The Week in Entertainment

Film: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - finally got around to seeing this. What a tremendously good movie this is. So well-made, and brilliantly acted. Gary Oldman, especially - so very different from the flamboyant Oldman villains.

DVD: Moneyball, very entertaining. I remember that Oakland team, when "that Bill James bullshit" suddenly became the new paradigm, and small-market teams could compete with the big dogs. Brad Pitt was very good (no surprise there), and it's very well filmed.

TV: The Mentalist - last week's was good. I love how when the bomb went off Jane ran away from it. But my god, that whole framing-the-dead-guy-for-the-murder - wow. Jane is absolutely a piece of work; it's just hard to figure out what kind of work he is, isn't it? "Hunting monsters changes you" he said, and it did. And the second episode was okay, some nice work by Jane. But while I'm glad that they're showing us that Van Pelt can't escape the consequences of killing O'Loughlin, I could have done without the hint that the ghost was real. Once Upon a Time stays intriguing, especially Gold/Rumplestiltskin who is a lot more than he seems. Grimm is still interesting, too - Monroe's killing the ogre might bring down some trouble from Hank and the captain (who's intriguing in his own right) - and, the second episode shows it's bringing some trouble from other Others.. Modern Family - OMG voters think Claire is "angry and unlikeable"! ROFL. The Middle: the Donahues are just plain weird! Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, one of those episodic 'slice of life' movies with Margaret O'Brien and Edward G Robinson.

Read: The Rope by Nevada Barr, the latest Anna Pigeon novel is chronologically the first, exploring how she came to be the person she is in Track of the Cat, the first one written and covering the themes of monster-hunting, feminine strength and survival, and wilderness compared to city living. Two sets of short trilogies, one really funny and one so-so. The funny one is DEAD(ish), by Naomi Kramer about a ghost who can't find her body and the PI she hires to do it - fair warning, lots of foul language. The other one is a crossing-into-fairy-tale-land thing called "The Clever Detective", who isn't really (she's just read the fairy tales) - they're very short, and very cheap (on Kindle), but not really worth the time. The Unholy Trinity by Paul Adam, a thriller about the Vatican and WWII and modern-day Italy.