Entertainment

Philippine creativity and the arts are front and center this February as the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) celebrates National Arts Month (NAM).

After 72 years in hibernation, the Catholic Church in the Philippines has revived the devotion to the Nuestra Seπora del la Salud (Our Lady of Health) Novena late last year.

By Boy Villasanta Nick Nangit who? Remember the classical pianist who performed a couple of years ago in exquisite Museum of History of Ideas in Padre Faura in Manila where controversial whistler-blower and now one of the managers of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) Sandra Cam and the late actress Dinah Dominguez were guests?

It’s not only the exclusive local entertainment industry, particularly the film section that mourns the death of prolific filmmaker Maryo J. de los Reyes but the whole of the viewing public as well.

As February is the “Love Month”, it is expected that most everyone would write about Valentine’s Day, romance and the whole giddy, saccharine sweetness of it all.

Most movie-industry observers know the Film Academy of the Philippines (FAP) as primarily tasked to carry out two things: recognize the finest achievements in film in the previous year through its annual Luna Awards, and select the country’s official entry to the foreign-language film category of the Lunas’ American counterpart, the Oscars. 

By Hananeel Bordey Special to The Market Monitor The Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino ended two weeks ago, and among the 12 films shown at the festival, Victor Villanueva’s Patay na si Hesus was one of the most buzzed-about, thanks to its mixture of comedy and drama. First shown at the 2016 Quezon City International Film Festival, the movie garnered there the Audience …

Two years after it moved audiences with its critically acclaimed production of Larry Kramer’s AIDS drama The Normal Heart, The Necessary Theatre (TNT) has brought them another provocative play, Scottish dramatist David Harrower’s Blackbird, which runs at the RCBC Plaza’s Carlo P. Romulo Auditorium in Makati City until September 10, 2017. 

Former matinee idol Eddie Mesa, best known as the “Elvis Presley of the Philippines” in the 1960s and patriarch of one of the Philippines’s most celebrated acting dynasties, is set to entertain audiences once more in a special concert—his first in more than 28 years—called Sing Us Your Song Again: The Music and Legacy of Eddie Mesa later this month. 

The familiar holiday spirit made itself felt once more as more than 500,000 people gathered at Lucena City in Quezon province for the recent Niyogyugan Festival, which signaled the coming of the “-ber” months.