Category Archive for: entablado

kultura

OPT: original Pinoy talent

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!

komentaryo

plump and pretty and political correctness

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 each, around the City Hall Rotonda.

tarps are the new “in” thing, a way of saying: “Sikat ako, ikaw?”

on posts, alongside advertisements
ms.mandaluyong 2011!

yes, those tangled wires represent the state of electrical maintenance in this city that has a beauty pageant. but i digress.

as i turn right into Boni, it takes me a while to realize that the set of tarps that line this narrower minor street actually has a different set of women. it was also about a different pageant altogether, one that obviously wasn’t just about beauty.

 you are reading that right: Bilbiling Mandaluyong 2011. and i cannot tell you how stunned i was at the idea of a whole city having excess fat, though i imagine that is beyond what the city hall thought when they put together this pageant.

this pageant that we’ve actually seen done on TV and the movies, yes? but also in the current scheme of health consciousness and early mortality rates is just startling. the gut reaction is to think: how politically incorrect is this? the other reaction is: but who’s to say, really?

in these times when being healthy is everything and commercialized, when it necessarily sinks into a consumerist culture that’s about the brands that matter, the places to run in, the workouts to do. in these times when impossible thinness has come to be seen as normal; when all thinness requires is a lot of money to go to some slimming clinic of other of which there are plenty.

in these times when we should know better. we should know that half the time it isn’t about misrepresentation as it is about class, the other half maybe those who worry about the world less actually get it right. in these times when we should know that all the time we are all victims of the culture of beauty of any given time, and yes this includes the men, too. in these times when whitening the skin and straightening the hair, whittling the waist and trimming the thighs, and for men being buff and sleek and metrosexual, is what’s seen as normal.

maybe the ones who don’t want to take some diet pills have got it right, are actually better off, are actually on a healthier track spirit-wise.

in context, on the street.
tabi-tabi portion eh?

i’m far from calling this revolutionary of course, but i will say this: maybe it makes for the most uncanny of steps in the right — because different — direction. hopefully these ladies refused to be made into the laughingstock of the pageant, ideally they are given the same kind of courtesy and respect accorded Ms. Mandaluyong. because there is more to Bilbiling Mandaluyong than the additional weight. especially if these Bilbiling candidates prove that their intelligence is just as big, their brilliance equally overwhelming.

now, maybe i hope for too much.

kultura

2010’s top TV (and showbiz) distractions / destructions

Now this obviously cuts across networks, so that is its limitation as well: I can’t quite watch two soap operas at the same time, though I will try all the time. There is no list that isn’t biased, and this one for Pinoy TV and showbiz in 2010 is also a measure of my own personal taste for that which is different, and new, and sometimes a  bit inane.

John Lloyd Cruz in a genre all his own. Because he can apparently sell everything from biogesic to fruit juice to crackers, tuna to pancit canton, and just might have singlehandedly brought back Greenwich Pizza in our lives. Of course he has a whole barkada in those commercials, but really now, that’s every other barkada we have. What works in the end is that John Lloyd is so willing and able to make a fool of himself, and to create this image of being the every guy in a co-ed barkada. And even when we hear him admit to girlfriends, and we hear rumors of vaginal locks in his life, in the end all that remains really is John Lloyd as the every boy, like a Juan dela Cruz without the indio or the konyo, and just a whole lot of middle class charm.

An Aljur seems to be in order. Aljur Abrenica opened the Cosmopolitan Bachelor Bash for 2010, with the confidence that we still rarely see in our men after Richard Gomez decided he could just row his way in an ad and wear briefs in a fashion show. Sam Milby just lost so much luster compared to Aljur, also because the former just seemed so darn uncomfortable the whole time he was on stage; it also didn’t help Sam that the new and improved Christian Bautista came before him, who undoubtedly new to strut his new, uh, assets. Aljur meanwhile, had us asking for more, and we wanted to see him on that stage again. After seeing what seemed like hundreds of topless men, that can only be a measure of Aljur’s presence. He’s playing Machete in a GMA soap for 2011; you know what channel I’ll be on for that timeslot.

The Currency of the Kantoboys. If you don’t know who they are, then you are missing something. Composed of Luis Manzano, Vhong Navarro, Billy Crawford (without the Joe), and John Lloyd, and an ASAP XV original, the Kanto Boys go against the grain of on the one hand the now defunct Hunks, and on the other just the standard metrosexual. There are no perfect pretty boys here, instead there is imperfection, one that’s borne of silliness, and these four boys’ willingness to make fools of themselves, with poker faces throughout any performance. It’s an anti-macho creation that just works. That they remain cute — if not become cuter — is well, just their luck. (more…)

kultura

the revolution cannot be staged

I had high hopes for Banaag at Sikat, The Rock Opera, a promise of good music and singing, a contemporary retelling of Lope K. Santos’ original novel on the winds of change that would bring the country to revolt against the overwhelming conditions that capitalism and feudalism wrought on the nation. But as it began with fake guitar playing between friends Delfin (Al Gatmaitan) and Felipe (Roeder Camañag), attached to what then becomes a fake amplifier, and with dancing from a chorus many of whom seemed uncomfortable doing the robot and dancing hiphop, I had to wonder if this musicale meant to be funny.

Love and revolution, not necessarily together
Because it didn’t stop, not the fake guitar-playing, not the requisite head bang. The beautiful love song between Delfin and Meni (Ayen Munji-Laurel) could only lose its tenderness with Delfin fake-playing the song. In this First Act, the beginnings of love are introduced to us at the same time as the characters, all of whom are perfect stereotypes that exist in an oppressive feudal society. Cigar factory El Progreso is owned by Meni’s father Don Ramon Miranda and Don Filemon, both unforgiving and unapologetic capitalists, who refuse to raise the wages of their workers who are ready to revolt. Nyora Loleng is wife of Don Filemon but is mistress to Don Miranda, a seeming pawn to macho control more than a powerful woman.

the rest is up at gmanews.tv!

kultura

relevant RockEd culture: notes on contemporary Pinoy rakenrol

The noise is overwhelming. SaGuijo isn’t made for long conversations with friends, not even when you’re all outside sitting at the farthest table from the entrance, having drinks and cigarettes. The truth is you’ve been here since dinnertime when it was empty and bright. You almost forgot it was the place of noise and crowds and youth, the one you hadn’t gone to in a while.

It had been a long day and, both emotionally and literally, food was what you needed. You also wanted to get eating out of the way while it was quiet enough to have a meal. The bagoong rice, salpicao and tokwa’t baboy, and ice-cold San Mig Lite seemed about right. Except that it was already noisy in your head, the kind of noise that apparently can’t be erased by a filled stomach. You came from the Maximum Security Compound of Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa, and after two years met an old friend—one who’s been there for almost a decade, the one for whom freedom is such a remote possibility, you cannot even see it.

The NGO Rock Ed was reason for that visit to Bilibid. Every Wednesday of every week, a bunch of prisoners expect Gang Badoy to arrive and teach them some creative writing.

the rest is up at pulse.ph!