Alex Eala’s Toronto Run Ends. The Bigger Picture Still Looks Good.
Alex Eala’s seven-match winning streak ends in Toronto against Belinda Bencic — a lopsided finish that says more about fatigue than form.
All posts tagged: news
Alex Eala Won on a Bad Foot. That’s the Real Story Out of Toronto.
Alex Eala beat Caty McNally in three sets at the Canadian Open — and spent most of the second one visibly hurt. The win matters more because of that, not less.
Harana Music Festival 2026: TJ Monterde Leads the Lineup for Manila’s New Acoustic OPM Fest
Harana Music Festival 2026 bills itself as intimate and acoustic — then lists more than 10 headline-level OPM acts. Here’s the lineup, tickets, and dates.
Cinemalaya 2026: The Cleaner, the Tee Girl, and the 9 Films in Competition
This year’s Cinemalaya bookends read like a matched pair: an undocumented Filipina scrubbing floors at a luxury Swiss ski resort, and a teenager racking golf balls at an elite Manila-adjacent country club. One end of the labor chain and the other, both getting the festival’s biggest slots. Pairing a previously-garlanded, non-competing film with the opening and closing nights is Cinemalaya tradition, not a 2026 innovation — 2018 opened with a mainstream Erik Matti thriller, 2015 opened with a film that had already played Cannes, and 2022’s opener, Leonor Will Never Die, had already won a Special Jury Award at Sundance before it played here — nearly the identical path Filipiñana just took. What’s sharper this time isn’t the structure. It’s the pairing itself: Enjoy Your Stay and Filipiñana sit at opposite ends of the same axis — who does the invisible labor, and who benefits from not noticing it — and both landed real hardware at Berlinale and Sundance doing it. Enjoy Your Stay, directed by Dominik Locher with a script by Honeylyn Joy Alipio, …
Alex Eala Has a Type: Defending Champions
Some players build a rivalry. Alex Eala is building a job description: show up wherever a title is being defended, and dismantle it. On Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., the résumé grew by one. Eala beat defending Mubadala DC Open champion Leylah Fernandez, 6-2, 7-6(1), in the Round of 16 — surviving a scare in the second set that had her down 5-1 before ripping off five straight games to force, then win, a tiebreak. It’s the second time in less than a month that Eala has taken down a reigning titleholder. If that sounds familiar, it should: Alex Eala Beats the Player Who Broke Her Heart in 2023 ran on this site less than a day ago, and Zheng Qinwen wasn’t even the champion in that matchup — she was the wildcard rebuilding her ranking. Fernandez is the real thing: the woman who won this exact tournament last year, now watching the quarterfinals from home because of the player who knocked her out of it. The Ledger So Far Start at Wimbledon. Three weeks …
Tanghalang Pilipino sweeps top prizes as Kisapmata leads 16th Gawad Buhay Awards
Tanghalang Pilipino was the company to beat once again at this year’s Gawad Buhay Awards. “Kisapmata” took the night’s top play honor while “Gregoria Lakambini: A Pinay Pop Musical” claimed the top musical prize — marking the second year running that the company has walked away with both. It’s a feat TP also pulled off at last year’s 15th Gawad Buhay Awards, where “Balete” won Outstanding Play and “Pingkian: Isang Musikal” took Outstanding Musical, part of a haul that saw the company collect 17 of the 26 competitive prizes that night. This year’s sweep was more concentrated, powered almost entirely by a single production — “Kisapmata,” which racked up 11 trophies spanning acting, direction, and design, making it the single most-awarded production of the night at ceremonies held Tuesday at the Aliw Theater, hosted by Reb Atadero. Its leads, Jonathan Tadioan and Lhorvie Nuevo-Tadioan, won Male and Female Lead Performance in a Play, respectively, while Toni Go-Yadao and Marco Viaña took the featured-performance prizes in the same category. The production also won Outstanding Stage Direction …
The 8 MMFF 2025 Films You Should Know This Year
For the first time in two or three years, we’re finally back to watching the Metro Manila Film Festival the way we used to. No shortcuts, no half-attending, no “maybe next year.” Just the familiar excitement of stepping into a cinema on a December night, lining up with families and barkadas, and immersing ourselves in Filipino stories during the holidays. And honestly — wala, ang sarap lang sa feeling. We missed this festival more than we realized. This year, MMFF welcomes us back with a lineup that feels different — not just bigger, but braver and more varied. ⸻ WHY THIS YEAR’S MMFF FEELS DIFFERENT If you’ve followed the festival over the years, you’ll notice right away: MMFF 2025 doesn’t look like the typical holiday lineup. This year feels like a reset. A recalibration. Maybe even a quiet revolution. Here’s why: 1. The Variety is Surprisingly Strong A queer parenthood comedy-drama, a representation-led film starring actors with Down syndrome, a 1969 period thriller, a future-set horror anthology, a legal drama about annulment, a Gen Z …