The Best & Worst of ’08: There’s a fruitcake for everyone
Life
Written by Totel V. de Jesus
Wednesday, 24 December 2008 23:15
‘I’ve seen the future and it’s much like the present, only longer.” The line is from US major-league baseball’s legendary right-hand pitcher-turned-poet and cancer victim Dan Quisenberry. In the field of local entertainment, we feel the quote aptly summarized what happened in 2008—the best and the worst of it—and our forecasts for the coming year. Besides show business, we’ve decided to include the trailblazers in film, music and theater.
A famous Christmas song by the Eraserheads reminds us that “there’s a fruitcake for everyone…and there are B sides to every story.” So we list the “worst” only in the canned world of local showbiz, where there are more worms than open space, lots of B sides behind headlines.
Film
THE still very young but already dying Philippine cinema got a major boost this year when one of its earlier outputs, National Artist for Film Ishmael Bernal’s 1982 opus, the Nora Aunor-topbilled Himala (Miracle), won CNN’s Best Film of All Time in the Asia-Pacific via a poll conducted by the same international media network.
The Ricky Lee-penned story about a simple barrio girl who becomes a famous and most envied faith healer never fails to astound new generations of critics and audiences. It bested what millions in Europe and the US had considered as modern classics, like Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, and Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express, among others.
A more recent local output, Judy Ann Santos’s self-produced headliner Ploning hopes to compete in the 2009 Oscar Awards for the Best Foreign-language Film plum. Shot middle of this year in the once-obscure island of Cuyo, Palawan, with Santos’s close friend Dante Nico Garcia as director, it has already gathered some major awards, the more recent being the Asian Film Festival in Singapore, with Garcia as Best Director.
In the indie route, avant-garde director Lav Diaz’s recent nine-hour opus, Melancholia, won the grand prize at the Orizzonti Section in Venice, the oldest and longest-running film festival in the world.
Because of the fresh blood infused by these three titles, the local industry—both mainstream and indie—can look forward to a more fruitful harvest in the years to follow. And we’re not talking about Golden Harvest productions.
Music
IF there’s one major event that single-handedly shook, charged, changed and continues to revitalize the heavily pirated, greedy producers-infested, nearly bland, boring and homogenous local music industry, the reunion of the Eraserheads tops our list.
Controversies involving multinationals, cause-oriented groups and a government agency hounded the much-awaited regrouping of the estranged members of the most influential and popular rock band in the 1990s, touted to be the second golden age of Pinoy Rock.
On August 30 fans from all over the world came, with OFWs and immigrants—doctors, nurses, engineers, cooks, seafarers—sacrificing their vacation leaves usually intended for the Christmas holidays or summer breaks.
Never mind if vocalist-rhythm guitarist-main composer-band leader Ely Buendia’s fragile health stopped the concert midway. The show gathered around 70,000 fans, a record only nearly equaled by foreign acts like Beyoncé and the back-to-back show of Rihanna and Chris Brown.
Even the US-based Sebastian “Basti” Artadi of Wolfgang wished he had been there.
Like an earthquake that shook the scene, the aftershocks can still be felt and many benefited from it. One giant telecoms company raked in billions of pesos in revenue for having the sole right to sell the songs from the aborted concert as ringtones.
In November the movie version was released and ran for almost three weeks at SM and Robinsons cinemas all over the country, making Eraserheads the only Filipino band with a successful output on the big screen. The last group whose live concert was shown on the big screen was the three-decade-old British rock band U2 with its internationally released U23D. Still, it was shown in special cinemas like SM’s Imax Theater.
Although there’s already a CD recording of the August 30 concert that’s still selling like hot puto bumbong, fans from all over the world are looking forward to the DVD release.
Buendia, drummer Raimund Marasigan, lead guitarist Marcus Adoro and bassist Buddy Zabala have already been elevated to heroes of their generation. Never mind if they are back with their respective postbreakup bands. Still, they remain among the highest-paid rock musicians around.
Theater
THERE’S a big difference from laughing—like at Tito, Vic and Joey jokes—to really laughing and being entertained with your heart and soul. Atlantis Productions’ local rerun in June of the Tony Award-winning Avenue Q tops our list of being the best play for this year.
To think it was a rerestaging, with the original run held in September 2007. It was so successful that phone lines to Atlantis were flooded with calls for a repeat. Additional playdates were held in December the same year.
And still, reports persisted that people were ready to sell their liver, lungs and other internal organs for a seat, so the whole gang had to regroup again for what was touted as the “farewell” run in June this year. The third run had reports of people watching the musical more than five times. Souvenir T-shirts and other items came in boxes and always sold out after every performance.
The requests for more runs didn’t come from fans just in these parts but from as far as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei and other Southeast Asian countries. Not surprisingly, the whole all-Filipino cast flew to Singapore and hit the Esplanade Theater in October and November this year for another jam-packed run.
Humbly speaking, it takes a genius of a director like Bobby Garcia to stage something like this. With puppets and real actors jiving onstage, the delightful story of Princeton, a young new graduate, and his jobless neighbors is set in New York City’s suburbs, tackling everything from unemployment and toxic relationships to basically finding one’s purpose in George W. Bush-led biosphere. Now that recession has struck not only the US but the whole world, Avenue Q may as well be the most relevant and entertaining theater piece of this lifetime.
Other local productions of more strident politics could only sing, “It sucks to be me.”
Now, there’s talk that a Filipino version (meaning Tagalized) is in the works. Nahhh, it’s not going to be titled “Avenue Quiapo.”
Showbiz
NOW, for the bad news and newsmakers—and we have five on our list. Of course, Gretchen Barretto’s affairs and skirmishes are among the worst. Her diva-like attitude and alleged trysts with a certain Puno precipitated yet-to-be-resolved fights with so-called friends like Nadia Montenegro and showbiz scribe Cristy Fermin.
Next, Gabby Concepcion’s equally endless legal battles. There were the questions regarding marital status and, of course, that filmfest scam he will never be able to live down—the earnest puff-up job of ABS-CBN notwithstanding—and before we could even blink, he was suing his manager, Rose Flaminiano, to free him from her clutches. Montenegro, who seems to be dipping her finger in just about anything and everything, came to his defense, resulting in more legal problems. To the relief of many, one of the upsides to the Concepcion-Flaminiano imbroglio was the axing of Fermin in what she used to call her home network.
Third were the deaths of Rudy Fernandez, Didith Reyes and our much well-loved Zaido Green, a.k.a. Marky Cielo. Among the three, Cielo’s untimely demise is something we’ve barely recovered from.
And who can forget those weeks recently when the whole nation tuned into a true-to-life telenovela in the supposed love triangle involving Marian Rivera, Dingdong Dantes and Karylle, the story becoming even more complex and charged as the year comes to a close. Up to now, no one has admitted guilt of any sort. Well, except Karylle with her much-quoted quotable: “He said he never cheated on me and I trusted him.” Yes, the italics are all ours.
As we wait for the latest developments in this still-unfolding telenovela, there’s the more plot-driven breakup of high-profile couple Drs. Vicki Belo and Hayden Kho. And they’re not promoting a movie or anything, mind you. This time, it involves many characters and subplots. If only someone can get a hold of that laptop and upload those “evidences.”
■ KARYLLE IN A RICKY VICENCIO PINK TAFFETA DRESS WITH FEATHERS AND HAND-STITCHING DETAILS. MAKEUP BY NANAN VILLALBA. HAIR STYLE BY GEORGE DELFIN. SHOES BY BABY PHAT. PHOTOGRAPHED BY TOTO LABRADOR.
Now for the positive vibes we can carry through the coming year.
“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” These words of affection could be uttered like a mantra by several showbiz personalities who made waves in the year of mermaids, environmental concerns and international recognitions.
For sure, Heart Evangelista used to say this line to a guy she lost herself to for some three years. But things change for a reason. Heart found herself broken, resulting to her transfer from the Kapamilya playground to the Kapuso landscape, and finding herself not only with a No. 1 prime-time TV program but also what could be true love in the arms of a nonshowbiz guy (who belongs to the same social strata). Certainly, these are the best things that happened to Heart this year.
Despite the alleged bar brawls over some girls who aren’t really bagay for him, Richard Gutierrez remains one of the bankable stars this side of showbizlandia. Many say that being Gutierrez, he’s got everything on his laptop—er, we mean lap. Then again, unlike Dennis Trillo, Dingdong Dantes, Piolo Pascual and John Lloyd Cruz, it’s the same surname that is putting too much pressure on his shoulders. And let’s not talk about the mom.
Richard’s involvement with Greenpeace International and other not-so-well-publicized advocacies for the environment is really something not so showbiz. While other heartthrobs sire (or about to) sons and daughters left and right out of wedlock, or are dodging never-ending rumors about being gay, Richard could be the better guy among the Gabby Concepcions of today.
Now regarding Dingdong—being named as the third sexiest man alive via E! Television’s list of 25, way ahead of Johhny Depp and Eric Bana, it’s definitely one for the books. It’s probably one of the best international recognitions a local sexy lead actor could ever receive. No wonder he is at the center of an alleged love triangle.
We’ve written about it many times and we’re damn consistent about it. This year is only the start of Marian Rivera’s reign. From being a once largely obscure soap actress and commercial model, Rivera was catapulted into where she is now via GMA’s decidely unapologetic fantaseryes, starting from Marimar and continuing to Dyesebel.
Suddenly, she’s endorsing everything—jeans, shampoo, clothes, wellness center, telephone service, fiber-diet food supplement, you name it. And suddenly she’s the girl everyone loves to hate and blame. But the fighter in her (“Cavitenya po ako, di ako umuurong sa laban ’pag alam ko’ng nasa tama ako!”) will surpass all the intrigues.
Like the usually tearful religious icon, she’s cried and she will cry some more. But this is showbiz, bey-beh. Indeed, 2008 is a Marian Year. And so will 2009 be.
Let’s just hope she won’t have an immaculate conception.
Indeed, we’ve seen the future and….
