A SCARECROW is a human-like figure that guards crops from marauding birds, and is usually made of sticks and old clothes stuffed with straw, held up by a frame over a field -- and can be a farmer’s best friend. The province of Isabela celebrates these farmer’s helpers -- known in the province as bambanti -- with a festival every fourth week of January.

CLASSIC designs start off as the trends in their time. When revived, these may elegantly evolve and be adapted to the present aesthetic.

BACK IN the days before digital games like Cooking Mama and Café World, kids would play and pretend to cook using luto-lutuan (toy cooking pots). Before Angry Birds crashed pigs into houses, kids used a tirador (slingshot). Before anyone played indoors with Wii Sports, games were played in the backyard or on the road in the absence of courts. Before strolling everywhere in search of Pokemon characters, there was hide and seek. But if we think all these are a thing of the past, Awit and Laro aims to prove otherwise.

“Crazy in Love Again,” the new feminine collection of Charriol for 2019, mixes the symbolic hearts and arrows dear to Cupid by giving a transgressive and ultra-trendy touch to rings, bracelets, necklaces and earrings, combining white topaz, rhodium silver 925 and steel cables.

LOS ANGELES — Manga-inspired action epic Alita: Battle Angel begins its worldwide cinema roll out this week but with a hefty budget and years in the making, producer James Cameron and director Robert Rodriguez acknowledge the stakes are high at the box office.

SMART Communications Inc. has finally ventured into the realm of web series as it introduces Find Her, a seven-part miniseries about the role of technology in romance, which drops its first episodes on Feb. 9 on Smart’s YouTube channel.

BERLIN — A mother fleeing her violent husband, a serial killer who preys on women, and famine in 1930s Ukraine are among the weighty social and political themes explored in films showcased at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

LOS ANGELES — This year’s Oscar ceremony will go ahead without an official host for only the second time in its history, an ABC television executive said on Tuesday.

A FARRELLY movie up for the Oscars?

6 films to see on the week of February 8 — February 14, 2019

FOR the 6^th concert in its 36^th concert season on Feb. 8, 8 p.m., at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Main Theater, the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO), under the baton of Yoshikazu Fukumura, will perform Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischutz Oveture, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, K.543 in flat major, and Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, op 73 in D major. For inquiries and tickets, contact the CCP Box Office (832-3704), visit www.culturalcenter.gov.ph, or contact TicketWorld (www.ticketworld.com.ph, 891-9999).

TOYMAKER Mattel Inc. continued its pivot toward entertainment, hiring a Walt Disney Co. veteran to run its burgeoning television unit.