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Roger's younger brother, Philip, has suffered under his father's preference for Roger, and retreated into a distant world of books and bygone historical epochs, spending all his waking hours in the library. Philip's wife Magda is an only moderately successful actress to whom everything, even a family murder, is a stage show in which she wants to play a leading part. His twelve-year-old sister Josephine, on the other hand, is ugly, precociously intelligent, and obsessed with detective stories. She spies continually on the rest of the household, letting everyone know that she is writing down her observations in a secret notebook. Three generations of the Leonides family live together under wealthy patriarch Aristide. His first wife Marcia died; her sister Edith has cared for the household since then.
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He also made the first (and, surprisingly, only) dead-dog joke of the night. Washington’s annual mashup of political humor and earnest paeans to the free press is typically a good-natured collection of one-liners and affectionate jabs at friends and enemies alike. But it was the leading 2024 presidential contenders who loomed largest — one in the Washington Hilton hotel ballroom, the other who definitely, positively, probably was not watching from Mar-a-Lago. There are meta references to the framework that governs films, like when someone asks Jody if her Metalstorm characters should reference the trouble she's having in nailing the third act (in many ways reminiscent of The Fall Guy's sagging final act).
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Josephine, who had been bragging that she knows the killer's identity, is found lying unconscious in the yard from a blow to the head from a marble doorstop. Charles discovers a cache of incriminating love letters from Brenda to Laurence, and the two are arrested. While they are in custody, the children's nanny dies after drinking a digitalis-laced cup of cocoa that had apparently been intended for Josephine. This over the top adaptation is not realistic, but it is great fun.
I blame fate of Birmingham's Electric Cinema and Crooked House on these people - Birmingham Live
I blame fate of Birmingham's Electric Cinema and Crooked House on these people.
Posted: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
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The party soldiered on, reinforcing a commitment to the role of a free press in a democracy, and many breathed a not-so-discreet sigh of relief when the crowd resumed in 2022 after the worst of the pandemic with Biden carrying the torch. With such an enticing cast, it’s tougher than one might think trying to divine which of these eccentrics might be responsible for the crime, and “Crooked House” keeps you guessing, right up to its shocking conclusion (of which Christie was especially proud, naming it a personal favorite among her extensive oeuvre). It’s not just the revelation of who poisoned Aristide that surprises but also the way in which the film delivers justice to his killer. This particular mystery won’t be spawning sequels, but it arrives at just the right time to satisfy those whose appetite for a delicious Christie mystery are seeking a truly diabolical twist. In any case, we need something to keep our eyes and imaginations occupied while the director trots out his cast of suspects, and together with DP Sebastian Winterø, Paquet-Brenner takes these relatively bland characters and stages them at dramatic angles in these positively breathtaking rooms. Whereas so many of Christie’s books have gone straight to the small screen, this stunning visual treatment is enough to make “Crooked House” feel worthy of a theatrical run (although in fact, the film debuted weeks earlier on-demand in the States).
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It starred Rory Kinnear (Charles Hayward), Anna Maxwell Martin (Sophia Leonides), and Phil Davis (Chief Insp. Taverner). The radio play was dramatised by Joy Wilkinson and directed by Sam Hoyle. The title refers to a nursery rhyme ("There Was a Crooked Man"), a common theme of the author. Narrator Charles's fiancée Sophia says it refers not to dishonesty, but rather "we hadn't been able to grow up independent... twisted and twining", meaning unhealthily interdependent on the intensely strong personality of the family patriarch, Aristide Leonides. He searches Edith's garden shed, and finds a bottle of cyanide; also Josephine's missing notebook, buried in quicklime. Taverner arrives to take over the case; he feels Charles's history with Sophia compromises him.
The discovery of love letters between Brenda and Laurence gives Taverner enough evidence to arrest them for Aristide's murder and the attempt on Josephine's life. Crooked House is a 2017 mystery film directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, based on Agatha Christie’s 1949 novel of the same name. The film stars Max Irons, Terence Stamp, Glenn Close, Gillian Anderson, and Stefanie Martini.
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They put off getting engaged until the end of the war when they will be reunited in England. You could read the film as a study of familial wealth and corruption, but it's happiest at a formal dinner where the insults - Downton Abbey's Julian Fellowes is a screenwriter - have a snobbish sting. Like the audience, Charles is overwhelmed when he arrives at the Leonides estate, which seems positively palatial, with closets big enough for a cemetery of skeletons. Josephine hints that she has found clues, but will not disclose them.
He becomes a house guest at Three Gables, hoping that someone might reveal a clue at an unguarded moment. A private investigator helps a former flame solve the murder of her wealthy grandfather, who lived in a sprawling estate surrounded by his idiosyncratic family. Agatha Christie’s massive collection of novels and stories are largely evergreen properties because of their elegant, economical storytelling and their sense of intrigue. It’s no surprise that numerous adaptation of her work continue to be produced; though they flourish most frequently in the UK on radio and television, there are many notable feature film versions produced across the globe, including ones helmed by directors like Billy Wilder, Frank Tashlin, and Sidney Lumet. This year alone, Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in the fourth adaptation of Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” to great commercial success. Sophia Leonides, granddaughter of the late Greek business tycoon Aristide Leonides, visits private investigator Charles Hayward.
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Based on an Agatha Christie novel (reportedly one of her own favorites), this mystery is beautifully shot, with great set design, but it suffers from its odd pace. It's too fast to pick up on character nuance and too slow to generate any suspense. Crooked House serves up an entire mansion full of suspects, all of whom appear equally guilty and equally innocent. Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner (Sarah's Key, Dark Places) seems more intent on trying to build a mystery than on building a world populated by characters. Everyone seems placed like a puzzle piece, rather than organically occupying a living space. The novel was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in four weekly 30-minute episodes which began broadcasting on 29 February 2008.
Doug Mills of the Times got the award for visual journalism for a striking photo of Biden, and the award for courage and accountability went to The Washington Post for coverage on the impact of assault rifles and mass shootings. “I am killing this dinner harder than Kristi Noem kills the puppies,” Friend said in his Trump voice, riffing off the news that the Republican governor of South Dakota, in a forthcoming book, admits to shooting her 14-month-old dog because she was “untrainable” and aggressive. The only Trump spotted at this year’s festivities was daughter-in-law Lara Trump, recently crowned co-chair of the Republican National Committee. Her father-in-law wasn’t in the building, but comic impressionist Matt Friend emerged from the crowd with a Trump impersonation — as well as sendups of Bernie Sanders, Mitch McConnell and Obama.
“The defeated former president [Trump] has made no secret of his attack on our democracy. He tells supporters he is the revenge and retribution,” Biden warned. Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence has declined to back his onetime boss in the 2024 election cycle. Donald Trump on Sunday trashed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner after being mocked by President Biden and “Saturday Night Live” star Colin Jost at the annual event. Towards the end of the Second World War, Charles Hayward is in Cairo and falls in love with Sophia Leonides, a smart, successful Englishwoman who works for the Foreign Office.
His second wife is the indolent Brenda, decades his junior, suspected of having a clandestine love affair with Laurence, the grandchildren's tutor. After Aristide is poisoned by his own eye medicine (eserine), his granddaughter Sophia tells narrator and fiancé Charles Hayward that they cannot marry until the killer is apprehended. Charles's father, "The Old Man", is Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, so Charles investigates from the inside along with assigned detective Chief Inspector Taverner.
Screenwriter Julian Fellowes has done far better (Gosford Park, Downton Abbey); Crooked House is just a lazy weekend in a big house with people no one would ever give a hoot about in real life. There are brief glimmers of flair and technique scattered throughout the film, such as an impressive performance by the young Honor Kneafsey as the mischievous Josephine and a well-blocked dinner scene that allows for amusing familial sniping. Yet, “Crooked House” is a bored and boring adaptation of a Christie tale that demands a stronger hand and a taste for mirth amidst the morbidity.
Channel 5 to premiere new Agatha Christie adaptation - Digital Spy
Channel 5 to premiere new Agatha Christie adaptation.
Posted: Wed, 29 Nov 2017 08:00:00 GMT [source]
It all feels muddled in translation by people who clearly have reverence for Christie’s talents but don’t quite understand what makes her work sing. Her nanny prepares hot chocolate for her and dies after Josephine refuses it and she drinks it herself. Again, Josephine refuses, even when Charles warns her that she is in danger. Edith is diagnosed with a fatal illness, and is told she has only months to live. The younger son, Roger, is managing director of a major family business, but is a failure who has required multiple bail-outs. His domineering wife Clemency is a plant biologist with extensive knowledge of poisons.
Unlike “Orient Express,” however, the inspector in this case is nowhere near as shrewd as Poirot. Played by the handsomely bland Max Irons, Charles Hayward is a former spy turned private eye named who had a brief fling in Cairo some years earlier with Sophia, and whose faint connection to the family might have something to do with his having been chosen to investigate the case. Max Irons plays the young private eye Charles Hayward, who gets a visit in his dingy office from the beautiful Sophia (Stefanie Martini), an old love whose grandfather, an unpopular tycoon, has shuffled off this mortal coil under unusual circumstances. After consulting with the vinegary Scotland Yard hand Chief Inspector Taverner (Terence Stamp, always welcome), Charles sets out to the estate, filled with aunts, sons, in-laws and others, embodied by an all-star cast including Glenn Close, Julian Sands, Gillian Anderson and Christina Hendricks. Ms. Hendricks, her distinctive red hair here a vermilion that borders on magenta, plays an ex-showgirl who is the last wife of the dead old man. The obvious suspects are Brenda Leonides, Aristide's much younger second wife, and Laurence Brown, a conscientious objector who has been living in the house as private tutor to Sophia's younger brother and sister, Eustace and Josephine.
Mr. Trump, who had privately discussed the idea of Mr. Kennedy as a running mate, echoed what Democrats have been saying for months about Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy — that it could swing the election. The former president called Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a ‘Democrat plant’ and attacked his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, who gave $2 million to the Kennedy campaign. A Marist poll released the day before showed the elder politician up by three points among more than 1,000 registered voters surveyed and a full six points among those who said they will definitely vote this November.
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