It’s a Marian Rivera-Dingdong Dantes season these days in Pinoy showbiz. Deliberate or not, the real-life couple are lording it over the others who are sweethearts off-and on-camera and even the love teams that are just for show.

Rewind, the highest grossing Filipino film of all-time top-billed by Dantes and Rivera, has achieved another milestone as it immediately hit the No. 1 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 movies in the Philippines and several Middle East countries a day after it became available on the platform.

The Metro Manila Film Festival 2023 entry, which started streaming on Netflix on 25 March, led the top 10 movies not just in the country but also in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and UAE, based on data published by streaming analytics site FlixPatrol.

Rivera is expected to make waves again, this time on free TV as the lead star of GMA-7’s newest primetime series My Guardian Alien, in which she is teamed up with the enduring iconic romantic matinee idol Gabby Concepcion, who has overcome estrangement from his ex-wife Sharon Cuneta for decades.

My Guardian Alien, which premiered last Monday, 1 April, is expected to be massively viewed not only by adults but also by their children. The series also headlines the well-followed child actor Rafael Landicho as the mother-orphaned son of the couple portrayed by Rivera and Concepcion.

After Rivera’s mother character dies in the story, she reappears as another character taken to be either an angel or as a benevolent alien.

At the grand media conference for the series held at Luxent Hotel in Quezon City, a stunningly lovely and warm Rivera revealed that the primary reason she accepted the series is to fulfill her desire to be involved in shows that “my children can be proud of” and can be wholesomely enjoy. 

Rivera has two kids with Dantes: Zia, 8, and Sixto Jr., 4. 

Meanwhile, Dantes continues to be the leading game show host of the country on GMA-7’s Family Feud. The show has the privilege of being the first to feature as players the hosts of ABS-CBN’s It’s Showtime two days after its scheduled premiere on the Kapuso network on 6 April. It’s Showtime takes on the high noon timeslot identified for decades with Eat Bulaga! and for a few months recently with Tahanang Pinakamasaya, both produced by the practically disgraced company TAPE (Television and Productions Exponents Inc.). 

The It’s Showtime hosts will be playing against each other on 8 April by dividing into two teams. The staff of Family Feud says the It’s Showtime hosts were a cheery riot against each other. The episode has been taped as live to retain the players’ rambunctious spontaneity.

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The winning creators of the entries in the songwriting division of the recently concluded Young Creatives Challenge of the Department of Trade and Industry in tandem with Senator Imee Marcos had better use their real names in the credits of their compositions and also as performers of their compositions. 

They should not let themselves be as mysterious as the now infamous “AG” who allowed himself not to be credited as the composer of the now even more followed controversial “Selos,” a song attributed to a young singer who let herself be known as Shaira Moro when her real name is the impressive Shaira Abdullah Alamudin. 

Some people may not know yet that the person credited as “AG” as composer in the records produced by AH Channel (including all those of Shaira Moro) is Krishna Ares Glang, who, like Moro, is from the autonomous region in Mindanao known as Bangsamoro. 

Glang is hardly listed anywhere as a composer. If you Google his full name or his credit name “AG,” his professional identification is “audioman,” though he’s actually responsible for the Tagalog lyrics of the songs that Moro turned into hits. Glang wrote them into the music of old well-followed songs in English and some Asian languages. His role in the production of Moro’s recorded songs should have been credited as “words by AG.” The creator of the songs’ respective music should have been credited, too. 

Aside from “Selos,” Moro’s three other songs now deleted from video streaming platforms are “Forever Single,” “Pakboy” and “Machine Gun.” 

Meanwhile, the grand winner in the Young Creatives Challenge credits himself as “Rocky,” now a very common name due to the unwaning popularity of Sylvester Stallone’s film of that one-word title. 

The grand-prize winning song is “Lambing” and the young man who wrote it performed his composition at the awards night held at SMX Aura. He was introduced simply as “Rocky” and his real name is not mentioned in the publicity yarn for the competition that awarded a whopping P1 million for each of the grand prize winner except in the categories for full-length screenplay and the added short-film screenplay (the P1 million was divided between the two grand prize winners). 

Can that young songwriter-singer market himself as “Rocky?” There is no Google entry for “Rocky, Filipino composer.” “Rocky” will always largely be identified with Stallone and that boxing film. 

The other winners in the songwriting contest were announced and listed as “Likha,” “Yalab” and “Marvi.” There are winners for one song that listed themselves as “Frisbie, Ganda Pilipinas by Rijj.”

Another group winners for one entry calls itself “We Prefer Chinitas.” Another group calls itself “Halamana.” Both names are in Google. Just how do you market them with such names? It’s worth noting, though, that Halamana’s piece is neither in English or in Tagalog. Its title is “Sayawa ang Atong Kultura.”

In the other categories of the money-generous competition, the winners came from regions outside Metro Manila. There were Muslims, too, possibly including those from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. We knew they were Muslims because the young women in those groups wore long dresses with hijabs (Muslim head covers).

Two other winners clearly named themselves individually as Burn Piamonte (“Dalawang Guhit”) and Cody Lalo (“Filipina”). Their names are in Google, and so are their accomplishments and contact numbers for business deals.

The Young Creatives Challenge drew 579 entries from all over the country. Aside from songwriting, there were categories in screenwriting, playwriting, graphic novel, animation, game development and online content creation. 

Senator Marcos addressed the crowd and so did DTI Undersecretary Rafaelita M. Aldaba. 

In addition to the P1,000,000 monetary reward, the grand winners from the Songwriting, Playwriting, Graphic Novel, Animation and Game Development categories received assistance in registering their intellectual property and promoting their winning work for production or commercial release.

The competition also awarded cash prizes to runners-up per category. The first runners-up got P500,000; second runners-up P300,000; and third runners-up P100,000. Six consolation prizes of P50,000 each were also given.

The judges in the songwriting category were composer-singers with clear names you can Google: Noel Cabangon, Kedy Sanchez, Jimmy Antiporda, Jake Lanting and Virginia Bactad.

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We don’t know how lyricist-audioman AG is benefiting from his controversial stature. We do know that Moro is “Shaira Moro Singer” and “Shairaa Moro” as her Facebook names (the extra “a” in the second name must have been taken from “Abdullah,” her middle name).

She has been posting in her FB Reels endorsements of some products. She has posted photos of herself looking slim and youthful as shot by a photo studio and image-building business groups.

Though her songs have been deleted from the streaming digital websites, they are still all over the place as posted by netizens and her fans. The most recent one we saw has Shaira doing a duet of “Selos” with a Bangsamoro princess.

Well, she is not really to blame for her songs that have music copyright infringement. She probably never knew when she recorded the songs that their music is not original. Only the Tagalog lyrics are.