Tried linking to the AV Club story but the auto-mod removed it, so hopefully this will work. This comes from Mary Robertson, the director of Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.
A lot of people on social media seem to be assuming that the flash sale will happen after the Kubrick box set is released, since the sale only applies to items that are in stock and not preorders. But, IIRC, historically Criterion has often timed the sale to happen just before a big release like this (happy to be corrected). If that's true and the sale happens October 13 before the Kubrick release, that leaves the Barnes & Noble 50% off sale in November.
I've never done the B&N sale, I usually just stick with the flash sales. Does B&N keep a lot in stock for the sale? Or should I just plan on being ready to go the second it's announced?
Condolences to Mike Farrell and his family.
Short version: I thought it was semi-okay, but if you really enjoy Christie adaptations, it's probably still worth your time.
(No spoilers for the story or mystery, but some minor spoilers for this specific adaptation)
Long version: Hi, it's me, the guy who's always coming into this sub to tell people to chill out about Christie adaptations. More often than not, I enjoy them, and if I don't, well there's usually another adaptation somewhere and we always have the books. My thinking is, if you don't like adaptations or are picky about them, then go re-read the book. Ditto if you expect an adaptation to just follow the book exactly—just read the book. I welcome changes, updates, etc.
And I rather liked Peter Dinklage's Poirot adaptations. But in the case of Audible's new full-cast dramatization of "The Murder at the Vicarage," I thought it was...not great. Not terrible, but a below-average adaptation. The overall story and the way it unfolds is fine. Nothing to complain about there. Most of the murder and the events leading up to it are told in flashback through conversations between Miss Marple and the Vicar. It's been so long since I've read the book I can't even remember if that's how Christie originally told it. Still though, there were some odd choices.
As a big fan of Toni Collette and someone who'd otherwise watch her read the dictionary, she felt miscast in this. The dramatization says she's in her 60s, but she doesn't sound like it (still younger than Christie ever said she was), no matter how much the show tried to convince us that Miss Marple isn't that old, with lines like "I'm in my prime." There's only so much you can do to age a voice before it sounds fake or exaggerated, and she made no real attempt to sound like a spinster in her 60s.
That, I suppose leads to the biggest problem with the show: It feels like it's desperately trying to be modern and cool for younger audiences. Miss Marple tells people to call her Jane because "Miss Marple" sounds so old fashioned. Early on a character says, "Awkwaaaaard" in response to an uncomfortable moment. And (I swear this really happens), another character says "He's my BFF" and when asked what that means, she replies, "He's my best future-fiancé." It plucks you right out of the story.
Perhaps those complaints sound weird coming from a guy who just said he's fine with changes and updating stories. But here they felt jarring rather than natural. Queer people existed in the 1930s and '40s; POC existed, etc. So including them in adaptations not only makes sense to me, I welcome it. But just tossing in modern language feels off.
So as much as I wanted to like this, I mostly found it fine and a bit odd, but could never really get into it given the miscasting and the weird anachronisms. The whole thing is barely 4 hours long, so you're not giving up a week to listen to it, so perhaps still worth it if you enjoy Christie adaptations.
If you're not familiar with Jason Arday, he was a professor at Cambridge who was accused of plagiarism and other issues, such as "making shit up." He also claimed to have run 600 miles in 6 days and raised millions for charity while running marathons. Because Arday is Black, a lot of this fed into narratives about DEI and fueled sweaty gutter racists everywhere.
His memoir is being released today, though it's not clear if they're doing an episode on the memoir or a bonus episode on Arday more generally.
The initial reports of this were that someone went into a store and started firing, and an "armed civilian" opened fire and killed him. The second I read that I thought it was BS—just NRA fantasy stuff about a good guy with a gun. And it turns out that early report was wrong. There was some altercation, a guy went to his truck and got a gun, went back into the store, and was shot by someone. He didn't open fire. Love to live in a country where everyone is armed and twitchy.
Edit: I see the gun people have discovered this and are trying to deflect by saying, "Well actually, this guy..." No one is defending the guy who went out and got a gun, but congrats on beating that straw man.
If you carry a gun in public you are weird, full stop. It shows a completely warped understanding of the risks of the world and crime statistics. Crime has gone significantly down, despite what you see on the news. That's why gun owners and their families are many times more likely to be a victim of their own gun (usually by their own hand) than they are a hero in a situation or a victim of crime. NO ONE in this situation should've had a gun, and it's unhinged that people think it's normal to just be walking around packing.
Sometimes it's not all bad news
Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration in the title, but Michael is so damn good. I've always appreciated his quality but noticed how stark it is after listening to this week's You're Wrong About.
I think Sarah is great in many ways; she's funny and charming. But it's clear she's decided that the podcast will just kind of be whatever knowledge the guest brings and they'll chat about it. I still can enjoy it but she just did a two-parter on the Kennedy assassination, and since it happens to be a topic I know something about, it was deeply disappointing. It's an important subject for people to understand (I agree with them that there was no conspiracy) but it felt really fumbled. There was no consistent story, no deep research—it was kind of a mess.
Are there any other podcasts that have Michael's research skills, storytelling ability, and commitment to good editing? So many podcasts I see recommended are just people reading a Wikipedia page or, at best, a book, and then a lot of banter.
Edit: Thanks everyone for great suggestions! I'm going to list most everything that got mentioned below. I've tried to keep things that were mentioned more than a couple of times at the top.
Before that, I want to add that I think Sarah Marshall is great and I don't want to dog pile on her. Her "The Devil You Know" podcast on the Satanic panic is really good.
And on Michael: He's human, and I know he can get stuff wrong. He has his blind spots as well. One thing I love about him and Aubrey is how they've openly talked about their discomfort with being microcelebrities, to co-opt a label someone used in a comment here that I think is perfect. It's gotta be extremely weird being held up to a standard that other people set for you and that you have no say in. I've criticized things I feel like Michael has gotten wrong on this subreddit before, but I do think he's nailed podcasting about as well as anyone. The pacing, the research, the storytelling, and the editing.
Here are the podcasts recommended in this thread:
I don't know if anything delighted me quite as much as seeing the Orca in the Cabot Cove "harbor" when I rewatched the show for the first time in ages. As fans know, the harbor in this case is the Universal backlot, the same place where Jaws pops up out of the water to startle people on the backlot tram tour. Here's how the boat got there.
There were two Orcas. An old lobster boat that was purchased by the Jaws production was outfitted for the production and dubbed Orca I. Orca II was a fiberglass copy used for stunts. When you see the ship listing, sinking, being rammed by the shark—that's the Orca II. After filming, Orca I was shipped to Los Angeles and sold to someone for around $15,000. Orca II was purchased by a Cape Cod local for...$1. No, really. Remember, this was after the brutal shoot and before the movie was a big smash. He hung onto the Orca II for a long time but tourists would come and rip parts of the boat off. Eventually he cut it up into 1,000 different pieces and sold them or they were offered as a keepsake if you bought the "Jaws: Memories from Martha's Vineyard" book.
After Jaws became a megahit, Universal wanted Orca I back. They paid the man who bought it from them around 10x more than what he paid and they put it on the Universal backlot in the fake harbor. That's how it would come to be spotted in the background of Murder, She Wrote, Knight Rider, and other TV shows. In early Murder, She Wrote episodes, the yellow barrels are even visible, though at other times they were nowhere to be seen.
Of course, Murder, She Wrote sometimes filmed on location in Mendocino, and they used the real harbor. But for those episodes shot on the Universal backlot, at least in the first half of the series, the Orca is there. But over time, neglect took its toll and, one day, the boat was just gone. There's some dispute as to what happened to it. Some reports say it was chopped up and thrown out, others say it was gong to be repaired but when a crane lifted it out of the water, it split. Still other rumors say Spielberg would visit the boat from time to time, wandering over from his office on the Universal lot to take it easy and think through his next film.
Next time you watch a Cabot Cove episode filmed on the backlot, keep an eye out for the Orca!
Hopefully drops tomorrow, since it sounds like he's finished editing and knows the length.
This is awful. A man lives to be 92 and then is hit by a car. A wonderful historian who changed the way we think about the American past.