The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Beloved (Les Bien-aimés), a wonderful French meditation on love, affection, desire, and obsession, spanning forty years and two generations - mother and daughter in a possible stunt casting of Catherine Deneuve and her actual daughter Chiara Mastroianni, both of whom provide compelling performances - of women who have, and inspire, life-long passions (alas, these don't meet in the same men) that they can't, somehow, resolve into relationships that work.

DVD: The Space Museum and The Chase, early Doctor Whos with William Hartnell. I always did love Barbara and Ian, and these were their last episodes. Museum is a fascinating failure, ep 1 raising lots of questions the rest of it resolutely refuses to address, but Chase is cracking good fun.

TV: Leverage - very nice look at Parker. I love how she fixed everybody. "Nice job," indeed. But waaaaah that it's the summer finale next week already. Frogs - how strange; I could have sworn that the frogs stomped Ray Milland to death on the lawn, but it's in the living room. The Belle of New York, an utterly light-weight Astaire-Vera-Ellen vehicle. Perception - first half of the season finale, which is rather confusing so far. Apparently absolutely nothing they showed us after the murder happened. That's ... kind of a cheat. Part two better redeem itself. Doctor Who: "Why would he want to kill you? Unless he's met you?" The Doctor is getting darker again - last week's killing of Solomon (much as he deserved it), this week's willingness to condemn Jex. Amy called it - and we've seen it in the past, particularly with Ten: the Doctor doesn't have companions because he gets lonely, but because he becomes mad and dangerous when he "travel[s] alone for too long." (Plus, how lovely to see Ben Browder again.)

Read: Finished Dear Blue Sky, which was very good. The Pigeon Pie Mystery, quite an entertaining novel. Began Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue, which is pretty good so far.