I had started watching CinemalayaX with Carlitos Siguion Reyna’s Hari Ng Tondo, Joseph Alterejos’s Kasal, and Roderick Cabrido’s Children’s Show. It was two good movies out of three, and I thought it was portents of things to come for the rest of the week’s movie viewing frenzy.
After watching all 15 full length films, I realize I had it good that first day. It was downhill from there.
Click here to read the rest of it over at Vera Files.
It seems the only way to start this review is to acknowledge – and praise – the Technical Theater Program Batch 111 students of Benilde for having dared and successfully staged and produced 2014’s Fluid. Were the technical aspects of the production the only point, then this was quite a successful theatrical debut for this batch of students.
It would also, for the most part, be a successful re-write for contemporary times, something that playwright Floy Quintos talks about in his notes for the production. One is reminded by this re-write that many things about art making and production in this country continue to be true 10 years hence. Many things might need re-writing, but the system itself just evolves into viciousness, or devolves into the superficiality that capital demands. (more…)
I tend to imagine that these times of political and socio-economic crises demand of creative work an amount of relevance, where it is easy to pinpoint films and TV shows and writing that tends towards escapism, refusing to speak of issues that are urgent and important.
But escapism is also exactly what we need in times like these, when only the wealthy minority can live oblivious to the rising cost of basic goods and the utter lack of public services, when only the rich might navigate nation and not see the majority who are living below the poverty line. It makes sense to the rest of us who live each day struggling to make ends meet to want to escape by watching Transformers, or uh, Sarah and Coco in Maybe This Time (walang basagan ng trip). (more…)
this year was the first time i even cared enough to go to Gawad Buhay, and that is really because of a good three things: my love for Tuxqs Rutaquio, my love of Layeta Bucoy, and my new-found discovery of and respect for the kind of hard work that Tanghalang Pilipino’s Actors Company stands for.
which is of course to wear my heart on my sleeve (obvious ba), and really to point at some of my good ol’ biases, the kind that i’ve always had and have never denied having. anyone who was reading my theater reviews from the beginning (i.e., 2009) would know that i had much respect for the work of Rutaquio and Bucoy (as director-playwright tandem), long before i came to know them as people (which was mostly this year). i had also done reviews of the work of AC’s Tadioan long before he even became the monolith of an actor that he has become.
i’d like to think these biases do not diminish my own thoughts about Gawad Buhay’s limitations, which i feel should / can be fixed at this point — democratization is the word i like to use — as a matter of actually and truly being about all of the theater community, and not just the few who are willing to become part of Philstage. yes, Gawad Buhay is not / cannot be a measure of the year that was in Philippine theater. because it is not looking at all of Philippine theater. (more…)
The first two installments on Beauty Deception spoke of how far we go, how complicit celebrity culture is with, and how media enterprises fall into the trap of, the beauty industry. And when we speak of the latter we do mean the bigger ideology of perfection, one that’s achieved via treatments and plastic surgery and every nip and tuck imaginable; one that’s achieved by selling images of real women perfected via photoshop.
Image is all, and yes our female celebrities are about the creation of this image. But it need not be a shameless display of skin whitening products and new cheekbones, of perfected skin and long sleek hair. It need not be tied to one kind of woman, with one particular look that is intertwined with success and freedom, happiness and woman power.
That no one seems to care, that there is no real intervention in media, is a dangerous thing. Imagine the generations of young girls who will think white(ned) armpits and vaginas, long black hair, a thin frame, are all important. Imagine the kinds of Pinays we raise when we intertwine gender equality with a shampoo advertisement selling long shiny black hair.
A public that cares
Elsewhere in the world a vigilant public is critical of plastic surgery in celebrities. The media question drastic weight loss (especially in young actresses). Photoshopped images are the enemy. This outlook is borne of a belief that these images are imbued with a particular set of standards for beauty, one that is intrinsic to any celebrity culture. These images are dangerous because these make people believe in an ideal which—given photoshop and cosmetic surgery—is also impossibly perfect and unattainable.
No one escapes these images, but publics elsewhere expect celebrities to care about how their (fake) images affect their audiences. (more…)