mababang langit

so the other day i was listening to this guy, who is about the most affable-looking heavy metal guitarist i've ever seen: and i thought, "gee, i can't even listen to that sort of arrangement and some of those riffs without thinking of 'head cha la'"... until i realized i was thinking of "head cha la" because the song actually sounded like "head cha la." so i tried singing the "cha la, head cha la" refrain instead of "let it go, let it go." it seemed to fit pretty well, so i thought, i should be working, why not make a mashup? i'd initially planned to lay the "head cha la" vocals over a "let it go" instrumental track, but couldn't find the former. luckily i found a "let it go" vocal track and a minus one of "head cha la" (the gino padilla version!) floating around on the web, so i threw those together in audacity : i had to slow down idina menzel's vocals by...

TLDR: 1.) a 30% entertainment tax levied by the government throttled local cinema output and creativity in the 90's. bong revilla wrote a bill cutting that tax to 10% in 2009, so things are on the upswing of late. bong, you are forgiven for ang panday 2 . but only that. 2.) i wish diokno had talked more about how a screen quota system can be made to work in the philippines. i think it's disgraceful that iron man 3 is playing on 3 out of 4 of our neighborhood screens but when a man loves a woman   it takes a man and a woman  only played on one. 3.) films aren't just fluff. they bring jobs and contribute to the GDP. they advertise the philippines (philippine products, culture, tourism) to the world. and the world is starting to take notice. 4.) use your money to change pinoy cinema. watch good films. give negative feedback on bad ones.

random footage by pinoy tekkie gerry alanguilan's komikon vid. 0:37 shows part of the The Great Komikon Proposal, featuring cartoonist lovebirds omeng estanislao and ails casis a feature on a trio of comics personalities, care of jerald uy and rappler.com more links and discussion over at sir gerry's summer komikon 2013 roundup post .

IN WHICH: - robin dude is kind to old ladies who cannot act - radagast is attacked by a werewolf - robin dude shoots a magical arrow that turns into a bucket - robin dude shoots a magical arrow that turns into a garlic bulb - a bunch of other crazy sh*t happens i don't know. i don't care anymore.

all the kids are doing it. alodia's done it. you know know you want to learn it.  and so, here are the steps: got it? now put them all together, with music:

Biting Elbows - 'Bad Motherfucker' (Insane Office Escape 2) from Ilya Naishuller on Vimeo .

La surconsommation from Lasurconsommation on Vimeo .

"hey, that was rotten!"

 my respect for mr. brand just went up several notches. via

Hominid from Brian Andrews on Vimeo  is an animated short featuring  "photo composites made from human and veterinary images creating hominid creatures."  

brought to you by the la salle students behind panelmag , an online magazine about pinoy comics. i especially enjoyed his comparison of a long-term comics writer-artist relationship to marriage.

if you grew up watching M.A.S.K. like me, you probably wanted one of these: (it's called condor, by the way) well, soon we may be seeing these things in commercial production: as close as it's going to get, i think.

i admit i got excited, watching the earlier parts of this with a naive hope that the troll might get some kind of comeuppance.  but once the veil of anonymity was lifted, all we found was... an unmasked troll, going about his trollish ways. via

the above is a recently-unearthed, unreleased, 12-minute, um.... animated (?) adaptation of tolkien's the hobbit, produced by bill snyder . it's got an interesting "little golden storybook" look provided by czech illustrator adolf born, and a wacky, totally non-canonical plot c/o writer gene deitch. it's got a pretty twisted backstory, too, according to deitch: Why invest money, plus a year-and-a-half of work, when you can make money without all that sweat? Not only had the Tolkien estate lawyers given Snyder the rights for peanuts, but in their ignorance of film terminology, they had left a million-dollar-loop-hole in the contract: It merely stated that in order to hold his option for THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Snyder had to “produce a full-color motion picture version” of THE HOBBIT by June 30th 1966. Please note: It did not say it had to be an animated movie, and it not say how long the film had to be! so it's basically a cheap knockoff, only with...

THIS VIDEO IS JUST SO AWESOME BECAUSE IT BEGINS WITH three words you  never hear the mainstream media say about the pinoy komiks industry: "buhay na buhay." one thing i don't understand about the video, though, is why the voiceover person sounds like a 12-year old girl and calls everyone "kuya". do they mean to imply that this stuff is for kids? another thing is why as of writing the video only has 124 views. spread it! spread it for the love of komiks!

i've never been sure about cellos. they're like huge, unwieldy violins, and you play one by holding it between your legs and rubbing a stick across it. but i do admit yo yo ma does some pretty awesome things on the cello, and in the hands of a capable jedi, well...   via

fanfilm by fight choreography group thousand pounds , based on naruto shipuuden, yadda yadda... for me it's all about the rock!

tabletop gaming, specifically D&D-type rpgs, is one of those things i've always wanted to try but never got the chance. my college roommate was a DM but for some reason or other i never did get to sit in on any of his gaming sessions. so, i just played my final fantasy or online mmorpgs or whatever, learning to be content with these electronic, graphical crutches for the imagination. and then i see this vid on youtube: and i am deeply, deeply inggit . what fun!

(lyrics NSFW)

andrew villar posted this video of some new and returning characters set to appear in the new batibot show debuting this month on TV 5, including the replacements for kuya bodjie and ate shena: my initial reaction is, "way too perky". but then again this hyperstimulated post-blues clues generation might prefer it that way. we'll see.