There's so much talent out there that deserves to get good work. Here's my list of winning manoks for Philippine cinema--fantastic young actors, film makers, a production designer, and a composer.

Kim Chiu. She's fresh, she's lovely, she's feisty–three things that make her stand out from the current crop of ho-hum young actresses trying to make it in showbiz. She looks utterly bango and delicate, so when she's playing the kontrabida the contrast is quite nice. Kim could be a huge star in China, she's a perfect porcelain China doll who acts and sings! (And she's much prettier than some Cantopop stars.) There are 24 million young Chinese men who all face a lonely and wife-less future so if Kim launched her career there, she would literally have millions of fans. She can sing in Mandarin, right?   That's a plus. I wonder if she can speak Mandarin too…

Here's a clip of her channeling Vilma Santos in the 1993 heavy-hitting AIDS drama The Dolzura Cortez Story. Kim really goes there. She's come a long way from her Pinoy Big Brother days.

Coco Martin. I first saw Coco Martin (Rodel Nacianceno in real life, I mean, who on earth thinks of screen name a name like Coco Martin?) in Brilliante Mendoza's Serbis and then in Kinatay. He's one of the few young actors with zero cringe factor even when he's doing something uncomfortable on screen like popping a boil on his butt cheek. Coco Martin is handsome but not cheesy, young but not awkward. I think he has great leading man potential. The roles in Mendoza's films demand fearless performances from the actors, and Coco Martin has the acting chops. At 26, he's already award-winning and gets a lot of work in both mainstream entertainment and independent cinema. And he'll only get hotter as he gets older. It's not fair how men age better than women.