Life Etc Etc

In a nutshell A plodding whodunit which takes its own sweet time to set things up but doesn't quite deliver the punch at the end with its reveal. Plot  Miss Marple returns to a favorite childhood spot, Bertram's hotel, to experience the nostalgia of the bygone years. The hotel's guests include Miss Marple's gregarious friend Selena Hazy, absent minded Canon Pennyfather who's making his way to a conference in Lucerne via London, hypervigilant Colonel Luscombe accompanied by his precocious ward Elvira Blake and tabloid friendly socialite Lady Bess Sedgwick who always seems to have a knack of generating headlines. While Miss Marple does take great pleasure in the comforts of the place she also quickly comes to sense that there's something sinister going on behind all that external facade. While a motley group of characters is permeating Bertram's hotel, the city is being terrorized by the daring thefts of a criminal gang which has evaded the police by skillfull...

In a nutshell A delightful whodunit set during the Christmas time with some compelling performances, brisk pacing and a happy ending. Plot   Sam Donovan ( Dennis O'Keefe ), an insurance investigator sets off for a small town to delve into the suicide of one, Roger Philips, who by all accounts was an extremely unpleasant man. On the way there he runs into Anita Weatherby ( Barbara Britton ), daughter of a wealthy banker in Philips' town, Stu Weatherby ( Art Baker ). The two hit off instantly and Sam makes plans to visit the Weatherby family once he's done wrapping up the Philips case.   Dennis O'Keefe and Barbara Britton <Credits: Cult Cinema Classics > Upon arrival Sam calls upon Sheriff Larry Best ( William Bendix ) to clarify the details of the case only to find all his inquiries being thwarted. Through the evasive replies, Sam learns that no weapon was recovered from the victim's side and the coroner who could have thrown some light into the circumstances o...

Plot Outline Chief of Police, Matt Whitlock's ( Denzel Washington ) personal life is in doldrums. His marriage is on the rocks and he's secretly courting another man's wife, Ann ( Sanaa Lathan ). When Ann is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Matt decides to fund her treatment with money that was recovered from a drug bust. But before Ann can proceed forth with her treatment, she and her husband Chris ( Dean Cain ) are killed in a mysterious house fire. The case is assigned to Matt's estranged wife, homicide detective Alex ( Eva Mendes ) and to make matters worse (for Matt), the DEA comes calling for the drug money. If this isn't enough, Matt is the sole beneficiary on Ann's insurance policy which further implicates him in this crime. Will Matt escape from the fix he is in and identify who's behind everything? Or will Alex and the DEA catch up to the clandestine secrets he's hiding?  Denzel Washington navigating rough waters in Out of Time <Credits: Movi...

Plot: Perry Mason receives an unexpected call from Ellen Adair, a lady of queenly bearing with a dark past. Ellen was a beauty contestant who suddenly disappeared at the height of her fame. Now, there's a tabloid which is planning to run an inside scoop on what might have happened to her. Ellen wants Mason's help in ensuring that none of the details of her colorful past come out into the open and her identity remains a secret. Despite not receiving satisfactory answers to his preliminary questions, Mason agrees to help out his new client and promptly shuts down the newspaper from running the article. But the matter doesn't end there, the newspaper sends a detective to negotiate a fee with Mason for his client's compliance. Mason immediately senses that there's more to the matter than what's being laid on the table. With the assistance of Paul Drake, his trusted detective aide, Mason finds out that a very powerful family from the same town as Ellen Adair is desp...

We live in the times of the antihero. Grey is the new white now and it has become increasingly cool for our protagonists to repeatedly toe the line between good and bad. Nobody stands for anything anymore which makes it all the more difficult to root for such characters. That's probably the reason why I had to go back to Perry Mason . Mason, his confidante Della Street and the ever dependable Paul Drake are a crimefighting unit whom you can get behind in their pursuit of justice. A Perry Mason book comes with the guarantee of justice being served at the end. With this one, I just had to find out how the justice was meted out to the perpetrators.     Plot: John Witherspoon, the wealthy rancher doesn't think too much of his daughter Lois' love interest, Marvin Adams, a science student with no discernible family lineage. When Witherspoon digs into the past of his daughter's suitor, he finds that Marvin's father was convicted of murdering his business partner. Unable t...

Picture This!  It's a lazy day and you have plenty of time to kill (if you don't have too many or any of those ' free time'  days you gotta make some serious changes to your life). You are fed up of the TV and the updates on the social media don't excite you. You want to do something different but don't feel like going out. You are looking for something interesting to read or hold your attention. That's precisely the time for a book like ' A beam of light '. It has a plot which moves at a steady pace and holds your attention through all the twists and turns.     Plot: Inspector Salvo Montalbano wakes up from a nightmare with a start. The nightmare has him visit a vacant plot to investigate a coffin containing the body of someone very familiar. As Montalbano struggles to make sense of the dream he's beckoned to a vacant plot to investigate a cabin which turns to be a hideout out for anti-nationalist forces. The vacant plot has an eerie semb...

The Characters and the plot Neville Strange is handsome, athletic and wealthy. He is a gentleman who wears his heart on the sleeve and cannot help but be sportive even when he loses a tennis match at Wimbledon. His good looks and impeccable manners make him irresistible to all women. Neville is planning for a fall vacation at Gull's Point  with both his wife Kay and his ex-wife Audrey . Neville plans to use the vacation to make it up to Audrey for leaving her to marry Kay. Kay reluctantly agrees to Neville's plan but deep in her heart resents Audrey very much. Ted Latimer , the childhood friend of Kay Strange is tagging along with the couple to Gull's Point. Ted cares for Kay beyond anything else and carries a flame in his heart for her even after her marriage to Neville. Thomas Royde , the Malayan planter and cousin of Audrey is coming to Gull's point too. Thomas adores Audrey and intends to ask her hand in marriage during the course of the vacation. Lady T...

" Jerry Burton arrives in Lymstock along with his sister to recover from a bad crash. The peaceful country side, the fresh air and the benevolent families of the village immediately take the brother-sister duo in. Everything seems rather idyllic and rather perfect until an anonymous letter arrives with a spiteful message. The nasty letter is quickly forgotten as a mischievous prank until Jerry discovers that people across the village have been receiving such slanderous letters. The anonymous letters soon become the talk of the town leaving everyone in a tailspin as to who this sick mind could be. Just when the letters are about to be dismissed as nothing more than a prank, the first victim falls. Before the community recovers another one goes down. As the body count rises, everyone's a suspect and anyone could be the next victim. It's a race against time for Jerry to stop the culprit as the next one to fall might well be his own. " The Moving Finger Now that...

I always felt the movies which I watched with the least expectations were the ones I liked the most. Te3n once again confirmed my theory. The story of an old man hunting for the individual who cost his granddaughter's life could have been woefully depressing boring us (the audience) with its unending melancholy (Read Talaash ).  But fortunately Te3n's deft screenplay ensures the movie rumbles along at a brisk pace. So here are three things which make Te3n an engaging watch apart from the screenplay (read on there are no spoilers ahead): Te3n The Performances: Amitabh Bachchan , Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vidya Balan breathe life into their characters. Amitabh plays a feeble old man run down by the scars of time and punctuates his role with a steely resolve. Nawazuddin Siddiqui turns in a restrained performance as a cop turned priest while Vidya oozes toughness as a no non-sense police woman. They say great actors convey emotions through their eyes. Amitabh, Nawazu...