Category Archive for: star creation

there is no doubt in my mind that joking about the rape of a woman is a no-no, which is like joking that you will kill a faggot. these are black and white, they are premised on gender discrimination, these are violent thoughts we do not think, and do not think to articulate when we actually do think about them out of anger or spite.

and yet i get it, too, that really fantastic comedy, the kind that’s intelligent enough to be irreverent, can talk about rape without it being an attack on women, as it does become an attack on the men who think it correct. Vice Ganda was far from intelligent about this joke, and as such there is no saying that members of the audience “didn’t understand it.” (more…)

Claudine’s cojones

Oh yes, it’s as macho as it sounds. And that’s also what informs the anti-Claudine rhetoric that’s on the interwebs, i.e., Twitter and Facebook. So in a fistfight that began between two men, the backlash has been on the one woman in the story; and while it’s been fascinating watching Raymart and Mon Tulfo going at it on television, the backlash has been more strongly against the woman. (more…)

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.

pinoy rap lives!

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…)