There are two British comedy series that can be seen on Hulu and that I can recommend.
One is Spy that consists of 17 half-hour episodes spread out over two seasons. The other is The Wrong Mans that consists of just six half-hour episodes. [Read more…]
I watched the season 3 premiere of Sherlock last night on PBS. The series is loosely based on the Conan Doyle stories updated to the modern period. It was fun. What the show lacks in plausibility it makes up in the way that the characters are drawn and portrayed. The casting of the main characters is first rate. The first episode of the new season was broadcast in the UK on January 1, 2014 but the big secret that people were waiting to see revealed was not reported widely in the US and I managed to avoid reading about it. [Read more…]
I like to watch films and so read a lot of film reviews since there are so many films and so little time and I need guidance in selecting what to watch. But while good reviews are the most helpful, it is the nasty ones that are the most fun to read, especially if they are written in a witty manner. [Read more…]
The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were scheduled to be announced at 8:38am (Eastern time) this morning. On my drive in to work at about 8:20 am, NPR had a segment with Kim Masters of The Hollywood Reporter where she was asked to make a predictions about what would be announced. [Read more…]
In his keynote talk at the 30th Chaos Communications Congress (30C3) conference last month to an audience that consisted to a large extent of computer professionals and systems administrators, Glenn Greenwald talked about one encouraging sign that he has observed, and that is the increased resistance he has observed among ordinary people, especially those in the tech industry. [Read more…]
The Onion’s head film critic Peter K. Rosenthal reviews It’s a Wonderful Life. He is just like me. I too hate it when people in films do something mind-bogglingly stupid just in order to drive the story along. (Language advisory) [Read more…]
I enjoy watching and talking about films but have learned never to discuss them with one person because when you mention one, she will say something like “You mean the one where X happens at the end?”, completely spoiling the film. As readers may notice, when writing about films, I try to give notice as to whether there will be a spoiler or not, because part of the enjoyment of a film is not knowing how it will end. [Read more…]
I watched this film recently and I want to thank reader rq for recommending it, as it is certainly a good one. Like The Prestige (2006) and Now You See Me(2013),both of which I reviewed recently, this film is about magic and magicians but I found it to be far superior to the other two. [Read more…]
There are some film characters who are so indelibly linked to the actors who created them that it is almost impossible for someone else to take it over. One case is Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in the long running Pink Panther franchise that consisted of eleven films. Sellers acted in five of them that were the most successful. Other efforts, even with extremely good actors like Alan Arkin, Roger Moore, and Steve Martin fared abysmally. [Read more…]
Joan Fontaine has died at the age of 96. I remember her most for her performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film Rebecca, as the young bride tormented by a sense of inadequacy compared to her husband’s first wife, whose memory is jealously preserved by one of film’s classic villains, the malevolent housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, played to perfection by Judith Anderson. [Read more…]