A FAMILY AFFAIR

This was written two years ago, and it speaks of the relevance of the ongoing Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) on my family. And again for this year my family is planning to watch one movie from the festival entries. But with my three kids now, it will be a choice between a movie of my choice or one that caters specially to fun-seeking kids like them. If I were to choose now what movie to watch, I go for Iskul Bukol, because I have been a big fan of Tito, Vic and Joey and a regular viewer of Eat Bulaga since I was a kid. But as I have said, that would depend on the kids (they have the majority votes). Or perhaps we will skip the festival, not necessarily due to disagreement but due to lack of time or lack of budget. 
 

THROUGH the years, Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) has been part of my married life. My wife and I couldn't celebrate our wedding anniversary on December 30 without a movie date.
  
Because December is MMFF month, we always had a filmfest entry in our list and it has become our tradition to watch only one movie for the whole festival. And we just don't watch any film, we have to see to it that it would be the best among the entries. 

Most of our picks romped away with the Best Picture award or received good reviews among film critics. 

The most memorable of these films and what I would say is my personal choice as Best Film in recent years is Mark Meily's debut feature, Crying Ladies. 

I'm not a big fan of Sharon Cuneta who plays the female lead character named Stella Mate in the movie. Sharon does a fine job in eliciting our sympathy (and laughter) for Stella's never-ending woes and her many wacky attempts to solve them. And to think that she looks chubby or losyang in Crying Ladies, far from the more glamorous portrayals she had in most of her previous films. 

But after I watched Meily's film, I realized Sharon indeed deserves of her Megastar status. 

No, Crying Ladies is not only about Sharon. It's about the clever plot of a story cobbled with local color and the ordinariness of life, centered on an old Chinese practice of hiring professional criers to fool the gods into thinking the deceased would be sorely missed for his/her good deeds. The humorous, witty script by Meily himself put together the individual stories of the three criers played by Cuneta, Hilda Koronel and Angel Aquino and that of the deceased's son, played by Eric Quizon. The funny shrieking trio and the relatively subdued Quizon came out with winning performances, marked by their brisk rendition of their characters' desperation with humor and poignancy. 

It's a Filipino version, if not second best, to Forrest Gump, in terms of the cunning use of comic relief to temper the heavy stuff and the depiction of an affectionate yet satirical portrait of an ordinary life with interesting twists at the end of the story. This is the kind of script I wish I would have written.

A couple of scenes remain vivid in my mind up to these days, perhaps because of the movie's Pinoy-ness or comic effect. 

One shows Stella having a hearty McDo meal with her son, her exasperated ex-husband and his wife. Others show Stella's regular encounter with the balut vendor, her audition piece for an entertainer's job in Japan and her winning an international acting award as a videoke model-artist.
 And to think that my wife and I almost missed watching Crying Ladies! We were celebrating our seventh anniversary that year and our two boys --then aged five and three, wanted so much for the family to watch Bong Revilla's Captain Barbell. But I did not give up watching Crying Ladies for a fantasy movie about an over-exposed local superhero. So we hired my wife's niece to accompany my boys to watch the film of their choice, while my wife and I watched Crying Ladies. 

For the next years, I gave in to my kids' wishes. With kids in tow, our anniversary date has turned out to be a family affair.

(Published in The Philippine Star, March 2, 2008, under the title “Pinoy as it gets”.)

A BOXING FAN

I AM one of millions of Filipinos that up to this day relish every retelling of the victory of Manny Pacquiao in his much-vaunted fight with another boxing great Oscar de la Hoya early this month. It was a good fight, a very convincing TKO conquest by the Filipino punching machine. In my whole life of watching great fights in the ring, and those of Pacman’s latest exploits over other big-time Mexican sluggers, his last fight for me is one of the best one-sided fights of all time and it’s a good thing when you’re a Filipino and on the side of the victor.
  

I have been a boxing fan since my elementary days in Ilocos. And I thank my Apong Lakay (my maternal grandfather Angel Escobar Sr.) for this. That’s why even to this date when I think of amazing fights, or when I see people to their feet cheering with wild abandon for their warrior in the ring, I always think of my late Apong Lakay doing the same.

And if I make a list now of those special moments I spent with Apong Lakay, who died when I was a college freshman or years before Pacquiao entered professional boxing in 1995, it’s the ones we had together watching boxing, or even wrestling matches, on TV which seem to be the best for me. Maybe because I always enjoy watching physically competitive contests whether on TV screen or in the street. Or I should say I can only watch a boxing match on television and any TV show hours after that when Apong Lakay was then in command of a rich aunt’s black-and-white TV. He would know schedules of every live boxing match or some classic boxing matches on replays, as I would with schedules of my favorite action movies shown on TV. He would call any of my cousins (my aunt’s children), no matter what they were doing, to turn on the TV for him. Yes, during that time, our own TV was already sold by my father to a neighbor, and Apong Lakay’s house didn’t have one until his death. So the best venue then for a visual delight over a bakbakan (slugfest) would be in my rich aunt’s house.

Apong Lakay, who was good in arnis and mano-mano during his younger days, was so proud of our Filipino fighters, especially Flash Elorde and Pancho Villa. Perhaps he would feel the same, if not reserve the best now for Manny Pacquiao. He was also a big fan of Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammad Ali. And with those years when Apong Lakay was alive, I was able to watch Ali or Leonard fight with their respective opponents in classic matches. I also watched other outstanding boxers in the 80s who have become legends of the sports—Marvin Haggler, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, and Larry Holmes. Likewise I didn’t miss great fights of our local champs like Rolando Navarette, before his rape conviction in Hawaii, and Dodie Boy Peñalosa.

And now if Apong Lakay were alive today, he would have savored like his favorite steaming papaitan this latest fight of Manny Pacquiao. And I would have loved to have us exchange our own post-fight analysis, now that I have matured as a boxing fan through the years. But I could only imagine these things now.