All posts tagged: Liza Soberano

Forgotten Island - Perfect Score

Forgotten Island Debuted at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes — Right Before Its Philippine Homecoming

DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island debuted with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score days before its Philippine release — here’s what critics are saying, the scene Filipino viewers won’t stop talking about, and where to watch it starting September 23. Twenty-one critics have reviewed Forgotten Island so far. All twenty-one liked it. DreamWorks Animation’s newest feature debuted at a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, the review-aggregation score that’s become Hollywood’s shorthand for early critical consensus. The film opens in Philippine cinemas September 23, two days after the score posted, ahead of its September 25 US release. Filipino audiences now get to test what critics have already decided. What Critics Are Actually Saying The specifics back up the number. The Hollywood Reporter called the film “dazzling and tremendously fast-paced,” noting influences ranging from anime to Studio Ghibli to Spider-Man. Refinery29 called it “joyful, hilarious” and predicted it would bring many viewers to tears. IGN focused on what it called the power of “the history of friendship and the significance of shared memories,” a nod to the plot’s central …

Lav Diaz Makikiraan Po wins at Venice

Lav Diaz Wins the Brian Award at Venice. It’s His First Trophy From the Festival Since the 2016 Golden Lion.

Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz has won the Brian Award at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival for “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors” (“Makikiraan Po”), a collateral prize given to the film that best embodies the festival’s spirit of rationalism, human rights, and pluralism. The Brian Award, known in Italian as Premio Brian, has been presented since 2006 by the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR), a secularist advocacy group affiliated with the global network Humanists International. Named for the Monty Python film “Life of Brian,” the prize goes to whichever film screened at Venice that year most strongly advances values the UAAR champions: rationality, freedom of conscience, and equal treatment regardless of sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious belief. “Let Us Through, Dear Ancestors” is set in 1617, during the height of Spain’s colonization of the Philippines. Bart Guingona plays Padre Enciso, a Spanish friar overseeing the construction of a church who sends his son, Dungwen — played by Christian Bables — to move limestone through territory where native communities are still …