Catch the grandest laugh of the century asUP SAMASKOM presents
Live AIDS Silver: The UP Centennial Edition
Anak ka ng Peyups!
Witness the biggest musical-comedy of the year at
the UP Theater on November 28, 29 and 30
Live AIDS Silver: The UP Centennial Edition
Anak ka ng Peyups!
See top humorists
Giselle Sanchez, RS Francisco and Tuesday Vargas in
their funniest roles
Live AIDS Silver: The UP Centennial Edition
Anak ka ng Peyups!
For tickets, call TicketNet at 911.5555 or call JUDEE 0916.5445856 for LA SILVER PREMIUM TICKETS or you may visit www.liveaidssilver.com
Live AIDS Silver: The UP Centennial Edition
Live AIDS, Ang Istoryang Dinebelop ng SAMASKOM, is an annual musical-comedy series mounted by UP SAMASKOM, a student organization based in the UP College of Mass Communication. What started as a mere applicants’ batch project back in 1983 is now one of the most awaited events in the Diliman republic. This year, with the full backing of the UP Centennial Commission, Live AIDS, billed as “Live AIDS Silver: The UP Centennial Edition”, is touted to be the grandest and most spectacular version of the yearly extravaganza.
Each year, Live AIDS has never failed to surpass the previous record number of fans who trooped to its staging venues on all performances. Come November 28, 29, and 30, 2008 Live AIDS is set to break its own record of audience size as it conquers the gargantuan 2000-seater University of the Philippines Theater.
As the yearly production reaches a significant milestone – that of being in existence for one quarter of UP’s 100 years of excellent history – resident and alumni members of UP SAMASKOM will be in full force for this year’s Live AIDS Silver: The UP Centennial Edition. If only for the huge roster of well-known personalities it has produced, with the likes of TV/movie directors Lauren “Pinoy Big Brother” Dyogi, Jerry Lopez Sineneng, and Jeffrey Jeturian, prima ballerina Melanie Motus, broadcasters Tina Panganiban-Perez and “Kuya” Kim Atienza, singers Raymond Lauchengco, Miro Valera (Stonefree), Kris Gorra (Cambio) and Wency Cornejo, and top humorists Tuesday Vargas, Rene Boy “Ate Glow” Facunla, and RS (M Butterfly) Francisco and Giselle Sanchez, Live AIDS Silver is certainly posed to give a grand treat to its fans.
This early, the temperature of anticipation for Live AIDS Silver has begun to inch to fever-pitch. And as anybody who has seen Live AIDS could attest, its unique glint of hilarious wit through its comedic sketches and monologues and awe-inspiring high-energy production numbers are truly one for the books.
Ned Legaspi, an illustrious alumnus of UP SAMASKOM and the Philippines’ top director for intelligent comedy, helms LIVE AIDS SILVER: THE UP CENTENNIAL EDITION.
LIVE AIDS SILVER goes ONLINE: Yehey!, Click the City, Getzmo
[Consolidated from several posts by Rikz, samaskom mailing list, 06 November 2008. Just doing my bit as an alumnus.]
I happened on one episode on the BBC once, then I got hooked. I don’t remember which of the episodes I actually saw first but doesn’t matter, I’ve seen all of them, and all I can say now I remain 50 percent in awe, 50 percent ecstatic. Yes, ecstatic as in imagine me as Bernini’s Saint Therese.
I’ve long been impressed with documentary presenter Simon Schama - and if he has a fan club out there, I’m definitely joining. I first saw him present BBC’s wonderful docu-series “A History of Britain.” In every one of Schama’s essay of event or personality, his observation into the human psyche was so intricate, my mental tastebuds were licking “delicious.” But right now, it’s not History of Britain I’d like to pour my praises on, it’s “Power of Art.” (Itself, I must insist, should be considered a masterpiece of broadcast arts excellence.)
I get confused with myself sometimes; how could I have acquired this much passion for art. When I was young, I even flunk in my arts and crafts projects. But when I was in my senior year in college, after taking a few art studies electives, I was convinced I enrolled in the wrong course. This despite that from time to time, I get ejected from honest-to-goodness reputable gayness for lacking elan. Then there are times when I sense in myself emerging “discriminating” taste. Whatever it is, I feel art, and it really does something to me - regardless for having none or probably just a little bit of talent, regardless of inconsistencies in flair.
But indeed, “just how powerful is art?” This Schama asks in the final installation of the Power of Art series. In this docu-series - in all respects, the best example of art history in the form of broadcast special - art didn’t solely refer to the artwork but seemingly to envelope also the artist as someone placed in a place and time in the world with other people and other events, and always conflicted, never complacent. (Can you almost taste the delectable richness now?)
At the end of every episode, I feel torn. I felt disappointed for all the wasted talent in Caravaggio, but later, pity also for the atonement that never came. Livid for Bernini’s vanity, but quiet acquiescence for in-all-fairness true, undoubtable talent. Scandalized at what (it turned out to be) David’s “Death of Marat” was all about, but sympathy as well for human inadequacies swept in revolutionary mob-madness. I’d have to stop here, or my mind will go swirling with too many incoherent, perplexities of emotions-disguised-thoughts again: just like Rothko, “I can’t point it out.”
I think it’s important as well to read what Schama himself has to say about the series, and I quote part of his statement here:
The power of the greatest art is the power to shake us into revelation and rip us from our default mode of seeing. After an encounter with that force, we don’t look at a face, a colour, a sky, a body, in quite the same way again. We get fitted with new sight: in-sight. Visions of beauty or a rush of intense pleasure are part of that process, but so too may be shock, pain, desire, pity, even revulsion. That kind of art seems to have rewired our senses. We apprehend the world differently.
BBC has a full section in their website about Power of Art HERE - and the rest of Schama’s introduction HERE. The clip above is just the first nine minutes of the last episode, one on Rothko, I found on Youtube. (But if you get the chance, please go through the first seven episodes - Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, JMW Turner, Van Gogh and Picasso - before this one.)
Like a true-blue devotee of this opus, I again, tried to look for the series in our local video stores. No results so far. As usual, we have to thank the torrents for filling in the gap.
The first time I saw this documentary was in Baguio. It was aired on the community channel of the local cable TV network. With the exceptionally unconventional programming of this channel, plus switching between the History and Biography channels, I got boob-tube hooked and almost never decided to get out of my hotel room. I never got to see what the title of this documentary, though.
The next time I was in Baguio, I checked the community channel again, and after almost a half-day’s worth of wait, it aired again. This time around, the theme was a whole lot more personal, more meaningful. This was already after that pancreatitis scare that highlighted my birthday. (By the way, from how I understood it, it wasn’t really “pancreatitis” but an early attack of type II diabetes.) Actually, when I was in the hospital, staring blankly at the TV, between dread for another zipping abdominal pain and routine blood glucose “embroidery” (sometimes dashed with my aunt’s diatribes over her domestic issues), I thought of Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” I really so wanted to see the whole documentary again.
So when I was blessed with yet another screening of Sicko, I swear, it really moved me to tears. It really felt so true - especially at that time, post-hospitalization, post official indebtedness, and pre-Philhealth claim. Considering that our own health system is essentially almost a carbon-copy of the American’s, indeed, how have we ended up like this as a country? The health of our nation’s citizenry at the mercy of so-called “market forces.” With the help of a little Wikipedia, my reflections led me to this conclusion: health insurance should not (solely) be the State’s response for the health of its people. Even Philhealth is a mere token of what we really need: universal health care coverage. (My Philhealth claim only amounted to just a little over 10 percent of how much was spent on my birthday hospitalization.)
Whenever I had the chance to go to malls, I looked for this documentary in video stores. Blessed are the “innocence” of our sales clerks of anything documentary, all they knew about documentary were DVD’s of Discovery Channel specials. (”Michael Moore po? Action ba yun o drama, sir?”) My little cash for luxury purchase, I’m convinced, this masterpiece really deserves. But I nonetheless took my chances at the pirated market. Nothing there as well. (”Naku, masyado na yatang luma yun, sir… hindi na kami nagbebenta nun. Pero meron naman kaming ibang magagandang black-and-white dito, sir.”)
Even at my conviction of Sicko deserving a legal purchase, I got desperate and finally looked into torrents. Thanks be, Moore has a following among torrent freaks; it’s well seeded. And I’m not the only one who’s moved by this piece. A whole movement has been born out of this opus.
For the rest of us, at least among cable TV subscribers, I’m happy to announce that Sicko will be aired by Star Movies starting November 1. Mark it on your calendar - it really deserves 123 minutes of your All Saints’ holiday time.
Shown in 2007, Sicko also was nominated for best documentary on the 80th Academy Awards, but lost to Taxi from the Dark Side (which I believe must also be a very good one). (Wikipedia article on Sicko HERE)
Last of the catch-up, antedated postings for (at least) the liwaliw:shutterbug. Took a longer time to finish this “quarterly” - the start of paperwork deluge at work combined with (yet another) sudden breakdown of our Globe Broadband connection.
Catching up on postings for liwaliw:shutterbug is a tad more challenging compared to liwaliw-inbox and aspacmsm. It’s posts are currently styled photo-eds. So it’s not the simple scouring of my mailboxes and starring bits that poked my interest. It contains images I took myself and captions. (Captions are optional, I try to convince myself always, but I always fail.)
Shutterbug was my first blog. I moved to i.ph at the time of that Internet connection slowdown caused by the Taiwan earthquake some years back. I was experimenting with my then-new SE K810i camphone when I resurrected it. I tried what I thought was a nifty function of blogging directly from the camphone. It was a failure, mainly my network provider’s fault. GPRS was just all hype.
Below are posts I’ve antedated for April, May and June. The images were selected over hundreds I’ve archived in 2008 alone. Particular to this catch-up challenge, many of the shortlisted images I don’t remember anymore why I’ve taken them in the first place. (Of course, other than that first outburst of appreciation “Ay! Ang cute nito!” which when repeated several times over could pretty get old too soon.)
