Author Topic: AGATON AND MINDY  (Read 7735 times)

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Offline keating

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AGATON AND MINDY
« on: Jan 18, 2009 at 12:02 AM »
Principal photography started already with newcomers Chase Vega and Louise Delos Reyes megged by Peque Gallaga. Part of Director's Guild Sine Direk Series along with Lore Reyes' LITSONERO, Maryo J delos Reyes' KAMOTENG KAHOY, Mel Chionglo's BENTE, Joel Lamangan's FUSCHIA and Soxie Topacio's DEAD NA SI LOLO.
« Last Edit: Feb 01, 2009 at 12:31 PM by keating »

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #1 on: Feb 01, 2009 at 02:34 PM »


Direk Peque Gallaga confer with Chase Vega, Louise Delos Reyes and AD Jo Macasa on the set of AGATON AND MINDY.
« Last Edit: Mar 16, 2009 at 11:03 AM by keating »

Offline keating

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Re: Peque Gallaga's AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #2 on: Mar 13, 2009 at 09:43 AM »
The trailer is so craping awesome! Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOKnSUwWDmc

Offline RMN

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Re: Peque Gallaga's AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #3 on: Mar 13, 2009 at 12:57 PM »
The trailer is so f**king awesome! Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOKnSUwWDmc

Any trailer from any PQ film will produce that kind of reaction from you... ;D

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #4 on: Mar 14, 2009 at 09:42 AM »
Too bad you were not present when we visit the set. You have been included also on the cameo. I hope my first acting gig will not be edited.  ;D
« Last Edit: Mar 14, 2009 at 09:43 AM by keating »

Offline RMN

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #5 on: Mar 14, 2009 at 12:45 PM »
Too bad you were not present when we visit the set. You have been included also on the cameo. I hope my first acting gig will not be edited.  ;D

Troop all the way to Capitol Hills !!? Not worth it man, not worth it.  ;D

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #6 on: Mar 16, 2009 at 11:01 AM »
I think its showing this June. Closing film of the Sine Direk Series funded by Tony Tuviera as a sort of thanking the movie industry.
« Last Edit: Mar 24, 2009 at 10:17 AM by keating »

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #7 on: Apr 05, 2009 at 01:47 PM »


Poster of AGATON & MINDY showing on May 20 at all SM Cinemas.
« Last Edit: Apr 05, 2009 at 02:07 PM by keating »

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #8 on: May 02, 2009 at 12:32 PM »
Newcomer Chase Vega breathes life into Peque Gallaga's 'Agaton'
 


 Eighteen-year-old Chase Vega is set to conquer the big screen as he stars in Peque Gallaga's newest film entitled “Agaton & Mindy.” Inspired by the classic story of Shakespeare's “Romeo and Juliet,” the film is a coming-of-age story about two 15-year-old dance scholars. There are no feuding families at all, except for the two star-crossed lovers whose hearts fight the complexities and craziness that love brings them.

“Agaton & Mindy” is one of the six films to be showcased under the Sine Direk Series project through the partnership of the Directors Guild of the Philippines Inc. (DGPI) and APT Entertainment Inc.

After going around the modeling circuit for quite some time, Chase finds himself portraying an important role in Gallaga's film project. The search for Agaton was not easy, but Gallaga already knew that he wanted someone not famous, someone who can provide a fresh look for the film. “He doesn't want the audience to have a preconceived notion of the actor,” shares co-writer Lore Reyes. “With a new actor, there’s no showbiz gossip to deal with. The audience can just watch the film from a fresh perspective.”

When the casting call was set, a good crop of artists went to the audition. “It wasn't just like any other cattle call,” Reyes recalls. “We had a good one that time. But usually you already know who to cast the moment that actor comes in. If he has the personality, the star material and the X factor, then he's the one. And Chase has these qualities.”

The auditionees were trimmed down to 12 boys and seven girls. By the time that Gallaga left Manila, the selection was narrowed down to the top three for both Agaton and Mindy roles. “We wanted an Agaton who is not romanticized,” Reyes explains. “We didn't want another teeny bopper film that stars a boy-next-door actor paired with a sweet teen girl.”

When Chase auditioned for the role, he didn't have any idea as to who he'd be working with. “I really didn't know who they were,” he says smilingly. “It was not until I was talking to my mom and she asked me who the director was. I told her that it's Peque Gallaga and she was like telling me that he's a very good director and all those stories. And I was amazed and felt really excited.”

Coming from a completely blank slate, Chase had to undergo an acting workshop under Gabby Fernandez for two months and a dance workshop under Denisa Reyes for more than a month. “The trainings were rigid and intensive,” Chase claims, “but they really helped me a lot especially when they made me open up about personal things. I began to loosen up more.”

Chase also watched a lot of Tagalog DVDs to observe how the actors talk and express their emotions. “Even though it’s my first time to be a part of film project, it was really fun working with Direk Peque and Tito Lore,” Chase relates. “I felt very comfortable in the set, got to meet new people and became very good friends with them. We were like one big happy family.”

Chase really made a very good impression on Gallaga and Reyes. “We already shot one of the most difficult scenes with Chase on day one,” Gallaga reveals. “We started the first scene with Audie Gemora who's playing the father of Mindy. Then we moved to the second scene that was full of high emotions, and Chase was able to deliver it well. We were impressed and confirmed that we didn't go wrong with casting him as Agaton.”

The second shooting day was also filled with heavy emotions. “We were shooting the ending scene the following day,” Gallaga continues. “Chase won't be using words here to convey his emotions but through movements. We had to do a number of takes for editing purposes and as Chase repeats the scene, we noticed that some of the crew and staff were already teary-eyed. Even the very macho art department members who you think wouldn't shed a tear were moved.”

Reyes, who served as the acting coach of Chase, is also very proud of him. “That's how Peque and I divided our duties. He takes care of Mindy's character while I handle Agaton's,” adds Reyes. “Also, given that we only had seven days to shoot the film under a three-million-peso budget, and provided that he had no acting experience and had to go through a series of workshops, Chase's performance was really outstanding,” ends Reyes who is also line producing “Agaton & Mindy.”

Many new actors have been shaking up the indie scene and the film industry in general. And Chase is sure to be one of them as he brings life to Gallaga's non-formulaic teen romance “Agaton & Mindy” that is slated to hit Philippine theaters on May 27, 2009.


Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #9 on: May 17, 2009 at 08:11 AM »
Its showing already on May 27 at all Sm Cinemas.

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #10 on: May 28, 2009 at 08:11 AM »
From Jake Tordesillas:

"I enjoyed Peque's AGATON & MINDY! Iba siya! Must-see! The visual master is back in his elements and we're lucky to forget our problems for a while in a moviehouse. Support Sine-Direk projects. I salute Mr. Tony Tuviera for this noble project.! No matter what the results may be sana maulit muli, sir!"

Offline RMN

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #11 on: May 28, 2009 at 12:34 PM »
I concur with Phil Dy's review of the film though  i do think that the kiddies have got lots to learn in the acting dept...

Tainted Love
« Last Edit: May 28, 2009 at 12:35 PM by RMN »

Offline X44

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #12 on: May 29, 2009 at 10:34 AM »
So keats - - - maganda ba 'to?  ;D

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #13 on: May 30, 2009 at 10:06 AM »
Haven't seen the film, X. Judgement day tomorrow.  ;D

BTW its Rated A from the Cinema Evaluation Board.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2009 at 10:08 AM by keating »

Offline oggsmoggs

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #14 on: May 30, 2009 at 11:01 AM »
So keats - - - maganda ba 'to?  ;D

Kailangan pa ba tanungin yan X? Hehe, peace keats...

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #15 on: May 31, 2009 at 12:09 PM »
Thumbs up review........! Tangna! From radicalchick.com

Agaton and Mindy: love in the time of indie
May 30th, 2009

Where does one begin with a good movie - the kind that resonates a day after watching it, the kind that you gush about? Maybe with this: for the first time in my life, I had the daring to watch a movie alone. Even when this theater in particular, my gay friend had warned, was a pick-up place; even when as I entered the theater, there were only two other guys, in separate ends of the theater, and I had no choice but to be nervous. Goodness, the things I do for Pinoy indie films.

But soon enough, three different couples walk in, and so does Jackie Lou Blanco with her kids - hooray! for intelligent viewers who chose Peque Gallaga over Angels and Demons! Having seen the first two of the Sine Direk project’s movies - Fuschia and Ded Na Si Lolo! - and missing Litsonero by Lore Reyes (because they pulled it out after two fluggin’ days!), I crossed my fingers for Agaton and Mindy. Oh, please please make my heart flutter, jaded as I am about love?

Thankfully, Gallaga outdoes himself here. I had imagined Baby Love (from the 90s) on the one hand, and Pinoy Blonde (from recent years) on the other. Agaton and Mindy is neither. Because it is informed by the contemporary and the current, which is to say that it also highlights an urgency that isn’t just for the young. It in fact goes beyond the notions of puppy love, and becomes more of a love story than any of those commercial romances.

Because Agaton and Mindy has a realness that’s so rare in our shores; it has the daring to reveal what it actually is the younger ones are dealing with, what it is that goes on in their heads in the midst of their silences. It is real, because these are real people, NOT the easy stereotypes for contemporary fiction. As her bestfriend says after Mindy asks that she be supportive of her love for Agaton: I am no f**king cliché!

And neither is this movie. It begins easily enough with dance class: Agaton and Mindy are being told to find their center as they practice their piece for the recital. A love dance, the discomfort was obvious between the two, and their dance teacher (played by Cherie Gil) was screaming: desire! desire! desire! Artists - dancers! - need to be a little crazy!

But Agaton was the least crazy of them all. He was a dance scholar, was being ostracized because of it, and was on a search for his mother. Nothing fazed him, because he wasn’t allowed to be fazed: his poverty - both literally, as he lived with his sister who was maid in some rich donya’s house in Forbes, and emotionally, given the questions he had about his mother - kept him from being superficial.

The craziness was Mindy’s territory: she who lights a fire in the dance studio’s bathroom and sees it as beautiful, she who has a violent boyfriend and goes to these parties filled with drinking and sexual libido, she who cries in the principal’s office because her life is horrible: her friends don’t support her, her father has a mistress, her mother’s in Virginia, her sister’s too caught up in her own wedding to care. Her instability - craziness, if you will - is clinical, something she takes medicines for, and something she was apparently sinking slowly into throughout the movie.

Mindy had obviously found solace in Agaton’s difference: he wasn’t of her world and wasn’t treating her like a baby. Agaton meanwhile found solace in Mindy’s craziness and devil-may-care attitude - bahala na si batman! was not something he was taught to say, but there he was running around the city, in love with Mindy.

This love of course was pregnant with all possible clichés, but here Gallaga switches it off and turns on the dancing. As their relationship deepens, it is the dancing that becomes consistent: they perfect the recital piece, dance about their love in real life, have sex in the dance studio wrapped around the long blue cloth to be used for stage. The dancing is their bubble: here their longing and desire were fulfilled. Here they were simply crazy about each other.

And yet it would be the dancing as well that would interweave the craziness in the outside world with the bubble. Agaton and Mindy love each other in the most basic way, and their worlds aren’t so much against it (that would be so Romeo and Juliet after all), as it was getting in the way. The relationship per se, the having sex, the commitment, even the difference in social class, were not the problems. The world was.

Because in that bigger world, Mindy was considered a clinical bipolar, and Agaton the normal talented scholar. In that bigger reality they moved in, Mindy’s father didn’t have a mistress because her mother did, and Agaton’s mother didn’t care for this boy she had left as a baby. In the bigger world, there was the teacher who loved dance with a longing, the sister who thought that the world revolved around her wedding, the principal who worried about the school’s reputation, the sister who was content as maid because there was nothing else.

In the end, Mindy contends with this craziness and sinks into melancholia, calling Agaton by his nickname Tonton but not seeing him. Agaton does the craziest thing: he climbs over the wall of Mindy’s house, throws pebbles at her window and as the light’s turned on, dances his heart out. The steps to his notion of love, the dance routine he had perfected with Mindy, were danced by Agaton alone, with the empty space where Mindy should’ve stood. It’s everything and poignant.

Denisa Reyes’ choreography was extraordinarily real here - more modern dance than anything else - allowing viewers to actually get involved in the dancing. The young leads Louse de los Reyes and Chase Vega were surprisingly effective, owing as well to how we have gotten used to self-conscious pretty TV acting in recent years. Both ably rendered the roles of people their age, without making it seem like they were just playing themselves. And then there is Cherie Gil, which is just priceless. That moment when she strikes a danseur’s pose in front of the mural for her obra was just beautiful in its pain and longing for her art. That she does it with a cigarette in one hand is classic Gallaga - it is irreverent and witty at times, but all the time real.

The scenes of Mindy’s suicidal tendencies, riddled with pills and vomit, blood against an ivory bridesmaid’s gown, a gun held at one point, were almost tounge-in-cheek, practically a “f**k you!” to the dismissal of youthful rebellions. The language is almost a paean to the present, a celebration of that which is articulated, because it is telling of the silences. The interspersed images of the separate real lives of Agaton and Mindy - beyond their bubble - were well thought out, not at all about being faddish or MTV-ish. This was no tribute to the youth, but was, more than anything a portrayal of the swiftness of contemporary times, of how we do everything to keep up, and are in over our heads - the young and the adults alike.

Which makes it logical that there was no happy ending here. What a joy. Because our own melancholia is Mindy’s, and Agaton’s craziness? It’s what we have said no to, those of us who are jaded about love. And the world.

« Last Edit: May 31, 2009 at 12:10 PM by keating »

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #16 on: Jun 06, 2009 at 09:43 PM »
Kailangan pa ba tanungin yan X? Hehe, peace keats...

I'm eagerly waiting for your review of the film, oggs. Its like a big event for me. Hahaha!  ;D
« Last Edit: Jun 06, 2009 at 09:44 PM by keating »

Offline oggsmoggs

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #17 on: Jun 13, 2009 at 04:27 PM »

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #18 on: Jun 14, 2009 at 03:21 PM »
I don't know why this film failed to connect to the C-D crowd inspite of the fact that Gallaga always wants to connect to moviegoers as he is a film lover also.

I beg to disagree about Cherie Gil's character in the film oggs, it was her best walang kahirap-hirap as the bohemian dance teacher. She's definitely aging like a fine wine.

Offline oggsmoggs

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #19 on: Jun 14, 2009 at 06:11 PM »
It is an over-the-top performance, but it was good, nonetheless. Thus, the adverb "joyously."

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #20 on: Jul 09, 2009 at 05:27 AM »
As part of the 5th Cinemalaya events and screenings, catch AGATON & MINDY by Peque Gallaga (Sine Direk) 19 July/Sun, 9:00PM at Tanghalang Manuel Conde (CCP Dream Theatre).

Offline marj

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #21 on: Oct 10, 2009 at 09:26 AM »
Soon on DVD.

Offline keating

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #22 on: Oct 14, 2009 at 10:49 AM »
Hi, Marj.

Where did you see the info? Regalfilms.com?

Offline marj

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #23 on: Oct 18, 2009 at 06:50 AM »
Where did you see the info? Regalfilms.com?

Yes.

Offline rse

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #24 on: Oct 31, 2009 at 02:12 PM »
I just saw that the Agaton and Mindy DVD is now available in www.KabayanCentral.com .  The trailer is available in the site.  I watched the trailer and wasn't impressed.  Based on the trailer that I saw, the movie seems to be a very generic "American" teenage love story.  I hope that the actual movie is better.

Online jas

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #25 on: Nov 03, 2009 at 03:54 PM »
Have seen the DVD out in Astro. Price is P350.

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Re: AGATON AND MINDY
« Reply #26 on: Nov 20, 2009 at 03:34 AM »
I just saw Peque Gallaga's Agaton and Mindy on DVD.  First let me warn those people buying this, the video and audio transfers are terrible. I can barely understand the dialog.  It doesn't help that there are no subtitles, but at least it's in widescreen.

The movie itself is terrible.  I really wanted to like this movie because I admire most of Gallaga's work -- but there's nothing here to recommend.  It seems like Gallaga and his crew have been watching too much "I think You Can Dance" and a lot of American teenage soaps.  It doesn't help that the main leads are not very likeable and also not good dancers which I think is a major prerequisite for these kinds of movies.  The movie's vibe is just amateurish and trite.

That said, the veteran supporting cast are great, especially Cherie Gil doing a "Mitch Valdez".