Tag Archives: Nora Aunor

kultura

Nora Aunor, National Artist

Note: The list of 2018 National Artists are awaiting proclamation by Malacañang, so here’s an essay from 2014, a reminder, a throwback, an insistence still, that Nora Aunor deserves it. She deserved it in 2014, she deserves it now. —  KSS. 

In the middle of writing today’s column, sad sad news stopped me in my tracks. Nora Aunor is not included in tonight’s announced National Artist Presidential proclamations.

And while I’m glad that Alice Reyes (Dance), Francisco Coching (Visual Arts), Francisco Feliciano (Music), Ramon Santos (Music), Cirilo Bautista (Literature), and Jose Ma. Zaragoza (Architecture) have finally been proclaimed National Artists, there is a real sadness about not seeing Ate Guy on that list.

It’s because this exclusion tells of how government treats culture in this country, and what exactly it holds in such high regard relative to actual creativity and artistry. (more…)

kultura

Selling relevance, using current events

The family drama is … ahem … a Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) tradition, one that’s produced some interesting enough versions from the Tanging Ina series to Mano Po. And so it was no surprise that the purported / sold / imagined “change” via MMFF 2016 would deem it necessary to have a “family drama.”

It was “Kabisera.” And while it did fulfill all the requirements for a family drama, i.e., there was a family, and there was a crisis, and the family pulled together — sitting through the convoluted loop-holed narrative made one think it was particularly chosen not because of artistic merit but because of elements that might have rendered it relevant … or at least “more relevant” than the family movies of MMFFs past.

Apparently all it takes these days is to throw in some corrupt politics, play around with images of impunity, and then engage in a discussion about these as superficially as possible. Have I mentioned the caricature of a human rights Chief that was obviously a jab at De Lima? Yup, one that didn’t work at all.

(more…)

kultura

on “Ang Kwento ni Mabuti”

That not much happens in “Ang Kwento ni Mabuti,” is precisely its power. And while its premise is poverty as crisis and its context is the distance and removal that the poorer among us live with, not once did the film seem like poverty porn. Neither was it full of itself.

It would of course be easy to hate this film for not doing more, not being more, when it could’ve been less restrained. Yet, there is the fact that it didn’t need to be more than what it was, because what this movie has to drive this story is what most other films don’t have.

That is of course Nora Aunor. (more…)

komentaryo

give Ate Guy a break, or what’s wrong with that cig?

Let it be said that Superstar Nora Aunor’s comeback is by all counts a success, if we are to measure it not by media mileage or product endorsements, not by tell-all interviews in every darn showbiz talk show or by grand statements about home being where the heart is.

Ate Guy’s return has been about none of this and that is precisely a measure of this comeback’s success. Because would she be the unbeatable popular culture icon that she is, the film actress par excellence, the Superstar in the real sense of the word, if she came back and fell into the trap of showbiz as created by the Kris Aquinos of this world?

Not at all. Ate Guy is everything that contemporary showbiz is not. And that was true long before she left, that was real to anyone who saw her films and respected her daring, this was always true for those of us who couldn’t help but be astounded on the one hand, and then be downright impressed on the other, by the life choices she was making, given the little that we actually knew of her. She was rebel long before it became fashionable to be one, she was rakenrol like no other, and in the midst of that she was inadvertently pointing out that she was – should be – nothing but actress, but singer, but star.

Ate Guy might be the only icon on these shores who can say to her public: here’s who I am, deal with it.

click here for the rest of it!