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In the age of doing Manila runs of foreign plays versus doing the more creative task of adapting these for local audiences, Dulaang UP’s Titus Andronicus: Tinarantadong Asintado can only be valuable. Directed by Tuxqs Rutaquio and adapted into Filipino by Layeta Bucoy, what’s remarkable about this work is that it does justice to the Shakespeare original while delivering a contemporary narrative that by all counts is a success. The moment pop/street music filled the theater, the moment the clown… Continue reading »
On August 7, 2011, the History Channel premiered its 48-minute documentary on the bus hostage drama that happened in Manila a year ago on August 23, 2010. For a full week after the premier, this same documentary would be replayed every day, sometimes three times a day, on cable TV. There was no noise about it, barely any media mileage other than what looked like press releases from the History Channel itself, where the documentary is sold along with the rest of… Continue reading »
there is no excuse — no excuse — for a President who not only presumes that 85% of this country are the same kind of Catholic; he also then thinks that this is a valid enough reason to gauge public anger. no excuse for a President who is as bad as Vic de Leon Lima. let me not begin with the fact that his own father died for democracy and freedom, the same things that this President has sacrificed here.… Continue reading »
I’ve got faith in Soxy Topacio. Always have. Especially after that wonderful comedy that was Ded Na Si Lolo (2009) that could only rock the world of anyone who follows local movies – local comedies in particular. Topacio brilliantly captured the tragicomedy that is death and the family in a lower class setting without making it seem like a judgment, or an apologia for that matter. Ah, but maybe that was a movie that was by most counts about being an indie,… 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 »
It might be out of the way, and painfully in the middle of the corporate hustle and bustle of Makati, but Rizalizing the Future was a good enough reason to leave anti-corporatism in the car and step into the Yuchengco Museum. The hook, and one of the more powerful things in this exhibit, is the inclusion of Team Manila’s contemporary renderings on wood of Jose Rizal in shades (and later on their other Pepe products), in colors too vivid you forget… 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 »
because with a festival pass at P1,000 pesos, these two plays were already value for money. and really it makes you wonder why P1,000 pesos would allow you to watch all 18 plays at Virgin Labfest, yet all it will get you are 4 to 6 movies give or take, at the Cinemalaya. and we wonder where the double standard lies? on Floy Quintos’ Evening At The Opera When a stage is filled with a king-size bed, a dresser, and… Continue reading »
To get anywhere really, and in the end didn’t even get close to redeeming itself. Unless of course redemption is about finally – finally! – having a local romance that doesn’t end as happily as usual? But even that gets lost in the aftermath of a movie that was more than anything, a waste of talent (the actors’ and director’s) and time (mine). Forever And A Day (directed by Cathy Garcia-Molina, screenplay by Melissa Mae Chua and Carmi G. Raymundo) began with… Continue reading »
Alwin Reamillo’s Ang Balut Viand exhibit is like balut: it looks like a standard generic egg from the outside, but is an unborn duck on the inside. Which is of course to say that you might not have the stomach for that sisiw literally and figuratively; or find that you actually quite have a taste for it, from sipping that hot balut liquid straight from the shell, to the process of slowly peeling the shell, and downing it whole: the eating of balut isn’t… 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 »
Two Pinoy artists were chosen to be part of the Singapore Biennale 2011, and while this might seem like a quirk of fate that’s like most of the grants and awards they’ve individually received before, there is much to be said about the fact that these two artists are Louie Cordero and Mark Salvatus. In an essay written for the Biennale on these two artists, Dr. Patrick D. Flores (Curator, Vargas Museum) draws similarities between Cordero and Salvatus succinctly: These… 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 »
The first thing that strikes you when you enter the Looking For Juan (L4J) art space (Serendra, Taguig City) for the Mga Kuwentong EDSA exhibit is how familiar the images on both the small and large canvasses are, with faces and figures both real and abstract that speak of a time we might be too young to remember. But the icons / slogans / colors continue to have currency. Two artists are part of this exhibit, from different generations, both working with… Continue reading »
The failure happens first on the level of being disallowed to take photos in the Ayala Museum, something that’s even stranger when the exhibit is purportedly about people power, and yet the people aren’t allowed to take photos anywhere in that museum, a reminder really of why I’ve stopped going there. It took an exhibit like Revolution Revisited (Ayala Museum, Makati City now up at on a mall and campus tour) by photographer Kim Komenich to make me step foot… 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 »