Bountiful gifts for Christmas in show biz

The current entertainment season is turning out to be truly worth being grateful for, and celebrating with an appropriately and authentically Christmas vibe.

Leading our beautiful, bountiful gifts for Christmas in show biz is this year’s “refocused” Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), with quality finally trumping commercial popularity once more.

It’s a golden opportunity that all lovers of Filipino movies shouldn’t pass up, to prove that the best movies can make good money at the tills. This can only happen if we go out of our way to patronize the festival’s eight official entries starting today—and onwards!

So, we trust that we will all troop to the theaters and watch as many MMFF entries as possible—to prove a key point: That good and great movies aren’t poison at the box office and can in fact be patronized by many Filipinos, who aren’t the clueless, escapist twits and pushovers some people cynically think they are.

Timely reminders

Other 2017 projects and productions that deserve our support should include more TV shows for child, tween and teen viewers, who are currently poorly served by the television industry—except for shallow and “popcorn” variety entertainment, and fan-friendly drama series of the “kilig” sort!

Fact is, TV networks are obliged by their franchise to provide a wide range of programs for all audience sectors, especially the youth, to assure the development of different aspects of their psyches.

The current dominance of drama series on local screens from morning till night is a negation of this obligation that parents and teachers should collectively complain about.

There is also a need to provide many more shows on culture and the arts, which viewers can benefit from in many ways.

For its part, Loren Legarda’s “Dayaw” is a yearlong weekly viewing treat, because it’s a cultural TV show that insightfully reminds us of our ethnic and artistic roots and traditions.

It fills a gaping gap in local TV programming, which generally ignores the past in favor of the more with-it but trivializing present.

“Dayaw” helps make up for this unenlightened disdain, which in fact abridges our future prospects as a nation.

So, teachers should encourage their students to watch Sen. Legarda’s visually and aurally significant show each week, and discuss its most telling points and insights in class.

In addition, parents should watch the show with their children at home, and use it as a springboard for conversations at mealtime, to make their kids realize that there’s much more to life and living than today.

Happily, aside from “Dayaw” and some other culturally engaged local TV productions, there are other shows on cable that gift viewers with deeper and richer coverage of the visual and performing arts, so TV buffs should benefit from their bounties, as well.

‘Brilliant Ideas’

They include “Brilliant Ideas” on Bloomberg, which features the vision and output of the world’s most innovative artists.

It’s heartening to note that quite a number of the visual artists showcased on the insightful program are Asians, and we hope that a Filipino artist will soon join their celebrated company.

Other cultural viewing gifts: “The Culture Show” on the BBC, and “Style” and “Icon” on CNN.