New works from brilliant talents

Actor-producer Liza Diño-Seguerra sweetly bothered to invite us a second time to watch the repeat of husband Ice Seguerra's solo concert "Videoke Hits" because we didn't make it to the Music Museum for the original show in May. We're glad we made it Friday night, 28 June.

Trans-man Seguerra sang about 30 songs and danced in at least two of them — without straining his throat and writhing his body to reach high notes. He can out-sing the “birit” queens, kings, princesses and princes of the country without hurting the audience’s eardrums.

Seguerra has done his best to look like a man and sound like one when he talks. But when he sings, he sounds like the most feminine woman there is. And we mean that as a high compliment, so we hope he and his wife do not take offense.

Seguerra seems to have mastered the art of correct diaphragmatic singing without sounding operatic. His diaphragmatic singing doesn’t make him sound throaty at all when he soars. He studied for some years at the Conservatory of Music of the University of Santo Tomas though we’re not sure if that was where he learned to sing the way he does.

There are some lines and bars of a song in which he hardly opens his mouth, and yet the words come out clear and the pitch is perfect. Was it the microphone he was using or his sheer mastery of correct and educated singing? The (fake?) “birit” pop “royalties” of the country should find time to have a tutorial with him so they do not write and make faces when straining for the soaring notes.

One long suite of the concert is billed as “Watch Ice Ice-fy Your Favorites” and it was where he easily demonstrated how to soar without splitting the audience eardrums and without contorting the body and the face. It’s a long segment where he slowed down about a dozen dance tunes including “Build Me Up, Buttercup” and “Dancing Queen.”

That concert was Friday night and the afternoon of the next day (Saturday, 29 June), the couple Ice and Liza portrayed the lead characters in Choosing (Not a Straight Play) at Power Mac Center Spotlight Blackbox Theater in Makati at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., under the direction of Anton Juan. They did it again yesterday (Sunday, 30 June). 

On 6 July, they’ll go on stage again at 3 p.m. but on 7 July, they’ll perform at 2 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.

By the way, the Music Museum was almost SRO the night of Videoke Hits (The Repeat). After the couple is done with their play in Makati, we hope Seguerra will do one or two more repeats. 

The couple produces almost all of their shows now, including foreign films shown first in international film festivals and, later, also in the Philippines, hopefully. (Local bookers may not find the film commercial enough for theater release.)

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Guess who is “threatening” to do a musical film? Yes, film, not a play.

Cannes winner Brillante Mendoza, that’s who.

He expressed that desire to a mass media outlet, not to some untrained vloggers who lack education in journalism.

Would Brillante care to do it with, or for Viva Films or its subsidiary Vivamax, assuming the huge and wealthy Viva Communications Inc. (VCI) would be willing to bankroll a musical?

But Mendoza seems to be not in speaking and working terms these days even as he has had about a dozen movies with VCI. Mendoza seems to be on his own now because Netflix takes his films now. His two-part Moro will start streaming soon on Netflix.

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A protegee of Mendoza, though, remains on good terms with the Del Rosarios who mainly own VCI: Reynold Giba, whose Huwad began streaming on Vivamax on 28 June.

The sex-oriented film top-bills Chloe Jenna, Azi Acosta and Aerol Carmelo. It’s about a husband (Carmelo) who has lost sexual interest in his wife (Acosta) whose sexual urges for her husband remains strong. 

The story is set in a distant fishing village where “albularyo” (herbalists) and “gayuma” (love potions) are still credible. The wife consults with an albularyo who gives her a gayuma which makes her more seductive but still not to her husband who had begun to fool around ahead of her. She gives in to so much extramarital dalliances. She is still unsatisfied and eventually finds out that intimacies with another woman (Jenna) works for her.

Vivamax movies now have their own initial producers who generate concepts and stories and put up their own production team. For Huwad, the producer is Ina Alegre, the sexy star who has been mayor of Pola town in Mindoro island for some years now. The film was shot entirely in Pola. She appears in Huwad as the albularya who would refer the wife to a male herbalist who is adept in concocting love potions.

Huwad is Giba’s third Vivamax film, his first two being Bata Pa Si Sabel (2022) and Sapul (2021) both of which had Mendoza as creative producer. Giba also writes the scripts of his films.