We love her tribute to James Bond flicks with “The Spy Who Loved Me’’, “For Your Eyes Only” and “Diamonds are Forever”. We likewise enjoyed her homage to Henry Mancini with “Moon River”, the song from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” whose poster featuring Audrey Hepburn she aped for her own poster for her concert. Other Mancini songs she did are “Two for the Road” (which also starred Audrey) and “Moment to Moment” (which starred Jean Seberg.) And we enjoyed it when she combined the finale songs of the last two “A Star is Born” movies. She got “With One More Look at You” from the Barbra Streisand version and mixed it with Lady Gaga’s “I’ll Never Love Again”. Bravo!
She also got to sing songs from her own movies, like “You Are My Song” from “Wanted Perfect Mother” and the title theme song from her 1997 movie, “Paano Kita Iibigin” with Piolo Pascual, her special guest that night, with whom she did a duet of the song. She made a hilarious recount of the first movies she did with Viva Films, like “The Untouchable Family” with the late comedian Redford White in 1987, “Pik Pak Boom” in 1988 with Herbert Bautista and “Elvis and James” with Joey de Leon and the late Rene Requiestas in 1989. For a while, we thought she’s gonna sing her hit dance song then, “Urong Sulong”.
She decided to lie low from the movies after doing nothing but comedies, until Boss Vic del Rosario
Since the venue is a smaller one compared to cavernous halls like Araneta Coliseum and MOA Arena, Regine can afford to make hilarious adlibs to call the attention of shrieking and screaming fans that keep cheering her on especially each time she’d hit her high notes. Regine’s voice has become more well rounded and finely textured. Her admirers are obviously very happy that she’s still the best at what she does. She said she thought she couldn’t do such vocal calisthenics anymore and admitted that she’s taking voice lessons with voice mentor Kitchie Molina to help maintain her precious vocal pipes.
She felt so relaxed with the appreciation crowd that, at one point, she called up on stage stand up comedian Tetay, who was applauding boisterously in his seat near the stage. He even got to spoof Kris Aquino and her current conflict with a former trusted employee she sued for swindling her in the brief time that he was on stage with Regine.Her final belting song before the dancing finale with son Nate was “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing”, sung by Aerosmith in “Armageddon”. We really love it when Regine sings this because the awesome range of her fantastic voice is in full display here, the timbre and tone of her low, mid and head voice dexterously manipulated through technique to produce an impressive sound that has a sharp, lyrical and expressive quality into it. As she herself sings in the 007 tribute: “Nobody does it better”. We just wish she had a segment for movie love songs and she did songs from “Love Story”, “Titanic”, “Top Gun”, or “Up Close and Personal”.
Regine also managed to take potshots against the bashers who lambasted her for leaving GMA-7 to transfer to ABS-CBN. “Sinabihan ko silang huwag na lang silang manood,” she quips. “Kaya I’m sure walang bashers sa inyo diyan tonight.”
You can still watch Regine’s concert this weekend at New Frontier Theatre on November 24 with Sharon Cuneta and November 25 with Daniel Padilla.
