The Week in Entertainment

DVD: 50 to 1, a good old-fashioned race-horse movie, with the added attraction of Christian Kane (considerably more photogenic than the real Mark Allen). A little heavy on the drinking-and-fighting cowboys, but I guess that's what Mine That Bird's owners were like. Calvin Borel, the Derby jockey, plays himself and very nicely, too. Excellent racing footage of Borel's rail-hugging run from last to 6 lengths ahead. (Is Bob Baffert really an asshole, or is he just the designated sneering super-villain of horse-racing movies?) And, finally, Inception, which I enjoyed a lot.

TV: The Manchurian Candidate, which is still a damned good movie. Tried to watch the remake of The Producers but just couldn't. It's not Matthew Broderick's fault that he's a pale imitation of Gene Wilder but I couldn't think of anything else, and Nathan Lane did a good job of making his Bialystock different from Zero Mostel's, but honestly, it was awful (I lasted till they hired the secretary).

Read: N.K. Jemisin's The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun, a two-book series as good as "The Inheritance Trilogy" though very different.