The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Monuments Men, which I found suspenseful and tense and absorbing.

DVD: Father Brown, the 1974 series with Kenneth More. Unlike the 2013 Mark Williams series (which I finished the first season of, and which is goofily entertaining), these attempted to actually adapt Chesterton for tv. Fr Brown sounds like a priest. Also, in the 2013 series, he's got a parish and a horrible stereotypical Irish housekeeper and a rival cop and a streetwise assistant... in short, he's just another amateur sleuth. Kenneth More's Fr Brown is altogether more serious, and altogether delectable (although one of the episodes is missing its last section, alas).

TV: Cosmos, the episode where NdGT explains electricity - and sent creationists into a frenzy. Again. I have to admit I got a bit teary at the end, when James Clerk Maxwell's book comes into Michael Faraday's hands... And then the next episode, also good. Caught up on Modern Family, including Cam and Mitchell's wonderful, disaster-plagued wedding.

Read: The Bill of the Century, about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is altogether enthralling. I'm almost done with it - the great filibuster is about to begin. (Reading this book is definitely both disturbing in the memories it awakens, and disquieting in the echoes of today.) Also a couple of shorts courtesy of "Athena's Daughters" - Janine Spendlove's "Birth of Anarchy" and "He Was A Marvelous Man" - excellent.