The Week in Entertainment

Film: Away from Her. Sarah Polley's debut directorial effort is wonderful. It's spare, lean, beautiful, and - as Grant describes Fiona - 'vague and ironic'. The fractured timeline is a perfect reflection of Fiona's fracturing - or, better, dissolving - memory, and Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent play their roles by inhabiting them fully. The movie isn't perfect - a line or two of dialog strikes false, an image or two seems over the top - but it's very close, and if Polley improves as she goes on she'll be brilliant. (an aside - Pinsent was familiar to me, really, only from Due South, where his role as Fraser's father was always presented as some kind of casting coup. I see why.)

TV: Heroes - wow. I love Hiro's father - George Takei and Masi Oka are really good together - and Bennet's dispatching of Thompson was actually cool. Lots of the right people bought it - I was sorry about Ted, though (and Audrey is so stupid!!!). I keep hoping Nathan will shake free from his mother and do the Right Thing ... having Hiro call him a "villain" was a nice piece of continuity back to the first time they ever met. Anyway ... can't wait till tomorrow night. (ps - I was right! The minute Linderman came for Micah I knew how Nathan would win the election.) Also House (props to Chase - he's a brown-noser, but he's not stupid - and why on earth would Cuddy want to hire Foreman, whose major contribution recently has been to kill a patient by screwing up, unless she really wants to annoy House?... or edge him out? hmmmmmmmm), Scrubs (speaking of stupid ... oy. How many times will JD and Elliot screw up their lives by forgetting how wrong they are together?), and the Gates.

Read: Fear on Friday and Secrets on Saturday. Also The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and The Bonesetter's Daughter