Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Uh-Oh
Sony in Talks to Buy High-Priced Robin Hood Project: The tone of the story has been described as Mission: Impossible and the recent Fast & Furious movies.
History's greatest female crime writers
History's greatest female crime writers
Annoying slideshow. And Gillian Flynn is already one of history's greatest female crime writers.
Annoying slideshow. And Gillian Flynn is already one of history's greatest female crime writers.
Marian Seldes, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Marian Seldes, a regal personality in New York theater for more than half a century in plays ranging from whodunits to the work of Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett and, especially, Edward Albee, died Tuesday at her home in New York. She was 88.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Overlooked Movies: What's Up, Tiger Lily?
I saw this movie long ago and thought it was pretty amusing. Woody Allen took a Japanese spy movie, recut it, and dubbed it with U. S. actors doing mostly one-liners that had nothing to do with the original plot. So, for example, whatever the MacGuffin was in the original movie has become the recipe for the world's best egg salad. The trailer and the poster give the impression that Allen is in the movie. He is, but only in the prologue at the beginning, when he tells about making the movie.Little did I know that the movie I saw wasn't the one that Allen intended for me to see. It had been altered with dialogue being added, along with additional scenes from another movie. And the Lovin' Spoonful. Yes, the Lovin' Spoonful sings a couple of numbers during the course of the movie for reasons that are obscure other than that somebody wanted them in there.
Or that's one version of the story, at least. There are others. I don't think anybody really knows for sure how many versions of the movie there are or which ones exist on current DVDs. It's something worth a look, though, if you want a movie unlike just about any other. The one-liners are hit and miss, but they hit more often than they miss. Or that was my long-ago impression. Now they might all fall flat.
Monday, October 06, 2014
Geoffrey Holder, R. I. P.
BBC News: Geoffrey Holder, the Tony-winning actor, dancer and choreographer known to millions as Baron Samedi in Bond movie Live and Let Die, has died at 84.
Free for Kindle for a Limited Time
Big Lake - Kindle edition by Nick Russell. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: When an armored car hijacking leaves two men dead, Arizona Sheriff Jim Weber takes the crime personally, because one of the dead men is his brother-in-law. His hunt for the killers leads him into a world of sordid sex, deceit, and violence, with a suspect list that includes jilted women, a family of anti-government survivalists, and the beautiful wife of the richest man in town. With a plot that has more twists and turns than an Arizona mountain road, a cast of characters you won’t soon forget, and a shocking ending that shakes the town of Big Lake to its very foundation, this first book in the Big Lake series will keep you turning pages to the very end!
Trick or Deadly Treat -- Livia Washburn
I always enjoy Livia Washburn's mysteries about Phyllis Newsome and her boarders. Like the earlier books, this one's got a great small-town Texas setting, characters you feel like are old friends, and a solid mystery plot, but I liked this one even more than usual because one of the boarders, Sam Fletcher, adopts a dog. And it's not just any dog. It's a dalmatian. [DIGRESSION ALERT] When I was young, my father brought home a dog that was mostly, but not quite all, dalmatian. He called it Drift, but my younger brother couldn't pronounce that. He said "Drip." So that became the dog's name. Now I know that a lot of you have had dogs that you think were pretty good dogs, and you are, of course entitled to your opinion, but Drip was the best dog ever, the smartest and most loyal and just the downright most lovable. After Drip crossed the rainbow bridge, my parents had several other dogs -- dalmatians. My brother, who has more dogs than I can keep up with, has a dalmatian among them even now. Whenever a book or a movie or a story has a dalmatian in it, I'm almost guaranteed to like it. [END OF DIGRESSION ALERT]
The dog, Buck, proves to be the connection to the murder in the novel because its vet is accused of killing his wife (the vet's wife, not Buck's wife). Sam can't believe the vet would kill anyone, but Phyllis has promised not to get involved in any more murder cases. That leaves it up to Sam to do the investigating. He knows he's not as good as Phyllis, but he's willing to go it alone if he has to. Later in the book, however, he and Phyllis are hired by the vet's lawyer as consultants. For the first time in the series, they're legit. I have a feeling this will come into play in later books.
Naturally there's cooking along the way, and I'm hungry for white chili casserole right now. Not to mention coconut cream pie cookies. Recipes are included.
There's another development at the end of the novel that's related to cooking and that also promises to figure in upcoming books in the series. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out. If you haven't read any of the other books, you can jump right in with this one, but you'll get even more fun from it if you start at the beginning of the series with A Peach of a Murder. The whole series is highly recommended.
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