Focus on the Philippines: Filipino comic Nico Santos joins Crazy Rich Asians cast

Plus: Spotify spotlights six Filipino music acts; Lav Diaz’s films screen on online video-streaming site Mubi; artists Lani Maestro and Manuel Ocampo featured in Philippine Pavilion at Venice Biennale; Filipino movies shine on international film festivals.

Nico Santos. Courtesy NBC

Filipino actor Nico Santos has joined the star-studded ensemble of Warner Brothers's forthcoming family comedy Crazy Rich Asians, directed by Jon M Chu. Santos currently stars as Filipino immigrant Mateo on NBC's comedy series Superstore, which has just been renewed for a third season. Prior to being cast on Superstore — his big break in Hollywood — Santos performed as a stand-up comic.

Crazy Rich Asians is based on a bestselling novel by Kevin Kwan about a clan of wealthy Singaporeans. Warner Brothers acquired the film rights to the book on October 2016, with Jon M Chu (Step Up 3D, G I Joe: Retaliation, Now You See Me 2) hired to helm the movie. Cast to play the lead roles are Constance Wu, Michelle Yeoh, Henry Golding, Sonoya Mizuno and Gemma Chan. Filipino actress Kris Aquino is rumoured to have been cast in a still undisclosed role. Production started in late April in Singapore and Malaysia.

Spotify spotlights six Filipino music acts

The streaming service Spotify has launched a playlist called Early Noise 2017, featuring the best up-and-coming acts from across Asia.

The playlist includes six acts from the Philippines, led by Ben&Ben (featuring twin brothers Paolo and Miguel Guico), vocalist Kaye Cal and pop-rock band IV of Spades. Also featured are the acoustic act Zack and Fritz, R&B singer Jess Connelly and pop duo Leanne and Naara. "We hope to give these talents some push, so that eventually we may see their music in the Top Hits charts," Spotify Asia's Sunita Kaur told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Lav Diaz’s films screen on online video-streaming site Mubi

The films of acclaimed Filipino auteur Lav Diaz are currently screening on Mubi.com, the video-streaming website specialising in arthouse cinema. In the first-ever online retrospective of his works, titled It's About Time: The Cinema of Lav Diaz, the director's films can be viewed worldwide until July 27 through a subscription on Mubi.com. Available for streaming throughout the month of May is Diaz's 2011 film Siglo ng Pagluluwal (Century of Birthing), which stars Angel Aquino, Joel Torre and Angeli Bayani. His five-and-a-half hour movie From What Is Before, which won the Golden Leopard prize at the Locarno Film Festival in 2014, will be screening next month. "His sprawling sagas of the Philippines' tumultuous recent history and beleaguered but strong-willed and passionate peoples are epic in scope but bracingly intimate and direct in style," read a statement from Mubi.

Artists Lani Maestro and Manuel Ocampo featured in Philippine Pavilion at Venice Biennale

Following its return to the Venice Biennale in 2015, after a 51-year absence in the premier international art event, the Philippine Pavilion opened at the Biennale this week with a show titled The Spectre of Comparison. Curated by Joselina Cruz, the exhibition features the works of two Filipino artists, Lani Maestro and Manuel Ocampo. According to programme notes, the show examines themes of nationhood, diaspora and identity, with Maestro and Ocampo inspired by Crisostomo Ibarra, the protagonist in Jose Rizal's classic novel Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not). "It is only fitting that our exhibit for the 57th Venice Biennale is titled The Spectre of Comparison," said Virgilio Almario, the chair of the Philippine National Commission for Culture and the Arts. "It stirs the conversation to many points of discussions; and one of them is to ask what it means to be Filipino and what being Filipino means to a world that is more fragmented than ever, yet is connected via technology." The Philippine Pavilion is housed at the Artiglierie of the Arsenale, one of the main exhibition spaces of the Venice Biennale. The international exhibition is open to the public until November 26.

Filipino movies shine on international film festivals

The live-action animated feature Saving Sally, directed by Avid Liongoren, took home prizes from two recent international film festivals. It won both the Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, held earlier this month in California. Saving Sally, which stars Rhian Ramos and Enzo Marcos, also received the Best Family Film award at the Bentonville Film Festival, held recently in Arkansas.

Meanwhile, Lav Diaz's Ang Babaeng Humayo (The Woman Who Left) won the Audience Award at the Festival de Cinema d'Autor in Barcelona, Spain, beating out a competitive programme of 80 films that included Mike Mills's 20th Century Women and Ben Wheatley's Free Fire. At the International Documentary Film Festival Munich, held this week in Germany, two Filipino documentaries were featured: Baby Ruth Villarama's Sunday Beauty Queen, about Filipino overseas workers organising a beauty pageant in Hong Kong, and Ramona Diaz's Motherland, about a busy maternity hospital in Manila.