Looking for a feel good — ADULT — Christmas flick?
Dave and Lisa Adlard recommended my favourite, Love Actually. (2003 R-rated)
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
related – Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) horrible Christmas variation of The Troggs’ classic hit “Love Is All Around”. (VIDEO)
Even more R-rated is the full version. 😀
Dream Catcher Academy near Lagos is a school for orphaned and indigent girls. The goal is quality education, arts and leadership and life skills.
Seyi Oluyole started Dream Catchers Academy with only 5 girls in 2014. It provides free dance, drama and music classes for underprivileged children.
I’m following the school now. And will try to visit next time I get to Nigeria.
It was this dance with afrobeat superstar Davido that first caught my attention.
7 episode mini-series. VERY good TV.
Weird and unique.
89% Rotten Tomatoes. That’s about right. I’d change a few things, if I could.
Intense. But skillfully done.
Unlike typical Agatha Christie, the dialogue is believable.
Emma Corrin is excellent as Darby Hart, a 24-year-old “Gen Z Sherlock Holmes” hacker who has written a true-crime book about her past as an amateur sleuth.
She’s Rami Malek‘s paramour right now IRL.
Harris Dickinson as Bill Farrah is quite good, as well. They make a charmingly socially awkward duo.
Darby and eight other guests are invited by a reclusive billionaire to participate in a retreat at a remote and dazzling location. When one of the other guests is found dead, Darby must use all of her skills to prove it was murder against a tide of competing interests and before the killer takes another life. …
Wikipedia
I did enjoy the technology.
The show is set in a billionaire prepper’s escape hatch, the Fljot Valley Hotel in Iceland.
Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly building a compound in Hawaii with an underground bunker.
OpenAI’s ousted-and-reinstated CEO Sam Altman has a stash of things like guns, gold, antibiotics, and gas masks.
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman bought motorcycles, guns, and ammo to be prepared to “hole up in my house for some amount of time” if necessary and even got laser eye surgery because he thinks it’d help his odds of survival in a disaster.
LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman once told the New Yorker he estimates more than half of Silicon Valley billionaires have invested in some type of “apocalypse insurance,” like an underground bunker.
Business Insider
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I did predict the killer.
I’m a big fan of the fictional character DC Smith.
Grainger’s 2023 book has the retired detective working on a possible insurance fraud case.
A woman’s husband disappeared 5 years prior. And she wants to make a claim on his estate.
The insurance company believes the man is still alive — and hires DC Smith to find him.
As usual, this Grainger book is a slow-paced, humorous police procedural.
No car chases nor gun fights.
I tried this show because … Lucy Lawless.
Xena: Warrior Princess and her as D’Anna Biers on Battlestar Galactica.
I’m a fan of the Kiwi badass. And she’s FUNNY. 😀
Snarky.
Namaste.
… Ya, you have a nice day too. 😀
My Life Is Murder (2019) is an Australian and New Zealand murder mystery, crime comedy-drama television series …
… follows the adventures of fearless private investigator Alexa Crowe, who solves the most baffling crimes as well as coping with the frustrations of everyday life.
Lucy Lawless as PI Alexa Crowe, former detective of the Victoria Police Crinimal Investigation Branch (CIB) . As a side hustle, she bakes bread in her kitchen for Baristas Café. …
Not bad. Standard police procedural.
But what makes it worth watching for me is the humour. And the Melbourne scenery.
There are some personal mysteries you ponder.
WHY is Alexa working cold cases for the police? She doesn’t seem to get paid.
WHY does Madison — who actually does work for the police — drop everything instantly anytime Alexa needs a hacker / analyst?
I’d best continue on to season 2. For one thing, the show moves to New Zealand, my former homeland.
My typical breakfast.
Either half or two half of a toasted, butter Kirkland Signature Cheese Bun. With coffee.
Buy at least 2 dozen at a time at Costco. Slice them in half. Throw them into the freezer.
Costco Kirkland Signature Cheese Buns Review
Jeffery Deaver is the master of plot twists & turns. False summits. 😀
Fewer than usual in Watchmaker’s Hand (2023), but it’s still an excellent novel.
16th in the Lincoln Rhyme series.
When a New York City construction crane mysteriously collapses, causing mass destruction and killing several people, Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are on the case.
A political group claims to be behind the sabotage and threatens another crane collapse in twenty-four hours, unless their demands are met.
With New York in a panic, the stakes are higher than ever for Rhyme and his team to unravel the plot before the timer runs out and more cranes crash down, reducing the city and its people to rubble.
Then Rhyme realizes that the mastermind behind the terror is his own nemesis—the Watchmaker.
Once again, it’s a battle of wits between Rhyme and the Watchmaker.
Technology plays more a role in this book. Drones. Artificial intelligence.
It feels like Lincoln is falling behind the times in some ways.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Over the years, I’ve finally watched all 79 episodes 2004 and 2022. A joy.
Sitcoms are pretty much the same formula for each and every episode. But for me seasons 1 and 9 were best.
I MIGHT have to start over again with episode 1.
I finally learned that — in real life — Martin Clunes is exactly opposite the character he plays in this comedy.
For one thing, he LOVES dogs! 😀
And he’s a charming people person, unlike the ramrod stiff and unpardonable Doc Martin.
Sigourney Weaver appeared in season 9 as a stubborn American tourist because she’s a good friend of Selina Cadell, who plays Mrs Tishell, the pharmacist.
International adaptations were made in Czech Republic and Slovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, and Spain.
Click PLAY or watch a wrap-up interview with Martin on YouTube.
The 2nd season of Reacher on Prime launched yesterday – Dec. 14, 2023.
This book is an early story of Jack Reacher, when he was still military police. Second chronologically of the books.
Having read them all, I’d call this one average. That still puts it into one of my top 10 novels of the year.
And this is the 4th and last Reacher book where the original author, Lee Child, will still have his name attached. From here on his younger brother Andrew Child takes over 100%.
A string of mysterious deaths. A long-classified mission. ….
Amazon (2023)
1992. All across the United States respectable, upstanding citizens are showing up dead. These deaths could be accidents, and they don’t appear to be connected—until a fatal fall from a high-floor window attracts some unexpected attention.
That attention comes from the secretary of defense. All of a sudden he wants an interagency task force to investigate. And he wants Jack Reacher as the army’s representative. If Reacher gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy.
But office politics isn’t Reacher’s thing. Three questions quickly emerge: Who’s with him, who’s against him, and will the justice he dispenses be the official kind . . . or his own kind?
Sadly, the photo is cut off.
I can’t actually verify I wasn’t standing on a box. 😀
Rick McCharles 