When the past catches up with the newly appointed head of MI6, in the form of a Russian spy with whom he shares a complicated past, he is forced to question everything and everyone in his life.
Secrets, lies and diplomatic relationships will all come to light.
Entertainment companies don't make compelling and intelligent spy thrillers anymore. *Sigh*
This new series, very short at 5 episodes with 37 to 45 minute episodes, is written, acted, and directed oh so badly. Adam Lawrence is elevated to acting Chief of MI6 when the chief was poisoned. EVERYBODY starts acting stupid as soon as his family was introduced - the wife, the children, the "friend" of the wife. Gahhhh! Whispering disease is worse than covid. Everyone is afflicted. Sheesh. .Amateur and convoluted much. The whole production and actors should be ashamed of themselves. 👎👎 Avoid!
“The Fabulous” is about the work, passion, romance, and friendships of young men and women who have thrown themselves into the fashion industry. It will portray their struggles to survive in the competitive fashion world and their flamboyant and passionate daily lives in the nation’s trendiest industry.
Big Bet (formerly titled "Casino") is the story of a man who has become a legend of a casino in the Philippines without money or support, and starts the last bet on his life when he is caught in the middle of a murder.
Actor Choi Min-sik plays Cha Moo-sik, the legend of casino and Lee Dong-hwi plays his right-hand man Jung-pal. Son Suk-Ku plays Oh Seung-hoon, a local police officer in charge of crimes related to Koreans living in Philippines, while Filipino actor Nico Antonio plays his counterpart in the CIDG.
The original title was Casino but changed to Big Bet which is better IMHO. I've seen the first 3 episodes released today, December 21, for total of 8 episodes. Second part with 8 episodes will be aired after a 2 week break. I like the 3 episodes so far. Must watch because Choi Min Sik of Oldboy and my current fave Son Suk-Ku are the main actors. It's interesting that it was partly filmed in the Philippines with some Filipino actors.
Best Netflix series and my favorite (along with Enola Holmes 2) for 2022. To fully enjoy the series, do not compare it and the cast with past TV shows and movies. This is titled Wednesday, not The Addams Family.
The dance scene is awesome.
And playing the cello - The Rolling Stones' Paint It Black - already downloaded from Freegal. Can you tell I'm obsessed? 😉
Welcome to Slumberland, the world of dreams! Jason Momoa plays “Flip” an eccentric outlaw on a mission to help a young girl travel through dreams and flee nightmares, in hopes of reuniting with her father.
I never heard of the comics and cartoons this movie is based on. I loved this bittersweet, cute, and funny children's movie. Jason Momoa is good as "Flip" and one of my favorite characters is the little boy with a pompadour driving a huge garbage truck.
Don't listen to professional and armchair critics. This is a fun movie for all ages.
The trailer for the new Netflix adaptation is out on Netflix and I can't help but write a post on the terrible "reads like parody" laughable novel. No, the gamekeeper is not the hot guy shown by every Hollywood production. In the book Oliver Mellors is a sickly phlegmy skin and bones cough-a-minute guy with no sex appeal whatsoever. Oliver is henpecked by his termagant bully wife who left him and their 5 year old daughter. In the book the daughter appears just twice never to be heard of again.
After surveying his property, the invalid husband decides he needs an heir. He tells Lady Chatterley to find a lover, have a child with him, and they will make the child their heir. So yeah, the lady has permission to bed a guy other than her husband. But he doesn't want a lowly gamekeeper's child to be his heir and naturally does not approve of his wife's choice of lover and worries that she is falling in love with a worthless consumptive man.
Lady Chatterley and Oliver Mellors find they are attracted to each other over a cageful of chickens that he raises on the estate adjacent to the small cabin where he lives. Chickens! I was laughing so hard at that scene. I was embarrassed for the author. I'm not kidding.
The book was so controversial and banned in several countries at the time it was published because of the use of a four letter word and the sex scenes which to me are hilarious and ridiculous, exactly like Fifty Shades of Grey. These two lovers name their private parts John Thomas and Lady Jane and decorate them with flowers. They are loony to me, not sexy.
Lady Chatterley together with her sister as teenagers were encouraged by their parents to get "deflowered" by young boys when the family went on vacation to Italy or maybe France. Indeed they were, by 2 German boys. What the heck! Their parents! The 2 sisters are promiscuous as young adults and settled down after their marriage to suitable gentlemen.
So it is head scratching for Connie (Lady Chatterley) to marry a wheelchair bound guy knowing she cannot have sex with him. The author tried to show that she is attracted foremost by his intellect. HAHAHAHAHA. But of course, she previously cheated on her husband before she met the tuberculosis guy. She had sex with an associate of her husband's right there in their house when he visited. The business associate encouraged her to divorce Chatterley and run away with him. She insisted in staying with her "brainy" husband to help him finish a publication he is writing.
Then there's the Oedipus Complex thing happening between the nurse and the husband. What? She is there to get revenge on him but somehow she starts having maternal and sexual feelings for the invalid. Are you kidding me? It is sooooo stupid and yucky.
Then the novel suddenly shifts to politics and Oliver's fight for the coal miners' right. Huh? Alrighty then. He ignores his new born baby with Lady Chatterley the same way he has been ignoring his older daughter with his wife. He's too busy with social justice issues doncha know! Sheesh. What a great lover!!??
Please, stay away from the book and the Netflix special to keep your IQ points intact. You're welcome!
tags: coming of age, drama, mystery. Netflix streaming
⭐⭐⭐
From IMDB
Abandoned by her family, Kya Clark, otherwise known to the townspeople of Barkley Cove as the Marsh Girl, is mysterious and wild. "Where the Crawdads Sing" is a coming-of-age story of a young girl raised by the marshlands of the south in the 1950s. When the town hotshot is found dead, and inexplicably linked to Kya, the Marsh Girl is the prime suspect in his murder case.
The movie is based on a best selling book which I haven't read and I never had the interest in reading it. I'm not into books about being one with nature and have "spiritual" themes (according to reviews on Goodreads).
Kya, the youngest of 3 children, is abandoned first by the mother who couldn't take anymore her husband's alcoholism and physical abuse. The older brother and sister also leave for the same reason. Kya is left alone with her father who at first is tolerant of her but she ends up all alone in their house. What a depressing story. Who does that to a little girl? Where are the grandparents? Uncles? Aunties? And who enjoys reading such a stupid story? The mother never came back nor check up on her. She wrote once but the letter was burned by the father.
Kya had to use her smarts in order to survive, digging up shellfish and sells it to the Black couple who runs a goods store. The couple are the only people who are nice to her. They give her used clothing so she can go to school where the children make fun and gossip about her and call her names. Discouraged, she runs back home and to the marsh where she is at peace. How she lived alone for 10 years since everybody left is a mystery to me.
She learns how to read when she is already a teenager. A friend of her brother shows up one day and sees she is talented in drawing. He teaches her how to read and suggests she submit her work to a publishing company. He becomes her boyfriend, her first love. But he also abandons her for university. 5 years she waits for him then another young man starts paying attention to her and she accepts him. The boy has a fiancée but still wants to have Kya as his sex toy. She rejects him when she finds out about the fiancée. He becomes aggressive and tries to rape her. Then the young man dies, either murdered or by accident.
The movie focuses more on the murder mystery, her trial, and acquittal. The ending reveals if she really killed him. All the clues are there. You just have to pay attention to Kya's poetic and metaphorical dialog. She dies as an old lady with gray hair and still married to her first love but the truth will never be revealed. There is no point anyway.
It is an okay movie, good not great. The acting and cinematography are good.
After his adventures in The Tower of Fools and Warriors of God, Reynevan is on the run again, harried by enemies—some human, and some mystical—at every turn. These are cruel and dangerous times for a man such as Reynevan, and to survive, he must set aside his history as a peaceful healer and idealist and play the brutal role of Hussite spy as crusades sweep through Silesia and the Czech Republic, and the world around him is forever changed.
The third and final book of The Hussite Wars does not disappoint. The ending is satisfying, although heavy on history, bloodletting, and Latin. Reynevan doesn't get the happy ending he is pursuing throughout the book and it is heartbreaking and might get you teary-eyed reading that part, at about 80% of the 640 page book. By the time I finished I can read the weird names without effort and also am able to guess correctly the meaning of the easier Latin passages. 😌
The highlight for me is my favorite character, Samson Honeypot and how he left his "physical body" again reminding me of The Little Prince, or maybe he is a heavenly being who possessed the body of a halfwit monk when Reynevan performed a magic in Book 1.
Light Perpetual has all the fantasy elements from the first 2 books - magic, shape shifter, murderous evil bishop, nonstop fighting and burning of towns and people. Joan of Arc is mentioned briefly, alchemy, a 200 year old witch, and a golem as awesome as Samson are added to the already superior fantastical characters and story.
tags: action, adventure, comedy, female sleuth, Victorian period
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sequel to Enola Holmes streaming on Netflix. Millie Bobby Brown as Enola Holmes is a good actress and her character is entertaining. She and Henry Cavill as Sherlock have real rapport and fun to watch as brother and sister. As predicted, she and Lord Tewkesbury are an item confessing their love for each other. Her brother, Sherlock, has a bigger presence in the movie. They, with a little help from Tewkesbury, work together to find a missing woman and the death of a factory worker. I liked it regardless of the terrible and contrived version of Moriarty.😒
I am looking forward to the next movie although Dr. Watson will be played by an actor of Indian descent. *sigh* Can't escape this trend.
The movie made me bake a Scottish cake called Dundee Cake. It is a simple fruitcake with no spices nor candied fruits. The recipe with photos is here.
Documentary will be streamed on November 21. Watch it, tell your family to watch it. It is no longer a conspiracy if healthy people of all ages suddenly dropping like flies. I hope this can be reversed.
A "non-heroine type" high school girl is thrown into a situation like something straight out of a dating simulation game! This slapstick adolescent romantic comedy follows the romance-averse Anzu.
Anzu Hoshino is a "non-heroine type" high school girl who pays no attention to fashion or romance and spends every day playing video games. After the wizard Riri suddenly appears and confiscates Anzu's three favorite things — video games, chocolate, and cats — she gets pursued by hot guys!
Super funny anime series. It's a departure from the usual anime love story. Anzu is not interested in boys, not even ikemen. She just wants to play video games, eat tons of chocolate, and play with her cat Momohiki. A wizard takes over her life and is forcing her to look at handsome boys and start dating. The episodes kept me in stitches. Brilliant script. Silly but entertaining as always.
tags: Italian TV series, mystery-crime, Terrence Hill
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Don Matteo is a TV series set in the town of Gubbio in Perugia, Italy. It has been airing in Italy since 2000 and still ongoing. The episodes starting from Season 1 are available to borrow from Hoopla through our county library. I have seen 4 episodes so far and they are good. The series is in Italian with English subtitles.
Don Matteo is a Catholic priest who has a keen sense of people and circumstances. He is able and more than willing to help the local police in solving crimes, just like Father Brown. His best friend is one of the policemen. Terrence Hill stars as the title character Don Matteo. He is 82 now and still filming the series.
Highly recommended for TV mystery viewers who don't mind reading subtitles.
Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialized from March 1918 to December 1920 and then published in its entirety in February 1922.
It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called a demonstration and summation of the entire movement.
Ulysses chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904.
Ulysses is the Latinized name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey, and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus, in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland's relationship to Britain.
The novel is highly allusive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature.
The novel's stream-of-consciousness technique, careful structuring, and experimental prose—replete with puns, parodies, and allusions—as well as its rich characterization and broad humor, have led it to be regarded as one of the greatest literary works in history; Joyce fans worldwide now celebrate 16 June as Bloomsday.
This book didn't interest me one bit when I joined a reading challenge of sorts many moons ago. I was discouraged by the reviews which are divided - love or hate, nothing in between. Some negative reviews say it is very difficult to read, hard to understand, doesn't make sense, life is too short to read an unreadable book, people who claim they have read it are liars/pretentious, etc. I avoided it and all of James Joyce's books even if I had nothing else in my stash or Kindle.
A few months ago, one of my favorite funnies drew Celebrate Literary Day, and one of them is Pretend You Have Read Ulysses Day. It made me chuckle and I decided maybe it's time to take a stab at it.
I did not expect to like the book nor finish it. It is moderately long at 740+ pages and took me a little over 1 month to finish although I feel like I never really finished it and I won't pretend I understood all of what I read. I will definitely read it again and couldn't care less if I won't be able to fully understand all of it. I refuse to read books/publications that explain each episode. That would be retarded if you need a book that explains what you are reading and I want to interpret them myself.
I love the book anyway and the prose is beautiful, often hilarious, and reminds me a little of the style of writing on some parts ofThe Last Samurai. I didn't find it too difficult to read although I gave up on the Latin passages. No need to dwell on those. James Joyce was a genius. Yeah.
tags: British series, mystery, septuagenarians, Thursday Murder Club #3
⭐⭐⭐
From Goodreads
It is an ordinary Thursday, and things should finally be returning to normal.
Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A local news legend is on the hunt for a sensational headline, and soon the gang are hot on the trail of two murders, ten years apart.
To make matters worse, a new nemesis pays Elizabeth a visit, presenting her with a deadly mission: kill or be killed...
While Elizabeth grapples with her conscience (and a gun), the gang and their unlikely new friends (including TV stars, money launderers and ex-KGB colonels) unravel a new mystery. But can they catch the culprit and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again?
I was eagerly awaiting the latest addition to the mystery series and was disappointed. I'm in the minority because the novel has a very high rating on Goodreads.
IMHO, the regulars, the two "bad" villains, and the mystery itself are too cartoonish. There are too many additional characters and the original side characters were set aside. Not good but I'm not saying bye bye yet to Mr. Richard Osman.. I will still read the next one.
Third and final season of Derry Girls is now streaming on Netflix. Liam Neeson does a cameo on Episode 1 and is absolutely perfect looking tired and weary interrogating the girls. He gave up after listening to Uncle Colm. Great acting and I wonder if he was trying not to laugh.
Will Spann is driving his wife to her parents’ house. They stop at a gas station on the way where his wife mysteriously disappears. He is bewildered and begins to panic, but then suspects foul play. He alerts the authorities but becomes a prime suspect. Detective Paterson leads the investigation and suspects that Will may have a hand in his wife’s disappearance.
Hollywood is hopeless. Good entertaining movies from Hollywood are very rare these days. The only ones I enjoyed this year are Uncharted and Father Stu and I'm not even a fan of Mark Wahlberg. I watched to see if Gerald Butler's acting and Hollywood have improved. No to both.
This movie has no entertainment value to me. I couldn't decide who is the most annoying character because everyone is super annoying: the wife, the parents-in-law, the policeman, the side characters, and Gerald Butler as the husband. I'm sorry but Gerald simply cannot act. In the the first few minutes he and his wife are whispering. In the car. While driving to her parents' house. Why?
His driving also annoyed me. He is constantly moving the steering wheel left and right left and right left and right. On a straight paved smooth highway. Who drives like that? Then he drives like a maniac at the gas station. Idiot.
The wife is approached by a man just outside the door of the convenience store and disappears, her phone off. Frantic husband goes looking for her inside the store and around the gas station, shouting her name loudly every 2 feet. He looks and sounds familiar. Wait a minute, I've seen this lousy scene before. Yep. Same inferior acting. Sigh.
Annoying husband goes to the parents-in-law who are also extremely annoying. Their exchange of dialog is exasperating. Now he goes to the police. What do you know, the policeman is also annoying and an even lousier actor than Gerald. I soon realize this movie is becoming a contest as to what character will annoy me the most. Sheesh!
The story has been done a gazillion times before so nothing is fresh and will put one to sleep. Adding to Hollywood cliché the group who kidnapped the wife are involved in making illicit drugs. But of course!
Not recommended unless you are a fan of Gerald Butler.
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic adventure, The Lord of the Rings.
Sauron, the Dark Lord, has gathered to him all the Rings of power - the means by which he intends to rule Middle-earth. All he lacks in his plan for dominion is the One Ring - the ring that rules them all - which has fallen in the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.
The Lord of the Rings is once again on entertainment news because of Amazon's original prequel series based on the book series and The Silmarillion. Viewers are divided between liking and hating the series because once again woke Hollywood added Blacks for diversity crap. Galadriel also is portrayed differently than the book. Because strong female...Galadriel is an Elven queen, not a warrior! Amazon had to temporarily remove reviews because there were more 1 star and negative reviews than positive.
Viewers are simply tired of seeing classic literature bastardized to satisfy racial diversity equality stupidity. For example. Ariel, the little mermaid is played by a Black actress and it deserves being mocked by several memes, changing the hair color to red, lightening the skin, and making the nose narrower because why would a Danish author make his character Black? Disney did not invent Ariel. I hope it bombs at the box office.
When the debate on the Black Hobbit became an issue with viewers, Neil Gaiman had a Twitter meltdown defending the Black actor included in the series mentioning that there are "brown Hobbits" in the book. I don't remember that when I read it eons ago. So I read it again. THERE ARE NO BLACK OR BROWN HOBBITS AND DWARVES EVER! Browner of skin does not mean they are Black.
"There are 3 different breeds of Hobbits. The Harfoots are the browner of skin, smaller, shorter, and they are beardless and bootless, their hands and feet were neat and nimble, and they preferred highlands and hillsides."
Woke Hollywood and authors like Neil Gaiman should stop their nonsense already! Stop forcing Blacks and Asians playing characters in movie and TV adaptations of novels that have original white European people on viewing public. They should instead encourage non Whites to research their culture, make movies about them, and stop appropriating white culture. Colored people invented the term "cultural appropriation", now the tables are turned and let's see if they recognize themselves. Ha! These wokesters are killing their own industry by making viewers puke at every woke production they come up with. No money for you!
I remember reading the main character Maggie Tulliver in George Eliot's The Mill On The Floss described as dark complexioned. Her parents are white English people but she is the only dark complexioned child among her cousins and brother. It doesn't mean she is Black or Asian, or some other colored race. In fact she is frustrated with her extremely straight hair that refuses to curl no matter what she does. When she was acting up and bratty, she ran away from home and went to a homestead where a gypsy family lives, thinking because she has browner skin they'll accept her as their own. It's a good thing George Eliot's books are not popular with Hollywood. Otherwise, they'll make Maggie a Black girl with kinky hair just because she is dark complexioned.
BBC produced films and TV series based on 5 George Eliot books. I've only seen Silas Marner with Ben Kingsley [half Indian half English] as Silas and a bit of Middlemarch. Silas Marner is good but Middlemarch was awful. I haven't seen the other 3 - Daniel Deronda, Adam Bede, The Mill On The Floss - and don't plan to. They usually ruin the original by casting super old actors to portray children and teenagers.
tags: Amazon streaming, 1966 British movie, comedy, drama, romance
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
From Wikipedia
Georgy Girl is a 1966 British romantic comedy-drama film directed by Silvio Narizzano and stars Lynn Redgrave, in the titular role, Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates, and James Mason. It was based on the 1965 novel by Margaret Forster.
The plot follows the story of a virginal young woman in 1960s Swinging London who is faced with a dilemma when she is pursued by her father's older employer and the young lover of her promiscuous, pregnant flatmate.
I've heard of the song Georgy Girl but never knew there is a movie with the same name. I checked IMDB to see if I've seen any movie with Lynn Redgrave. Nope, not one although I've seen several of her sister Vanessa's old movies. What a shame. Lynn was good in this movie. And so are the rest of the cast. I love the dialog and the great acting by everyone. And the song.
Charlotte Rampling plays Meredith, the elegant and beautiful flatmate of Georgy. Meredith goes on dates with other men although she has a steady boyfriend. Meredith is the opposite of Georgy who is not attractive with her dry wiry hair and frumpy clothes.
One night in December, a corpse is found in Room 622 of the Hotel Verbier, a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps. A police investigation begins without definite end, and public interest wanes with the passage of time. Years later, the writer Joel Dicker, Switzerland's most famous literary ingenue, arrives at that same hotel to recover from a bad breakup, mourn the death of his longtime publisher, and begin his next novel. Little does Joel know that his expertise in the art of the thriller will come in handy when he finds himself investigating the crime. He'll need a Watson, of course: in this case, that would be Scarlett, the beautiful guest and aspiring novelist from the next room, who joins in the search while he tries to solve another puzzle: the plot of his next book. Meanwhile, in the wake of his father's passing, Macaire Ebezner is set to take over as president of the largest private bank in Switzerland. The succession captivates the news media, and the future looks bright, until it doesn't. The bank's board, including a certain Lev Levovitch - Geneva's very own Jay Gatsby - have other plans, and Macaire's race to the top soon becomes a race against time... A matryoshka doll of a mystery built with the precision of a Swiss watch. Joel Dicker presents a diabolically addictive thriller where a love triangle, a power struggle, shocking betrayals and dangerous envy play out against the backdrop of a not so quiet Switzerland, where the truth twists and turns into something no reader will see coming. A European phenomenon, Dicker's latest page-turner is his most personal novel yet
This is the first novel I've read by this young Swiss author. The novel is full of flaws and at first I was not liking it but I found myself laughing at the absurd characters and story and slowly realized I was loving it up to the very last twist at the end. Speaking of twists, a novel usually has just one or two. Enigma has several twists that I failed to guess who was dead and who killed him until all the possible characters and suspects have been cleared. In the book, the author Joel Dicker misses and pays tribute to his long time publisher who just died and he does it nicely without being maudlin or intrusive in the main story.
The dialog, situations, the love triangle, the unbelievable characters are silly but oh so entertaining.
The author wrote himself into the story which is not a new idea because William Goldman wrote a fictional character of himself in The Princess Bride. I am comparing the silliness and comic book feel of Enigma to the The Princess Bride, being almost a satire maybe, I am not sure. The book is a tad long at over 600 pages, my only complaint, but I didn't notice because I was enjoying the novel. The mystery of Room 622 storyline was confusing at the beginning because of the several timelines jumping back and forth but I got used to it and didn't mind after 200 pages. I just paid attention to the years things happened, what's what, and who's who.
Great read. Highly recommended for readers with sense of humor and adventure.
tags: Amazon streaming, comedy, crime, murder-mystery, Spanish series
8 episodes
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
From Amazon
1940s, Galicia. Marina Quiroga, a bold upper class girl with the soul of a detective, decides with the help of Héctor, her loyal butler, to trap the killer who has been terrorising her city.
My favorites Aura Garrido and Jean Reno are the leads, how can I not watch. I like the first two episode so far and will rate when I am done watching the complete series. Amazon is showing interesting series [at least to me], at last.
Update September 24, 2022: 5 stars.
Highly recommended. Watch in original European Spanish with English subtitles. Dubbing in English is always atrocious.
tags: based on true story, Catholic priest, drama, family, redemption, streaming on Netflix
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Based on a true story, Father Stu is an unflinchingly honest, funny and ultimately uplifting drama about a lost soul who finds his purpose in a most unexpected place. When an injury ends his amateur boxing career, Stuart Long moves to L.A. dreaming of stardom. While scraping by as a supermarket clerk, he meets Carmen, a Catholic Sunday school teacher who seems immune to his bad-boy charm. Determined to win her over, the longtime agnostic starts going to church to impress her. But surviving a terrible motorcycle accident leaves him wondering if he can use his second chance to help others find their way, leading to the surprising realization that he is meant to be a Catholic priest. Despite a devastating health crisis and the skepticism of Church officials and his estranged parents, Stu pursues his vocation with courage and compassion, inspiring not only those closest to him but countless others along the way.
The movie is currently Number 1 on Netflix and I can understand why. It is well scripted and acted, inspiring for everyone not just for Catholics but for all faiths. It's superior to any current movies Hollywood is churning out these days. The soundtrack is awesome also.
82-year old Ringo Starr does jumping jacks in time to the music after a 2 hour show in Pittsburgh Saturday; second of a three night stand in Pennsylvania: Easton Friday, Philadelphia Sunday. Some guys not as old as Ringo go home to Delaware on weekends and fall off their bike. pic.twitter.com/0JlN56E6xt
He was 65 years old in this 2005 video. Don't Pass Me By is still my favorite from the double album White Album. It was originally written as country western by Ringo. Great song and I like the humor in the story/lyrics.
I listen for your footsteps
Comin' down the drive
Listen for your footsteps
But they don't arrive
Waitin' for your knock, dear
On my old front door
I don't hear it, does it mean
You don't love me anymore?
Don't pass me by
Don't make me cry
Don't make me blue
'Cause you know
Darling, I love only you
You'll never know it hurts me so
How I hate to see you go
Don't pass me by
Don't make me cry
Don't make me blue
I hear the clock a-tickin'
On the mantel shelf
I see the hands a-movin'
But I'm by myself
I wonder where you are tonight
And why I'm by myself
I don't see you, does it mean
You don't love me anymore?
Don't pass me by
Don't make me cry
Don't make me blue
'Cause you know
Darling, I love only you
You'll never know it hurts me so
Sorry that I doubted you
I was so unfair
You were in a car crash
And you lost your hair
You said that you'd be late tonight
About an hour or two
I said, that's alright
I'm a-waitin' here
Just waitin' to hear from you
Don't pass me by
Don't make me cry
Don't make me blue
'Cause you know
Darling, I love only you
You'll never know it hurts me so
How I hate to see you go
Don't pass me by
Don't make me cry
Don't make me blue
Ringo Starr wrote this in 1963 and sang lead. It was the first Beatles song he wrote by himself. In an interview for a New Zealand radio station during their 1964 tour of Australia, Ringo is heard in the background saying "sing the song I've written, just for a plug." Then, Paul says "Ringo has written a song called 'Don't Pass Me By.' A beautiful melody. This is Ringo's first attempt at songwriting." At this point, Paul and John actually sing a verse of it and Ringo says, "It was written as a country western, but Paul and John singing it with that blues feeling has knocked me out. Are the Beatles going to record it? I don't know. I don't think so, actually. I keep trying to push it on them every time we make an album." Paul then states, "Unfortunately, there's never enough time to fit Ringo's song on an album.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent.
Great adventure and fantasy for all ages. Read it. It is short at 370 pages.
Woo Young-Woo is extremely smart and she also has autism spectrum disorder. She never forgets what she sees, but she lacks in social skills and empathy. Woo Young-Woo begins to work as a trainee lawyer at a large law firm. While working there, she faces prejudice and irrationality against her, but she solves cases with her own unique perspective and grows as a lawyer.
Although the main character Attorney Woo is a 28 year-old lawyer, the drama is kinda bildungsroman because she has autism and only becomes fully an adult towards the end of the first season. The writing is absolutely perfect. I love her immediate boss, Jung Myeong-Seok's admirable and warm personality, that I was rooting for him when he fell ill. I read there will be a second season because fans around the globe love the series. I'm looking forward to the second season.
Alchemy Of Souls
20 episodes, 62 - 70 minutes, Season 1 complete
tags: fantasy, mages, magic, romance, sageuk
The fate of these people become twisted due to "hwanhonsool" (the soul of the dead takes over the body of another living person).
In the country of Daeho, Jang Uk comes from the noble Jang family. He holds an unpleasant secret about his birth, which people all around the country talk about. He is a troublemaker. Jang Uk happens to meet Mu-Deok. She is an elite warrior, but her soul is trapped in a physically weak body. She becomes Jang Uk’s servant and secretly teaches him how to fight.
Seo Yul comes from the noble Seo family. He seems perfect with good appearance, intelligence, and strong martial arts skills.
Go Won is the crown prince of Daeho. He hopes to become a generous king.
A period drama, comedy, horror, shamans, mages, the baddest villains, romance, lots of sword fight, pretty and cute young leads, and the obligatory love triangle. Here the triangle becomes a polygon with 4 young men and 2 young women, it is dizzying at first but eventually settled to a rectangle, then a triangle. Whew! 😄Second season with 10 episodes will be aired in December, 2022.
The love polygon - Crown Prince, nobles and mages Jang-Uk and Seo Yul are all in love with maidservant Mu-Deok. Crown Prince calls her Filthy Mu-Deok because she used to wear tatty clothes.
Little Women
12 episodes, 60+ minutes, ongoing Saturday and Sunday
tags: 3 sisters, corruption, loosely based on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, mystery
Three sisters get involved in a case that leads them to fight against the richest and most influential family in South Korea. They grew up in a terribly poor environment with an inattentive mother and absent father who lives abroad.
Oh In-Joo is the oldest sister. Since she was a young child, she realized that money was the most important thing to protect herself and her family. Her dream is to live an ordinary life like other people. She gets involved in a case that could change her life.
Oh In-Kyung is the middle sister. She is an enthusiastic reporter at a news station. She believes in doing the right things. She believes money doesn't rule life. She now begins to dig into a mysterious case that she first faced when she first became a reporter.
Oh In-Hye is the youngest of the three sisters. She is a student at a prestigious arts high school and she has a natural talent for painting. She often feels her two older sisters' love for her is too much.
There are only 3 sisters, not 4. I'm guessing Beth is not included because nobody will want to watch if the middle sister dies. The story is a mystery involving an ambitious wealthy politician and his involvement in a series of deaths in the present and 4 years before. Interesting story line and the acting and script are really good.
Jack Parker didn’t set out to be a stay-at-home dad, but his professional dreams went up in smoke after he accidentally burned down his office building.Six years later, Jack’s got parenting his two kids down cold.
Then comes an unwelcome blast from Jack’s past: high school nemesis Chad Henson. He beat out Jack for class president, stole his girlfriend, and never had so much as a pimple in his four years of adolescent bliss. Now Chad has moved to the same midwestern town Jack calls home.
When Jack learns Chad is running for president of his daughter’s school board, he decides to run to settle old scores.But parent politics prove more cutthroat than Jack could have imagined, and he’s facing unexpected challenges in his marriage, too, forcing him to question his role in the family. Suddenly, the election is about more than Jack’s past. It’s an opportunity to discover the person he wants to become.
People grow up, but some high school rivalries never die. It’s time Chad Henson got schooled once and for all—and for Jack to learn a few things of his own.
False advertisement by Amazon Kindle First...again. Supposed to be funny and relatable. Big NO! What is funny about burning down your place of work because of negligence, heating pizza in the microwave on a piece of aluminum foil and leaving it to go to the parking lot??? This stupidity is on the very early part of the book and the reason he lost his job and eventually becomes a stay-at-home dad. At the playground, his daughter loses her underwear to a squirrel yet he is not concerned and continues talking to a former classmate and bully, the antagonist Chad. I skimmed through but finished the darned book because I'm a masochist and because I want to give it the least star on Goodreads.
They Came to Baghdad is one of Agatha Christie's highly successful forays into the spy thriller genre. In this novel, Baghdad is the chosen location for a secret superpower summit. But the word is out, and an underground organisation is plotting to sabotage the talks.
Into this explosive situation stumbles Victoria Jones, a young woman with a yearning for adventure who gets more than she bargains for when a wounded secret agent dies in her hotel room. Now, if only she could make sense of his final words: 'Lucifer ... Basrah ... Lefarge ...'
I don't think I can rate any Agatha Christie's novel lower than 4 stars. I wasn't expecting much with this short story but surprised I really loved it. The story and writing are superb as usual.
The book is more of a spy thriller than a murder mystery. The main protagonist is Victoria Jones, a young woman who is bored with her low paying job as a typist. She meets and gets enamored with a very charming and handsome young man, Edward who is going to Baghdad in a few days. Victoria, on a whim, decides she wants to follow him without knowing his full name and with just 4 pounds in her pocket.
Victoria is a pathological liar who invents stuff without batting an eyelash and people believe her because she is resourceful, pretty, and charming herself. She succeeds in going to Baghdad armed with just her lies and meets Edward. Victoria gets to know a lot of people, some are famous personalities, who are also in Baghdad for some reason. She gets into dangerous situations and is able to get out of them, of course, and helps in preventing a crazy group of people from implementing their sinister plan during a summit with the American President and Russian Premier.
Bequeathed a rare diamond by her late uncle, heiress Rachel Verinder has no idea it was stolen from an Indian temple or that it has a cursed history. When the diamond disappears on her eighteenth birthday, multiple suspects - including Rachel’s suitor, Franklin Blake - are implicated in its theft. Determined to prove his innocence, Franklin begins his own investigation. Did one of his fellow Englishmen steal the jewel? Or was it whisked back to India?
The case, which unfolds through multiple narratives, takes startling twists and turns in pursuit of the truth.
Widely considered the first great detective novel written in English, The Moonstone is one of Wilkie Collins’s most famous works.
It is considered the first detective novel but I beg to disagree. The Moonstone was written in 1848 and Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders In The Rue Morgue came out first in 1841. Yes it is a very short story with less than 100 pages but C. Auguste Dupin was the first fictional detective in the first detective story ever written and the most brilliant IMHO. M. Dupin and Poe's story inspired both Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Moonstone is unnecessary long and not very exciting. I was bored to death and finishing it was a chore. It's more like a family drama and the center of the story is the missing moonstone. I didn't like the writing style with multiple points of view divided into their own chapters written in the first person - my pet peeve.
I find the book too simple and pedestrian. And too contrived. The detective, Sergeant Cuff is sharp and smart but I never warmed up to his character. His character is as dry as the Sahara. The rest of the characters are not likable specially the housemaid who has a physical defect and not pretty. She fell in love with a young man way above her station. Adoration and unreasonable protection of a person who doesn't look at or even acknowledge her is crazy and it isn't the fault of the man. She is a housemaid in the 1800s! The whole mystery is revolved around him and he isn't even aware that it is so.
I find the story very weak and doesn't need to be 600 pages long. It was serialized so understandable but the editors should have trimmed it to just a third because the rest is just group of words that do not contribute much to the story. I skipped one chapter after realizing it has nothing to do with the narrative and is totally totally not needed. Totally. I'm not kidding.
tags: Korean movie, mystery, Park Chan-Wook, police investigation, thriller
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An insomniac detective becomes infatuated with a young and beautiful widow after she becomes the prime suspect in his latest murder investigation.
Park Chan-Wook (director of Old Boy) deftly tackles a "platonic love story" between a police detective and his main murder suspect. The highly stylized movie is almost perfect with its story, screenplay, acting, directing, cinematography, music, and a touch of humor. The movie is long at 2 hours 18 minutes and too complicated [maybe just for me] that it needs a second and maybe a third viewing to fully appreciate. I was entertained and liked it nevertheless.
Quirky lead detective Hae-Joon has trouble sleeping and his relationship with his wife looks headed towards divorce territory. He carries several small stuff, example - eyedrops, in his jacket that has 12 pockets and his pants has extra pockets too. Then he meets the beautiful and enigmatic widow who is much younger than her deceased husband who died while climbing a steep and rocky mountain. One of the detectives asks why anyone would want to climb it and that it should be illegal to climb the said peak. Detective Hae-Joon is too nice to the suspect from the get-go even buying sushi boxes for their lunch which means he is already infatuated with her. He keeps an eye on her almost 24/7, sleeping and spying on her in his car on the parking lot, recording her every movement including her eating habits like ice cream and leaving the left over melting outside of the fridge. In other words, he is obsessed but at the same time trying to find if she killed her husband.
I like these dialogues
Det. Hae-Joon to murder suspect Seo-Rae, thereby confessing to her how he feels
You said I have "class". Do you know where that comes from? Confidence. I used to be a very confident police officer. But...Because of this obsession I have for a woman...I screwed up the investigation. I am collapsing.
Detective's wife to him and when she took a phone call for him
You're only happy when surrounded by murderers and violence. Congratulations. There's been a murder.
The murderous widow is played by Chinese actress Tang Wei who became famous in the 2007 Ang Lee movie Lust, Caution. She doesn't seem to age since that movie came out. She's 42 now but still looks early 30s. She's so pretty, has a very nice voice both in Korean and Mandarin languages, and is a very good actress. She's married to Korean director screenwriter Kim Tae-Yong and speaks very good Korean. In the movie she occasionally speaks Mandarin to her telephone app to translate into Korean.
Worldwide excitement is escalating in Seoul in the days leading up to the opening of the 1988 Summer Olympics. The fashion is old school, the music is sentimental and the racing is the best in the world. The drivers of the Sanggye-dong Supreme Team receive an offer they can’t refuse and become mired in a VIP slush fund investigation.
I love this movie 💗💗💗because I love movies set in the 80s. What's not to love? 1988 Seoul, the clothes, music, the actors.
I remember when I went to Seoul a few months before the 1988 Olympics and everything was Olympics Olympics Olympics. I even bought a hand fan with the swirly logo. I think it's kept somewhere in the basement. LOL
American brands, culture, clothing, and food were very popular at the time, specially Pizza Hut and McD's. Koreans were obsessed with anything American. In the movie Park Yoon-Hee wore a jacket with Washington Redskins and her brother Park Dong-Wook, played by Yoo Ah-In was wearing a jacket with Oakland Raiders at the end of the movie. The pair of Nike shoes offered to a rival is so spot on.
Most of my favorite Korean actors are in the movie but I specially love Lee Kyu-Hyung and his 80s clothes. He is one of the more versatile Korean actors in Korean dramas and movies.
Highly recommended for fans of Korean movies and set in the 80s.
Leni and Gina are identical twins who have secretly swapped their lives since they were children, culminating in a double life as adults, but one of the sisters goes missing and everything in their perfectly schemed world turns into chaos.
I couldn't even finish Episode 1. The leads, Michelle Monahan and Matt Bomer, are both terrible actors. Why are they whispering all the time? Why? Do the director and these actors think this is good acting? It is exasperating. On the opposite side, the lead policewoman is loud and overacting. Not a single actor is believable and acts natural. What you see are ACTORS IN FRONT OF A CAMERA RECITING THEIR LINES. Who could finish watching this lame series? Not me.
tags: favorite, hardboiled detective-crime, mystery, Philip Marlowe
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From GoodRreads
Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to the only friend he can trust: private investigator Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is willing to help a man down on his luck, but later Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe is drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?
The Long Goodbye is Raymond Chandler's 6th Philip Marlowe novel, written in 1953. I consider it a masterpiece and have added it to my favorites list. The first book, The Big Sleep, is also a 5-star book and I loved it but it didn't earn a spot on my favorites list. Books 2 to 5 got 3 and 4 stars from me.
Philip Marlowe developed a friendship with and a "savior" complex for the down on his luck Terry Lennox. Twice, 3 times, 4 times he helped Terry. The short [about 400 pages] novel's prose is IMHO most brilliant sometimes poetic has numerous memorable characters - the most beatiful blonde femme fatale, cuckoos, vicious thugs. Throughout the story, Chandler has seamlessly inserted his opinion on law agencies, politicians, media, society's morals and ethics, rich people, consumerism, etc. without sounding preachy, just matter of fact. They were true in the 1950s and even truer nowadays.
The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.
The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.
He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.
And these
We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return.
What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don’t like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on.
Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.
Let the law enforcement people do their dirty work. Let the lawyers work it out. They write the laws for other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers called judges so that other judges can say the first judges were wrong and the Supreme Court can say the second lot were wrong. Sure there's such a thing called law. We're up to our necks in it. About all it does is make business for lawyers.
Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.
tags: action, adventure, based on video game, Magellan's lost treasure, Netflix streaming
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A very short synopsis from IMDB
Street-smart Nathan Drake is recruited by seasoned treasure hunter Victor "Sully" Sullivan to recover a fortune amassed by Ferdinand Magellan, and lost 500 years ago by the House of Moncada.
tags: Korean movie, mutant virus, Netflix tudum, nonstop action
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
From Netflix
A man wakes up missing his memories. Directed by a mysterious voice from a device in his ear, he sets off on a hostage rescue mission rife with danger.
Joo Won loses his boyish image and he bulked up adding more than 14 pounds in muscles, has buzz cut hair and tattoos. He is naked wearing only a thong in the opening scenes which includes a bloody seemingly endless knife fight inside a bath house full of yakuza and one naked lady with a gun. I have never seen so many naked butts in a movie in all my life. 😆
The action is dizzying and really nonstop. I like it regardless of the CGI and story. Netflix needs more entertaining action movies like this.
Tamara Falcó is the 40 year old daughter of Filipino Spanish socialite Isabel Preysler and the late Marquess of Griñón, whatever that is. She is the half sister of singer Enrique Iglesias on her mother's side. She is a TV personality and influencer [her mom is the original trendsetter - influencer in today's lingo], also a chef and now she wants to open a pop-up restaurant in their rundown castle which her father inherited from an aunt. It is a large property with its own chapel and pet cemetery but the castle itself needs major renovation with its crumbling roof and peeling walls.
