Truth or cheap promo?

“Yes [I am ready to fall in love.] Kahapon pa. Reding-ready na, yes.”

That was how actor Kathryn Bernardo answered a pointblank interrogation at Fast Talk With Boy Abunda on Monday, 28 October, at a GMA 7 studio in Quezon City. 

For some reason, Abunda did not follow up with a similarly straightforward question: “Ready to fall in love with Alden Richards, or is that too soon?” 

For us, Bernardo sounded too facile to convince that she’s telling some great truth. And if Abunda could not get himself to ask whom she is ready to fall in love with, it could be to avoid that interview from falling into a cheap promo for Bernardo’s reunion film with Richards, which is showing the middle of next month.

Or will Abunda inevitably ask Bernardo about Richards in a very possible second Bernardo guesting in the show around the second week of November before the movie begins screening? 

The film is a co-production between ABS-CBN and GMA 7, so it is not a silly thought that Bernardo could have a second stint in Fast Talk, which is fully produced by the Kapuso Network. But that second guesting could already be with Richards, who is likely to turn up in Abunda’s show anytime this week. 

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Mikee Quintos cooking up something

News programs these days can be daunting, even depressing. Even clownish high-ranking politicians variously cause some gloom in legislature hearings. 

To prepare viewers of primetime news to face gruesome events crowding the news programs, GTV, the sister network of GMA 7, has come up with a cooking-talk show — Lutong Bahay — which intends to make viewers laugh at the antics and banters of the cooking hosts and their guests. 

The new show will not be confined to a kitchen studio of the network. Main host Sparkle star Mikee Quintos will “raid” every now and then the kitchens of some of the country’s celebrities where they will whip up not just recipes but also chunky stories in the lives of the “invaded” celebrities.

Quintos is joined by three youthful chefs who have attained celebrity status among netizens due to their raw but loquacious, wacky vlogs in various social media platforms followed by millions of plain (and possibly bored) Pinoys.

Among the trio of working chefs is Hazel Anonuevo, popularly known as Hazel Cheffy, and she is expected to infuse the viewers’ afternoon with her fun antics, motherly love and of course, her cooking skills.

Also joining Lutong Bahay is Sparkle’s Sexy Foody Chef, Chef Ylyt. The promo yarn about her is “she is ready to take the viewers’ hearts away with her charm and yummy recipes!”

Chef Kuya Dudut completes the squad. He is part of Team Payaman, a group of well-followed digital creators whose core members are blood kins to each other. Its founder in 2015 and titular head up to now is vlogger Lincoln “Cong” Velasquez, more popularly known as Cong TV. His wife, sister, cousin, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and other vloggers related to Velasquez and his wife by affinity are the group’s core members. 

Kuya Dudut used to call himself “Dudut Lang” and he was almost slim in his first few years with Team Payamanin. (“Payamanin” is a Tagalog word that means “on the way to being wealthy” — and it seems all Team Payamanin members have achieved varying degrees of being wealthy due to their millions of followers.)

Kuya Dudut is Jaime Marino de Guzman in real life. He has a hoarse voice and is now close to being overweight.

Lutong Bahay is thankfully a daily show which began steaming their pots and pans on Monday, 28 October, at 5:45 p.m.

Global Pinoys can catch it via international channel, GMA Life TV.

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Do they have what it takes?

The new show will most likely not let Quintos be overshadowed by the voluble vloggers who seem to need more reminders on the protocols of a TV show: clear enunciation and not to overlap too much their talking while someone is still at it. A little overlap is acceptable since that’s how conversations in real life go. 

At the show’s media launch one afternoon recently in a QC restaurant, only Quintos seemed aware about speaking clearly and not to overlap too much with another person talking. Having been a movie-TV actor for many years now, Quintos knows that a show is meant not only to be watched, but also to be heard clearly.

In that media huddle, Quintos would cut herself short when one of her co-hosts began talking. She hardly interrupted anyone. Her vlogger co-hosts need to be drilled some more on the protocol of a TV show. 

Vloggers do their thing with no director, no scripts, no multiple-camera set-up, no floor director to signal which camera to look for a close-up or a two-shot (two persons on cam in one specific spot or a person is at the back of the other). 

The vlogs of the likes of Karen Davila or Korina Sanchez are professionally produced, and we doubt that those of Hazel Cheffy, Chef Ylyt and Chef Dudut are. Even if Lutong Bahay is co-hosted by three awesomely popular chef vloggers, it still has to look and sound like a professional TV show. 

Lutong Bahay airs daily Monday to Friday. Maybe the new host vloggers will learn fast. We strongly hope so.

No one who became wildly famous as a vlogger-influencer has made it just as wildly famous as a TV-movie idol. It seems it’s the vlogger-influencers who give up showbiz stardom due to the refined skills, discipline and protocol required of showbiz idols. Ivana Alawi seems ready to quit showbiz and go back to being a full-time vlogger who does not have to follow a strict schedule of tapings and doesn’t have to deal with ubiquitous directors and seasoned actors she has to kowtow to. 

One vlogger who once announced the millions of pesos she (product seller Rosmar Tan) has earned has been rebuffed twice for making tactless remarks. One or two showbiz idols occasionally fall into tactlessness, but it’s not a habit among their ranks.

Would anyone among Hazel, Ylyt and Kuya Dudut eventually get known as seasoned main host on TV?