This BBC series is set in the Shetland Islands off the northeast coat of Scotland. It tells the story of a small police department investigating crimes on the sparsely populated islands where everyone pretty much knows everyone else. I found the series to be quite gripping, even though the murder plots did not quite satisfy me, having some serious implausibilities. The first two seasons consist of four two-hour episodes based on books by Ann Cleeves and the third season consists of a single six-hour story that was written by others using the same characters. It is in the portrayals of the gritty life of the people that the series has its strength.
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I wrote recently about how the film The Room was so bad that it has acquired cult status and there is even a film made about the making of it. Thanks to reader Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write I learned about this article by Stuart Heritage about the qualities that go into getting a zero rating on the critics site Rotten Tomatoes, a rarity that means that not a single critic liked it.

Heritage says that there are factors in addition to bad writing, acting, directing, and other cinematic skills that will help you get that rare distinction.

The Room (2003) which has Tommy Wiseau as writer, director, producer, and star is such a terrible film that it has acquired cult status with special screenings so that true aficionados of bad films can watch it in the company of others and collectively revel in its sheer awfulness. I reviewed the film back in 2011 and described some of the things that made it, as one wag wrote, the Citizen Kane of bad films.
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Mary Poppins (1964) is quite an enjoyable film with some good songs and humor. But many people will also remember the absolutely awful English cockney accent that American Dick Van Dyke used as the chimneysweep Bert. At a recent event to publicize a remake of the film with Emily Blunt in the title role and in which he makes a cameo, the good-humored Van Dyke apologized for perpetrating on the public “the most atrocious cockney accent in the history of cinema”. Truer words were never spoken.
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When one uses sites like Netflix or Amazon, they keep recommending things to you based on your past searches and purchases. Most of the time, one can see why they recommended the items. But sometimes, they are real head-scratchers where the recommendation seems wildly off or to make no sense whatsoever, and today I experienced one such case.
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Soon after discussing the film Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer and how minority communities view with concern films that play on minority stereotypes, I watched Growing Up Smith in which the minority is now Indian.
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The actor, who at the somewhat late age of 46 gained international stardom as James Bond and played the role until he was 58, has died at the age of 89. Interestingly, when they were first casting the role of Bond, they passed on him in favor of Sean Connery because they thought he was too old for the part. He was then just 35.
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I love pretty much everything about the film High Noon (1952), from the story, the acting, the music, and the morality it represented. I have reviewed it before and discussed some of the plot holes. But this is the kind of film where one easily forgives such things. The filmmakers seemed to have ignored those things that did not affect the main story.
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