Winners, losers in 2014

DINGDONG Dantes had an early start but fell back.

All stars and starlets do their best to line up new projects to add to their luster and popularity. For show biz year 2014, how have some leading or emerging luminaries fared in this regard?

On “Ang Dalawang Mrs. Real,” the leads were Dingdong Dantes, Maricel Soriano and Lovi Poe. Dingdong had an early head start, but fell back when his character was unmasked as an unprincipled weakling.

For her part, Lovi failed to chalk up substantial plus points, because her mistress character was similarly weak and failed to rise to the feisty level of the “real” wife, Maricel.

ANGELICA Panganiban comes into her own as a comedienne.

Maricel’s portrayal was rapped for being occasionally too physical and livid, but she did significantly make the role “passionately” her own.

Other winning portrayals in the show were turned in by “senior” stars led by Coney Reyes.

On “Ikaw Lamang,” the big winners were Joel Torre, KC Concepcion and Amy Austria. On “My Destiny,” the “emerging” love team of Carla Abellana and Tom Rodriguez scored popularity points, but on point of thespic achievement, the winners were Lorna Tolentino and Al Tantay, as Carla’s parents.

On the concluding series, “Hawak Kamay,” Piolo Pascual finally broke through with a deeply felt and charged portrayal midway through the series, and female lead Iza Calzado similarly made a strong showing, especially after the show stopped focusing on subsidiary characters and went back to concentrating on its real leads. In addition, Tirso Cruz III was exceptional as Piolo’s once-estranged father.

Incidentally, some people have given us props for correctly divining in a recent article that Iza and Piolo would be “jointly infanticipating.” Were we being psychic, or what?, they wanted

JOHN Lloyd Cruz reestablishes himself as the actor to beat.

to know.

No, it was just a lucky guess—and we didn’t divine another major concluding development on the show, that Iza’s ex, Bernard Palanca, would escape from prison and hold her and their daughter hostage. Win some, lose some, right?

Not so incidentally, now that the series is about to end, we join some other viewers in worrying that it could have a tragic ending for Piolo.

For some days now, Piolo and other players have been mordantly musing about the briefness of life, the very real threat of death, etc.

Does this mean that Piolo’s character may not “go the distance”? If so, it would be a TV first, and we wonder how viewers will “take” it!

Back to our focus on winners on the TV-film front this year: “The Trial” was a good big-screen vehicle for John Lloyd Cruz, who reestablished himself as the young-adult dramatic actor to beat—which should in turn light a fire under the similarly well-regarded Jericho Rosales. What’s he doing to catch up?

LOVI Poe fails to rise to costar’s feisty level.

Among young-adult female stars, it’s Angelica Panganiban who’s come into her own as a comedic standout by way of her relentlessly funny and self-satirizing star turn in the recent “Beauty in a Bottle.”

Even more promisingly, Angelica followed it up with another comedic caper, “That Thing Called Tadhana,” in this season’s Cinema One indie fest, again directed by Antoinette Jadaone, who previously mentored her to sweet delicious success in “Beauty.” Hope springs!