Tag: Zsarlene B. Chua

A FILM about a cranky old woman who wants to die but whose neighbors wouldn’t let her won the top prize at the Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino awards night on Sept. 15 at One Esplanade in Pasay City.

WITH SO MANY bands trying to make it into the music scene, the goal has always been about making an impact — and for three-year-old band CHNDTR, it meant creating their own musical genre.

YOUTUBE NEXTUP, an internationally staged contest where smaller YouTube creators are given the chance to learn how to scale up their channels, has named its newest batch of winners from the Philippines and the roster includes a poultry farming channel, a men’s beauty channel, and a Philippine law tutorial channel.

SOUTHEAST ASIAN cashback rewards program Shopback is ramping up its Philippine operations four years after entering the country with a new user interface and new app features in response to the increased penchant of Filipinos to online shopping.

BDO Unibank, Inc. and Singapore’s Keppel Land Ltd., on Tuesday formally opened the office and retail mixed-use development The Podium in Ortigas business district, Mandaluyong City.

RAYMUND RIBAY GUTIERREZ’ feature debut about domestic violence won the Special Jury Prize at the 76^th Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

THE winner of the 10^th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race and all-around fashionista, Aquaria has become the first drag queen to endorse The SM Store as she was chosen by the company for her quirky and over-accessorized fashion sense.

SOUTHEAST ASIAN e-commerce retailer Lazada is kicking off a series of sales until yearend with its 9.9 Big Discovery Sale today, Sept. 9, featuring “9 million deals, [some up to] 90% off” from local and international retailers alongside new app features such as bills payment and a pre-sale option for sale items.

HELLO, LOVE, GOODBYE is now the highest-grossing Filipino film of all time after breaching the P880 million box office mark after more than a month in local and international cinemas.

THE Metro Manila Film Festival Executive Committee (MMFF Execom) has announced that Carlo Ledesma’s film Sunod will replace Kris Aquino’s comeback film (K)Ampon which was disqualified for making a casting change beyond the prescribed deadline.

AS PART of its 80^th anniversary celebrations worldwide, Marvel Entertainment partnered with SM malls to bring official Marvel merchandise and other consumer products to 70 of the mall chain’s locations.

RAMEN-YA or ramen restaurants have become so popular in the country that most malls have more than one offering some form of noodle soup from some region of Japan. Such is the focus of these restaurants to maintain that authentic taste, a bowl of good ramen will set one back around P500 so it was a pleasant surprise to find a good ramen restaurant offering a complete meal for the same price.

THE PRODUCERS of Still Human, a film about a Filipina domestic worker in Hong Kong and her relationship with her disabled employer, are hoping to get a more widespread theatrical release in the country after its Philippine premiere in the recently concluded Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival.

RESORTS WORLD MANILA (RWM) is celebrating its 10^th anniversary with dining and accommodation deals from its signature restaurants and partner hotels alongside a slew of musical performances in its venues.

AFTER last year’s successful collaboration with actor Matteo Guidicelli, fashion designer Avel Bacudio is back with another collaboration, this time an “affordable athleisure” line...

DUE to market demand for an “upscale Chinese dining experience,” Seda Vertis North in Quezon City is introducing Chinese menu items in their banquet facilities and opening a Cantonese restaurant by year-end featuring authentic Chinese flavors mixed with Filipino-Chinese favorites.

A FILM about a champion female boxer and the heroic deeds of a flight attendant who saved hundreds of passengers when a plane was hijacked are just some of the films featured in the first Mabuhay Bollywood film festival which runs from Aug. 23 to 25 at the Shangri-La Plaza mall in Mandaluyong City.

WHAT WAS supposed to be Kristina Bernadette “Kris” Aquino’s comeback horror film is pulling out from the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), though no formal statement has come from the festival’s executive committee (Execom).

CULT-FAVORITE Japanese skincare brand Hada Labo has finally launched in the Philippines, a feat which took years to do, according to a brand representative.

I HAD previously used Hada Labo products from the core line when they were sent over from Japan by relatives, and while I remember that my skin loved the products, it was a problem getting them regularly enough to become staples so I stopped using them for a couple of years.

AFTER a sold-out concert in June, Filipino rock band Mayonnaise is reprising its Akalain Mo ’Yun concert in September due to insistent public demand, according to the band’s frontman.

ANNE CURTIS Smith-Heussaff is returning to her roots as a sexy, romantic drama actress in Jason Paul Laxamana’s Just a Stranger, a film about infidelity and its consequences. The film hits theaters nationwide on Aug. 21.

JOHN DENVER TRENDING, a film about cyberbullying filmed in the Kinaray-a dialect of Antique, was the 2019 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival top winner, bagging six awards including Best Film and Best Actor at the awards night held on Aug. 11 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).

SUICIDE RATES in Japan may have fallen — CNN reported in 2018 that the total number of suicides in the country fell to 21,321 in 2017 compared to a peak of 34,427 — but rookie director Kasumi Nojiri who directed Lying to Mom (2018) doesn’t believe in these numbers, saying that the number of people who committed suicide is probably misreported by the government.

THE 2019 International Venice Film Festival has chosen Raymund Ribay Gutierrez’s Verdict as an official entry, making it the only Southeast Asian film to be chosen for the Horizons (Orizzonti) section.

THE ONLINE food delivery platform of ride-hailing app Grab has announced 24/7 operations in select cities in the Philippines in a bid to serve the demands of the company’s growing segment.

A NEW Robinsons Galleria has risen in San Pedro, Laguna as Robinsons Land Corp. (RLC) formally opened its third Galleria property on July 19 featuring a themed Asian section, a sculpture in homage to the city’s namesake saint, and four floors of retail and dining establishments.

AFTER LAUNCHING its 24-hour English-language news channel last year and a sports channel in early 2019, local pay TV provider Cignal TV is introducing another channel under its One branding, One PH, a 24-hour Filipino-language news channel.

TONY AWARD winner Lea Salonga is set to perform on Aug. 30 and 31 at the Newport Performing Arts Theater in Resorts World Manila (RWM), Pasay City as part of the 10^th-anniversary celebrations of the integrated casino-resort.

THE MULTI-BILLION dollar beauty industry has increasingly shifted to digital as social media became a way of marketing products, a trend that has also come to Southeast Asia, according to a media intelligence firm.

SUMMER has come to the Northern Hemisphere and that means it’s Shark Week time again. The longest-running cable TV programming returns with shows meant to provide further knowledge and dispel misconceptions about sharks and the efforts to conserve the species.

THIRTY signature pieces from 15 prominent fashion designers and photographers in the country were gathered together in one collection to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of local fashion brand, Plains & Prints.

MORE THAN 70 musical performances, ranging from busking to full-on gigs — at various locations including LRT stations are what this year’s Linggo ng Musikang Pilipino (Philippine Music Week) is featuring until the end of July.

SINGER Martin Nievera is continuing as Solaire Resort and Casino’s celebrity endorser for two more years after a “great last two years” according to a property executive.

FAIR-SKINNED, brown-eyed, and dark-haired, Ai-Da speaks with an English accent. She wears a white long-sleeved blouse and black trousers. Since April, she has been studying her subjects and sketching them using her bionic arm in a company in Cornwall, England.

FASHION Arts Business Creatives (F.A.B. Creatives), a school set up by some of the most prominent Filipino designers, will soon be offering an intensive one-year program with courses ranging from sewing and design to merchandising and entrepreneurship. And for those who can’t afford the fees but have the talent, the school has also opened several slots for scholarship students.

KUALA LUMPUR-based video-on-demand (VOD) service, iflix, has announced its partnership with Philippine media and entertainment company, Viva Communications Inc., which includes “a substantial” investment in the streaming service and plans to launch several films and series within the next three years, according to an iflix executive.

ABS-CBN’s music portal, One Music, is set to organize a musical event which “aims to raise awareness on climate change” on July 27 at the La Mesa Ecopark in Quezon City. The concert will feature singers Maris Racal, Sam Mangubat, and AC Bonifacio.

CORREGIDOR, an island that is synonymous with the valor of Filipino and American soldiers during World War II, will soon get a much-needed facelift.

THE Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino — Filipino Film Festival — is back for its third run, this time with 10 full-length feature films which will be shown on Sept. 13 to 19 in cinemas nationwide, coinciding with the celebration of the first 100 years of Philippine cinema.

THE concert of English musician and actor, Sting (Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner), scheduled on Oct. 2 at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, has been canceled according to the concert’s local organizers.

SUREFIRE crowd-pullers once again dominate the first four film entries for this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), which is set to run from Dec. 25 to Jan. 7 in cinemas nationwide.

THE satirical comedy, Ang Babae sa Septic Tank, is back for a third installment. This time the cult favorite tackles the issue of historical revisionism, with comic Eugene Domingo playing herself as a director and main actress in a Josephine Bracken biopic.

BUSINESS reality TV show The Final Pitch is back for a fourth season featuring judges from previous seasons once again looking for the best Philippine startups from aspiring entrepreneurs.

BACKED BY two years of research into the Philippines’ ongoing drug war led by President Rodrigo R. Duterte, Kolateral is a 12-track rap album that includes the numbers, the stories, and the effects of the war on drugs.