A love-hate film

Un/Happy for You reportedly grossed P40 million at the box office on its first two days of reeling in more than 200 theaters nationwide. 

Now we know that real-life ex-lovers Julia Barretto and Joshua Garcia are magnets at the tills only when they are together. Teamed up with others, they lose their screen potency. Barretto’s Ikaw Pa Rin ang Pipiliin with Aga Muhlach months ago was a sleeper. And so was Garcia’s Fruitcake shown just in June this year. 

Directed by Petersen Vargas, Un/Happy for You features Nonie Buencamino, Ketchup Eusebio, John Lapus, Kaila Estrada, Aljon Mendoza, Ana Abad Santos, Victor Silayan, Bong Gonzales, Meann Espinosa and Bianca de Vera.

Happily, there are no talks that Barretto has re-awakened her feelings for Garcia even as their banters during promo appearances seem like those of real-life sweethearts: nakakakilig! 

We all know that if Barretto has Anderson, Garcia has the French-Filipina athlete Emilienne Vigier and they seem to have been living-in, as suggested in their occasional Instagram postings. They have “honeymoon-ed” in Japan. No one seems to be bothered these days about celebrities of legal age who live-in. The public seems to be upset only when lovers for years, married or not, suddenly break up.

There are no talks yet that some film or TV companies have offered our Olympian double gold medalist Carlos Yulo a contract to be an actor. After all, those companies have to top the reportedly already more than a hundred million pesos pledged to Yulo for being the first Filipino double gold medalist in the Olympics. Even billionaire ex-politician Chavit Singson has offered Yulo a whopping P5 million if the young Olympian would kiss and make up with his mom, Angelica Yulo. Chloe San Jose’s boyfriend has not breathed a single word of interest about getting into a film or a TV show as the lead star. The movies are for anchovies, and Yulo isn’t one by all measures. 

It’s the bronze boxing female medalist  Nesthy Petecio who has spoken about wanting to have a guest appearance in the forthcoming action-fantasy Sang’gre on GMA-7. She made it known through her newfound friendship with comebacking actor Diana Zubiri, who is in the cast of Sang’gre. 

Petecio, a lesbian, bumped into Zubiri at the airport when they separately got there. Petecio was coming home from the Olympics in Paris while Zubiri flew in from Australia where she has been living for years now, happily married and already a mother. Petecio was with her girlfriend, according to PEP website reporter Jojo Gabinete, Zubiri’s manager. 

A one-time guest appearance is all that Petecio desires, even as she looks handsome enough with her man’s hair cut and outfits. But she seems to be eager to train for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, just like Yulo. 

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Do you know that for years now, some impersonators of international music idols have been doing profitable concerts in the Philippines — and not only in Metro Manila but also in provincial cities? 

And those fab performers are not billed as “impersonators.” They are branded as “tribute groups” (while solo performers are called “impressionists” in art circles). There are country-hopping tribute groups for The Beatles, The Bee Gees, Spice Girls, Queen, Pink Floyd and Abba. 

We know that tribute bands for The Beatles and Abba have been coming back and forth to various parts in the Philippines. Mania Abba Tribute group is in the country now to do shows not just at Newport Performing Arts Theater at Resorts World Manila but also in Batangas City and Passi City in Iloilo. 

Abba is a Swedish band. The tribute band Mania is based in London. 

The tribute band performs ABBA’s greatest hits with passion and precision, taking audiences back to the disco era of the 1970s.

Composed of a superb cast of talented musicians and performers, Mania was formed in 1999 and has been selling out theaters and concert halls internationally ever since. Mania has toured every continent in the world and has played over 3,000 live concerts in over 35 countries.

The original Abba is a pop band formed in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972 by Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad. The Abba mania lives on, with over 600 million records sold and the famous Mamma Mia movie and musical franchise, and many of their hit dance floor classics.

The first ABBA tribute show surfaced in 1988 and the popularity of the group’s repertoire spawned the hit musical Mamma Mia! in 1999, later made into a movie in 2008.

The Iloilo show on 25 August will be held at Passi City Arena at 6:30 p.m., with front act performers from the province. Rising singer Ysabelle Palabrica heads the front act talents.

She is the sweet 16 singer who is sometimes referred to as “the mayor’s daughter.” She has just released this August her second single, “Mr. Kupido.” 

With “Mr. Kupido,” Palabica is said to be living up to an award she received last June this year: Rising Princess of Revivals. The award was given by World Class Excellence Awards-Japan, a group founded by a Filipina singer in Japan and which presents the award in Japan and in the Philippines. 

In May this year, she released her first single, “Kaba,” the young girls’ ditty about crushes popularized by the teeners’ idol in the late 1990s, Tootsie Guevarra. The song was composed by hitmaker Vehnee Saturno in the early ‘90s yet and was first recorded in 1991 by a pre-teen singer Ten Ten Muñoz. 

“Mr. Kupido” is also a Saturno composition popularized by Rachel Alejandro in 1997. She and Guevarra were sort of rivals since they were recording songs for rival companies. Rachel was in her late teens when she recorded “Mr. Kupido.” 

So how does Palabrica feel about recording another  Saturno song?

“Very lucky and very grateful! When my management company first told me that my first single was a song composed by Tito Vehnee, who is also going to be our producer, I looked him up in Google and found out what a famous and award-winning composer he was. I prayed that even my next single would be also one of his compositions. And I manifested it,” said the young singer who is actually based in a town in Iloilo.

Saturno is the composer of the hits “Be My Lady” (Martin Nievera), “Forever’s Not Enough” (Sarah Geronimo), “Sana Kahit Minsan” (Ariel Rivera), “Dahil Tanging Ikaw” (Jaya), “Till My Heartaches End” (Ella May Saison),  “Bakit Pa?” (Jessa Zaragoza) and a few more. 

It does not bother her that her second single is a revival.

“Why should I be bothered? Do you know that an award-giving body has already honored me as Young Princess of Revivals after they found out that my first single is doing well in the digital platforms? If my second single is again a revival, I am just living up to the award I had been given,” Ysabelle reasons out.

Saturno has owned for some years now a recording company, Saturno Music, and signs up young talents and challenges them to record his very melodious compositions, specifically those that he wrote in the ‘80s and ‘90s.  

Ysabelle is daughter of the mayor (Mark Palabrica) of Bingawan town of Iloilo. The Palabrica clan is into politics in that town, just like their ancestors. 

However, Ysabelle’s mother, JeAn Magno Palabrica owns and operates a school, CentrePhil Montessori in Janiuay, Iloilo, a neighbor of Bingawan, which is on a plateau on the northernmost part of Iloilo. It is a progressing and peaceful town many kilometers away from Iloilo City, which is in the southern coast of the province.

Despite being based in Bingawan, Ysabelle’s career is largely conducted in Metro Manila, though she has begun to have gigs in towns and cities in Iloilo. For instance, on 25 August, she will be the front act in the concert Mania: Abba Tribute Concert at City of Passi Arena in Passi City. Passi is closer to Bingawan than Iloilo City is. 

Upon the release of “Mr. Kupido” in the streaming platforms, Palabrica will promote it not just in Metro Manila but also in the cities and towns in Iloilo where there are radio stations and malls. 

The mayor’s daughter will also soon start accepting acting stints. She and some groupmates had a workshop in July with Vince Tanada and JP Lopez of the popular Philippine Stagers Foundation. 

Everything is, as that old Broadway song goes, coming up roses for Ysabelle Palabrica.