“I just want you to know. I would never hurt him. I love him.”
“I know. I also know it can only bring him unhappiness.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because part of him is a man.”

I was browsing through the TV Shows category of The Fanlistings Network while waiting for WinZip to download when I came across the approved FL for the 1987 television series Beauty and the Beast.

The show was aired on Philippine television when I was still very young, but I can recall clearly that the story had a modern spin on the fairy tale.

The series starred Linda Hamilton as Catherine Chandler (Beauty) and Ron Perlman as Vincent (The Beast). It had a modern-day, urban backdrop.

Catherine was pretty much an ordinary working girl based in New York City. One day, she was beaten and left for dead in Central Park, where she was found and rescued by Vincent, a magnificent and noble man-beast.

Their extraordinary love story then began, a meeting of two vastly different worlds – Catherine’s glittering city apartments and law firms and Vincent’s mysterious underground dwellings and its outcast inhabitants.

Beauty and the Beast was a deliciously dark yet romantic show, with a beautiful soundtrack entitled Of Love and Hope that features heart-wrenching love songs and the hoarse, sexy voice of Ron Perlman reading poetry.

In the Philippines, I could occasionally hear the show’s theme song, The First Time I Loved Forever, still being played on the radio, most often during the wee morning hours.

The First Time I Loved Forever
Lyrics by Melanie Safka

The first time I loved forever
Was when you whispered my name
And I knew at once you loved me
For the me of who I am

The first time I loved forever
I cast all else aside
And I bid my heart to follow
Be there no more need to hide

And if wishes and dreams are merely for children
And if love’s a tale for fools
I’ll live the dream with you

For all my life and forever
There’s a truth I’ll always know
When my world divides and shatters
Your love is where I’ll go

Happy, happy, happy New Year!

May the passing year leave us with memories to cherish, lessons to remember and greater hope for the coming year. Likewise, allow me to extend my warmest, albeit belated, Christmas greetings to each and every one.

To all my beloved friends and visitors, I am wishing that the blessings of the New Year be with you and yours. May these knock early, stay late and leave the gifts of Joy, Hope, Peace and Fortune behind.

During Christmas break, I found a copy of the 2000 Witchblade television series pilot and promptly bought it.

That was actually the first time I came across the television series, although I have been a fan of the comic book since it was first released in the early 1990s.

One of my most prized possessions, comics-wise, is the Witchblade Deluxe Collected Edition (Issues No. 1 to 8), which was a gift from my dearest Owlfriend.

Anyway, I have promptly discovered the magic of Eric Etebari, who gave Ian Nottingham a very seductive and sinister aura.

If only all stalkers would be just like him!

Amazon.com has this studio description of the television series:

In this adaptation of the Top Cow comic book, Witchblade is the story of a New York detective, Sara “Pez” Pezzini, whose search for justice brings her into contact with the Witchblade, an ancient, intelligent, living weapon so powerful it can battle Earth’s darkest evil forces.

Week in and week out, Pez employs her skills as a police detective to fight crime. She finds she must employ the Witchblade to combat a much greater and frighteningly organized conspiracy of evil that threatens the very soul of humanity.

As Sara tries to keep the secret of the Witchblade, do her job and have a personal life, she finds that her most formidable adversary may be the Witchblade itself.

Majority of the populace in ye olde domicile have religiously followed Endless Love: Autumn Story and Endless Love 2: Winter Sonata on GMA-7.

As it is one of my fine, unbreakable habits of spoiling things for everyone by knowing the endings of television novellas way ahead, I stumbled across an Endless Love 2: Winter Sonata domain in one of my sporadic online research sessions in the middle of December last year.

This very elegantly designed website, however, is currently offline. Of late, all that ever shows up during my visits is a placeholder page for Name Secure. Most unfortunate, really.

The aforementioned domain used to have a front/splash page containing a sweet montage of photographs of the lead characters as well as a heartbreakingly beautiful poem by Sara Teasdale.

I have long since downloaded the poem’s full text and would now like to share it, for everyone to appreciate.

The Flight
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

Look back with longing eyes and know that I will follow
Lift me up in your love as a light wing lifts a swallow
Let our flight be far in sun or blowing rain
But what if I heard my first love calling me again?

Hold me on your heart as the brave sea holds the foam
Take me far away to the hills that hide your home
Peace shall thatch the roof and love shall latch the door
But what if I heard my first love calling me once more?

Next week, GMA-7 will have its premier broadcast of the romantic drama series’ third installment, Endless Love 3: Summer Scent.

I have just finished watching the 6:00-8:00 A.M. episodes of 24: Season Two.

The series was aired on Philippine television in Filipino-dubbed format by ABS-CBN, at 9:30 PM on Sundays. Each telecast constitutes of two episodes. Tonight’s installments were the last ones of the show’s second season.

24 is one of the best television series I have ever come across, the reason why I watch it so religiously.

The pacing, sets, storylines, acting and direction, among numerous other production factors, come together to create a thrilling, edge-of-your-seat series. It is a mixture of action and suspense, headily spiced up with realistic human drama.

Kiefer Sutherland is in his element as Jack Bauer, a brilliant, dangerous and highly resourceful Counter-Terrorist Agent.

The tight scrapes and continually mounting tensions in 24‘s second season gave Kiefer’s character the plot room to grow in terms of depth and strength. Jack is, of course, my favorite character in the show.

My favorite female, and second overall, character in 24 is Kate Warner, portrayed by Sarah Wynter. I loved the way Kate developed from a rich girl doubting her sister’s husband-to-be to a brave, quick-thinking woman who had survived numerous life-or-death encounters.

Sarah’s portrayal has the perfect blend of intelligence, vulnerability, steely nerves and indomitable courage. These qualities made Kate a character that provided a perfect match to Jack’s own willful nature.

I was rummaging through my old soundtrack tapes when I came across Batman and Robin, which contains the twin The End is the Beginning is the End and The Beginning is the End is the Beginning by the Smashing Pumpkins and the low-key ballad Foolish Games by Jewel.

The latter, I recall, has quite an interesting music video, wherein Jewel is singing against a backdrop of mostly hazy, drifty white and in the company of a few individuals dressed in flowing dark-blue kimonos and heavily made-up in the Kabuki style. Their movements, however, were slow and serious, as in the Noh.

Fascinating, the things one remembers when rearranging tapes.

The ending for tonight’s episode of Ikaw Lang Ang Mamahalin was quite the goddammit-don’t-leave-me-hanging-like-this type, as Lorenzo Diego (the uber-sexy character of the uber-sexy Mark Anthony Fernandez) was finally forced to pull the trigger on the heroine to save the life of his adoptive father. Mark will also be in tomorrow’s episode of Kakabakaba Ka Ba?, a weekly primetime suspense-horror series.

Come next week, my freshly retuned clavier electronique will be delivered to our house, including a new set of line-in wires that I had to move heaven and Middle Earth to acquire given the current rare and pricey status of the stuff in the sparse number of decent electrical-supply stores in Iloilo City.

Well, I have to be thankful I did not have to order them from another city and pay additional for shipping.

I will be watching GMA Network‘s one-hour Text Tube party in a little while.

It is an interactive show that airs music videos and anime episodes and has viewer/texter polls and a text-in chat room. Very cool and fun.

I got into the whole thing because they started airing Goo Goo Dolls and Linkin Park videos.

Text Tube also offers variety, from Filipino death metal acts to Britney Spears. Last week they aired two episodes of Lupin III in just one show.

For all Pinoyz who are into Text Tube, you can find me there as DarthShirley. Lovely nick, is it not?

I just finished watching Bugso, the Vilma Santos comeback made-for-television movie.

Bugso is a noun that roughly translates into “gust,” as in a quick attack of wind or some such. Sometimes, the word is also used in the context of having extremely strong and sudden feelings, reactions or urges.

The movie is about the conspiracy of three men, each of whom have a different motive, to kill the family of Miss Ancheta (Vilma Santos) – so she would be left alone and helpless to sign some papers that would turn over all her money and property to Tirso Cruz III‘s character, her devious cousin-in-law.

Tirso’s character is one of the three schemers. Such was his greed that he came to the point of killing off his own wife and stepchildren for the sake of material wealth.

The other two men involved in the plan are the non-speaking semi-psychopath Nanding (Ian de Leon) and the aging foreman of the Ancheta farm, Ka Matias. The former does it for the money and the thrill of the kill. The latter has cheated the Ancheta family by stealing the title to the farm land and then pawning it for money for his own caprices. Ka Matias realizes that he cannot hide such a secret for long and believes that the best way to clear himself of it was to resort to murder and force.

The approach of the whole television movie was suspense-mystery. The story was driven by dark intentions set against the idyllic countryside. All of it revolves around the decisions and chutzpah of a proud, blind heroine.

I have to admit this may be a bit formulaic, with so many murder-mysteries and their respective slightly incapacitated heroines, but Bugso possesses an appeal all its own, sourced for the most part from its actors.

Vilma Santos is heart-wrenchingly bittersweet and annoyingly stubborn. Tirso Cruz III is ever the Juancho-like bastard (Juancho is his villain character from the GMA-7 soap opera Sana Ay Ikaw Na Nga).

However, my favorite is definitely the dark, mentally-disturbed Ian de Leon, who exudes menace just by sitting in the shadows and eyeing the heroine with bloodlust.

Director Christopher de Leon did a good job with the transition of scenes, especially when the action starts to heat up. The way he constructs the angles and the movements of the characters mirrors the varying moods.

Lighting was optimized to reflect the depth of the story’s events. Through the lighting, the viewer would already have a sense of foreboding on what will happen next, such as in that conversation of Vilma and Tirso in the shadows, where only certain planes of their faces were illuminated with watery blue.

I am glad that GMA-7 is once again putting together movies made for television. Several years back they had this regular weekend-night time slot for telesines, which served as a good growing ground for up-and-coming actors, writers and directors to make their way onto the silver screen.

I just finished watching Buffy: The Vampire Slayer on RPN-9, a multiple-episode run wherein the Slayer and Faith switched bodies.

It was quite sad, since it became evident by the end that Faith’s life was different from hers. Buffy had loyal friends, a Watcher/father figure, a cool mother and a tolerable boyfriend.

Faith had none of these. She was, in a nutshell, alone. At the end sequence of the arc, she was in a hut made up of wooden planks. That wordless shot captured her desolation.

It was nice to see Spike aka William the Bloody again. I haven’t watched Buffy for quite some time and I was struck to see how gorgeous Spike really is.

Maybe my taste has gravitated to guys with very neat, swept-back hair. There is this character David in the dubbed IBC-13 Mexican soap Por un Beso, now Spike.