The Week in Entertainment

Live: My Fair Lady at the local Playhouse. Excellently done!

Film: Wall-E - and what can I say? It's as good as the hype. As a friend says, "Pure magic - and it irritates the right. Bonus!"

DVD: Behind the Curtain - a very old and badly acted mystery - a 1929 movie badly marred by everyone's being unused to sound. Have you seen the "talkie" in Singing in the Rain? Remember the love scene? Here it is, and worse. Moreover, this is allegedly a Charlie Chan movie, but he barely made an appearance (though when he did, he was played by a guy named E.L. Park - who was Oriental!!!). I loved the way Eve and John made such a big deal of his trip into "the Persian desert" - all alone! "Four months in the desert, away from everyone!" "You know what it means - four months in the desert, all alone!" All alone ... well, except for the forty guys in the caravan, of course. (One of those was Boris Karloff, quite easily the best thing in the whole movie.) Some other Chans (my father has the set and is working his way through): in Panama, The Black Camel, Murder Cruise. Uneven lot - and Murder Cruise has almost the same alibi trick in it as in Paris does, so I guessed the killer right away. Hellboy (I'd seen it before but am preparing for the sequel) - pretty enjoyable, all things considered - stylish, well acted, and feels like it's in a coherent universe that just isn't quite ours. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which is extremely funny. "Too much science? Is there such a thing?"

TV: The Ninth Gate - moody, intriguing, well-acted, and compelling. Also beautifully shot and scored.

Read: I actually read nothing this week until Sunday. Astonishing. That's what being on vacation does to you. I'm scheduling this since I'll be traveling Sunday and may not get to post, so I'll note that I'll be reading The Penguin Who Knew Too Much and The Stranger House on the plane.