Christmas in September

MUHLACH AND VELASQUEZ. Reunite in “Of All The Things.”

CHRISTMAS in the Philippines precociously starts as early as Sept. 1, when Yuletide carols wake befuddled radio listeners up, making some of them wonder if they’ve been trapped in a time warp.

No, we just love to celebrate the coming of the Christ child, with all of the season’s attendant glitter and gifts and food—so why not beat the rest of the slowpoke world to it?

Aside from our extensive and extended Yuletide observances, however, there’s much more to the month of September that we should watch out for and enjoy:

First off, the popular love team of Aga Muhlach and Regine Velasquez is co-starring in its third big-screen foray, “Of All The Things.” The love team’s fans have been looking forward to viewing this rom-com because it’s taken literally years to finally get it to the screen.

The long shoot was rudely interrupted many times by all sorts of personal and professional detours, dead-ends, and false starts that included schedule conflicts, marriage and a baby for Regine, TV-film mother-studio shift for Aga—and considerable weight gain for both.

Happily, those problems have been faced and dealt with, hopefully to everyone’s satisfaction, so when the movie opens on Sept. 26, the production and its popular stars will be on easy-breezy street.

September is being enlivened further by the continuing resurgence of the mainstream Filipino industry, with the showing on Sept. 12 of “The Mistress,” starring John Lloyd Cruz, Bea Alonzo and Hilda Koronel.

Adding to the excitement level is Brilliante Mendoza’s “Captive,” starring no less than French thespic diva, Isabelle Huppert. After the excitement over the Manila locales in “The Bourne Legacy,” Mendoza’s film is even more eventful because most of it was shot right here, and it’s about a local occurrence—with international consequences.

True, not all local mainstream flicks are successful, like a recent production that we hear ended its much-touted run after only three days.

But, we’re cheered by the fact that some indie movies are “graduating” to mainstream screens, like the 2012 Cinemalaya sleeper hit, “Bwakaw,” in which Eddie Garcia shares a lot of screen time with his character’s pet askal.—Merry Christmas!