Happy Halloween with Hercule Poirot

by Cláudio Alves

I don't know about you, but after the double whammy of Belfast and Death on the Nile, I was ready to give up on Kenneth Branagh as a director. Yet, like Michael Corleone famously said: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

Turns out that what Branagh and, more specifically, his Agatha Christie adaptations needed was a healthy shot of nonsense plus the spooky seasonings of horror. A Haunting in Venice, now streaming on Hulu, succeeds by untethering itself from literary fidelity, twisting Christie's Hallowe'en Party out of shape in pursuit of maximum entertainment. Though a sense of melancholy pervades, self-serious prestige is abandoned, or mayhap sacrificed at a witches' altar. And from its deadened carcass, Hercule Poirot emerges as the center of a ghostly storm, the skeptic anchor keeping this Hammer Horror resurgence from floating away on the Lido tide…

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Almost There: Angela Lansbury in "Death on the Nile"

by Cláudio Alves

From Gaslight to Glass Onion, Angela Lansbury had one extraordinary career whose sheer grandeur is hard to overstate. For almost 80 years, she entertained people worldwide, be it on the stages of Broadway or on TV as Jessica Fletcher, from roles of unspeakable villainy to cherished nurturers in children's media. So to read news of her death was shocking, even though Lansbury was almost 97 – she passed less than a week before her birthday. It just seemed like she would live forever, a primordial force eternally present in our lives. Lansbury worked to the end, maintaining a last vestige of Old Hollywood alive with her. How can one come close to articulating what a loss this is for show business? There was simply no one else quite like Angela Lansbury.

To honor the star, let's recall one of her most colorful film creations, a foray into Agatha Christie's world of murder mysteries that almost nabbed Lansbury a fourth Oscar nomination – the 1978 Death on the Nile…

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Was Peter Ustinov the best Poirot?

by Cláudio Alves

Growing up in a house furnished with the complete written works of Agatha Christie made me a fan of the whodunnit genre from a young age. My mum, an unabashed fan of criminal narratives and detective stories, made sure I was familiar with the figure of Hercule Poirot and, eventually, I too became a fan. While we've long spent joyful evenings sharing our love for the adventures of Belgium's most excellent fictional investigator, we don't always agree about this entertainment.

For instance, our idea of who the perfect on-screen Poirot  differs significantly. Her heart belongs to David Suchet's book-faithful incarnation, while I prefer Peter Ustinov's joyful take on the same character. On the centennial of the the two-time Oscar-winning thespian, I thought I could elaborate on why Ustinov is my perfect Poirot…

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Showbiz History: Tommy Lee, Tom Hardy, and Mother!

7 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

1890: Agatha Christie born in Devon, England. She would become one of the world's most famous writers of all time. Over 70 (!!!) adaptations of her work have hit film and television over the years from as early as 1928 (a silent film called The Passing of Mr Quinn) to the forthcoming Death on the Nile in 2020. Only one of the adaptations was ever nominated for Best Picture though: Billy Wilder's take on Witness for the Prosecution (1957)...

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Almost There: Marlene Dietrich in "Witness for the Prosecution"

by Cláudio Alves

1957 was a fascinating year when it comes to the Oscars' acting categories. Thanks to the stultifying Sayonara, Miyoshi Umeki became the only Asian actress to ever win an Academy Award, while silent era Asian-American sex symbol, Sessue Hayakawa, received his first and only Oscar nomination for The Bridge on the River Kwai. In that same year, the Best Actress race saw Elizabeth Tayor receive her first nomination, and Deborah Kerr coming the closest she ever was to win an Oscar, for Heaven Knows Mr. Alison. She lost, but was, at least, nominated, unlike the cast of Best Picture nominee 12 Angry Men. It seems insane to think so, but none of that picture's astounding performances got any love from AMPAS, not even for Henry Fonda's star turn.

That being said, no snub hurt more than that of an actress so confident she had earned Oscar gold, that there was a prerecorded introduction to her Vegas show that mentioned a 1957 nomination. We're talking about Marlene Dietrich in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution…

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