Star for the night
Source: ADOBO.COM
Author: Gerard Ramos
Date: March 23, 2002
REGINE VELASQUEZ’S portrayal in Viva Films’ Ikaw Lang Hanggang
Ngayon may have been an over-the-top interpretation of her character’s
lack of social skills but, hey, bone-pickers ought to cut the young lady
some slack.
After all, not only did she—along with Richard Gomez, who has never
been more appealing onscreen than in this recent romantic comedy—fuel
the movie to blockbuster status but, really, what makes her performance
all that different from Russell Crowe’s in A Beautiful Mind?
I’ll get to that shortly but, for now, congratulations are in order
to Regine, who will be honored by the Guillermo Mendoza Memorial
Scholarship Foundation as this year’s so-called Box-Office Queen. The
honor, if you will, is well deserved because, frankly, no actor
hereabouts, male or female, comes close to the singer-actress’s record
over the past couple of years, when she fueled Dahil May Isang Ikaw,
Kailangan Ko’y Ikaw and Pangako... Ikaw Lang, all under Viva Films, to
spectacular numbers at the box office.
Of course, not a few will be inclined to be dismissive and regard the
title of “Box-Office Queen” as ultimately inconsequential, even
worthless, and it is to Regine’s credit that—unlike others who need
to get a life for giving so much value to all these empty titles—she
regards this celebrity with humorous insouciance that is, however, never
contemptuous.
“I swear, for my coronation I’m going to have a gown expressly
made according to the design of the sash!” she breezily intoned during
a face-off with the entertainment media yesterday to hype the local
version of the European hit talent show, Star for a Night, which Viva
Television will premiere on IBC on March 31, Easter Sunday, at 8 pm.
The latest sensation on British television, the show provides a
launch pad for unknown and unsigned talents—but with huge differences
from current talent shows on the medium. “What makes this different is
that the contestants are not left to their own devices, as I was back
when I was joining all these talent contests on TV or otherwise,” said
Regine. “Those who pass the auditions are given the treatment that
established stars enjoy, including having the musical arrangement most
suitable to their vocal range because it is not uncommon for people
participating in a talent contest to try to sing beyond their range in a
effort to impress the judges ample, and this routinely turns out to be
their costly mistake. The contestants will also get ample rehearsal
time, a full-blown makeover, hotel accomodations on the day of the
competition—the works, the full star treatment.”
The weekly winner in Star for a Night brings home a cash prize of
P50,000, while the semi-finals prizeruns up to P100,000. For the grand
finals, the cash prize is, yes, a whopping P1 million—this, on top of
the opportunities for a career in show business. “Naturally, Viva is
looking at this talent show as a source of potential future stars, as
will other entertainment companies, I’m sure,” Regine said.
“That’s why Star for a Night auditions those want to become a
contestant in the show because we really want to give a solid platform
to those with really good potentials to become a star.”
For Regine’s part, she sees the talent show as her small way of
lending a hand to individuals who are struggling her past struggles.
“I was very lucky to have been given the opportunities that I got when
I was just starting out, and that why I readily agreed to host this
show,” said Regine in an early press conference for Star for a Night.
Yesterday, she added, “That’s why I also told Viva that instead of
having me sing while the judges deliberate their choices near the end of
the show, it would be much more interesting if I did a number with all
the contestants. That way, the focus will still be on them and not just
me.”
All throughout the press conference yesterday, Regine displayed a
sense of humor, a flair for the comic, that her romantic comedy outings,
individually or even put together, have barely scratched. Which is why
it would be a mistake to put her in a big-screen drama—as was
suggested during the media face-off—when her comic potentials have not
yet been fully exploited, as Julia Roberts bitterly learned when she
desperately tried to do a Meryl Streep in such dismal failures as Mary
Reilly and Michael Collins. I would wager that if Roberts had approached
Erin Brockovich with all the serious-actress trappings she employed for
the aforementioned failures, not only would the Steven Soderbergh film
been a huge disappointment at the box office but also she wouldn’t be
the Oscar-winning actress she now is.
Of course, in this year’s Academy Awards—which unfolds on
Saturday in the U.S.—the conventional wisdom is that Crowe, nominated
in the Best Actor category for A Beautiful Mind, is well on his way to
collecting his second back-to-back Oscar following his triumph last year
for Gladiator.
But, as inferred earlier, I don’t just get what all the fuss is
about. From the moment director Ron Howard trains his camera on Crowe,
the once-admirable Australian has “ACTING” written all over but his
forehead, employing just about all the tics that have been used in
cinematic portayals of mental impairement that the paranoid
schizophrenic John Nash seems like a cross between Dustin Hoffman in
Rain Man and Robert De Niro in Awakenings and less a living, breathing
character.
To Regine’s credit, the false note she struck as the painfully
withdrawn heroine in Ikaw Lang Hanggang Ngayon appears to be more a
failure in direction and not an attempt to stretch a la Julia Roberts in
Mary Reilly. In Crowe’s case, he has been quoted as bragging about the
complete trust he enjoyed from Howard, who ostensibly allowed him to run
away with the role—which he does, indeed, all the way to Never Land.
Strangely enough, for all that much vaunted trust Crowe supposedly
enjoyed from Howard, the director appears to have been not all that
confident about his actor’s ability to make the audience wholly
connect with Nash’s terrifying spiral into madness. Which is why
Howard employed that most infantile device in portraying Nash’s
paranoid schizophrenia—which, by the way, is even more cheesy than
anything in Frank Darabont’s much-maligned The Majestic.
