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 landed after watching Queen of the Damned since early last night.

It is now morning here. Vampyr Nosferatu henceforth prey on the unsuspecting.

I totally loved the movie. I know most critics said it was kind of trashy, but there were four things in it that I could not help but rave about. In no particular order:

Stuart Townsend as Lestat de Lioncourt
He is beautiful and he looks so good in black. His demeanor reminds me of Brandon Lee’s Eric Draven character in The Crow. His animal grace and sensuality is a much sexier Lestat compared to Tom Cruise’s Interview with the Vampire rendition. The faded French slur in his voice is so easy on the ears, and let us not forget how well he fit into the role of a rock demi-god.

Aaliyah as Queen Akasha
She could move, baby, how she could move. Whenever she is onscreen you forget everyone else in it. Her body is like the purest, sweetest yet most poisonous jelly. Her overall expression radiates menace, sex, power and a terrible beauty all at once.

Vincent Perez as Marius de Romanus
The second Crow, but here he is a slightly balding, slightly caustic mentor figure. He is suggestiveness and wisdom personified, so rarely could you see those two attributes together in one person. He looks so at home in the role that I could not envision Marius as anyone else but him.

The Soundtrack
I am besotted. Gorgeous, breathtaking metal. A more hardcore and hoarse side to something akin to the music of The Smashing Pumpkins. Jonathan Davis was a brilliant choice for the singing voice of Lestat: a versatile package of acid, destruction and seduction. My favorite song is Forsaken; it is the first song I will play if ever I get to organize a mosh-pit shindig.

Here is a summary of the movie from Amazon.com:

It’s her time. Her place. The wickedly regal Mother of All Vampires is ready again to rule!

Aaliyah plays the title role in this stylish shocker based on Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. Stuart Townsend portrays Lestat, the undead antihero previously seen in the movie version of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.

This time, Lestat finds acceptance in a tattooed and pierced world. He’s a rock star. And his intoxicating Goth-riffed sound rekindles the desires of all-powerful Akasha.

Today is the last day of Queen of the Damned in our local theatres.

I just have to see it or my uncle will murder me and feed me to the Uruk-hai of their neighborhood. Definitely not a good way to spend your Tuesday afternoon.

I will probably just wait for the sun to dwindle in intensity, and then it is off to SM City for me. Sbarro movie dinner, too, with garlic bread and vegetarian spaghetti.

This is just a random thought, but anyway. Fine.

I would really recommend clear skin and hair care products to everyone. When I say clear I mean the semi-transparent stuff available out there.

Right now, I am using Novas soap, whitishly transparent, and Palmolive Botanicals rosewater blend, pinkishly see-through. They feel much cleaner and lighter to use, plus I could attest to the results that the skin and hair do not get or feel sticky right away, unlike with those opaque cream soaps and heavy shampoos.

We all have our moments, if you know what I mean.

I saw this on the AIM ticker a few days ago and bookmarked it.

Here is a significant point of note: Nearly four out of five people opposed cloning, while one-third of those polled were against federal funding of stem cell research, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

President George W. Bush is pushing the United States Senate and several other relevant sectors to implement a total ban on cloning, embryo duplication, stem cell research or whatever else they call the process of creating duplicates of human genes/cells/embryos.

There are already countless fictitious hypotheses of what could happen when cloning is taken up to the level of duplicating actual beings – not only humans, but dinosaurs and other such animals, especially the extinct ones.

We have seen in movies such as Jurassic Park and Multiplicity the possibilities that could occur when such a thing as God-playing gets beyond human control. It is not pretty.

I am a science lover. So many things in my life reflect my affinity with this discipline, but since way back when my teachers have expressed time and again that there has always been a fine line between creating scientific pathways and God-playing. Sometimes the only thing that divides these two is ethics, but due to so many socio-cultural differences, the already-flimsy boundaries have been getting more and more blurred.

Note that I described science and all its myriad corollary forms as a discipline. Science as a whole is built upon a method of rational thought and by-the-number means of verifying educated guesses. It is based upon validity, and what exists to back up the level of validity that each activity aims to claim in the already extensive field of study and discovery.

By using the word discipline, I also meant validating one’s actions against his or her own mental check-and-balance. It is not so much as what we know and could do, but how we put what we know and do into use.

Surely, “into use” means not attempting to play God or tamper with the natural cycle of life, death and change.

Even if K’s Choice has the song Everything For Free, I am afraid this would not really hold that true to the Internet anymore.

Most of the so-called freebies have a catch anyway, such as annoying pop-ups and banners in your website or e-mail control panel. Not to mention tons of spam in your inbox.

I abhor all that stuff, with a vengeance.

I have just clipped out an article from yesterday’s edition of our local national daily The Philippine Star. It was about the paper getting it straight from reliable inside sources that Yahoo! and MSN Hotmail may no longer be free for much longer. There were projected annual charges for the use of their e-mail and other related services, ranging from a minimum of 200 to 400 Philippine pesos a year.

The bigger question on such a thing happening is that how would all their non-credit-card-using users pay?

A great portion of Yahoo! and Hotmail users are below 18, as reflected by the slew of teen-centered sites and communities taking over the Internet. It is indeed very disappointing to think that a lot of people may no longer be able to avail of the services they had previously used for expression and for sharing information,

It cannot be denied that the world is ruled for the most part by pecuniary concerns. Not even the seemingly boundless cyberspace is spared from that.

During dinner tonight, we had an interesting conversation about how people grow to covet the forbidden things in life. The overall premise is that the more off-limits something is, the more attractive and appealing it becomes.

There is even an old saying that goes something like this: To get something done you can either do it yourself, pay someone else to do it for you, or forbid your children to do it.

Said discussion led to the extramarital affairs of military and police men in the Philippines. This is especially applicable to the younger ones who had attended the Philippine Military Academy and have assumed high ranks in the field so early in their careers.

Turns out that we know a fair number of cases of young officers seeking the company and challenge of more articulate, exciting career women, in lieu of their wives who have already been weighed down by the responsibilities of motherhood and maintaining a household at this point in their relationship.

This is the harsh yet undeniable reality.

I am currently obsessing over the music of Enya. I discovered her brilliant tunes through The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. She wrote and performed the theme song for this film, May It Be.

Enya’s music is just so soothing and beautiful. Her sound is very smooth, like a deep stream that never gets disrupted by the elements.

Her live performances, quite infrequent compared with most artists, are also a sight to behold. When she sang May It Be in the 2002 Academy Awards, it was an ethereal, unforgettable appearance.

Her songs that are on heavy rotation in my WinAmp are Only Time and Orinoco Flow, which I consider to be contemporary classics.

I was able to find a few interesting Enya remixes online, among them two discofied versions of Only Time. I also came across a particularly daring blend of Orinoco Flow and Eminem’s The Real Slim Shady.