A tale told thrice

There used to be a video rental shop in Virra Mall Greenhills (owned, if I’m not mistaken, by revered screenwriter Ricky Lee) which made available to the public Betamax tapes (I know this dates me) of classic movies, even those made outside Hollywood.

Thanks to this shop, I was able to watch a slew of classic movies which had either gone out of circulation, or had little commercial appeal. Let me say “Maraming salamat” at this point to that little video rental shop for shaping my cinematic education and putting me in touch with films and filmmakers of decades past.

Anyway, it was thanks to this shop that I learned of Akira Kurosawa, who had brought Japanese (and Asian) cinema to the attention of the world, and watched his most famous films. One of them was “Seven Samurai,” released in 1954, about the residents of a poor farming village who hire a group of wandering samurai or swordsmen to defend them against an impending attack by bandits. Today, “Seven Samurai” is regarded as the greatest Japanese film ever made.

While watching “Seven Samurai,” I kept wondering why the storyline seemed so eerily familiar. Then it hit me. It had been made into a Hollywood film! “The Magnificent Seven” starred, among others, Yul Brynner, and was set in the “wild, wild west.” Now we have a remake of a remake, with the new “Magnificent Seven” retelling the story of a motley group of “outsiders” during post-Civil War America coming to the defense of helpless settlers against rapacious business interests.

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I MUST give credit to director Antoine Fuqua and the producers for sticking to their resolve to set the new “Magnificent Seven” still in the cowboy era, given that the genre is believed to have generally run its course with the movie going public.

Also worthy of mention is the decision to cast Denzel Washington as Sam Chisolm, the leader of the seven mercenaries. It isn’t often that we see African-Americans in westerns, much less in the lead, but Washington’s terse, moody persona is perfect for the enigmatic freelance law enforcer.

Another contemporary touch is the choice to make the cast of seven gunslingers as inclusive as possible, including a troubled Confederate veteran (Ethan Hawke as Goodnight Robicheaux), an Asian knife-wielder (Korean superstar Byung-Hun Lee as Billy Rocks), a frontiersman (Vincent D’Onofrio as Jack Horne), a Mexican outlaw (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Vasquez), and, most astounding of all, a Native American called Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier, who is himself an authentic member of an Alaskan tribe).

Indeed, the only white man in the bunch is Josh Faraday, a gambler and gunslinger, played by Chris Pratt with loads of charm and panache.

I was pleasantly surprised by Fuqua’s decision to keep to a conventional style of filming and storytelling. No hi-jinks or tricks here. Just a straightforward tale now told thrice, keeping true to its origins and lineage.

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A LINGERING memory from childhood is that of a grandmother of mine, who looked so dignified with her erect posture and shock of coifed white hair, conversing with my mother and other relatives while enjoying her cigarillo. If I close my eyes, I can still breathe in the distinct aroma of her thin cigars that evoked spices and exotic lands. The tobacco was rolled in dark paper, which over time lent her teeth and tongue a dark brown tinge.

Two names are attached to the cigar-blended cigarillos in this country: La Campana Fabrica de Tabacos and Alhambra Industries, both of which have a combined history of over a century, dating back to the Spanish colonial period. Today, the cigarillos, known as Cortos and Regaliz Largos, are produced by Mighty Corporation out of its factory in Bulacan. And, surviving changing trends and preferences, Mighty Corporation is the current market leader in the local cigarillos market.

Mighty also manufactures so-called “American blended” cigarettes out of its Bulacan factory. The products range from high-class to mass-market brands, in menthol and nonmenthol variants. The various brands use a mix of local tobacco grown by farmers in Northern Luzon and imported leaves of flue-cured Virginia and Burley tobacco.

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MIGHTY Corporation, which celebrates its 71st anniversary on Tuesday, traces its history from a small concern born out of Chinese immigrant Wong Chu King’s postwar efforts to eke out an existence by peddling cigarettes door to door. Today, it is a dominant player in the field.

With a few trusted friends and associates and the support of his wife Nelia and their six children (three sons and three daughters), Wong Chu King was able to build a cigarette factory, eventually taking over even revered and dominant brands, while pursuing other interests like rice milling, buy and sell, insurance and construction. Perhaps in keeping with more modern trends in marketing and corporate identity, his sons changed the name of the company from La Campana to the present-day Mighty.

In later years, the King family established the Wong Chu King Foundation, dedicated to the uplift of the poor to which the patriarch, as a young desperate immigrant, had dedicated his efforts ever since the immediate postwar years. This the Foundation does through scholarships and construction projects with a public benefit, with most projects concentrated in tobacco-growing areas to benefit the families of their “partners” in the tobacco fields.

Greetings, then, to Mighty Corporation, which has roots deep in Philippine social and economic history, and today pursues philanthropy with equal zeal. Here’s to more years to come of success and service!