Short feeds on a heady Wednesday

Once in a great while, we manage to shorten our columns to the required two pages designated by editor Ricky Lo. In the two years we have been writing Live Feed, sweating over its length, hard put to edit down our normal four pages, we have learned to respect the virtues of brevity. Anyone who has been a features writer for so long will appreciate the difficulty. Small wonder we were never attracted to news writing.

Some weeks back, after the final performance of the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO) at the Philamlife Theater with a Russian pianist, French conductor and music director Olivier Ochanine announced an online petition on change.org to save the theater. SM Development had bought it and could turn the property into a mall and subdivision.

“This is one of the best performance halls in the entire Philippines with the best acoustics for Manila’s orchestras, choirs and solo musical artists. Its destruction would be a gigantic loss for Filipino culture and heritage,” Ochanine said in his petition. Our friend and music lover Martin Lopez wrote, “Prevent the historic Philam Life Theater from being torn down by its new owners. Even if they say they will not, we have to remain vigilant.” A litany of known and unknown names quickly joined in the petition.

Soon enough, SM Development Corp.’s Henry Sy Jr. announced their decision to “save and preserve the Philamlife including all its elements and most especially its acoustics. We are fully aware of our responsibility as corporate citizens.”

Ventriloquism versus Marionettery

On another occasion, we met up with Wanlu whose Dolphy marionette sang Handog in Pilipinas Got Talent, as PGT judges, Ai-Ai delas Alas actually cried remembering Dolphy, and both Kris Aquino and Freddie M. Garcia commended Wanlu’s marionette manipulation. He has been untiringly promoting a puppetry form different from ventriloquism which is marionettery.

Wanlu’s most recent international festival participations include ASEAN Puppetry in Malaysia, Traditional Puppetry in Singapore and the Marionette Festival in Vietnam where the Philippines got silver. Coming up is the World Puppet Carnival in Indonesia this September. Follow Wanlu and his puppets on Facebook and visit their website at www.wanlu.net.

Shy mama’s boy goes naked

We recently had a most engaging conversation with OJ Mariano, appearing April 19 to May 5 in The Full Monty, Atlantis-Viva’s big musical at RCBC Theater about jobless policemen in London who put up a play with a full striptease as finale. OJ joins the cast of Mark Bautista, Jamie Wilson, Arnel Ignacio, Niño Alejandro and Marco Sison. We admit not being familiar with the youngest and shyest of the group, who nevertheless had ventured into theater, portraying the reporter in PETA’s Himala: The Musicale by Tom Collins in RENT, Tunying/Simoun in Dulaang UP’s Isang Panaginip na Fili, Victor Vidal in Sweet Charity, Sebastian in Atlantis’ The Little Mermaid, Paco Valencia in Rivalry: Ateneo-La Salle the Musical, Upstart’s Forbidden Broadway, Rama in Ballet Philippines’ Rama Hari etc., etc.

OJ confesses to being a mama’s boy who was singing at three, had 15 years of choir experience, went to UP College of Music, took classical training for a year and joined ABS-CBN’s Star in a Million in 2005. We can see him bloom in his role as the night security in The Full Monty into the more confident actor inside of him.

How to get away with violence

We watched Olympus Has Fallen of how disgraced US army ranger Gerard Butler plays a one-man army against Korean terrorists led by Kang Yeonsak who occupy the White House. So-so acting from all except Morgan Freeman as acting US president. We, nevertheless, enjoyed the quick paced action and suspense in this Die Hard simulation.

Bad Romance from our active indie makers has a simpler plot where fan Mercedes Cabral falls for her movie idol Francis Lopez playing Sam Lloyd Pascual, and believes he would marry her after one night of love-making. The rest of the film follows her rampaging and killing everyone in sight. Bloody, suspenseful, violent. We would have preferred more boob exposure to this. Mercedes is truly queen of the indie actors — may you stay that way. Aiza Seguerra’s role as private eye needs more development. Paging direk Ian del Carmen!

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