Bela Padilla’s latest starrer celebrates love the old-fashioned way

Bela Padilla (left) and JC Santos in “100 Tula Para Kay Stella”

In this age of text messages, chat and e-mail, wouldn’t it be a welcome change to receive an original handwritten poem from your “significant other,” instead?

Romantic fools comme moi relish the beauty of the written word. It’s more heartfelt than SMS. Saying “I love u” via text is usually just muscle memory. We’ve gotten so used to ending our text messages with abbreviated forms of those “3 little words” or resort to emoticons.

That’s why it’d be quite refreshing to watch Viva Films’ “100 Tula Para Kay Stella” (opens Aug. 16). It celebrates love the old-fashioned way, but with a hip vibe.

Topbilled by Bela Padilla and JC Santos, the movie is about a guy with a speech defect who turns to writing poetry to verbalize his feelings for a girl who has passion for music.

Just as a French quote goes: “Je serai poète et toi poésie (I will be a poet and you will be poetry).”

Here’s my chat with Bela:

What makes your movie different from other love stories? The fact that it’s based on a true story makes it unique.

Would you take an ex back? At this point in my life, I’m not sure.

If you were not famous, would you join dating sites to find your match? Probably not. I like talking to people in person, so I can gauge if we’ll get along.

What’s one mistake that you made in your life, and what did you learn from it? Trusting people too much. So I better be more cautious.

If you had to choose between love and career, which would you pick? Career. I have responsibilities. If a person loves me, he’ll support my career.

If you write a poem for your future husband, what would the title be? “Thank You for Today.”

In what ways are you like your character, when it comes to love? I’m nothing like her, which is why I accepted the role. She’s very headstrong.

If your life story were made into a poem, what would the title be and why? “Unfinished,” because I still have so much to do and see.

Aga Muhlach

Aga’s birthday

Since it’s my good friend Aga Muhlach’s birthday today, allow me to pay a little tribute to him. Even if we don’t see each other often, our bond remains intact. The Muhlachs are family to me.

Whenever I’m embroiled in controversy, “Ags” makes his presence felt. I’ll never forget the time he talked some sense into me. He told me to stop granting interviews because I’ve said my piece already.

During our teen years, his cousin—my bestfriend—Liezl and I used to leave Aga on the dance floor during our nightouts, because he didn’t want to stop dancing.

When Aga and I, along with Richard Gomez and other friends in the biz, watched Michael Jackson’s concert in Singapore, Ags badgered me to give him one of the MJ shirts I bought, even if he could afford to buy the entire souvenir shop. That was his brotherly way of making lambing.

Happy birthday, my eternally “Bagets” friend. You rock!