PASSERBY:

For the longest time, Aljur Abrenica tried to avoid going the sexy route to sustain his popularity.
Although given to teaser pictorials and half-naked scenes in his TV and movie projects, he was never really that bold, that adventurous, to explore the genre. Until recently.

It took director Lawrence Fajardo and the now-streaming Vivamax movie, Sugapa, plus his current partner, AJ Raval, to convince Aljur that the time has come for him to go all-out as an actor in a film about sex. He told a recent mediacon it helped that he was executing those intimate scenes with AJ, so that they all seemed so natural.

Nevertheless, both Aljur and AJ admitted that doing love scenes isn’t always easy. “No matter how much you know your co-actor, all love scenes are hard to do,” they said.

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His career may have suffered a miscarriage at age 16 when he became an overnight dad, yet former child actor Bugoy Cariño feels none the worse for everything that has happened.

He gained a son, now 5, and a family. Bugoy acknowledged that he lost TV and movie projects, including endorsements, yet he remains optimistic that there can still be room for improvement forthcoming. He’s only 21.

A dance-drama movie "Huling Sayaw" which would have been his launching picture four years ago, is finally opening on Sept. 13 in theaters.

The movie, directed by Errol Ropero for Camerrol Entertainment, also stars a quite young Belle Mariano, pre-Donny Pangilinan. Belle and Bugoy were constant partners on Goin’ Bulilit back then.

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Glad to know that former CCP president Nick Lizaso continues to support the arts in his capacity as a private citizen.

On Sept. 23, Saturday, Nick is mounting a rare dinner show, “An Evening To Remember in September,” at the Kalayaan Hall of Club Filipino in Greenhills.

For the first time in this side of town, music lovers will be treated to performances by two of our country’s celebrated vocal artists: Arthur Espiritu, acclaimed international opera tenor fresh from his performances in Europe, and Lara Maigue, young coloratura soprano who can do arias and pop in a snap. Lara herself has just returned from a series of classical concerts in Singapore and Malaysia.

The two international concert artists will share the stage with the Manila Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Hermie Ranera.

Time and again, I have been saying that concerts of this nature need not be confined to the CCP, the Met, or the new events places in faraway BGC and Makati. Audiences from the neighboring areas of San Juan, Quezon City, Caloocan, Marikina similarly yearn for similar productions but we are usually too uninspired to travel south under heavy traffic. Good thing that some theaters are in existence within these areas, for instance, PETA, Ateneo’s Arete, UP Theater.

We do hope that more enlightened producers, like Nick Lizaso, and perhaps soon, Pablo Tariman, too, can be convinced to mount their shows in these places and meet the same cultural needs of others.