Well, it’s been more than a quarter, but it’s just easier to sum up that way! I’m still not getting much reading done, but at least I managed to find some really good movies. Here’s a wrap-up for the first quarter.
Tag: B&Wmovies
Is “tri-monthly” the right word? June, July, August — loads of books and shows that I discovered and even liked (wonder of wonders)! Interestingly, in pretty much all of these, I also found that the blurb or the trailer had been misleading. Here’s a (long post) wrap up.
Castle Barebane by Joan Aiken
A rather strange and underrated historical fantasy work set in the 1880s involving a “road trip” from New York to Scotland. The journalist heroine sets out to help her odd brother (and also escape her marriage). Then she finds herself embroiled in a blackmail plot and with her young nephew and niece in tow. This book really defies genre and age groupings. The suspense is slow to build-up, the “fantasy” part is very, very subtle. I even thought there was some LGBTQ representation in this 1976 book. Also historically accurate, as can be expected from Aiken.
Why didn’t they ask Evans?
A very quirky new adaptation of one of Agatha Christie’s more complex mysteries. This cryptic question changes every time: Why didn’t they ask Evans? Why didn’t they ask Evans? Why didn’t they ask Evans? Wait at least till Episode 2 for the show to really get going.
Bringing Up Baby is a story about a missing intercostal clavicle, George the digging dog, and a Brazilian leopard named Baby. And what a madcap rip-roaring ROFL hysterical comedy this was!
Cary Grant plays an absent-minded museum director who just wants to polish off his gigantic dinosaur skeleton. But the harum-scarum Katharine Hepburn has other plans, and willy or nilly, Grant just HAS to help her out.
Oh, I felt so sorry for Cary Grant — who has trouble keeping up with all the stories and names people keep assigning to him. Hepburn gives him a really tough time, sending him running after golf balls, stolen cars, misplaced purses, escaped geese, musical leopards, hidden clothes, missing bones … I am laughing as I write this.
I never expected to like Bringing Up Baby so much. I went in thinking they were both an old married couple (they weren’t) who had decided to raise a leopard (not by choice!) and then squabbled over it (not precisely over the leopard).
I was so happy I took a chance on it. There was never a dull moment. No wonder this movie is considered one of the Top 100 Funniest English Movies of all time. Highly, highly recommended.
Watch the trailer HERE.