved Japanese drama movies and I always cry every time the last scene fades to black. My senpai and good teacher Ms. Pauline Mangulabnan shared  me this movie "In a Corner of this World" and indeed it was a heartbreaking, heartwarming and inspirational film. I remembered other Japanese movies with the theme of World War II like Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies and Letters from Iwo Jima and they all made me cry. 

The cinematography of the film is equally sublime and stunningly unique. The first scene that pops out in the movie is a moving cart with a boy and a girl inside. The boy said it was a kidnapper's cage and told the little girl that once it stops they would escape together. Fade to black with the next scene of a woman, whose name was Suzu in bed with his husband Shusaku, the same little boy in the first scene, and they held hands. Then one will realize that both scenes are merely dreams when the third scene showed Suzu in bed, with bandages in her head. As she lifts her right arm, she realizes that her hand is gone from the time bomb that exploded during those times in war. 

Hiroshima. 1930s. Then comes the flashback when Suzu was to meet the man she would marry in a tradition called omiai (arranged marriage). Shusaku, the man she would marry, is part of the military corps. When they finally met, Shusaku said that he already knows Suzu by her mole, with Suzu clueless as to where they could have met. Suzu also met her longtime friend Tetsu and drew him a picture of him as a child and the ocean, the time when Tetsu's brother was killed in the navy war. 

Everything seems normal at first: as a housewife, Suzu worked hard in the house and served her husband well. During these times her husband was working in the military and they both lived in her parents' house, while her elder sister visits them with her daughter occasionally. A significant scene appears when Suzu got lost in the village and met Rin-san, a geisha who was kind and sweet. When she found out that Suzu is good at drawing, she made her draw a picture of a watermelon and caramel. Eventually they bid each other goodbye. 

A conflict arises when Suzu found out that her husband Shusaku seemed to know Rin-san as a customer, and becomes cold to him for a while. Tetsu visited Suzu and gave her an omiyage (present) of a bird's feather and said that it might be the last time they meet each other.

Before the war worsened, spring passed by and Rin and Suzu met again. They shared stories and Rin left Suzu with inspirational messages about the war.

Just because you're lacking a little something, doesn't mean there's no place for you in this world." (だれでもちいとたらもんがあるくらいで、この世界に場所はなくなら。)

The war came like a thunder afterwards and time bombs were scattered everywhere. Shusaku was promoted as a military commander and would be away for three whole months. Suzu endured this while taking care of her niece, Harumi but ended up getting blown by a time bomb hidden in the bushes and a fence, killing Harumi and taking her right hand. 

A part of Suzu was lost during that time because everything she did--cleaning the house, making Harumi a pouch, sketching drawings for her friend Tetsu and Rin and hugging her husband Shusaku became impossible without her right hand. She decided to wander off alone because she still could not accept the fact that her loved ones died and still they lost the war. Shusaku found her and invited her to come home. She said that her home could have been the fence where the time bomb was and then she would be with her loved ones--Harumi, Tetsu and Rin.

"I'll be your home. I hope it would be fine for you," Shusaku said in assurance.

In the end, Suzu returned home and finally accepted the realities of life during the war, and thanked her husband, who would always find her because of her mole, even during that time that she got lost when she was a kid and Shusaku helped her find her way home.

Such Japanese drama movies always make me cry and, and as a Linguistics student who studies Japanese,  appreciate the Japanese culture better. I have noticed that the characters use a Japanese dialect compared to the Japanese used in the cities. The general theme of the movie, I believe is finding one's place in the world even if he is nowhere near perfect, and moving on so that one can face the future with confidence and hope.

#RememberingRobinWilliams: Patch Adams

"Treating a person is about improving the quality of his life, not just delaying death,"

I remembered how my mentor Ms. Josephine Bonsol always told me about the Hindu chant "May I be an instrument of love and peace, may I be well." This is the same principle that the real Patch Adams shared along with his other six mantras: love, happiness, care, cooperation, fun, creativity and thoughtfulness. 

Sixteen year ago the great Robin Williams brought to life his revolutionary work and people still miss him for being Patch Adams. I myself have always remembered the name of Robin Williams as Patch Adams because that was the first movie where I watched him. Both are like twins--they continuously bring joy and happiness not just to the world but to the world of suffering, pain, and chaos. It is hard enough as it is to spread the love and be an instrument of peace but both Patch Adams and Robin Williams have done with such finesse and ease that they have turned the world upside down and contributed to making the world a better place worth living in. 

The story first zooms in to a suicidal man who narrates his worth in life and the worth of the world he's living in. He self-admits to a mental hospital and found in this most unlikely place his place in the world--he met his roommate Rudy who is schizophrenic and always sees squirrels crawling all over him, a Nobel Prize winner doctor who always laughs at people who say four to the four fingers he shows and his psychiatrist who "sucks at his job" and won't even look his patients in their eyes. After having a game with Rudy to make him go to the bathroom, and learning from the genius doctor that four fingers means looking at the problem too hard, he finally realizes he wants to help people and become a doctor.

But then helping people is easier said than done. Patch enrolls in a medical school and makes a few friends who are still in doubt about his philosophies in improving the quality of life of the patients instead of just treating the disease. In the hospital, he makes all kinds of clown tricks to cheer up the patients which all became very effective. He befriended the nurses and was even able to tame the wildest patient who would never let anyone near him because of his terrible disease.

An epiphany hits him: a free hospital with no insurance policies and other formalities, where there are only free medicines, care, and a bonus of laughter from the balloons and cap guns and bubble machines. A conflict arises because of the low supply of the medical kits because of the absence of insurance. Another major conflict hits Patch where his girlfriend Carin (Monica Potter) was killed by a psychopath. These are all overcome by Patch and the work goes on.

A final conflict surfaces because the medical school principal does not want him to graduate because of "excessive happiness". However he was able to defend himself in court thanks to the help of all the patients he helped in the hospital.

I do believe in my mentor's Hindu chant "May I be an instrument of love and peace. May I be well." I realized that most of the time it's hard to do because I myself  have a lot of things going in my head that I don't manage to look at other people's problems. What I didn't realize was that I could really learn about other people's lives and equally learn more about my life when I talk to them. 

We will always remember you, Robin Willliams a.k.a Patch Adams.

Silence of the Lambs: the Marcus Aurelius Principle

"First principles. What is it in itself, what is its nature?"

I took a test in Facebook on who would have been the author that would write my life story, and the results said that it would be "a crime if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, would not write my story." Indeed I have been in love with detective and psycho-thriller movies since I was a child. Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Saw series, Detective Conan, all these movies have always thrilled me because they are not really horror movies which recently have become a series of scenes that just scares you but with empty stories. I just watched Silence of the Lambs after five years and still gave me the chills by Dr. Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal the Cannibal.

I have read that the movie, which is inspired by the book Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris is based on real life serial killers, where Hannibal Lecter played the role of the real-life cannibal Albert Fish, while Buffalo Bill or Jame Gumb reflected three serial killers including Ted Bundy. I have read a lot about Albert Fish during high school, where he kidnapped children and ate them. Since then, I continued to read about different serial killers and their untold stories of horror and their identities as men of severe violence.

The story starts with FBI student Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) who also has divine interest in behavioral science. A job comes up and the head of the Behavioral Sciences department Dr. Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) asked Clarise to profile serial killers including Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), their "most prized asset". The covert assignment is to use Clarise extract information from Hannibal regarding the Buffalo Bill case files, where up until then the FBI has not able to pin down the horrible serial killer who kills women. Jack Crawford is right: Hannibal knows who Buffalo Bill is. Clarise, who wants nothing but to help pin down the serial killer agrees to a deal with the cannibal Hannibal quid pro quo: Hannibal gives her clues about Buffalo Bill and Clarise tells him about her worst memory of childhood. 

Clarise was able to successfully find the wanted serial killer with Hannibal's anagrams and Marcus Aurelius principle techniques and saved Catherine Martin, the last girl Buffalo Bill kidnapped that time. 

I have always loved how Clarise solved the case files and I learned a lot about the stories behind serial killers who were victims of their childhood themselves. When I read more about the psychology of serial killers and mass murderers I found out that most of them were victims of violence during their childhood and therefore they become something horrible and terrible that they themselves were not able to escape from. 

I have been attracted to different psycho-thriller movies these days despite my current condition, but then the very reason I crave them is I can familiarize with these horrible things and compare them to my own demons, and realize that such people in such movies are far worse than what I am experiencing now. 

In the end, as I have always believed, bad guys are never born as killers in the first place.

Wreck-it-Ralph: One game at a time

"I'm bad, and that's good. I'll never be good and that's not bad."

This is the very reason why I love bad guys and villains in movies, it's because they are a product of their own histories. It's because they were never meant to be bad guys in the first place. It's because they never wanted to be one in the beginning of the story.

I needed some reference with regards to different kinds of sweets, pastries and candycane lollipops for my book I am currently writing and I remembered Sugar Rush in the movie Wreck-it-Ralph. This is one of my favorite Disney movies and no wonder that the cinematography and the story itself is parallel to the Pixar movies is because John Lasseter, the director of many of the movies in Pixar, was the executive producer of this movie. 

Arcade games? Many of us was still able to connect and experience first hand arcade games and now comes in the game Fix-it-Felix, where the protagonist Felix (Jack McBrayer)  fixes the building that Ralph the bad guy destroys. However the story does not revolve in the heroic acts of Felix but in the frustrations of Ralph (John Reilly)  in being the bad guy and living in the block dumps and not having cakes and fireworks and medals. He wants to prove that even bad guys can earn medals and goes Turbo and went to the game Hero's Duty. At first he thought it was that easy to earn the medal in such game until he realizes his life and the whole game could be at stake if he would not shoot the cybugs and help his comrades. The game was over in less than a minute because of Ralph's recklessness and secretly climbs and enters the building where a shining gold medal awaits him. However things took a turn for the worse when he accidentally flew a spaceship with a cybug in it and crosses over to the game Sugar Rush. 

Here he meets the glitch--Vanellope von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), who was also in need of a gold medal/coin so she could join the race. Everyone in her game despises her because they said she was never meant to exist in a game--a glitch. The two first had a series of misunderstandings because Vanellope stole Ralph's gold medal and used it so she could join the race. Vanellope decided they should be partners--Ralph would help her get a legitimate race car while Vanellope would win the race so Ralph can get his medal back. 

And so comes the bonding and the development of their friendship with a bonus candy medal saying "You're My Hero" to the bad guy. However another conflict surfaces and their friendship ends until Ralph finally deduces the real reason why Vanellope is a glitch. He helped her get in the race after all and after much combat to the multiple cybugs that almost invaded Sugar Rush, Ralph and Vanellope were able to reset the whole game, while discovering at the same time that Vanellope is a princess and the lead character in the game consul. 

I can watch this film a thousand times and never get bored because the story reflects how bad guys are always mistreated and misunderstood. We meet different kinds of "bad guys" in our lives but we tend not to hear their stories of pain and anxiety. Most of us never tend to understand where their anger really comes from because it takes a lot of effort and time. On my part, this is the very reason why I love bad guys--because they have untold stories that are treasures of knowledge of humankind.

From Up the Poppy Hill: A Miyazaki Masterpiece

The ghosts of our pasts always haunt us, but sometimes, they lead us to identify who we really are, and who we'll be from then on.

I have always been an avid fan of Hayao Miyazaki's movies and apart from my favorite Whisper of the Heart, From Up the Poppy Hill is the second best love story I adore. The story revolves around a young girl Umi Matsuzaki, who would always raise signal flags for his father who had died in a supply ship during the Korean war. Little did she know that a certain someone was answering her signal flags, and even that someone even wrote a poem about her raising the flags in memory of her father. 

Meet Shun Kazama, the young boy who immediately but secretly falls in love with Umi. He is one of the editors of the weekly newspaper in their school and is part of the Journalism club. The basic conflict surfaces when their school principal and the chairman decide to abolish the Club building, which includes the Archeaology, Philosophy, Chemistry and other clubs mostly led by the boys of the Konan Academy. Umi, who befriends the handsome Shun, suggests that they should clean the place to make it look new. 

The work began and the love story of the two develops until a second conflict arises--when Shun and the other boys were invited for a small get together party at Umi's boarding house, Umi shows her a photo of his late father Yuichiro Sawamura and he is left speechless. He has the same photo and his foster father finally told him that Yuichiro is his true father, which makes the couple brothers and sisters. Shun gets cold towards Umi until he admits that they are indeed brother and sister. 

"It's just like a typical melodrama." Shun says.

However Umi admits that even though they are related, her feelings for him will never change. The same goes for Shun and they bade each other goodbye after they have talked to the chairman to come visit their new club building.

Umi's mother comes home from America and she asks her the truth about Shun. The mother then contacts Shun's foster father and they are both able to come in touch with the third person in the photo--the one who knows the truth. It becomes a moment of peace for all three of them--Captain Hiroshi Tachibana, Shun and Umi. It feels like a reunion for Hiroshi seeing the son and daughter of his late friends and he thanked them for the moment they finally met. 

I was moved by the last scene where Hiroshi held both their hands and thanked them for the opportunity to meet his best friends in a long time. I also loved how the movie depicted the Japanese culture of boarding houses, signal flags, school clubs, stencils that worked before xerox machines and passionate students who would save their club building no matter what. 

It was indeed a ghost of Shun and Umi's past that actually brought them together in the end. 

Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux: A Comedy of Murder

"It's a blundering world out there, and every act of kindness can make it better."

My Linguistics professor Dr. Ricardo Nolasco shared me this comedy film "Monsieur Verdoux"  by Charlie Chaplin  and I first thought it was going to be a French-speaking movie. In the end, I was able to extract the lesson of the story and laugh out in my seat because of the witty lines in the movie.

1930's. Great Depression in Europe. Jobs, none. Stocks, low. For Monsieur Verdoux, his line of business revolves around "liquidating people of the opposite sex." That is, for two weeks, he sends them flowers, flowers them with utopian words, courts them and marries them all at the same time in different places. A traveller, Verdoux also has a true wife and kid whom he supports by fooling women into marrying him and robbing them of their wealth. For him, it is simply business in the midst of a terrible great depression. He has been pushed out of his job at the bank three years ago and since then, he has been courting women and marrying them and robbing them of their money and incinerating them to leave no proof of bigamy. He has many aliases, no insurance and all money goes to the stock market to leave no trace of his crimes. 

What caught me in the movie was the time when he met a young woman who just got out jail and helped her get through the night by offering her dinner and wine. This was the time when he was experimenting on a drug that might cure his sick wife and tried to test it on the young woman. But by the time the woman told him her story, he changed his mind and even gave her money. 

"It's a ruthless world out there, and one must be ruthless about it."

"You're wrong. It is indeed a blundering world out there, but every act of kindness can make it more beautiful."

"You better go, before you corrupt me with your philosophy."

And so the courting and the marrying and the liquidating goes on, until one day, the woman he has an affair with suddenly pops out of nowhere in a wedding where Verdoux would marry his next victim. Everything crashes and finally he was sentenced to guillotine with 12 counts of murder and bigamy. 

What captured me in the movie is how Verdoux considers everything as a business enterprise, and how he was changed by the woman he helped. Most of the time we overgeneralize bad people but what the can't see is that some of them also have the heart to help people in need and have the guts to face their imperfections and change the world.

#RememberingRobinWilliams: Awakenings

Who are the dead? Who are the living? There are people who live life to be happy and to share happiness. There are people who live to earn a living and feed their families at least three times a day. But there are some people who live in a vacuum--people whose lives are trapped in their own bodies--"living statues".

I was devastated when I couldn't find my CD of my favorite Robin Williams CD "What Dreams May Come", which was shared to me by my mentor Ms. Josephine Bonsol, and decided to borrow it in Video City. Instead I found the movie "Awakenings" (1990, directed by Penny Marshall) and I remember my class in English 11 where we analyzed one of Dr. Sayer's narrative on people with the "Sleeping Sickness". I cried a bucket of tears after watching the movie.

"What is it being like them? What are they thinking?" The epic and most dramatic movie of Robin Williams revolves around a new and socially-awkward doctor Malcolm Sayer (Robin Williams) who discovered the long-lost encephalitic patients who have been in a catatonic condition at most 40 years. He was trying to uncover the reasons and possibilities behind the mental illness and found out that even though they always seem to be catatonic and to be "living statues", they have this unique reflexes which can be manifested through the will of another person.

After evaluating patients with histories of Parkinsons' Disease and encephalitic conditions, Dr. Sayer was able to make a circle of group whom he would help to possibly recover from their basic state of mind--that is, he would help them bring back to the world after forty or more years. One of his patients, Leonard Lowe (Robert de Niro) was also catatonic after 30 years and Dr. Sayer began to run tests on the drug combinations for anti-Parkinsons and encephalitic medications to possibly see the light behind the empty eyes of his patients. At first, it worked well with Leonard after a small dosage and was able to communicate with others and write his name. After the successful experiments, he tried it to his other patients and yielded the same positive results. One of his patients, Lucy, was able to communicate again and talk to other people. It was a miracle at the time because the disease had been ignored for almost 50 years.

The conflict began when Leonard started to show signs of aggressiveness and paranoia and Parkinsons' disease--that is, the drug had its own side effects and may only last for a brief period of time. Despite this, the best times of the catatonic patients with the ever-patient Dr. Sayer had been the most memorable for both sides. Based on a true story by Oliver Sacks the story truly touches the heart of the people and reflects a win-win situation--Dr. Sayer was able to temporarily revive the patients and bring them back to the world that they know, while the patients taught him to have fun and interact and communicate with more people.

I will never forget how me and my twin sister and my dad laughed at the scene when Dr. Sayer was examining a woman patient and when he showed her his pen for the evaluation she began to be manically hysterical. I also cried when Leonard finally embraced her mom and called out her name after 30 years. I am deeply moved by the story because I can relate with the related mental illnesses that I am currently fighting as well. 

The theme of the movie is essentially about not giving up, the same theme in Robin Williams' 'What Dreams May Come'. Here are some of the unforgettable lines in the movie:

Memorable lines from Awakenings:

Dr. Sayer: His gaze is from the passing of bars so exhausted, that it doesn't hold a thing anymore. For him, it's as if there were thousands of bars and behind the thousands of bars no world. The sure stride of lithe, powerful steps, that around the smallest of circles turns, is like a dance of pure energy about a center, in which a great will stands numbed. Only occasionally, without a sound, do the covers of the eyes slide open-. An image rushes in, goes through the tensed silence of the frame- only to vanish, forever, in the heart.

Dr. Sayer: What I believe in is that these people are alive inside.

Dr. Sayer: I hope we'll bring him back to wherever he is. To the world.

Leonard Lowe: I'm Leonard Lowe. It has been explained to me that I've been away for quite some time now. I'm back. 

Dr. Sayer: They have to be reminded of the beauty of life, the simple things.

Leonard Lowe: I want to walk alone. I want to do the things that you people are taking for granted.

Dr. Sayer: Love is more powerful that the drug. That needs to be nourished. This is what we've forgotten.

We will always remember you, Robin Williams.