The more you try to erase me, the more that I appear

1. Move over, Sufjan, my mp3 player deserves a much-needed break from your whispery vocals and sexy banjo-plucking. This week's new obsession is Thom Yorke's solo venture, The Eraser. And while I'm not a big fan of electronic bleeps and music that sounds like it was generated by a musically capable computer, I knew I'd like this album from the few songs I heard in Elmo's car 2 weeks ago. "And It Rained All Night," which does sound like a textured and percussive downpour, was an instant favorite. So was the intense and political "Harrowdown Hill," written with Dr. David Kelly (the U.N. weapons inspector who supposedly committed suicide) in mind. But my top listen-to-it-over-and-over pick is "Atoms for Peace," with its offbeat rhythms and lovely lyrics. Yorke's voice soars when he sings "I wanna get out and make it work" and when he repeats "So many lies, so many lies, so many lies, so many lies, So feel the love come off of them and take me in your arms." Awww!

2. A midnight text from Egay:

"The traveller cannot love, since love is stasis and travel is motion. If he returns to what he loved in a landscape and stays there, he is no longer a traveller but in a stasis and concentration, the lover of that particular earth, a native." --Derek Walcott

And while I'm certainly taking this out of context, I'm not sure I agree. One need not be a native in order to love a particular patch of earth. One can be a traveller and still love a specific place (Rizal and Hemingway come to mind). And I don't like the notion of love as being static, especially if it's love of another person. Steadfast pa siguro. Unwavering. But static? Nothing and no one is static; we are all virtual travellers in this world. For love to exist I believe it must move and embrace change and accompany people in the process of becoming. On second thought, maybe I'd better read Walcott's Nobel lecture na nga muna.

3. Lady in the Water was implausible and disappointing. And not for the lack of the twist I've come to associate with M. Night Shyamalan's films. I wish the mythical aspects/creatures were more culturally rooted and less random. I wish there had been less minor characters, or that they had been more rounded (how many stereotypes of the protective and foreigner-wary Chinese mother do we really need in Western films?). I wish the tone had been more consistently suspenseful, instead of veering into off-key and forcedly funny moments (oh Paul Giamatti, that milk moustache was below you). I wish the characters acted like real people and not like cardboard cutouts who instantly believe in the unlikely. And I wish the bedtime story aspect had been explored further. If the film had been a story within a story told by a fumbling and improvising parent, that would have justified the almost-haphazard narrative direction. The lady in the water's name is Story, for night's sake! Shyamalan could have made a strong statement about the power of storytelling and the ability of stories to change us and make us believe -- but I don't think he did it successfully in this film. One thing I did enjoy was when the arrogant critic (whose arrival coincides with the beginning of the film) gets killed off by the scrunt despite his unflagging belief in the salvation of minor characters. But on second thought, Dear Writer/Director, must you really kill the critics? We too are here for a purpose, in this story beyond your story.