The Week in Entertainment

Film: Blancanieves, which was stunning. I loved the ending, too - very sad and very enigmatic, but if you think about the original story, very hopeful.

DVD: Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman (राजू बन गया जेन्टलमैन, Raju Has Become a Gentleman), an early Shahrukh Khan movie with Juhi Chawla, and an outstanding Nana Patekar as Raju's street-performer mentor, Jai. The story is loosely based on A Place in the Sun, but it's not an Indian tragedy (hee hee), there's a happy ending after the angst. Also, Chalte Chalte ( चलते चलते, While Walking), with SRK and Rani Mukherji, a story of mismatched lovers who meet cute, marry after a whirlwind romance, and then bicker - until disaster befalls, and things get worse. And then the rom-com Mujhse Dosti Karoge! (मुझसे दोस्ती करोगे Will you be my friend?) which is a story about a boy named Raj (Hrithik Roshan), who moves to London when he's ten and who falls via email for his childhood friend, Tina (Kareena Kapoor), without knowing that it's actually Pooja (Rani Mukerji) who's been writing and that Tina hasn't given him a thought since he moved away. I thought it would be light and frothy, but its second act was quite angsty (not as angsty as Chalte Chalte, which was a tear-jerker, but still), so I watched Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (मेरे ब्रदर की दुल्हन My Brother's Bride), with Imran Khan and Katrina Kaif, which delivered on the light and frothy (funny: they felt the need to include a warning before the movie that they weren't promoting cigarettes, but there's a ton of drinking, including of bhang (cannabis) that wasn't worth a mention).

TV: Turned out the episode of The Mentalist I was wavering over wasn't even recorded (The Good Wife was instead), but this week's was pretty good. Glad to see Rigsby and van Pelt getting past their problems, though I suppose it will mean one of them has to go... if so, I hope it's her, 'cause I like the way Rigsby and Cho interact. I did go ahead and watch the other one on line, and it was good - the RJ level was down pretty low (see, I don't mind Jane hunting for him - what I mind is how he seems to have a million minions and a hand in every law enforcement agency up to and including Interpol. What I mind is how he can do stuff (like kidnap that FBI guy and get him killed by the other FBI guys) that makes him not a regular criminal but instead some kind of super-Napoleon-of-crime) and the actual murder was intriguing. And then the Doctor - and this is the kind of thing that annoys me: last week Clara had a conversation with the TARDIS, and this week she's calling it "an appliance". Is inconsistency part of her character? I'm trying to reserve judgement (new companions are always hard to adjust to unless of course they're replacing, say, Nyssa. Or Adric.) but she's a puzzle rather than a person, at least so far. Her jeopardy doesn't seem real. We've already see her die twice (and not like Rory) - she just gets replaced by one from a different time. The TARDIS's peril seemed much realer.

Read: Old Flames  was really ... boring, which is an odd thing to say about a book that was as all over the place as it, with Khrushchev and British spies, and murder and adultery, and police/Special Branch in-fighting among other elements of the plot. I got to chapter 71 and couldn't go on. So I started Watching the Dark by Peter Robinson, who's always reliable for a good read. We Can Fix It!, a funny, raunchy, ultimately poignant tale of using time travel to try and set your past self straight. Diary of a Dragon, a cute little story of a dragon and the princess he wants to eat.