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I CONFESS to being biased against Pio de Castro III’s Soltero ever since I heard the premise. A Filipino film about loneliness? Filipinos are some of the most gregarious people in the world the warmest, friendliest, most hospitable; the (darker side) fondest of gossip, of backbiting, of mob rule. Filipinos, I’d have said, are the least likely to know loneliness, particularly on the big screen; most Philippine cinema depict teeming slums full of corrugated shacks crammed with squatters. Filipinos know the despair of overcrowding, not loneliness.
But that’s not entirely true; one of Brocka’s best-known films (
Credit: Karen Thompson
Dear diary,
It’s day please-god-I-will-sacrifice-barbie-boy-to-make-it-all-stop of the human strangles epidemic. After a year of being locked down with increasingly feral humans obsessed with using us as the only reason they leave the house, I didn’t think ANYTHING could make it worse. I was wrong. For this week, mother nature proved she is indeed the most evil of women as she put that lesser seen shining orb into the sky.
And the humans started taking their clothes off.
It was like watching a Green Peace video on saving beached walruses, combined with some sort of David Attenborough piece on a lesser known maggot larvae pupating. I have never been so grateful in my life to now be blind in one eye at least I could turn away as across the land, masses of flabby flesh came out from under the frankly forgiving camouflage concealment of lounge pants and dressing gowns. It was like a remake of dawn of the dead. Only the dead are skinnier. As fellow
Jullie Y. Daza
Once upon a time in a section of the ancient city there lived the most famous fashion designers. Around Remedios Circle, on its fringes or blocks away from one another, they toiled with their cotton, taffeta, lace, and tulle, and nobody bothered to ask why Malate was The Place. Why, even Myther the Tailor, the self-named “Duke of Adriatico,” was drawn to that sweet spot.
At one point, Mayor Fred Lim was taunted by busybodies in media to declare Malate a “fashion zone” to honor Filipino couturiers, the ones who had tickled the imaginations of Imelda Marcos’ titled friends and the occasional visitor from New York, London, Rome, whether model, socialite, or photographer.