Wish Date’s concert cum-movie shows are getting more and more exciting musically. Its presentation, “Unexpected,” last Sunday night at SM Mall of Asia Arena had GMA 7’s top-star Julie Ann San Jose as major attraction supplemented with vibrant performances of the bands 6cyclemind, Cup of Joe, and solo spots of Arthur Miguel and Hakki. 

In past editions of the unique concert-cum-movie show, Kyla, Joey Albert, Gigi de Lana and the bands South Border, Moonstar88 have been featured.

Last Sunday, San Jose, in an all-white suite and pants, mesmerized the full-house audience, with four solo spots of mostly old Filipino pop songs and one foreign hit. She did a spellbinding rendition of Mike Carpio’s “Hiling,” Jimmy Bondoc’s  “Let Me Be the One,” Parokya ni Edgar’s “Your Song,” and Faith Hill’s “There You’ll Be.”

She was the finale solo singer whose spots came at the last segment of the concert that supplemented the movie “Unexpected” featuring TJ Marquez, Kate Yalung, Jameson Blake, and Riza  Faulkerson, the younger sister of Alden Richards in her first ever acting stint.

The film is about a woman who was orphaned young and grew up feeling strong on her own yet kept falling in love with deceitful men, including a meek, handsome lawyer, who would turn out to be a covert gay who heroically married her despite her being already pregnant with another man’s child. The lawyer eventually died. 

6cyclemind, an all-male band, was a big hit with their own songs, including “Sandalan,” which has the catchlines “Sige lang, iiyak mo lang sa langit, iiyak mo lang sa akin.”

Cup of Joe is a rising all-male band from Viva Music, whose two lead vocalists contrast their projected respective  personalities: One is tall and projects to be macho-rough and the shorter guy with an almost lean physique projects androginy though his moves are almost effeminate. His outfit that night was a leatherette black jacket on thigh-length black leatherette shorts and knee-high black boots. The lower part of his thick black hair was dyed blonde. 

One of the numbers Cup of Joe did was their hit song, “Ikaw Pa Rin ang Pipilliin Ko.” They were not convincingly melancholic in Loggins and Messina’s classic “Alone Again, Naturally.” They are too gay to be sad. They sang other songs blithely.