There’s also an EW article that says Meryl and Lady Gaga can work on a sequel of Death Becomes Her:

If this somehow really happens, Streep should definitely reprise her role as actress Madeline Ashton in Robert Zemeckis’ 1992 dark comedy Death Becomes Her. Gaga would obviously become Lisle von Rhoman (Isabella Rossellini, semi-pictured), because she’s super sultry and the bearer of magical potions. You cannot tell me the following trailer isn’t a Lady Gaga video waiting to sneak up on/make out with you in a ladies’ prison.

Sounds tempting, but no. Please, no Gaga and Meryl.

]]> http://kristinregina.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/damn-you-ampas/feed/ 0 Kristin Regina ampas http://kristinregina.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/a-chronology-of-events-%e2%80%93-laban-up-pgh-movement/ http://kristinregina.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/a-chronology-of-events-%e2%80%93-laban-up-pgh-movement/#comments Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:53:47 +0000 misssecgen http://kristinregina.wordpress.com/?p=38 ]]> UP-PGH is currently on a crisis on its leadership. Also, the students of the University of the Philippines are in danger of being unrepresented in the Board of Regents, the highest policy-making body in UP because the legality of Charisse Banez as Student Regent is questioned. Here are the events that lead to these issues:

Dr. Carmelo Alfiler, was on his second-three- year term as PGH Director, ending Dec. 31, 2009. Normally, PGH Directors should have a maximum of two terms, unless with exemplary or extraordinary performance.

Search process for new director started sometime in August, with initially just two candidates:

1) the incumbent director: Dr. Carmelo Alfiler

2) former Chairman of the Dept. of Surgery: Dr. Jose Gonzales

A third candidate eventually emerged:

Incumbent Deputy Director for admin (only for last 2 years): Dr. Eric Domingo

Comment: a lot of eyebrows were raised when Dr. Eric Domingo joined the candidates because he was close to Dir. Alfiler, and was still a neophyte in UP-PGH Admin.

A few days prior to the Dec. 18 election of the BOR, Dr. Eric Domingo was “pulled out” from list of nominees upon Chancellor Arcadio’s notification of the BOR that Dr. Domingo was not qualified because his appointment in UPCM is only part- time, non-tenured. Even when Dr. Eric Domingo was already taken out from list, he was calling Regents to vote for him, showing the obvious reason for his run: to take away votes from Dr. Gonzales in what they predicted a close fight. The group of President Roman probably knew before the election of the possible vote, which now relates to a case filed against the student regent, which was related to her failure to enroll. Before the vote, Regent Sarmiento raised the issue that the Student Regent is not enrolled and should not be allowed to vote. The BOR did a vote, and the majority decided to allow the student regent to vote.
On the actual BOR election on Dec. 18, the following was the vote:

5 votes for Dr. Alfiler : Pres. Emerlinda Roman – Presidential appointee

Regent Abraham Sarmiento – Presidential appointee

Regent Nelia Gonzales – Presidential appointee

Regent Francis chua – Presidential appointee

Cong. Cynthia Villar – Chair, Congress Committee on Education

5 votes for Dr. Gonzales:

Student Regent Charisse Banez – sectoral rep for students

Regent Judy Taguiwalo – sectoral rep for faculty

Regent Santos – sectoral rep for staff and employees

Regent Pascual – sectoral rep for alumni

Sen. Mar Roxas – Chair, Senate Committee on Education

To break the tie, CHED Chairman Angeles, who sits as the Chairman of the BOR, voted for Dr. Gonzales.

Regent Sarmiento raised objection again on the ground that the Student Regent should not have been allowed to vote, and that he was submitting a formal letter of protest on Dec. 23, 2009.

During the Dec. 18 BOR meeting, three other appointments were made, aside from Driector Gonzales:

1. Prof. Joselito Florendo, as Director, System Budget Officer

2. Dr. Flordeliza Lantican, as Dean, College of Economics and Management

3. Dr. Vicente Medina III, as Dean, College of Dentistry

All three other appointees immediately received their notice of appointment, but none was received by Dr. Gonzales. At that time, CHED Chairman Angeles knew that the main supporter of Dr. Alfiler was Sen. Villar and his wife, who has publicly said that Dr. Alfiler will most likely be Sec. of Health if Villar becomes Phil. President. Sensing the possible problem, CHED and BOR Chair Angeles asked Dr. Gonzales to come to his CHED Office on Dec. 21, during which time he administered his oath of office as PGH Director, effective jan. 1, 2010 to Dec. 31, 2012. he belatedly knew that Dr. Alfiler was also a personal friend and physician to the children of Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

On Jan. 4, 2010, first day of office after the holidays, Dr. Gonzales was supposed to be offically introduced to the PGH staff at the usual Monday flag ceremony. This did not happen because Dir. Gonzales was called to the CHED Office by CHED Chairman Angeles, who told him that the BOR is holding his appointment until the objection of Regent Sarmiento has been resolved. Chairman Angeles, who now obviously has changed his support for dr. Alfiler, upon orders from President GMA who is a personal friend of Dr. Alfiler, grilled Dir. Gonzales on why Sen. Mar Roxas voted for him.

Students and All UP Workers’ Union did a rally in front of PGH protesting the holding back of Dr. Gonzales’ appointment.

On Jan. 5, 2010, Pres. Roman issued Memo No. PERR-2010-001 withholding appointment of Dr. Gonzales as PGH Director, and appointing Chancellor Arcadio as OIC PGH Director, until further advice. A flurry of protests was again started by students and workers, which eventually resulted in the decision to appoint Dir. Gonzales.

Chancellor Arcadio administered oath of office to Dir. Gonzales on January 7, 2010, and Dir. Gonzales started his official function, running the hospital up to this day.

The hospital was already running near normalcy, but the clinical departmen chair appointments were temporarily put on hold until the BOR dealt with finality on the issue during the january 25, 2010 BOR meeting.

On January 29, 2010, Regent Sarmiento proposed to nullify the Dec. 18 election of PGH Director jose Gonzales, and for which, the 4 sectoral regents walked out. The BOR meeting was stopped due to lack of quorum. Students and AUPWU were actually rallying outside

In the meantime, PGH operations were going on unhampered, and the UPCM dean, with concurrence of Dir. Gonzales recommended the appointment of the new clinical department chairs by Chancellor Arcadio.

On February 25, 2010 BOR meeting. the BOR decided first on the matter of removing the Student Regent, Charisse banez, from the BOR since she was not an officially-enrolled student. Having made that decision, there were now only 9 BOR members counted in the meeting (5 presidential appointees, including CHED Chair Angeles, Cong. Cynthia Villar, and three sectoral reps). They then proceeded to vote for the nullification of the Dec. 18 election of Dir. Gonzales, and held a new election, resurrecti ng Dr. Eric Domingo as a contender again. The three sectoral regents abstained from the voting, and the 6 remaining regents all voted for Dr. Eric Domingo, who was earlier deemed not eligible for the position last December.

Note that the other elected positions decided upon in the Dec. 18 BOR meeting (Prof. Joselito Florendo, as Director, System Budget Officer; Dr. Flordeliza Lantican, as Dean, College of Economics and Management, and Dr. Vicente Medina III, as Dean, College of Dentistry) was not considered null and void. The BOR acted with swift dispatch this time, giving Dr. Domingo his appointment papers effective the same day, Feb. 25, and administering his oath of office on Feb. 26, 2010. he is supposed to be offically presented to the PGH community as the new director on monday, March 1, but will be met by a rally of employees, faculty, and students who are protesting the unfair, unjust and oppressive moves of the BOR, so uncharacteristic of academic freedom and truth that U.P. stands for. The political intervention of PGMA and Manny Villar in U.P. is deplorable!

-LABAN UP-PGH-

Liberal Party presidential candidate Senator Benigno Aquino III recently expressed exasperation that the issues discussed in the series of presidential forums have become repetitive and tended to focus too much on populist shtick rather than on the more substantive issues hounding the nation.

He then challenged Senator Manny Villar, the candidate who is widely seen as his closest rival for the presidency, to a one-on-one debate; a challenge Villar immediately accepted. Villar shot back: Name the place and the venue. A sidelight to that verbal scuffle was Brother Eddie Villanueva’s attempt to insert himself into the picture saying that if Aquino and Villar were going to debate mano a mano, then he also should be there even if only to serve as a referee.

I cite this back story because it just so happened that the professional organization of which I am currently vice president, the People Management Association of the Philippines (the national organization of human resource management professionals in the country) was also at that time organizing its own series of presidential forums. What we had in mind was a format involving two or at most three presidential candidates at a time. Coincidentally, the plan was to invite Aquino and Villar to the first forum. So we jumped at the opportunity and made the necessary arrangements.

I say this with no malice intended: Inviting Aquino and Villar was a complicated and nerve-wracking experience. Up to day of the forum, we were never really sure if both, or either, or neither would show up. I’ve organized quite a number of national conferences myself and I familiar with the difficulties involved in getting the rich, the famous, and the notorious to speak or show up at a public event. Nothing prepared me for the kind of backroom negotiations that had to be made. But after a lot of wheeling and dealing, both camps accepted the invitation. There was also a lot of briefing and coaching on the talking points and the format of the forum. I don’t really know anymore how it came to pass but somewhere along the way, Brother Eddie Villanueva’s participation became part of the arrangement.

Aquino and Villanueva did show up. Villar chickened out at the last minute. If Villar thought human resource managers can easily be dispensed with, he has another thought coming. We directly influence millions of workers—we’re the gatekeepers of information and learning in industry, we’re also the people directly responsible for managing and developing those employed in the private sector.

A friend in media who covers the presidential candidates intimated to me that notwithstanding the bravado he displayed in responding to the Aquino challenge to a one-on-one debate, Villar is actually uncomfortable in forums where Aquino is also present because the crowd inevitably gravitates towards the latter.

This was exactly what happened last week at the PMAP forum. I take my hats off to Brother Eddie Villanueva who must really be such a humble man not to take offense at the fact that people mobbed Aquino and relegated him to the sidelines. I can understand how such a spectacle would be a blow to Villar’s ego. Whether it is on the wane or not, the Aquino magic is a real phenomenon.

The general perception is that there is an ocean of difference between the public persona and who a person really is up close. Television, which is the most popular medium today, brings candidates into our bedrooms and living rooms and magnifies their supposed strengths and weaknesses —their brilliance, nervous gestures, warts, thinning hair, and all. But for all its vaunted power, television has limitations. For one, it has to appeal to as many types of constituents and therefore tends to be superficial in treatment. There is no substitute for small forums that function like town hall meetings focused on specific concerns and issues. In fact, town hall meetings have been staple fixtures in the presidential elections in the United States since the eighties.

But then again, it really still boils down to the readiness and capability of candidates to provide incisive and in-depth answers to questions asked of them. I have noted that even when our presidential candidates are asked direct questions that call for specifics such as action plans and timelines, they still tend to answer with motherhood statements and broad strokes.

I was a little disappointed that at the PMAP forum, Senator Aquino couldn’t be more specific with his answers despite the fact that he had just complained, just a couple of weeks ago, about what he thought was the lack of substantive discussions in the various presidential forums. When asked, for example, how long it would take his administration to fix the mismatch problem and at what cost, he hemmed and hawed and skimmed through the surface. The moderator had to try to pin him down to talk specifics. Still, it was the moderator who had to synthesize his thoughts to come up with a specific answer: About two years, with money to be sourced from the gaps in the tax collection efforts, which would be more than enough.

If Aquino was non-committal and tended to be superficial, Villanueva was clearly oblivious of the issues. His stock answer to everything and anything was a variation of the same refrain: The problem in this country is the lack of a sense of righteousness and that he and his party would lead by example. Villanueva had specific talking points, which he had clearly mastered—memorized even—and he never strayed from these points.

There is more about Aquino that does not register on television and in other mass media channels. He is far more eloquent and engaging in person although he does tend to display non-verbal messages that seem to indicate impatience. Others have labeled these as indicative of being “petulant.” I think the senator just needs to learn to be more tolerant of criticism. At the PMAP forum, he expressed exasperation at our political system which bred incompetence and stymied innovative and long-term solutions. When the moderator cut him off with the observation that inability to change the status quo and failure to get things done within the system could also be interpreted as failure in leadership, the senator continued to whine about what he had not been allowed to do. The senator justified himself by saying he chose not to be popular.

Aquino, however, earned brownie points from me for being sincere and authentic. What I liked most about him was the fact that he didn’t try to come across as a “know-it-all,” he carried with him a folder—presumably containing statistics and various data—which he flipped through during the forum. He drank water straight from a bottle, didn’t ask for star treatment (in fact he refused to enter the room when someone else was talking because he didn’t want to interrupt), and even stayed even if he was already late for another appointment just to accommodate members of the audience who wanted to have pictures taken with him.

I still haven’t decided on who to vote for President but I know this for a fact after having met Senator Aquino, sat with him on the same table, and listened to him parry difficult questions from our group: A Noynoy Aquino presidency would not be such a bad thing.

Charito Solis, the Meryl Streep of Philippine Cinema

The Great Anita Linda. Still alive, still making quality films.

Nida Blanca. The actress who can do no wrong.

Atang Dela Rama. The actress who started it all…

I don’t know what she’s doing in here.

Clearly, it was Yu Na Kim’s night. This is her first free skare this season where she skated cleanly – no falls, popped jumps or downgrades. I knew from the start that she’ll take the gold medal, but that’s because I thought that her competition will falter. Especially her rival Mao Asada. Asada proved herself to be very vulnerable especially during the last two seasons.

Yu Na opened with a gorgeous triple lutz-triple toe – her nemesis jump all season, either ending up with a downgrade or a pop. She continued with a triple flip, double axel, her signature double axel-triple toe loop, triple salchow and another triple lutz. As usual, she accompanied her performance with very nice spins, footwork and transitions. And those were enough to secure her a record-breaking score and an Olympic gold medal.

Joannie Rochette showed everyone the true definition of an athelete. Though with a very heavy heart, she skated through her long program with poise and grace despite the visible errors. In an ordinary competition, she would have dropped to fourth place, but her performance was made more beautiful by her courage and strength despite the tragedy that had happened to her.

Tonight, it is not only Yu Na Kim who broke world records. Her rival Mao Asada of Japan also did. She attempted and successfully landed three triple axels – the first from any lady. The axel had been her friend and nemesis for years, but Mao was consistent, persevering and determined enough to attempt them, let alone land them. (FYI, the Axel is the hardest triple jump. It costs many points when landed cleanly, and knocks off much too when downgraded or landed uncleanly.)

I am happy for the winners. They are all deserving. Though I am expecting this lineup months ago, I am still quite surprised (but happy) by how well the did tonight. Great job!