Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from November, 2017

Kenneth Branagh's "Murder on the Orient Express" is a Stunning Adaptation of the Agatha Christie Classic: Review

Film Review: Murder on the Orient Express I first read Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express when I was in the sixth grade. I needed to pick a book for an independent reading assignment for English class and after an arduous forty-five minutes browsing the shelves of Barnes and Noble, I settled on MOTOE , not knowing much about it, aside from that it was a classic. Reading it, I fell in love. The glamorous and exotic location! The murder with no logical solution! The funny little detective! The impossible-for-me-to-pronounce character names! OK, that last one was not one of the reasons I fell in love with the book, but, seriously, there was mabye one character whose name I felt comfortable pronouncing. Anyway, that experience began my minor obsession with all things Agatha Christie. I read more books ( Death on the Nile ! Death in the Clouds ! Evil Under the Sun !), sought out film and TV adaptations (Billy Wilder's The Witness for the Prosecution remains

Who is The Black Hood on Riverdale? Here are 5 Possible Suspects

There's a killer on the loose in Riverdale , the setting of the CW's dark adaptation of the Archie Comics, now in its second season. He's called the Black Hood, a reference to the vigilante superhero comic book of the same name published by Archie Comics. So far, he has shot Fred Andrews (Luke Perry), murdered Ms. Grundy (Sarah Habel) with a cello bow, and shot at Midge and Moose ( Emilija Baranac and Cody Kearsley), all while wearing his executioner's hood-style hood, which is how he got his name. His letter to the Coopers in the third episode of the season reveals he is targeting victims that he sees as criminals or hypocrites and the fourth episode revealed he got the idea from Betty's (Lili Reinhart) speech from the end of last season, where she pleaded that "Riverdale must do better." It's looking like figuring out the Black Hood's identity will be the big mystery of season two, so I have put together a list of possible suspects. Note: Th

Ranking the Five Best On Screen Portrayals of Hercule Poirot

Before Kenneth Brnagh dons the iconic mustache in the highly-anticpated new adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (in theatres November 10th), I thought I would take a look back at some of the most famous portryals of Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie's signature creation, Poirot is peculiar. meticulous, and at times, bombastic and arrogant, but he always solves the case in the end, with the help of his little grey cells. Countless actors have portrayed the Belgian detective on stage, screen, or radio, including Charles Laughton, Austin Trevor, Orson Welles, and Ian Holm. But this list focuses on TV or film adaptations just becuase those are the ones I have seen. 5. Alfred Molina (2001) Molina played Poirot in the 2001 TV movie version of Murder on the Orient Express . He's a terrific actor, generally, but his Poirot is not distinctive or memorable in any way. The accent is not great, the mustache is not great, and he is not eccentric enough to get away with bei