The hunger - 1983

The erotic horror movie starring Catherine Deneuve as the main vampire Miriam. It wasn’t good but it had a little something, until the absurd ending. Now it makes no sense at all. It tried too hard to be cool and mysterious though, and Bowie’s part was too short. Also, they should have tried to answer a few keypoints more clearly, I mean, just invent something, whatever, and give it some sense!
The other protagonists are Susan Sarandon as Sarah and David Bowie as John. I watched this movie years ago and the only thing that I could remember was him saying “forever and ever”, which was within the first nine minutes. I said erotic-horror: erotic because of the sex scenes between Miriam and Sarah mainly, and horror because it’s a vampire story and there’s blood flowing. 
The story:
Miriam and John Blaylock pick up a couple at a club, take them home and then kill them using their Egyptian pendants - Ankh representing everlasting life, she says - and feed upon them and then burn the remains. She’s the one who’s being living since forever, she was killing in ancient Egypt’s time, and in the 1800s she turned John into one to be her companion, promising him eternal life and youth.
Now John starts suffering from insomnia and he knows what this means. It has happened before so her previous companions: at some point they start aging and be unable to sleep, and even if they feed the aging goes on. He asks her who will take his place when he’s gone, sure that the already thought of that. Maybe she thought of Alice, the girl who went to them to study music, but she doesn’t tell. He goes to see Dr Sarah who studies aging and the internal clock and tells her that only yesterday he was thirty years old and now he’s aging “I’m a young man” he says, but she thinks he’s crazy and lets him wait hoping he’ll go away. He ages by the minute and after two hours he leaves accusing her of lying to him and leaving him wait. She tries to stop him, upset at seeing how he has aged, but he goes home. At home Alice comes to the house and he can’t resist and kills her, but it’s useless, he keeps aging. When Miriam comes home and understands what he did, he reminds her that she promised him he’d be forever young and they’d be together forever, but she says there’s nothing she can do to make him young again now. He begs her to kill him and release him but she says she can’t, that there is no release. He’ll leave forever in a decaying body. She brings him upstairs in her attic and she puts him in a coffin and leaves him there, alongside the other coffins of her previous lovers-companions, not dead, not exactly alive, forever conscious in their graves.
Sarah goes to her house looking for him - with only a white t-shirt and no bra - and then they have sex and somehow Miriam’s blood enters her bloodstream. She goes back home changed, she can’t eat and feels sick, and after some tests it turns out she has two blood strains in her system, one not human fighting for dominance. Sarah is scared and angry and goes to Miriam to ask her what she did to her. Miriam has the face to say “there’s nothing to be frightened of as long as you put your faith in me, give me time, trust me” ... the face..
Sarah leaves but feels so bad she comes back because ‘the hunger’ is too strong and she doesn’t know what to do about it, she suffers like an addict without knowing what her addiction is.
Sarah’s lover and colleague Tom comes looking for her and Miriam sends him up to the bedroom where he finds Sarah clearly unwell. She feeds on him and then Miriam explains to her that they now belong to each other, they’ll feed once a week and never grow old: “we’re damned to live forever, with no release, no end”. Sarah doesn’t bring up the fact that Miriam’s husband was aging so rapidly, strangely, instead she kisses Miriam and then uses the Ankh to slash her own throat forcing Miriam to swallow the blood that fills her mouth. When she collapses on the floor and Miriam begs her to stay with her, Sarah says “I can’t”, and Miriam brings her upstairs with all her lovers. 
The attic shakes and suddenly all her lovers come out of their coffins and try to get at her; she screams and tries to fight them off and leave, but she falls a long way down the stairwell. She starts aging quickly and the almost-corpses die and are finally released.
Next scene we learn that the building is now being sold because the owners died, and we might think that they all died.
Last scene shows us Sarah alive and well, with Miriam locked up in a coffin, and this doesn’t make sense at all, why did they exchange places? Why did Miriam start aging? Because she drank Sarah’s blood? So what, didn’t she do that already? How did she turn Sarah in the first place? How did she make her drink her blood without her noticing?
Why didn’t Sarah die? Absurd, she didn’t want to go on living if that meant being forever forced to kill people..
ITA Miriam si sveglia a mezzanotte (makes no sense I know, just makes you think of vampires)  

Cabin fever - 2003

I’m not very fond of horrors but as a thriller it was not too bad. A bit silly here and there and too loud at moments, but all in all not too bad. You know, only a little bad. I didn’t like the excessive amount of F word they all said, nor I liked or understood all the gay-jokes, if that’s what they were. Bert hunts squirrels because they’re gay, and when Paul wants to keep kissing Karen and questions why she’s swimming away she tells him ‘you’re so gay’, and I don’t understand, was that a code for something?  Anyway, not my usual cup of tea, but rather what one expects from this kind of movies. Still, future-me reading this, do not watch it again, you were not fond of all the blood-spitting that went on and on... 
The story starts, almost traditionally, with five kids on their way to a vacation in a rented cabin in the woods (what a great idea, always a winning one). They are Jeff and his girlfriend Marcy, Paul and his long-term friend Karen, and Bert the idiot.
They stop at the latest store before getting to the cabin, and there’s a weird kid who bites Paul’s hand. His father says that he shouldn’t sit next to Dennis! 
They arrive at the cabin. Jeff and Marcy have sex and Bert goes out looking for squirrels to shoot; instead he shoots a man already sick and tells nothing to the others. 
All around a bonfire to tell each other gruesome stories, they are approached by a strange guy with a scary dog who wants to join in: Jeff says that it’s a “private conversation”, he says that he has a lot of weed, and they welcome him eagerly. He says his name is Justin but to call him Grim, and when it starts raining he goes away.
The sick man comes to their door asking for help and they want to, but then he points a finger at Bert saying ‘he shot me’ and Bert quickly closes the door on his face shouting that he’s not letting that crazy sick man in. The man takes their car so they all rush out to stop him, with weapons of all sorts.
The man spits blood all over their car and when he gets out they scream for him to back off and then they set him on fire and he runs away. Not one of the kids seems to have noticed that he had said that Bert had shot him, that fact will never be addressed. 
We see that the dead body is in the river (quite reasonably since he was on fire) and that’s where their water comes from. 
There’s a bit of wandering about now, looking for help since they’re all upset and want to go home but their car doesn’t work now.
Paul and Karen stay at the cabin, Jeff and Bert find a woman’s place and learn that the animals are sick, she’s angry because she can’t eat the pigs she bought because they’re all sick. She offers to help them by calling a tow truck but they learn that the hermit man was actually her cousin Henry so they quickly run away. 
Marcy joins them at another house but there’s nobody in.
Meanwhile deputy sheriff Winston comes to ask Paul about the previous night commotion. He tries to explain and Winston, standing right next to the car completely covered in blood, both outside and inside, tells him to keep partying and not to worry and talks about girls. 
Karen drinks water and she’s the first to get sick. It’s some kind of flesh-eating disease and Paul finds out because when he wakes up beside her he starts touching her while she sleeps and realizes that her legs are all damaged and bloody. Her friends lock her in a shed outside because they don’t want to get whatever she has. Bert repairs the car; Paul and Marcy take Karen to the car but she starts spitting blood. Bert just found out he’s sick too (he also drank water). Jeff is scared and refuses to enter the car or be near Karen; he takes a lot of beer bottles from the fridge and goes away alone telling them all to stay away from him. Bert goes away alone in the car, and stops at the store, where Dennis bites his hand. Totally unprovoked this time, Bert only inquired about a hospital or a doctor saying that all his friends are sick, this time nobody sat next to him, and yet Dennis got up and went to bite his hand... his father gets angry now saying that if he’s sick he might have made his son sick.. so he calls two friends (the dumb-looking one says he’ll get 'the kit’) and with rifles they go after the kids at the cabin.
Paul finds the corpse in the river and falls in the water. Marcy is rotting too and when she gets out Grim’s dog gets her and kills her. When Paul sees that Karen is still alive but her face has been eaten away by the disease, he kills her smashing her head. 
The car stops in the woods, but Bert reaches the cabin to warn Paul. When the men get there and open the door, Bert works as bait in a chair in front of the door. A man shoots him and Paul kills him, who falling shoots Dennis father, who tries to go away but Paul goes after him and kills him with a stake. Paul also kills the third man with a screwdriver - he didn’t have time to open his ‘kit’.
Paul finds Grim dead too. He takes Dennis’ father’s car, tuns over an animal and shoots it because it got stuck in the windshield, getting blood all over his face. He finds a group of people having a party, with Winston among them. Looking all covered in blood like that he asks for help, a ride would be good, then he starts spitting blood all over them before hitting Winston and going away. He sort of faints on the road and a truck stops and takes him to a hospital. When he saw a man in a bunny-suit at the hospital I thought  for a moment that he was delirious and maybe it was all an hallucination, but no. 
The hospital can’t help, and Winston takes him away. 
Jeff comes back at the cabin, sees all the corpses and says ‘they’re all dead’, and then he screams “I made it” over and over, because he was the only one not contaminated, but as soon as he steps outside the sheriff and two deputies shoot him dead (very night-of-the-living-dead !)
The sheriff, his two men and Winston set fire to all the bodies. 
We see a couple of children taking water from the river, and there’s a corpse there but I wasn’t sure: was that still Henry’s body? What happened of Paul? Was he burned or killed some other way?
The sheriff and his men go to the store where the two children offer him lemonade they made with that water.
The first time the kids stopped at the store the owner said that the rifle was for the negros and they thought he meant to shoot them, but the last scene shows us three black kids going in and the man giving them back their rifle well polished. 
There’s a big party, and not only the sheriff and his men but everyone drinks that lemonade, plus there’s a big truck bringing away the Spring Water... which means much more people will get infected soon.
Paul-Rider Strong
Karen-Jordan Ladd
Jeff-Joey Kern
Marcy-Cerina Vincent
Bert-James DeBello

The grudge - 2004

It definitely lacked something. Meaning, for example. 
It wasn’t much scary because the more you show of the ghosts and the less frightening they are. The story didn’t make much sense, the ending was too open, and too many things are not explained.
It starts with the words: “when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. The curse gathers in that place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury”.
We first see a woman waking up very normally and asking her Peter (Bill Pullman) why he’s up so early. He doesn’t say a word but quietly throws himself off the balcony to his death.
We move to another house where Yoko goes to take care of old Emma and the house when Jennifer’s out. She hears something, goes up in the attic to check, alone with only a lighter, and the ghost gets her.
We now meet Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Doug (Jason Behr). She followed him here to be together. He’s studying for his ‘architecture midterm’ and working in a restaurant (I think) while Karen came here as an exchange student, also volunteering at the care center for three months now for social welfare credits.
Since Yoko’s disappeared, Alex (Ted Raimi) sends Karen who has never been out in the field before. She finds Emma alone and in need of assistance. She sees a door taped shut and a noise like a child - or a cat - so she opens and she sees a black cat and a little boy who says his name is Toshio. While in Emma’s room - who says she wishes for ‘her’ to leave her alone - the big ghost of ‘her’ fills the room and they both see her. 
Flashback to Emma’s family buying the house. The seller knew and saw but of course said nothing because he wanted to sell. We see Emma (Grace Zabriskie) with her son Matthew (William Mapother) and her daughter Susan (KaDee Strickland), and his son’s wife Jennifer (Clea DuVall).  One day the man comes home to find the house a mess, Jennifer ill and unable to speak (I think she was still alive at this point but am not sure), and this unknown boy that screams.
Back to Karen: she called Alex as soon as she found the boy because she didn’t know what to do with him. Now Alex comes to find Emma dead and Karen in shock. The detectives ask him about Matthew who’s been missing a day, like Yoko. The good detective finds him soon: the bodies of Matthew and Jennifer are in the attic, but no sign of Yoko - where did Yoko’s body go? How come the bodies of the couple were found in the attic? How did they get there?I know this is a story about supernatural things and curses and ghosts, but things should make sense nonetheless.
They think, apparently, that Matt killed his wife and then himself... why? how do they think she died? how is he supposed to have killed himself, up there in the attic, sitting down with her close to him? Did the ghosts fake a gun shot??
They also think that Emma died in her sleep and this alone put Karen in shock for hours. 
Now the ghost-girl and the boy go after Susan - simply because she called on the phone or because she was there when they bought the house? Both maybe. Anyway, it seems the ghost tracks her down via her phone. Since Susan called from the office the ghost appears there, and is recorded on tape... The ghost follows her to her apartment building but has to call her to know which apartment exactly... She locks herself in but the ghost appears under her blankets and Susan disappears in her own bed.
Karen leaves the hospital to go home, seeing the ghost everywhere. 
The boy Toshio goes after Alex, and also the bloody corpse of Yoko this time. We’ll be told that he died too. The detective watches the surveillance video of Susan’s office building and he sees the ghost too. 
Karen googles Toshio and finds out about Peter’s death so she goes to talk to his wife and looking at pictures of him she finds the same woman in ALL of them. 
Flashback to Peter at school, talking about having received strange letters from a girl he doesn’t remember but she writes that she’s attended his classes (or at least one). To settle the matter, he goes to her house, and when he sees Toshio hurt he tries to help. The boy makes the meow sounds like a cat. This probably happened three years ago, because we hear detective Nakagawa talk about three detectives his friends who three years ago died because they were investigating some murders at that same house. 
After what happened and after seeing the ghost on video, Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) thinks of the curse and goes to burn down the house, but when he gets there he hears a boy crying, and then sees him drowning in the bathtub so he tries to help but someone - a male hand - drowns him instead. 
Doug finds Karen’s research in their house and leaves a message saying that he thinks she’s there so he’s going there to meet her. She runs as fast as she can to stop him entering that house but she’s too late. 
When she gets there she sees Peter and learns that Kayako was ‘in love’ with him - I’d say dangerously obsessed, not in love, though. She even collected his cut fingernails and taped them inside her diary :-/ 
She follows Peter as he finds all their family pictures with Kayako’s face cut out, then Peter finds her corpse in the attic. After reading her journal and learning of her obsession, Kayako’s husband went mad, he drowned the cat, killed his wife and son and then hanged himself. 
Karen finds Doug in shock ( I think, very much like Jennifer, not sure if they were both found dead or almost dead) and the bloody ghost goes after them. Karen sets the house on fire, but later we learn that she was saved, and so was the house. 
The last scene shows Karen to see Doug’s body in the morgue - alone, they left her... - when the ghost appears there behind her. This is the end: will she die too now? Who knows. If she dies, then Nakagawa and everyone who entered that house should die too. Anyway, why was the ghost Kayako? Why we kept seeing Toshio? The only one who ‘died in a powerful rage’ was the husband, I’d have thought, not them. How does this curse work, that it used Kayako and Toshio’s ghosts and Yoko’s corpse too? How did they all die, of fear or where they hurt some other way, since the detectives thought of murder?
I don’t like stories that don’t make sense. 

Scooby-Doo 2: monsters unleashed - 2004

I thought it was really boring, but I was never a Scooby-doo fan to be honest. I thought the old cartoons were boring too, so I was not at all excited by how close the movie was to the old scenes.
I thought that Shaggy and Scooby were very much like their animated selves, but that wasn’t a big plus for me. The other characters were rather plain, most of the attention was on Scooby, Shabby and the monsters which were as ridiculous as the old ones. They should have made the other characters a little bit more real, with maybe some funny lines or maybe adding some heartwarming friendship interaction.. anything that could make you feel for them.
The details:
it starts with Mystery Inc. being welcomed like heroes at a museum with all the costumes of the enemies they defeated. Velma likes the curator, Patrick (Seth Green) but she’s so scared she says no when he asks her out. A monster attacks, Shabby and Scooby are useless as usual and need Daphne to save them. Journalist Heather (Alicia Silverston) destroys them on tv, and Shaggy feels sad he only caused trouble and tries to be more like them (this is a perfect example of what I was saying, seeing Scooby with Daphne’s boots was not funny to me at all).
They go to the house of their main suspect, old man Wickles (Peter Boyle) and must fight one monster-ghost-in-armor. Shaggy is useless, Freddy is soon knocked out, and the girls have to save the day: Daphne fights like Buffy while Velma figures out a way to defeat it (a kick in the groin was not how I’d expect to defeat a ghost that shouldn’t have anything to hurt down there...).
Velma is so scared of dating she hides when Patrick reappears, so Daphne tries to help her, but in the wrong way, which is to make her more like herself: Velma comes out in a tight red leather suit and heels, she looked like a caricature of Daphne. Pretty yes, but there was nothing to it, it lacked a funny line or something.
There’s a long scene with Shaggy and Scooby at a club for criminals, where Scooby dances with a big wig on his head until it comes off and they’re discovered for who they are and must escape.
Next, they learn that all costumes have been stolen from the museum. During a search, Shaggy activates all the monsters. From now on it appears all they can do is to use the same device that activated them to deactivate them :-/
The gang goes to their old place now abandoned, where Velma does her calculations and Daphne and Fred repair said device. Meanwhile Shaggy stumbles on a ghost so they have to run. 
They go to defeat the ghost and Scooby finally helps, and it is revealed that Heather was the one responsible, but the journalist was only a disguise for Jacobo, a criminal mastermind apparently who likes to create monsters. Jacobo and his/her cameraman who helped her are arrested.
All is cool now, Patrick was not bad after all, and they all dance through the credits. Heather and the cameraman too..
Maybe I’m not the right target for this: I would have liked more focus on the characters, more attention on their friendship.
Fred-Freddie Prinze Jr.
Daphne-Sarah Michelle Gellar
Shaggy-Matthew Lillard
Velma-Linda Cardellini

ITA Scooby-Doo 2: mostri scatenati

Bad Karma - 2001

Terrible movie, really. Bad acting, bad direction, bad ending, it was all bad. The protagonist was Patsy Kensit who is not in my list of good actors but believe me if this movie was terrible it was not her fault at all. She did her part and I think she tried much more than the others. Patrick Muldoon as doctor Trey Campbell was so plain and boring. The detective in charge of the investigation was simply terrible, the was he spoke was unbearable. All the nude scenes at the beginning completely useless and in bad taste. The movie was very slow, the clothes forgettable, and all the blood coming out of the mouths rather disgusting and not scary at all. There isn’t a thrilling moment in the whole movie, not once I felt scared or interested.
I could even say that if I have to save something I’d save Kensit and part of the plot. The dialogues were boring, specially the family ones, but the idea was not completely bad, something could have come out of it. In this movie it was approached so badly that it is ruined from the start, though.
The details:
it starts with a girl - I think she’s supposed to be a school-girl by the way she’s dressed although that girl’s school days are as far in the past as mine I’d say. Anyway, this Maureen goes to Mr Miller’s petrol station bathroom to change and wear makeup. No surprise the guy spies on her (a few seconds of totally nude girl here) then he abducts her. He takes her elsewhere, ties her to a bed naked, and he calls her Agnes. He says that in a past life he was a girl killed by Jack the Ripper and she helped him kill her. He tortures her with electricity until she remembers everything - yep, a bit of electric shock and she’s no more Maureen, she’s Agnes again. She frees himself, kills him and sets out to find her lover Jack. Next thing, we meet Dr Campbell. We’re told that after murdering four prostitutes Agnes ended up in his mental hospital. Somehow she found him, sure that the doctor is her Jack. She apparently had plastic surgery because now Agnes is played by Kensit (in movies surgeons are incredible apparently). He leaves for a week to go on vacation with his wife and daughter. Agnes offers sex but the substitute doctor refuses because he feels he can’t trust her to keep it a secret. Apparently that’s the only thing that bothers him, because as soon as he thinks she’s out on drugs he starts touching her and kissing her. She bites his tongue and then kills him. She also kills a guard to take her uniform, and a nurse to cut her heart out, and then she escapes. 
Trey thinks about her and also has nightmares about his past life as Jack. 
Agnes picks up a girl in a gay bar - doing a Georgian accent - then kills her to make it look like she died in a car accident, and at first the police believe it too.
Trey leaves as soon as he hears that she escaped, and his wife Carly is so upset she makes a scene, ready to throw eleven years of marriage away if he puts his work again before his family... :-/
Trey quits his job and calls her to say he’s coming back. Agnes is already in his holiday house with his family, pretending to be their neighbour Jackie. At first she does nothing to them, for whatever reason, but when the wife is out she kills their babysitter Jenny but not the child - simply because she stepped into the sea? :-/ did the child stay there while she came back to murder Jenny? :-/   
Agnes finds Trey and Carly who introduces her to him as Jackie. He tells her that he must bring her back to the hospital, so she hit him and run away. The wife now acts very annoyingly, with all her “what’s going on?”, can’t she see it’s an emergency situation? :-/
We’re now told that in their previous life Agnes had killed Jack after finding a picture of another woman. He said it was his sister but she didn’t believe him. This is important only because they tell us that they should have died together, but since they died separately their souls got separated in the next lives, so now she wants them to die together - since when? I thought she wanted to go on living and killing with him...
Trey sends his family away but Agnes kills two coast guards and abducts wife and daughter. She calls him and he goes alone to meet her hoping to save his family. For a moment he tries pretending that he remembers and he loves her, although that’s completely useless. When she moves to kill his family he takes hold of her gun and shoot her. She’s not dead though of course, and she handcuffs him to her so that now they can die together. Burn together to be exact, who knows why. Well, she’s crazy, so... When she had killed him back then she had burned him alive, so maybe now she wants to burn with him... but after all who cares.
Carly takes hold of her hatchet - Agnes carried quite a bag with her - and cuts her hand off so Agnes is the only one to burn. They walk out and get away, rather quietly I’d say, and that’s the end. A terrible ending for a terrible movie.

Agatha Christie's Poirot: Five little pigs

One of the best Poirot episodes. Only a bunch of characters and no side stories so they could concentrate on the main story. Also I like a lot the make-up in this film, so simple it can easily go unnoticed and yet I like how they made clear the difference between the ‘now’ and the ‘fourteen years ago’ in all their faces. 
The murder happened 14 years ago, but now Lucy Crale, the daughter of the murdered man and of the woman who was hanged for it asks Poirot to investigate and find out the truth. She was only seven back then and knows very little, but when she came of age she was given a letter that her mother had written to her before her death, in which she proclaimed her innocence. Her parents were Amius and Caroline Crale.
Poirot goes to talk to Caroline’s defense lawyer: she didn’t defend herself at all and he thought her guilty, so she didn’t stand a chance, really. He gives Poirot the five names of the people he should talk to.
Philip Blake was Amyas friend. He says that Amyas was a great friend and a great artist, that he loved women and had a harsh attitude, that he was self-absorbed, but that Caroline had a terrible temper and that she was jealous and dangerous. Caroline had disfigured her younger sister in a moment of rage, and he says it was sibling jealousy. He tells him that Elsa - Amyas was painting her - proclaimed in front of everyone that he loved her and was going to marry her so she’d soon move in and make changes, and when Caroline asked Amyas about it, still in front of everybody, he didn’t deny it.
Elsa Greer, cold and calculating and apparently glad that Caroline died. She says she always loved Amyas since she first met him, and she herself asked him to do her portrait. They became lovers and he promised to tell his wife “after” he had finished the painting. She says that Caroline was devious and that Amyas admitted in front of her and everyone that he loved her.
Meredith Blake, Philip’s brother, says that Amyas was an artist, that his art was his passion and when he painted he was like obsessed, that he meant to finish that painting whatever the cost. He calls Caroline “gentle creature”, says that he was always devoted to her, but still thinks that she did it.
Miss Williams the governess. She says that Mr and Mrs Crale were very much taken with each other, that it was all Elsa’s fault, how she behaved. She says that Amyas wanted to get rid of Angela because he was jealous of all the attention Caroline gave her. Caroline was very fond of her sister, and that awful day she saw her with a beer and took it herself down to Amyas. She calls Caroline “a woman of honor and dignity” and yet she’s sad to confess that she’s sure that she did it because she saw her trying to fake a suicide, putting the bottle of beer into Amyas’ hand. 
Angela, Caroline’s sister, is the only one absolutely sure that she didn’t do it. She says she knew her extremely well, that she could never have murdered anyone. She tells him that her disfigurement is precisely the reason why she couldn’t do it, because she was a constant reminder to Caroline of what it could happen if she gave way to her temper. She says that Amyas told her that Elsa was joking about their marriage, and that after finding Amyas dead Caroline sent her away in a hurry, telling her that she had “nothing to worry about”. She also says that her main suspect would be Philip because one night she saw Caroline coming out of his room, but he tells Poirot that he refused her, I’d say because he loved Amyas.
Poirot reunites all the characters at the old Crale house. He reveals that Caroline didn’t defend herself because she thought Angela had done it in a fit of rage and wanted to protect her. That much was so obvious it’s barely worth saying. He says also that Caroline had confronted Amyas about Elsa and he said that Elsa meant nothing and that he’d sent her back as soon as the painting was finished, and that she was thinking of Elsa when she was heard saying ‘too cruel’. Elsa heard it all and planned her revenge. She had believed his words of love. She drugged him and watched him die. Poirot says that he’ll present his findings but he doesn’t think that there’s enough evidence for her to be charged. She says that she died too, but this ending seems rather farfetched to me, she didn’t.
Amyas-Aidan Gillen
Philip-Toby Stephens
Elsa-Julie Cox
Angela-Sophie Winkleman

Miss Williams-Gemma Jones

Agatha Christie's Poirot: Sad cypress

Paul McGann 😍 what a beautiful voice :-) This was a very nice episode, I liked it a lot, one of the best Poirot episodes. David Suchet is the perfect Poirot, and everything in this episode/film was quite right. 

EDIT [ Mrs Welman is rich and old and lives in a big house with her niece Elinor (Elisabeth Walsh), her fiancee Roddy Winter (Rupert Penry-Jones) and also Mary Gerrard (Kelly Reilly) a girl without a family brought up by Mrs Welman, who was very fond of her. Plus the servants and two nurses who look after Mrs Welman. Dr Lord doesn't live with them but visits often to check on the old lady. He knows Poirot and when Elinor tells him of a strange letter she received, he shows it to him. Poirot feels a danger that unsettles him, and when Mrs Welman dies he goes back to the village straight away. Dr Lord says it's a natural death but Poirot stays around anyway. Mrs Welman died without making a will so Elinor gets everything. She saw Roddy and Mary together, plus the way he always looks at her makes her understand that he loves Mary and breaks up with him. To honour her aunt's wishes and affections, Elinor gives Mary a sum of money. she's hurting a lot, tells Poirot she wishes Mary was dead, but later she will realise that she and Roddy were just not meant to be together. While having tea and sandwiches with Mary and a nurse, something happens: Mary dies, poisoned. All suspicions of course are on Elinor and the police arrest her. There's a trial and she's found guilty, so Poirot must find the truth quickly before she's hanged. Only Roddy and the doctor believe her innocence: Roddy knows her and has great affection for her, even if he was going to propose to Mary, and Dr Lord is clearly in love with her. Poirot speaks to everyone, as he always does. Now the solution: 

I didn't remember it at first, had no idea what was going to happen, until I heard the nurse say, after serving tea for Mary and herself and washing up the cups, that she had hurt herself with the roses thorns, then I remembered. When Elinor tells that to Poirot he understands, because nobody but Elinor could have poisoned the sandwiches, but that was not the only thing Mary had. Mary drank the tea, like the nurse did. The roses outside have no thorns: she poisoned the tea and when she went to wash the cups she injected herself with a drug that made her vomit to get rid of the poison in her stomach. The police arrest her and Poirot frees Elinor, and old romantic that he is, he had the doctor meet her outside the prison to take her home :)  ]

It starts with Elinor Carlisle on trial (the credits read Elinor, but all the while I understood Elena), and they hear the prosecutor say that they have lots of evidence against her and she showed no remorse and we hear her thinking that she wanted her death so much...
A flashback brings us to the previous summer, when Elinor and her fiancée Roddy Winter received an anonymous letter and decided to visit their old aunt Laura Welman. They find Mary Gerrard there, back from Germany. They had played together as children and meeting again now Roddy falls for her. When her aunt dies, Elinor breaks her engagement because she knows he’s in love with Mary. 
Elinor had showed the letter to doctor Lord and he got Poirot involved. Now Poirot is back in the village after reading of the aunt’s death. Since Laura left no will everything goes to Elinor, and she gives Mary some money thinking that’s what her aunt wanted. She tells Poirot that she wishes “so much” that Mary was dead, in quite an impressive scene. 
Mary and a nurse have tea in Elinor’s house and Mary dies of poisoning. The detective in charge is quite satisfied that Elinor ha motive and opportunity to put morphine in the sandwiches Mary liked, with salmon pastry. The doctor begs Poirot to help him find the truth because he’s in love with Elinor and therefore he’s sure that she didn’t do it. He also always had suspicions about Laura’s death but he thought that she might have taken the morphine herself and didn’t want to cause a scandal. Poirot has Laura’s body exhumed and examined. 
Roddy is distraught, he wanted to propose to Mary but he’s absolutely sure that Elinor didn’t do it. 
Laura died of morphine poisoning too and of that too Elinor is accused. We’re now back at the beginning of the episode, and we hear the verdict: guilty. She’ll be hanged in five days. Elinor hasn’t defended herself at all and has nothing to say to Poirot.
Poirot keeps investigating. The nurse reveals to Poirot that Mary was Laura’s illegitimate daughter: she could not recognize her, she wanted to avoid a scandal, but always provided for her. Poirot goes again to see Laura in prison, and she tells him about that day when Mary died, and how the nurse told her that she had pricked her arm with a rose thorn. Poirot now understands it all but must prove it very quickly to save Elinor, so he sets a trap. The nurse is actually Laura’s sister Mary Riley, and she’s the murderer. She put the poison in the tea, not in the sandwiches, and then injected herself with something that would make her vomit the poison. She planned to go back to New Zealand and quietly claim her money from there - now I’m not an expert but I wonder why, without a will, it all went to a niece and nothing to a sister... anyway, this way she would have had it all of course; still I think the movie is not clear on this point. Did Mary leave her money to her as she said at the beginning or to Roddy as Poirot told him?  

The nurse now poisons again the tea waiting for Poirot to drink it, and he pretends to be dying so she lets down her guard and confess openly. Of course Poirot never drank that poisoned tea, and the police arrest her and they all rush to save Elinor. The doctor goes too and waits outside the prison for her to come out and take her home :-)

2003

ITA la parola alla difesa

The sisterhood - 2004

A terrible movie, really terrible. It has pretty girls well dressed that from time to time undress (not totally, they spend a lot of time in bra and panties) and kiss other girls, if that can interest anybody that’s all there is to it. Terrible, I say. No story, no acting, no suspense, no horror, no plot. 
The writing is bad too of course, in this movie the idea of a good girl or a good boy is someone who only thinks of studying and waits to be married to have sex, and the idea of evil and ‘dark side’ is apparently girls kissing other girls. Until the last part of the movie that’s all that happens.
Christine is the good student, the virgin who doesn’t want to party and who has special psychic abilities. A professor (Barbara Crampton) asks her to help her stop the Bat club, a sorority on campus, telling her that something evil goes on there and that the leader corrupts young souls. She asks Christine to join and to work from within to help her stop them. 
Because of their powers Christine is soon invited to become one of the Bats and she makes them take her roommate Regan because she had her heart on it. For a while the only things they do is having parties and kissing each other and then calling themselves sisters... :-/ it kinds seemed that their idea of bad girls was strongly linked to women-on-women action... they did nothing more than that and wearing cool black dresses, nothing sinister at all. Christine starts enjoying the sisterhood, although she says she’s a virgin which doesn’t go well with all the rest. 
The prof keeps telling her to be careful (she’s not), to wear a necklace with a cross all the time (she doesn’t even notice when two girls take it off before the three of them go into bed), and to resist all their temptations... sure keep telling her that. Christine replies that maybe they’re not evil at all, but next thing you know the leader Devon for some reason chooses Josh, the virgin, the good student who never misses class, and has him now in her power. Christine is upset (jealous) that he has sex with her and that he stops going to class because he only thinks about her now. All of a sudden Christine thinks Devon is evil :-/ 
The prof tells her, only now, that Devon has been doing it for years, centuries maybe, that she killed both her father and Christine’s parents, and now they’ve been given another chance at stopping her.
Christine and Devon ‘dance’ with two guys until Josh comes and they tie him up and kiss him instead, and Christine seems at it for real :-/ Next thing you know we are at the initiation scene, when Devon speaks to the girls about to be initiated: Christine and Regan: “Enter into the darkness”, which is not very subtle, she’s quite clear about it. Regan sits into a casket then Devon bites her because she’s a vampire and now Regan is reborn with light in her eyes, “belonging to the darkness”. When it is Christine’s turn the prof shows herself as one of the two women with a hood (why she didn’t stop the other girl then, she wasn’t important?) and she screams at Devon. Devon promises Christine immortality (more than once, that’s her strong point, and yet she’s the only one who seems to be immortal) and she calls the prof vampire-hunter. Christine chants her lines and the prof sticks a wooden stake in her chest. Now that she’s been defeated the prof leaves the school, Josh is back to his normal life, papers report that a girl is missing, and Christine seems not to care for Josh anymore and she sticks to the Bats as her sisters, even without Devon, saying it’s their time now, but the last image of the movie is Devon inside her grave taking the stake out of her chest.
That is all, but watching it is even more boring than reading it. It was terrible, the only good things were the clothes and the shoes that they always kept on, even the first one we saw running away in her underwear, she wanted to be quiet and yet kept running on heels. 

The informant! - 2009

First of all, the ! is in the title, I didn’t add that myself. Now, I liked watching it once but it’s not something to watch and re-watch. It’s a slow story, but since I didn’t know it already it was all new to me so it had a kind of mystery aura because there was clearly something wrong right from the start, and slowly I understood what it was. 
The story in details:
Marc Whitacre is a real person here portrayed by Matt Damon. This is a true story apparently. He had an important position in a big firm that had something to do with corn, they extract substances from it or something. The firm is having problem because there is a virus affecting the corn. Marc goes to his bosses saying that a Japanese guy knew all their company secrets and was asking 10 million dollars to “help” them defeat the virus. Basically he’s saying that there is a traitor in the firm who worked with the competitors, who planted the virus and they’re now being blackmailed to resolve the situation. It would cost the firm less than what they’d lose wasting time, but they still don’t like to yield and contact the FBI. Special Agent (but FBI agents are all special or only field agents are special?) Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula ) goes to his house to bug his phone, and Marc’s wife Ginger encourages Marc to “tell him everything”, so completely out of the blue Marc tells him a big story about orders received from his bosses and international plans to fix prices, which is illegal. The FBI is of course interested. Marc says he wants to do the right thing. He secretly works for the FBI for two and a half years, recording conversations at meetings, keeping them updated to everything that happens at his firm ADM. When they think they have enough they move and do a blitz. It could be over now, but somehow it turns out that Marc, like others at ADM, was taking bribes all the time, and not only that but I think he was embezzling, using some people who owed him their salary for some scam, or something, anyway he stole 9 million dollars ... it starts admitting 1, then 2, then 5, then 7.7, he lies so much the FBI revoke his immunity and go after him. Maybe it all started when ADM, trying to defend itself, found out that Marc forged signatures and faked contracts. He refused to take a deal so at the end while the people at ADM did only three years he ended up doing 8 (or 9).
It was a strange story and a strange character, at the end they say he was diagnosed as bipolar although that’s not the bipolar behaviour I’ve learned, still there was clearly something strange about him. From the start, he made a big deal out of everything, acting as if the whole world depended on him and he was more important than he seemed to be. He presented his boss with the blackmail request (it will turn out that it was him who created and maybe defeated the virus, and he invented the blackmailer) and then made a big deal when they talked about FBI. The agent came and was about to leave, and it was Marc encouraged by his wife (you tell him or I will, which shows that he had talked about it with her and she knew everything) to start the whole thing by calling him back and telling him of the ‘price fixing scheme’. We heard his thoughts and again he felt important, calling the agent ‘Brian’ and imagining the two of them playing golf or something. All that happened, he started it.  To explain why he ‘wanted to do the right thing’ he kept telling people that his parents had died when he was six and a rich man adopted him and gave him a comfortable life, he had been lucky and now wanted to do good, but his parents were not dead at all and he was never adopted.
He kept telling lies, that there was a mole at ADM, that he was in a meeting and couldn’t meet the agents, that the price fixing thing had stopped, and more, all lies. When they went after him for the money stolen, he 1.was shocked that the firm would do this to him, he kept imagining that they’d understand and he’d keep his job there, which was ridiculous of course; 2.tried to sue the FBI saying that Brian had hit him with a suitcase... 3. forged a letter from a doctor saying that they had caused him great distress that could lead him to suicide or something 4.kept lying about how much money he had taken. 
It was a strange story and I don’t know what happened to his money, but I googled him and apparently the real Marc is now an important figure in another firm....
Anyway, it seems that he was right in the price-fixing scheme, there was really something illegal there. 
Other actors:
his wife - Melanie Lynskey
Cheviron - Tom Wilson
Special Agent Bob - Joel McHale

Ti ricordi di me? - 2014

It was a nice movie, a bit funny and romantic, although I think it touches some problems in a rather superficial or unrealistic way. I’m not an expert so I may be wrong, but the female lead here is a narcoleptic, and this causes her two problems: she usually leads a perfectly normal life, awake during the day working and having her normal activities, and asleep at night, but then when she gets emotional she falls on the floor asleep with no warning. Also, after some of these episodes, when the emotion was stronger, she wakes up with a total amnesia and she never recovers her memories.
Visually this works very well for the movie, but it doesn’t seem very realistic to me.
Anyway, if we take it for what it is, a strange movie fairy tale, it’s not bad after all. The ending is somehow too open for my taste, though. 
The story: the film starts with ‘once upon a time’ but we’ll learn that the reason is that the male lead writes modern fairy tales.
It’s the story of Roberto Mariano (Edoardo Leo) and Beatrice Benassi (Ambra Angiolini). They meet outside their psychiatrist office. He went there because he’s a kleptomaniac, she went because she’s narcoleptic. They share the urge to cross the street by walking only on the white stripes, and when he sees her doing that he’s like stroke by lightening and thinks she’s the right one for him. He tries many times to talk to her but she’s not interested, and finds his insistence and his gifts rather annoying.
One day though they meet again and are both stuck when they see that the white stripes are gone because are being remade (although they look perfectly alright the time before and now have apparently been cancelled before being remade..), also the workmen are on lunch break so she doesn’t know what to do until Roberto takes the equipment and draws a big vertical white line where she can walk. After this kind of ‘romantic gesture’ they start talking and liking each other. He’s single but she’s in a relationship and has been for many years. One day she’s forced to change her usual schedule of activities and gets home earlier to find her Amedeo (Ennio Fantastichini) with another woman. She storms out and starts walking and crying until she faints on a sidewalk. She stops going to her therapist because she’s being cured in an institution. She meets Roberto again by chance and he tries to make her remember about him. She always carry around a big book where she writes all her life, including pictures of people. The first time she wrote that he was annoying and to be avoided at all costs, and beneath that she wrote that she loved lemon-and-coffee ice-cream. Somehow the post-it with “change of mind” written on it has been misplaced and appears to be over the ice-cream thing, so he shows up again with an ice-cream cone, saying that if she hates it he’ll never bother her again, but she loves it, therefore there was no change-of-mind on that. They start talking again, and get to know each other and fall in love. They move in together, have a son and live happily a few years, until one day she meets Amedeo again. It must have been a strong emotion, maybe she remembered him all of a sudden, and she fainted. Roberto and the child are very worried, not hearing from her again. They know nothing for weeks, until his friend Francesco who works at the passport office finds her. She remembers nothing of his life with Roberto or of her past with Amedeo, she only thinks that Amedeo never gave up on her and kept looking for her until he found her, and is now living with him and working in his business firm selling clocks. He frantically searches his house for her big book with their whole life together, and finally his son admits it is now under his bed - for years she never went anywhere without it, but that day she went out without it happy that she felt strong enough to leave it at home, so she had nothing to remind her of what had happened before. It was a result of their successful life together, just like she had no more narcoleptic episodes and he had stopped stealing as long as she was with him. 
Roberto immediately drives up to Switzerland but only when he gets there he takes a look inside the book to discover that his son had stripped it of all its contents, taken away all the pictures, leaving only one. The last page was a picture of the three of them together, and the child covered it with a drawing showing himself and his dad alone. I felt for this scene, because they didn’t give the child’s feeling much space, and Roberto hadn’t known what to tell him because he hadn’t known what had happened. He now has only one picture, but when he’s finally face to face with her and she appears to be fine and without the slightest memory of him, he doesn’t show it to her, instead giving her an elaborate excuse for his presence and then walking away. 
Even if she doesn’t remember him something makes her look outside the window. She looks at him and sees how he crosses the street and in the spur of the moment she runs after him to talk. The movie ends with the two of them going for a coffee... it seems clear that they’ll get back together, but we don’t know how he’ll break to her the big news that she has a son. 
A couple of things to add about this movie: 
1-Roberto writes modern fairy tales, meaning not the usual ones about princesses but modern ones about the real world with grandmas dying an kamikaze-kids. His editor obviously hates them, but his teenage son got hold of them and read them and loved them, and gave them to his school mates to read, so now the editor wants to publish them. He writes two books of stories if I’m not mistaken. 
2-His friend Francesco (Paolo Calabresi) was in a relationship with Valeria (Susy Laude). He kept saying how he was tired, how he wanted to avoid being alone with her. He didn’t want to have time to talk to her and didn’t share her enthusiasm at the idea of having children, but never said so to her. Francesco kept inviting Roberto so that they wouldn’t be alone, and wanted him to keep living in their house for the same reason. When Roberto told them that he was planning of finding a new home to move in with Beatrice, Francesco reacts badly, saying that they can both live with them in the spare room because after all it’s empty and they have no use for it... Valeria gets upset because she thought they had already planned to turn it into the baby’s room, and she leaves him. From that moment Francesco becomes obsessed with her, he wants her back, keeps calling Roberto, saying that he loves her. Years go by, Valeria has another relationship but that too ends and Francesco keeps hoping. There’s no definite closure for them either, but she looks at him tenderly when he reads Roberto’s child a bedtime story while babysitting, because Roberto has left to go find Beatrice.

Quantum leap season 1

1 - 2 - Pilot
It all starts. We learn that Sam jumped in the accelerator; Al knows they’re not ready, the computer was against it, but Sam did it anyway. He wakes up thinking “we did it! ... did what? I can’t remember, I can’t remember anything, who am I?”, then he learns that he’s called Tom, has a pregnant wife and a son, and is a pilot. Looking at his image in the mirror he knows it’s not him, but at the moment that’s as far as he goes. 
When he sees Al, he doesn’t recognize him. Later that night, he starts remembering something, that he was raised on a dairy farm in Indiana until he was 18, had a sister Kate who married Jim, mom lives in Hawaii since dad died in ‘74, so since this is just 1956 he figures that his dead is still alive and wants to call him but doesn’t remember either the number or the name...
Al can’t tell him his surname or any personal information, and even tells him that they couldn’t retrieve him because he told people that he’s not the real Tom... he also tells him that they’ll try again on Tuesday so he tries pretending he’s the real Tom, but I guess his wife starts wondering after they kiss... problem is, he has a flight test on Monday... on the questionnaire designed to test how the flights affect their memory, he writes that he was born on 1953 and also about stuff they have never heard about... so they think he faked the memory loss like other pilots.
Before the test Al explains something about their project Quantum leap, which is fascinating :-)
Al tells him that Tom was killed during a flight trying to break mach-2, so if he puts that right he’ll leap. Al is an ex-astronaut apparently, so plans to help him flight the plane.. Al is a bit late though because he was at a ball game and met a girl.. still he arrives and helps him, and he ejects right before the plane explodes. Sam’s still there though, he didn’t leap, although Tom’s life has been saved. 
His wife went into labor when she heard the crash, and is having some problems.  Nine weeks too early. The choice is to give birth where she is but the baby won’t stand a chance, or transfer her to another hospital, but the doctors there think it’s too late, so Sam uses his medical knowledge - also insisting that everything he wrote in the questionnaire is the truth - to tell them to get her drunk and thus stopping the contractions, so they can save both. After that, he leaps.
Into a baseball player. Al tells him that both Tom and the baby lived, and they called the baby girl Samantha :-)
Sam says “I could be bouncing around in time forever” and Al “no, nobody lives forever” :-p
Sam has six doctorates, medical doctor is just one of them. Al is touched by his situation and tells him his surname: Beckett, so Sam calls Mr Beckett, in Indiana, and he can finally hear his father’s voice, telling him they’re related because he’s the son of his uncle John who went to Australia. 
Grateful that he could do that, he moves on on a very different spirit, and wins the game. Of course it’s two strikes first, then .. well he misses the third too, but the catcher doesn’t catch so Al starts shouting for him to run; the other team keeps not catching the ball so he keeps running all the way.
Then he leaps again, into a professor. The end.

3- Star-crossed
June 15, 1972
Sam is an English professor, supposed to talk about Wuthering Heights at Lawrence College, Ohio, named Gerald R. Bryant, as his faculty ID shows us, thanks. A student named Jamie Lee is obsessed with him and with poetry. She already told her dad and supposed boyfriend about ‘them’, seems even happy at the idea of a double suicide, to die romantically like Romeo&Juliet... :-/ how silly, romanticism is to live together, not to die together! Al tells him his reason for being here is to avoid the marriage between the professor and the girl that will ruin both their lives, but Sam thinks differently. He says he’s here to get a second chance. Donna is here, and they almost got married but she didn’t show up in church, although they would meet in twelve years.  
Al warns him about “Quantum leap rule numero uno: “the time traveller shall not take advantage of his position to improve or alter his life”, but he doesn’t care.  Al says: “don’t give me that sick puppy look, stop it”...
So Sam starts spending time with Donna, talking about astrophysics and time-traveling theories and telling her what Al told him about the string  in a circle and all that crumpled up... he thinks that Donna never got over the fact that her father left her and plans to get them together again. He’s in Washington at the Pentagon, and is supposed to leave for Vietnam the next day.
Three of Sam’s doctorate are in : medicine, astrophysics and ancient languages. Since the bosses are controlling Al he wore hieroglifycs to help him.  
He tries to have Oscar make peace with Jamie Lee by having him be a little more romantic, but she shows again at his place in a lovely Guinevere’s dress... and then Oscar shows up complaining that it didn’t work when he told her that her perfume makes him horny... yeah very romantic!
Sam, Donna, Jamie Lee and Oscar all travel to Washington in Oscar’s car, but Al has a point: Donna was engaged once before, before him, so she might grow up to marry that other man..  
When they get there, they’re not allowed in but Sam enters from a side door - it wasn’t locked, is it to be considered breaking and entering? Anyway, they reach the colonel’s room and Donna meets her father who tells her that he loves her.  
One of the guards notices a car with the plate from Ohio - why is that a big deal after Sam just told him that Donna traveled all night from Ohio?? - and then he also finds the open door, and now we see why there was one open: it had been taped so that it wouldn’t lock. The other guard calls the police for a break-in at the Watergate...
Oscar finally switches horny with ‘breathless with passion’ ..
It’s now June 17, when it all started, the Watergate Scandal and Nixon impeachment...
He leaps as soon as Jamie Lee kisses Oscar, into a boxer.

4- The right hand of God
October 24, 1974 - California
Sam is Cody, a boxer. His contract has been bought by a convent of nuns. If he wins heavyweight champions he'll give money to the nuns of St. Mary to build a chapel.
They own him now and he goes to live with them, supposedly to save money they say, but I don't see how since his girlfriend still lives in their apartment..
In the past more than once he took money to lose fights.
Now he starts training with sister Angela, who of course has a sad past, her family murdered when she was a little girl.
His girlfriend is Dixie, the sweet blonde stripper who likes to say "sprinkles on top".
He trains very hard for the next fight, and Al says that in the past the real Cody took a dive and lost.
Now Sam wants to fight clean, despite a boss wanting him to lose.
Sam bets all their money, Cody's and Dixie's, but on Ali's match, and he wins 48.000 dollars, so he can give 20.000 to the nuns, 20.000 they keep, and the other 8.000 they give to the boss as compensation and way out.

5- How the Tess was won
August 5, 1956 - Texas
A ranch owner wants his daughter Tess to marry someone, but she refuses. When he insists she proposes a contest: she chooses Doc and if he wins a week of challenges she'll marry him and together they'll own everything.
Sam is Doc, a vet secretly in love with her. One day she tires so much she faints, and he takes her home and undresses her saying she needs to cool down...  was it really really necessary to leave her with only her bra and panties on, in front of the kid?
At the end he wins but refuses the marriage; she's sad and goes to talk to him, and he confesses that he didn't do it for the land but because he's in love with her.
Cowboy Wayne shows up at Doc's door too, confessing that he also doesn't care about the land, he's always been in love with her and has written her a lot of love letters, so she'll marry him.
Al tells Sam that it was to be expected, tells him "you had a lot to overcome", and the explanation is Doc's face in the mirror... or it is supposed to be. What was wrong with it? We see it only for a moment. Was he older? Ok, maybe Wayne was cuter, but that's in the eye of the beholder right?
Sam hasn't leaped yet. Throughout the episode there was the little gag of the kid that looks after his animals and sings outside his door, and Sam didn't know his name.
At the end of the episode the little pig that the doc/Sam had saved escapes out and Sam goes after him calling Piggy, Piggy, and the kid starts singing PiggySue. Now Sam knows why he's there and the name of the kid. He calls him Buddy (as in Buddy Holly) and says "Buddy, why don't you try Peggy Sue, it might sound a little better" ...

6- Double identity
November 8, 1965
They speak Italian A LOT in this episode :-p and Sam sings Nel blu dipinto di blu.
Sam is Francesco 'Frankie' who's having a story with Theresa who apparently is off-limits because of Don Gino's orders.
Al is still trying to find a way to bring Sam back and this time their plan cause a HUGE blackout and it still won't work, of course. To make it work Sam has to be with the same person at the same place and doing the same thing he was doing when he appeared. We'll never know if the plan would have really worked if Sam had followed the instructions to the letter, instead he didn't have sex with Theresa... good thing maybe since Don Gino busted in with a gun and they started fighting a bit. Sam leaps into Don Gino and this time he thinks he'll be able to do something good, and when Frankie admits, with all due respect, that "I love her so much it hurts" he publicly approves of their engagement so that Don Gino won't be able to change it. Still no leap, until he realizes that he was there to make grandma win bingo...

7- The color of truth
August 8, 1955
Sam leaps into Jessie, a black man in 1955 Alabama. Before he knows anything about his new himself, he sits down at a diner and almost gets beaten up for it. He’s Miss Melanie’s driver and general factotum. Sam wants to help the civil rights war but Al tells him he’s there to save Miss Melanie’s life since she’s supposed to die the next day. 
His granddaughter Nell comes to take him home, where he has to cook, but a bunch of white shits leave a burning cross in front of their house scaring the girl.
Miss Melanie’s not too bad, although as an old lady she’s very attached to “the way things are, the way things have always been”; Poor Nell is thrown offroad by two white guys; Miss Melanie warns him as soon as she sees the car, they take Nell in the car, lulled into her arms, and he drives straight towards the first hospital even though that is a white-hospital... it IS against the law though, so the doctor says he can’t help, but Miss Melanie steps forward saying “I want you to help that child” so they do it. A nurse called the sheriff and he arrests him. He has the sheriff agree to keep Miss Melanie there for half an hour so that she couldn’t get killed in the car crash - what Al thinks they’re there to avoid - but as soon as she hears he’s been arrested she drives the car herself. Al is in her car shouting for her to stop the car, and at the last second she does and doesn’t die, thinking her dead husband saved her.. she has Jessie released from jail and she tells him that Nell is fine enough and has been moved to the other hospital. She sends him to take her salad at the diner as usual, like at the beginning, until she walks in at sits there and asks him to join her for lunch. And now he leaps.

8- Camikazi kid
June 6, 1961
Sam is Cam Wilson, a 17-year-old kid. His sister Cheryl is engaged to Bob. He drinks a lot, and Sam must stops Cheryl from marrying him. Sam remembers his own sisters who got married at 17 and had an abusive husband but told nobody. Cheryl’s wedding is in three days. He sees a bruise on her neck but she covers for Bob. At the wedding rehearsal, he makes a touching speech on how he’s proud of her, then in the bathroom he overhears Bob talking to his dad when he says he’s going to work with him so Cam tells Cheryl but Bob lies again and she believes him so Sam listens to Al and challenges him to a race. Cam and 16-year-old Jill modify the car to give it more boost. Thanks to Jill’s help and Al he wins the race, but then he’s so angry he tries to run him over. After that Cheryl gives him back the ring and when Bob tries to force her to stay with him Sam hits him : “don’t you ever touch my sister again”, and after that even his friends leave him. 
Cheryl goes home with Jill and Cam and then she leaves as she wanted to for Kennedy’s campaign and other charity work. Sam kisses Jill and then he leaps (she’s 16, but he’s supposed to be 17.. 
I don’t know how old the actress was).  He leaps into a man, holding a gun, standing in front of a dead man’s body...
Jason Priestley plays Bob’s s friend. 

9- Play it again, Seymour
April 14, 1953
Sam’s a private detective named Nick Allen, someone Sam and Al both say has a remarkable resemblance to Bogart, so much Sam asks “Am I Boogie?” but alas no, Bogart is with Audrey Hepburn and William Holden ( :-D )  but honestly I don’t see it. A vague resemblance, maybe, but nothing more.
Sam has a lot of de jà vu.. he knows everybody around. The dead man was his partner Phil, and Nick was having an affair with his wife Allison (Claudia Christian), well more or less since they never made love before. When he finds a manuscript or something in his office he realizes why it is that he knew what was happening: he read the book. 

He almost dies when he enters the elevator but the elevator is not there and he almost falls down.
Al finds the book and it turns out that the mystery was never solved, and also that Nick was killed too. (Al has been married five times already :p). Sam likes Allison too and is so annoyed at his warnings that she might be the killer that he becomes a little mean: "don't compare me to yourself; I think with my brain and I don't cloud my judgement with the bottle" but quickly regrets it "why do we hurt people for telling us the truth".
A guy, Seymour, wants to be like Nick and follows him around, but Nick tries to leave him behind when Al tells him that after his death Seymour and Allison disappear. Al warns him to stay away from LaGuardia, where Nick died, but he wants to find Phil's killer, but Seymour is taken away by 'Clapper the dropper' :p while he's distracted by some people who think he's Bogart...
Neither Allison or Seymour had anything to do with the murder, it was a man obsessed with her. With Al's help he has Lionel arrested and so Allison and Nick can finally be together... and Seymour, scared after Lionel tried to kill him, changes his mind and doesn't want to do that job anymore, instead he decides to write about it and will become a writer :p
Sam leaps again and finds himself in a bathtub, and a girl calls him "Miss" ...

I liked these last two episodes, my favs of the first season. Specially the last one, with its aura of 'noir film' about it, really good.

In the last analysis by Amanda Cross

I liked this a lot. Only 217 pages, which for me is rather a perfect amount: no long descriptions of sceneries, architecture, clothes, or any other kind of useless (for me, that it) descriptions.
Only the story, and a nice one, the words flying by as I read on. The ending is rather abrupt, so if someone likes to guess the solution before it is revealed it might be somewhat irritating because I think it’s almost impossible to guess it right. 
Now all the details: Kate Fansler is an English teacher. A student, Janet Harrison, asks her to recommend a good psychoanalyst and Kate gives her the name of her good friend Emanuel Bauer. 

When Janet is stabbed to death on his couch, in his house, with his knife, Emanuel is the first suspect, his wife Nicola the second. Kate throws herself into the investigation, 100% sure of their innocence, with the help of her good friend a.d.a. Reed, and young Jerry, engaged to her niece Sarah. There seems to be little hope of solving the mystery, but at the end she conjures up a nice, neat theory that only lacks evidence. She is sure that Janet and Dr Michael Barrister were in love, and yet he kept secret that he knew her and she kept an old picture of him hidden in her documents. Kate puts together a lot of things that are not exactly “facts” but are important nonetheless: the literary preferences of the doctor when he was young, Janet’s dreams that indicate she hated lawyers (barrister!), things that the doctor suddenly forgot after returning from Canada... and her big theory is that the doc met and fell in love with Janet in Canada, but then he met a man who looked a lot like him. The man killed him, or somehow he died, and the man took his identity. Many things kept Janet away for years, and then she went looking for him and realized he wasn’t the man she loved and tried to prove it, and he killed her. A good man who knew him when they were students and also his sensitive wife manage to find a way to prove it. The real Mike Barrister had had an operation and should still have the scar on his back. Reed takes it upon himself to go look and prove that she was right. The book ends with a scene happening six weeks later: Kate going on holiday, sailing for Europe; she finds Reed is there too, on “vacation and leave”, for protection: “I wanted to protect you, so to speak, in the quarantine period, to be sure the fever was gone” - “what fever?” - “detective fever. I’ve known a few people with cases like yours. They invariably sail for Europe and trip over a body on their way to the shower” . :lol:

A day at the races - 1937

Well, it still holds its own, for sure, it’s funny and full of good actors. It’s a mix of slow comic scenes and fast comic lines, plus some unavoidable singing and dancing *sigh*
The story: Miss Judy owns a sanitarium but she’s having financial trouble, and risks losing it. Her only rich client/patient is Mrs Upjohn but she wants to leave in a rage because the doctor says she’s perfectly fine. When she says she wants to go to Dr Hackenbush, Tony says that he’s the new sanitarium’s doctor so she stays and he sends a telegram to Hackenbush telling him to come and take care of Mrs Upjohn. He’s actually a vet but Mrs Upjohn doesn’t know - “she’s so in love with me she doesn’t know anything. That’s why she’s in love with me”. He puts on his jacket and prepares to leave and there’s a puppy hidden inside one of his sleeves :-p
His funny walk reminds me of Govi sometimes, and it’s funny how two different actors so far away may have developed similar techniques.
Hackenbush arrives at the sanitarium and tries everything he can to avoid answering questions about his profession. He knows he’s a fraud because he’s not a people-doctor, but he needs money too.
He looks at a portrait and tells Judy that he had met the woman and “I proposed to your mother” - “but that’s my father” - “no wonder he turned me down”  :lol:  
Gil Stewart, Judy’s boyfriend, is a tenor and there’s a long long scene when he sings a song, then Vivien Fay dances, then a bit of fun with Hackenbush dancing with two women: Mrs Upjohn and the sexy one he wants to dance with; then there are Chico and Harpo playing the piano and directing the orchestra, then they smash the piano and Harpo uses it as an harp :-p
A rich man, Morgan, wants to buy the sanitarium to build a casino, so he set the femme fatal onto him to get him into trouble. Stuffy hears it all and ‘explains it’ to Tony, and they try to save the situation. Hackenbush has invited her to his room, where he was supposed to be found by Mrs Upjohn and ruined. Tony and Stuffy do all they can to stop their evening together: at one point they dress up as Sherlock : “if you’re looking for my fingerprints you’re a little early”, when they look at her. Then they come in as workmen to put new wallpapers on the walls, and they cover everything, girl included, so when Mrs Upjohn comes in she’s nowhere to be seen. 
Whitman, who works at the sanitarium but secretly for Morgan, brings in another doctor to put Hackenbush to the test, and Hackenbush tries to leave in a hurry but Tony stops him. “Are you a man or a mouse?” - “You put a piece of cheese down there and you’ll find out” :-p
At this point there’s a long comic scene where the two doctors are supposed to examine Mrs Upjohn: a lot of madness that ends with a horse in the room.
Now there’s another song to cheer Judy up because she thinks she’s lost. Then there’s a long song/dance scene with a lot of little black kids and their families and some musicians and singers. The three Marx blacken up to blend in when she sheriff arrives, trying to avoid those chasing them. When they see the sheriff, all the people disappear, and Stuffy escapes with Gil’s horse, who turns out to be a jumper, not a runner. They all plan to make the horse compete, and succeed even if the bad guys are all trying to stop them. Stuffy is their jockey of course, and every time the horse has to jump they make him see Morgan’s face or hear his voice, until at some point both him and Morgan’s jockey fall down in the mud. The other jockey gets up first and wins the race, but when the horse reacts badly to Morgan’s presence Stuffy realizes that that’s his horse! And since it’s the horse that matters, not the jockey, they won! They all walk away into a long celebrating procession, and Hackenbush says to Mrs Upjohn: “Emily I have a little confession to make, I really am a horse doctor but marry me and I’ll never look at any other horse” :lol: 
Hackenbush-Groucho Marx
Judy-Maureen O’Sullivan
Tony-Chico Marx
Stuffy-Harpo Marx
Gil-Allan Jones
Mrs Upjohn-Margaret Dupont
Vivien Fay as herself
Dancing femme fatal - Esther Muir

ITA un giorno alle corse

Nothing sacred - 1937

No, I didn’t like it. I’m sorry, it can be a nice movie to talk about, but a boring one to watch. I can appreciate the satire, the acting, the funny lines, the fact that it was in technicolor, but I still found it boring. 
It’s about a girl who lets the world believe that she’s dying to enjoy fame and a free holiday in New York, until the truth comes out and a solution must be found.
The movie starts with the words “New York... where truth crushed to earth rises again more phony than a glass eye”, and then there’s a celebration for Wally Cook, a journalist with a big story who turns out to be fake when his rich sultan turns out to be a local man with wife and kids.
His boss Oliver Stone, the funniest character in the movie, is very angry and ‘plans to remove him from the living’, relegating him to writing the obituaries. Cook manages to convince him that he’s a better journalist than all the others and he could write a great story about Hazel Flagg, a girl who is dying of radium poisoning, instead of the simple column that has already appeared. Cook leaves for Vermont, where people don’t like journalists and say a lot of yeps. 
Just now Hazel learns from his doctor that he had made a mistake and that she’s not dying; she’s relieved at first, and then almost sorry because she had planned to use up all the money she had to go away and spend her last weeks enjoying herself. She comes out of his office crying when Cook meets her and obviously thinks that she’s crying because she’s dying. He tells her that he can take her to New York, all paid by his newspaper, the Morning Star. She accepts and brings her doctor along, who strongly feels that the Morning Star owes him for not giving him the prize he feels he should have won twenty years before. The whole of New York honors her, there are front pages talking about the “doomed girl” and she receives the key to the city, and everybody cries for her and speaks of her great courage and how she’s an example to everyone. She knows she’s a fake but it takes a long time before she starts talking about a conscience.
When she’s called on stage she suddenly faints and everyone thinks she’s getting worse but she had been drinking all night and is simply drunk.
When she wakes up, still hangover, Cook comes to see how she’s feeling and to discuss with her the terms for her funeral, and to tell her that he’ll ask for a national day in her name. He tells her that he wanted the President to be present at her funeral but that he’s not available: “he’s still fishing” :lol: things don’t change all that much huh?
He also tells her that he doesn’t want to give up and that he’s called another doctor, an expert, to have a look at her. She’s terribly upset and thinks of faking her suicide and disappear. She leaves a not on the pillow and sneaks out that same night, but a man (the fake sultan) come to take some of her flowers for his wife finds the note and calls Stone immediately. The police and Cook are alerted, and Cook finds her before she conjures up enough courage to throw herself into the river (although knowing very well, since she checked, that her doc was there with a boat to take her to safety). Trying to stop her from committing suicide he inadvertently pushes her and then he jumps too without thinking, wanting to save her only he can’t swim. Together they get out and he proposes to her - a swim in the river and a lot of kisses and her makeup and lipstick are still absolute perfection :-)
The famous doctor from Vienna didn’t come alone. Hazel was examined also by his colleagues from Berlin, Moscow and Prague. They report to Stone that Hazel is totally healthy and therefore an impostor. Stone is very upset of course. Cook is glad to learn that she won’t die, but Stone is furious and orders his men to get her, but she fakes another illness, pneumonia this time. Cook doesn’t fall for it this time, but wants his boss to believe her so in order to make her all sweaty they have a fight and then he hit her to knock her out. He says it’s alright because he loves her. Then she comes to and hits him back, and then tells him she’s sorry because she loves him - she took him by surprise of course, she was being the worst fighter I have ever seen..
She confesses to the mayor and those few people outside her room waiting to see how she’s doing, and together they plan a way out. The papers report her death and everybody attends her funeral and shed tears for her while she goes away and marries Cook.
In the opening credits all the main actors are listed beside a terrifying miniature caricature of them :-p
All the cast was good.
Hazel- Carole Lombard
Cook- Fredric March
Her doctor- Charles Winninger, who has the tendency to ‘lean’ towards the people he speaks to, very Michael-Jackson-style :lol:
Oliver- Walter Connolly
Vermont drugstore lady- Margaret Hamilton - funny

Transformers - 2007

Not bad, it was fun enough. The autobots were cool :-) Not only cars and trucks, but also helicopters and tanks turned into autobots (the nice cars and the shiny trucks were the good autobots, and the police car, the tank and the helicopter were the decepticons). There was also a big scorpion-bot that attacked a group of soldiers in the desert. 
That’s what the movie is all about. There were also actors and characters to fill in the time between bot-fights. Shia LaBeouf played Sam Witwicky, a teenager who gets his first car. The used-car salesman tells him that the car chooses the man, and indeed a yellow car makes a mess until it is chosen. As Sam puts it, he bought a car and it turned out to be an alien robot, and that’s how he got involved in this war. He was chosen by the bot because his great-grandfather (I think) had found Megatron hibernated, and the coordinates of something got imprinted into his glasses, now in Sam’s possession. The glasses weren’t all that useful after all, it seemed to me, since both Megatron and the big cube that could transform every metal into an autobot were in possess of the military. They were using Megatron as a source of technology, but now an imp-bot frees him. 
Other characters are: Mikaela (Megan Fox), the girl that Sam likes. She’s the daughter of a car thief and knows about cars. A genius tech-girl in high heels, the Defense Secretary Jon Voight, a group of soldiers (Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson and others). There’s also John Turturro playing the agent who goes to Sam’s house to get him. He was the funniest part, I liked how he played it :-) 
The cool part were the bots. 
Of course the good bots win with Sam’s help, and then Optimus Prime, Jazz, Ratchet the medical officer, and Sam’s car Bumblebee decide to stay here on Earth. Well, one of them ‘died’, I think, torn in two by the bad bots, I think it was Jazz, or Ratchet, not sure. Not the other two, that’s for sure. 

Edit:

Optimus’ voice explains: “before time began, there was the cube. We know not where it comes from, only that it holds the power to create worlds and fill them with life. That is how our race was born.”

Sooner or later a war began because some wanted power to do good, but there’s always who wants it for themselves. Their planet was consumed and the Cube lost. “We scattered across the galaxy hoping to find it and rebuild our home, searching every star, every world.”

Now, guess where it is. Yep. ^_^

So, they come to Earth, “ but we were already too late.”

Yeah, that’s why things stayed the same here for years, decades, and then all of a sudden technology started going wild, every few months something new, something more advanced.They used alien technology as inspiration or something. Of course they couldn’t give you the ultimate product right away, they start slow and make little changes every time, so people keep buying more. Of course.

So:

An helicopter-bot attacks a military base in Qatar.

Sam speaks in class of an ancestor who was an adventurer, trying to make money selling stuff. He goes to buy his first car. He gives Mikaela a ride home. They’ve been in the same classes for years and she can’t even recognize him…

The car stops to give him time with her, but starts again when she walks away. Its radio goes by itself choosing ‘appropriate’ songs for the moments. :)  

The plane of the President has a radio-bot, a small nasty things :lol: Lucky for them, it only wanted information, apparently it wants Sam’s ancestor’s glasses. 

Sam’s car goes away by itself at night, and he sees a bot for the first time.When dogs attack him, his car saves him, but then the cops take him in, for some reason. 

The survivors in Qatar have to deal with a scorpion-bot, or something. When planes attack it, it goes back underwater.

Tech-genius girl working for the government takes data outside to give it to a super hacker, Glen. They’re found in no time. 

Sam rides a pink bike to escape his car, that now scares him. He asks for help when he sees a police car, but it’s a police-car-bot. Now he does get in his car, with Mikaela who followed him. Police-bot wants his glasses. His yellow car-bot transforms to fight the bad bots. There’s the little nasty thing too :lol:

Mikaela saves him by cutting it to pieces.Still, it now becomes a cell-bot.

To make them happy, yellow-bot becomes a new car, all shiny, but still yellow. 

Things fall from the sky, like meteors, but it’s bots. They meet blue-red-truck-bot, aka Optimus Prime, who explains that they come from the planet Cybertron and are autobots. There’s Jazz, Ironhide (purple) and Ratchet, a yellow-red bot. His car is Bumblebee.

They’re looking for the “All spark”, and need to find it before Megatron, leader dei Decepticons.

His ancestor found the Cube’s location, (which for some reason got imprinted in his glasses…) and … revived Megatron? Why then Megatron didn’t get the Cube? 

Sam’s chihuahua Mojo takes a piss on the foot of a bot :lol

These good bots destroy Sam’s garden. Finally he finds the glasses. Sector Seven of the government knocks at his house. They take them all away, but then Optimus breaks the car they’re in, so Sam introduces them to Optimus Prime. 

Sam learns that Mikaela’s dad stole cars. 

The government then attacks the good bots and arrest Sam and Mikaela; they also take Bumblebee. Optimus has the glasses though.

We see the government has a frozen Megatron, since 1934. They also have the Cube, and it’s a big one.

(No Borg inside, though)

With the Cube’s energy, they change Glen’s phone into a bot. All bad bots arrive for it.

The little nasty thing is there too :lol

Sam gets back his car, they were torturing the poor thing. Bumblebee touches the Cube and it becomes smaller. Megatron gets free. 

Big Bot fight,

Bumblebee gets hurt. A bad tank-bot is there. Bumblebee(maybe…) gives the Cube to Sam. Sam runs with the Cube to get it to safety. Lots of fight and destruction. The Cube’s energy makes stuff become bots; they’re all bad, aren’t they? Even if it’s not in Megatron’s hands…

Sam reaches a roof, he wants to give the Cube to some soldiers but the helicopter is destroyed. 

More fighting, more destruction.

Then, instead of doing what Optimus said, to put the Cube in its chest so he can defeat Megatron sacrificing himself, Sam uses it to touch Megatron and it kills him. Jazz is dead, the others are here.

Bumblebee speaks, not with songs, and wants to stay with the kid. The rest of the bad bots is put in a deep abyss at sea. 

The good bots stay here now. The cube… did it get destroyed? Not sure about that.

Optimus sends a message to all bots among the stars.

Sam… ShiaLaBeouf

Mikaela… Megan Fox

CaptLennox… Josh Duhamel

Sergeant Epps… Tyrese Gibson

Defence secretary… Jon Voight

Agent Simmons… John Turturro

Peggy Sue got married - 1986

The only good thing about this movie was Kathleen Turner as Peggy Sue. Everything else was barely watchable, which is everything but Nicolas Cage, he was unbearable. I wonder how it’s possible he had such a long career. Did people really liked him back then? I mean, now there’s the experience and the star-aura around him so it’s different, but when he started, did people really like him? Why? This movie’s director shares the same surname, but what about all the other movies?
It’s clear that he must have had his followers, although I really can’t understand how that happened.
Basically he ruins the movie for me. The whole movie is about the great love story between Peggy Sue and his character Charlie Bodell, who’s supposed to be soooo cute and soooo charming... :-/
The story is: Peggy Sue is sad because she’s getting a divorce because Charlie left her for a ‘bimbo’, and she’s so upset she’s a total wreck. Her daughter Beth (Helen Hunt, good choice) goes with her to the school reunion as moral support. When he shows up Peggy starts crying and shaking.. and when she has to go up on stage because she’s been elected queen, she suddenly faints. 
She wakes up in a hospital in the Spring of 1960, and we see a balloon from the reunion, which makes you wonder if that’s real or just a dream. She acts weird at first of course, glad to see her mom dad and little sister, but she has no other choice than go on living there as a teenager. 
Charlie tells her that they should see other people now, have fun, and then maybe get married in the future, but when she agrees and he sees her talking to other boys he’s all jealous and changes his mind.
She asks Richard, the smart guy bullied at school (as they often are because bullies are idiots and afraid/jealous of the smart ones) if time travel is possible and convinces him that she comes from the future (rather easily actually).
She had told her friends at the reunion that Michael was the only one she liked beside Charlie, so now she goes talking to him and they spend a night together. Later on though she makes him understand that it can’t go any further and that one day he’d write about it.
Charlie dreams of becoming a famous singer but he has on future in music. She tries to leave him but he keeps coming back to her saying how much he loves her. 
On her 18th birthday she goes to meet her grandparents, and she also tells them that she’s from the future. Charlie comes to snatch her away and proposes, and she can’t resist him any longer...
Back to the present, we hear something about her heart and that she almost died, and she wakes up with Charlie at her bedside. Everyone has sent flowers and gift, and Michael has sent her his book dedicated to her “to Peggy Sue and a starry night” and she wonders why since she “hardly knew him”, making us think that it was all a dream, but then she tells Charlie that she went back and tried to push him away but he wouldn’t give up, and he tells her that he’d never, and that he hopes for another chance now that the bimbo’s gone, and they get back together...
Just like that, she forgets all she said about him never been there for her and the kids (they have two apparently).
It was terrible. Hunt had a very small, irrelevant role, and Jim Carrey too as one of Charlie’s best friends. 
A funny line was delivered by her mother:
Mom: Peggy, you know what a penis is? Stay away from it! - what a speech :-p
It’s not clear if anything happened or if it was just a dream. She remembered it all about Charlie but not about Michael and yet he dedicated the book to their starry night...
Anyway, the plot could be acceptable as an 80s movie, but he wasn’t. Good thing she was good or I wouldn’t have been able to bear it to the end.

ITA Peggy Sue si è sposata