THE Bureau of Customs zeroed in on gross misdeclaration of goods imported from China as the reason behind a “massive gap” between declared export volumes and actual shipments entering the Philippines.
In a statement, Customs Commissioner Isidro S. Lapeña said China’s import and export records to the Philippines do not match Manila’s official statistics, suggesting large-scale smuggling of goods through “hidden traders” and consignees for hire.
In a report submitted to Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III, Mr. Lapeña said the “wide discrepancy” may have been done through undervaluation or misdeclared volumes or weight of cargo. Goods which have been released to hidden traders would also allow importers to evade the scrutiny of the Bureau of Internal Revenue for tax payments.
“In both instances — misdeclaration or undervaluation and the use of consignees for hire — benchmarking and the submission of fake documents allow traders to get away with these underhanded schemes,” the statement read.
China is the country’s biggest source of imports, with total shipments valued at $10.573 billion from January-August, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. This marks a 4.4% increase from the same period in 2016, and currently accounts for 17.9% of total imports.
Mr. Lapeña said he is set to meet with the head of China’s Customs service this month in order to compare Philippine records with China’s. Mr. Dominguez ordered Mr. Lapeña during a recent Executive Committee meeting to close the gaps in the two countries’ trade estimates, in order to plug any revenue holes that may have emerged from the transactions in question.
Mr. Dominguez has said that 2016 trade records show a P1.8-trillion gap between official imports and totals recorded by countries exporting to the Philippines, suggesting P231 billion in foregone revenue.
This estimate is roughly 2% of gross domestic product, Mr. Dominguez has said, although he noted that the disparity could also be due to “timing” issues and decisions to include or exclude particular commodities in the trade reports.
Mr. Lapeña took over as Customs commissioner on Aug. 30 after heading the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
BEIJING — As President Xi Jinping led his US counterpart Donald J. Trump around Beijing’s Forbidden City on Wednesday, he made time to teach the American billionaire a bit of Chinese history.
Mr. Trump has been given the red carpet treatment on his three-day state visit, beginning with a tour of the ancient imperial palace where he sipped tea with Mr. Xi and showed the Chinese leader a video of his granddaughter singing in Mandarin.
Chinese media were quick to give the footage airtime, with the official Xinhua news agency broadcasting it on its Twitter account, though the platform is blocked in China.
The pomp and circumstance may be intended to allay some of Mr. Trump’s fervor on sticky issues such as China’s vast trade surplus with the US and continued relationship with its rogue neighbor, North Korea.
History was not expected to be on the list of talking points — at least until Mr. Trump mentioned he had heard that Chinese history went back 5,000 years and Mr. Xi stepped in to tell him more, according to state broadcaster CCTV.
“We have 3,000 years with a written language,” Mr. Xi said through a translator as they moseyed through the Forbidden City’s immense cobblestoned courtyards.
“I guess the older culture, they say, is Egypt with 8,000,” Mr. Trump retorted.
China is famously proud of its heritage, with schoolchildren learning early on that the country is one of the four great ancient civilizations.
“Egypt is a bit more ancient,” Mr. Xi admitted. “But the only continuous civilization to continue onwards is China.”
“We people are the original people, black hair, yellow skin, inherited onwards,” Mr. Xi laughed. “We call ourselves the descendants of the dragon.”
“That’s great,” Mr. Trump said.
It is not the first history rundown Mr. Xi has given the real estate mogul.
During the leaders’ first meeting at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Mr. Xi gave him a quick lesson on past Sino-Korean relations, which Mr. Trump told the Wall Street Journal changed his thinking on the issue.
Mr. Xi disabused him of his earlier opinion that Beijing could easily dispatch the North Korean threat, he said, stating: “After listening for ten minutes, I realized it’s not so easy.” — AFP
The designation of lawyer Harry Roque as presidential spokesman suggests that President Rodrigo Duterte suspects that what’s driving his approval ratings and other indicators of his declining popularity down is the regime’s failure to convince the public that it is as honest, as sincere, as patriotic, as pro-poor and as committed to the country’s progress and development as it has claimed to be since Mr. Duterte assumed the presidency.
This much is evident not only in Roque’s replacing Ernesto Abella in that official capacity but also in Roque’s holding, even before the effectivity of his appointment last Nov. 6, those press briefings that are normally the domain of Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Martin Andanar. Apparently the Duterte dispensation shares with its predecessor regimes the conviction that public approval is simply a matter of getting its communication efforts right.
The pastor Abella may have been too soft-spoken and not combative enough for Mr. Duterte’s tastes, and it’s a wonder that he even lasted as spokesman for over a year. On the other hand, Andanar hasn’t been specially effective either, among other reasons because he’s been known to say things that may resonate among street thugs and ne’er-do-wells, but come off as outrageous, tasteless, and crude even among the haphazardly educated. In that category belongs his disparaging the European Union because its leaders “don’t get enough sex,” for example. Such other personas as Mr. Duterte’s legal counsel have been no better, in their mistaken assumption that being vulgar and publicly boasting of their alleged sexual prowess will gain them and the regime brownie appoints among the population.
The inadequacies of whatever communication skills Andanar has learned as a broadcast news reader rather than as a journalist help explain why, for all his low-key and often futile attempts to explain and clarify what President Rodrigo Duterte says, Abella has come off as relatively more credible. How successfully one can communicate depends after all on the quality of one’s training as well as experience.
But these may not be as crucial as the fact that the statements these gentlemen’s master, the President of the Philippines, makes, require modification, explanation, interpretation and even correction. Because he’s president and his subordinates think him the lord of all he surveys, Mr. Duterte also invites imitation among his subordinates, thus Andanar’s and his other minion’s obvious attempts to mimic both his manners and language when speaking about policy and other public issues.
Apparently aware of his new boss’s preferences, Roque’s first public statements when the media reported his appointment were nearly as outrageous as those of Mr. Duterte’s and Andanar’s. His promise to throw hollow blocks at regime critics and to scream at them also earned him media space and time, which every politician angling for an elective post knows is what can make the difference between losing or winning, say, a Senate seat or even the presidency.
As every public relations practitioner knows, negative publicity is after all still publicity, which is crucial to name recall on Election Day.
Roque nevertheless assumes his post armed with a level of credibility his predecessor and Andanar do not have. Not only was he a professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law rather than one of those alleged lawyers who know little about the law but who nevertheless occupy exalted posts in this regime. He also has a record as a human rights lawyer who brought the conviction for libel of Davao broadcaster Alex Adonis to the attention of the United Nations Human Rights Council, and was among the lawyers who protested the 2012 Anti-Cyber Crime Act’s unconstitutional provisions.
But the jury is still out on whether Roque will not succumb to the same temptation of imitating his patron’s distasteful communication preferences, and will instead be issuing sound and intelligent statements worthy of his claim to fame as a former UP law professor and human rights lawyer.
Every Philippine regime, and Mr. Duterte’s is no exception, has looked at the lack of credibility of its declarations, policies, and actions as a communication problem. The Marcos terror regime thought that it wasn’t what it did that mattered, but how it would be perceived.
In addition to subjecting the media to State regulation, it created the huge government media bureaucracy that succeeding regimes have since inherited, in the belief that manipulating public perception through the media was key to the credibility of its claim that what it was doing was saving the Republic and reforming society rather than savaging both.
Although the Corazon Aquino administration did not dismantle the Marcos media machine, it didn’t take the same approach primarily because Mrs. Aquino enjoyed almost total press and media support and approval until she filed a libel complaint against the late columnist Luis Beltran for saying that she hid under her bed during a coup attempt, and then testified against him in the courtroom of a judge who was her appointee.
Mrs. Aquino’s successor, Fidel V. Ramos, would call and berate journalists whose views he couldn’t abide. But to get on their good side he also had some for breakfast and lunch a number of times, while the State media system churned out such positives as the Philippines’ allegedly impending emergence as the next Asian tiger.
Joseph Estrada complained about biased media coverage, launched an advertising boycott campaign against one broadsheet, and caused the shutdown and change of ownership of another by filing a P100-million libel suit against it. The same government media machine outdid itself in justifying these acts and so did his spokesman, a former student activist.
During Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s nearly decade-long watch, her husband filed 11 libel suits against 46 reporters and editors in a futile attempt to stop media criticism of her administration. There was a surge in the killing of journalists. Some were surveilled by the military during the 2006 state of emergency she declared. The military also labelled several media organizations as “enemies of the state,” and included some media practitioners in their “order of battle.” A warlord family that was among Mrs. Arroyo’s allies is accused of masterminding and carrying out the 2009 massacre of 58 men and women including 32 journalists in the Maguindanao town of Ampatuan. But State media studiously failed to mention it in their reports, which instead emphasized how Mrs. Arroyo was supposedly doing everything to address that outrage by declaring martial law in parts of Mindanao.
Benigno S. C. Aquino III used every opportunity to criticize the media for their alleged bias, inaccuracy, and focus on his love life while belittling the significance of the continuing killing of journalists, all of which his spokesman and State media religiously echoed.
No Philippine President has ever been happy with the press and media. They have tried, whether through their personal efforts or through spokesmen and the State communication system, to get “positive” coverage, no matter the flaws of their policies and actions.
They forget or have never understood certain communication fundamentals in today’s media-saturated world. The first is that no matter how well a falsehood is disguised as truth, in this Information Age someone is likely to expose it. The entire planet is after all deluged with billions of bytes of information daily, generated by online news sites, social media, blogs, newspapers, radio, and television, among whose practitioners some make a virtue out of exposing the failings and falsehoods that others propagate. The second is that nothing beats actually doing the right thing instead of making it seem as if a wrong were right by manipulating public opinion through the media.
These are the realities every government bureaucrat involved in communication must take to heart. Lying, making the bad look good, and claiming that black is white just don’t work — not for long, anyway. As Abraham Lincoln put it: “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter (@luisteodoro). The views expressed in Vantage Point are his own and do not represent the views of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.
Text and photos by Nickky Faustine P. de Guzman, Reporter
WHEN MARTIAL LAW was declared in Mindanao in May, the tourism and hospitality industry in Davao City saw a plunge in tourist arrivals, at least during the first few months of the announcement. According to its Tourism Office’s latest report, there was a 19% drop in the number of tourists who visited the city in June, from 152,678 tourists in June last year, to 123,343 tourist arrivals in the same period this year. But since August (thanks to the Kadayawan festival held every third week of August) everything, it seems, is picking up again. It’s back to regular business.
“The business was good [early this year], but when martial law was declared, there was a drop of tourists arrivals — of Chinese visitors cancelling their trips — in June and July. But it picked up in August because of the Kadayawan festival and because they saw that it is peaceful here,” said Bryan Yves Lasala, general manager of the Waterfront Insular Hotel, of the effects of Marial Law on the hotel.
The majority, or 80%, of the hotel’s visitors are locals, while the remaining guests are from the US, China, Korea, and Japan.
Upon the hotel’s invitation, a group of lifestyle journalists from Manila stayed at the Waterfront from Oct 11-13.
For the past 56 years, Waterfront has remained the only available accommodation in Davao City that has a beachfront, which makes it different from the rest, said Mr. Lasala. Davao City has a total of 10,000 rooms counting small and big hotels (Marco Polo, Seda, Microtel, Red Planet, Go Hotels, Dusit Thani), inns, and pension houses.
An iconic landmark in the city for the past five decades and counting, Waterfront Insular is primarily a MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, and exhibitions) hotel. While it has been hosting conferences, it has also become the go-to place for a communal New Year countdown in the city. Its beachfront is a good viewing location for offshore firework displays. It is widely known that Davao implements a firecracker ban, so locals enjoy staycations and tourists book accommodations at the hotel which is less than 45 minutes away from the city proper and less than 20 minutes away from the International Airport.
SMOKING, CURFEWS, AND ISAW
Standees of the city’s former mayor are seen in public places like hotels and parks.
When at the heart of the city, it is inevitable that one goes to the night market. In front of Aldevinco — a small shopping strip where pearls, souvenirs, and durian are sold — is a night market focusing on street food like isaw, barbecue, kwek kwek, and other skewers. Today there is no trace of the bombing that happened in the same spot last year as the crowd of hungry people sit on the plastic chairs while partaking of both their food and the juiciest gossip.
The night market is smokey because of the grilled food — the city is otherwise smoke-free thanks to a long-standing ban on smoking cigarettes in public. Chain smokers are limited to indulging in their vice in small designated smoking areas — a P5,000 fine awaits people who dare break the rule.
The city is veiled in darkness as the nights grow longer as the year draws to a close. Because the city is under martial law, there are curfews for minors but the locals said adults can still go out late at night. From the point of view of a first-time visitor, Davao — amidst all the bad publicity — seemed safe and at peace.
The night market closes at 7 p.m.
WATER AND LAND ACTIVITIES
The mornings, meanwhile call for day trips to the sea.
Waterfront Insular is a convenient exit point going to nearby Samal Island where people can relax and swim in the Davao Gulf. A typhoon (Odette) was looming in Luzon at the time of our visit, but Mindanao remained sunny; the water, still and serene.
Waterfront also has its own beach, but Samal Island’s is clearer, cleaner, cooler. The resort-hotel offers boat services going back and forth to Samal — it takes just 30 minutes for the two-way trip. Insular’s partner tourist attraction in Samal is a quiet Bali-style villa called Chema’s by the Sea. At least three groups of tourists were also on the island with us, but the place remained quiet and at peace.
Lunch, though, is better taken back at the hotel’s Café Uno and La Parilla, each having distinct menus. Pizza, pasta, salad, and a buffet of Filipino food like pancit, chicken inasal, street food (kwek kwek and fish balls), and taho are available in Café Uno that serves breakfast and lunch buffets. Fresh sea food, meat skewers, and soup, meanwhile, are available in La Parilla.
From Waterfront is another tourist spot not too far away called Eden Nature Park and Resort. A garden of fruits and vegetables and manmade forest, Eden is like Tagaytay — because both are elevated areas making them cool and breezy. The sprawling resort is host to activities like fishing, sky swinging and sky cycling, horseback riding, swimming, and gardening.
Chema’s by the Sea in Samal Island is less than 30 minutes away by boat from Waterfront Insular
CHANGING LANDSCAPES
A standee of the city’s former mayor and now President, Rodrigo R. Duterte, is found in almost every tourist spot we visited: in Eden, in the airport, and in Waterfront’s lobby. While the politician’s slogan is “change is coming,” Waterfront, on the other hand, remains rooted in the past at its core, including design-wise.
Designed by National Artist for Architecture Leandro Locsin, the 12-hectare property has six function rooms, one big pool, and 159 rooms. According to general manager Mr. Lasala, the management did not want to touch anything because they respect and regard the structure as part of the national heritage. The amenities and rooms are mostly wooden and reminiscent of the Baguio hotels of the last century. The two-story property has no elevators — one goes up via pebbled stairways.
While the classic ambiance of the hotel has remained consistent through the years, it has witnessed changes in its name many times over the course of the last 50 years. It was build by a group of investors led by the Ayalas in 1961 and was first called Islandia Hotel. The following year, it’s name was changed to El Davao Insular Hotel when a Spanish national became its hotel manager. The Inter-continental group came to manage the hotel in 1980, when it was renamed the Davao Insular Inter-Continental Inn. In 1991, the Ayalas took over for two years — changing its name again, this time as the Insular Hotel Davao. Three years after that, the hotel became the Insular Century Hotel, after the Century Hotel group took the new management. In 1999, Waterfront Philippines acquired the property and the hotel has been using the name Waterfront Insular Hotel Davao ever since.
Martial Law is scheduled to be lifted in December and the hotel’s name (who knows) may change yet again, but what will remain constant, according to Mr. Lasala, is their efforts in keeping its good service sustainable for its guests.
HOLLYWOOD — As she did three decades ago in Titanic, Oscar winning actress Kate Winslet (The Reader) plays a character that once again is immersed in freezing cold water, clinging to life, hopeful of a rescue. Only this time, in The Mountain Between Us, her character is battling the elements in a high altitude rather than shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean.
Based on the Charles Martin novel, the drama centers on Alex, a young woman headed east to her wedding. When her flight aboard a passenger jet is canceled, she and another stranded passenger (Idris Elba) hire a private plane to take them to their destination. Bad weather isn’t the worst of their problems when they reach 10,000 feet, and soon the strangers (along with the pilot’s dog) find themselves stranded on a remote and unforgiving mountain without any way of communicating their location to the outside world. Their best hope is to wait for a rescue, but staying inside the wreckage could spell more trouble than venturing out into the wilderness in search of help.
The adapted screenplay by J. Mills Goodloe and Chris Weitz is directed by Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad who previously helmed the Oscar-nominated Paradise Now. As he was putting the finishing touches his first Hollywood studio film, the amiable filmmaker spoke about working with his two acclaimed stars, shooting on location in Alberta and British Columbia, and (SPOILER ALERT!!!) how he was overruled when he wanted to kill off one of the characters.
What was it like making this film and how would you categorize it? Is it a drama? A survival movie?
This is my first experience with a studio and it was a pleasant experience. This film is a survival story but it also explores big ideas such as what is important in life: is it surviving or is it each other or is it something else? It’s not preachy (but told) in a very accessible way.
How easy was it convincing Kate Winslet to get into the icy lake?
Kate wasn’t the problem; the problem was the team because there are all kinds of security people and insurance. So, the problem wasn’t the water itself because she could be protected by a waterproof suit. The problem wasn’t when she was in the water but once she leaves the water, 10 seconds later she would have become an ice-block. So, we had 10 seconds to get the shot. We had to do that three times. And every time we did it, we then would have to get her back to the tent to re-dress her before she froze and keeping her warm until she was ready to go again. The 10 seconds started the moment she went underwater. Then Idris has to put his hands in to find her and pull her up. It isn’t easy.
Where did you shoot that?
In Canada. It’s a real river but you can’t use real river water. So, we had to build a tank within the river so we could control the water, so (Winslet) wouldn’t go under. That would have been too dangerous. We built it in September, four months before (production started) the water froze. It was a very very cold environment. Some days, I couldn’t move my facial muscles. Sometimes, I couldn’t open my eyes because it was so cold.
How long were you in that environment?
Two months: three weeks of pre-production and five weeks of shooting. It’s very different from the Middle East.
How high up were you?
Above the tree-line it was 11,000 feet and we were there for eight days. Then, we had the tree-line area for four days and the rest was under the tree-line.
How long did it take to acclimate to that altitude?
We couldn’t stay more than six hours because beyond that, your chest feels like it’s burning. You feel like you’ve been running for six hours because of the lack of oxygen. We also couldn’t fly to the mountain if it was windy or if there were clouds or if it was dark. We had to have clear weather to go up 11,000 feet. Every day we would wait for the forecast to know if we could go up (the mountain) or not.
Sometimes, when we were up there and it was clear, a sudden cloud cover would appear so we couldn’t fly back down. So, we had to bring eight days of supplies for 50 people (cast and crew). So, first we’d take up all the supplies and then we’d go up. Otherwise, it would be dangerous.
Did you ever get stuck up there?
One day we had gotten the all clear to go up. It was me, the DP, the line producer, and the first AD. We were in the helicopter and suddenly saw the clouds coming towards us. So, we had to turn around and get down fast because the clouds were right behind us. That day I felt like, “What am I doing here? Is it worth it to have this experience?” Somehow, I feel like in films like this, when you take a risk, you, as a director, the cast and the crew, will give their best. We all felt like a team and doing something more than usual.
What was it like having the dog in this already logistically complicated production?
The dog had two trainers, the owner and a representative of animal protection to make sure we didn’t push the dog too hard. Sometimes when he was cold and refused to stand on his mark, we’d have to wait. I suggested that we kill off the dog (character) but the studio said, “No way! We’ll fire you, but not the dog.”
Was it always going to be Kate Winslet and Idris Elba as your stars?
(Producer) Peter Chernin thought of Idris. The moment he mentioned him, everybody, including me, felt like this is going to elevate the movie because it’s going to be a color-blind love story for the first time in Hollywood. Usually, when you have a love story in a Hollywood movie, their race is an issue. We don’t have an issue at all in our story because it’s not written as an issue.
Your couple are adults in their 40s, not youngsters. Did you think of making them younger?
No. Dramatically, it’s more interesting to have more mature characters that explore the meaning of life in a poetic way. Secondly, I don’t recall a movie that I want to see on the big screen. This is a movie for grownups because most of the movies made today are for teenagers.
Did you take the actors up to the location before you started shooting?
No. They said they wanted to feel like there was no way back. They’re not prepared for (the journey) they go on. Their first day of shooting was the first day they were up in the mountains. They hadn’t been there before. Kate actually said to me when we got there, “If I knew how dangerous it was, I wouldn’t have agreed to do it.” But we made it very safe. Every step she took, somebody else took it before her to make sure there weren’t any holes for her to fall into.
Was anyone on the crew familiar with wilderness survival?
The location manager was experienced and he prepared us for the shoot. We were like a well-oiled machine. We were on schedule.
Video Review A Quiet Passion Directed by Terence Davies
IF YOU ATTEMPT something often enough once in a while you’ll get it right. The biopic has been done so often in recent years someone had to hit the bullseye sometime, not so much telling a subject’s story with reasonable accuracy as using said subject’s life as grist to express the filmmaker’s obsessions on his own stylistic terms — I’m thinking of Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster as lush and narratively wayward as any of his other works or Jane Campion’s Bright Star with its austere beauty and focus on the female protagonist (John Keat’s great love Fanny Brawne). Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion does something as interesting if not more so: cast Emily Dickinson — one of America’s greatest poets — in what is basically a horror film.
Davies opens the film with Emily (Emma Bell) already in effect buried alive, not just in 19th century New England (where men disapprove of women singing onstage) but in Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where she must take up among other subjects “ecclesiastical history.” Standing by herself to one side of a sparely decorated room she stands defiant against headmistress Miss Lyons (Sara Vertongen) who demands of her: “Have you said your prayers?” Historically there are several explanations for Emily leaving (sickness, homesickness, father wanted her home) but Davies tellingly opts for rebellion against “an acute case of evangelism.”
Emily in this first half (Cynthia Nixon as an adult) is a live wire, speaking out against piety (“What of hell?” “Avoid it if I can; endure it if I must”) and propriety (“She has led a blameless life.” “She hasn’t led a life at all!”), railing along the way on the subject of slavery (“which should never have flourished in this country in the first place”) and sexism (“live as a woman for a week… you will find it neither congenial nor trivial”). Add a crippling disability (Bright’s Disease, an old-fashioned term for a variety of kidney conditions) and what may have been depression if not severe agoraphobia and you might say she’s led a full life of sorts.
But those are the easy targets, the obvious targets, standard-issue in any feminist film; to Davies’ mind Emily goes further, condemning her brother Austin’s (Duncan Duff) extramarital affair (despite having pined for the married Reverend Wadsworth [Eric Loren] herself earlier), ranting against the poor hand God has dealt her appearance-wise (“The only people who can be sanguine about not being handsome are those who are beautiful already”), ultimately punishing the world the same way she punished the headmistress back at Mount Holyoke, with intractable defiance — this time standing alone within the walls of her room.
Davies’ tactic is more than deliberate, giving us what feels at first glance like a Whit Stillman period adaptation (Love & Friendship anyone?) complete with arch witticisms and pithy comebacks (which, judging from the surviving letters out of the many thousands she wrote, Emily was perfectly capable of crafting) showing us what a funny independent spirited soul she is. And then — not long after the death of her father (resplendent in black, laid out in a massive coffin that stretches across the screen) — dressing her in white and having her spend the rest of her relatively brief life sealed off in the upper floors of the Homestead, the family’s Amherst, MA mansion.
Then there are the poems. Emily’s seem suited to the big screen: somewhat short and easily recited in one- to two-minute increments they (as Nixon recites them) have a lively engaging cadence, not unlike a children’s rhyme. But what of the mysticism? What about the metaphysical longings? Davies’ visual style is exquisitely suited to expressing this side of Emily’s poetry, anchoring us in chastely sensuous images of the here and now (the gleaming wood, the rich textiles, the flicking warmth of candlelight) at the same time looking beyond the trappings at the outlines of the at times dark and forbidding God glimpsed at in her verses.
“Because I could not stop for Death” is an obvious choice for Emily’s passing but Davies takes a page from Dreyer and realizes the burial as a serene gliding journey to her final resting place (the last few verses — “since then — tis Centuries —” suggesting a chillingly long view of time’s passage as we peer down the deep hole in the ground). “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” the classic outsider’s anthem, shows Emily casting allegiance with Austin’s newborn child (they’re both outsiders hence instant good friends).
But Davies reserves his most rapturous — and most terrifying — passage not for a Dickinson poem but for a sentiment apparently extrapolated from her poems: “He will mount the stairs at midnight,” actress Nixon intones as Davies shows us the door — partly lit by sunlight — to Emily’s room. Nixon’s voice grows distressed as day wanes and the light slips away; as shadows gather her voice chokes as she cries out: “O please let him come! Let him not forget me!” A little too on-the-nose for Dickinson but as a cri de coeur fashioned for the film it’s an unforgettable moment: suddenly the shadows about the doorway take on a mortal aspect and the door’s white wood resembles the cover of a casket, freshly hammered shut. Suddenly our hearts are in there with Emily, and we need to pause to recover our senses.
SOUTH PARK: Stick of Truth was a game that was much, much better than first impressions conceded. While its graphics were simple, taking its art style and much of its humor from its titular Comedy Central show, South Park: Stick of Truth provided a level of polish that didn’t look possible from such a simple-looking game. Featuring an entertaining turn-based combat system, South Park: Stick of Truth was a surprise hit; it proved in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t just a cash grab targeting fans of the series. It was an amazing adaptation of a television series, and a good game in its own right. Now, with South Park: Stick of Truth’s success apparent to all and sundry, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, its sequel, certainly has big shoes to fill and a lot of expectations to live up to. Does it come anywhere close?
In many ways, the answer is a resounding yes. The idea of sequels has always revolved around the latest release being bigger and shinier and its immediate past predecessor. In this way, South Park: The Fractured But Whole easily delivers. Set a day after the events of South Park: Stick of Truth, it once more shines a light on the exploits of the New Kid, who gets between groups intent on developing superhero franchises. With the help of familiar characters (the taqueria-managing Morgan Freeman included), the New Kid must keep the town from being overcome by crime. En route, players get to explore a larger map, with plenty of optional areas in the town to visit in search of treasure. Fast Travel points are dotted along key areas to make backtracking easier, and it’s often good to do so, as layouts can be revisited and provide much-needed loot and gear. Its crafting system is rather generic, but gets the job done all the same, as it rewards players who explore and do battle, with better gear and more efficient healing items.
The combat strays away from the JRPG-like mechanics of South Park: Stick of Truth, and incorporates a grid-reliant turn-based system, allowing for more tactics to shine in combat. Strategy becomes an important part of every fight, as certain attacks depend on the specific positions of the protagonists. Often, attacks will cause status effects or knock enemies back, dealing extra damage if they collide into another character. That said, these very enemies can do the same in kind, leading to a careful balance between offense and defense.
And here’s the kicker: The level of customization is pleasantly in-depth. The superhero theme works well in giving South Park: The Fractured but Whole a sense of progression. There’s something hugely satisfying about going through the main story, as each chapter not only enhances characters by giving them additional attacks or by unlocking alternate classes, but by also changing their appearance, religion, and even sexuality and gender. These are small things when viewed from the big picture, but they fit perfectly with the source material’s tongue-in-cheek humor.
On the downside, South Park: The Fractured But Whole finds itself unable to sustain its momentum; it falters somewhere in the middle. As good as it is and has the potential to be, it winds up trying the patience of players with its repetitive game design. Even disregarding its controversial humor and dark comedy, some of the jokes, while legitimately funny, tend to get reused too often for comfort. Moreover, its constant use of quick-time events during battle, while amusing, can get tiresome. Even some of the better aspects of exploration, such as using a party member to clear an obstacle through elaborate puzzles, gets painfully slow when the same problems are faced again and again.
Creditably, South Park: The Fractured But Whole does try to shake things up. Various mechanics, such as the hilariously fourth-wall-breaking micro-aggression mechanic, are introduced at a moderately fast pace to break up the flow of combat and add interesting aspects to battles. This, alongside special moves in the form of Time-bending farts and special attacks, can combat the grindier, slower aspects of South Park: The Fractured But Whole.
Overall, barring the occasional lip-syncing issues and animation bugs, the game should last and function well throughout its respectable playtime of 20 hours or so on normal difficulty. It’s a mechanical upgrade over South Park: Stick of Truth, and a veritable must have for fans of the series. For others, the offensive humor and the simplistic looking art-style are barriers to appreciation from the get-go, but their investment of time will yield them a trove of value via an interesting combat system, a ton of content, and at the very least, a laugh or two. South Park: The Fractured But Whole is utterly ridiculous, and utterly satisfying.
Movie Review The Mountain Between Us
Directed by Hany Abu-Asad
THAT’S SOME mountain, all right.
A gigantic mountain of ridiculous, snow-covered steaming…
Something.
For the first hour or so, The Mountain Between Us is a tedious and corny survival story, but at least it’s bearable, thanks mainly to the all-in performances from Kate Winslet and Idris Elba as a couple of strangers stranded in the unforgiving, icy wilderness of northern Utah, clawing and climbing and bantering and bickering as they desperately try to remain alive. And then… there’s the potential for romance? Are you kidding me?
He’s got broken ribs and cuts and bruises, she’s got a badly fractured lower leg and other injuries. They’re running out of food, they’re always on the brink of frostbite. He took a nasty spill on a steep cliff. She broke through the ice and nearly drowned. They were nearly killed by a cougar.
Not to mention the fact neither one of them has been near a shower or a bar of soap in a very long time.
Oh, and they’re fairly certain they’re going to die anytime soon,
And, oh yeah, she’s engaged.
What a perfect recipe for a Nicholas Sparks-type romance!
The Mountain Between Us begins at the jam-packed Denver airport, where all the flights have been postponed or canceled due to storm activity.
Winslet’s Alex, a plucky and somewhat nosy and slightly annoying photojournalist, is desperate to get home because she’s getting married tomorrow.
Elba’s Ben, a neurosurgeon, has to get to Baltimore because he’s scheduled to perform surgery on a 10-year-old boy in the morning.
Seems reasonable to ask why Alex is so far from home on the day before her wedding. (Yeah, yeah, work. Come one.) Or for that matter, why Ben isn’t already in Baltimore, getting a good night’s sleep before operating on a kid in the next morning.
But there they are.
Alex overhears Ben’s desperate please to find a flight, so she approaches him with a proposition: They’ll split the cost of chartering a plane to a regional airport, where they can find connecting flights to their respective destinations.
Suffice to say that turns out to be a really bad idea. After a well-filmed and suitably harrowing plane crash sequence that kills off the pilot (but leaves his Lab retriever intact, because you DO NOT KILL THE DOG in movies such as this), Ben and Alex awake deep in the mountains, with her leg shattered and his torso bloody and bruised. (Only a few artfully painted scratches mar their handsome movie star faces.)
The beacon in the tail of the crumpled Cessna is broken. The food supply is extremely limited. They’ll be able to survive for a few weeks on water — there’s plenty of snow and ice around to keep that supply going — but unless they find a path to civilization, they’re doomed.
Off they go! How about this way? What about that way? How about winging it? Yikes.
For a skilled and sophisticated photojournalist, Alex often comes across as whiny and naïve. (When Ben talks about how he loves working with the brain because the brain controls everything, from thoughts to emotions, Alex says, “But what about the heart?” “The heart is just a muscle,” grumbles Ben, as if talking to 12-year-old.)
Alex believes in taking increasingly reckless chances because after all, they’re probably going to die anyway. Ben is a humorless stiff who insists they should formulate a plan and stick with it, no matter what. Now is not the time to improvise!
So they butt heads and make-up, butt heads and reconcile, butt heads and really reconcile. At one point you almost start rooting for the elements to win out, just so these two would shut up.
The Mountain Between Us actually goes downhill in the scenes that take place in the relative comfort of the civilized world. (I’m not saying they wind up rescued. Maybe I’m talking about flashbacks, or scenes not involving the two main characters. Not telling.) Dermot Mulroney is saddled with the thankless role of Alex’s wet blanket of a fiance, Mark. We don’t see any reason why Mark and Alex would have been engaged in the first place.
Or any reason why the viewer should be engaged with the nonsense from the outset. — Chicago Sun-Times
THE Metro Rail Transit (MRT)-3 will have a new maintenance provider next year, Department of Transportation (DoTr) Secretary Arthur P. Tugade said.
“By next year, the MRT will have a new service provider,” Mr. Tugade told reporters on the sidelines of the site inspection of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEx) Harbor Link Segment 10.
A transition team composed of personnel from DoTr, the Philippine National Railways (PNR) and staff absorbed by the DoTr from Busan Universal Rail, Inc. (BURI) is currently managing the maintenance of the MRT, following the termination by DoTr of the maintenance contract held by BURI.
BURI in January 2015 signed a negotiated contract in the absence of other bidders. DoTr terminated the contract citing BURI’s alleged failure to ensure efficient and available trains and failure to procure the proper spare parts.
BURI however contested the claims of the DoTr, saying that operational failures should not be blamed on the provider because of the poor condition of the rails, which BURI under the contract, is not required to rehabilitate. The Filipino-South Korean joint venture said it is hoping that a Quezon City regional trial court can grant a stay of the termination, bringing both sides to arbitration.
The DoTr in October granted Light Rail Manila Corp. (LRMC) original-proponent status for its unsolicited proposal to rehabilitate the MRT, covering both operations and maintenance. The proposal involves an investment of P20 billion to rehabilitate the train system, as well as the handling of operations for a period of 30 to 32 years.
Former LRMC President and CEO Rogelio L. Singson said in September that the consortium plans to take over the management of the MRT-3 within six months and said the company hopes to start the transition by next year.
LRMC currently manages the Light Rail Transit (LRT)-1. The consortium is composed of Metro Pacific Investment Corp.’s Metro Pacific Light Rail Corp., Ayala Corp.’s AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp. and Macquarie Infrastructure Holdings (Philippines) Pte. Ltd.
Undersecretary for Railways Cesar Chavez has said that interested parties for the maintenance of the MRT are Singapore MRT, RATP Group, which LRMC tapped as a partner for the improvement of the LRT-1 system, and previous provider Sumitomo Corp. with Mitsubishi Heavy Industry and TESP.
MPIC is one of three Philippine units of Hong Kong-based First Pacific Co. Ltd., the others being PLDT, Inc. and Philex Mining Corp. Hastings Holdings, Inc. — a unit of PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund subsidiary MediaQuest Holdings, Inc. — maintains interest in BusinessWorld through the Philippine Star Group, which it controls. — Patrizia Paola C. Marcelo
ROBINSONS LAND Corp. (RLC) grew its attributable profit by 29% during the July to September period, as cost efficiencies in operations offset a slight dip in revenues.
In a regulatory filing, the Gokongwei group’s property business said its net income attributable to the parent stood at P1.65 billion in the third quarter, higher than the P1.28 billion it realized in the same period in 2016.
RLC managed to offset a 9% drop in revenues to P5.62 billion with a reduction in costs from the real estate segment, which recorded lower expenses for advertising, promotions and commissions, among others.
Amid the positive performance for the third quarter, RLC’s net income attributable to the parent was flat at P4.56 billion in the nine months ending September, compared to the P4.50 billion reported in the same period in 2016. Revenues were also flat at P16.64 billion.
RLC’s commercial business, which includes its chain of Robinsons shopping malls is the biggest contributor to revenues at 47%, or P7.82 billion. This was achieved through the operations of the lifestyle centers it opened in 2015, as well as three new malls and two mall expansions in 2016.
The residential segment accounted for 31% of revenues or P5.06 billion, while office buildings contributed 14% or P2.39 billion.
For its hotel segment, contribution to the business came in at P1.37 billion, or the remaining 8% of the company’s total revenues. The hotel group consists of 10 Go Hotels across the country, three hotels under the Summit brand, and the Intercontinental Hotels Group, which manages Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria and Holiday Inn Manila Galleria.
Shares in RLC shed 55 centavos or 2.18% to P24.65 each at the Philippine Stock Exchange on Thursday. — Arra B. Francia
DUMAGUETE — The Philippine Sports Commission’s last major multi-sport competition for the year, the Batang Pinoy Visayas regionals, unfolds today at the Lamberto Macias Sports and Cultural Center here.
Close to 2,500 participants from all over the Visayas will see action in the sportsfest ushered in by opening ceremonies at 4 p.m. at the facility graced by PSC Chairman Butch Ramirez, Sen. Miguel Zubiri, the author of the law making arnis the national sport, and Dumaguete City Mayor Felipe Antonio “Ipe” Remollo.
Events on tap are athletics, archery, arnis, badminton,baseball, boxing, basketball, chess, dancesport, karatedo, lawn tennis, sepak takraw, pencak silat, swimming, softball, table tennis, taekwondo, table tennis and volleyball in this weeklong competition at this scenic seaport city.
Dumaguete is the hometown of youthful Malaysia Southeast Asian Games silver medalist Nicole Tagle, 15, who became the first Filipino athlete to qualify for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The Batang Pinoy Games is one of the PSC’s grassroots sports development programs that has been cited by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in promoting sports as part of a country’s national policy.
The Games were the brainchild of the late PSC chairman Butch Tuason, who launched the program in 2000 and became one of the government sports agency’s projects in scouting young sports talent at a in the countryside.
Chairman Ramirez, who was then a commissioner, was the overall coordinator of the second edition of the Batang Pinoy National Games held in 2001 at the Santa Cruz Sports Complex in the Laguna provincial capital.
The Visayas regionals follows the highly successful Luzon regionals held in Vigan, Ilocos Sur two weeks ago.
The Mindanao regionals, which was supposed to be the kick-off leg of the meet, was not pushed through because of the armed conflict in Marawi City last May, although the Batang Pinoy finals will likely be held sometime early next year.
REPRESENTATIVES for pop star Taylor Swift told streaming-music partners that her new album won’t be available through their services during its first week of sales, people familiar with the matter said.
NHRA Funny Car driver Courtney Force’s Advance Auto Parts Chevrolet Camaro SS funny car is seen featuring the cover Taylor Swift’s new album Reputation at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Oct. 30. Swift’s album debuts on Nov. 10. — AFP
The services are still negotiating with Swift’s team to determine when Reputation will be made available, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private talks. The album will be on sale in retail outlets as well as online stores like iTunes starting Nov. 10. A Swift spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
For most of the music industry, streaming is the future, helping propel global sales to 5.9% growth last year. But Swift and a handful of other high-profile acts gunning for the top spot on the charts still find sales of physical and digital records more lucrative. Beyonce only made her latest album, Lemonade, available on one streaming provider, Tidal, which is co-owned by her husband Jay-Z. Adele shunned streaming for months after the release of 25 in 2015.
It’s still possible Swift changes her mind at the last minute, but she has been one of the most vocal critics of streaming, saying in a column for the Wall Street Journal that the services devalue music. Spotify, the largest of the streaming providers, offers much of its catalog for free, supported by advertising. Paying subscribers get the full library, including new releases artists have chosen not to offer to everyone. Apple Music, the second-biggest, doesn’t have a free version.
Swift’s album is expected to score one of the biggest chart debuts of the year. Her previous record, 1989 was her biggest seller, finishing in the top three in global sales in both 2014 and 2015. That album was available on Apple Music starting in 2015, but was kept off Spotify until June of this year. — Bloomberg
The combat strays away from the JRPG-like mechanics of South Park: Stick of Truth, and incorporates a grid-reliant turn-based system, allowing for more tactics to shine in combat. Strategy becomes an important part of every fight, as certain attacks depend on the specific positions of the protagonists. Often, attacks will cause status effects or knock enemies back, dealing extra damage if they collide into another character. That said, these very enemies can do the same in kind, leading to a careful balance between offense and defense.