Players
The Friday night movie fix, courtesy of Netflix, was a big winner. Knives Out (2019) is a classic mystery similar to Agatha Christie’s work except for the language and sexual references. A highly successful author of crime fiction commits suicide — or was it murder? Writer/director Rian Johnson puts a stellar cast through the paces of a complex plot that makes sense in the end. If there’s a hole in it, I did not detect it. At the center of the story is a young caretaker wonderfully played by Cuba-born Ana de Armas. The avaricious family members include Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, the venerable K Callan as great-grandma, and Chris Evans, who is raking in big bucks these days as Captain America. Perfectly cast, Christopher Plummer is the dead patriarch, seen in flashbacks. LaKeith Stanfield is the cop on the case, aided by Daniel Craig, outrageous as a southern P.I. hired by an anonymous relative. He must have had a blast using that drawl. Rian Johnson is in the midst of great success. He’s directed one of the Star Wars movies and written several others. I should probably re-watch Looper (2012), which I did not get what all the fuss was about. 378,000+ users at IMDb have rated Knives Out, forging to a consensus of 7.9 on a scale of ten. It was a smash at the box office, returning $309+ million worldwide on a budget of $40 million. Anyone who enjoys mysteries and is tolerant of profanity should give it a shot. The only violence is verbal. It runs a bit more than two hours.
K Callan’s career began in 1962 with a bit part on Route 66. Her next credit did not come until 1970 when she played the wife in the iconic Joe, one of the first flicks characteristic of a large swath of the cinema of the coming decade. From then on she has worked steadily, mostly in TV. She played Martha Kent in 87 episodes of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. There are 140 titles under her name at IMDb. She has been a true Hollywood stalwart. She has also written four works of non-fiction focused on her profession, including How to Sell Yourself As an Actor: From New York to Los Angeles and Everywhere in Between.
Born in Texas in 1972, Edi Patterson plays a maid in Knives Out. I was completely unfamiliar with her, despite an impressive resume`. She did appear in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, albeit one I probably haven’t seen. A member of Improv Theatre, there are 60 titles under her name. She has been in at least eight episodes of seven different series, and also has five writing credits, including two for SNL. Kudos.
I hope the following headline from foxnews.com isn’t an omen: “Multiple boats sink during ‘Trump Boat Parade’ on Lake Travis in Texas.” There were several such events today around the country.
Given that it’s a holiday weekend, I did not expect business to be good, despite the gorgeous day. My thanks to the kind folks who surprised me. Here’s what sold: Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs by Henry Carroll, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley, Airport by Arthur Hailey, Lost in Yonkers by Neil Simon, Time and Again by Jack Finney, The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty, Inferno by Dante, and nine books in Russian. I was happy and relieved to be visited by two gentlemen I’d been worried about — Boris, and Bill Brown, author of Words and Guitar: A History of Lou Reed’s Music. Bill, a proofreader, has been working from home.
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