Drinks with Jane: Cocktails Inspired by Jane Austen's Characters

With dozens of adaptations and even more spin-offs, Jane Austen found universally acknowledged truths that still resonate two centuries later. If I had the means, I would open an Austen-themed pub with this menu. Short of that, queue up an Austen classic and consider making a drink inspired by these Pride and Prejudice characters. The… Read More »

Fantastical Films & Where to Find Them

Prime examples of fantastical subgenres — steampunk, surrealist, and speculative --- have little in common with one another, but they all offer a version of reality slightly askew of our own and give us another world to ponder. Read More »

Documentaries That Are Stranger Than Fiction

From video game rivalries to an unknown unhinged artist, the following docs explore the odd side of humanity and leave you in disbelief. Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up. Read More »

Across the Pond

Spies, murder, buried treasure, cold cases. Make some scones, brew some tea and embrace your inner Anglophile with these British shows. Read More »

KNIVES OUT (2019)

Knives Out! is what it would look like if The Royal Tenenbaums were invited to dinner in Murder by Death.  Read More »

Win VERA on DVD

It's Thanksgiving weekend! Does the mere thought of traveling through terrible weather and traffic just make you want to commit MURDER? Instead of engaging in a terrible crime, make a pot of hot tea and curl up with the DVD set of Vera. Read More »

Four Things to Look For in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

Even with his impressive resume and box office dependability, the studio was hesitant to greenlight a picture like Psycho. Read More »

Too Marvelous For Words: Spotlight on Johnny Mercer

Four Academy Awards, plus sixteen nominations. More than 1,500 published songs. Johnny Mercer founded a record company and the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame. Sometimes singer, sometimes composer, always wordsmith. He had a way with making the simple things sound fantastical and making unlikely phrases roll of the tongue. His smooth Southern drawl and his ability… Read More »

Happy birthday, Johnny Mercer

Mercer wrote more than 1,500 songs. He won four Oscars (and was nominated for 14 more), founded Capitol Records (and gave Nat "King" Cole his first contract) and founded the Songwriter's Hall of Fame. Read More »

GIVEAWAY: Criterion Blu-Ray of Hitchcock's Notorious (1946)

In celebration of Spooktober, I'm giving away one copy of the Criterion Blu-ray of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946), an underrated title in Hitchcock's library. Starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, it is a masterwork in quiet tension. Read More »

THE WIND (2018)

The Wind finds terror in the simplest, and harshest, place -- the unforgiving, uninhabited prairie. A precise date isn't given, but based on clues, it is set somewhere in the American west in the mid-to-late 1800s. The audience feels for the characters who try to stave off loneliness -- and death -- everyday. Read More »

Five Billion

Five billion. That's how many DVDs Netflix has shipped since it starting mailing entertainment directly to people's homes in 1998. Five billion little red envelopes have been carried by postal workers to all 42,000 zip codes in the U.S.A., and even some military bases. Read More »

Neo-Noir Films of the 2000s

Of all the styles in film history, film noir is one of the most far-reaching and hard to pin down. A few of the things critics and historians mostly agree on are: Social degeneration which forces those who still believe in “the good” to grapple with their own alienation. A tragic protagonist who must delve… Read More »

JAMES STEWART: Summer Under the Stars

The son of a hardware store owner from Indiana, Pennsylvania, Stewart embodied classic Americana on film. Starring in everything from Frank Capra small-town dramas to Hitchcock nail-biters to gritty Westerns. He became the face of wholesomeness. Read More »

How to Spot a Film Noir

Guys who talk out of the sides of their mouths, calling women “broads” and “dames.” Detectives, crime, forbidden love, doomed lives. Dark alleys, sympathetic bad guys, strong and dangerous women, stark lighting, trapped characters and dim settings are all signs you might be watching a film noir. Read More »

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