The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Illusionist (a hand-drawn animated version of Jacques Tati's last script) which was beautiful to look at and a good story, too - somber, yes, even sad, but good. One thing - I saw that Jane Horwitz in the Post noted: "There are no subtitles; the few bits of dialogue in French and English are deliberately unintelligible." Actually, most of the French was intelligible enough, just French - and most of the "English" (all of Alice's dialog) was actually Gaelic. But you don't need to understand the words, what few there are; the visuals carry you right into the heart of the movie and never let you go.

TV: The Mentalist: we now know Jane's m.o. so well that it came as absolutely no surprise that he didn't really hypnotize the girl. The only question was who was supposed to think he had... Modern Family's Valentine's Day episode was funny, especially Gloria's "I win! I win!" And I'm glad to see Dylan back, because I liked that character. The Middle - amusing, especially the "banned from volunteering" bit. House - I really do not like that med student character. More the idea of her, I think, because it's simultaneously ludicrous to believe she'd be put in that situation and horrible and unprofessional that she is.

Read: Reread a couple of Lord Peter Wimseys, and then an extremely good YA called Zora and Me about Zora Neale Hurston that was reviewed last week. A couple more Fletchers. Started Craig Kennedy, Scientific Detective, turn of the century novels that are nice looks at what was cutting-edge back in 1910. Also, something called The Fat Man, subtitled "A North Pole Noir" and sold as a funny hard-boiled detective novel with an elf (he used to run the Naughty List, but went too far) as the protagonist. It was okay, though I am not at all sure whether we were meant to take Potterville and the Island of Misfit Toys as archetypes that bled into our world, or if they were supposed to be things from here that crossed over into there and then sort of always were... it wasn't that well laid out. But that's because it wasn't really a noir. It was apologetics. By the end it was overtly Christian, with the message that we're all Naughty and getting presents is how children learn about grace and mercy... I resent things being marketed in that kind of underhanded way. If I want to read heavy-handed Christian propaganda, I will. But pretending I'm getting a Jasper Fforde-like noir (The Third Bear is excellent) when I'm getting is a sermon - not cool.