The year ahead
PEOPLE
Joshua Garcia
The 2016 Metro Manila Film Fest entry Vince and Kath and James was a pleasant surprise to many who came in expecting a pretty standard formulaic romantic comedy. The film was oddly refreshing in a sea of romcoms all trying to out-cool one another; it didn’t put on any airs, it wasn’t afraid to be a little jeje, a lot silly, and mostly honest.
But one of the most delightful surprises came in the form of Joshua Garcia, whose portrayal of the title role Vince was all the parts it needed to be: little boy in a school playground pulling his crush’s pigtails, not-quite-a-jock but just-cool-enough guy you wouldn’t mind giving your mobile number to, and a heartbroken young man underneath a happy-go-lucky façade. Garcia was easily the heart of the film, and he handled his role with a grace and depth that not many actors, regardless of age, possess.
He’s also being touted as “the next John Lloyd.” But behind Joshua’s pretty boy exterior is something deeper. The 19-year-old was known to be the “troubled kid” of his batch inside the Pinoy Big Brother: All In house. By now it’s obvious that he has channeled that sense of turmoil inside into his acting.
“He is a very hardworking actor,” Theodore Boborol, director of Vince and Kath and James, says of Garica. “He comes to the set prepared. He asks questions when he wants to know more about the emotional obligation of the character or the scene’s intention. He’s a sensitive actor; he feels. He can actually be very serious at times, to the point that I have to tell him to loosen up. I would tell him, ‘I just want you to be young. This is not a melodrama, we’re not doing this to win any awards. What I want is for you to be truthful and sincere.’ He’d listen, and he would deliver.”
His first major role came in the 2015 afternoon series Nasaan Ka Noong Kailangan Kita, following up with supporting roles in films like You’re Still The One and Barcelona: A Love Untold. Garcia enters 2017 with Bloody Crayons, a horror film that reunites him with Vince and Kath and James co-stars Julia Barretto and Ronnie Alonte.
The seeming cherry on top of a blossoming career is Garcia being likened to one of the industry’s most complex and beloved actors: John Lloyd Cruz. Boborol, however, is of a different opinion. “To be quite honest, I always tell him that I don’t want him to be the next John Lloyd. I want him to make his own mark on the industry as Joshua Garcia.”
And having had a taste of what Garcia has to offer, we’re likely to agree, and we’re impossibly eager to see the trajectory of this star’s rise to the top. —Gabbie Tatad and Tim Yap
Photo by REGINE DAVID
Produced by DAVID MILAN
Alonte
Ronnie Alonte was the only actor to top bill two out of eight MMFF entries. The two top grossing films at that. He showed makings of a matinee idol in Vince Kath James as jock heartthrob James, and as a young deacon tempted by the devil in Seklusyon. Rarely do young actors get a break such as what Ronnie just got.
His group Hashtag has also been credited to raise the ratings of Showtime post Aldub phenomenon and his social media stats are at an all time high. For Ronnie Alonte, there’s nowhere to go but up! —Tim Yap
Photo by REGINE DAVID
Produced by DAVID MILAN
Gabbi Garcia
Her real name is Gabby Lopez (same as the ABS-CBN big boss) so naturally the folks at GMA network had to change her name into Gabbi Garcia. This proved to be a lucky move, as Gabbi moved from one hit to another, essaying the role that Angel Locsin originated in Let the Love Begin and as one of the stellar sangres in the remake of Encantadia.
Gabbi turned 18 in a glitzy debut that spelled nothing but “next big star.” She is arguably the Kapuso network’s hottest young star who has the right combination of talent, chutzpah and social media savvy. Make way for Gabbi Garcia. —Tim Yap
Christian Bables
As Christian Bables made his way up the stage to receive his MMFF 2016 Best Supporting Actor Award, he had an epiphany. “Totoo pala yon — yung pakiramdam na maaalala mo lahat,” he says, sincerity all over his boyish face. “Mula simula. Jam-packed yung mga memories dun sa maiksing oras na yun. Grabe, nag flashback lahat.”
The road to this victory was paved with lots of auditions (He once lined up at 2 a. m. hoping to be part of Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition. At 2 p. m. the next day, someone from the production team said they were cutting the auditions short, just like that); cruel rejections (“Ba’t ika-cast yan? Hindi naman gwapo. Ba’t kukunin yan? Wala namang pangalan? Ba’t kukunin yan? Hindi naman magaling?” Take note: The unkind casters said these things to his face) and, most importantly, Christian’s relentless passion for acting. (“Buo na yung loob ko eh, na ito yung gusto kong gawin.”) Christian, 24, beat luminaries like Joel Torre, Lou Veloso, and Ricky Davao, thanks to his excellent portrayal of Barb in Jun Robles Lana’s critical and box office hit Die Beautiful — and it is a win that is widely celebrated by the supreme court of the Philippines: the comments section. A receipt: Jobert Hiso Tumalaytay’s fervent Facebook comment on a selfie with Christian reads, “Barbs!!! Walang sawa ko talagang inulit-ulit yung movie niyo. Ang galing mo, Christian Bables!”
The ladies are just as smitten. On Instagram Kat Veloso declares, “I love you, Barbs. I watched Die Beautiful twice for you.” This outpouring of love, the fact that people now know his name is Christian Bables (The correct pronunciation of his last name is bab-less) is so different from the treatment he got from bouncers during the first few mall tours for Die Beautiful. Security guards were tasked to form a human barricade around lead star Paolo Ballesteros and Christian, but the ones assigned to protect him kept shooing him away from Paolo, thinking he was just one of the fans. He laughs at the memory, and there’s no bitterness in his voice as he tells me this, just incredulity with the the way things unfolded and how they continue to unfold. “Ang dami nang offers,” he says, smiling and shooting a grateful glance at his two refreshingly chill managers. “Pero ang galing ni God kasi He made sure muna na nakapako yung paa ko sa lupa.”
2017 is shaping up to be a promising year, but Christian says he’ll never lose sight of his why. “Itong love ko for the craft, may purpose ’to. Hindi ko ’to nararamdaman dahil wala lang… Dahil gusto ko lang sumikat? Yiiiieee,” he shudders visibly. Well, we hate to break it to you kid, but that last bit seems inevitable. Better get used to it. The highest court — the comments section, unusually benevolent towards you — has decided, and the unanimous decision is: Everybody loves Christian.—Irish Christianne Dizon
Photo by REGINE DAVID
Produced by DAVID MILAN
Grooming by JUVAN MOLINA
Hair by MYCKE ARCANO
Bailona
14-year-old heartthrobs Bailey May and Ylona Garcia will headline an ABS-CBN teleserye this year. It’s a stamp of approval for this match made in reality show heaven (aka the Big Brother House). The show, however, may also be make-or-break for these upstart artistas. Will they pull through and be the next Jadine? Or will real-life feelings get in the way? Only time will tell, but with an army of devoted fans behind them, it will be difficult for Bailona to fail.
Photo courtesy of BENCH
The boys of ‘Meant to Be’
GMA-7 has always been a fertile launching ground for young artistas, and with their new show Meant to Be, they hope to launch a new generation of artistas. In the serye, fate puts Barbie Forteza in the middle of four boys — Ivan Dorschner, Jak Roberto, Ken Chan, and Addy Raj. One of them may just become the station’s next Dingdong or Alden.
The Memory Drawers
2016 was a landmark year for Memory Drawers. From landing a handful of overseas compilations to being championed by music acts like BP Valenzuela and Ang Bandang Shirley’s Owel Alvero, the band’s ascent to Internet buzzland feels vital at a time when local indie is closely associated with squeaky-clean crossover acts whose songs gravitate toward the holy trinity of hugot, sex and young love.
These guys take a good deal of pride in the fact that their music is a potentially risky gamble, aesthetics-wise. From the get-go, they make obscure, early ‘90s twee-pop that is liberated from any notion of cool. Their songs are comfort anthems for happy-sad pop geeks and outcasts who love their sing-alongs scrappy and syrupy, lackadaisical and melodic, small but affecting, and not the kind that subscribes to being the flavor of the moment—if you know what I mean.
It’s refreshing to hear a relatively young band favor simplicity and comfort over pop ambition and experiments. Sweet little ditties like Hart and For Any of This grab you by the collar as it strives for indelible songcraft in the most subtle of ways, while Lovingly, Leaving Me — a track that peaked at number three on Vandals On The Wall’s 100 Essential Filipino Tracks of 2016 — is one of those rare moments in music that find beauty in the freewheeling abandon of reality and life. There’s so much joy listening to their songs drenched in lo-fi noise and jangly guitars. There’s so much to celebrate about how their work articulates themes that aren’t often explored in “trendy” Pinoy indie tracks. Thank goodness for Memory Drawers, it seemed important for every other new act to embrace uniqueness, raise the stakes, and ditch the new normal with something that refracts ingenuity and earnestness back to the “Internet underground.” —Ian Urrutia
Photo by ALY CABRAL
Donny Pangilinan
Even without an existing TV show or movies under his name, Donny Pangilinan’s social media engagement is nothing short of stellar. His posts get double clicks by his fans, with the number of likes in the tens of thousands which doubles or even triples when he is the subject of the post. The scion of showbiz royalty and already in the spotlight as soon as he was born, Donny is the newest VJ of music channel MYX.
Armed with the right genes and the right moves, Donny is destined to be a superstar in social media and beyond. —Tim Yap
PROJECTS
Mike de Leon and Atom Araullo’s ‘Citizen Jake’
Cinema lovers, we open 2017 with great expectations.
If there’s anything that 2016 has taught us, it is that we have a voice, one that is capable of exponentially reverberating no matter where it comes from because of the power of social media. However, that voice is also as fleeting as the fads that came and went. History is malleable. Legacies can be forgotten.
Citizen Jake may be Mike de Leon’s final bid for immortality. The filmmaker, widely regarded by many as one of the greatest filmmakers our troubled nation has ever produced, has a tight filmography of works that are respected both because of their indisputable crafting and their social relevance. Kisapmata (1981) is a tense and taut domestic thriller that can be read as a treatise on the deathly suffocation our country experienced at the hands of a paranoid patriarch in the name of Ferdinand Marcos. Batch ’81 (1982) uses fraternity culture to expose the fascist tendencies of the dictatorial government. Sister Stella L. (1984) is more straightforward in its political observations, detailing the fight of a nun who becomes the voice of the oppressed. His last feature, Bayaning 3rd World (2000), made more than a decade after Marcos was deposed, is somewhat prophetic of how we are a nation that tends to forget despite our addiction to soulless symbols. We did forget, or if we are to be optimistic about it, we are in the process of forgetting.
It is perhaps this trend of forgetfulness that urged De Leon to wake up from his filmmaking hiatus. There were signs. During Bongbong Marcos’ vice-presidential bid, he was producing short videos, sharing his voice along with the rest of this politically charged nation on social media. However, that voice wasn’t heard. Marcos nearly won, and there is still that threat of the late dictator’s son eventually unseating the current lady vice president if his campaign in the Supreme Court prospers.
This is an age of vigilance, an age where democracy and all its tools matter. This is an age where De Leon, whose entire career is built on using the power of cinema to expose truths that are bigger than his stories, needs to return, and return he will. Citizen Jake, which stars child celebrity turned school leader turned news reporter Atom Araullo, is De Leon’s much-awaited comeback, his bid to cement the history he knows and has documented, to protect his legacy. If it is, indeed, true that we are a forgetful nation, we will always have 2017 when De Leon returned to attempt to make a cinematic reminder of what we are and were capable of when we aren’t so busy whimsically vocalizing in the Internet. — Francis Joseph A. Cruz Illustration by Patrick Dale Carrillo
‘BeastMode’
In the recently concluded year of the monkeys, we found ourselves behaving a tad too close like our less-evolved cousins. We weren’t just divided. We were divided violently. Veiled by the friendly profile pictures we mask our complete personalities with in our various social media accounts, we were free to speak our minds, throwing all notions of compromise, decency, and even civilization. We had ownership over our walls and timelines, so we will always be right, and when we are right, we have to fight. That was our mentality. Our virtual lives are being lived in a digital, socially networked jungle where the loudest, harshest, and most outrageous voice is king. In a year of issues, ranging from human rights to dog’s rights, we were eager for blood, we were vocal about it, so long as we were comfortable and clean with a frap in one hand and our IPhones in the other.
The tandem of director Manuel Mesina and writer Mixkaela Villalon cooked up an ingenious idea to explore the extent of our collective bloodlust. They recruited Baron Geisler, a gifted actor whose reputation for being reckless when intoxicated seems part and parcel of his celebrity, in a series of planned incidents that would culminate in a fistfight with Kiko Matos, another gifted actor who was game to play the part of Geisler’s rival. Their experiment ballooned beyond their initial expectations, resulting in inexplicable mania and fanfare, culminating in a real cage fight between the two actors with everyone, from those moneyed enough to purchase tickets to the glitzy event to those who can only afford to witness the spectacle through Facebook or Twitter, taking sides.
BeastMode, a documentary that maps Mesina and Villalon’s extravagant plan alongside observations of how our society gets easily blindsided from real issues by escapist violence, is the product of fortune, of filmmakers whose temerity to depict how vicious we have all become (and all for the wrong and whimsical reasons) has forced them to ride the flow that turned their ruse into a monster. There are gray areas in the filmmaking process, considering that Mesina and Villalon staged the impetus, making everyone, even institutions like mass media, both involuntary conspirators and subjects of the film. However, there is a point to be made, and the staunchest of filmmakers will make use of the medium to make it. Mesina and Villalon just started a joke that made the whole world crying for blood and division. This year, when BeastMode finally gets shown amid probable legal issues and concerns, the joke’s on us and our inner apes. — Francis Joseph A. Cruz
Up Dharma Down, Ang Bandang Shirley, and more precious comebacks
There’s always risk in making a comeback album. One wrong move might botch your legacy in exchange for a few cash-ins. An underwhelming reception might spiral into a series of flops. But there are artists capable of transcending the zeitgeist: risk-takers who have built their brand by releasing compelling records that thrive in a landscape often compromised by commercial demands. Lucky for us, they are here to stay and turn the beat around this 2017.
Now in its 11th year, Up Dharma Down shows no signs of slowing down. Buoyed by a string of commercial endorsements, lucrative gigs and crossover radio hits, Terno Recordings’ top band continues to be relevant as ever even without releasing any album since 2012’s “Capacities.” This year promises to reinstate them on top of the game with the rumored release of their still-untitled fourth album. Sigurado, an understated funk-pop ditty which premiered on Spotify a few days ago, serves as the record’s first single. It also marks the first time they’re using the moniker UDD instead of Up Dharma Down — a hint that they might thread into unforeseen direction in terms of branding and music.
Aside from UDD, Ang Bandang Shirley is poised to return with a new album called “Favorite,” the follow-up to 2012’s “Tama Na Ang Drama.” So far, they’ve released two singles prior to the official launch of the third LP due this March 2017: the rousing anthem Umaapaw, which topped various year-end lists in 2016, and Siberia, an emotionally resonant piece penned by Ean Aguila and the band’s manager Kathy Gener. In their attempt to piece together the most definitive soundtrack of our lives, expect nothing but effortlessly beautiful songs that appeal to music fans of all stripes.
More good news: Expect long overdue releases to hit the shelf soon and take over the music blogosphere discussion in a few months. Cebu-based act Sheila and the Insects are working on a follow-up to 2005’s critically lauded Flowerfish. Also plotting their comeback are Number Line Records’ Outerhope, trip-hop duo Drip, math-rock gents Musical O, dance-rock titos Pedicab and indie outfit Taken By Cars, whose brand-new track Soothsayer feels like a much-welcome departure from the band’s Bloc Party-meets-Blondie sound. We are also stoked for the debut full-length albums of not-so-newcomers The Strangeness and She’s Only Sixteen, with both acts embracing a completely different sound from their previously released EPs.
Comebacks have never been this exciting. — Ian Urrutia
Photos courtesy of TERNO RECORDINGS and WIDE EYED RECORDS MANILA
Reality 2k17: Augmented and virtual
By now, many of us have deleted Pokemon Go, and along with it, our habit of pointing our smart phones at the world, hoping to capture virtual creatures — a habit that now, after we’ve survived a year that seemed to never end, feels as if it were from a lifetime ago. But far from a fleeting fad, Pokemon Go was an augmented reality primer for the general public, a sort of appetizer of where AR is probably headed. It’s a direction that Facebook is poised to take us in 2017 — the year when its acquisition of virtual reality company Oculus is supposed to pay off.
As Mark Zuckerberg teased last year, we may be looking at a more interactive application of Facebook Messenger, where our avatars start talking to each other and mimic our facial expressions in any setting we choose. It’s an interplay between AR and VR that is now being called “mixed reality,” a new technological trend that many expect Apple to plunge into this year with the 10th anniversary of the iPhone.
But while it’s the flashy and hip technologies — whether VR, AR, or MR — that are making headlines, 2017 may go down as the year of AI. Remember artificial intelligence, that sci-fi-ish technology that was supposed to transform life in the 21st century and turn us into slaves of our robot masters? A recent breakthrough by Google suggests that the future may have arrived. Google’s AI department, Google Brain, has introduced a new AI approach that takes inspiration from, well, the human brain. Discarding the old computer chess model of feeding machines fixed rules, Google Brain programmers have created algorithms with virtual neurons and synapses that allow them to process data in rudimentary human ways like trial and error and pattern recognition. Computers can therefore “learn” the way toddlers do instead of compute like robots. This has led to a vastly improved Google Translate which now sounds more like a Nobel-prize-winning translator instead of the disjointed Mad Lib generator of years past. Machines are now beginning to understand the nuances of language. Hold on to your skulls, fellow humans. — Alex Almario
Illustration
by Rob Cham
BLKD, Ninno, and the renaissance of local hiphop
The recent renaissance in local hip-hop has produced some of the most groundbreaking records of the last two years. Emar Industriya’s Industriyalismo, Calix’s The Breakout Satirist, and BLKD x Umph’s Gatilyo emerged as modern classics overnight with their bold, searing commentary on social and political realities in the Philippines. Allen Jordan a.k.a. BLKD in particular, minces no words about the struggles that prey on the Everyday Filipino, giving the disenfranchised a voice, the marginalized sectors of society a representation. His work on Gatilyo is a poetic masterclass of its own, a sharp-witted epic that paints a cinematic showcase of a nation systematically oppressed by The Powers That Be.
Rapper-producer Ninno also made headlines with his own version of confessional, socially “woke” anthems that appeal to the young, the millennial, and the urban middle class. His debut album, “Third Culture Kid,” offers a more introspective social critique, rife with observations that understand the status quo from a privileged perspective. The record not only boasts top-notch production by Somedaydream, CRWN and Ninno himself, but also offers a thematic content that is lavishly nuanced with emotion and pop smarts.
A wave of rap music influenced by the anti-establishment nihilism of Odd Future and Joey Bada$$ infiltrated the “underground Internet” last year, proof that hip-hop is slowly transitioning into its punk phase. No Face Records, a record label and community established by hip-hop/electronic producer skinxbones, leads the pack with bleak narratives that react to an authoritarian state with pure hatred and pessimism. “We believe that hip-hop is too macho and gangsta, and we’re not like that,” the prolific producer tells Supreme. “We tend to do more emotional stuff.”
Their rebellious mindset has birthed some of the most interesting hip-hop songs in recent memory, tackling depression, anxiety and other personal issues not often discussed in music.
Other locally bred hip-hop acts have challenged their western counterparts with gripping, envelope-pushing releases that encapsulate the primal urgency of DIY ethos and non-conventional lyricism. Shadow Moses gravitated toward nerd culture and geekdom on their recently released EP, Expansion Pack; Ankhten Brown hooked up with rap producer extraordinaire Yung Bawal on lo-fi opus Long Nights and Daydreams; and Bugoy Na Koykoy reigned supreme with the fantastic Dealer of the Year, a bold, in-your-face single that addressed the issue of drug hustling and extra-judicial killings with a brilliant, low-key music video. —Ian Urrutia
Photo by TRISTAN TAMAYO
Fake news is so 2016
Social media is now in its adolescent stage. Gone are those carefree days of youth, when Twitter and Facebook felt like newly discovered beaches where we roamed free and played unconsciously as our skin burned. Now it’s gentrified and the beachfront is littered with corporate sponsors. We’ve also created a scene and began shouting at each other.
We are all disillusioned and scarred and we know better. And one of the things we have learned is that the only constant in the chaos of social media is backlash. No one is immune from it: not Taylor Swift, not Kanye West, not Jennifer Lawrence, and sorry Stranger Things fans, but not even Millie Bobby Brown will be spared. It’s the law of social media. It’s a law that we may have to cling to as a source of optimism this year because it also governs the world of paid trolls. Yes, their days may be numbered.
Sure, they may continue to get paid and continue to troll. But the number of real, unpaid, and non-troll people who buy their BS is dwindling. Back in the feverish campaign season of 2016, it was easy to confuse this manufactured phenomenon with the organic desire for change that brought the likes of Trump to power. But now that the shit has finally hit the fan, the lines are clearly drawn. It’s easier to distinguish the real patriots when Russian spy conspiracies and extra-judicial killings start getting exposed and the same old defensive rhetoric starts to get really old and sound very rehearsed and well-funded.
Fake news may finally meet its match, not in grizzled journalists or members of the intelligentsia, but in social media’s good old distaste for repetition. These trolls will eventually go the way of Kanye and Tay Tay: erstwhile charismatic underdogs who become insufferable and lame the minute they become the paradigm. —Alex Almario
Illustration by Patrick Dale Carrillo
A year of cocooning: ‘Hygge’ and ‘lagom’
The hype around hygge has been swirling for quite a while now. Pronounced HOO-gah, the Danish term means “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.” Oxford Dictionaries shortlisted hygge as one of their Words of the Year for 2016. In 2014, English celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall touched on the subject in his three-part miniseries Scandimania, which took a look at why Sweden, Denmark and Norway are consistently voted the happiest countries in the world.
While all three Nordic countries share happiness boosters such as small populations and reap the advantages of a welfare state — from free education to subsidized child care, among others — what distinguishes Denmark is its quest for hygge.
According to Visit Denmark, hygge means creating a warm atmosphere and enjoying the good things in life with good people. “The warm glow of candlelight is hygge. Friends and family – that’s hygge too. There’s nothing more hygge than sitting round a table, discussing the big and small things in life.”
The New York Times calls it Denmark’s national manifesto, “an obsession expressed in the constant pursuit of homespun pleasures involving candlelight, fires, fuzzy knitted socks, porridge, coffee, cake and other people.” Jacob Gallagher, men’s fashion editor of The Wall Street Journal, recently posted on Twitter: “Hygge is the wabi-sabi of 2016 which was the sprezzatura of 2015.”
While hygge finds its roots in Denmark — where winters are long and dark, and so the Danes fight the gloom and cold with candles and wool socks — its appeal is international, much like the ‘90s cocooning trend. In The Book of Hygge — the Danish Art of Living Well, author Louisa Thomsen Brits breaks the concept down into six areas: belonging, shelter, comfort, well-being, simplicity and observance. Whether you live in the tropics or in colder climates, hygge is ultimately about going home, building a cozy nook and staying there.
Already another Scandinavian lifestyle trend is giving hygge serious competition. Lagom, a Swedish word which roughly translates to “just the right amount,” is thought to relate to being frugal, fair and creating balance.
Elliot Stocks, creative director of British magazine Lagom, told Elle UK that while hygge is a temporary state of bliss, lagom is a way of life. “I think hygge captures a moment in time, whether that be a short break in the day or something you try and work into your life every day. Lagom is an overarching concept behind your life in general. Rather than fitting a bit of lagom into your day, it’s more about your approach to your life as a whole.” — Gino de la Paz
Illustration by Rob Cham
