The Week in Entertainment

Film: Love Is Strange, a lovely, sweet, sad, brilliant movie, quiet and understated and brilliant. Alfred Molina and John Lithgow are absolutely perfect. What a wonderful movie.

DVD: Because I found it while putting something away, the fourth (and final, waaaaaah!) season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which had some wonderful stories in it - and the DVD has "The Pyramids of Mars" as a tie-in, so of course I watched that, too.

TV: So I remembered I have Prime, and got "Into the Dalek," which I liked. The Doctor has of course had soldiers around him before, but that was before. He doesn't like that part of himself just now, so he of course doesn't want one around. If this guy Pink is going to be involved, with his obviously complicated backstory, the Doctor's new aversion to them (which has in fact been growing for some time since Three) will complicate that, too. (I just hope we're done with old enemies (saving Missy if she's who I think she might be) - no Cybermen, no Weeping Angels.) And I really like Journey's saying "It's smaller on the outside!" On rewatching, I'm really pleased by the Doctor's facing up to what he did as the War Doctor. Nine (Ten? oh let's say Nine, everyone's used to that) was consumed with rage and grief and survivor guilt, but neither he nor Ten and Eleven understood it. Ten and Eleven, I think, fled from it by getting younger and flirtier - hell, Ten fell in love - but it's only now, after learning what the War Doctor did, that Twelve is actually facing the trauma of destroying Gallifrey (because he did, in a sense: he was willing to, and that he was spared it doesn't mean it didn't scar him) and asking the question: Am I a good man? That that rage and hatred still burn so brightly inside him that the Dalek could see nothing brighter - that "that's what you do" is true - presages a long journey. Maybe what "this face" is trying to tell him is that he can save people... And then I watched "Robot of Sherwood" which really was a throwback in many ways to the old historical episodes ("Robots! Now we're getting somewhere!") I loved it - so much fun.

Read: Finished Wildwood, which had a somewhat unexpected ending. Enjoyable. An old John Thorndyke (The Red Fingerprint) - did anybody ever actually try to frame someone by forging fingerprints, or was that just a rage-against-modernity by the old writers? Started Lincoln's Boys but was not moved to get through the first chapter; will try again later. Found too many good things at the bookstore this evening to fight my way though something.