THE punishing trade restrictions the US government slapped in 2017 on prominent China-based technology companies that included Huawei and ZTE, ostensibly due to possible national security threats, have not eased, and there appears to be no indication the blacklist—which has been adopted by some US allies—would be lifted anytime soon.
WHEN was the last time a mobile phone stirred the kind of excitement you remember from childhood, when you discovered the latest Matchbox car waiting for you under the tree on Christmas Day? For me, that would be all the way back to 2006 when Sony Ericsson—leveraging Sony’s decades of music expertise, gleaned in part from its hugely popular Walkman brand of portable players—came out with the W810, arguably the first truly refined fusion of Sony’s strength and Ericsson’s formidable networking muscle.
THE numbers should not be where one might have suspected them to be, given the prevailing conditions.
SHE was born Alice Buenaflor Lake on November 23, 1924, in Pasay City, the daughter of an American father and a mother from Iloilo. Of course everybody knew her as Anita Linda, her chosen nom de guerre when she entered show business in the early 1940s after being discovered by National Artist Lamberto Avellana. Her last film credit was 2019’s Circa, an Adolf Alix Jr. drama for which Anita Linda won a Best Actress nomination. It was one of the many acting awards the actress had collected in a decades-long career.
THE global pandemic that is the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) continues to impact the entertainment industry everywhere, with film and TV productions grinding to a halt, and theaters from West End to pockets around these parts reduced to ghost towns. However, the virus is spreading despair that goes beyond economics.
Text and photos by Gerard Ramos
DILIGIN Mo ng Hamog ang Uhaw na Lupa, the 1975 Augusto Buenaventura film which starred Joseph Estrada and Gloria Diaz, was the Best Picture winner in first-ever annual Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF), then known as the Metropolitan Film Festival. The festival superseded the Manila Film Festival of then-Manila Mayor Antonio Villegas following the declaration of martial law in 1972 by then-President Ferdinand Marcos, and the creation of Metro Manila, or Metropolitan Manila, over which Marcos appointed his wife, Imelda, to rule as governor.
It was only last Tuesday, June 18, that legendary actor Eddie Garcia collected his nth Best Actor award, this time for the independent film ML, an honor bestowed on him by the country’s most esteemed film award-giving body, the Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino.
By Gerard S. Ramos | Lifestyle and Entertainment Editor
TOUTING its powerful Globe at Home broadband services recently, leading telecommunications provider Globe talked up another blockbuster offering from its formidable partner Netflix, the global streaming service behemoth.
A week after celebrating his 88th birthday, National Artist for Architecture Francisco “Bobby” Mañosa has gone on to better days, as that Dianne Reeves song goes. The announcement of the architect’s passing came on Wednesday, February 20, in the form of a photo card posted on the Facebook page of Angelo “Gelo” Mañosa, the National Artist’s son who is also a highly esteemed architect. The photo card bore a stylized black-and-white photo of the National Artist and the simple text: “Arch. Bobby Mañosa 1931 -2019”.
There was a new set of winners; there were the same old problems.
“It’s just too beautiful!”
“I’m watching the dog documentary on netflix and sh#t has me in tears or idk i just might be highly emotional sorry” – celsius | @spcynoodlesoup
AMID the shopping madness which unfolded over the holiday season at SM Mall of Asia, a terrifying scene of which I’m certain was replicated everyday in just just about every other mall in this urban nightmare also known as Metro Manila, a few automotive brands took over a chunk of prime real estate in the main mall for a slice of all that good cheer—and Christmas bonuses—going around.
Story & photos by Gerard S. Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
THE leading smartphone manufacturer in China, Huawei has had another exceptional year this 2017. After going from strength to strength since the release of Mate 7 in 2014, the company has surpassed Apple as the world’s second-largest smartphone brand to place behind Samsung.
AS entrances go to a news conference meant to hype the upcoming launch of one’s new prime-time series, Dingdong Dantes’s was met with resounding approval by the entertainment media on that gray and wet August evening. v In full black biker-dude regalia, the star of GMA’s prime-time offering Alyas Robin Hood roared into the function hall of the venue in a big, burly motorbike and then expertly parked the beast just shy of the stage, where his costars had taken their place after having been introduced earlier. Flashing that winning smile, which has moved many an endorsed product since coming into stardom, the actor thanked the press for having braved the surly weather to join him and the rest of the cast of the second season of the hit series that premiered back in September last year.
IT has been a year since Motorola Mobility, or simply Moto, released its second play in the then-nascent modular smartphone market: the Moto Z Play, a midrange iteration of the brand’s flagship Moto Z, which was released in June 2016. While the former didn’t have the latter’s best-in-class bragging rights in terms of hardware (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor vs the 820 chip; 3 gigabyte of RAM vs 4GB; Quad HD display vs Full HD, etc.), the original Moto Z Play nonetheless earned high marks from the tech media for performing pretty much like it was a flagship device, minus the steep price.
IT was not the first time I called out my daughter, who recently turned 9, for carrying a backpack that was rather heavy. Well, to me at least, given her age and the weight of what she had on her young back. An Android tablet; a small towel to wipe off her sweat from an hour or two working the playroom; a small jug of water; a “vanity kit” with a comb and small bottle of baby powder; and, finally, an extra blouse to change in after sweaty play.
It seems rather silly, really, to feel guilty about seeing our deep fondness for the Huawei Mate 9 dim quite easily as soon as we got our hands on the P10 Plus, the latest of the twin flagships of the Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company that now ranks among the top-three smartphone brands in the world. (The other twin is of course the P10, which has a 5.2-inch screen while the Plus bears a 5.5-incher.)
Story and photos by Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
I REMEMBER it all like it happened only yesterday. I was in the late-1990s and I was strapped into a Fiesta Class seat on a half-empty Philippine Airlines evening flight to Manila, after spending an extended period in North California, farther upward of San Francisco, with the romantic love of my life.
By Gerard Ramos
By Gerard Ramos / Lifetyle & Entertainment Editor
You’re keen on becoming the next influencer with all the food and travel porn you post on Instagram? Or do you hate having to tote around the city both a smartphone and a DSLR camera?
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
IT was quite fitting that Madonna—the best-selling female music artist of all time, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, seven-time Grammy winner, Golden Globe awardee, humanitarian and longtime gay-rights advocate—would arrive in Manila, just as this islands republic was reeling from the hateful comments made on national TV by a much-admired, but terribly flawed boxing professional regarding gays and same-sex marriage. Comments which, offhand, one might be tempted to allow to roll off one’s back as an unfortunate byproduct of the statute of free speech that is enjoyed by everyone, but which should not go unchallenged, given that this boxer is running for a seat in the Senate.
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifesteyle and Entertainment Editor
By Gerard S. Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard S. Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard S. Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
By Gerard Ramos / Lifestyle & Entertainment Editor
IT was a bit startling to see a woman done up like the Roman goddess Libertas walking around nodding her head ever so slightly at passersby. For a moment there, I felt like I had been mysteriously transported to some mall where cosplayers seemingly have become a fixture.
OY! If only giving your space a quick pick-me-up were as easy as making a quick post-office stop at some global fast-fashion store where a premium linen check long-sleeved shirt or a linen stole can give your summer wardrobe that extra punch—without burning a hole through your pocket.
IT was past midnight of February 27 in Osaka, Japan, only a little over 24 hours since we arrived in this beautiful capital city of the Osaka Prefecture—courtesy of Cebu Pacific, the Philippines’s largest carrier, which had flown in a small group of media professionals for a four-day familiarization tour—and, of course, I knew it was chilly, even freezing, outside. I was, however, in desperate need of some strong shots of black coffee if I were to survive the next hours with eyes wide open to get some work done before catching an hour—or two, if I were lucky—of sleep.
ONE of the leading wireless communications providers around these parts, Globe Telecom kicked off the new year by rebranding its postpaid offerings to a single, unified subscription plan for a more simplified and, thus, better customer experience. With the new MyLifestyle Plan, priced at P499, new postpaid subscribers will enjoy unlimited calls and texts to other Globe and TM subscribers, and this without the user ever having to key in particular—and particularly confusing—number combinations to enjoy the same, as all that “unli” goodness is already built-in with the new plan.
BACK in September, consumer-electronics giant Sony chose the 2014 edition of the annual Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) in Berlin, Germany, to unveil the latest additions to its Xperia line of wireless-communications goodness, including its new flagship smartphone, the award-winning Z3, and its smaller but no less powerful sibling, the equally acclaimed Z3 Compact.
STEVE JOBS, the late founder of Apple, once famously dismissed the competition’s race to shoehorn increasingly bigger screens into smartphones, likening the end-products to “Hummers”, those luxury SUVs that look like miniaturized tanks—silly, unwieldy and even downright vulgar given the limited road space of any neighborhood, except perhaps in, say, Dubai.
NOWADAYS it’s not often that we get worked up to an excitement over a new smart TV range in the same way that a new smartphone or tablet or wearable technology easily does. Of course, this should come as no surprise given that our increasingly mobile lifestyles have us constantly looking out for things that would help speed us from one appointment to the next, from one destination to another.
TAKE random snapshots of everyday life—at the airport, in cafes and restaurants, in a barbershop—and it is more than likely that not a few of these will bear the irony of how wireless technology has made us tethered to wires more than ever before, as we feed this beast that has become seemingly indispensable in our everyday life the food it devours insatiably.
Time can be unkind—not only to your face, your hairline and your gut, but also in that it rarely allows you to go back to correct a past mistake. Mine would be being the precious twit in 2001 who didn’t bring a snapper when I got invited to Sydney, Australia—just because I didn’t want to be readily singled out by the locals as one of those annoying tourists, although I quickly behaved like one (minus the annoying part I believe, but I can’t vouch for it) when I found myself staring out to the iconic Sydney Opera House across Darling Harbour.
WE waged a revolution to free ourselves as a colony of Spain—and that freedom won centuries ago now allows us to embrace our former colonizer by way of food, fashion and, yes, especially fashion.
