Mini essay after the film(ette):

On the current offerings

Before getting to an enjoyable film or episode of a series, there are a series of obstacles.

First is what’s on offer at YT or Bitchute, with the answer being “not a lot”. However there are some … usually middling tales but all right for a Saturday afternoon.

Second is getting through that appalling commented upon version, or an audiobook which is just someone reading, but sometimes we can strike lucky with an old radioplay. All classic films as we knew them have pretty much gone.

Third is at least settling on a leading character we know, e.g. David Suchet and thus I spent some time looking at the start of the 2020s version of Cards on the Table … great novel, altered for the 80s film but not shockingly.

That’s when its appallingness started to impinge immediately … the chief baddy … well he couldn’t act, he was wooden, they were all like cardboard cutouts, speaking when required, saying the lines. Just what David Suchet made of them … who knows?

My question, seeing as I watch no TV, go to no cinema, is … can anyone act today? I did see a trailer for that La La Land and no one could act … it was all “script calls for emotion here” … overall, it was dead. Part of that, of course, is the scriptwriting plus the direction.

So if I could not find one of the 80s episodes, I wasn’t going to bother. Why the 80s? No idea why it became dire after that … one reason, e.g. in the revived Dr. Who, was the wokery … some episodes had flashes of good acting, reasonable plots … but then the wokery blighted it.

So … a lesser Christie story … Triangle at Rhodes … seemed as though it might be halfway decent. About to watch it. More later.

Later

They did it very well … settings, costumes, the Italian a bit overdemonstrative, the overdemonstrative anger called for that way by the story … changes from the book, yes but appropriate ones and the key element to my mind was Frances Low as the fellow conspirator with Suchet … that was a nice touch.

Holes, yes, awkward now and then … overall grand. Made me realise though … I have zero desire to go to the Med, Africa, India or China these days … maybe Sicily or Greece to a point. …/END.