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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 25, 2017 20:01:37 GMT
@ - Salzmank
As bad as that? Oh dear! Perhaps I'll not bother.
I've never read the books. but there are a lot of Philo movies on Youtube. Also many more Philo radio shows on Archive radio. But somehow I've never got around to any of them. One day maybe... :-)
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 25, 2017 20:15:12 GMT
The Kennel Murder Case ('33) is one of the greatest mystery movies of them all--which I guess says a lot about mystery movies, because the book (to which it's fairly loyal) isn't all that great! They truly tempered old Philo down for the movies. (William Powell plays him in that delightfully Powell-esque way, with vim and vigor and swagger and chivalry. Not much like the PV of the books, unfortunately.) Here's an example of Vance's dialogue, from The Benson Murder Case (which was also made into quite a good movie): [The first speaker is Vance. I borrowed the passage from the late Wyatt James's Philo Vance page.] Now, that may not sound too bad, but when you've got 200 pages of it and interminable footnotes on every page about every conceivable subject (Vance was an expert on...let's see...tropical fish, art, history, philosophy, mathematics, theoretical physics, horse-racing, dog-breeding, etc.)... Well! And the mysteries tend to be fairly obvious, too. I sound like I really hate the Philo Vance books, but I don't. The '20s-'30s New York atmosphere is great, and, footnotes aside, Van Dine's writing style is enjoyable to read, very melodious and poetic, as Mike Grost (a big Van Dine fan) pointed out. But if you're going into them expecting great mysteries... Ehh. My recommendations (for the books) are The Greene Murder Case (good atmosphere), The Bishop Murder Case (that nursery-rhyme theme--wild, wacky plot, even if it's not too difficult to figure it out), The Dragon Murder Case (great set-up, though lousy solution), and The Kidnap Murder Case (probably the best-plotted of the lot). I find the movies superior, though, particularly The Benson Murder Case and The Kennel Murder Case. The Dragon Murder Case is also fun.
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 25, 2017 21:50:18 GMT
Re Philo Vance Thanks for the recommendations. I'll get round to them some day. :-) Right now I'm into MC Beaton's Hamish Macbeth (small b) murders. I'm at #21. Probably not your scene, but they're close to home to me and very "comfortable". There was a TV series made based on the books, but was so unlike the novels as to be ridiculous. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamish_MacbethTo get back to Agatha Christie I really must say something about "The Mousetrap". How that play has lasted so long in London's West End is beyond me. I've seen it and imo (writing under her own name) barrring "Postern of Fate", it's about the worst piece she ever penned and so predictable. I guessed the culprit way before the end.
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 25, 2017 22:10:50 GMT
Re Philo Vance Thanks for the recommendations. I'll get round to them some day. :-) Right now I'm into MC Beaton's Hamish Macbeth (small b) murders. I'm at #21. Probably not your scene, but they're close to home to me and very "comfortable". There was a TV series made based on the books, but was so unlike the novels as to be ridiculous. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamish_MacbethTo get back to Agatha Christie I really must say something about "The Mousetrap". How that play has lasted so long in London's West End is beyond me. I've seen it and imo (writing under her own name) barrring "Postern of Fate", it's about the worst piece she ever penned and so predictable. I guessed the culprit way before the end.You know, to me the obvious culprit is actually the least bad thing about it. I don't actively hate it, but I just think it's a badly-written play. I wrote some thoughts and comments on it, and why I think it might have lasted so long (spoiler: it's the popular, even if erroneous, conception of "an Agatha Christie mystery"), here.
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 26, 2017 11:48:00 GMT
Re Mousetrap review. Can't fault that. :-) There are quite a few 'tecs around the genre with the same super-knowledge of just about everything, not forgetting Sherlock, One of the tricks of SH was to be able to tell a brand of cigarettes from the smell of the tobacco, the texture of the ash, etc., etc. While that may be true (but doubtful) with some expensive brands of cigars, with cigarettes it's drivel. I worked for a few years in a cigarette factory which made many brands, and know that most brands use virtually the same mix of tobacco leaves. The cheaper brands even incorporate tobacco reconstituted from floor sweepings (this is simply called "leaf"). The strength comes from tiny pinpricks in the paper. The less pinpricks the stronger the cigarette. Re menthol cigarettes, the menthol is absorbed into the tobacco from menthol-indoctrinated tin foil in the packaging. I have to smile at the "dog which doesn't bark in the night". I had a dog which barked at anyone and everyone who approached the house, friend, foe or family, postmen, hawkers and the Mormons. Another of the know-it-all 'tecs but perhaps lesser well known is the "distinguished scientist and logician, Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen" (aka "The Thinking Machine") created by Jacques Futrelle who sadly went down with the Titanic. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Futrelleebooks.adelaide.edu.au/f/futrelle/jacques/tales-of-the-thinking-machine/contents.html One trick these super-'tecs have (more so those of Victoriana up to the early-30s) which really annoys me, is their unerring ability to know, day or night, regardless of wherever they may be, exactly when the next train is to anywhere, and without even consulting a timetable. That's some trick! :-)
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 26, 2017 13:20:15 GMT
Here's a question for you: What's your take on murder by injection of air into victims, i.e. as in the Wimsey story "Unnatural Death"? If you recall the murderess did away with her aunt (?) by this method, and was caught at the end with hypodermic in hand trying the same method on Lord Peter's aged helper. I don't buy it. And you? ------ Another question: Have you ever had discussion with egg-heads/tunnel-visioned academia who insist that whodunnits are not really literature? If so what replies have you given them? There's a similar streak of morons who say that opera should not really be sung in English or other national languages as Italian is the correct language for opera. (Mozart had the same problem. )
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 26, 2017 17:03:13 GMT
Here's a question for you: What's your take on murder by injection of air into victims, i.e. as in the Wimsey story "Unnatural Death"? If you recall the murderess did away with her aunt (?) by this method, and was caught at the end with hypodermic in hand trying the same method on Lord Peter's aged helper. I don't buy it. And you? ------ Another question: Have you ever had discussion with egg-heads/tunnel-visioned academia who insist that whodunnits are not really literature? If so what replies have you given them? There's a similar streak of morons who say that opera should not really be sung in English or other national languages as Italian is the correct language for opera. (Mozart had the same problem. ) Question 1: As a medico-scientific question, based on my (very) limited knowledge of those fields? Nah, not buying it. This article makes a lot of good points--in fact, scientifically, it's more likely than I thought, but certainly not in the way Sayers describes it. But as a mystery-detective story question, based on my fondness for ingenuity in the genre? I think it's fairly brilliant. Unnatural Death is my favorite Sayers, as it is Nick Fuller's (Nick's an acquaintance of mine with whom I've been corresponding on and off for a few months now, and he used to run that great mystery website to which I linked)--an odd choice, to be sure, but I think it best unites her plotting skills and her social conscience. It's not a whodunit--more of a howdunit and whydunit--but it's a superb puzzle-plot. Question 2: The simple answer is no, but I wouldn't mind having that kind of discussion with any eggheaded member of academe who would like to have it. (Don't get me started on the political fights I've had with them, though!) I think I made a brief preliminary case for the intellectual respectability of the whodunit in my response to spiderwort in the "Billy Wilder" thread. (The whole "sunlight of understanding" bit.) It seems likely that that, in a more sensible world, the sheer exercise of intellect in the puzzle-plot whodunit would impress the intellectuals, but that is not so because they're so set on social concerns and "reality" as the highest criterion in literature. (It's not. Things like good characterization, plotting, and style are far more important than how "real" a work is.) I'm not a huge fan of the modern French whodunit writer Paul Halter (I just think he has trouble with the actual craft of writing), but he touched on this point in his A 139 pas de la mort ( 139 Steps from Death): On Opera: As for opera... It's absurd to insist on "only on Italian," because that's "the language for opera." There's no international operatic supreme court to determine what is and what is not the language of opera! And what about (offhand) not only Mozart but also Wagner? Or even Meyerbeer, Nick's favorite opera composer, a German Jew who wrote mainly in French? Or Purcell? I think that's just a silly argument.
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 26, 2017 17:15:14 GMT
Ain't that the truth! Thanks for the reply. Couldn't find anything in it to disagree about....darn it!
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 26, 2017 17:30:06 GMT
By the way: I got so caught up in the opera bit that I forgot to explain why I think intellectuals have collectively dismissed the detective story as "sub-literary"! (Spoiler: It's all Edmund Wilson's fault!) As we know, intellectuals and academics as a whole tend to be fairly tribal, liking to go along with the crowd (thus the fashionable leftism--radical chic, as Tom Wolfe would call it--that takes the place of genuine critical thinking--but I digress). Edmund Wilson, a critic I find wildly overrated (in fact, I think he's just a bad critic), hated just about everything remotely popular as he sat on his high perch, laughing at the hoi polloi as his own insecurities ultimately consumed him. He disliked detective stories, horror stories, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and probably just about everything else that's fun. (He was one of those types who believe, in Carr's phrase, that mankind is dull and damned as well as damned dull. Also, Wilson couldn't write a novel for his life.) His "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" anathematized reading the genre as a vice somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking. I think the academic and critical establishments have internalized Wilson's specious arguments and just regurgitate them over and over, despite pointed criticisms of Wilson's thesis from T.S. Eliot, George Orwell, and others. Unfortunately, even many mystery writers, including the late, great P.D. James, believe in Wilson's points (at least in James's Talking about Detective Fiction, which I confess I've only skimmed). Ironically, the late Ruth Rendell, who hated Christie's books, nevertheless understood the appeal of the genre better than James ever did. Many of her short stories and early novels have similarities (probably unintended) with postwar Carr (and with pre- and post-war Gladys Mitchell), particularly in the focus on psychology. Of course, there are also many Rendell books, usually the later ones, that focus on abnormal psychology at the expense of plot or character, in a way that would make Wilson proud.
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 26, 2017 17:57:28 GMT
Rendell is not the only one at "fault" here. Psychology, humanity, and philosophy, seems to be the in-thing and film-noir marches on in a different vogue. Which is why Death is Paradise with straight-forward whodunnits is so refreshing and has caught the popularity (in the UK at least). Hustle caught the same sort of popularity too but sadly has now finished.
Just while I think of it, one movie I really like is "Rehearsal for Murder", written I think by the Columbo writing team. It stars Robert Preston.
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 26, 2017 18:29:48 GMT
There are quite a few 'tecs around the genre with the same super-knowledge of just about everything, not forgetting Sherlock,
One of the tricks of SH was to be able to tell a brand of cigarettes from the smell of the tobacco, the texture of the ash, etc., etc. While that may be true (but doubtful) with some expensive brands of cigars, with cigarettes it's drivel.
I worked for a few years in a cigarette factory which made many brands, and know that most brands use virtually the same mix of tobacco leaves. The cheaper brands even incorporate tobacco reconstituted from floor sweepings (this is simply called "leaf"). The strength comes from tiny pinpricks in the paper. The less pinpricks the stronger the cigarette. Re menthol cigarettes, the menthol is absorbed into the tobacco from menthol-indoctrinated tin foil in the packaging.
I have to smile at the "dog which doesn't bark in the night". I had a dog which barked at anyone and everyone who approached the house, friend, foe or family, postmen, hawkers and the Mormons. Yeah, you're pretty much right, but then at the end of the day these stories aren't exactly aiming for realism. (Carr put it this way: "I cannot find a story enthralling solely on the grounds that it sounds as though it might really have happened. I do not care to hear the hum of everyday life; I much prefer to hear the chuckle of the great Hanaud or the deadly bells of Fenchurch St Paul.") Certainly verisimilitude is necessary, but not realism, I'd argue. By the way, with cigarettes, do you know if they have always been made that way (i.e., different brands' use of the same mix of tobacco leaves)? I'm just wondering about what it was like in the 1880s and '90s, when Doyle was writing? No offense to any of our Mormon friends who may be on here, but sometimes I wish I had a dog that did the same as yours, Al. Less for my sake than for theirs, because I've had Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses who've come to my door in the middle of wicked snowstorms and who didn't want to come in to get warm until I said I was open to their beliefs!
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 26, 2017 21:46:18 GMT
I don't know personally but looking at the web extract repeated below, I don't think there would have been much difference to today in the blending mixes and make-up of the cigarette, except perhaps the number and speed of the machines churning the cigarettes out. There may be a difference in the additives and flavouring, but that would probably be secret anyway. In the factory I worked there were 30 making machines working two shifts from 6am to 10pm (with the night shift used for cleaning and maintenance), and an equivalent number of packing machines, the lattter operation having to be done by hand in the early days of cigarette making. I haven't seen any of the old machines. I guess even the ones I knew are probably old and defunct now. I worked at Carreras Seapark (near Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland). It closed in the mid-80s. I left it a few years before that. www.irishnews.com/news/2014/10/08/news/news-will-come-as-major-shock-104226/Extract: "By the 1800's, many people had begun using small amounts of tobacco. Some chewed it. Others smoked it occasionally in a pipe, or they hand-rolled a cigarette or cigar. On the average, people smoked about 40 cigarettes a year. The first commercial cigarettes were made in 1865 by Washington Duke on his 300-acre farm in Raleigh, North Carolina. His hand-rolled cigarettes were sold to soldiers at the end of the Civil War. It was not until James Bonsack invented the cigarette-making machine in 1881 that cigarette smoking became widespread. Bonsack's cigarette machine could make 120,000 cigarettes a day. He went into business with Washington Duke's son, James "Buck" Duke. They built a factory and made 10 million cigarettes their first year and about one billion cigarettes five years later. The first brand of cigarettes were packaged in a box with baseball cards and were called Duke of Durham. Buck Duke and his father started the first tobacco company in the U.S. They named it the American Tobacco Company."healthliteracy.worlded.org/docs/tobacco/Unit1/2history_of.htmlNot much help on the blending I'm afraid, but as said I'd guess it was pretty much the same in the 1890s as it is now, except the output which is now astronomical in comparison. Wiki is quite informative on cigarette construction. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#ConstructionHope that helps. The last thing Northern Ireland needs is more religion!
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 27, 2017 0:14:37 GMT
Got it, tarathian123 ! Thanks for explaining. P.S. I just realized the poor, hypothetical dog would never be outside anyway during a terrible snowstorm. Oops! I guess the point still remains, though. I genuinely felt bad for the Mormons that one time. They were two nice guys who were absolutely freezing on my doorstep. Me: "Can I get you coffee, tea, water, something?" Them: "No, Brother, but are you interested in the Restored Gospel..." Me: "You know, you're going to freeze out there." Them: "Thank you, Brother, but are you open to the Gospel?" Me: "Sure I am, but my whole family's either Catholic or Presbyterian." Them: "Well, all right, can you take our brochure?" Me: "Sure" [as they left]--"stay warm!" I think I took one look at the brochure and then put it in the trash.
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 27, 2017 0:49:12 GMT
My wife was horrified when I occasionally let them in. She usually disappeared to other parts of the house until they left disgruntled that they couldn't answer the questions I asked. They haven't been round for ages, and have probably given up trying to convert we heathen Ulstermen.
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 27, 2017 0:59:05 GMT
Speaking of both the Mormons and you heathen Ulstermen... Not in Northern Ireland, but on the other side of the Irish Sea, there's this group. I discovered them while writing a paper once on small, virtually unknown religious denominations. Their "prophet" copied the Mormon "prophet," Joseph Smith, and tried to come up with a "Book of Mormon" set at Stonehenge. I feel bad for mocking them, but, when I was reading his "Book" for my paper, it was one of the funniest things I've ever read, so much so that I actually took time to write a terrible (short!) parody of it. Example of a passage from my parody:
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 27, 2017 1:07:09 GMT
We have them here too. Just changed my avatar to Carrickfergus Castle. It was built by the Normans. We lived for 15 years in Carrickfergus (Carrick for short). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrickfergus
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 27, 2017 1:10:18 GMT
We have them here too. Just changed my avatar to Carrickfergus Castle. It was built by the Normans. We lived for 15 years in Carrickfergus (Carrick for short). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrickfergus And a beautiful castle, too.
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 27, 2017 1:15:15 GMT
Most of the locals take it for granted and don't even think about it. Most times they forget it's there. Me too?...yep, guilty as charged. Many have never even been inside it. I have.
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 27, 2017 1:25:03 GMT
Same thing here, too. Lucky you've been to a great place near you! I grew up on Long Island, about an hour away (by train) from New York City. Did I ever go to Grant's Tomb? Nope. Still haven't seen it, in fact. (I have been to the Empire State Building, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, and St. Patrick's Cathedral, so there is that, though.) Now I live in Boston (well, in the Boston suburbs). Have I ever gone to any of the famous art museums here, or the Old State House? Nope. (I have been to Old North Church, though.) Yet I've been to all the famous spots in Washington, D.C., and know even a small city like Portsmouth, New Hampshire, like the back of my hand. Go figure. I think there's something about this ubiquitous phenomenon in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories... I can't find it at the moment. It might have been in a pastiche.
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Post by tarathian123 on Apr 27, 2017 1:43:31 GMT
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