I was quite impressed when All the Money in the World completely replaced Kevin Spacey footage with Christopher Plummer after filming was completed, and shot his scenes in 8 days around Thanksgiving, and still met a December release barely a month later. Plummer even got an Oscar nomination. You have to give director Ridley Scott and his cast and crew enormous credit for pulling it all off so cleanly.

Eons ago, the late Gloria Grahame played Ado Annie in the film version of Oklahoma! (1955). Gloria was tone-deaf, not a singer, and had been dubbed when called to sing in earlier movies. But as the song "I Cain't Say No" is very much a character song, the decision was made that she sing it herself. So the story goes that they sat her in a studio and had her sing a line, record it, then do the next line, record it, painstakingly making sure she stayed on key, and line by line cobbled a complete vocal take.

The result? Seamless perfection, a hilarious and memorable performance and rendition. Decades later, long away from the Hollywood scene, Grahame was pleased as punch when she still received residuals from the movie soundtrack.

It does not look like he directs anymore, but I would have loved to see director Jerry Zucker (Airplane, Ruthless People, Ghost, Rat Race) direct Melissa McCarthy, who is pretty much wasting her time these days on efforts with her husband. Zucker could bring out the zany funny out of McCarthy I would wager.

I guess I take a contrarian perspective. For many years, TV took a backseat to film, and the acme of success was when an actor or director or writer who started in TV and learned the ropes, elevated themselves into film work. There are countless examples. Emmy, by recognizing TV work as having real worth, helped balance the equation a tad, rewarding noteworthy efforts on the small screen.

Now, actors, writers and directors move back and forth, and TV frequently surpasses film from a quality perspective. An Emmy award nomination, if not the win, can bolster a career, and keep talented people actively engaged within the medium. So for me, it's no harm, no foul.

When I read missives like this, I kind of despair for the younger generation. This poor misinformed Redditor just does not understand the tidal wave of change to the entire music scene that The Beatles caused, using their Fifties musical influences and the rising local scene to reimagine and reinvigorate popular music with a basic musicality that transcended genre. And then, they grew and reimagined the scene once again, using rising studio technology in masterful, innovative ways. Artists from all walks of life began recording their material as well, cementing their work in the public consciousness. You can't really overestimate their influence.

At its heart, HB had an affection for its source characters.

Velma does not, and that makes it a botch.

For me it was The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Read it when I was about 20 or so, and preferred the narrative approach over some of his more gaga stories.

You know, you dug up a movie factoid I have never heard, about the movie uniquely sweeping every major award, so thank you for that.

But the other "factoid" of some people hating the movie? No. Some people hating the subject matter, or fringe Holocaust deniers, that I can believe, but hating the movie? There's no there there.

It would actually make a terrific Law & Order episode, as they have tapped into many stories torn from the headlines along the way. And it would get publicity both positive and negative, and everyone would tune in, and the producers and writers would claim it is not based on any one event.

And yes, I would watch.

Yes, I think that is what it is: the sense of discovery. A good used bookstore may look random but it is not, it has an organization to it, and if you master it, you find discoveries scattered among more conventional offerings. I still recall the glee I experienced at Strand Bookstore in New York in 2000 when I fell upon a copy of an old mystery book that you could not find anywhere, online or on eBay or anywhere, and it was $4.00 to boot. The book is still next-to-impossible to find, but hey world, I've got a copy of it, so there! :)

My choice too. It somehow gave them more of a identity or sounded more cohesive than their individual albums up to that time.

The Stand. Two miniseries, and neither could get it quite right, with too much padding and talk and meandering. Granted, the book is itself padded and long, but surely they could reduce it down to an exciting and terrifying 2 hours.

I absolutely admit that when the synopsis is some sort of found footage trope, I elect not to watch it. It feels very been there, done that, and multiple films have explored it over the years.

There are other tropes that I just cannot abide as well, like switching bodies movies or reliving the day again and again movies or Ebenezer Scrooge takeoff movies. Each has had marvelous examples of creativity for sure, but enough is enough after a certain point.

I'll never understand why anyone would so jeopardize their hard-won, odds-against-success careers like this. I know, I know, the heart wants what the heart wants, but there were so many ways these two could have handled this, and they chose the worst option, a lose-lose for everyone including themselves, their families, their show.

As new and used bookstores began to disappear, and the pandemic impacted onsite shopping, something odd happened: I lost the compulsion to buy books. I could still buy online, and purchased nonfiction that way, but purchasing fiction books lost its appeal regardless of channel. I too have a gigantic backlog of unread books, and am now slowing reading through that pile. So maybe out of sight, out of mind applies.

The great thing about Christie for me was that I really wanted her to completely bamboozle me, make me feel like an absolute fool for not seeing it all along. She was very fair in laying out the clues, and devious in deflecting me from seeing what was really going on. In the battle of wits, she mostly won, darn her!

Five Little Pigs is my all time favorite. It does not scream out at you the way And Then There Were None and Orient Express and others do, but it its own quiet way, it is its own masterpiece.

To me, it was Passenger to Frankfurt that was perfectly awful. A late novel, for sure, but it should never have been published.

I watched the show years after it finished its run, "discovering" it one day on one of the streaming services. I was hooked, really hooked, and applaud the show for the unique characters it created and the great parts it gave some very talented people. I do think it ran a tad longer than it needed to, but that is neither here nor there.

And, yes, this episode was spectacular. What makes it particularly outstanding was that it came late in the show's run. Just when you think they were out of ideas, pow!

I have never done this,

But I noticed a bias I had that stunned me the other day: I was watching a dubbed-in-English movie, and they used British actors for the voices, and I watched it all the way through. Then a few days later, I was watching another dubbed-in-English movie and they used American actors, and I just could not take it. I reverted film to original language plus subtitles.

It was not bad voicing, but simply one sounded right to my ears and one sounded wrong. And I'm an American. Why such a bias? Beats me.

I don't mind snarky. I don't mind edgy. I don't mind reboots. I don't mind controversial.

I do mind unfunny.

Velma is unfunny.

Because lightning rarely strikes twice, although there are cases like Michael Landon (Bonanza to Little House to Highway to Heaven) and Raymond Burr (Perry Mason to Ironside) that defy the odds. Then others like Carroll O'Connor go from All in the Family to Archie Bunker's Place to In the Heat of the Night, where the latter shows were not quite huge hits but were getting more than acceptable ratings.

You have to understand that his later fame was built upon his first fame (with the Jackson Five), then continued fame with The Jacksons, then on his massive solo effort (Off the Wall), all before Thriller raised his fame to a whole other level. The Jackson Five / the Jacksons honed his singing, dancing and entertaining skills before live audiences, and then the combination of Thriller and videos on MTV from Thriller and then the live performance at the Motown 25th anniversary TV special captured the public like no artist since Elvis or The Beatles. His eccentricities added to his fame, and Bad and Dangerous kept the fire lit. Even Janet Jackson, with her own megahit albums, added to his fame. It was like nothing could stop him and then the allegations and surgeries and suits sullied it all for quite a while.

It's in my TBR pile. It looks pretty daunting. I am tempted to see the TV series instead, in all honesty.

Simmons is maybe the most idiosyncratic writer I read. He jumps genres so is hard to pin down, and can get wordy at times. He does not go for jolts, but mood. So if he is writing about winter, you can feel the cold creeping all over you. When he has a central protagonist, he will suddenly focus on a side character who does not seem to add anything to the action, but adds to the overall sense of dread. Simmons is gifted, for sure.

Will I read it? If Simmons were setting the scene, I would hear a noise, investigate, and find nothing, and forget about it. Then, days later, while cleaning up, I'd see The Terror had fallen from its bookcase perch, and realize that was the noise. Then I'd pick it up and suddenly start reading it.

It was a critical and popular success at first, no question, but I truly believe that by intersecting with the rise of MTV by breaking the color barrier there, and then using Hollywood studio quality video as a platform to visualize and showcase Jackson's particular genius with irresistible fare like Billie Jean and Beat It, the album crossed over like no album ever did. Jackson's potent fame from the previous Off the Wall and earlier Jackson Five went into another level, and then his appearance at the Motown anniversary special nailed it. It is like everything came together perfectly.