Mystery

The Tourist

  • Title: The Tourist
  • IMDB: link

I haven’t seen Jérôme Salle’s Anthony Zimmer, the original French film on which this American version is loosely based. What I can tell is The Tourist is the kind of enjoyable summer flick you don’t usually find in the midst of family holiday flicks and more dramatic Oscar fare.

Johnny Depp stars as American tourist Frank Tupelo who just happens to be in the wrong place at the right time when the lovely Elise (Angelina Jolie) sits down next to him on the way to Venice.

Unfortunately for the math teacher, this mysterious woman isn’t so much caught up by his charms as she is using him as a stand-in for the man she loves. On instructions from the mysterious Alexander Pearce, Elise chooses a man on the train the same height and build of her former lover in order to throw suspicion away from the thief who is evading both police (Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton, Alessio BoniGiovanni Guidelli) and the mobster (Steven Berkoff) from who he’s stolen millions.

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Castle – Last Call

  • Title: Castle – Last Call
  • tv.com: link

I do love this show. “Last Call” involves a 135 year-old bottle of scotch, a rustic tavern, and murder. This isn’t the best episode of the show (oh, it is a darn fine one!), but it does have a little of everything that makes Castle work including some great moments for its two stars to shine such as this scene between Beckett (Stana Katic) and Castle (Nathan Fillion) before questioning a murder suspect.

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Sherlock

  • Title: Sherlock – The Complete First Season
  • tv.com: link

“Do people usually assume you’re the murderer?”
“Now and then, yes.”

Created by former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, Sherlock takes the famous detective out of Victorian London and into modern day. The first season is currently playing in America on PBS and is available on blu-ray and DVD.

The three episode first season begins with the meeting of Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Dr. Watson (Martin Freeman) in a loose adaptation of “A Study in Scarlet” titled “A Study in Pink.” Aside from introducing the characters to us, and each other, this first episode begins the Holmes and Watson partnership as the pair hunt down a killer on the streets of London.

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The Mentalist – The Complete Second Season

  • Title: The Mentalist : The Complete Second Season
  • wiki: link

More of the same here as California Bureau of Investigation continues to put more criminals behind bars in the second season of The Mentalist. Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) makes astonishing deductions while infuriating everyone around, including Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney) and her team, while bending (if not breaking) the law.

This five-disc set includes a new agent (Terry Kinney) taking over the Red John case, murder in the CBI offices, Jane getting sent to prison and found in contempt of court (in separate episodes), the death of the aide to a state senator (Fay Masterson), a religious cult led by Malcolm McDowell, a biker gang, a haunted house, murder on a Native American reservation, the murder of an assistant district attorney (Rachel Montez Collins), a jewel heist, Firefly‘s Sean Maher shows up as an eco-terrorist, and murders at a baseball camp and high school reunion.

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Castle: The Complete Second Season

  • Title: Castle: The Complete Second Season
  • tv.com: link

Mystery novelist Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) returns for another season to shadow, and bother, NYPD Detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) in the second season of Castle. (Read the first season review here.)

Highlights from the season include the publication of Castle’s first Nikki Heatnovel “Heat Wave,” vampires, the “best case ever” concerning a dead con man who may, or may not, be dead (and may, or may not, be a secret CIA agent), models, a dominatrix (Dina Meyer), a missing bullet, a two-parter involving a serial killer obsessed with Nikki Heat, a murdered bigamist, a Mayan curse, a new boyfriend for Beckett (Michael Trucco), and Alyssa Milano guest-stars as Castle’s long-lost love, and the one who got away, in A Rose for Everafter.

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