Restrictions have eased all around the place but it’s only a matter of time before shit hits the fan again and right now more and more people I know are now getting the “spicy cough” regardless of all their precautions. SO here’s another list of movies to consider for when (not if) you go into isolation…
I wasn’t able to use this data like I’d originally planned so I decided to just make it into a nice big diagram. All of the actors who won, were nominated for, or otherwise received Oscars and also appeared in films based on the works of Agatha Christie. (Easily the franchise that has attracted the most number of such actors).
That, to me, is the interest of this case. We are cut off from all the normal routes of procedure. Are these people whose evidence we have taken speaking the truth, or lying? We have no means of finding out—except such means as we can devise ourselves. It is an exercise, this, of the brain.
Through quirks of media mega-mergers and studios shunting movies to streaming during the pandemic, Kennth Branaugh has relased three films since 2020. Belfast is probably the universally agreed upon best and Artemis Fowl the worst. Death on the Nile is somewhere in the middle, un victim je pense, of a mediocre script adaptation and too-serious tone.
What happened to make this movie so bleh? I think Michael Green happened. Some of his changes from book to film are modern and inspired (the Otterbournes and the Schuylers); some are odd (the crew announcing “we’re going ashore” then not having that be significant? Flashbacks, really serious flashbacks, Poirot getting Hulk-angry.) These tonal choices are consistent with his and Branaugh’s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express and I think they misfired in that adaptation as well.
The cast is … not bad. Agatha Christie’s work merits more context than I’m putting on it here, but the people caught up in a murder plot are usually rich, glamourous, and largly assholes. To that end, disliking anyone in the cast won’t necessarily negatively impact your viewing. But back to Christie for a moment: her characters frequently exhibit racist, xenophobic, sexist, greedy behavior. Sometimes we’re meant to see these as flaws and sometimes it’s Poirot’s benevolent sexism or something akin to the “period racism” tag on AO3. Christie definitely trucked in sterotypes we’d call racist and would apply them to characters of which we’re supposed to be suspicious. This is stripped out of this movie and that’s a good thing.
Despite the music being slightly less ponderous than Murder on the Orient Express (Patrick Doyle provides the music in both) the whole journey remains too serious. I don’t mean that murder isn’t serious but the prologue is Poirot’s flashback to WWI, a scene that I suppose only Branaugh’s staus saved from being cut. We witness Poirot’s emotional breakdown discussing love with Jacqueline and his impressive anger which makes him seem a little unhinged. I’d be unhinged in these cricumstances but he gets so worked up it undermines our confidence in the great detective.
What makes this worth the watch are the costumes and setting. Venture any farther upriver and you’re bound to be dissapointed.
Does anyone remember when Murder On The Orient Express came out and they had a website where you had to find all these clues (the url was cluesareeverywhere.com if I remember correctly)? I remember one of the ‘rewards’ for finding a clue was a Youtube video that was a recipe for hot chocolate and I really want to find it again
The hot chocolate recipe video was called “Hildegarde’s Death by Chocolate” and among the ingredients were dark chocolate liqueur, chocolate squares and chocolate truffles. I can’t find it on the official channels (youtube, instagram, twitter) but I downloaded it in 2017 after playing the viral campaign game, and I’ve screencapped the footage for you.
Ingredients:
2oz dark chocolate liqueur 10oz whole milk 8oz heavy cream, separated 4oz dark chocolate squares 2 chocolate truffles 2 cinnamon sticks
Chop dark chocolate & truffles.
Simmer together whole milk, 4oz of cream & cinnamon sticks.
Add dark chocolate and liqueur. (First pic shows Hildegarde taking the cinnamon sticks out of the pan, before she adds the chocolate bits.)
Cool for 5-7 minutes. Whip 4oz of cream until it peaks.
Sprinkle chopped chocolate truffles. (Obviously, don’t add “poison” like Hildegarde does in her recipe! ;))
There you go! Bon appétit! The official twitter and instagram also posted cocktail recipes inspired by MOTOE hereandhere.
what movie do y’all know front to back like it doesn’t even have to necessarily be Good,, it’s just something you’ve seen so many times that the dialogue is printed into the very core of your being
21 – MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS by Agatha Christie.Yeah, I’m familiar enough with the story to remember who did it, but not why or how it plays out, cos my set of the Suchet Poirots doesn’t go up to this one, and I’m planning to watch the Branagh version which is over Xmas, so…
It’s another classic Poirot plot, from 1934, and written most in the form of interview dialogues, with very little description, which actually works to its favour; it reads as if Christie was thinking of turning it into either a play or a radio drama. Poirot’s dialogue does more than enough to give him character - the other characters less so, none are particularly dimensional – and it’s definitely Suchet’s voice I hear, rather than Finney or Ustinov, in the books. If ever I read one that I think sounds like Malkovich, I’ll take that as a viable diagnosis of dementia…
Poirot in it does make up one thing out whole cloth rather tan from clues we’re presented with, which is unusual for Christie. Fortunately for him, it turns out to be true, and to be fair he does admit later to guessing at stuff based on the sort of household he expects an American one to be like. I still thank she was pushing it there though.
The ending is very sudden, and is open to different interpretations of Poirot’s attitude. In the Suchet version ISTR him being angry or annoyed at the decision, but I read the printed version as being perfectly OK with it…
