The Week in Entertainment

somehow I missed this last week, so here are two weeks' worth
 
DVD: Billu with the great Irrfan Khan starring along with Shahrukh Khan. Yes. They put those two into the same movie ... and it works. Irrfan plays a poverty-stricken barber who has always told his wife and kids that he knows the mega-Bollywood-star played by Shahrukh - and when the latter comes to film his new blockbuster in the former's village, the question becomes: Has Billu been lying? All the shine and song is Shahrukh's, and all the heart is Irrfan's - or so you might think. This one's wonderful.

TV: The usual Wednesday lineup - The Neighbors is settling in nicely: silly but in a very funny way. Axl cracks me up on The Middle; kid's got master-level life skills. Several episodes of The Mentalist which have been piling up on the dvr; the Lisbon-has-a-nemesis-too arc actually played out very well; I'm sorry it's over. This has been about the amount of Red John (ie, one mention) I like.

Read: The First Rule of Ten and its sequel The Second Rule of Ten, which are very well written mysteries about a Tibetan ex-monk practicing as a PI in Los Angeles. Ten's an engaging character with a strong narrative voice. Looking forward to the next one, whenever it comes out. There's a Head on the Beach, Grandad, a light-hearted mystery set in Thailand, dealing with some heavy topics - very entertaining read. About Alice, Calvin Trillin's memoir of his late wife. Servant of the Muses, a noirish book about a private eye who discovers that his secretary Clio is in fact Clio the Muse of History. He doesn't discover this until she's kidnapped and her sister Erato shows up - at which point he's waaaay over his head.