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freezing-kaiju · 6 months ago

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THE BIG POLL, ROUND ZERO, REPLACE BLADE BRAVE!!!!!

Beautiful show it is, Kamen Rider Blade must come to an end soon. I will cry. But the world must move on.

And I decided to make this one an anime poll, since some of the legacy options from the very first poll ended up being much longer than the rest. SO! This is all shows between 20-50 episodes, around the same length as a Rider show!

You must choose at least one; if u want more, leave it in the comments or tags or replies pls and i'll count your additional votes at the end!

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Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple - A young detective related to famous detective Miss Marple joins other famous detective Hercule Poirot as his assistant and learns from these two legendry mentors to solve murders. I love detective shows but I'm not too familiar with Poirot and Miss Marple so maybe the show could serve as an introduction to them. It seems cozy but compelling! The lead writer worked on a bunch of the big popular serieses (Pokemon Sun & Moon, Fairy Tail, Death Note, and Anpanman). This one's a legacy inclusion!

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Blue Gender - A man from the modern day with a strange illness goes into cryosleep and wakes up in a destroed earth where mechs and aliens fight and there is a cool tall woman who has a mech. It has gore, mechs which I do need to see more of, but it's a military series. Space's also listed in the genre stuff which...is that a spoiler, do they go to space? 26 episodes, so it's on the longer side, less diligence may apply. This one's a legacy inclusion!

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Dirty Pair - 80s anime, two Hotted Boobhaving space agents fight and bicker their way through the galaxy in a distinctly 'two bi women constantly getting divorced' vibe. I don't remember if this one is a legacy inclusion, but it's a famous show!

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Scrapped Princess - Fantasy setting, A local white girl doomed to destroy the world and her adoptive siblings travel the world to avoid her devastating fate. also... There's mechs?? Wikipedia tells me it’s a lighthearted but mournful show that uses Clarke’s third law to bridge the gap between scifi and high fantasy. This one was handpicked by a dear friend!

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Texhnolyze - by the creators of Serial Experiments Lain, it’s a show that seems similarly angsty and cerebral but much grimier. A boxer gets dismembered, cyborgized, and possibly radicalized deep in the bowels of a city that never sees the sun. ALSO GACKT IS THERE?

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R.O.D. READ OR DIE -THE TV- - a potentially jojoish, gay little show about a novelist with a heady mix of hubris and self-loathing and three bibliophile sisters with Paper Abilities fighting various goons and also Britain. It seems like a romp!

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Captain Earth - In the vein of Super Sentai (sadly without the precious masks), a color coded group of teens that seems to include a Yaoibait Kaworu fight aliens on behalf of NASA, with a robot that has a REALLY big hat. Supposedly it’s got a lot of intellectual depth!

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RahXephon - the second name on everyone’s lips when someone says Evangelion Rip-off, after Darling in the Franxx. Mechs that are blatantly angels, a JSDF, and blue-blooded men in black. I tried a bit, and it’s got a great capture of humanity in times of crisis and such a beautifully 2000s aesthetic.

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Devilman Lady - what if you were Devilman and a Lady??? What if there was a blond woman and you were a beast and there was all this blood and violence. Psychological, grungy, and gorgeously 90s. And it's a yuri!!!

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Chrno Crusade - Cisgender Bridget and a devilboy (no relation to devilman or devilmanlady) do exorcisms for an order of nuns in 1929 New Yawk Citay. It's a het romance, full of bumbling and comedy and period era ghostbustiness. Also for some reason in a lot of the art (like this one) Chrno is whitewashed?

ITS NOT LETTING ME PUT AN ELEVENTH VIDEO TAKE THIS AND SOME POSTERS

A Precure - I've seen Kamen Riders, Super Sentais, an Ultraman, but I've not seen the sister show to them all; Pretty Cure! SO clearly I need to, and if this one doesn't win it'll flood the poll to replace Ryuki. These options are suggestions; might be others.

[original image sources: agatha's is from the op but can be found screencapped here, gender, dirty, scrapped, texhnolyze, die, earth, rahxephon, lady, crusade (official magazine art findable here), pre tty cure (official posters findable in those places). i replaced them with trailers tho lol. but check the ones that are oroginal anime wallpapers out theyre very nice]

#kj watches anime #polls #Youtube

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asweethistory · 4 years ago

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Agatha Christie

Black Coffee Custard with Ground Cherry Jam and Cumin Date Syrup

Known as the queen of crime and mystery, Agatha Christie is often remembered for her countless novels, short stories, and plays, and her well-known fictional detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie was born in a seaside town in England to wealthy family in 1890. She was mostly homeschooled, although her mother believed Christie had no reason to learn reading until she was eight. Because of her curiosity, though, Christie started to read at age four. When Christie was 10, she wrote her first poem, “The Cowslip,” and when she was 15 she studied opera in Paris. After her education, Christie spent time in the warm Egyptian climate of Cairo with her ailing mother. Inspired by the trip, Christie, under the pseudonym of Monosyllaba, began writing her first novel.

By the end of 1914, Christie was married to Archie Christie after a 3-month courtship, only to become separated from her new husband during WWI. For the next four years, Christie volunteered for the Red Cross and worked as an apothecary’s assistant, an experience that would prove useful when writing murders by poisoning. After a dare from her sister that she couldn’t write a good one, Christie’s first detective novel was published in 1920 and followed a mustached Belgian police office with a head “exactly the shape of an egg.” After multiple publishing successes, Christie and her husband left for a promotional around-the-world tour, during the course of which they became some of the first Britons to surf standing up.

Christie’s momentum hit a bit of obstacle in 1926 when a depression fueled by the death of her mother led to Christie’s own mysterious disappearance. In December 1926, four months after Archie asked Christie for a divorce due to falling in love with another woman, Christie left the house and seemingly evaporated. This, of course, prompted the media to have a field day. There was a reward, search volunteers, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself employed the use of a medium to find her. Even the New York Times in America reported the news. It wasn’t, though, until 10 days later that Christie resurfaced at a nearby hospital, although she had been checked in with the same surname as her husband’s mistress.

Even though Christie’s autobiography ignores this disappearance, plenty of theories have swirled around. Some doctors believe she lost memory, while others believe she was in a fugue state, and still others suspect that she planned it as a publicity stunt.

Christie and Archie divorced and Christie kept custody of their one daughter and kept his last name for her writing. Afterwards, Christie jumped back into an exciting life. After traveling in places such as Istanbul and Baghdad, she became interested in archeology. She met and married archeologist Max Mallowan, 13 years her junior, and his work inspired many of her stories. During WWII, Christie once again worked in a pharmacy, learning more about poisons. Throughout the next 30 years, Christie continued to write and received many accolades. In 1976, she died at the age of 85, leaving behind a legacy that included 66 detective novels. In addition to mystery, Christie wrote a few romance novels and plays including her first, Black Coffee, and the world’s longest running play, The Mousetrap.

Christie reported disliking “crowds, loud noises, gramophones, and cinemas” and enjoying sun, sea, flowers, travelling, strange foods, sports, concerts, theatres, pianos, and doing embroidery. Christie kept journals, 73 of which have survived. Her personal prejudices creeped into her work often in the form of stereotypes and derogatory references towards POC and Jews.

#agatha christie #black coffee #custard #ice cream #ground cherry #jam #cumin #date #murder mystery

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bernieanderson · 6 years ago

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Inspirations of 2018: Innovating Genre and Character with Agatha Christie

Inspiration is a strange and elusive creature. I’ve also said more than once that inspiration is over-rated. The Muse will reveal herself when she pleases. But it’s up to us to show up. If we don’t, she probably won’t either.

I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.

William Faulkner

But inspiration sometimes comes from unexpected places. It has this year for me.

For this last week of 2018, I want to highlight a few of the people who’ve been most helpful, most inspiring in my creative journey throughout this year, with the hope that some of these folks will inspire you, as well.

The first one was surprised me until I went back to my childhood.

My preferred genre of fiction is fantasy and fairy tales. This is what I read. This is what I’m writing.

But for some reason, Agatha Christie, queen of the mystery genre, has a been a part of my literary life for a long time.

I was about 9 years old when I finished reading through everything in the children’s section at the public library in Rochelle, IL. It was time to move upstairs to the whole new world of the adult section, with its Dewey decimal system and rows of genre fiction. I remember nosing through what seemed like massive numbers of books in the stacks. I am fairly certain there weren’t as many books as what I imagined. But it was a new world to explore, and new worlds always seem larger than they really are.

For whatever reason, I honed in on a nice thick hardback called “Murder on the Orient Express” and my 9-year old mind entered an adult world of murder, innuendo, and intrigue - much of which I didn’t understand. But I did like the story, the strange cast of characters, and I will always remember the surprising, yet inevitable, solution to the puzzle.

I soon moved from Agatha Christie to Tolkien, Pratchett, and Brooks (I had already read through the world of Narnia and the strange and wonderful universes of Madeline L’Engle numerous times in the children’s library).

Fast forward 42 years.

I’ve been married to a fellow lover of books and stories for almost 30 years now. While my genre borders on the strange, weird, and fantastical for her, she is a reader of mysteries - and has maneuvered through the world of Miss Marple and Hercules Poirot at least as many times as I’ve wondered Middle Earth.

So this year, we’ve passed our time on road trips listening to the combination of charm, humor, and darkness that is Agatha Christie.

And I’ve found it fascinating and educational, and always entertaining.

Here’re three ways Agatha Christie has taught and inspired me this year.

Christie teaches Genre

She is the murder mystery archetype. Her novels lay the groundwork. They set the rules. The expected tropes are determined by Christie’s characters. I’ve learned what to expect (and what not to expect) in the mystery genre. With a little careful observation, every genre has similar tropes. And tropes are not bad things when they are not “tropey.” Agatha Christie does the expected in the most brilliantly unexpected ways.

Christie teaches how to innovate structure

The murder mystery has a very specific structure. Christie innovates this structure from novel to novel, but there are very specific attributes to every story. A body. An inquest. A cast of characters. One or more complications. A red herring. A reveal. It’s astounding to me that she includes these things in every one of her 66 novels and 14 short stories, yet each is completely different and unpredictable. She was a master.

Christie teaches character development

Poroit used his “little gray cells”. Miss Marple was a student of human nature. Both are very different, whimsical, and endearing. Each of the characters in stories has a story of their own. Christie's characters have a depth and reality about them. They are interesting. Never boring.

Here’s the funny thing. I love fantasy. The fantastical worlds of trolls and gnomes and dwarfs and dragons are the worlds I prefer to live in. Renee’ is ever a practical one and likes to keep feet firmly planted in the world of reality.

That said, we do have the groundwork for a cozy mystery series. It probably will not come to fruition in 2019 - but I do see this being a reality in the next few years.

When it does happen, we have Agatha Christie to thank for that. But learning and understanding genre is a critical aspect of writing fiction. Agatha Christie is one of the best teachers of how to do genre fiction.

I’m also grateful for the stories Ms. Christie told that introduced me to the world of adult library books, as well as murder on trains in Central Europe.

#Leadership #Agatha Christie #Fiction #Development #Inspiration #Genre #Creativity

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setepenre-set · 7 years ago

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Can u recommand some good books pls?

I DEFINITELY CAN!

(I’ve divided them up into categories, and included a short summary of each, so that you can choose more easily, and put the list under a cut, since it’s fairly long.)

Comedic Fantasy With Emotional Center

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (part of the Discworld series; everything in the Discworld series is excellent. main characters of this one are a god stuck in the form of a tortoise and his last believer.)

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett (Discworld. Death has to take over the duties of discworld’s version of Santa Claus in an attempt to keep the world from ending.)

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett (Discworld. Death gets fired and decides to live as a human—as near to human as he can, at any rate. eventually he has to battle the New Death to save the discworld.)

Guards, Guards! by Terry Pratchett (Discworld. Sam Vimes, leader of the disgraced and dying Ankh-Morpork City Watch, regains his self-respect and his interest in life as he works to solve a mystery of who is summoning a dragon and killing off citizens of his city.)

The Bromeliad by Terry Pratchett (small ‘nomes’ live secretly in this world, hiding from humans. the perpetually out-of-his-depth and put-upon nome Masklin finds himself in charge, tasked with leading them to safety and finding their way home.)

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (an angel and a demon tasked with seeing that apocalypse happens as scheduled decide to try to avert it instead. completely and utterly fantastic.)

Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams (murder mystery involving Norse Gods, record contracts, and the Ultimate Bubble Bath.)

The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber (novella told like a fairy tale, full of wordplay and beauty and fun. this one just absolutely shines.)

The Gates by John Connolly (young boy, his dog, and an extremely minor demon try to stop the end of the world.)

The Infernals by John Connolly (sequel to The Gates, featuring the same characters.)

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (a young lady is cursed to be old, decides to become cleaning lady for a wizard rumored to be dangerous but actually just vain, overdramatic, and irresponsible. so very fun and romantic.)

Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien (a local peasant finds himself unwillingly roped into facing a marauding dragon.)

Comedy

All of the P.G. Wodehouse books, particularly the Jeeves and Wooster series (wonderfully fun and lighthearted comedy set vaguely between the edwardian era and the 1920’s. Rich, cheerful, and kindhearted Bertie Wooster has a habit of accidentally getting engaged to girls he has no desire whatsoever to marry; his clever valet Jeeves gets him out of trouble every time.)

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed by Lynne Truss (hilarious and surprisingly touching at the end. lots and lots shenanigans. really fun.)

Romantic Comedy

Cotillion by Georgette Heyer (romantic comedy, fake relationship, regency era.)

When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rhinehouse (romantic comedy with a stolen jewels mystery plot. cast of characters stuck in a house together.)

Romance

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer (historical romance with intrigue and comedy. The main character crossdresses and, to me, reads as genderqueer. The love interest is basically a villain who accidentally becomes the hero. I LOVE IT.)

Her Every Wish by Courtney Milan (regency romance novella. hero is bisexual. subplot about bicycles being scandalous. this is the one that I have Roxanne give Megamind in Code: Safeword.)

The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan (regency romance, the last in the Brothers Sinister series, all of which are good. main character reads as autistic. her love interest is younger than she is; they’ve secretly presented her groundbreaking scientific work as his, so that people will take it seriously.)

When a Scott Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare (regency romance; main character has social anxiety and made up a fiancee years ago to get out of her impending social season. but now a man with the same name has shown up claiming to be this fiancee, and intending to marry her.)

Mystery

Behold, Here’s Poison by Georgette Heyer (1920’s murder mystery with comedy and romance. The characters are wonderful.)

Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie (murder mystery featuring elderly heroine Miss Marple, who seems fluffy and harmless but is really a sneaky, nosy, and terribly sharp woman. I love her.)

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (murder mystery featuring detective Hercule Poirot. intricate and enjoyable.)

Death Comes As the End by Agatha Christie (murder mystery set in ancient egypt. both the mystery and the historical features are extremely well executed.)

Difficult to Categorize

Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann (A group of sheep decide to solve the mystery of who killed their shepherd. Funny and moving. The point of view is amazingly well done.)

Watership Down by Richard Adams (A group of rabbits set out on a journey to establish a new home. The worldbuilding and characterization are fantastic.)

Kiln People by David Brin (science fiction mystery. amazing worldbuilding. One of the main characters is a robot who, due to a slight malfunction, has developed a personality and will of his own.)

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (A love story set during the zombie apocalypse, between a young woman named Julie and a zombie known as R, who isn’t quite as dead as zombies are supposed to be. Horrifying and romantic and uplifting.)

Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving by Martin Millar (Main character Elfish is basically the living embodiment of ‘fuck you’. She’s a guitarist on a mission to claim the name Queen Mab for her—just at present nonexistent—band from her ex-boyfriend Mo.)

Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt (a young woman in the medieval era gets lost in the forest and nearly dies. When she meets Death, though, she convinces him to postpone her demise—she claims that love is stronger than death, and he tells her that if she can prove it by finding her true love within one day, he will spare her life. Full of joy and sorrow and love.)

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury (A group of children go on a fantastic trip through time with a mysterious man called Moundshroud in an attempt to save the life of one of their friends. Fun and dark and beautiful.)

The Girl Who Owned a City by O.T. Nelson (An epidemic wipes out all of the adults in the world. Ten year old Lisa Nelson bands together a group of survivors and shapes them into a new society, with her at its head. Satisfying.)

Fantasy

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley (Gorgeous worldbuilding, kidnapping, romance, magic, and adventure.)

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (The last of the Unicorns goes on a quest to find out what happened to the rest of her species. Fun and frightening and hauntingly beautiful.)

Transformation by Carol Berg (The Emperor’s New Groove for grown-ups. Formerly a magician and currently a slave, Seyonne finds new meaning in his life when he and careless, proud Prince Aleksander work together to defeat the demonic forces that threaten the kingdom. Slavery and freedom, loyalty and friendship. Intricate worldbuilding.)

War For the Oaks by Emma Bull (Urban fantasy. Eddie has just broken up with her boyfriend, and, in the process, broken up the band they both played in. She has enough problems of her own, without getting dragged into a war between the Seelie and Unseelie courts of the Fae.)

Young Adult Fantasy

So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane (Young adult fantasy adventure. Preteen protagonists Kit and Nita journey into a terrifying shadow world to fight a dark entity. One of my favorite depictions of magic of all time.)

Which Witch by Eva Ibbotson (The Great Evil Wizard Arriman has decided to take a bride! The members of the local witches’ coven are invited to a contest—whichever witch performs the most dark and wicked act of black magic will be Arriman’s bride. The young witch Belladonna is absolutely smitten with Arriman, and desperately wants to win the contest. The only problem is that Belladonna is a white witch.)

Megamind: the Novel by Lauren Alexander (A little darker and a bit more grown-up than the movie; still incredibly fun. It features additional scenes from Megamind and Roxanne’s developing romantic relationship.)

Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde (Teenage Kerry is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ends up being taken captive by a group of people who are holding another person captive as well—a young man they insist is a vampire. Kerry thinks they’re crazy, and helps the boy escape…but it turns out they were actually right. And now she’s being held captive by a vampire on the run.)

Young Adult

Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going (Depressed teenage protagonist Troy almost commits suicide, but is stopped by a homeless teenager named Curt, who is also a local punk rock legend. Curt convinces Troy to form a punk band with him, featuring Curt on guitar and Troy on drums…even though Troy can’t actually play the drums. funny and angry and deeply moving.)

The Undertaker’s Gone Bananas by Paul Zindel (Thriller. The misfit teenage protagonists are convinced that their neighbor murdered his wife, even though no one believes them. They set out to prove it.)

Older Children

The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Bernard (Recently orphaned, the disagreeable young Mary arrives at her uncle’s house—a house full of secrets and mysteries.)

A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Bernard (Young, precocious, and strange Sara Crewe is sent to boarding school. When her father dies unexpectedly, leaving Sara a penniless orphan, the Headmistress forces Sara to work as a servant. Strength in adversity, the power of imagination, and an eventual happy ending.)

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Neatly Snyder (A group of children secretly play at being ancient Egyptians in a deserted lot. This one really captures the dangerous, wild, and intense feeling of childhood.)

Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix (adventure with young girl as heroine. genuinely creepy and exciting and so clever. my great-grandmother loved this one, too.)

The Witches by Roald Dahl (Young boy and his grandmother happen upon a convention of terrifying, evil witches.)

The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischmann (Spoiled Prince Brat and his whipping boy Jemmy run away together, much to Jemmy’s annoyance. Adventure and friendship.)

Trapped In Death Cave by Bill Wallace (An adventure story with a secret map, a hidden cave, and an evil plot.)

#books #book recs #Anonymous

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mendo-r · 7 years ago

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Kenneth Branagh: 'I want you to smell the steam of the Orient Express'

A new article about Murder on the Orient Express from The Guardian

The actor-director’s latest film, Murder on the Orient Express, boasts a stellar cast, including Branagh himself as Poirot. He discusses magnificent moustaches, moral brooding and the passion of Agatha Christie

“Women in wild places and mental instability run right through things, don’t they?” says Kenneth Branagh, leaning forward, earnestly. “She’s very, very sensitive, and I see the ghost of her as a heroine in what she writes, in terms of keeping body and soul together, and of being an adventurer.”

He’s talking about Agatha Christie, and giving a reading of the detective novelist’s fiction that is a long way from the more traditional view of her as a comfy West Country matriarch who churned out mysteries to support her family. “I think people have been pretty tough on her,” he adds. “They’re suspicious of the volume of her output. She herself admitted that sometimes she wasn’t proud of a book when she had finished it.

“Personally I admire the prolific nature of what she does … her ability to grab the audience’s attention is really striking. The surface of what she writes has led people to dismiss her as a second-rater. But I think she is far more than that.”

Branagh is talking about Christie as he gets ready to unveil his big-screen versionof her classic Murder on the Orient Express (the first cinematic interpretation since 1974), her story of a group of passengers and a dead body trapped in a luxurious train in a snow storm. He stars as the legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

“I think people often feel this about Shakespeare – they’re annoyed by his bourgeois credentials,” he says.

“He retires at the normal age, goes back to Stratford, buys houses, gets involved in disputes about rent. It feels as though there’s a sort of middle manager quality in there; he was a businessman, a shareholder, yet he wrote all these plays. That makes people suspicious.

“With Christie, people essentially have her down as a sort of Miss Marple – a sexless, removed, bookish, woolly, very English sort of individual. And they are not aware of the intrepid, pioneering, passionate woman that she was.”

The lineaments of her life back this view. Christie had such a desire to travel – and to keep her first husband, the dashing Archie Christie, happy – that she set off on a year of travel with him in 1924, leaving her daughter Rosalind at home with her mother. She left Rosalind again when she famously vanished for 11 days after discovering Archie was having an affair; she underwent psychiatric treatment in the wake of the incident. After their divorce, she travelled alone on the Orient Express, to Istanbul and then on to Damascus and Baghdad. Her family worried about her on the trip but for her it was a way of discovering new worlds – and, coincidentally, a new companion in life since she met her second husband, Max Mallowan, on a dig in Ur. Despite her writing commitments, she worked alongside him, often in difficult conditions and exotic locations.

Branagh and I talk at Twickenham Studios. He is tired because of an exhausting schedule which is whisking him around the world, but he’s here to put the finishing touches to his film, which boasts an all-star cast: Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Olivia Colman, Penélope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Derek Jacobi, Sergei Polunin …

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The way the trailer is framed, with captions that reveal the type of character each star is playing, takes both the film and its director back to his youth in the 1970s and early 80s, when the posters for movies such as The Towering Inferno and indeed Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express, starring Albert Finney as Poirot, were plastered across the streets of Branagh’s home town of Reading. To the boy who had moved there at the age of nine from his native Belfast, they represented a sense of possibility. “My first encounter was with their sense of glamour,” he says. “I was pretty intrigued by all the names on those posters.”

This liking for good performers coming together to make popular entertainment is perhaps what links the two contrasting sides of Branagh’s current career. There is the actor and director who is regarded as one of the best of his age; an eminent Shakespearean, the first man to film Henry V since Olivier, a talent who can gather a top-flight company of actors to perform a season in the West End which included heavy-weight productions of The Winter’s Tale and The Entertainer. Then there is the Hollywood film director, best known for the comic-book movie, Thor. And Cinderella. He grins when I point out the strange collision between Hollywood and serious stage productions.

“No one, quite frankly, is more surprised than me that I have been allowed to get away with it,” he says. “I had not anticipated or planned for suddenly finding myself in this studio groove. It is unusual, I must say. But it’s fun.”

Shot on 70mm film, his version of Murder on the Orient Express gleams as the camera dwells on the crisp table linen, the polished wood and the glistening glasses. “I wanted you to feel the snow and smell the steam – I wanted to have all the advantages of classic material and none of the disadvantages of over-familiarity,” he says.

For Christie fans, there are some changes – to characters, to locations, to motivation – that may surprise. But all the essential ingredients are faithfully reproduced, and Branagh has added considerable depth to his portrayal of Poirot, making him more active, more passionate and more lonely. “The screenplay caught a hurt and a more tangible isolation in Poirot,” Branagh explains. “There is a kind of vulnerability about this man who appears in The Mysterious Affair at Styles with a touching gratitude to England for looking after Belgian refugees. There’s the sense of someone who has already felt the bruises of the world.”

Did he not feel any trepidation about taking on a character who has already been portrayed by 20 actors, including Orson Welles, Peter Ustinov and, on TV, David Suchet? “It’s a lot isn’t it?” says Branagh with that disarming smile. “I guess that’s where my thickish skin comes into it. You do understand that the reason so many people have played him is because he’s a fantastic character.”

He stopped watching other incarnations when he knew he was about to deliver his own (“I wouldn’t want to get caught copying the other boys”), but recognises the various ways that the detective has burrowed into the collective consciousness. “With the amount of source material in the novels every actor is going to bring something unique and unusual, in the same way as would happen with a famous classical part. David Suchet is a fantastic Poirot, so is Finney and John Moffatt on the radio is excellent.”

Discussion about his own characterisation will, I suspect, be dominated by conversations about his moustache – grey and flourishing and twinned with a natty beard. “We probably spent about nine months on it. We started with something thinner than Charlie Chaplin’s, then something that went up, that went down. We looked at famous moustaches in movies and paintings. The luxury as an actor – and I had this before when I was playing Wallander – is that you can go back to the books and trawl for details.

“I loved Christie’s phrasing – ‘the most magnificent moustaches in England’ – and I enjoyed the fact that the risk you were taking was that you would potentially produce the impact that the moustache has on characters in the novels, who often dismiss or ridicule Poirot, or are embarrassed by him.”

That mention of Wallander – whom Branagh portrayed in the British television adaptation of Henning Mankell’s detective books, feels significant. Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in 1933, on an archaeological dig at Arpachiyah in Iraq. Published the following year, it was rapturously received, though the audacity of its plot caused Raymond Chandler to remark that it was “guaranteed to knock the keenest mind for a loop. Only a half-wit could guess it.”

His damning view of the British golden age detective novel – “futzing around with timetables and bits of charred paper and who trampled the jolly old flowering arbutus under the library window” – and his preference for psychologically based novels where a “perfunctory mystery element [is] dropped in like the olive in a martini” underlines the division in the thriller market that has existed ever since.

But the dichotomy between the advocates of clever plotting and the lovers of a story that reveals a deeper truth about society or character is misleading when applied to Christie. She may write in simple sentences, but it is the way she imagines character that has ensured the longevity of her books.

Branagh, a fan of both schools of thriller, points out that there is not so much difference between them. “I enjoyed the meditative qualities of what the Wallander novels were doing. But there’s quite a moral brood in Murder on the Orient Express as well.

“There are not only the questions of who did it, how did they do it, and why, but also the question of what now represents justice. And that issue of what justice is – when concerning crimes born out of revenge – goes quite deep in analysing whether an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ultimately is a way to order civilised behaviour.”

He worked on the film at the same time as he was directing Hamlet, starring Tom Hiddleston, as a fund-raiser for Rada. “Curiously, both stories seem to me to contain the poison of deep grief, and that idea of loss and the death of innocence. I think there is a passionate depth to Christie, even though she sometimes said her writing is merely entertainment.”

Sensing that darkness beneath the surface sheen means that he has been anxious to avoid what he calls “heritage movie-making”. “I wanted to remove excessive theatricality – a sense of the sort of fluting, shrill shriek, of so called ‘larger than life’ characters. I wanted to feel that people were talking not much louder than we are now.”

Assembling his cast – consisting of old friends and colleagues and young talent – was a moment to remember.

“When they all met for the first time, they were very shy and excitable. And one of the things I was determined to do was to try to capture that energy as soon as possible. I wanted a quiver of real guilt and uncertainty when they are interviewed by Poirot, to feel as if they were people for whom the prospect of him getting it wrong and accusing them was a matter of life and death.”

Murder on the Orient Express is in cinemas from 3 November.

#Kenneth Branagh #Murder on the Orient Express #agatha christie

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abbajane · 7 years ago

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To celebrate the release of Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, and to kick off my Author Tuesdays, let’s talk about Agatha Christie!

Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, Five Miss Marple Novels

Whether or not you’ve ever read a Christie novel, I’m sure you’ve at least heard of her. She’s the undeniable Queen of Mystery and is one of the best selling authors of all time. Her most infamous creation is Hercule Poirot, the quirky genius detective, but she’s also well known for her independent novels and the Miss Marple collection, about an elderly woman who solves crimes in her small town. Before we break into my reviews, let’s take a minute to get to know Christie.

I won’t bore you to death with biographical details, so here are five fast facts about Christie, all taken from her website, which has more information if you’d like to read on.

Christie in later life.

Front page regarding her disappearance.

Christie and Mallowan on a dig site.

Christie as a young girl.

Agatha Christie was born in September 1890 (a Virgo! Of course!) in Southern England, and died in January of 1976.

Christie wrote a 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections. The most famous of these are Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Death on the Nile, and Murder at the Vicarage.

During the First World War, in which Christie began to write, she worked at a hospital dispensary where she learned about poisons. According to her website, “The murderer’s use of poison was so well described that when the book was eventually published Agatha received an unprecedented honour for a writer of fiction – a review in the Pharmaceutical Journal.”

Agatha Christie married a couple of times. Her first husband Archie Christie was an aviator in the war, and they married in 1914. Her second husband, Max Mallowan, was an archaeologist in the Middle East when they met and married in 1930.

In 1926, Agatha Christie vanished. Her car and some of her belongings were found in her abandoned car, and no one knew where she had gone. For ten days the nation searched for her, and eventually she was found in a spa under a fake name, seemingly unable to recognize her husband. Opinion is still divided today on whether Christie cracked under emotional strain between her husband’s infidelity, poor reception of her novels, and her mother’s death which caused her to experience amnesia, or if she was orchestrating some publicity stunt or effort to frame her adulterous husband for murder. She makes no mention of the incident in her autobiography.

I’ve read three of Christie’s novels this fall, and I chose them in an attempt to get a wide view of the kind of story that Christie was capable of. All of them deal in careful clues, twisting narratives, and untrustworthy characters, and all of them were a joy to read!

Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

This is the novel that got me interested in Christie. I never framed myself as a mystery-lover, but I do love crime shows like 20/20, Dateline, and anything on the Investigation Discovery Channel, so I guess I should have given crime novels a go earlier! I picked up this novel because the film was about to be released, and because I had a computer game as a child that was based off this story that I loved dearly. So, I knew how this story was going to end, but that didn’t make the process any less enjoyable.

The premise of the novel is ambitious: a vaguely unlikable man is murdered on the cross-continent voyage of the Orient Express. The train is delayed by heavy snowfall, and the famous detective Hercule Poirot, who was planning to enjoy a peaceful journey, is recruited to investigate the 12 passengers and figure out who killed the man. Twelve suspects is a lot to keep track of, and there is a lot of evidence and motive to investigate, but Christie keeps the information manageable and, though some of the lesser characters can blend together or fade out, the cast as a whole provides plenty of entertainment and intrigue. I won’t spoil, in case you haven’t heard how it ends, but I will say that it is so clever that you’ll never see it coming.

I really enjoyed Poirot. He’s charming, quirky, and so damn smart that half the novel is keeping up with him. Christie has a tendency to be very cut and dry, meaning she doesn’t infuse a lot of emotion into her texts. She deals in the black and white of things, in cold logic and provable fact. While this novel sets up a lot of emotional turbulence with its conclusion, Christie keeps her feet dry by ending the novel right when the emotional could have run in and stolen the genius of the crime. I personally prefer a little more feeling and emotion in my stories. I like to feel with characters and experience their emotional conflicts, but Christie left me hanging with this one. As I read more of her work, I found the same issue, but it’s probably my only complaint with Christie’s work.

The cast of this film is stellar. Daisy Ridley! Judi Dench! Olivia Colman! Penelope Cruz! Kenneth Branagh!

I’ll take a quick moment to talk about the film, since I felt the film not only was a roaring success in cinematography, acting, and directing, but it also filled in those pitfalls that I found in Christie’s writing. The film was chock full of emotion, but still kept all those subtle clues and careful stages that comprised Christie’s novel, and even added a few more with mirror doubling, claustrophobic and vertigo-inducing shots, and one lovely Last Supper reference. It diverted from Christie’s novel only to fill the characters with a little more heart and feeling, which I felt was done tastefully and neatly. I got choked up a few times in that film, which I love! It was cathartic and moving and I think Branagh did a wonderful job with it. It seems we’re in for a few more Branagh/Poirot collaborations so buckle up!

The Body in the Library (1942)

This novel was my least favorite of the three Christie stories I read. I can’t quite put my finger on why I didn’t like it as well, but I think some small part of it might have been Miss Marple herself — she didn’t add much and she was mega-judgmental. Maybe I’ll read a few more, since I have a collection, to test my theory but something here fell flat, and it wasn’t just the lack of human sympathy and emotion, which seems to be token in Christie’s novels.

When the body of a missing hotel dancer turns up in the library of a well-to-do family man, his wife calls in Miss Marple to offer her advice on the case. Between the skills of the detective and the nosy old woman, the murder is brought to light after some seriously twisty turns and inference. This ending I felt to be a little too absurd to be realistic or plausible, and while Christie likes those WTF moments, this one just didn’t seem to have even the smallest element of believability in it. With the other Christie novels I read, I felt at the end that though it was entirely wild, it was explained in a way to make it entirely possible, given the facts. I think another thing that I didn’t care for was the overly traditional motive. After Orient Express and And Then There Were None, I wanted something a little more eccentric. Seems I can’t be pleased! The events were too unbelievable, and the motive wasn’t unbelievable enough!

Again, I’m going to complain about the lack of compassion and feeling in this one. I felt the victim was treated quite unfairly by others, especially with a surplus of unkind comments. Additionally, there was a lot of glee, and not just from the weird and excitable child, about the fate of the murder. These folks love death — even when its in their own houses. When you look at the gender politics at play here, there are a lot of cringe-y moments, and oftentimes I wondered if I was reading too far into things or if Christie was trying to subtly suggest some underhanded behavior by various male characters. Overall, I think the context of gender was nearly as huge of a character as any of them, but was completely treated as the elephant in the room. I can’t hold it too strongly since I’m reading with a modern mind, and concepts about rape-culture and sexism and shaming weren’t so easily verbalized or examined when the novel was written in 1942. Still, this novel just didn’t do enough for me. It felt half-assed, honestly.

And Then There Were None (1939)

This was the first Christie novel I read, and it is undeniably my favorite. ATTWN is not a Poirot or Marple detective novel, so it stands in a category of its own. This story was also included with the Murder Mystery computer game pack that I had when I was a kid, so I again knew the outcome of the story, but it had been ages since I’d played the game. While I knew who the murder was, I couldn’t remember the hows and whys that make this novel so great and complex, so it was almost as good as reading it completely new.

This novel, like Orient Express, is made of a cast of seemingly unrelated characters. Ten people arrive to a remote island residence all under different pretenses, but all on the invitation of the mysterious U. N. Owen. Strangely, and horrifyingly, the guests suddenly start dying in the order and method described by a children’s nursery rhyme as soon as they arrive, and soon realize they have been stranded on the island with a pyscho-killer. It’s utterly insane and terrifying. The remaining guests must work agains the clock (and each other) to figure out who the murderer is before it’s too late.

Where the other Christie novels failed to thrill me or strike at my emotions, this novel went above and beyond. I was scared, I was anxious, I was sympathetic, I was horrified. The whole thing was a rollercoaster ride from start to finish, and I really could not put it down. Like the other novels, the ending was completely surprising, but this one finishes up with a confession which is even more spine chilling than the action of the novel. This murderer is the most psychotic that I’ve read, and foreshadows the kind of killers that we obsess over today from the likes of Stephen King.

I can’t write a review about this novel, no matter how well I like it, without addressing it’s very sketchy and messy past. The novel was originally published under another name, which I will not write here, but will link to. Clearly, the name is racist and meant to inspire thoughts of darkness, violence, otherness, and evil via the racism of the day in the reading audience of the 1940s. To add onto this racism cake that Christie was building, the novel was renamed for the American readership, to Ten Little Indians, which is still meant to signal all of those wicked stereotypes about a certain race, but in a distinctly American context (not to say that white Americans were worse on the Native populations than the Black ones, or that Black populations had it any easier because that word was removed from the American title). Eventually, publishers decided that racism, no matter who you were being racist to, was not cool or remotely acceptable, and they changed the title to it’s current iteration, with the children’s poem being Ten Little Soldiers instead. I had no idea about this history when I read the novel, though I was vaguely familiar with the rhyme from a similar, though less gruesome and equally racist rhyme about little Indians.

Christie’s racism doesn’t come as a terrible surprise to me, since in Orient Express there was a lot of slurring and stereotyping being thrown around by the passengers and suspects. In Branagh’s film, the racism is adjusted, I think, to help modern audiences (especially American) understand the racism in Christie’s novel, since the modern viewer may not think the casual intra-European racism is as harmful as it is. Branagh included a black character and some not-so-covert racism by another character so the modern reader could understand the subtle damage Christie was doing in her own work. Christie has been accused of racism before, (see her top ten moments here) and some reviewers had some comments about how the film dealt with it. In an age where we out predators, racists, misogynists, and various other aggressors in our society, lets not forget to be critical of even those who write damn good books.