After the funeral by Agatha Christie

I love it. It's good, isn't it? My book ends at page 237, and I got to the right solution at page 183... before, I had no clue at all. Not too bad after all, isn't it? It could have been worse.
A bit of plot:
It starts with the funeral of a rich man, and after the funeral, when all the heirs are together one of them, a well-know-space-out-woman lets out that he was killed. No one really believes that, but they are all bothered in some way by this. Then, she's found murdered, so a friend of the recently-dead man calls in for Hercule Poirot to investigate.
SPOILERS ahead, so you be warned.
I had no idea until that point, it could have been anyone, then like it often happens Poirot got them all chatting, and listening carefully I noticed that Miss Gilchrist said that it was so beautiful that table with the wax flowers under the glass bell, and I thought: the glass bell got broken before she arrived! Later Poirot says that she couldn't have seen the flowers that are now in the cupboard, but it's the same thing, they had been put in the cupboard after the glass bell got broken in fact. That's the detail that tells you everything, because one thing leads to another. How could she know there were wax flowers under a glass bell? She must have seen them before. When? We have no more doubts when Helen is attacked because she was thinking of what was wrong that day after the funeral, she thought of aunt Cora turning her head in her usual way, while at the same time watching herself in the mirror, and I got it. She turned the head the wrong way.
Before that page she was as much a suspect as many of them, which of course means nothing. When the art critic came to her house I had asked myself, is he really a critic and a friend, or maybe he came here to say a painting was worth nothing and maybe try to take him away, but he didn't do anything strange. With my bad memory I had forgot about the nuns, forgot the smell of painting, and had no idea how much it would cost to open a teashop from scratch, and I think it's not so very perfect to say that while Miss Gilchrist was at the funeral the real Cora was at home asleep because of sedative that had been put in her tea. I mean, how could she be sure she would not wake up before she went back? It looked perfectly okay for them, but I would have thought that a bit risky. Still, I'm not an expert on sedatives, I've never taken one, so I don't know how strong they are.
Anyway it was fascinating this finale, because there was a young man who had lost his client's money and was in trouble, there were two young women desperately in love with their husbands who wanted money for them, just like the two husbands seemed suspicious. There was an older man who was not as ill as he liked to say, and that wanted so much the power money can give you, and his wife who also would have done anything for him.  They all inherited a lot of money, but the murderer was not one of them. The murderer was a woman who would not get a lot of money out of her scheme, but just enough to start a new life and make her dream come true, because often money depends on how much you've got.
Ask around, and people who have 800 a month will tell you "if I had 1200 it would be more comfortable", but if they had 1500 they would say "if I had 2000 I could make that trip I want so much", but if they had 2000 they'd say... you get the idea. It turned out she could make 5000 out of it, and to her it was a lot.


ITA: Dopo le esequie

The murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Love this, I love this book , it's great, because is one of those real Hercule Poirot books, where everything's there, and even if you think you've been tricked you're really not, because everything Poirot sees we see it too, and we all could arrive at the solution, we just don't.
Now don't say : I knew it, because it's easier when you've already heard of it, or read it long ago, or seen a representation of it, or whatever, maybe even seeing a similar plot in one of the million crime stories our screens are filled with these days. Consider what this is, the fact that it came out in 1926, that is written wonderfully, that every clue is there but so well hidden you don't notice, the fact that Poirot gives even a blackmailer and a murderer a choice, so to save embarassment and pride to the family, and doing so not only excuses suicide but encourages it (in this very peculiar, extreme circumstance, of course, not always!).
I love than among all the things, Poirot finds the time and the heart to help two people in love. I love the characters of this book, the doctor's sister, all gossip and inventive deductions :-p  Miss Flora, so loyal and determined. The others too, I like, everything is good about this book.
It's really great, I've never found a detective-story-book so well written and so good as Agatha Christie's books, this one being among the best.
She doesn't just say that the detective realised something by looking at one thing or hearing another. She lets you see everything that he sees as the story goes on, and then tells you what he made of all the little things that you may or may not have even noticed, but that were there.
SPOILERS
just the usual warning, before revealing the finale.
Come on, be honest, how many of you screamed 'I knew it'? No, better saying how many of you can say they knew it before Poirot invited everyone at his house to reveal the truth??? At the invitation I got it, but honestly before that I didn't have a clue! Thing is, it was sometimes hard to remember that he was not Hastings and he was not Dr . Watson.  What with him playing the same role, what with him being a doctor, it's easy to associate the characters, and therefore keeping us away from the truth, because Hastings or Watson would have never done such a disgraceful thing as blackmail, and a murder!! Hastings was maybe a bit dumb but he was good and honest, and Watson was a doctor: slow maybe but brave and loyal. This doctor Sheppard however is not.
Then we come near the end, I'm still with no clue, when Poirot invites the people of the house and the doctor to his house, and he says very clearly that 'all the people coming are suspects', and that's why he doesn't want Caroline Sheppard to join them. It could be easy not to notice this if I didn't know Poirot and Mrs Christie, but I do, and I know that they are precise, and I see that Poirot made no exceptions, and for the first time I thought: "Is the doctor a suspect?", and then it occured to me that being their doctor it was strange that he only had a vague suspicion about Mrs.Ferrars poisoning her husband, if one could know who better than him? How could anyone else know and blackmail her? I mean, Caroline always said she knew, but in a way it was just gossip, no proff of any kind, not enough to blackmail anyone, is it? But a doctor could have or find the proof.
Only then I got it, so shortly before he revealed it...

ITA l'assassinio di Roger Ackroyd

They do it with mirrors by Agatha Christie

Miss Marple is the main character here. This one was tricky, because the whole time I suspected the right person, but couldn't think of the right "how" because there was an accomplice and that's tricky. Especially here, it was hard to guess why this accomplice would do it. This is why I don't particularly love it. Well, I like it, yes, of course, it's written very well, but she sort of tricks you in the end.
We meet Miss Marple right at the beginning, talking to her friend Ruth worried for her sister Carrie Louise, even if she doesn't know why. So Miss Marple goes on a mission to find out if something's really wrong at Carrie Louise's home. They set up a home for difficult kids, to keep them away from crimes, and there is her new husband, her daughter from a previous marriage, the daughter of her adopted daughter now dead and her husband, the two sons of her previous husband but not hers, her faithful helper and a troubled young man.
One day, while a little drama is going on between the husband and the troubled young man, in his room the son of her first husband , been here only for a couple of days on a misterious reason, is found murdered.
Everyone is questioned by the police, and Miss Marple reveals the real reason or her staying and helps with the investigations, and eventually resolves the mistery.
Of course.

ITA Miss Marple giochi di prestigio

A murder is announced - by Agatha Christie

Not one of my favourites, but still a good one because of Agatha Christie's amazing writing. The most important thing to remember while reading this is " there are no typos!" because when I read it first time and I saw sometimes the wrong vowel I thought maybe it was just a typo, and at the end discovered it was not, it was instead very important! It was actually the key to everything!
 I thought it funny when Edmund talked of having written a play , a farse called " elephants do forget", because I knew she had written "elephants can remember", although while reading it I didn't know which book came first. I know now because I checked on wiki, and it says that 'elephants' came later.
The story starts in a lovely country-village-style, a look to many people reading the local paper where they can find all the news (and the gossip) about the people they know around there. One morning they read this :" A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks, at 6:30 p.m. Friends accept this, the only intimation" , quite strange for all, no doubt, they think it's a game they're all invited to, but then someone is actually murdered! 
In this book there is Miss Marple helping with the investigations, and the nice thing about it is that this time the officer doing the investigations is not dumb at all, is a good cop. Not brilliant like Miss Marple, but a good cop.

SPOILERS 
warning for those who don't yet know how it ends.
Why did I keep thinking it was a typo, or the spaced-out woman making a mistake.. I should have thought more about it, after all this is an Agatha Christie's book, paying attention is important! For once I noticed it, and didn't think it was important! Maybe if I had payed more attention and noticed that Dora "Bunny" Banner was the only one to use both "Letty" and "Lotty", I would have thought more of it. In her books you must focus particularly when people appear to be chatting about! It is true that while chatting with Miss Marple, Bunny keeps calling Letitia both Letty and Lotty, and saying how beautiful she had been, and how much she had suffered, brave and patient, so much that now she deserves some compensation, but also that she had always been an intelligent girl, maybe not very pretty but destined to success in life... I should have thought that Lotty could mean Charlotte!
Some pieces of the book looked a bit boring, but later on revealed themselves to be important...
It's touching how much Miss Hinchcliffe is suffering for the death of Miss Murgatroyd, her friend. So she did love her, in spite of all the insults, always telling her she hadn't got a brain. 
This book ends on a funny note, with two of the characters coming back from the honeymoon, and going to order the newspapers they want to receive, and they have to insist quite a lot that they do NOT want the local gazette, since it it unbelievable to the shopkeeper, and then he goes to repeat the order to his mother and she just goes Of course they want it, you misunderstood, how else could they know what's going on around here??? :lol: lovely country town :-)

ITA un delitto avrà luogo

Ten little Indians - And then there were none - by Agatha Christie

Edit on 14 September 2023, when I reread it and noticed I hadn't written much about the book, about the plot itself.

First, let me tell you that there should be a movie made out of this book, but a good modern one, seriously thought through and seriously made, no silly escapes or romance. I found it's really difficult to make good movies about Christie's books, apparently nobody can do it without changing things here and there, but this book has been a masterpiece for more than 80 years, does it really need changing? 

No. Just good directing, good acting, a good setting with the right atmosphere... not easy but not impossible. The only 'change', if you can call it that, is that I would call it something like 'ten little penguins' and have little penguin statues of course, and possibly an island in the shape of a penguin. This way, they have no nationality, they have no gender, they're safe and cute, and in contrast with their fate. Perfect I'd say.

The movie should start with the old murders in order from the oldest to the most recent, probably starting with the doctor, or the general. The most recent should be Emily, Vera and then Marston.

There should be a little context to explain the murder, of course, as if they were very short movies, and all ten of them should be showed, no mention at all that one of them was not guilty. Morris can be left out of the movie, it would add time for no reason. 

After the murder, you should show the character now, travelling and arriving at the island, no words needed for that, saves time.

Once all ten have been shown, and the characters are all known to the audience, the thrill starts with the recorded voice and then one murder after the others, in a rising suspense, no long pause trying to create fear in the wrong way. The pace should be quick at this point.

With good lights and good scenography the atmosphere would be there already, good acting would keep you thrilled, and then at the end, while she hangs herself, with the room fading and the framing going out the house and up above the island, then showing a boat picking up a bottle, maybe a small bottle with a father and son fishing, and the curious child picking it up. Then an image of the police reading the letter, no words from them, only concentrated expressions. And since the moment of the hanging, the voice of the murderer explaining what he did and why he did it, a shorter version, of course, although a few silent images of how he found out about the murders would be great, like a crying, deeply unhappy Hugo.

Ok, if you think that maybe nowadays Miss Brent's story is not really believable, you could change it to a modern version: Beatrice had a girlfriend, bigot Emily fired her but also revealed it to everyone in the small bigot village, maybe even adding something of her own creation but that she actually believes, and Beatrice's family turned their backs on her. Amy wanted to go far away, Beatrice told her to stay to spite them all, but when bullies cause Amy's death (don't go too far, something like shoving her because she wouldn't stand for their verbal bullying of Beatrice, and Amy hitting her head the wrong way) and Beatrice feels guilty for staying and commits suicide. Tragic, and one more name on Emily's conscience, if she had one.

It would be great.

The book I read has Nigger Island as the name of the island where everything happens, because people back then thought its shape reminded of the physiognomy of black people, which was typically strong features, pronounced jaws and cheekbones, I think. I don't know why she called the book Ten Little Niggers, I don't know if that was an existing poem and that's where it came from, I have no idea and wasn't able to find out. Still, in Italy it's always been Ten Little Indians, so that's what it is to me. In America I think they chose the title And then there were none, which is a nice catchy phrase, but it gives too much away, I'm glad it was not the title here. 

So, the plot:

some people are going to Nigger Island, in Devon, bought by an American millionnaire then sold to a Mr Owen... nobody knows who that is, so gossip spreads.

-- Judge Lawrence Wargrave got an invitation from Lady Constance Culmington, a friend.

-- Vera Claythorne, a girl who found a job as a secretary and who got a letter from a Nancy Owen, had been in a trial and found innocent.

-- Captain Philip Lombard has done illegal things in lis life and gort away with it, and would certainly do it again.

-- Miss Emily Brent is 65 and a very old-fashioned person. She's been invited to a free holiday by someone she can't remember.

-- General MacArthur is avoided by many people for something that happened thirty years before.

-- Dottor Armstrong has been hired to go to the island for a generous amount of money, to discreetly look after Mrs Owen's health. He hot in trouble 15 years ago when he still used to drink, but got away with it.

-- Tony Marston is a young man with a fast car who likes drinking.

-- Mr Blore wrote in his little notebook the names of all the people above plus butler Rogers and his wife, planning on how to introduce himself to them. He goes for Mr Davis, from South Africa. 

They all reach the island by boat and meet the butler who tells them Mr Owen is late and will join them the next day. Vera finds in her room the little poem of the three little indians, as do the others. 

After a good dinner cooked by Mrs Rogers, a voice echoes in the room: they are all accused of causing someone's death: Armstrong of Louisa Mary Clees, Miss Brent of Beatrice Taylor, Mr Blore of James Stephen Landor, Vera of Cyril Ogilvie Hamilton, Lombard of 21 men belonging to an African tribe, MacArthur knowingly sent his wife's lover to death, Arthur Richmond. Marston of John and Lucy Combes, Tomas and Ethel Rogers of Jennifer Brady. Wargrave of Edward Seton.

Mrs Rogers faints. Lombard found a gramophone in the next room, but they don't know who played it. It turns out it were the Rogers, as per Mr Owen's orders. Mr Blore's identity is revealed, he's a private investigator, hired to spy on them. 

They all refuse the accusations, the judge too insists he sent a murderer to death. Vera recalls the cild she was in charge of, who went swimming and drowned. She tried to save him but failed, and not even his mother thought her guilty. The general says a man got killed in a mission, but it was war and those things happened. Lombard admits he abandoned those men, running away with all their food provisions. Marston ran over two kids, very unfortunate for him, he says, it was an accident. The Rogers worked for Miss Brady, her health was never good and the night she got worse the phone didn't work because of the bad weather. Blore got a man sentenced to life in prison for robbery and he died there in a year: he was the police detective on the case and testified against him, and got a promotion. Doctor Armstrong says he's never heard the name Clees, never had a patient with that name but he thinks back of the day he operated while drunk and with trembling hands. Miss Brent tells them nothing, only that she has nothing to feel guilty about, and she believes it.

They plan on leaving the next morning, when the boat will appear with Fred bringing bread and milk like every day. 

Marston drinks and falls down his chair, dead. There was something in his glass. Macarthur goes to sleep thinking back to the young wife he had so loved and the young man he had liked before discovering their affair and sending him off to die in his fury. Vera is also thinking back to the man that told her he loved her but couldn't marry her because he had no money. He could have been rich but then his nephew Cyril was born... still, Hugo loved the boy. 

Doctor Armstrong was having a nightmare when Rogers woke him. His wife wouldn't wake up, she died during the night. She's number 2. Emily Brent says it was probably her bad conscience while Blore thinks her husband killed her so she wouldn't confess. Emily Brent tells Vera her story: Beatrice was a nice girl working for her, but Emily discovered her true dissolute nature when the girl got pregnant. Emily didn't forgive such a thing, nor did her parents, and she fired Beatrice who later on committed suicide. Armstrong, Lombard and Blore explore the whole island, very small, and the house, but find no trace of anyone else. 

They all join for lunch, but the general was late, still sitting by the sea, so doctor Armstrong goes to him to call him in for lunch. Shortly, he's running back to tell them the general is dead. Number 3.

The fourth is Rogers, found the next morning. He was chopping wood for the morning fire, they saw another big axe had broken his skull.

The fifth is Emily Brent, someone injected her with something while there was a bee in the room. Only five are left, and they know one of them is the murderer, so they're all tense, suspicious.

The sixth is judge Wargrave, shot in the head with Lombard's gun, covered in a red 'vest' (the disappeared curtain) and a grey wig (made with grey wool that Emily said was missing). Only four now. They lock themselves in their rooms.

At night Blore hears noises, and after a thorough search neither he or Lombard can find Armstrong, and now the little statues on the dinner table are only three (meaning Armstrong should be dead too). Vera doesn't think so. She believes, according to the children's nursery rhyme, that it is a 'red herring' and Armstrong is still alive somewhere, and the murderer.

The eighth is Blore, dead under a window, his head having been smashed by a marble clock in the shape of a bear. Lombard and Vera were together, so neither of them could have done it, so now they're sure it was Armstrong, at least until they find his drowned body in the water.

Now that it's only the two of them, they are both sure the murderer is the other one, so Vera steals Lombard's gun from his pocket and when he makes a move to forcefully take it back, she shoots him. The ninth body is him.

She's alone but alive. The last one. She won. She goes back in the house, so so tired she only wants to sleep. She sees there are still three little statues so she throws two out the window and takes the third with her. She starts feeling strange, thinking of Cyril and Hugo, and when she enters her room she sees a rope hanging from the ceiling and a chair under it, and she hangs herself. She's the tenth.

Epilogue:

the police has found ten dead bodies on the island, and nobody alive. Mr Morris, the man who uesd to set up things for the island, is also dead. Detective Maine says Morris bought the island declaring he was doing it for a third party. The police speculates on how things could have gone, they have notes from the others up until Armstrong's 'disappearance', but no more. 

Until a fishing boat finds a bottle with a confession inside and sends it to Scotland Yard. It takes very little time to understand it was written by the judge.

Since his childhood, he had the desire to kill and at the same time was horrified by the idea, having a strong sense of justice. That's why he chose a career in the law. He liked sentencing people to death, but only guilty people, as was Seton. Not innocent ones. Getting old, the desire to kill got stronger. In time, a doctor told him of two servants who simply didn't promptly give the old woman the medicine she needed, and a nurse explained to him the dangers of alcohol by telling him of a drunk surgeon. Chatting with old military men made him aware of what Macarthur did. A man back from the Amazon told him about Lombard. A woman told him, indignantly, of Emily and her poor servant... and Hugo himself told him about Vera. By chance on a ship together, after a bit of alcohol, a deeply unhappy Hugo told him of a woman he was madly in love with, who caused a child to drown. Hugo loved that child.

For Wargrave, the tenth victim was Morris, who dealt in drugs and brought a young girl into it, who then killed herself when she was 21.

Wargrave was sick, not much to live, and he wanted to go out with a bang, not waiting passively for death. So: through Morris he bought the island, gave Morris a 'medicine' for his gastritis and decided to kill the others starting from the 'less guilty' onward. When it was time to fake his death, he had secretly agreed with Armstrong that by doing so he would have been able to better spy on the others. So Armstrong told the others that he was dead. Wargrave was carried to his own room, like all the dead ones, and was from that moment free to act. He lured Armstrong out on a red herring. Vera's death was a psychological experiment for him: the atmosphere inside the house, the guilty conscience regarding Cyril and the fact she had just shot a man, plus the way he had arranged her room, with the rope and the chair... she did it. 

He writes that the police could find out that he did what he did even without the confession, after all they must know Seton was guilty (it had been found out, yes), and so he was the only one innocent of the charges laid against all of them, and therefore he had to be the murderer - the police would not have guessed because they couldn't know all the others were really guilty, an example is that like everyone else except Hugo, they thought Vera was innocent.

After putting his confession in a bottle and entrusting it to the sea, he went to his room and shot himself, using a rubber band and other stuff to make the gun fall away from him.

By the time people will come looking, there will be ten dead bodies and an unsolved mystery.

The end.

(What I wrote in 2014:)

This is amazing, isn't it? Not a surprise because Agatha Christie's books are so often amazing! This story of the Ten Little Indians, which is the italian title (well, not like this, not in English- once translated it becomes the italian title Dieci piccoli indiani), 10 people of different social class, both male and females, young or old, who apparently have nothing in common, are brought to a little island by means of various, different pretexts, guests of a misterious host that never shows up, and that as soon as they are all reunited in the big house charges them all with causing someone's death, and declares them guilty. They can't escape from the island, and they have nobody to go to because they are the only people on the island. One by one they die in this order :
Ten little indians went out to dine,
one choke his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little indians sat up very late,
one overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little indians travelling in Devon,
one said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little indians chopping up sticks,
one chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six little indians playing with a hive,
a bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little indians going in for law,
one got in Chancery and then there were four.
Four little indians going out to sea,
a red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little indians walking in the zoo,
a big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two little indians sitting in the sun,
one got frizzled up and then there was one.
One little indian left all lone,
he went and hanged himself and then there were none.

They try to understand who's killing them all, but it's not easy, and the killings continue.
SPOILERS in case there in someone on the planet that still doesn't know how this famous book ends, don't spoil yourself the finale by reading what comes next.
There is also the realization of everyone's story, that the accusations as we go along in the book appears to be all right and just. Sometimes it was firing a girl and leaving her alone with no house and no money, or convincing a weak little boy that he could swim far knowing he wouldn't be able to make it back, or hitting someone with the car, all cases that could not be punished by the law, but that actually happened, and they are guilty of them. But are they all  guilty of what they've been accused of??? All of them?
The trick of the story is that one accusation was wrong, but he had to raise an accusation to himself too, to look just like one of the other.
The finale is amazing, all of the ten people dying, as later on the police state clearly that there were ten bodies on that island, and can't figure out what possibly happened, until they get their hands on the executioner's confession. It's interesting to read it, because he admits he always wanted to kill, but had such a sense of justice that could never really do it. In his final days, he thought he wanted to commit murder, but still had a sense of justice on himself, so he resorted to murdering criminals, and set out to find people that had escaped from justice while being guilty.
It was amazing reading it when I was very young, thus knowing nothing at all about it, and being surprised when the tenth died still with no clue whatsoever to who did it, because I couldn't believe the girl had orchestrated everything by herself, and anyway I turned the page to discover there was more, it was the police trying to figure it out without results, but stating clearly that she could not be the murderer because she hanged herself kicking the chair underneath her, but then the chair was picked up by someone else and placed neatly against the floor. I remember being puzzled and fascinated, and almost thinking the book would end that way, leaving the mistery unsolved, but there was yet another page, the surprising confession and recollection of how he did it. It was amazing. It was not my first Christie's book, I already loved them, but it made me love her even more.

ITA dieci piccoli indiani (e poi non rimase nessuno)

Double indemnity - 1944

Quite a good movie, even now. I like it, although I've read something about it and it seems the character of the woman is considered so evil, so terrible, when actually the man is worse. I mean, they are quite alike, she's a murderer too, just like him, but maybe it looked different because she was a woman, and it was easier to accept that behaviour from a man than a woman, I guess.
Fred MacMurray plays Walter Neff, and Barbara Stanwyck is Phyllis Dietrichson. The film is from 1944, but he says that it's now July 1938.
The film starts with him sitting down in his office, and we can see a hole in his jacket, making us think he got shot, probably. At those times there was no river of blood every time someone got shot, the clothes are immaculate, but with a hole ! He starts talking into a dictaphone (I read about those in an Agatha Christie's book, and it was real technology back then!) and recalling everything that happened, addressing his story to his friend Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), and starting with the words "I killed him. I killed him for money, and a woman. And I didn't get the money, and I didn't get the woman" which I think is an amazing start. Someone could even shout "Spoilers!" at this point, because he already told us what he did, why he did it, and how it ended...  Then there is the long flashback showing how the whole thing came to be.
He works for an insurance company, and he goes to meet Mr. Dietrichson but he's not in, so he talks to his wife, and is immediately taken by her. She comes downstairs walking slowly, with her long blonde curly hair and an anklet showing. Beautiful, no doubt, so pretty soon he forgets about the insurance and starts flirting with her with no shame. The scene of them flirting are great, btw! You should really check out those scenes, if you haven't seen them yet.
Anyway, he starts flirting , not caring at all that she's married, and when later she'll start talking about him about a life-insurance policy taken without his husband knowing about it, he understands it all at once, and goes away, but not for long. He keeps thinking about her, and when he sees her again he tells her he's crazy about her! They talk again about her husband, and he reveals that he has thought about something like this for a long time, long before he even knew her, and in fact it's him looking the more determined, and it's him thinking about the 'double indemnity'. Basically, she'd get 50.000 if he dies of an accident, but if it happens on a train she gets double! 100.000!!!!  It's still him planning the whole thing, and actually killing him while she's driving, and not even blinking! That's the big scene, isn't it? They don't show the murder in itself, but we see Neff going for his throat, we hear the strangling-noises, and we see Phyllis being totally cool about it!
They want to make it look as if the husband fell off the train and died, and at first it all goes well : accidental death. The company's boss suspects a suicide, but Keyes doesn't believe that. Keyes is the one working with Neff, the one that has  to understand if someone is trying to cheat the company and this time he doesn't know what to think. He can sense something's wrong, but it takes a while before he figures things out.
There's also Lola, Mr. Dietrichson's daughter, telling him about her suspicions on her mother's death. She thinks Phyllis killed her while she was her nurse, and also that now Phyllis is seeing her (Lola's) boyfriend Nino Zachetti quite often, and he starts thinking about killing Phyllis.
Phyllis tells him that she wanted to get rid of Lola too, so was filling Nino's head with lies about her in order to have him murder her. Phyllis shoots Walter, but only once, because she says in that moment she realised she cares about him, but he doesn't believe her and shoots her twice. Then he sees Nino walking towards her house, and does one good thing, sends him away, telling him 'Lola loves you, just go to her'.
It's 4.30 in the morning when he finishes his story, and he turns to see Keyes at the door, listening and looking at him. He had lost blood all that time, so he hasn't the strenght to go away. We hear Keyes calling the ambulance, because he has to, but we're not told if he'll make it or not, but I think definitely not.
The end is great, with Walter saying to Keyes that he didn't get to the truth "because the guy you were looking for was too close. Right across the desk from you" and Keyes says the sweetest thing. He says "closer than that" and Walter, smart guy, understands and says it back " I love you too". I loved this moment.
Then Keyes lights up a cigarette for Walter, which explains why they insisted during the whole movie to show us Keyes and his cigars, always without matches, and Walter always lighting the cigar for him.
The end, but anyway Walter either dies right away, or survives only to be hanged for murder, so not much of a difference. But I think he dies right away.
Great movie, really.
ITA La fiamma del peccato

Shadow of a doubt - 1943

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, which is saying a lot already!! Not his best film, but still a good one!
The scene of the river at the beginning reminded me of Vertigo!  There's a lot of music, but this kind of old films probably needed it, since everything went on so slowly.
The story is: the Newton family is a good, normal family, and daughter Charlie (Teresa Wright) lives in adoration of the figure of her uncle Charlie, her mother's brother, who actually is secretly a criminal. One day uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) comes to visit them, and she's so happy! But starts to notice odd things, and when the police get interested in him she understands what he is but don't want to make her mother sad with the revelation, so she keeps it to herself. But things are not so easy, because she worries him, and now he sees her as a threat.... but good always wins against evil, right? That's what I like about movies.Not like real life at all.
I like the bit when the father doesn't want to put the hat on the bad because, he says, he's not superstitious "but I don't believe in inviting trouble" ! Great. Also when they talk about the 'good old times', it seems a conversation you could hear now 'the world was different, kids were happy then'... Funny how Joe (Henry Travers) and his friend Herbie (Hume Cronyn) talk about crimes, and how they would go about killing each other :-)  and the scene when Mr.Graham wants to have a walk with Charlie and asks her mother if she can show him the city, and the mother isn't too happy about sending her daughter with a man, and tries to have her younger daughter Ann to go with him! Ah, the old times, when it didn't seem at all dangerous to leave a little girl alone with a stranger man, since she was not yet at a marriage-age! Now it would be much worse!
Of course today the whole film wouldn't be possible, because in this story, they know they are looking for a certain kind of man but have no idea of his face, and in fact Charlie says that he has never had a picture of himself taken! Quite impossible nowadays, where everyone has a camera in their pocket, what with all these phones being better at taking pictures than at calling!

Star Trek - 2009

I love it. I know some trekkers don't so much because it changes everything, from the start it creates an alternate reality in which what we know may never have happened, who knows, we are back in the past. But in a way that's why I like it, because it was a great way to bring it back, and now it's fresh and young people (or people who have never watched it) can start from here if they want and enjoy it, and this means there could be lots and lots more! I also love the way they did it, which is to start from the beginning, describing the characters for those who don't know them, but still having lots of things for a fan like me. The only thing that left me puzzled was hearing Uhura ordering a Cardassian Sunrise. Do they know the Cardassians already? Their world is far far away...
I mean the only thing character-wise, there are some other things that puzzle me science-wise...
First thing first, we meet Kirk senior, right where the things go different, which is when old Spock and the villain Nero come back from the future and change everything. Nero attacks them and kills the captain, so Kirk acts as captain during the minutes (12 I think) of the battle; Nero destroys the ship, and they have to evacuate, but they would never make it under Nero's ship's fire, so Kirk stays on his ship and covers their escape, saves a lot of people including his wife and kid. It was a moving scene, very heroic, and he gets to name the child: not Tiberius like his father because it's terrible (:-p) but Jim like her father :-)  We see Kirk's mother for a bit (Jennifer Morrison, one of the main stars in Once Upon a Time). Then we meet young Jim Kirk and young Spock, who is mistreated from the other Vulcan kids because of his human mother. Those kids are big bullies to be Vulcan, but after all they've not gone through the ritual that purges them from emotions yet... and they make him angry insulting his mother, so he fights with them. Well done, young Spock!
Of course his father goes all logical on him, saying that marrying his mother was the logical thing to do, but later on he'll admit to adult Spock that he married her because he loved her, pretty much like he did in an episode of the original series. I love that scene, it's very important and moving.
Once they've grown up, we see Spock being accepted at the Vulcan academy but refusing the honor to join Starfleet (these Vulcan are real racist, aren't they?); we see Kirk in a bar fight being persuaded to join the Starfleet academy (well, challenged by Pike to do as well as his father did), where he meets doctor Leonard McCoy, all grumpy because he hates flying, and saying that a divorce has left him only the bones.. :-p
 We understand that Spock is older because he's the one who programmed the famous Kobayashi-maru test for the last 4 years, and like the Kirk we used to know this one finds a way to cheat! I admit I was totally on Spock's side here, Kirk cheated making a spectacle of the test, really not understanding the purpose of it at all.
It's funny when Kirk asks who is the pointy-ears-jerk and Bones says I don't know, but I like him :lol: well, probably funnier if you know them already.
Uhura is studying at the academy too, but is very decisive and won't accept to be assigned to another ship, she wants to be on the Enterprise, so he satisfys her 'request'. Kirk shouldn't be there because of the 'cheating' problem, but Bones makes him ill so he can bring him on the Enterprise to cure him: Bones is the funniest! I was laughing a lot every time Bones gave Kirk a shot, because I was thinking that he was like the Bones I knew, always ready to inject people with something :-p
When we saw Uhura and Spock kissing I was thrilled, because I've always liked them together, since the first time he played music for her and Uhura started singing "his alien love could victimise" in the original series (not 100% sure of the words, without checking). I'm so happy that they are an item, here, I love them together!
Nero blames Spock for the destruction of Romulus, although he was only trying to help (the Empire is not gone, just a planet, right?). So he does the same thing to him.
It was sad when Vulcan was destroyed and Spock's mother died, very sad indeed, and the expression on Spock's face was heartbreaking :'(
Apparently our old Spock came here from 129 years in the future, and when he finally appears, that was a great moment! I love every scene with him. He meets Kirk when Spock throws him out of the Enterprise and he finds himself on an iced planet with dangerous beasts, and  old-Spock helps him. They talk and he explains to Kirk what he must do. It was great to see our old Spock again! Legend!
They go see Scotty because they need him to get Kirk back on his ship.
Scotty being punished for 'losing' Admiral Archer's beagle was something (sad for Porthos, of course) , it states clearly how the ENT series is the only one not affected by any change, being set before Kirk's time! Although I admit it is a bit puzzling because it should be set long before Kirk's time, not just before. Archer made the first trip of the humans with a ship that at the beginning didn't have a functioning teleport, and it lasted 4 years, until they created the Federation. Of course sooner or later he was made an admiral, but for Porthos to be still alive, it would mean not many years have passed... but again, details we can accept as they are.
Kirk and Scotty get back aboard the Enterprise, and Kirk provokes Spock like old-Spock told him to do: get from him an emotional response in order to become himself the captain of the ship. He starts about Nero, himself, Vulcan, but then he tells Spock he didn't care about his mother and never loved her and Spock loses it :-p I love that :-D
Spock beats him a little and almost chokes him - and nobody says or does anything, either too shocked to see their Vulcan act like that or unable to decide if they can do anything being all young and being Spock their captain at the moment; yes, because on the bridge they are all young, they were all cadets.
Only Sarek calls his name and eventually Spock stops and resigns his post because too emotionally involved :!!! It's then that Sarek follows him and tells him that he married his mother because he loved her! And that's big! It also shows how Vulcans do have emotions: sometimes people say that they don't have them, but they do, their emotions were very strong and that's why they found a way to control them and win them. They bury them deep.
So, this Kirk is now Captain: that's how fate works, he was about to be thrown out, or at least punished for cheating, but due to the extreme circumstances he ends up being the Captain, in the end. Makes you think of the Voyager series, doesn't it?
Now he can do what he wanted to do, go after Nero. They stop him when he tries to do the same to Earth as he did to Vulcan; Kirk and Spock go on his ship and I love the scene where Spock is so sure that Kirk has his back that he melts with a Romulan not caring about the other Romulans around.
I also love the scene when Kirk saves Pike and Pike picks up his gun and shoots two men behind Kirk - he may very well be in need of medical attention, but he is a captain and can stand his own.
So, our heroes win, Kirk is officially the captain of the Enterprise and Admiral Pike is on a wheelchair.
And what about Uhura's beautiful happy smile when Spock is made first officer at the end, and so he can continue on the Enterprise with her?  'yeaaaah , my boyfriend, we're still together!!!!'
I love it! I could go on watching it 100 times!
I love it because it's new and modern but still the characters are the characters I knew, they reflect perfectly the essence of the ones I know :-)

Just a word about the science, though. Do black holes last forever, as long as there is something to eat in their galaxy? Does this mean that they created a black hole where Vulcan was and that that black hole will stay there now? Does this also mean that they created a very big, a huuuuge black hole not too far from Earth when Nero's ship was destroyed? Black holes can't be closed, can they? Because if they are still there, they would change a lot of things in the entire galaxy....


Kirk was Chris Pine, Spock was Zachary Quinto (great) , Uhura =Zoe Saldana, Spock Prime=Leonard Nimoy, Nero=Eric Bana, Bones=Karl Urban , Scotty=Simon Pegg , Sulu=John Cho , Chekov=Anton Yelchin .
Chris Hemsworth was George Kirk, and Winona Ryder was Amanda, Spock's mother.

Ghostbusters 2

This might be good only for nostalgic reasons, but it's not worth much.. It's set 5 years after the first movie ended, and we find Dana that of course sooner or later got tired of Venkman's attitude and left him, married someone else, had a baby and got divorced/separated . Ray has a shop called Ray's occult, and from time to time he goes with Winston to children's parties (not sure if it's funny or melancolic to see the two of them singing "who you gonna call" and the kids shouting He-Man! ) , Peter is a tv presenter for the show "World of the psychic", and Egon is doing research (mean and pointless research maybe, but research nontheless).
Everyone thinks they are swindlers, then a sort of pink blob comes out of everywhere, including of course Dana's house, so she picks her baby up and storms into Peter's house. All the bad emotions of New York City have gathered in there, and now a very very bad guy called Vigo wants to use it to come back alive, because at the moment he's just a painting!
I think that the best moment of the whole movie is when they describe how Vigo was called, how bad he was, and how they got rid of him, really wanting to make sure! :lol: that's the only scene really good, I think.
 His plan is to enter into a baby, and what a coincidence, Dana has a baby and they choose her Oscar among all the other children! So the ghostbusters are needed again, and it all starts again like it had before, the music, the car, and Janine announcing "we're back" on the phone. Things from here go like in the first film, nobody believes them, or wants them at first, then some people do but there's a bureaucrat who has them thrown into a mental hospital (big change, in the first they were thrown in prison!) then big, bad things happen , city in chaos, nobody knows what to do, so "Where are the ghostbusters?" and they're in action again. Basically, they are freed again thanks to the big enemy only they can defeat... again only they can save the city, and they do it by defeating all the bad-emotion-blob with the help of all the people singing and spreading good-emotions at it, with the little help of the statue of liberty that they make move and cross the city without hurting anyone, it's incredible how some people find it difficult to use a remote-controlled toy-airplane, and they can move the whole statue with only the help of a music-loving blob, and walk perfectly on the road... I wonder if this is the most incredible thing, or is instead the fact that all New York City's people are singing happily together as if  it was Christmas...
After Vigo is defeated they are the city's heroes, people cheer at them, just like it had happened before... so they probably should be worried. Apparently after the first film they were sued for all the damages they did, so if there was a Ghostbusters 3 they would probably live all under a bridge, given the things they did this time!

Elementary season 1

Sherlock Holmes in America, just out of rehab with a female Watson to look after him. This is the American version of Sherlock. Joan Watson is Lucy Liu, which is always a good thing. Ex-surgeon, now helps people out of rehab.
Funny that Sherlock googled her to know about her dad having an affair, because you can not deduce everything :-p
Watson : "You can solve a person just by looking at them. You don't have mirrors. It means you know a lost cause when you see one"
___
Watson : "Do you close yourself off to people and deny yourself things that might bring you pleasure not because it makes you a better investigator, but because it's some sort of penance?"
Holmes : "Penance?"
Watson : "For what happened in London. Being addicted. I don't know. It just occurred to me that it might be something that someone might do and not even know it."
Holmes : "Well, you always know it Watson, if you didn't it wouldn't be penance"
___
Watson : "Are you okay?"
Holmes : "My dear Watson, when ever am I not?"  - yeah sure, always alright, like the Doctor says.
___
about Irene Adler : " she died. I didn't take her passing well" - "She was, to me, THE woman. She eclipsed and predominated the whole of her gender."
___
Holmes : "The thing that's different about me, empirically speaking, is you"
Watson : "That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me"
 ... please, don't make them a couple, never ever, it's not right, please don't mess things up like always, it is possible for two people to work together and be fond of each other without necessarily having to sleep together! I hope they'll never do such a thing.
___
Watson : "You named a bee after me" aww.
___
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep" - by R.Frost.
___
SPOILERS
Now, the finale... I didn't like it very much. Not because of Irene's identity, no problem with that, as soon as I saw her I thought she had to be on the wrong side, but still I had not thought of her being Moriarty, wasn't expecting that, but after all why not? I mean, here Watson is a woman, so why shouldn't Moriarty be a woman? No problem with that at all. What I didn't like is that they presented like genius the fact that Watson could tell that Moriarty loved Sherlock... oh really, come on, where's the surprise? Of course she did, that could be the only reason for putting off his murder, and always insisting that he shouldn't be killed, and even revealing herself in order to protect him : 'she would never kill him, not in a million years' , and he's surprised? Had she not saved him, nobody would still know who she was!

Things in common with 'Sherlock' ? Well, he writes sms to the detectives, but not so often. He wrote an sms to the murderer "I know you killed her" .  When he said "if I was a sociopath.." but he is not, so ...
Of course there's the "Watson, you know, some people, without possessing genius, have a remarkable knack for stimulating it" - Not much after all, because this is much American.

I liked it anyway, I'll wait for the new season.

Doctor Who series 5

With the eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. It was difficult to accept someone replacing David Tennant, but the series is well done, and the Doctor is a great character; also, they made 11 much different from 10, so it becomes more acceptable. It's not at all a copy, it's totally different , and yet the same character. Fascinating thing. I enjoyed these new 13 episodes.
The first was The eleventh hour , nice title to introduce the eleventh Doctor. We find him on a crashing Tardis, of course, which is where we left him when 10 regenerated. We see a little girl asking for a "someone, or a policeman" to fix the crack on her wall, and "someone in a police box" crashes in her garden. "Who are you?" - "I don't know, I'm still cooking" is the Doctor's answer. He asks for food and she gives him an apple, then a yoghurt,  but he doesn't like it. "You're Scottish, fry something" so she tries with bacon, then beans "beans are evil. Bad, bad beans", then bread and butter, and he throws that out of the door. Finally he eats fish fingers and custard... oh God, fish fingers and custard... yeuch. Then he takes time to ask her name and chat "Amelia Pond. Like a name in a fairytale. Are we in Scotland, Amelia?" I didn't notice, but apparently he heard a Scottish accent. She lives alone, but is not scared of that. Of course not, "you're not scared of anything. Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of box, man eats fish fingers and custard and look at you, just sitting there. So you know what I think?" - "What?"  - "Must be a hell of a scary crack in your wall" - I loved this bit. That surprised me a lot. I was so desperate to lose 10, but 11 is different. Not better, it's more like watching a different movie, but with many bits here and there that work as nostalgic elements. He still uses phrases like 'wibbley wobbley timey wimey', 'trust me, I'm the Doctor', and unfortunately a new one 'Geronimo!' which I don't like, at all.
Anyways, he tells little Amelia that he'll be back, and she prepares a suitcase and waits for him, but when he comes back 12 years have passed, and little Amelia from a fairytale grew up to be Amy, a kissogram : "I go to parties, and I kiss people"
Another funny moment, when she tells him he's like her aunt : "I'm the Doctor, I'm worse than anybody's aunt!" than turns to the woman next to him " and that is not how I'm introducing myself" :lol:
Late in the series we'll find many things seen here, like the story of 'the raggedy Doctor', Amelia's imaginary friend, or the duck-pond, with no ducks. Of course we also meet Rory, who proudly introduces himself as her boyfriend, while she was trying to pass him as just a friend, and settles for 'kind of boyfriend'. Cruel Doctor, always cruel with Rory, he will always prefer Amy, and here he says "your friend.. not Rory, the good-looking one" :-/  Jeff is prettier by common standards, but looks so dumb!
It starts the whole talk about 'the cracks in the skin of the universe' and 'the Pandorica will open' and 'silence will fall' that we'll get throughout the whole series.
After defeating the bad alien, he goes "Wo da man?" and I had the same reaction than when he said Geronimo, but this time I was happy to hear him reply "Oh I'm never saying that again, fine". Good to hear that. The episode could have ended here, because the Aliens that were threatening to destroy Earth if they couldn't find the Prisoner Zero finally found him and went away, so no more threat, everything ok, but it wasn't enough for Doctor Who, more was needed, so the Doctor calls back the aliens, finds himself his new Doctor's suit, with a bowtie because 'bowties are cool', and says to these aliens to take a good look at Earth's history, where humans were never a threat to them, where many aliens before had tried to invade it but someone  was always there to defeat them, and the Doctor asks them "Is this world protected?" and I wanted to cry because that's the first adventure of 10, when he said to them that this world is defended, and now the aliens look at their history and we see the faces of all the eleven doctors than 11 steps forward and says: "Basically, RUN" and they do. Great!
The Doctor goes away again, and comes back after what are really 2 years, so 'the girl who waited' : little Amelia, actually waited 14 years before stepping finally into the Tardis!!
"I'm definitely a mad man with a box"
ep 2 The beast below  rule one: never get involved, apparently a Doctor's rule, really? "you never interfere... unless there's children crying?" and Amy starts to get to know the Doctor.
Does she have a Scottish accent? Because frankly I still can't notice it.
They go to the future, where British people fly through space on a giant floating-city. There's something wrong, and the Doctor investigates. They meet Liz10, in other words "Elizabeth 10. I'm the bloody Queen, mate! Basically, I rule." The truth is actually very sad, that poor space-whale-like creature tortured for years and years...
here Amy saves not only the day and the creature, but also the Doctor. She understands the whole thing, because she had seen it in front of her eyes: "if you were very old, and very kind, and the very last of your kind, you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry" : the creature was just like the Doctor. Little note, when did she learn everything about him being the last of the timelords?
 - "in bed above we're deep asleep, while greater love lies further deep. This dream must end, this world must know, we all depend on the beast below" -
3 -Victory of the Daleks  They go at Churchill's times, during the war, but are late again, they were called a month before. There is a dalek moving around, apparently to help them, but Amy seems indifferent to it. "Amy, tell me you remember the Daleks, they invaded your world". He just can't let it go, and keeps on and on about it "I sent you into the Void, I am the Doctor and you are the Daleks!" Correct, and now it gets worse. The Daleks were not all destroyed, one ship survived, and went to find the Progenitor. The Doctor wanted to know what their plan was. "I was their plan". Then he tries to bluff pretending a candy is the Tardis self-destruction device "it's a jammy dodger, but I was promised tea"
Now there are 5 new Daleks, coloured Daleks, light yellow, dark yellow, red, blue and white. He can't let them go back to the future, he wants to rid the universe from them, once and for all, but he can't. Now they're stronger than ever, a new race of Daleks.
4-5 The time of angels - Flesh and stone  Mixed feelings about this, I don't like it very much because of some reasons, and I like it because of others. We meet River Song again, and are introduced to her hallucinogenic lipstick. The Doctor goes to the Archive museum, the biggest museum ever. There's a home box with written in old High Gallifreyan (the lost language of the Time Lords) 'Hello Sweetie" It's not clear to me how he can say that it's from someone "on a spaceship 12.000 years ago", but this is a detail, maybe there was some indication written is the same language. 'triple-seven five slash three four nine by ten zero twelve slash acorn' i have no idea what that means, so it's possible that it means everything, coordinates not only through space but also through time. Good enough for me.
We see that River can fly the Tardis and she landed it. "It didn't make the noise"  - "It's not supposed to make that noise. You leave the brakes on" - "It's a brilliant noise!" - "He thinks he's so hot when he does that" - than the introductions "she's my future, Amy, professor River Song" - "gasp. I'm going to be a professor?" because she's simply Doctor Song, now.
In these two episodes, they are against the weeping angels, it's the 51st century, and here Amy is almost annoying, always talking and going ooh ... then the explanation "it's a quantum lock. In the sight of any living creature, the Angels literally cease to exist. They're just stone. The ultimate defence mechanism. Being a stone until you turn your back". Amy keeps looking at the recording of the angel, and even when they shout at her 'don't even blink!', she goes 'but it's just a recording!' ... yeah, what would they know, right?
How British were this lines? : "No offence" - "Quite a lot taken it that's alright" love it!!
I like Amy, but in this episode she was just annoying. I like the bishop, though, very very cool, and great voice, really like both actor (Iain Glen)  and character.
Little Doctor-River moments are nice, like : D"It's impossible" - R"how impossible?" - D"two minutes", they are fun together, for the simple reason that she appears to be the only one to really know & understand him.
bishop  "Doctor  Song, do you trust this man?"
river "I absolutely trust him"
bishop "He's not some kind of madman, then"
river "I absolutely trust him"
lol
The Doctor again showing off "a forest in a bottle on a spaceship in a maze. have I impressed you yet, Amy Pond?" . My biggest problem with this episode, is that in Flesh And Stone we clearly see an angel moving, and that's wrong. The best, greatest thing about Blink was that we never saw them do anything, and that was the scary part, it was almost like they couldn't move as long as we were looking at them!yeah, because sometimes it felt as if the character was turned the other way, but the angel still didn't move, and it really felt like it couldn't move if we were watching it! It was amazing! I loved that, and to see an angel moving destroys everything, and they go from scary villains to colourless clowns. Also, the fact that they won't move as long as they think that Amy can see them... but if blinking is enough, and she has her eyes closed all the time, the fact that she can walk among lots of them with her eyes closed is ridiculous, like the fact that now they don't cover their own eyes anymore, they don't seem to care about looking at each other at all, they never cover their eyes. But you know what, I wouldn't care much about this because I could always say :this is a distant future, maybe they've changed somehow... but it's the moving that I just don't like. It ruined the weeping angels.
Basically, the only things that  I really like are : 1)a few lines, like the doctor saying "I'll do a thing" what thing? "I don't know. It's a thing in progress. Respect the thing!" 2) the little scene of the doctor asking Amy to remember and trust him. I had noticed the jacket off-jacket on detail, but it could have been a mistake, but the whole speech seemed out of place, he seemed different from before, the speech seemed out of context, so when I got an explanation on ep 13 it was great! 3)the bishop, I really like the bishop, great, it's the best thing of the episode.
It's a bit difficult to keep track of River, since we always meet her in the wrong order. Here, she says that she remembers the Pandorica, that it's her past.
Back to Earth, Amy kisses the Doctor, and that's why he decides to bring Rory with them!
6 - The vampires of Venice not my favourite episode, but with nice moments. Funny when the doctor jumps out of Rory's stag party cake saying "she tried to kiss me", and all Rory's friends were looking at him not in a friendly way.. "funny how you can say something in your head and it sounds fine..." :lol:
Then Rory enters the Tardis but for the first time someone doesn't look all that impressed, and the doctor is disappointed : Rory-"it's another dimension" Doctor-"I like the bit when someone says 'it's bigger on the inside' ".  He wants to take them to somewhere romantic, and if I approve of the place (Venice) I'm not sure I approve of the time, because it's not often that you can find vampires there!
1580, "Casanova doesn't get born for 145 years. Don't want to run into him. I owe him a chicken"
My best moment of the episode? When the doctor is surrounded by the vampire girls: not much for his explanation of why we can't see them through mirrors, but because when he shows them his document, he takes his 'library card' with the face of William Hartnell on it, the first doctor!
Another moment was when he got angry at the alien 'woman' because "You didn't know Isabella's name!"
He's not much of a sport though, because if someone is a bit critical he gets angry, like when Rory attacks him "you make people want to impress you. They don't want to let you down" but it's understandable, because it is true, and also he's worried about Amy.
The general plot continues with the aliens saying "we ran from the silence".
7 - Amy's choice  I like this episode, because it is very emotional, and finally set straight Amy's feelings.
The plot is that they find themselves going back and forth between two different realities, one now in the Tardis, and one five years in the future, with Rory and a pregnant Amy living in Upper Leadworth, and they have to decide which one is real.
There is a moment in the Tardis when the doctor says that he "threw the manual in a supernova because I disagreed with it" and some people like to think that this was back when he said goodbye to Rose...
A funny moment is when the doctor and Rory are "disagreeing or competing??" and Amy innocently goes "for what?" Oh Amy...  but the best emotional moment was when in the future reality Rory dies, and Amy can't cope. In a low voice, she says Save Him but the doctor can't, and she goes "then, what is the point of you?", and she decides that reality is fake "because if this is real I don't want it!" and she goes on to end it.
The doctor tries to stop her : "this could be the real world" but Amy has decided : "It can't. Rory isn't here. I didn't know. I honestly didn't, till right now. I just want him" and she drives the van onto a wall. I'm not sure if at that moment the doctor knew or not, but in any case, he went with her nontheless, being a friend till the end. It turned out it was all because of some psychic pollen, that feeds on dark "I'm 907, it had a lot to go on". Rory asked "but why didn't it feed on us too?" - "The darkness in you pair? It would have starved to death in an instant. I choose my friends with great care. Otherwise I'm stuck with my own company, and you know how that works out". Then of course there's a Rory-Amy moment, when he realises what had happened , and is happy, of course. "how did you know you wouldn't just die?" - "I didn't" - awww
8-9 -The hungry earth - cold blood   how sad it is when Rory sort of dies, sort of killed by the 'crack in time', and he disappears, and Amy doesn't remember him, as if he had never existed... :-(
10 -Vincent and the Doctor  They meet Vincent Van Gogh, who apparently had a bloody good reason to be a bit mad!
11 -The lodger Well, the doctor playing  'normal', sharing an apartment and playing football ..... yeah, now this is fantasy! The owner of the apartment is James Corden, and even if I'm not crazy about him, I liked his character, very sweet.
12-13 -The Pandorica opens -The Big Bang  The end of the series. A bit of a mess, but Rory is adorable. "I could do with a ridiculous miracle right now" aww
"your girlfriend isn't more important than the whole universe" - "She is to me!!" awww
He's the sweet part, and the doctor is the funny part: "There's only one of me, I counted" ; "I've got a future. That's nice"  :lol: I also liked his "come along Ponds" , and his "today just dying is a result"
River was speaking for us all when she said "What in the name of sanity have you got on your head?" - "It's a fez- I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool" and I love how River and Amy understand each other without words, one throwing it in the air, and the other shooting it. Of course there's an happy end, with Amy having parents, 'the girl that didn't make sense' getting married; love how they turned back to the forest of angels to explain that scene, and the whole point of the Tardis: it's old and it's new, it's borrowed and it's blue. Adorable when he came to the wedding, "I'm Amy's imaginary friend, but I came anyway!" I love this line.
One last thing : Rule one: the doctor lies : well, Eleven does, but it wasn't like this before. Ten didn't lie, once he told Martha a little lie and he felt so guilty! Eleven lies  often, probably because he has to, like River, because things are so messed up.
By the way, is the whole world back to normal, even the part that Amy doesn't know, all the people she never knew? I think, yes, it is because of all the atoms of the universe inside the pandorica, and it couldn't work for him because he was right in the middle of it. Ok, so we're clear, everything that has happened until now is still valid, and all the people of Earth know about the Daleks and the Cybermen, right?

Something borrowed

The film with Ginnifer Goodwin and Kate Hudson, 2011. Ginni is Rachel, and Kate is Darcy. Rachel has always been Darcy's best friends since they were kids, and since university she has been in love with Dex, but never told him, and arrived even to "encourage" him to go out with Darcy, and now Dex and Darcy are about to get married.
 Rachel had never told any of them about her feelings, and if Darcy had been a real bitch to take him from her like that without a second thought, she was really stupid to act as if she was happy about it : really stupid. She should have said something to Darcy right away, make things clear between them. Given how things have been, Darcy has every right to be angry at her now, because it is true that Rachel betrayed her, stealing her fiancèe and sleeping with him. Another character is Ethan, and they had been friends for years, and now he keeps on saying that Rachel should do something to make herself happy, he seems to be the only one that actually cares about that; Darcy never seems to care about that.
The actors are okay, and I like Ginnifer Goodwin, but the story... now that I've seen how it ends, I can say that I hate it. I hate this film. Why? Because it goes with the theory that a couple can stay together for long only if one of the two bears everything in silence, and backs up the general opinion that a man and a woman can't be friends, because a straight man looks for other men for friends and for women for sex: different things, never to mix up. Like Ethan, that cares so much about Rachel not because they were friends but because he is in love with her. Or like the Rachel-Darcy couple, that has worked until now only because Rachel never asked for anything and simply did everything that Darcy wanted. I'm talking about the fact that in this film friendship doesn't exists. Is it really true, is it really like this??? Is this our world??? Am I the only one who still believes, or better still hopes that friendship exists, and is important for people??? Especially between women, does friendship exists or not? Two women can be friends without being jelous one of the other? I personally can't thing of one example of a woman happy for another woman's success... that's why this film made me so angry!

Doctor Who series 4

 -Doctor Who Partners in crime 13 April 2014

The episodes of this series:
1-Partners in crime - I already talked about this episode, and I like it because it explains clearly how Donna is not at all attracted by him, as crazy as that might sound. She "bloody loves him", as she'll say in episode 2, but not romantically, and that is a relief for someone like Ten: everybody he met tended to fall in love with him, so Donna is restful, is the perfect companion right now. At the end we see Rose for a moment, still not knowing why. That's the common theme of this series, alongside the planet of the adipose people that went missing, and how can a planet just disappear???
2- The fires of Pompeii - again the Doctor wanted to go to one place, and the Tardis brought him somewhere else. He still doesn't know how to read well the data and everything, or the Tardis does what she wants with no warning, before or after? Anyway, they are in Pompeii and they meet Peter Capaldi, future Doctor n. 12!!! Who bought the Tardis thinking it was a piece of art!!! Well, now you can have it, you had to wait a bit, but now it's yours :-D
The Doctor tells Donna that they can't change history to save those people, because it's a fixed point in time, something they can't change, and it's very difficult for her, she can't accept it, and keeps fighting with him because of it, right to the point where he finds out that he's the one causing the destruction of Pompeii. He finds aliens, and he has to choose between a city or the world, and it's intense, but he has Donna next to him, not leaving him, understanding now. Before going away, it's Donna that convinces him to save at least someone, so he saves Capaldi's character's family.
3 - Planet of the Ood. The Ood again, and the way humans are treating them, disgusting but unfortunately very easy to believe. They save them, and here too they say something that will be remembered later in the series and in the later specials.
4-5 The Sontaran stratagem - The  poison sky - They are called back to Earth by Martha, because people are disappearing, and the Sontaran are planning an invasion using cars. We learn that Martha is no longer a doctor, but she's a sort of soldier now, which I didn't like at all. Best line of the two-part episode is when the doctor puts on a gas-mask and says "are you my mummy?" which reminds us of an episode with Nine.
6 The Doctor's daughter - The Doctor with Donna and Martha go to a planet where there is a war that looks like it's being going on for ages, but Donna finds out that it's not. The Doctor cells are used against his will to create a human being to replace those that died in battle, because that's what they do instead of stopping the fight. They make new people already grown and throw them into war. A girl comes out, and it's her the doctor's daughter. He has difficulties accepting this, but the most difficult thing for him will be to tell her goodbye, when he thinks she's dying. He's angry to the man that killed her, and takes a gun and points it to him, and I feared one of those moments "don't do it, it's not worth it" and stuff like this, that we've already seen millions of times. But this is the Doctor, so nobody says anything to him, they just look and wait, and then he does NOT shoot, instead he says that he "would never", and that's the most important bit of the episode. That he "would never".
7 The unicorn and the wasp - The Doctor and Donna are alone again, and he takes her to meet Agatha Christie, and they get involved in a mistery, because a body has just been found in the library!! I love this episode, when the two of them meet A C is fantastic, when the doctor is happy to meet her saying that she always fools him in his books, only to go gradually down to "weeell, once, but it was a good one", Fantastic, the way he says that. And funny is the way he cures himself when he's been poisoned, very funny, as it is Donna when she notices that meeting Agatha Christie while there is a murder would be like meeting Dickens at Christmas with ghosts, which actually happened to Nine and Rose. :-D
8-9 Silence in the library - Forest of the dead - This is when the Doctor meets professor River song, that seems to know a lot about him, although he has never seen her. She knows his name, which leads him to help her because he knows he never tells his name to anyone, and says that there is only one reason why he would have told her his name, but doesn't say which one.
Both parts written by Steven Moffat.

10 Midnight
11 Turn left
12 The stolen Earth
13 Journey's end

Russell T. Davies wrote the special and episodes 1, 10, 11, 12, 13.
continues