This is the second in a (long-delayed, alas!) series of posts chronicling the fortunes of Agatha Christie on film from 1974-1988. Spoilers are not only expected, but required, and I offer them with no apology. With the success of Murder on the Orient Express, it was only a matter of time before the cinema tried […]
At all events, perhaps no writer has ever wielded this terrific thought with greater terror than this same harmless Hawthorne. Still more: this black conceit pervades him, through and through. You may be witched by his sunlight,–transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds over you;–but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; […]
This is the first in a series of posts chronicling the fortunes of Agatha Christie on film from 1974-1988. I have previously covered some of these movies elsewhere, but the content of these posts is entirely new and oriented in a different direction. Spoilers are not only expected, but required, and I offer them […]
Crime fiction has both the opportunity and the obligation to be the most political of any writing or any media, crime itself being the most manifest example of the politics of the time. We are defined and damned by the crimes of the times that we live in. The Moors Murders, the Yorkshire Ripper, and […]
There are a number of different directions one can go when reviewing Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. We could protest (again) that Robert Downey, Junior is no Sherlock Holmes. He does not look like Holmes or act like Holmes. On the other hand, neither does any other portrayer of Sherlock Holmes, for in a […]
The Hound of the Baskervilles was Basil Rathbone’s first turn as Sherlock Holmes—and one of only two Rathbone Holmes movies set in the Victorian era. The casting is perfect; Rathbone has all the lean intensity of the original Sidney Paget illustrations, and his cool acting style embodies the man Watson once described as “the most […]