Spinster sleuth Miss Marple returned to Masterpiece Mystery last Sunday with her sensible shoes and ingenious deductions in one of Agatha Christie's venerable warhorses, The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. What true classic mystery aficionado has not seen one of the movie adaptations of this wonderful 1962 book of the same name? It has been trotted out no less than two times prior to this new production showcased by former Miss Marple's: Angela Lansbury and Joan Hickson. Now Julia McKenzie gets her chance to slip into the Marple mantle and solve a double murder at a grand manor house  in her own village of St Mary Mead.

Read Laurel Ann's full review

Here is a preview of the summer - fall season of Masterpiece Mystery! from one of our our friend Laurel Ann Nattress of Austenprose.

It's no wonder I have to watch each new production at least twice to clear my brain enough to appreciate it, not just as an adaptation, but as a work of art in its own right. After all, there can never be a truly faithful adaptation of any literary work, even with source material as eminently adaptable as Austen's.

Watching the new adaptation of Emma on PBS I was enchanted by its visual beauty. I am not talking about the actors, although Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller are easy on the eye, but about the richness of the colors of the costumes and sets, and the precise composition of the exterior and interior shots and placement of the camera. When I viewed the images I had pulled, I realized why I had reacted so viscerally to this production: the pictures reminded me of the paintings of my favorite Dutch artist, Johannes Vermeer. Thinking about this visual connection, I was struck by the coincidences in the lives and careers of Jane Austen and this master painter.

Emma wanders through the house, alone and restless. Framed in the doorway, she is isolated, both literally and figuratively.

I've been thinking about this very question all day long, practically every day, for the past several years, while I was writing my just-published book, The Happiness Project, and working on my daily blog, also called The Happiness Project. I whole-heartedly agree with one of the main tenets of "This Emotional Life": you can be happier than you are. But how? That's what the documentary seeks to address.

Episode Three, "Rethinking Happiness," was particularly engaging, because it covers many of the most fascinating--and controversial--topics within the larger subject of happiness. What's the relationship between money and happiness? Does marriage bring happiness; do children bring happiness? Who fares best--and why--when faced with a huge happiness challenge, like being a prisoner-of-war for years, being paralyzed in a diving accident, or not being able to find a job? How can people learn to forgive?

I was particularly interested in the discussion of the question: Has any of the advice given by the "self-help" industry been proven scientifically to work--and how effective is self-help, anyway? Turns out self-help is enormously effective, but some of it is dangerously unproven.

I'm a big fan of Daniel Gilbert's work (he's the author of Stumbling on Happiness), and he made a charming host. The episode features several profiles of compelling people, as well as appearances by some of the most interesting researchers in the field.

There are also lots of fun little cameos by celebrities like Larry David, Chevy Chase, Alanis Morissette, and (a bit incongruously) Adam Gopnik. (Larry David's contribution: "If you don't have a job you like, and you're not having sex, you're not going to be happy.")

I could have kept watching for hours.

Oh joy! In less than a month, the Masterpiece Classic season begins on PBS offering another incredible lineup of quality period and contemporary drama's. This is my favorite time of year for television and this season certainly aims to please offering some old classics and new surprises. 

Masterpiece is branching out a bit this year in scope. Not only will we enjoy new adaptations of classic bonnet drama's set in Regency and Victorian times, we will be offered more contemporary fare from the twentieth century. I am intrigued by the diversity of stories chosen and the top notch casting. Which new productions this season am I looking forward to with rapt anticipation? Well, of course as a Jane Austen enthusiast I am excited about the new adaptation Emma, but also a return to the delightful Victorian village of Cranford, and a certain dashing and adventurous British army officer in a red coat, Richard Sharpe. La!

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Watch a clip from Emma

- Jack Kerouac

Like all artists since the beginning of time, I've looked to dreams for inspiration.

I started writing down my dreams as a teenager, after I got my hands on Jack Kerouac's Book of Dreams--dreams he collected by scribbling in his notebook the minute he woke from sleep.

Later on in college, I studied just enough psychology to learn that the creative process mirrors the dreaming process. As the film director David Mamet says in his book On Directing Film, "The dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question." Not only can the dream provide us with material, but the process of dreaming itself can provide us with inspiration towards a process of working.

Any artist will tell you that when the work is going really well, it's as if you're taking dictation. The characters speak because they want to speak. The act of art-making is an attempt to fall into a kind of dream state. We do this by abandoning the linear and the logical for the non-linear and the free-associative. This is when creativity happens.

After watching this NOVA episode, I pulled out my pen and crayons and attempted to digest what I had seen through drawing--juxtaposing images in space. It was not unlike dreaming, watching the images come out of my hand...

To view high resolution version of image - click here - View image

Place of Execution is a terrific production on so many levels, and one that will reverberate within you long after you've finished watching. Part of that is due to the excellent cast, and part of it is due to the brilliant novel by Val McDermid on which it's based. Told in two overlapping and interlocking plots, Place of Execution takes place in both the present day, as well as 1963 rural England with two different investigators exploring the disappearance of a 13 year old girl who vanished without a trace on a winter afternoon in 1963. This is not Miss Marple's English village. Place of Execution is a first rate thriller about the choices we make in our lives, the events that shape us and the hold of obsession over us. Don't miss it.

I caught up with Val to ask her a few questions about the production of Place of Execution.

Janet Rudolph: Your books have been adapted for TV before, is the adaptation of Place of Execution different from the previous adaptations?

Val McDermid: The main difference came from the split time frame in the original book. It meant that we had to have two actors for several of the key roles. And of course we had to get the period details spot-on because enough people have accurate memories of the 1960s to get on our case if we got it wrong!

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Apartheid Timeline

Endgame is available for online viewing
October 26 - November 8, 2009, Eastern Time

Watch a Preview 

Let's be honest: these people do not look like rock stars. 

And yet: in the art world, Herb and Dorothy -- he, a retired postal worker, and she, a librarian -- are rock stars in the extreme. They are rock stars for amassing an incredible collection of Minimalist and Conceptual art (view the collection); they are stars, too, for donating said collection, worth millions of dollars, to the National Gallery of Art...and for refusing compensation. Let me say that again: they refused compensation. This is not like Madonna, or Bono, saying, "no, no, National Gallery, consider this art a gift." Herb and Dorothy are people of modest means. They live in a tiny New York City apartment, filled with their pets: cats, turtles, fish, and whatever art they haven't, at this point, given away. And yet, when the National Gallery finally convinced them to accept payment, did they splurge on a bigger apartment? Buy a fancy sports car? No. They bought more art - art which they plan to donate, eventually, to the National Gallery, so that members of the public can enjoy it for free.

This, apparently, is just how Herb and Dorothy roll.

So we learn in a documentary, aptly titled "Herb and Dorothy," that aired last night on one of my favorite series, Independent Lens (if you missed it, check here for reruns, or check for local screenings - unfortunately, you can't watch the film online, and there doesn't seem to be a DVD). The couple's compulsion to collect art is striking, as is their apparent disinterest in material wealth. But what's most interesting is this: an hour of television featuring two such unlikely (and, let's face it, not very pretty, superficially speaking) characters. Herb and Dorothy do not look the part of art world denizens -- where's the bleached hair, the sleek clothes? No casting director would ever hire them. On television, characters are so often symbols -- of a demographic, a profession; but Herb and Dorothy aren't symbols of art collectors....they're just people who collect art, as compulsively as bees collect pollen. Not pretty-flowers-in-a-vase art, mind you, but challenging art..."weird" art. The kind of art that some people point at and say, derisively, "Pfft! I could have done that." ("But," as my grandfather would have said,"you didn't.")

This plain-looking couple is edgier, it turns out, than most people who bear the trappings of edginess. As artist Chuck Close says in the film, Herb and Dorothy are drawn to the least decorative, most rigorous pieces an artist creates. Just as they do not symbolize art collectors, they do not treat art as symbolic -- of what's "in," or "hot," or "important." They're drawn most of all to artifacts of the artistic process ("souvenirs," as an artist in the film puts it), versus end products that represent an artist's fully realized vision. The reason for this is clear: Herb and Dorothy love artists. They esteem them. They celebrate the process of making and sharing art above all else.

This, of course, is completely antithetical to so much commercial television, which treats reality itself as a commodity to be packaged, marketed and consumed. As "Herb and Dorothy" shows, there is no greater artistic process than the process by which we build our lives.

Check out the Website and watch a Preview

We bought what we liked!

According to this documentary, The Chandler Family is responsible for the development of Los Angeles from San Pedro to the San Fernando Valley. They took the Los Angeles times from being a tool for real estate development to a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper.

Although the story of the Chandlers is a good one, The Chandlers And Their Times is magnificent. With heroes and villains, mental illness and bigotry, the storytelling is compelling and though the tragic tales are told mostly in still pictures, I found myself glued to the television, riveted.

 As a friend, classmate and admirer of various Chandlers I could not possibly watch this with an objective eye. I sat wondering what my friends would think of this expose of their very private, incredibly wealthy family. I, like you, felt the odd combination of pride, curiosity and shame for peeking into the family photos of Los Angeles' most prominent family.

I'd never known of Dorothy "Buff" Chandler's difficulty being accepted into the family, though I did know that she'd been successful in uniting Downtown and Westside [read Protestant and Jewish] philanthropists in building the Music Center downtown. I knew before this viewing that her son Otis had been unceremoniously pushed out of his stewardship of the times.

  As a blogger I couldn't help but watch the evolution of my newspaper with a psychic eye. Is this the destiny of the new media? What can we learn? The first years of the LA Times were lawless, profitable and existed only to feed other businesses ventures that were far more profitable. First standards were set, then huge journalistic milestones were hit, and in the blink of an eye there was fiscal ruin, and a loss of ownership.

What will we be left with? My city has Chandlers with their legacies and their fortunes, but we no longer have Their Times. I can't help but think that it's a paper without a soul, now that they have lost the family behind it.

Video Clips
Otis Chandler and His Family

A recorded phone conversation reveals former President Nixon's plan to investigate the Chandlers.

Unionists explode dynamite at the Times Headquarters during Harrison Gray Otis' reign as publisher.

Web Site 

Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times

A variety of performers and musicians gathered in New York's Central Park in Sept. 2009 in celebration of the Ken Burns documentary series THE NATIONAL PARKS: AMERICA's BEST IDEA.