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UVDust, who proposes that Wes Anderson make a movie of Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox. Live-action this time.

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There are no zombies crashing through the windows or serial killers cooking heart tartare in The Knick, probably the most horrifying show on television. Steven Soderbergh’s hospital drama has no need for bloodsucking monsters to act as metaphors for the human condition. In The Knick, the monster IS the human condition, death is the inevitable ending, and in 1900, it seems the merciful alternative to hospital treatment.

Read our TV column The Binge, every Friday at Business World.

Oops, put the wrong video earlier.

But not Inherent Vice, The Crying of Lot 49. It’s short.

And sorry if you got all excited, we don’t know whether Inherent Vice will open in Philippine theatres at all.

Maybe Pynchon has a cameo in Inherent Vice. They can claim he’s in it, after all no one knows what he looks like.

Last week we had our annual viewing of Magnolia. One way to look at Magnolia is to see it as a musical by Aimee Mann and P.T. Anderson. There’s even group singing with Tom Cruise.

It’s P.T.A. Week at Grantland.

The Spiral Staircases of Budapest

These images would’ve come in handy in James Marsh’s melodramatic Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything. Read our review at InterAksyon.com.

We liked the food at Cafe Provencal on the second floor of Shangri-La Mall (the old wing), so we were a little distressed to find that it was gone. In its place is a cafe called Duck and Buvette. We would’ve tried it sooner except that we thought everything on the menu had duck. It doesn’t.

As a devout meatatarian we hardly ever order salad of our own free will, but we had the weird urge to eat leaves. Maybe we had a roughage shortage, maybe our taste buds were just bored. So we ordered the grilled romaine salad with parmesan and anchovy garlic dressing. It was excellent, and we don’t even like vegetables. As you can see, they did not stint on the cheese.

For our main course we wanted the duck pie with foie gras, but they didn’t have it yesterday. Also we could feel the lettuce expanding so we decided to have something light. We had the brandade de bacalao dip—creamy cod and potato on grilled bread. Not only was it very good, but we could fool ourself that we had had a virtuous lunch.

A buvette is a food stall by the market, carinderia, basically. Duck and Buvette is bright and casual, reasonably-priced (mains are about Php390), and with an interesting wine list. We will be back to try the rest of the menu, with a glass or three of their bubbly. They also sell freshly-baked goods. Here’s their menu.