Category Archive for: kultura

kultura

notes on OPM 1: celebrity versus talent

We say it often, and truth to tell in these shores it is true: many of our less talented singers have albums, and many of our more talented musicians are without jobs. But what of the non-singer, someone who doesn’t sing at all, gathering a strong enough following for her CDs that she’s now on her fifth (count that!) solo album—and yes, that’s not counting the one she did with her son, and another about the rosary.

Welcome the celebrity CD! At the center of which is Kris Aquino. Judy Ann Santos began this kind of production with Ang Kuwento ng Buhay Ko (2007) where her TV show and movie theme songs were interspersed with her recorded thoughts about particular times in her life. This album had an all-Filipino, all-original set of songs that still made it original Pilipino music (OPM) by all counts, over and above Judy Ann.

But Kris, unlike Judy Ann, began this enterprise not to do a retrospective on her life, which would’ve meant just planning one CD. Instead, tied as the industry of celebrity is to selling the personal, Kris immersed herself in doing self-help albums, which is what most of these are. But unlike self-help albums done by experts in some form of counseling or other (think Dr. Phil on CD), most of Kris’ albums are only about her: when she came out with first CD Songs of Love and Healing, there was soon after a public marital crisis and pregnancy difficulties; when her mother Cory died she did The Greatest Love (2008), a tribute album; when her brother Noynoy was running for president she came out with Blessings of Love (2010), which was filled with nationalist and campaign songs.

the rest of it is here!

kultura

Chris Martinez, FTW!

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 Films) is: does it still work? Is campiness something we’d know to be an exaggeration? Would campiness work with this set of five girls, three guys, and a gay man?

Could Martinez make it work?

He apparently can, at least if we take the laughter in that almost filled theater as an indication of success. I myself was familiar with the lines from the original and still found myself laughing, sometimes too loudly or just earlier than the rest of the audience in that cinema. Because there’s a learning curve here, during which the audience seem to warm up to the idea of exaggeration and extremes, the kind that campy relies on.

So when the movie begins with Lovi Poe’s Serafina, with her overtly slow and husky voice, and a body in the eternal act of posing, it was easy to feel the audience’s discomfort: ah, this is this kind of movie? Never mind that it wasn’t clear what kind it was. By the time Marian Rivera was delivering Cristina’s lines while dancing with her crook of a boyfriend, the over-the-top delivery seemed to have sunk in, if not the obvious look and feel of an Austin Powers movie.

click here for the rest of it!

kultura

two plays: Virgin Labfest 7

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 an ottoman you don’t know when to begin feeling uncomfortable: the mere sight of a bed conjures up a sex scene, and sex is always reason for discomfort amongst an immature audience, including the three guys behind me who chatted each other up throughout the play before this one.

But sex as we imagine it wouldn’t be reason for discomfort in that cold little theater; it would be politics that would hush the noisiest of audiences, encapsulated as it is in this bedroom.

Floy Quintos’ Evening at the Opera (directed by Jomari Jose) is the story of rural politics, as we know it, as we hear it in the news, as it has been imagined in movies, presented by documentaries. That this is also the story of dynasties left unquestioned, of marriages of convenience, of political machismo, of class versus crass, of the wealthy and rich among us, are layers that thicken this stage of a stark white bed and a governor’s wife in a bright red dress.

click here for the rest of it!

on Rae Red’s Kawala

What happens when the tiny space that is the Tanghalang Huseng Batute at the country’s cultural center is deemed too large? What happens when it is made into the two walls and two doors of a condominium elevator with the one constant presence within it?

Some really creative funny theater, that’s what.

Written by Rae Red and directed by Paolo O’Hara, Kawala shows us aspects of our urban contemporary life in Manila within an elevator that has no truth other than that of the young man who tends to it, the elevator boy.

Alwin (Cris Pasturan) is a fresh graduate, ready to move on and away from the oppressive walls of the elevator. In the course of a day, he articulates this unfreedom, as he shows how this world revolves around him, trusted as he is by the condominium’s tenants, central as he is to their existence.

Familiarity is easy, friendliness is default. It is here that you realize this boy’s life is beyond that elevator’s walls, because there is much to be said about opening those doors. And so it becomes understandable why the big shot sleazy dirty old man, the ex-bold star turned serious actor, the gold digger stalking her prey all hop into this elevator and demand a friendship of sorts with Alwin. He must hear no evil, see no evil, speak no….

click here for the rest of it!

kultura

too much Torre 3: on 100 days to heaven

in fact it was a surprise that a television critic would ask for, of all things, a kontrabida. but this is what Nestor Torre asks of ABS-CBN‘s 100 Days to Heaven. he says:

Another unfolding element of the show that needs to be remedied is the general weakness of its kontrabida quotient. Thus far, all we have is a cupidacious relative who wants to take over Anna’s thriving business empire.

yet this lack of a kontrabida actually works for this soap, seeing as it’s the story of business executive Anna Manalastas being sent back to earth by St. Peter so that she may undo all the mean she did while she was alive. Anna was the kontrabida in this story; she returned to earth as a skewed version of herself.

that is to say she returns to earth in the body of little girl Anna, her skills and intelligence and craftiness intact but not easy to utilize on her own. it’s easy to fall for this dynamic of childlike innocence and adult shrewdness all in one kid. this is why it’s also expected that the young Anna played by Xyriel Manabat gets more camera time: Coney Reyes as the adult Anna’s characterization was fixed from the start and would in fact fall into the trap of being kontrabida, period.

via abs-cbn.com
via abs-cbn.com

meanwhile, Xriel’s greatness here is her ability to be both the adult Anna, and a little girl who doesn’t mind playing with other kids. but Torre is unhappy:

On point of stellar coverage, however, Coney ended up with the short end of the stick (so far) in terms of active projection, so the imbalance clearly has to be addressed and remedied.

Fact is, there are dramatic devices and conceits that can be employed to mitigate the situation, and give Coney her due. We trust that the show can utilize those alternate options soon, so the production isn’t deprived of the mature actress’ proven acumen and energy.

in fact Coney does quite well, thank you very much, even proving that there is no short end of the stick, not when that stick is all about brilliance. the little girl Anna is the only person alive for those within the soap; the adult Anna appears for the viewers’ benefit, and is where Coney proves that the reckoning of a woman at the end of her life is one that’s quiet and restrained, one that’s about realizations that do not concede to the standard and stereotypical, that isn’t about regret as it is about an acceptance of faults if not a rationalization of it.

Coney’s appearances while fleeting, are well-thought out, enough to propel the story without weighing it down with long monologues and explanations. once Xyriel appears, the more difficult emotions have been dealt with, and the smarts and taray of little Anna becomes relief, light and comic in the hands of this little girl.

in this sense, it’s perfect that there’s no kontrabida here: for this little girl is not one who’s easy to oppress, and even the latter is already an archetype isn’t it. instead little girl Anna is given a counterpoint in the character of Sophia, con artist and survivor, smart but without viable opportunities at a better life.* other than of course becoming a team with little girl Anna towards changing both their fates, blurry as that still looks.

the uncertainty works here because it’s what’s truthful and real for lives such as Sophia’s, and even more so for someone like Anna. and it’s here that the storytelling of 100 Days to Heaven just works at keeping you hooked to the kindnesses and possibilities at change that it can deliver given the multiple stories it will deal with. this is also why it doesn’t make sense when Torre says:

Finally, the show’s storytelling has yet to dynamically detail how she <Anna> can turn her former victims’ lives around. A general “reformed” feeling of better intentions simply won’t cut it in terms of convincing and thematically affecting storytelling, so more work is needed here, as well.

in the same way that kontrabidas need not exist for life to be difficult or miserable, in the more real complex stories of our lives, it is never clear how things will develop or pan out. and for a soap to finally be this truthful, we should all want to thank the heavens.

* played by Jodi Sta. Maria the complexity with which she deals with Sophia is no surprise; she must surely be the peg for a comeback that’s about acting borne of maturity and skill, you almost forget she was George in Tabing Ilog.

kultura

too much Torre 2: on Sam’s twang

in 2006, and just the past week, Nestor Torre had the same complaint about Sam Milby, and the same conclusion. complaint: his lack of Filipino language skills. conclusion: his roles and acting are limited by it. in 2006 he said:

<…> Fil-Ams’ generally limited ability to speak Filipino drastically limits their roles to Balikbayan or rich-kid characters, of whom we’ve had much too many on our local screens. <…> That’s the sort of role Sam played in his recent film, and on his new TV series, he speaks in an awkward mix of English and Filipino yet again. — So much for thespic growth. <…>

in 2011 he says:

To make things worse, Sam adds his continuing difficulty with Tagalog to the movie’s insufficiencies. Yes, he’s “improved” in this regard, but improvement won’t do when competence is required. <…> So what is the actor to do—stop performing while he works really hard at finally surmounting his problem? Yes, that’s what the situation calls for, and as a professional actor, that’s what Sam needs to do, unless he wants to consign and resign himself to more years of playing shallow balikbayan types.

now i know Torre’s generally unhappy with the romantic-comedy, thinking it limits actors such as John Lloyd Cruz’s acting (yes, i will respond to that soon), but it might do him well to go through Sam’s filmography. for even when it is a rom-com, he began doing it better than most from the moment he did the fat guy in Jade Castro’s My Big Love. there also wasn’t much comedy in his character in I Love You Babe where he played an irritable architecture professor, and no comedy at all in And I Love You So where Sam in fact proved he could do a character with not a whole lot of cuteness.

Sam as fat guy Macky Angeles in My Big Love by Jade Castro
Sam as fat guy Macky Angeles in My Big Love by Jade Castro

now it isn’t clear to me which “shallow balikbayan types” Torre’s saying Sam has played, but there was complexity even in his characters as the policeman-wannabe in You Got Me and the US embassy consul in You Are The One. it might not have been as complex as Torre wanted them to be, but that might be a limitation of the genre more than anything else. a genre, we repeat, that he apparently doesn’t like much.

now of course Sam’s smile shouldn’t be a problem. except that for Torre, it is:

And in some of the drama’s challenging scenes, he is emotionally “present” and “committed,” unlike his previous starrers, where he just sort of winged it with his dark, good looks, a smile and a prayer. <…> Oh, yes, that smile—it’s one of the inappropriate visual “crutches” that weakens Sam’s latest portrayal. In dramas, cute smiles even if meant to demote bravery and supportive love are distractions—and even contradictions.

this begs the question: there are no cute smiles in a drama about cancer and dying?* or is it just Sam’s smile that we question? granted he praises Sam as “committed” and “present” here, in the same breath Torre says Sam winged it in his previous films. i’d like to know which ones, and how. because his Chris Panlilio resonates not at all with its darkness but with its free spiritedness, even when yes, he was the dark rocker dude there. his Chef Macky Cordova where he was put in a fat suit has yet to be attempted by any other actor in these shores and is still absolutely enjoyable.

Sam broods as Chris Panlilio in andiloveyouso directed by Laurenti Dyogi
Sam broods as Chris Panlilio in andiloveyouso directed by Laurenti Dyogi

in the end Torre fails at considering the kind of development that’s in Sam’s filmography, which would be fine were he NOT making conclusions and generalizations about Sam’s acting, were he just seeing him in light of this recent film and nothing else. Forever And A Day as he says was a storytelling failure. why drag Sam’s whole film career with it? and why suggest that he stop making movies altogether? that’s to simply look down on all the movies and all the work he’s done so far, yes? i’m the last person who will say Sam’s the best actor in these shores, but i will give him credit for roles, in rom-com and otherwise, that are undoubtedly his. without giving him that credit, all Torre does is criticism un-constructive, and where would we all be with that. 

 
*and while we’re on Forever And A Day, it’s unclear to me why Torre would think this a romantic-comedy when it so obviously wasn’t from the beginning, not when the main female protagonist was revealing so little about herself. had he seen much of the rom-coms we churn out, it would be clear to him that this was farthest from it from the start. too, he obviously didn’t see Chris Martinez’s beautiful glossy portrayal of a cancer patient’s last 100 days which would debunk his idea that medical conditions and gloss don’t go together. goodness.