Recent TV, Books & Movies
📺 Mad Men (2007) – explores the glamorous and ego-driven “Golden Age” of advertising, where everyone is selling something and nothing is ever what it seems. And no one plays the game better than Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Madison Avenue’s biggest ad man - and ladies’ man - in the business. 👍
📚 George Goodchild (1927) The Monster of Grammont – an interwar country-house mystery thriller set at an ancient French château. As guests encounter shattered mirrors and rumor of a creature haunting the grounds, hidden motives, suspicious staff, and criminal intruders unravel a deadly local secret.
📗 Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton (1905) The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories – Ten gothic and psychological tales exploring the macabre, obsession, and the supernatural. Dedicated to Henry James, the title story subtly parallels his style through an author haunted by a portrait, blending delicate tension with tragic mystery. 🔊 👎
🎦 American Psycho (2000) – Patrick Bateman, a young, well-to-do man working on Wall Street at his father’s company kills for no reason at all. As his life progresses his hatred for the world becomes more and more intense. Based on the book by Bret Easton Ellis. 👍
🎦 Invitation to a Murder (2023) – In this homage to Agatha Christie, set in England, an amateur detective (Mischa Barton) joins five strangers at a remote mansion-and must solve a real-life murder mystery.
🎦 The Mothman Prophecies (2002) – A reporter arrives in a small town experiencing sightings of the Mothman, a mysterious, winged creature that sows nightmares and fevered visions.
🎦 Stay (2005) – A thriller about a psychologist whose suicidal client makes bizarre predictions that to the psychologist’s mounting terror begin to come true. The shrink must race against time to save everything he loves before it disappears.
🎦 Midsommar (2019) – Young couple Dani and Christian travel with friends to experience a rare midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. But what begins as a carefree holiday takes a sinister turn when the villagers force their guests to partake in their deadly rituals.
🎦 Tolkien (2019) – Tolkien explores the formative years of the orphaned author as he finds friendship, love and artistic inspiration among a group of fellow outcasts at school.
🎦 Agatha Christie’s 13 at Dinner (1985) – An American movie actress, best known for playing dumb blondes, is Scotland Yard’s prime suspect when her husband, Lord Edgware, is murdered. The great detective, Hercule Poirot, digs deeper into the case.
🎦 Ali G: Who Iz I? (2026) – a mockumentary comedy film directed, written, and produced by Sacha Baron Cohen, marking his feature directorial debut. Plot: Twenty years after his carefree lifestyle and television career, British hip-hop journalist Ali G discovers that his long-term girlfriend, Julie (played by Morgana Robinson), is eight months pregnant. Facing sudden financial responsibilities, he travels to America to reclaim his fame, becoming an online influencer and getting caught in political and cultural crosshairs.
📗 Clara Reeve (1777) The Old English Baron – First published in 1777 as The Champion of Virtue, Clara Reeve’s Gothic novel The Old English Baron follows Edmund, an orphaned peasant. After discovering his noble lineage and uncovering his father’s murder, Edmund reclaims his birthright. Reeve blended supernatural horror with domestic realism, heavily influencing early Gothic literature. It is an ambitious rewriting of Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, transporting the trappings of the Gothic to medieval England. 🔊
🎦 There Will Be Blood (2008) – A sprawling epic of family, faith, power and oil, ‘There Will Be Blood’ is set on the incendiary frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview, who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon. 👍
📺 The Booth at the End (2011) – 👍👍 One of the best, if not the best, series I’ve ever seen. Season 1 & Season 2
📗 Kay Cleaver Strahan (1928/9) Footprints – A classic Golden Age locked-room mystery revolving around the murder of Richard Quilter in his bed. Despite a snowy night and a rope leading from the window, there are no footprints in the snow, leaving family members locked in their rooms to suspect one another until crime analyst Lynn MacDonald investigates. 👎 This is not a “fair play” mystery. The author makes it clear that no gun was found at the scene. And that no gun was removed from the scene, but in the solution, it turns out there was a gun and it was removed by another member of the family. So what turned out to be a simple suicide is expanded in a convoluted story that it is impossible for the reader to have solved on their own. 🔊
📗 Edgar Wallace (1928) Gunman’s Bluff – originally titled The Gunner—is a classic crime thriller. The fast-paced story plunges readers into the gritty underworld of London, pitting elite high society against ruthless gangsters, underworld enforcers, and complex plots involving extortion, danger, and street-level justice. 🔊