The Americans on FX

In 1981 life is not as easy as it once was for a couple of KGB spies.  Reagan is rattling sabers and threatening the Soviet Union as it hasn’t been threaten since the Cuban Missile Crisis.   On a more personal level, other KGB agents are defecting to America and making a lot of money for doing so.  One such traitor to the Mother Country causes problems for our KGB heroes. Also in 1981 a movie called Das Boot came out.  It was the story of the heroic crew of a Nazi U-boat doing it’s best to sink Allied ships…

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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

What do you do when find yourself past your prime and your bank account not living up to it’s expectations?  Retire to a run down hotel in India, of course. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel shows us a number of older folks, all great British actors with familiar faces, do the best they can in a place that doesn’t live up to their expectations. We watch them go about the business of adjusting and adapting.  The film’s catchphrase- Everything will be all right in the end… if it’s not all right then it’s not yet the end –pretty much sums…

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Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln is an American icon who has fallen victim to the recent obsession with taking classic books and dropping zombies, werewolves, vampires, and other such silliness into them.  And while I like titles like Mr. Darcy, Vampyre and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, I haven’t actually read many books in this sub-genre.  So I walked into Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter with very low expectations and a maybe a bit of dread. Turns out that this is a standard issue Hollywood film, lots of special effects, good sets and costumes, a number of familiar faces, and a fairly straightforward story.  We…

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