FILM 2021: MURDER MYSTERY

FILM 2021: MURDER MYSTERY

TRIVIA: This movie set a new Netflix record. Netflix claims that, in the first three days, 30,869,863 accounts watched the film: 13,374,914 North American accounts and and an additional 17,494,949 accounts watching from the rest of the world.

Adam Sandler's real life wife, Jackie Sandler, makes a cameo appearance as the flight attendant on the plane. 

Andrea Bendewald, who plays a customer in the salon, is Jennifer Aniston's best friend. Bendewald was maid of honour at her wedding to Brad Pitt and guest starred in the sitcom "Friends."

Luke Evans and Victor Turpin are a couple in real life.

FILM 1840: THE INSTITUTE

FILM 1840: THE INSTITUTE

A documentary on the Jejune Institute, a mind-bending San Francisco phenomenon where 10,000 people became "inducted" without ever quite realizing what they'd signed up for.

(Find more information (preferably after you’ve watched the documentary as it gives away a lot) here: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jp54ky/game-or-cult-the-alternate-reality-of-the-jejune-institute)

TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (2017)

TRIVIA: Everett McGill came out of retirement after 17 years to reprise his role as Big Ed Hurley.

This belated season was first teased by simultaneous tweets, "That gum you like is going to come back in style," from Mark Frost and David Lynch at 11:30am, the same time that Agent Dale Cooper is first seen dictating to his secretary Diane and "entering the town of Twin Peaks" in the original pilot episode of Twin Peaks (1990).

During the audition process for Twin Peaks (2017), David Lynch requested the actors to perform a lengthy monologue about themselves.

During a Q&A on the annual TLV International Student Film Festival on June 2016, David Lynch said that working on Twin Peaks (2017) again after so many years was one of the greatest experiences he ever had.

Michael J. Anderson was approached to reprise his role as The Man From Another Place, but negotiations fell through over pay disputes. Anderson later took his anger to social media, going so far as to accuse Lynch of rape, incest, murder and encouraging suicide. A spokesperson for Anderson denied to comment further, only to say that Anderson would not be doing any interviews "for the foreseeable future."

The actor who portrays the Security Guard, Michael Bisping, is the 2016 UFC Middleweight world champion.

FILM 1604: DIAL M FOR MURDER

TRIVIA: Warner Brothers insisted on shooting the movie in 3-D although the craze was fading and Alfred Hitchcock was sure the movie would be released flat. The director wanted the first shot to be that of a close-up of a finger dialing the letter M on a rotary dial telephone, but the 3-D camera would not be able to focus such a close-up correctly. Hitchcock ordered a giant finger made from wood with a proportionally large dial built in order to achieve the effect.

During the attack scene according to the script, Grace Kelly was to get out of bed, put her robe on, and answer the phone when it rang. Grace Kelly contended that no woman, being at home, would put a robe on to answer the phone. Alfred Hitchcock agreed, and so the scene was shot with her in her nightgown.

Alfred Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to star, but Warner Bros felt that he would be miscast as a villain.

Filmed in 3-D, which explains the prevalence of low-angle shots with lamps and other objects between the audience and the cast members. There was only a brief original release in 3-D, followed by a conventional, "flat" release; The New York Times review mentioned it opened with the "flat" release at the Paramount in New York. The 3-D version was re-issued in 1980.

At their first meeting, the untrustworthy Captain Swann is wearing a tie the colors of a Guards regimental tie. However this is not a genuine tie, as the diagonal stripes run in the American direction, opposite to British style. This is a contemporary detail, used by spivs.* The tie resembles the trustworthy Guards tie well enough to fool most, but gives an excuse if a genuine Guardsman queries one's service record. (*"Spiv" is a Britishism for "a man who lives by his wits without regular employment" [Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, eleventh edition].)

Ranked #9 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Mystery" in June 2008.

Warner Brothers forced Alfred Hitchcock to make the movie to fulfill his contract - such was his disinterest that he claimed he could have phoned in his direction, and that the action wouldn't have been any less interesting if he'd staged it in a phone booth.

CAMEO: Alfred Hitchcock: about 13 minutes into the film, Hitchcock can be seen on the left side of the reunion photograph. As he is only seen in a photo, this is the final Hitchcock film in which he does not appear in person.

BOOK 155: THE NEW YORK TRILOGY: PAUL AUSTER

Originally published sequentially as City of Glass (1985), Ghosts (1986) and The Locked Room (1986), it has since been collected into a single volume.

Ostensibly presented as detective fiction, the stories of The New York Trilogy have been described as "meta-detective-fiction", "anti-detective fiction", "mysteries about mysteries", a "strangely humorous working of the detective novel", "very soft-boiled", a "metamystery" and a "mixture between the detective story and the nouveau roman", This may classify Auster as a postmodern writer whose works are influenced by the "classical literary movement" of American postmodernism through the 1960s and 70s. There is, however, "a certain coherence in the narrative discourse, a neo-realistic approach and a show of responsibility for social and moral aspects going beyond mere metafictional and subversive elements" which distinguish him from a "traditional" postmodern writer. The New York Trilogy is a particular form of postmodern detective fiction which still uses well-known elements of the detective novel (the classical and hardboiled varieties, for example) but also creates a new form that links "the traditional features of the genre with the experimental, metafictional and ironic features of postmodernism."

ADAPTATIONS: City of Glass was adapted in 1994 into a critically acclaimed experimental graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. It was published as City of Glass: A Graphic Mystery in 2004.

In 2009, Audible.com produced an audio version of The New York Trilogy, narrated by Joe Barrett, as part of its Modern Vanguard line of audiobooks.

In 2016, Edward Einhorn adapted City of Glass as a play Off-Broadway, at the New Ohio.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Trilogy)

BOOK 148: THE DROWNING OF ARTHUR BRAXTON: CAROLINE SMAILES

BLURB: An urban fairy tale from the acclaimed author of 99 Reasons Why.

Arthur Braxton runs away from school.

He hides out in an abandoned building, an old Edwardian bathhouse.

He discovers a naked woman swimming in the pool.

From this point on, nothing will ever be the same.

The Drowning of Arthur Braxton is an unflinching account of the pain and trauma of adolescence and of how first love can transform the most unhappy of lives into something miraculous. It is a dark and brooding modern fairy tale from one of our most gifted writers.

REVIEW: I’m going to keep this short, and so I probably wont do this justice.  First of all I am too old for this book.  It is a teenager’s book, one of those ones with sex and swearing in to make it really appealing to the teens, make them feel like they’re doing something a bit naughty when they read it.  The word ‘cock’ was used, in my opinion, far too many times and as an adult I found it juvenile. However the book it narrated by teenagers, so then one could argue that the writer really does have an ear for the way teenage boys speak. And they do say cock a lot.

Many who read it describe this book as an urban fairy tale but I think it’s missing something that a fairy tale should have, it’s missing heart.  And I agree with many reviewers that Laurel (a criminally underused character that you start to connect with in the first chapter) is the most (or only) appealing character in the whole thing.

However, despite my criticisms, I did read this quickly and despite the fact that I knew what would happen in the end (Clue: it’s in the title) I did want to read the whole thing and it did keep me engaged. I must say it wasn’t what I was expecting but it was a quick read especially since the chapters with dialogue were laid out as a script and without the added nuisance of he said/she said, a technique I would like to see more often if I’m honest but also found quite lazy writing, I’m torn by this book, I am. Read it, you’ll either be confused or you’ll love it.

(A side note: If I’m honest, I didn’t like Arthur Braxton, I know teenage boys can be like this, but they don’t have to be, you should feel sorry for him, he’s going through a terrible time but you don’t because he’s a twat (and this is what he calls himself.)