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brought Angela to Love Loss and What I Wore, the local staging of a Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron original. mixed reviews in the US, but an interesting enough text owing to this third world Pinay’s class consciousness. and Bituin Escalante and Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo are equally brilliant in it. go see it, bring your mothers and girlfriends. will only run until Jan 22! :) saw it last year, and did this review. Five women in all black outfits, mostly in the same… Continue reading »
or let’s begin 2012 by talking about oppression, shall we? My issue with self-help books is that they are mostly American. And anyone who lives off of the Philippines’ contradictions and silences, crises and sadnesses would know that not much of American self-help applies to the every Pinay. The 11 stupid things women do by Veronica Pulumbarit, based on the book by Dr. Laura Schlessinger Ten Stupid Things Women Do To Mess Up Their Lives among other sources, reeks of a… Continue reading »
The Church and reproductive health by Juan Miguel Luz When RH is portrayed as a great evil and when women and men who choose to pursue RH measures, notably contraception, are deemed to be sinners by Church leaders, this is neither fair nor informed. The greater sin would be to bring any number of children into a world of poverty.When parents do so with no means to provide adequately for them nor provide them a chance at a decent quality… Continue reading »
in April 2000, Prof. Luisa Mallari-Hall died in a plane crash, along with her husband and two children. she was a wonderful woman/teacher/friend/human being whose teaching continues to resonate with me, 15 years since she was first my teacher in 1996. these two essays were written soon after she died, the first one for a SEA newsletter, the second one i read at the tribute put together by the DECL in U.P. in 2010, i give birth and lose a… Continue reading »
Let it be said that Superstar Nora Aunor’s comeback is by all counts a success, if we are to measure it not by media mileage or product endorsements, not by tell-all interviews in every darn showbiz talk show or by grand statements about home being where the heart is. Ate Guy’s return has been about none of this and that is precisely a measure of this comeback’s success. Because would she be the unbeatable popular culture icon that she is,… Continue reading »
had an infinitely emotional conversation with this non-fiction narrative of a review of Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa. The teacher of literature, Karen (Jean Garcia), is enigmatic for a reason, but effective like every literature teacher should be. She reads poetry and it comes alive, she asks questions about it with certainty. She is unsurprised by any of her students’ assertions, even as these are necessarily about sexuality and desire, love and intimacy, the act of gazing. Even as… Continue reading »
on Temptation Island 2.0 It might have been the more apt title, actually, for the benefit of those who are so strict about originals and remakes, and imagine faithfulness to be about keeping to the level of copy. But there’s no crossing the same river twice, and it’s a foregone conclusion that every remake is a retelling, every retelling a different story altogether. And so the question for Chris Martinez’s remake of Joey Gosiengfiao’s 1981 Temptation Island (Regal Films and GMA… Continue reading »
i’ve begun to call the saturday inquirer Nestor Torre Day: open it on any given Saturday, and there he is dishing it out about local TV and celebrities. now this would be fine, though a bit shameless (isn’t it, to have your name appear so many times in one section of the paper, on any given day?), were he obviously keeping in touch with popular TV and contemporary culture. but this, as he himself reveals, he doesn’t do. recently Torre… Continue reading »
i grew up not really knowing what being an inaanak means, where i never had to call anyone ninang, where that didn’t mean any different from a standard aunt. but the three kids all the way in Holland began calling me such, and i realize it means something, especially when it comes with Lucien instinctively leaping onto the bed to hug me, or Francisco giving me a shy knowing smile like we’re the same age (coz we probably are you know),… Continue reading »
In The Name of Love (directed by Olivia Lamasan, written by Lamasan and Enrico Santos) had the promise of courage. Its OFW story is one that deals carefully with the fact of male bodies, where Emman Toledo (Aga Muhlach) and his dance group are hostos in Japan: dancing in a club and stepping out of there with blonde women in tow. The crisis of the Filipino family in the face of the OFW phenomenon is shown here with a bright honesty: there is… Continue reading »
And when I say that this movie proves Sarah Geronimo and Gerald Anderson individually and together have the kilig down pat, it’s that someone my age, with my history of bad love, could actually still get kilig. Yes, kilig to the bones circa 1980s, complete with stomping foot, loud laughter, sinking into my movie seat, nudging elbows with my younger sister (ex-student now friend) beside me, in the end tired from the roller coaster ride that a two hour love story… Continue reading »
when you’re told point blank by a foreigner, and with all honesty instead of malice, that they don’t know anything about Manila, that when he told his friends he wanted to go there they asked “Why?”, that in fact Manila is at the bottom of his list of cities to see, how do you even respond? it gets worse, too. you’re asked do you enjoy Manila? is it a safe city? the answer to the first question is easy of course.… Continue reading »
because Orosman at Zafira is all-original: music, lyrics, talent. and even when Rent 2011 is obviously an American text, there is here, real Pinoy talent. both reviews are up at gmanewsonline!
I’ve been told with disdain that I have too much hope for local movies, puwede namang hintayin na lang na ipalabas saTV ang pelikula. But it isn’t with hope that I go to the cinemas to watch Pinoy films. It is with excitement, always: I enter a cinema willing to be surprised, having as context what is usual or normal for movies on our shores. It isn’t with notion(s) of hope, as it is with a sense of how things have changed,… Continue reading »
The past two years of going around art exhibits and events have taught me two things. One, no matter how much I love a work of art, I will never be able to afford it. Such is the tragedy of my writing about art: spectatorship isn’t ownership unless I delude myself into thinking exactly that. Two, pre-exhibit write-ups aren’t my cup of tea. Many people are trained and/or like this kind of writing; I feel like it impedes upon my spectatorship… Continue reading »
The rewriting of fairy and folk tales into more politically correct versions is an old task, one that’s been done by the best fictionists (think Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber 1979) and poets (think Anne Sexton’s Transformations 1971), one that’s been analyzed by every kind of feminist there is. We all generally agree: tales are archetypal stories that limit what we can be. Stereotyping is the basic accusation against these stories we’ve grown up on; current cultural theory tells us… Continue reading »
on an otherwise quiet Saturday, driving home from a jog in the Fort, I could only be jarred into the realization that the cities we live in survive on activities within and in and by itself. and no this doesn’t mean fiestas anymore, not in this day and age. it seems that the city’s local beauty pageant had just been held, a tarp with the Mayor’s face actually announces the event. the Miss Mandaluyong candidates had one tarpaulin each, hung on a post… Continue reading »