The Week in Entertainment

Film: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - the best movie so far. Imelda Staunton was very good as Uxbridge, especially that little laugh, and the complete two-dimensionality of Cornelius Fudge doesn't seem nearly as obvious on the screen as on the page. (The kid who plays Neville has grown much too tall, but I guess there's nothing they could do about that!)

DVD: A bit more Hawaii 5-O. I've about got used to those scarves McGarrett ties around his neck when he's off duty, but in this one episode he's wearing the most incredible hat! I'm sticking this here though it's not really DVD (don't want it in same paragraph as the Doctor and Captain Jack!) I finally got around to watching the rest of Masters of Science Fiction on DVR - well, sort of. "The Awakening" was entirely predictable and annoying as hell, and Elizabeth Rohm was her usual annoying self spouting lines like, "Some things don't have explanations" - oh, indeed. "The only difference between skeptics and believers is that skeptics are afraid." Pleah. And then, oooooo look - an angel! "Jerry was a man" couldn't be saved by Malcolm McDowell, and "The Discarded" was so boring I couldn't get past the first five minutes. No wonder the series tanked.

TV: Doctor Who ("God, you're rubbish as a human!" hee hee) - a nice episode. The ending was genuinely touching. But I must say, and I hope the Doctor realized it, that no, of course he never anticipated 'John Smith' falling in love: the Doctor still has Rose, and how could he think anything could make him forget? Someday she'll be the same faded bittersweet memory that Sarah Jane is, but not now. Not this soon. So of course he didn't think about it. Torchwood. Ahhh. I liked it. A different feel from the Doctor, but good. Captain Jack, I've missed him. Cocky Captain Jack. "I'm getting tired of following you, " Gwen says. "No, you're not," Jack replies with that grin, "and you never will." I'm trusting Russell Davies and John Barrowman to make that true. (And I love that Rose, in her power and her love ("I bring life... the sun and the moon, the day and night," she said, and Jack arose, reborn from the nothing of Dalek death), actually made Jack immortal.)

Read: Saturnalia - a splendid entry, answering the questions "Did Camillus Justinus ever get over Veleda, the wild Germanic priestess?" and "Will Falco ever feel like a real paterfamilias?" Falco does take a moment to tell his adopted daughter Albia that something is a "real word" when "enough people think they know what it means" which is a pretty good definition.