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Post by theravenking on Jan 13, 2022 12:19:35 GMT
Are the Jesse Stone stores considered Whodunnits ? or are they more police procedurals?Whatever they are .. the TV movie series AND the books are (imo) well worth reading / seeing. Selleck is very Jesse ! I haven’t seen the movies or seen the books, but I’d say in general the line between the whodunit and the procedural is tough to draw… Mystery author Freeman Wills Crofts, for example, had a policeman as a hero and wrote about painstaking police techniques, but he also filled his books with hard-to-break alibis and could throw in surprise solutions. (Crofts is in some ways the ancestor of Columbo, especially on the clever alibi front. Many of the early-season episodes are particularly Croftsian, I think, as is ye olde mysterious “missing Columbo.” An Inspector French TV series after the books by Freeman Wills Crofts has been in the works. Although from what I could gather the series will be quite different from the novels. I mean the showrunner describes it as 'if Peaky Blinders invaded Downton Abbey".
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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 13, 2022 13:51:52 GMT
I haven’t seen the movies or seen the books, but I’d say in general the line between the whodunit and the procedural is tough to draw… Mystery author Freeman Wills Crofts, for example, had a policeman as a hero and wrote about painstaking police techniques, but he also filled his books with hard-to-break alibis and could throw in surprise solutions. (Crofts is in some ways the ancestor of Columbo, especially on the clever alibi front. Many of the early-season episodes are particularly Croftsian, I think, as is ye olde mysterious “missing Columbo.” An Inspector French TV series after the books by Freeman Wills Crofts has been in the works. Although from what I could gather the series will be quite different from the novels. I mean the showrunner describes it as 'if Peaky Blinders invaded Downton Abbey".
Fascinatin’. I try to follow Curt’s (“Passing Tramp’s”) blog, but somehow I must have missed those posts! An Insp. French series I never in a million years would have expected. Throw out any of my guessing on John Dickson Carr, then: Crofts is a drier, less character-based, and less often surprising—though equally complex—writer. I don’t really mind extensive changes for this adaptation, what with Crofts’s plodding-ness. And from Curt’s comments it looks like the writer is adapting a book, not writing his own (likely less well-plotted) story. But Curt’s post is 2019… I wonder if the series has made any progress. Also, it’s funny, when I wrote that post I was thinking a miniseries based on Crofts’s The Cask might work. Lots of police procedure, but some nice twists and turns and good locations, and the story is charmingly old-fashioned.
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Post by theravenking on Jan 15, 2022 12:49:29 GMT
An Inspector French TV series after the books by Freeman Wills Crofts has been in the works. Although from what I could gather the series will be quite different from the novels. I mean the showrunner describes it as 'if Peaky Blinders invaded Downton Abbey".
Fascinatin’. I try to follow Curt’s (“Passing Tramp’s”) blog, but somehow I must have missed those posts! An Insp. French series I never in a million years would have expected. Throw out any of my guessing on John Dickson Carr, then: Crofts is a drier, less character-based, and less often surprising—though equally complex—writer. I don’t really mind extensive changes for this adaptation, what with Crofts’s plodding-ness. And from Curt’s comments it looks like the writer is adapting a book, not writing his own (likely less well-plotted) story. But Curt’s post is 2019… I wonder if the series has made any progress. Also, it’s funny, when I wrote that post I thought a miniseries based on Crofts’s The Cask might work. Lots of police procedure, but some nice twists and turns and good locations, and the story is charmingly old-fashioned. Funny you should mention The Cask, since that was the first Crofts I read. I found it incredibly gripping and even felt it could be called sort of a precursor to modern TV shows like The Wire or The Killing in that it meticulously followed the solving of one case.
As for the Inspector French series I believe it was originally supposed to come out last year, but I guess the pandemic changed these plans and as it seems, it hasn't even gone into production yet.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2022 22:26:27 GMT
I almost hesitate to post this because it’s so absurd that it sounds made up, but I swear this is true: yesterday I saw the Knives Out blu ray on sale at Best Buy.com for only 6$! A great deal so I order it for in store pick up. This morning I go in, I show the girl the order number, she goes in the back and comes back out with… AN ACTUAL BOX OF KNIVES! I didn’t even know they sold knives at Best Buy but apparently they do. She said she didn’t read the full description and only saw the word “knives”. A minute later she was back with my movie.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 16, 2022 5:27:44 GMT
I almost hesitate to post this because it’s so absurd that it sounds made up, but I swear this is true: yesterday I saw the Knives Out blu ray on sale at Best Buy.com for only 6$! A great deal so I order it for in store pick up. This morning I go in, I show the girl the order number, she goes in the back and comes back out with… AN ACTUAL BOX OF KNIVES! I didn’t even know they sold knives at Best Buy but apparently they do. She said she didn’t read the full description and only saw the word “knives”. A minute later she was back with my movie. This is wonderful. I don’t even know what else to say, except… This is just plain wonderful.
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Post by Penn Guinn on Jan 16, 2022 5:33:25 GMT
@forceghostackbar
Maybe she saw that it was you and immediately thought "sushi knives" !
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2022 18:03:26 GMT
I almost hesitate to post this because it’s so absurd that it sounds made up, but I swear this is true: yesterday I saw the Knives Out blu ray on sale at Best Buy.com for only 6$! A great deal so I order it for in store pick up. This morning I go in, I show the girl the order number, she goes in the back and comes back out with… AN ACTUAL BOX OF KNIVES! I didn’t even know they sold knives at Best Buy but apparently they do. She said she didn’t read the full description and only saw the word “knives”. A minute later she was back with my movie. This is wonderful. I don’t even know what else to say, except… This is just plain wonderful. Isn’t it though? I’m still chuckling about it.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2022 18:03:59 GMT
@forceghostackbar Maybe she saw that it was you and immediately thought "sushi knives" ! Very possible! I better keep my guard up next time I go in!
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Post by Penn Guinn on Jan 16, 2022 18:32:54 GMT
@forceghostackbar Maybe she saw that it was you and immediately thought "sushi knives" ! Very possible! I better keep my guard up next time I go in! and be sure to watch for TRAPS !!!
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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 18, 2022 22:14:56 GMT
While we’re on the subject, just saw that StudioCanal wants to readapt Christie’s Endless Night. I’d love for filmmakers to adapt mysteries other than Christie’s, but still Endless Night is a good choice for another adaptation.
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Post by theravenking on Jan 20, 2022 12:52:32 GMT
While we’re on the subject, just saw that StudioCanal wants to readapt Christie’s Endless Night. I’d love for filmmakers to adapt mysteries other than Christie’s, but still Endless Night is a good choice for another adaptation. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Endless Night is one of my favourite Christies, but I think like most books with a first person narration it would be difficult to adapt properly (see also The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd).
There was a new French adaptation of And Then There Were None recently, and while I haven't seen it yet, judged by the trailer it looks more like a slasher movie than a whodunit, which would make sense considering it's from the director of infamous horror movie Martyrs. Reviews weren't particularly positive either.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 20, 2022 17:39:31 GMT
While we’re on the subject, just saw that StudioCanal wants to readapt Christie’s Endless Night. I’d love for filmmakers to adapt mysteries other than Christie’s, but still Endless Night is a good choice for another adaptation. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Endless Night is one of my favourite Christies, but I think like most books with a first person narration it would be difficult to adapt properly (see also The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd).
There was a new French adaptation of And Then There Were None recently, and while I haven't seen it yet, judged by the trailer it looks more like a slasher movie than a whodunit, which would make sense considering it's from the director of infamous horror movie Martyrs. Reviews weren't particularly positive either. Fair point. I was just writing in the Classics board that an Ackroyd adaptation would be hard because…reasons. That said, I think Endless Night (one of my favorite Christies as well) is more visual, and more lends itself to film, than Ackroyd. I hadn’t heard of the new ATTWN adaptation. Interesting that they set it in modern times, I’ve wondered how a modern ATTWN would work. But at that point the adapter should probably just come up with a new story.
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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 31, 2022 21:05:09 GMT
I rewatched the Suchet Murder in Mesopotamia (somewhat surprisingly, at least to me, the only TV/film adaptation of that book) and thought it was OK, but not as good as I remembered. The adapter and actor make the murderer pretty obvious, and the director never gets the most out of the great locations. I’ve got to watch one of the excellent episodes to remember how good this show was.
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Post by Nalkarj on Mar 27, 2022 16:17:44 GMT
The best Poirot movie made by these producers, in my opinion, is the third and final entry, Evil Under the Sun. It has fewer stunning moments than MotOE and isn’t as good a mystery as DotN, but it’s a smart adaptation (also by Shaffer) that improves on Christie’s book and has fewer flaws than either of its predecessors. Rewatched Evil Under the Sun last night and didn’t like it as much as I remembered. It looks fantastic and the Cole Porter songs are ingeniously arranged (by John Dalby) into a cohesive film score, but… It feels, I dunno, so light? Weird to say about any entry in a series that is light entertainment, but this one feels so weightless compared with its predecessors. To put it a different way: No one—including Poirot—cares when the victim is killed in this one. Moreover, I doubt the audience would care if any of these characters got killed, they’re so loosely sketched. In The Last of Sheila, similar in broad outlines and to some degree in plot mechanics (and also with James Mason as a suspect), the characters aren’t deep, but they all seem like they have lives outside this narrow plot. This movie’s characters are chessmen who exist to set up the clues and “ halibis.” Also, Shaffer’s Death on the Nile script does a better job of integrating the puzzle with the story. Here the puzzle pieces stand out a bit more as puzzle pieces. It’s still fun, but now I think that, of the Finney/Ustinov Poirots, Death on the Nile is probably the best.
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