The Week in Entertainment

Live: Sarah Brightman in concert. Entertaining, though I really don't understand the musical business drive to amp everything to 11 and then mike the singer as hard as possible to give them a chance to be heard. Even someone like Brightman can't really do it. (Also, I think her lighting designer was doing his damnedest to burn out the lenses of all the cellphones in the audience. I don't know if that's even possible, but I'll bet the pictures weren't good.)

Film: The Way Way Back, which was so good. Excellent cast, quiet moments of great meaning. Wonderful movie.

 DVD: World War Z, which I enjoyed very much.

TV: Last Tango in Halifax which is darker and more complicated - the two sons-in-law, the daughters' love lives - than I had expected. But it's beautifully filmed and the two old ones (Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid) are wonderful. They do have a creepy "Miranda" in the UK, though, don't they? The second bit deliberately undermines the first. The Newsroom ended the presidential election and its season with satisfying developments that make me wish the next season was sooner than it is.. Broadchurch, moving the story along nicely. Sleepy Hollow, which is intriguing enough to warrant watching the next episode, but is very dark - everything happens at night, and it's just damned hard to see what's happening. Since Paul Krugman mentioned it and BBC America is rerunning the first season, I tried Orphan Black. The first two episodes are quite intriguing, and I'm starting to wonder about the original of the clones - was she messed up, too? The Neighbors began, after moving nights (why? I wonder), and is setting up a season of romantic angst that might be really funny but might not. We'll see.

Read: The Golem and the Jinni, a very entertaining book about, well, a golem and a jinni in 1900's Manhattan.Very good story, with interesting looks at free will and the value of relationships through the prism of their very different outlooks.