Trends of the week
Merry Christmas
MANILA, Philippines - The “ber” months are here, shopping malls have begun playing Christmas carols, news programs have started counting down to December 25, and “Merry Christmas” has already trended on Twitter. The Philippine government might as well declare Christmas as a four-month holiday and encourage people to put up Christmas decorations as early as September, start kris kringles by October, and attend parties by November. We’ll all have aneurysms by December, but that’s a small price to pay for the freedom to revise calendars at will.
Mark Gil
In the most harrowing scene in Mike De Leon’s “Batch ’81,” Mark Gil’s Sid Lucero watches helplessly as his fraternity brother is killed by members of a rival fraternity. He curses at the murderers, over and over, that it almost becomes chant-like, an incantation to reverse the tragedy. It doesn’t. He looks at his dead “brother,” screams his name, and repeats the chant of curses that will never get him back.
Mark Gil died of liver cancer this week, prompting a deluge of tributes on Twitter that rang like screams into the void. The remnants of Philippine cinema’s last golden age are fading fast. We are all helpless to stop it.
