Concert Review: Journey At Mall of Asia, Manila, March 14, 2009

Journey stays true to their roots in their first concert in Manila with new singer Arnel Pineda



by Clarence Yu

All roads led to the SM Mall of Asia (MOA) fair grounds as Manila’s mostly upper crust and middle class crowd witnessed rock band Journey’s first Asian date in support of their Revelation album.

An announcer mentioned to the audience that the concert was being filmed for a special DVD and asked the crowd to perform two cheers for filming purposes.

Led by native son Arnel Pineda on vocals, the band took the stage at approximately 8:50 pm and erupted into "Never Walk Away" off the Revelation album with all cylinders firing, followed by "Only The Young," a sufficient one-two salvo to keep the crowd on its' feet.

The legendary rockers mixed the old with the new. Instead of trying to please the crowd with a potential wall to wall greatest hits concert, the band admirably dug deep into their newest release, with songs like the rockers "Change For The Better," "Where Did I Lose Your Love," and the tear-jerking ballad "After All These Years," intermixed with old gems like "Ask The Lonely," "Stone In Love," and the ever crowd rousing "Separate Ways." This brought the crowd on and off their feet; for every hit like "Open Arms," which had everyone screaming, there was a "Wildest Dream" which kind of flew over the audience's heads.

No matter. The sound was all-professional, solid, and tight.

The band also added new bits into their old songs. "Separate Ways" had an interlude during Neal Schon's blistering solo, and "Wheel In The Sky" began with Jonathan Cain on harmonica and Schon on acoustic in a country-honky tonk jam. Bassist Ross Valory was cool and collected, holding down the bottom end while entertaining the audience with his comical facial expressions.

Drummer Dean Castronovo sang lead vocals on several songs, the most impressive being "Mother Father" off the Escape album. Castronovo proves not only to be a great drummer but an excellent singer as well.

Finally, lead vocalist Arnel Pineda was a ball of fire throughout the whole show, jumping all over the stage and hitting all the high notes with his more than apt voice. Confident and equipped with the obligatory arena rock star charisma and moves, Pineda was visibly charged and emotional in his first concert with Journey in his native land, and dedicated the 1996 ballad "When You Love A Woman" to "all the women out there" and "to my wife."

Understandably, though most of the crowd was there to see Mr. Pineda, Journey proved that collectively they are still a serious band to be reckoned with. This was no sentimental tour. Albeit boring the crowd somewhat with their new songs, the band showed no compromise, proving in the end that they are still firmly entrenched in their roots and are looking forward to a longer career ahead of them.

Movie Review: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttom" Has No Merit At All

by Clarence Yu

From my personal notes:

Director David Fincher re-teams with Brad Pitt, who re-teams with Julia Ormond and Cate Blanchett, in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Brad Pitt should have won an Oscar a long time ago for his role in Legends of the Fall, when he was still a young actor full of raw emotion. This attempt at redeeming that lost award is obviously framed at capitalizing on Pitt's current super, uber-celebrity status.

To see a movie where Angelina Jolie's hunky, chunky husband is portraying an old man who ages into youth is exactly the kind of clichéd fluff that will capture the hearts of the multitude of viewers that flocked to see Titanic, and will try to capture the minds of those who awarded Forrest Gump.

The premise of the movie is nowhere near the story of the original 1922 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's merely an excuse to create a movie that tries to combine elements of fantasy, a sense of the epic, drama, humor, and love. The result is one big mess of splattered bird droppings, salvaged by excellent make-up and special effects.

Cate Blanchett lays her acting credibility to waste here in a role that would have been more suitable for Lindsay Lohan or Emma Thompson. Brad Pitt tries to channel Val Kilmer, James Dean, finally, himself, but fails miserably. Memo to Mr. Pitt: you will be better off sticking to pretty boy roles (Ocean's Eleven, Thelma and Louise) if you want to win an award. Your asset is your charm and movie star charisma, not this 180-degree turnaround against type. If you do happen to win, I'll quit watching your movies forever.

Why is Hurricane Katrina involved, and what's with the insulting and highly irritating New Orleans-Creole accented narration that you hear throughout the movie? Beats me. Again, a wild guess: Titanic and Forrest Gump.

I'm slowly losing my mental acuity and developing a curious case of narcolepsy in the middle of this long, long movie. I'm half-considering leaving the theater to buy the Back to the Future trilogy DVD to get my senses back to life. But I'm still waiting to see Blonde Brad as he ages into his present state, the way I see him on the front pages of every tabloid publication nowadays.
I'm curiously reminded, out of the blue, of a techniqu used in recording music called backmasking. I wonder what we will see if this movie is played backwards. Does it become a watchable movie at all?

The wretched gift this film gives is its interesting title, which will surely remind me of this unpleasant experience till the end of my days.

For the Academy's consideration: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Case dismissed, no contest.

Movie Review: "Milk" Is Lukewarm

Written by Clarence Yu


Milk tells the real-life story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. Based on actual events, the premise of the movie seems inspiring: the struggle of a man representing a hated, minority community who overcomes all obstacles to win representation in government.

Looks can be deceiving, however. The movie's running time just doesn't give enough to build on Harvey Milk's character, aptly portrayed by Sean Penn in a fine performance.

The film, directed by Gus Van Sant, covers Milk's life from 1970 to 1978, the time in which he begins his rapid ascent from a down and out, 40-year-old insurance executive to his final years as a gay/civil rights activist and eventually, an elected public official, serving as a City Supervisor of San Francisco.


While the film enlightens viewers on the career of Harvey Milk, it lacks a certain sort of dynamic tension needed to justify the climax; there are scenes that show a promise of build-up, but then it just veers off into various sub-plots that tend to irritate rather than to punctuate. You just don't get that feeling of victory as the movie ends.


What is good about Milk is its feel for the time and the superb acting by Penn, James Franco, and Josh Brolin. You don't expect an actor like Penn to take on a role like this, so apart from his superb performance, it is a brave one as well. He is consistently sweet and amiable throughout without any of the fits of rage or anger that characterize his previous work. Josh Brolin proves he has the acting mettle to match Penn as he takes on the pivotal role of Dan White. Brolin captures the frustration and mild insanity that the role demands.


With all the hype surrounding Milk, many will expect it to be cheesy in a good way, but get set for a mild disappointment. The film is certainly entertaining, but the scenes could have been woven tighter in a way that would have made the actors' performances really shine. The movie tells the story of an extraordinary man, but there is nothing extraordinary in its telling.

Movie Review: Swing Vote

Starring Kevin Costner, Madeline Caroll, Dennis Hopper, Kelsey Grammer
Directed by Joshua Stern
Distributed by Touchstone Pictures

By Clarence Yu

KEVIN Costner’s latest drama-comedy starrer, Swing Vote, is a timely film for a primer on the US electoral process. Released in North America in August this year, the movie focuses on a trailer-living, divorced, single father, all-around loser and drunk bum (Bud Johnson) played by Costner.

As it happens, during the US election that transpires in the movie between the two presidential candidates played by Dennis Hopper and Kelsey Grammer respectively as the Democrat challenger and the incumbent Republican President, the whole fate of the race boils down to the vote of one man, Johnson, due to a voting machine performance error that did not able to record his vote.

Please click here for the rest of the article (at the Philippine Daily Inquirer's TV blog, Couch Potatoes).