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Cakes by Carlo, originally uploaded by 160507.

The stats have remained constant, no spikes in the last week (although the comments have increased), so let’s try a corollary to hypothesis A: Lots of people searched for “Carlo” and “cake”. Here is Carlo the Dessert Diva’s Torta Limone, also known as “It’s a Lacroix!”— layers of crisp walnut meringue interspersed with thick mounds of delicately sour lemon curd, beneath a veil of chantilly cream and lemon roses. Mmm. Click on the photo to see the Strawberry and Mango Dacquoise, and the Grand Cru Truffle Torte, a.k.a. Death and Resurrection and Death Again by Chocolate.

Update. No spike, so hypothesis A is out. The stat booster must be lithium, then. However, I did get text messages from lots of friends asking where they could order the cakes. Yes, he can make the Torte Limone into a hat that you can wear. Carlo is updating his brochure. The cakes are available in different sizes. You can contact him at (+63) 920 955 CAKE. Carlo is also the subject of my column Emotional Weather Report tomorrow in the Star. No, I am not his publicist. I work for cookies (they’re eeevil).

Having encouraged friends to read Atonement, then scolding them for even thinking of watching it on bootleg dvd, having myself snubbed the copies that have appeared everywhere in the last month, I finally cracked and got the dvd. In my defense I will say that I checked the schedule of movies opening this week, and all the reportedly wonderful movies we’ve been hearing about this awards season are NOT opening in theatres soon, I don’t know why. Way to draw people to the theatres, distributors.

So tonight I sat and watched Atonement. When watching film adaptations of beloved novels, one must prepare for the worst. It is a given that the movie will not be as satisfying as the book. Atonement presents special problems for the filmmakers: it is a novel about the novel, about writers, about factual truth and fictive truth. It is inherently self-conscious. Not surprisingly, this movie of a novel of the novel has been called “too clever” and “too self-conscious”.

In deference to the friends I have unjustly deprived, I will shut up about the film until we have all seen it at the cinema (I promised to bring them). I will only describe my visceral reaction. First, I was wiped out. It was as if I had been through something when in fact I had been sitting for two hours. Then I put another dvd in the player, but I couldn’t pay attention. I started pacing up and down my house, and after a kilometer or so realized I was famished. I had eaten dinner half an hour before seeing the movie. So I went out to the convenience store and bought chips, soda, and a chocolate bar, which I promptly inhaled. Then I sat around doing nothing. Clearly, the movie has had an impact. And if the prettiest of the season’s contenders has this effect, I expect nothing less than zombiehood after the heavyweights.

Jonny Greenwood, composer, violist, guitarist, adept of unusual instruments, wrote the musical score of Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood. His work on the film has been called unearthly, beautiful, revelatory, liberating an entire dimension of the film experience from cliche. Greenwood’s score is not eligible for an Academy Award because much of the music, such as the piece called Popcorn Superhet Receiver, was not composed specifically for the film. (This is also why nothing from Sweeney Todd is up for Best Song.)You may know Greenwood as the lead guitarist of Radiohead.

Cats with books, originally uploaded by 160507.

I (not Koosi my ginger cat, who hates humans) am doing a TWISTED 8 reading and book-signing tomorrow, 30 January, 4 to 6pm at the Fajardo Room, De La Costa Building, Ateneo de Manila in QC. If you’re on campus and you’re not doing anything, pop over, buy a book, have it signed, and see my co-publisher Ige Ramos’s live montage of climactic moments in Nora Aunor movies.

If you’d like to schedule a TWISTED 8 event at your school, email us at zeusbooks.twisted8@gmail.com.

Can I just say for the jillionth time that I love Daniel Day-Lewis? Daniel Day-Lewis is the cosmos’s gift to women: he was put on this earth to make other men feel like dirt. Have you read the Oscars round-table discussion in Newsweek featuring Daniel, George Clooney and James McAvoy? Interesting dynamic. Day-Lewis, who is so elegant he can wear two hoop earrings and everyone would still genuflect, is the alpha male of the pack. Clooney, who would be the alpha male anywhere else, looks at Day-Lewis, and being a very smart man, quickly makes calculations: I cannot compete with That, I’ll just be funny. He makes Clooney feel inferior! And McAvoy, being an ambitious young man, looks at his elders and figures: Only a fool would try to compete with Day-Lewis, I’ll just take a few digs at Clooney. So Clooney and McAvoy do the verbal sparring, and Day-Lewis floats above them like a deity and remembers to pay attention to the ladies. Meanwhile Angelina Jolie, Marion Cotillard, and Ellen Page look at the prime examples of the male of the species jousting and think, Men are goats.

In his acceptance speech at the Screen Actor’s Guild Awards, when Day-Lewis pays tribute to Heath Ledger, you can almost hear the audience thinking, “I have to recall my 2005 ballot and write Heath Ledger for Actor!” When he mentions the other nominees in his category, they go, “Omigod Daniel Day-Lewis said my name!” Tina notes that Ryan Gosling sat up straight. I imagine lovely Viggo Mortensen thinking, “I have a fantastic career because Daniel Day-Lewis declined to play Aragorn because he wanted to be a cobbler.”

Marat’s back, originally uploaded by 160507.

Haha bad pun. Novak Djokovic wins the Australian Open men’s singles title, beating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (7-2). First player who is neither Federer nor Nadal to win a major since Safin in ’05.

Questions. Djokovic seems to run out of breath a lot, does he have asthma? Will Tsonga do well on other surfaces? Will the very talented Richard Gasquet ever realize tennis is a competitive sport? Will Baghdatis’s new hairstyle be luckier? Those tattoos, did you see Eastern Promises? Will Federer get a coach? What does Mirka think? Did Nadal’s legs fit in an economy-class seat? Will Rafa win his fourth title at Roland Garros? Is the field wide open now? I miss Goran Ivanisevic, what’s he doing these days?