The Week in Entertainment

Film: Shrek the Third: actually quite amusing - lots of laugh-out-loud moments and nicely done. Not brilliant, not deep, but funny. What more can you ask from a summer flick?

DVD: Extras, series 1 & 2. This is a great set - the whole of both series (seasons we'd say in the US) plus good extras (hee hee). Can there be anyone who could deliver the line "Would you shut up about your fucking dead wife?!" like Ben Stiller? In fact, Stiller and Patrick Stewart are both great, and great sports, in the show. To a lesser extent, Orlando Bloom as well - with his obsessions about his place on the "10 hottest film stars" list and general attractiveness and Johnny Depp... but Ben Stiller's "directorial" turn as a man who's got his movies' profits memorized by the day, and who'd threaten to blow off a little child actor's mother's head to stop him laughing is excellent, and Patrick Stewart with his screenplay about a man who can make women's clothes fall off, coupled with that delivery - hysterical. Extras is very, very funny.

TV: NCAA WCWS (softball), good games - though UT came in second not first. Babes in Arms, which I'd never seen before. Preposterous plot (state workschool?!), odd casting (Douglas MacPhail is 25 and looks it, yet he's one of the "kids" who might be taken away from his parents!), some dated acting (Mickey Rooney is extremely hyper), but good singing - though the minstrel show is unfortunately out-dated and the finale is a bizarre mix of patriotism and fear-mongering - WWII right on the horizon. Plus of course that Busby Berkely choreography that could never have been staged inside a theater. Judy Garland was something special, wasn't she?

Read: Finished Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage by Alice Munro. Damn the woman can write! The Battle over the Meaning of Everything, an engaging retelling of the Dover trial. Started Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (yes, more Murakami; I love him).