The Week in Entertainment

Film: Seven Pounds - the NYT reviewer notwithstanding. And I found it excellent - demanding, yes, but repaying you with a riveting story, a brilliant performance by Will Smith, and another by Barry Pepper in a small but crucial role. All the rest of the actors were good as well, and the script is terrific (though I choked over Emily's saying her dog was a vegetarian (sheesh)). It's beautifully filmed and scored, too. I think that Tim could have been credited by name (I mean, they write several credits as Name/Role - like Larry / Hotel Owner, so why not Tim / Ben's Brother?), but you know when that's a nit there's not much to complain about. I will warn you, it's a tough movie, not feel-good, happy-ending, but it's a rewarding movie, an excellent film all the way around. Slumdog Millionaire - yes, I already saw it once. This time I took a dubious friend, who came away raving.

DVD: Meet the Robinsons - if you haven't seen it, don't waste the ninety minutes. "What's happened to you, Moses? You're acting kind of strange." This is one of the priceless lines from The Ten Commandments: The Musical. This movie is pure-dee awful. The actors do the very best they can with what they were given, but unfortunately they were given banal lyrics, forgettable tunes, and the most bizarrely bad choreography... Worse than I thought it would be (and I must admit we stopped watching at intermission, so we missed the parting of the Red Sea, the Golden Calf, the actual 10 Commandments ...) And I still cannot understand why the slaves in Egypt were singing about the horns of Jericho. Indiana Jones 1, 3, 4 - the watchable ones. I constantly forget just how good 1 and 3 really were.

TV: Cinema's Exiles: Hitler to Hollywood - a pretty good documentary. The usual Viennese New Year's concert... this year I spotted two (gasp!) women in the orchestra! A few things on Discovery, and then The Red Shoes.

Read: Cockatiels at Seven and Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews, very good entries in this light-hearted series. Uneasy Relations - as has been the case with several of the later Gideon Oliver books, I knew the motive almost right away, but I did not guess the killer, so that's okay. I do have to say, though, that the whole "if sapiens and Neanderthals interbred, we're the same species!" line only made me say, "yeah? What about mules? Who can tell from half a skeleton that 'Gibraltar Boy' was fertile?" But that's minor ... pop-sci wouldn't necessarily notice that, that's for sure. Laurie R King's A Grave Talent (the hiding of Lee's gender was a bit annoying, but probably wouldn't have been if I hadn't known) and then her The Art of Detection, and although the story was very good, I came away saddened by the postscript. Kate and Lee marry under Gavin Newsome's short-lived attempt at equality, and I know they'll lose it, then get it back in 2008 ... and lose it again. And sure, they're fictional, but there are thousands of couples like them in real life.