The Manunuri takes pride in the fact that its founding members were among those who helped stress the importance of production design in film. In fact, it was this group that introduced the category of Best Production Design in award races. (The FAMAS members, from their end, honored the Best Art Direction instead and it wasn’t until much, much later when this group came up with the category for Best Production Design.)
Choosing the winner for Best Production Design in the last Gawad Urian not surprisingly took long – with production designer Arthur Nicdao of Mga Munting Tinig edging out the other nominees in the end. His choice of locale for the film and the fact that he did not attempt to prettify the characters and their surroundings helped him win the award. His production design was a real as it can get.
For Best Screenplay, the fight was between the writing team of Adolf Alix, Senedy Que and Gil Portes of Munting Tinig and Lualhati Bautista who penned the script of Dekada. The problem with the screenplay of Munting Tinig was that it derived one too many scenes from Hollywood films (at least that’s how some Manunuri members felt). This helped Dekada sail forth to its victory.
In the category for Best Direction, Gil Portes was really the runaway winner for Mga Munting Tinig. Although there was a stray vote for another director, it was clear even in the beginning of the Manunuri deliberations that the award belonged to him.
In the race for Best Supporting Actor, it was easy to predict Piolo Pascual’s victory for Dekada. Compared to the roles of his fellow nominees in this category, his was the lengthiest (except maybe for Johnny Delgado in Kailangan Kita). Fortunately, he was able to do justice to that really challenging role and for that, he scored a grand slam in this year’s awards season.
For Best Supporting Actress, Elizabeth Oropesa brought home her third Urian trophy (after winning in the past for Milagros and Bulaklak ng Maynila) for delivering a consistently good performance in Laman. She was particularly brilliant in the scene where she maternally comforts the defeated Yul Servo (as a rural boy battling it out in the city), whom she tried to seduce earlier in the film.
The battle for Best Supporting Actress was actually tough because all the nominees gave above-average performances in their respective films: Irma Adlawan and Dexter Doria of Mga Munting Tinig, Kris Aquino and Amy Austria of Mano Po, Madeleine Nicolas of Paraisong Parisukat, Judy Ann Santos of Magkapatid and Raquel Villavicencio as the madam in Prosti. But in the final round of the deliberations for this category, it was Oropesa who got majority of the votes – although Kris Aquino clung to the very end.
Selecting the winner for Best Actor was just as tough. The votes in the beginning were scattered among the different nominees. In the end, however, the votes favored Jay Manalo for Prosti. Jay, incidentally, also slugged it out in the Best Supporting Actor derby, except that his part in Mano Po was a bit too short compared to the role played by Piolo Pascual in Dekada.
In the contest for Best Actress, Vilma Santos of Dekada emerged the winner by unanimous vote. This is actually Vilma’s eighth win from the Manunuri. (Tenth – if you count the two Actress of the Decade awards she received, from this critics group in the past.)
There really is no question that Vilma gave the best performance by a lead actress last year. Personally, however, I also liked Cherry Pie Picache in American Adobo and Alessandra de Rossi, too, in Mga Munting Tinig.
The only problem with Alessandra was that her role was not completely developed in the story – unlike the other characters around her. This weighed down her chances of winning the Best Actress award.
In the Best Picture category, the tie between Dekada and Mga Munting Tinig was "numerical." You see, there were occasions in the past when the group would suggest a tie even at the outset of the deliberations. A fine example was the tie for Best Actress between Nora Aunor (Bilangin ang Bituin sa Langit) and Vilma Santos (Pahiram ng Isang Umaga) in 1989 because the group members felt that it wouldn’t be right for one of either performance (and both were great) to go without being honored officially by the Manunuri.
This time around, there really was no intention to have a tie. It just so happened that one of the nine members, Dr. Rolando Tolentino, went to Japan as an exchange professor and was unable to vote. The votes for Best Picture therefore went at four each – without anyone budging.
In the end, the group just went for a tie since everyone agreed anyway that Dekada and Mga Munting Tinig were really the two best among the outstanding films released last year.