Lights, camera, laughs. Tens of millions of film fanatics are entering theaters around Asia during the long Lunar New Year holiday, but Hollywood can’t count on them to boost the box office for its mostly serious Oscar nominees. Even with the Academy Awards buzz at a peak barely two weeks before the ceremony, patrons are opting for lighter fare.
For months now, one of the channels of our cable-TV provider has been having a very bad reception. We were disheartened as it has been one of the few movie channels we’ve enjoyed viewing in our spare time.
Some of the movies shown at the Asia As Our Society Film Festival at Shangri-La last week were rough around the edges. But the Asia Society, which aims to build cultural bridges between Filipinos and their Asian neighbors, deserves to be lauded for exposing local cineastes to a plethora of cultures and issues relevant to the pan-Asian experience.
