Category Archives: news

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Emil Guillermo’s quick take on “24” finale: An OK close for the 8th day’s “End-of-the-World/POTUS Corruptus” scenario, but a 9th day lurks in the future and maybe something newer than real-time SIM card recovery disembowelments?

“24” is my guilty pleasure. 

But I sure wish it had ended for good last night.

In real life, I’m a softie  for human rights, civil rights and all rights of the oppressed. But on “24” I can satisfy my unrealize desire to kill, maim, torture, and this season, disembowel, all  for the greater good. Jack Bauer is better than a video game. You don’t have to figure out how to use the darn remote controls to make him move. And when push comes to annhilate, Jack is more moral than we all thought. Last night, Jack couldn’t off Logan or Pillar when he had the chance. (Jack  bit off Pillar’s ear, but he lived). Deep down, the good guys know what’s right.

Unlike “Lost,” where nothing in the previous 6 seasons seemed to have anything to do with the powerful last 10 minutes, at least there was a kind of unity to “24.” As in the previous seasons, the last episode fulfills the mission of the day. Among the highlights:  Chloe shot Jack. Chloe avoided a full cavity search. Taylor gave in to her guilt over the cover-up. The corrupt peace accord was averted. Great. It was as it has always been for me, a tense, “stand-up-while-watching”  TV experience.

But I really wanted it to “end” end.  

And then I noticed, as the clock ticked like the last seconds in a game, the story arc wouldn’t give us much more than it had to. Jack is still alive, on the loose, and with a final wink, is off, a step ahead of the feds, the Russians, and millions of fans soon to be in hot pursuit.

So a faux finale. They had a chance to bring it all together as when Jack told Chloe how, when it all began, she came into CTU, and he never knew it would be her to have his back. But she did.

I swear I tried to pump out a tear just to play along. But after 8 seasons,  I was dry.

Instead, I winked back.

Addendum: On his blog, Chuck Ross, asked if finale was a missed opportunity. Of course, I believe it was. The storytellers were victims of their “real time conceit,” and were trapped inside a box of their own making.  The subsequent movie should be liberating, unless they rename the project  “120.”  

 “24” made sense 8 years ago, when real-time was a buzz word.  But why insist on the format now? Time for the next thing, or the next old thing.

SIM card disembowlements–in 3-D?

blog, movies, news

Emil Guillermo’s take on “Lost” Finale:Longer than a Sunday School lesson, complete with Father, Son, and Holy Ghosts; But still a showbiz–not a religious experience–for me. Now bring on the devil–the “24” finale

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Over the last six years, I was an on-again, off-again “Lost” watcher. I really got into it when I lived on Oahu. I really got off of it when I was too linear for the show’s own good.

I was a Lapsed-Lost follower.

I hadn’t seen an episode for three years until I was hooked by last week’s hype.

The last show?  Really?  No more “Lost”?  Honest to God?  I was back on the island.

Without benefit of Cliff Notes, it took me awhile to figure out how I was “Lost” all those years. But it didn’t matter. And then it all came together. The “lost” were found, and everyone was reunited in….  Heaven?

I suppose if I was a devotee all these years, this would have been my religious experience.  The family coming together and seeing the light.

But I wonder how else they could have tied things up. People coming together for a journey, but instead of Oceanic 815, they’re sitting in pews at a church. The 8:15 Mass?

The number of Christian references would have bothered me if I were say Buddhist or Muslim.  But since I was in church earlier that day for Pentecost Sunday and had the image of tongues of fire in my mind all day, I was  intrigued how openly Christian the finale was.

Symbols abound: The coffin marked “Christian Shepherd.”  The drinking of the cup, with the words, “Now you are like me.”   Desmond being lowered to the depths of fire and the earth moving–“Revelation”?  Ben apologizing to John, and John saying, “I forgive you.”  Jack the son, with his father, who has all the answers, or not.  But yes, we’re all dead. No Last Supper. But there is a group hug/cocktail-less cocktail party, with everyone ending up in the pews. There are 16 people, 4  more than the apostles. And the father walks down the aisle to open the door.  Let there be light.  Transfiguration? And then it’s all interspersed with  Jack on the  island,  on his back, wounded on his side, a more obvious Christ figure, no? But Jesus didn’t have his dog with him in the end. 

I swear the show was more fun than watching the Church Channel.

I watched the ending again this morning, and if I wasn’t so snarky, I’d say the guilt from missing the last three seasons almost rendered me teary-eyed. But I dare say it was more remarkable a display from the producers than not, and hardly the cop-out as suggested by one major daily.

If you wanted a technical explanation for things, you’re a fool anyway. The producers had it more right than not.  I forgive them their convolution.

When you kill a show, you are attending a funeral. I did catch symbols of other religions on the stained glass windows, so it wasn’t totally Christian, just predominantly so. But the tone was fine for saying goodbye. The story isn’t about physics and science. It’s about human relations and characters, and for something so Hollywood the “Lost” finale was pretty damn moving.

Now on to the end of  “24,”where the devil shall be  vanquished as the day ends.

blog, diversity, news, politics, race

Two Radicals: Times Square suspect Faisal Shahzad and Tea Party victor Rand Paul from Kentucky

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While Rand Paul was marching to victory in Kentucky on Tuesday, Faisal Shahzad was arraigned in New York.

Much has been made about the story of Shahzad, mostly about his ineptitude as a terrorist.

His other story line is more common.

In these diverse times, Shahzad, a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, was no different from many Americans and considered a normal suburbanite . But when the American dream slipped away due to foreclosure and money pressures, the radicalization of the “boy next door” began.

Darn it. If he were white, he could have joined the Tea Party.

But that group is so radical in a different way that a Shahzad wouldn’t have been welcome to pass out tea bags.

If there was a doubt about that, Rand Paul dispelled it this week.

Paul –a Tea Party devotee and as of this week, the newly minted Republican nominee from Kentucky to the Senate–showed his true colors when he made his victory speech for public office in a private country club.  

Being elitist is one thing, but when you add his public denouncement of the Civil Rights Act, you have a true radical in public life in America.

It’s as radical a perspective from a different direction as the radical fundamentalism of Shahzad.

I won’t condemn Paul for having his views.  That would be undemocratic. And our democracy allows for the freedom to have stupid opinions.

But I will condemn his vile beliefs as having no place in modern society.

To be a poltically-fundamentalist American is no less radical a belief to fear in a new diverse America.

blog, news, politics, race

Emil Guillermo’s quick take: The Aquino victory in the Philippines and what it says about the Filipino people

I’m hearing it said, and it’s true: Noynoy Aquino would not have won this time around had his mother not died last year.

It’s that guilt vote. Catholicism,guilt,  family ties mean something in the RP.  If voting machine and counting snafus could be averted, then it was in the bag. But who had the crystal balls to predict that?

One thing is sure, an Aquino candidacy was unlikely had Cory lived on. Noynoy was too happy as the idealistic gadfly oligarch.

The political wags in Manila are already saying that in a “Non-Noy, No Aquino race,”  the convicted and pardoned former ex-President Joseph Estrada would have won easily over the scandal-tainted Manny Villar, the Meg Whitman-Ross Perot like politician who had lots of money to burn.

Add to that the tremendous victories from the surviving Marcos family, all of them, allowed to run and win in their Ilocos region. What do you get?  A recycling of corruption seems imminent.

Says a lot for the Filipino voters and the future of democracy there, where crooked politicians are cherished and revered.

But why shouldn’t some scalawags and scalawagas be given a fifth or sixth chance? 

It’s the Filipino way.

In America, you get dumped for lying about your Vietnam status. Or you get dinged for having an affair (which is strange. Don’t politicos get into the business to get chicks?)

But that’s politics in America.  All that is just a starting point for political success in the Philippines.