Saturday, December 24, 2016

Friday, December 16, 2016

The King and I, plus Us.







My cousins bought me and mom "The King and I" tickets at the Pantages Theatre as their Christmas present to us.  It was one of the better Christmas present I have received.  Well I did not know it then before seeing the live show.  I saw the movie version with Yul Brenner and it was just OK in my book.  Well I did not care for the casting of the movie to begin with.  Yul Brenner for the King of Siam?  Rita Moreno as TupTim?  Terry Saunders for Lady Thiang?  I mean they are not even Asians!  The only Asian was Prince Chulalongkorn.  They cast anybody who was not blond and blue eyes as Thais in that movie.

So I was very pleased to see real Asians playing Asian roles in the revival of "The King and I" in theatre.  Jose Llana as King of Siam was funny with a good powerful voice.  Love his rendition of "A Puzzlement".  Laura Michelle Kelly was Anna Leonowens was perfect.  To begin with, she is really English so she did not have to fake the accent.  Singing was superb as well.  The rest of the cast gave good performances very apropos to their roles.  Although I must mention Anthony Chan as Prince Chulalongkorn was kind of overacting.

I especially like "The Small House of Uncle Thomas" number.  It was just superbly entertaining.   Also liked "Shall We Dance", "Getting to Know You" and "I Whistle a Happy Tune" numbers.  I think the success of the numbers has to do with the set design and the way it seamlessly flow from one scene to another.  It did not feel awkward and forced.

I watch the movie version just before seeing it in theatre and I find them very similar. The dialogue and the scenes were almost the same so it may have helped me enjoy the Theatre version because of familiarity.

I enjoyed this show and I will give it a 4.25 out of 5 stars.

Monday, December 05, 2016

Forever

The guys from My Husband's Lover Filipino Telenovela Tom Rodriguez and Dennis Trillo duet Forever.

Friday, November 18, 2016

Voter's Remorse is coming.

I read an article several months ago by Michael Moore that the angry white male vote will propel the demagogue Donald Trump to the White House.  He was hoping he would be wrong but boy was he right.  Donald won and mostly from middle America.  The more diverse and progressive states went to Hillary.  I feel this election was mostly a protest vote by the privileged white male for loosing their influence in a society that is giving more equal rights for minorities, women and LGBT.  They are angry at the status quo because their ways are changing for the better.  It did not matter that Donald is caught in the act of boosting to be a sex offender.  It did not matter that Donald refuses to release his income tax in fear that his unsavory business dealings will be expose.  It did not matter that Donald does not really know how to run a country.  Facts did not matter.  All that mattered is that they are angry at the politicians and wanted to give their middle finger through their votes.  All established politicians starting from the primaries to the general election lost to the "outsider" Donald.  And the voters did prevail in voicing their anger.  Well this is how our democracy works .  The majority of the Electoral Colleges select the president.

But the sad part of all these fiasco is everybody will suffer from the repercussion of a Trump presidency.  Stock market will suffer in the long run.  The economy will suffer.  And guess what?  Even those who voted for Trump will also feel the folly of their actions.  In fact, I will venture to say that those "red" states will suffer more than the progressive "blue" states.  So the jokes on those who voted for Trump.  Soon enough they will have voter's remorse.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Saturday, October 08, 2016