Have to agree to disagree here; I thinkThe Artist was very much its own film, and as much a belated homage to its inspiration as Singin' In the Rain was to its.

And The Artist doesn't even make the top 100. Gosh, that's an amazingly quick backlash.

Wilson Shears: 'I realize you and I have gotten off to a rather shaky start. But things don't have to stay that way. What do you say?'

Brilliant as Wilson Shears, the smarmy beauty pageant coordinator in the brilliant black comedy Smile (1975). 'Now see here, Mr. French, I'm trying to be reasonable about this! Our Jaycee Chapter is almost bankrupt because of this meat show, and if we don't break even we're going to have to cancel the Rodeo for the…

Agatha Christie qualified as a dispenser during WW I, and it was then that she obtained the knowledge of poisons that served her so well in her later career as a mystery writer.

(Spoiler for a novel published in 1930) In Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novel Strong Poison, a character dies after being poisoned with arsenic. His final meal was shared with his cousin, and it's established beyond doubt that both men shared everything that was served, which initially rules the cousin out as…

Be careful; they broke the chalice from the palace, and now the pellet with the poison is in the flagon with the dragon.

There's a Sandman Hotel in Cache Creek, six miles down the road from where I live. In a former job I occasionally had to book people overnight accommodation when they came to town, and as I wouldn't recommend the one hotel in my town to a dog, I'd go with the Sandman in Cache Creek (it's on the junction of two major…

The Warm Beer Liquor Store was popular with British ex-pats, but there weren't enough of them in Lethbridge to keep it going.

Anyone who had Lethbridge on their bucket list of 'Places to visit before I die' can now cross it off. I doubt it was on anyone's list, though. . . .

'I always hear "Punch me in the face" when you talk, but it's usually subtext.'

Agreed; but I suspect the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver runs Alberta a close second in terms of Bible Beltery. If an epidemic of some easily preventable disease breaks out in B.C. because of religious objections to vaccination, it'll have its epicentre somewhere in the Fraser Valley.

Yeah, when Todd reviewed Slings and Arrows here there were lots of comments about the strange way Martha Burns as Ellen pronounces 'sorry' ('soary'), and I kept thinking 'But there's nothing at all odd about how she says it!'

I'll spell you. If she gets out of bed to get a glass of water, I won't put up with any of this 'I'm taking it up to my workshop, my dear' crap from a stranger in a Santy Claus hat and a coat.

Yeah, but copying in those days took work and determination, dammit! None of this cut-and-paste like the kids of today have; no, you had to copy it out by hand! People don't know how easy they have it, nowadays.

I thought it was Julian Assange.

Series two of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's Inside Number 9 has started in the U.K., and whatever you have to do to watch it, do so. The first series - six standalone half-hour episodes, each set within the eponymous No. 9 (which could be anything) - was brilliant (if you doubt me, watch - and then re-watch -…

Or, on the distaff side, Angela Lansbury, who even in Gaslight, made when she was 18, looks two decades older, and didn't change much for a long time after that.

And they re-cast the actors playing the kids twice during those three months.

Drove My Chevy to the Levy