The show will go on even if Tito, Vic and Joey (TVJ) have yet to reclaim the name “Eat Bulaga” from their former producer. Vicente “Tito” Sotto, one of the three original hosts of the country’s longest-running television variety show (the other two being his brother Vic Sotto and Joey de Leon), said on Sunday...
Category: Film/TV
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Where will ‘Eat Bulaga’ make a new home?
By June 7, “Eat Bulaga” hosts Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, his brother Vic Sotto, and Joey de Leon would have “formally” decided on the media network to air their 44-year-old noontime television show that was shut down by its erstwhile producer last May 31. Sotto, a former Senate president, told CoverStory.ph on Saturday that he...
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‘Delikado’: forest defenders in the line of fire
The earth’s last remaining forest cover cleans the air we breathe, purifies water systems, provides habitat for plants and animals, and even helps slow down climate change by removing heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It benefits everyone, but what happens if trees are indiscriminately cut for the high-value wood, if the most profitable minerals...
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‘Maria Clara at Ibarra’ turned Rizal into a romance writer
At the restaurant, I could hear the women’s conversation clearly. My ears perked up when I heard a network’s name and its popular TV show in one breath. “Its finale was GMA’s most watched,” said the woman whose back was to me. “The youth of today are so lucky! They can just watch Jose Rizal’s...
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Hits and misses in the Summer Metro Manila Film Festival
In an earlier face-to-face interview with lawyer Josabeth “Joji” Alonso, chief operating officer of Quantum Films, she casually said that an official entry to the ongoing Summer Metro Manila Film Festival (SMMFF), “About Us But Not About Us,” wouldn’t make money. To think that her office is a co-producer of the project. But then she said...
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Film continues to help Filipinos remember the sins of martial law
Shortly after World War II, many survivors of the attempted annihilation of Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies recalled the final plea of their fellow prisoners while being herded to impending death: “Remember! Do not let the world forget!” It was in honoring that anguished plea that Holocaust survivors set up exhibits and scholarly...
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4 Chinese women show social context of deployment of beauty
Women’s agency is illustrated in how they deploy their beauty as cultural capital. But they do so amid certain factors, which shape, facilitate, and even constrain such deployment. In China, as shown by four famous Chinese women, the deployment of beauty lies at the intersection between individual agency and social, cultural, and even political structures:...
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Kidlat Tahimik’s ‘Balikbayan #1’ reverses the colonialist narrative
The story of humankind is replete with plot twists and unexpected events. Take, for example, the matter of who first circumnavigated the world. The usual answer is Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan who, on Sept. 20, 1519, led a five-ship, 270-strong expedition from Spain to search for a westward route toward the Spice Islands, now the...
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Where is PH in world cinema map?
Hollywood’s 95th presentation of the Oscars—deemed the mother of all movie awards—is the most revealing in decades. Asians won the top awards in the annual derby, with Malaysian Michelle Yeoh taking home the Best Actress plum for the seriocomic “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” It was the first time ever for an Asian woman. The...
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They also deserve press coverage
It has become a joke in local show biz—a film suddenly being shown in movie houses without so much as a word about it and its content, or its cast, or its director, to inform viewers and stir their interest. When a producer screens a film without the necessary drum-beating, the biz is abuzz with...