Ah, Victorian England: prim, proper and also touched by the occasionally horribly gruesome murder of a three year old, as detailed in Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which I just finished and highly recommend ( Read more... )

After not blogging here for a bit, we'll be busy today. Because last night's Arrow, was, um -

Well, it deserves two posts. Let's start with the biggie:

( Cut for major, major spoilers for what was the moment I didn't even realize I was waiting for, the moment where I was so NOT crying, really, and also for the last 30 seconds of the episode which I realize I had to snark about. )

Last night we watched His Girl Friday, the classic film of fast banter and slimy journalism featuring Cary Grant speaking at high speed and Rosalind Russell, who really, but really knows how to wear hats. A few points that struck me while watching:

1. Everyone, but everyone, smokes like a chimney -- except for the murderer. And Ralph Bellamy, who ( Read more... )

A Tale of Two Seasons

( Cut for very mild spoilers for the first seasons of both shows; I don't give away any endings. )

1. My brother, while we were driving back to the house on Sunday: There's a scary clown behind us ( Read more... )

Voyagers of the Titanic, by Richard Davenport-Hines, published in 2012, contains this gem of a statement* about second class passengers on the Titanic:

Women sat there opening their hearts to novels with salutary moral purposes**; men reached to the shelves for formulaic detective stories or books that were heavy with solid, reliable facts.
This ( Read more... )

So it's the last day of the year, the traditional day for rounding up all of the good and bad things that happened in 2012. At the moment I'm not even feeling up to rounding up all of the good and bad things that happened over the holidays, so instead I'll just be trying to chat a bit about some of the movies my brother and I have been watching on ( Read more... )

Woman gets restraining order against violent ex; he kills her and a coworker and injures her friend the following day.This is getting a large amount of local press primarily because it happened in a tourist area, and both the local news and all businesses on International Drive are eager to assure everyone that no, no, this doesn't usually happen ( Read more... )

Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: the Private Diary of a Victorian Lady, by Kate Summerscale ( Read more... )

I've been doing some research into Beauty and the Beast, which meant picking up Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve's long version, The Story of Beauty and the Beast (1740), which unlike the more familiar tale, does not end with the transformation of the beast into a human, but instead goes on and on and on, and then on and on and on, and then, just to ( Read more... )