It's a very morbid day as not one but two important figures of the French acting world passed away of unnatural causes.

Most tragic is undoubtedly the 37 year old Guillaume Depardieu, son of the internationally-known Gérard Depardieu (Babylon A.D.), who died today, October 13th, of a sudden pneumonia attack due to a virus caught a few days ago in Romania on the set of the thriller L'Enfant D'Icare (literally Icarus' Child). Winner of a César acting award (the French equivalent of the Oscars) for the 1995 comedy Les Apprentis (literally The Apprentices) and nominated twice before, this is unbelievably not the only incredibly tragic event of Guillaume Depardieu's short life.

Indeed the troubled, formerly drug-addicted actor had many run-ins with the the law and several stints in prison but most sad is the traffic accident he was involved in in 1995. A suitcase which had fallen from a car caused him to fall from his motorcycle and badly damage his right knee. He was immediately operated on but things didn't go very well and an infection settled in, forcing him to have his right leg amputated in 2003.

He however didn't let that stop him and resumed his acting career, at the same time creating the Guillaume Depardieu Foundation for nosomical infections. He was last seen on the big screen in the acclaimed dramas Versailles and On War, both shown at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Having played over forty roles, some of his best-known films are the 1991's All The Mornings Of The Wold and 1999's Pola X. He was also a recipient of the prestigious Jean Gabin Award.

Guillaume Depardieu is survived by his father, his mother the actress Elisabeth Guignot (Jean De Florette), his sister the actress Julie Depardieu (Rush Hour 3), his half-sister Roxane, his half-brother Jean and his daughter Louise. He will posthumously appear in a couple of forthcoming films and no word on what will happen to L'Enfant D'Icare.

Today also marks the death of 80 year old Françoise Seigner, of pancreatic cancer. The acclaimed actress, aunt of actresses Emmanuelle (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly) and Mathilde (Harry, He's Here To Help/With A Friend Like Harry...), best known for her contributions to the theater nevertheless acted in a few films, most famously 1970's The Wild Child and most recently the 2005 Agatha Christie adaptation By The Pricking Of My Thumbs.

One must also not forget celebrated 71 year old Japanese actor Ken Ogata, who died on October 5th of liver cancer. The award-winning performer is best-known for such films as The Pillow Book, Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters and several collaborations with late director Shohei Imamura, including one of the segments of 11'09''01: September 11 and the 1983 Golden Palm winner Ballad Of Narayama. He is survived by his two actor sons Kanta (The Samurai I Loved) and Naoto (The Deep Red).

Sexy musical instruments from Sidney Gilliat's ENDLESS NIGHT, a weird Agatha Christie adaptation from the early '70s. These shots function as cutaways during a passionate shagging scene, and each gets its own little nod (well, crashing paroxysm) from Bernard Herrman's insanely overwrought score.

Of course there are a thousand reasons why this scene is vulgar and ludicrous, but several reasons why it makes sense and is appropriate, too. And those reasons win. In that way it's a bit Ken Russell-like.

I would show you some of the hot action that appears between each of the instrument shots, but that would be an absolutely massive plot spoiler, and the film is well worth seeking out and enjoying. Gilliat, having co-authored THE LADY VANISHES for Hitchcock, had clearly been paying attention to Hitch's oversees adventures, and this is one of the few films I can think of with VERTIGO's vaulting ambition to break new ground in the realm of the romantic thriller. There are plenty of VERTIGO rip-offs out there, from Jonathan Demme's partly-successful LAST EMBRACE, to Brian DePalma's... well, there are too many DePalmas to mention, but let OBSESSION stand for the best of them. But the difference between borrowing from VERTIGO and emulating it is like the difference between calling yourself Christian and actually trying to be like Christ.

Anyhow, Gilliat's film doesn't really approach VERTIGO's greatness at all, but it does set out to be as daring visually, and that's a rare thing. Gilliat and his partner Faank Launder had these moments of wild ambition thorughout their lengthy careers, but only intermittently. I SEE A DARK STRANGER is the other strongest one.

They also had their smutty moments. From the somewhat-inappropriate teen rudery of the ST TRINIANS series (which tapered to a grotesque conclusion with the softcore misery of WILDCATS OF ST TRINIANS), to the desert island suggestiveness of THE BLUE LAGOON, they were, along with Val Guest and Terence Fisher, at the forefront of the battle to get sex onto British screens. More on these erotic pioneers later.

It reminds me of a story I read recently on the road:

There are things going on, things that shouldn’t be. […] It’s blossoming everywhere and in every country. […] Youth is what you might call the spearhead of it all. But that’s not really what’s so worrying. They – whoever they are – work through youth. Youth in every country. Youth urged on. Youth chanting slogans, slogans that sound exciting, though they don’t always know what they mean. So easy to start a revolution. That’s natural to youth. All youth has always rebelled. You rebel, you want the world to be different from what it is. But you’re blind too. There are bandages over the eyes of youth. They can’t see where things are taking them. What’s in front of them? And who it is behind them, urging them on? […] They’re not only fancies. That’s what people said about Hitler. Hitler and the Hitler Youth. But it was a long careful preparation. It was a fifth column being planted in different countries all ready for the supermen. The supermen where to be the flower of the German nation. Somebody else is perhaps believing something like that now. There’s something somewhere, and it’s running on the same lines.
Agatha Christie, Passenger to Frankfurt.

By 1973 the two-year partnership between the British EMI and Hollywood's MGM had fractured to the point where the American organization decided to finalize its British production involvement and keep all of its dealings on its home side of the Atlantic. This was pleasing for EMI (the owners of the expansive and proficient Elstree Studios) as they had been suffering losses incurred by MGM's disastrous losses in the USA. As a now single corporation, EMI company head Nat Cohen choose the 1973 Cannes film festival to announce a £5 million package of seven films, most of which would be American features with an EMI distribution interest. Of the domestically produced EMI features announced that year, it was an adaptation of Agatha Christie's bestseller Murder on the Orient Express that garnered the most interest. It had taken a lot of strenuous negotiation between Christie and Cohen, but he eventually secured the rights to three of her Hercule Poirot novels, believing that such material would be the ideal screen antidote for Britain in what was a gloomy time of industrial, social and civil unrest.

Filming did not begin on Murder on the Orient Express until March of 1974, ten months after the announcement at Cannes. Yet in that time another Christie adaptation was conceived, financed, cast, prepared and already filming.

"Same Script different locations. You always kill off the most expensive stars first!" - Harry Alan Towers on his three versions of "Ten Little Indians"

In October that year, Variety's "international wrap" included a brief mention that Towers was producing a new version of Ten Little Indians. The news was from their correspondent in Madrid, so it seemed the film would either be shot there or at least based in that country. Towers, based at the time in Lichtenstein had attracted a strong cast for this project - Oliver Reed, James Mason, Elke Sommer and Herbert Lom were verified, with Adolfo Celi in talks and negotiations continuing with several international names.  Each week would bring new casting news with the November 7^th column stating that the British-French-German-Italian-Spanish production was looking for two Spaniards to round out the cast and that James Mason had left the production. 20^th Century Fox was expected to distribute the film in the USA.

Towers had arranged his most widespread production yet, involving five nations. It took some delicate work to make the arrangement as equitable as possible for each participating company to benefit from their local subsidies and rebates.

The companies and incentives involved were:

Oceania (French) who had previously worked with Towers on Call of the Wild and had a history of involvement in multi-national productions, especially genre-based films including westerns and crime thrillers. Tax rebates and no interest loans were available from the Centre du Cinema.

Talia (Spain) were a reasonably new company also in the co-production business. With Spain having equal partnership in this production they were eligible for a 15% rebate on ticket sales.

Coralta: (Italy) had, until this time restricted themselves to either local productions or partnerships with French companies. In those cases they were eligible for low-interest loans from the Film Credit Section of the Banca Nazionale (SACC) as a not majority participant on Towers' film, the loan would be far smaller.

Corona (Germany), a well-established company that had previously funded several of Towers' collaborations with Jess Franco. Germany offered State Aid, in which films German companies shared equal partnership were eligible. Companies could also offset.

The British component was Towers himself, through the aptly named Filibuster Films, a company created for this production only. Towers packaged the production and although Filibuster did not contribute any capital, it acted as a broker between the other companies. The creation of Filibuster was for the purposes of Eady levy rebate eligibility, yet although nominally British it was listed as located in elsewhere. This was due to these four companies had another, silent partner.

In the 1970s Tehran had an established film festival, one which showcased both Iranian and world cinema. Endorsed by the Shah or Iran, the festival spared no expense in attracting stars and directors to attend the festival, held late each year. The success of the festival led to the Iranian government believing that cinema was the ideal medium to promote the country internationally as a progressive nation. The Film Development Company of Iran was created and endowed with a large budget to attract international filmmakers. The 1974 Film Festival brought news of the first international film to be shot there - Ten Little Indians. The Film Development company offered the superb location of the Shah Abbas Hotel for filming (and five star accommodation for the cast and crew) there was also an added inducement that Towers could not resist - moving his company Filibuster to Iran which would act as a tax shelter for the entire budget and all of Tower's personal fees. In this way, Towers took the money from his four partners and did not have to pay any tax on the amount until the film had grossed a certain percentage of the cost. Even then, this tax shelter offered minimal taxation rates.

The cast was finalised with a not quite equal spread of actors - there were two Britons (Oliver Reed and Richard Attenborough), two Germans (Gert Frobe and Elke Sommer) and two French (Stephane Audran and Charles Aznavour). However there was only one Italian (Adolfo Celi) and a single Spaniard (Alberto de Mendoza). Rounding out the cast were Herbert Lom (Czech) and Maria Rohm (Towers' Austrian wife). This problem was solved by providing extra credits for Spaniards and Italians on the film. Jess Franco has spoken of this as a regular practice on Towers' films. In order to meet a country's co-production guidelines they would invent roles or create ‘strawmen'. This would entail paying a small amount to a certain artist or technician to agree for his name to be used and, if asked by the authorities, to state he did work on the film. Although there is no official record of these ‘strawmen' being used, two extra producers are listed alongside Towers. These men (Juan Estelrich and Tibor Reeves) had fulfilled minor production roles on previous Towers' films. One may also wonder about the names credited alongside that of screenwriter Peter Wellbeck (actually Towers' pseudonym), Erich Kronke and Enrique Llovet. Although screenwriters, it seems unlikely that they had any true input, for the screenplay is almost identical (to the very word) with the once Towers wrote for the 1965 film. The only changes were very minor, detailing characters commenting on the outside landscape (changed from snowy alps to sandy desert).

Briton Peter Collinson was hired to direct. In his short career he had worked in a number of countries across a variety of genres. He had one true hit film to his credit, the 1969 caper comedy The Italian Job. After that, with the British film industry in difficulties he had travelled the world making films in Greece - You Can't Win ‘em All (1970), Hollywood - A Man Called Noon and Spain - Open Season. He joined Towers just before production began, having left pre-production on a project titled "Nights of the Moulin Rouge" which appears to have never been made. Filming in Iran started in late December and seems to have taken around 3-4 weeks. The Iranian backers had requested that two of their popular stars be given roles, so a short sequence where two detectives stumble across the bodies was also filmed. Although mentioned in the press material, these cameos were excised from English language market prints. Several cast members then returned to Spain to film some interior shots and the film was then taken to Teddington Studios in Britain for post-production work, including the dubbing of Celi, Frobe, de Mendoza and Aznavour into English. They had spoken their lines in their natural languages during shooting, not fluent enough to have mastered the dialogue in English.

It must be mentioned that Oliver Reed has commented only that he did "a movie in Iran for the money", which was to pay the upkeep on his large English estate, not even mentioning its title in his autobiography. Attenborough has stated that after having retired from acting he spent so long trying to finance his long-cherished Gandhi project (which he eventually directed in 1981) that he took what work he could find for the money. James Mason (originally cast) had relocated to Switzerland for tax reasons and although his biography does not mention his involvement in this film, that year he worked on four films in Europe which he'd described as ‘rubbish', yet once again, he needed the money. These were harsh times for British actors, with little work available at home and high tax rates meaning they had to find work where they could. This explains why so many British actors and American tax exiles seemed to spend much of the 1960s-1970s jetting from one European co-production to another. Arthur Kennedy, an American character actor who managed a prolific career in Europe has said that he generally read only his part of the script for those films and seldom saw the finished product.

A scan of the actors' credits reveals that after working with Towers, most of the cast worked predominantly in international genre co-productions for the rest of their careers. It would seem that having chosen such work, it was difficult to return to cinema with a distinct national flavour.

Murder on the Orient Express exceeded the expectations of all involved. Running for over a year in both Britain and the USA, it amassed a splendid $19 million in US rentals alone and a similar amount again internationally. Praised by critics, the film was nominated for six Academy Awards, with Ingrid Bergman winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in the film.

Ten Little Indians opened late in 1974 in West Germany to "good" business and was rated as "popular" when it was released in Spain in December. Under the title of And Then There Were None (a late change as the pressbook still uses the original title), it was not released in the United States until August of 1975, (through Avco-Embassy, with Fox having passed) where it received unanimous negative reviews from the New York critics. It rose as high as eleventh on Variety's Top 50 Box Office chart in its only week of wide release then quickly dropped away, grossing under a million dollars in the United States. Although it has been reported that the film never played theatrically in Britain, it was kept on the shelf for 16 months until it finally managed a solitary week in London in 1976 and was promptly withdrawn after a £1013 gross. There is no report of it playing provincially. Its poor British performance may be due to the fact it was distributed by EMI who had produced and distributed Murder on the Orient Express and did not want the rival film harming its business. There is also a theory that many of Towers films did not play in Britain due to his creditors there having the legal right to seize any returns from his films. France, the final official partner in the production, did not release the film until two years after it first screened in Europe.

Ten Little Indians has all the hallmarks that critics reviled of the international co-production: It rode on the coattails of a successful British/American production; it had performers chosen due to their passport rather then suitability for the role and a setting determined by investor demands. The film also is guilty of the most rank opportunism. Charles Aznavour, the first victim, is in the film for less then ten minutes and only has a couple of lines which are dubbed into English anyway, yet his one scene features him singing (in its entirety) his hit song "Dance the old fashion way". The pressbook for Ten Little Indians even urges exhibitors to emphasise that point through radio and record store promotions. The film is also guilty of the criticism that such productions have their inspiration in antiquated and well-recycled narratives that lost their freshness early in the century. With such adherence to stock and stereotypes they ignore modern political realities and prefer to exist in a purely fictional temporal and spatial universe, one where the same narratives are repeated beyond exhaustion and invention and innovation are shunned in favour of formulae.

Rather than attempt to hide the fact, Towers' film wore its international pedigree with pride. The American advertising stated it had an "international all star cast" and the pressbook contained several stories telling of the production and how various nations were ‘represented' in the casting and how some performers were ‘obtained' from countries, as if this was a film sanctioned by government.  Perhaps Charlton Heston closer to the truth then he knew when he had complained of Towers' business practices amounting to ‘United Nations -style filmmaking'.

One can see the influences within the narrative. There is the obvious connection to the all-star casting aspect of Murder on the Orient Express (a film Ten Little Indians' pressbook has no shame in continually referencing, even name-checking it on the film's poster), yet this is an aspect both films share with the disaster movie cycle of the time. It has been theorized that audiences of the 1970s took great delight in watching luminaries of the screen being killed in gruesome ways. The advertising of Towers' film also shares the ‘picture-box' theme of several disaster movie posters in which the studio portraits of the cast are situated around the border, each identified by name. This method feeds the impression that it will be the performers we may pay to see die, rather then the characters they portry. But rather than a disaster movie, Ten Little Indians resembles an entry in the Italian giallo genre. One of the pioneers of that form of thriller, Mario Bava, has admitted that one of his films, Bay of Blood (1971) was inspired by the Christie story and that another, Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) was a direct rip off. Ten Little Indians (1974) has a dour nature that is not evident in other versions of the story and, with its gloved hand seen dispatching victims, inventive manners of death and surprise revelation of the killer, it is clearly giallo-influenced. Cinematographer Fernando Arribas and composer Bruno Nicolai had previously worked on gialli, so their styles help in creating such an aesthetic. Yet it must be noted that of all the versions made of Ten Little Indians, not a single one has been filmed, or set, in England. With its lack of detective and misanthropic world-view, it does adhere to the European tradition of darker, rival variants of popular American and British culture. James Bond had Fantomas, Dr. No had Fu Manchu and John Wayne had ‘The Man with No Name'. With this theory in mind, Ten Little Indians is Christie's anti-Murder on the Orient Express.

However, the most apt influence upon this international film is its own creation. With its financing and production methods Ten Little Indians manipulated the system to its fullest so it is only apt that the system is eulogized by the narrative. If the disaster influence valued stardom over character, then Towers' film takes the theme a step further.

Ten Little Indians opens with a helicopter landing at a grand hotel in an unnamed country. Ten jet-lagged people step out and try to gain their bearings. Strangers to each other but with some acquainted by reputation, they have been invited there to a party by a mysterious host, ostensibly because he admires their professional capabilities. Instead, he wishes to sentence them for crimes they have committed (mostly) in the course of those very professions. There is no escape from the location and he kills them off, one by one, the only survivors being the two who he falsely accused.

One can read such a synopsis as a metaphor for the international film, perhaps this very film. Ten jetlagged actors arrive at a grand hotel in an unknown country, having been invited by a mysterious producer to participate in a film, believing it was their talents that have brought them there. The producer never appears, yet via the recorded voice of Orson Welles, who scoured the world for film work, he tells them they had each long sold out their integrity for financial gain. Their punishment will be to never escape the international film system, as represented by the hotel in the non-specific nation. They are destined to re-enact these roles, killed off for the audience's delight, for the remainder of their careers. It is the two youngest stars who escape the punishment and they have the opportunity to return to careers with integrity and substance.

However, like so many co-productions, this is the imposed and unrealistic happy conclusion. Had Christie's original ending remained then the truth would have been preserved, for there was no salvation for either Oliver Reed or Elke Sommer, both seldom found film work outside of international co-productions and their stars faded as the 1970s drew to a close. It is Attenborough who plays the judge and is revealed as Ten Little Indians' killer. Ironically, Attenborough  extricated himself from the international film roundabout and he barely acted again, realizing his dream of directing grand and respectable, middlebrow entertainments. The other members of the cast (and the director) spent their careers jetsetting from one unidentifiable country to the next and in that regard they never left the Shah Abbas hotel.

Ten Little Indians is a rare form of self-reflexive cinema, in that such self commentary is probably unintentional. Had the European co-production never existed, and had Harry Alan Towers and his ilk been restricted from practice then the film, as we see it today would be little more than a curio. Yet, it is impossible to see it existing anyway, had such productions and producers never occurred. It remains a film of a time, a place and a method and a film whose method creates its own time and a place.

As for Harry Alan Towers, well you can't keep a cunning old rogue down. From Ten Little Indians he returned to his blue territory, producing efforts for Italo sleazers Joe D'Amato and Massimo Dallamano and failing to make much of a star of Annie Belle in the process. It was then back to the public domain classics for a while, raiding H. Rider Haggard, Jack London and H.G. Wells and giving work to Jack Palance, David McCallum and Rod Steiger while taking advantage of tax breaks in Canada and South Africa. More soft porn kept him busy in the 1980s along with forays into the sword n' sandal epics that were briefly popular at the time (the Gor movies, for example). Michael Dudikoff was his star for a while and Towers took to buying up the fag-ends of spent series for Howling IV - The Original Nightmare (1988), HowAAAAmerican Ninja 3 (1989), Delta Force 3 - The Killing Game (1991) and a pair of Michael Caine Harry Palmer spy flicks - Bullet to Beijing (1995) and Midnight in St. Petersburg (1996). A slew of South African filmed Edgar Allan Poe adaptations from Towers gathered dust on video store shelves in the late 80s -early 90s, wringing whatever marquee value was left from Donald Pleasance, Oliver Reed and um, Ginger Lynn Allen.

But if you thought he was done with Christie well another decade, another Ten Little Indians. In 1989 he produced what was originally to be titled Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, but was forced to abbreviate the title when the novelist's estate complained. This time his then regular director Alan Birkinshaw took duties behind the camera and the cast included Brenda Vaccaro, Herbert Lom, Donald Pleasance and (yes!) Frank Stallone. Shot in South Africa it went directly to video in most territories.

Towers, now back in Britain having settled his legal difficulties is still in action today. For 2009 he has announced a version of Moll Flanders, with none other than Ken Russell as director. At 88 years of age there appears to be no stopping this great vagabond of the international co-production.

Harry, here's to you.

“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.”

~ Agatha Christie

Leighanne and I are absolutely addicted to the Food Network channel, and one of our favorite shows is Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Meals...Yum-O! One such episode featured a main dish that made me wish for smell-o-vision. Rachel made Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage and did it ever look good! I decided to give it a try for the family and received rave reviews. So, it has been a standard for the beginning of Autumn around our house, and something that everyone looks forward to enjoying. I thought I would share the recipe with you.

Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon
• 1 pound bulk sweet Italian sausage
• 4 cloves garlic, cracked and chopped
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 bay leaf, fresh or dried
• 4 to 6 sprigs sage leaves, cut into chiffonade, about 2 tablespoons
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 cup chicken stock, canned or paper container
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup (3 turns around the pan) heavy cream
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, ground or freshly grated
• Coarse salt and black pepper
• 1 pound penne rigate, cooked to al dente
• Romano or Parmigiano, for grating

Directions

Heat a large, deep nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and brown the sausage in it. Transfer sausage to paper towel lined plate. Drain fat from skillet and return pan to the stove. Add the remaining tablespoon oil, and then the garlic and onion. Saute 3 to 5 minutes until the onions are tender.

Add bay leaf, sage, and wine to the pan. Reduce wine by half, about 2 minutes. Add stock and pumpkin and stir to combine, stirring sauce until it comes to a bubble. Return sausage to pan, reduce heat, and stir in cream. Season the sauce with the cinnamon and nutmeg, and salt and pepper, to taste. Simmer mixture 5 to 10 minutes to thicken sauce.

Return drained pasta to the pot you cooked it in. Remove the bay leaf from sauce and pour the sausage pumpkin sauce over pasta. Combine sauce and pasta and toss over low heat for 1 minute. Garnish the pasta with lots of shaved cheese and sage leaves.

Prep Time: approx. 10 minutes  Cook Time: 15 minutes Yield: 4 servings Level: Easy

Thanks Rachel!  Bon Appetit!

Don't forget to leave a COMMENT to rate this recipe!!!

Stumble It!

Am inceput, normal, cu toate cartile Agathei Christie pe care le-am gasit (cred ca am citit tot ce s-a tradus la noi de ea), dupa care, suparata fiind ca nu a putut si Agatha asta sa scrie mai mult, a trebuit de voie de nevoie, sa trec la alti autori. Asa am ajuns la Georges Simenon, si mai tarziu la PD James. Acum, urmaresc fiecare noua aparitie a lui PD James si cum o prind, o devorez.

Problema e ca e o pasiune de necontrolat. Eu sunt prima care recunoaste ca parca nu prea se merita banii dati pe cartile astea, dar cand vad ceva ce nu am citit intr-o librarie, ma ia un tremur, vocea mea rationala, asa firava cum e, se chinuieste sa ma convinga ca nu are rost sa o cumpar, si in momentul urmator ma trezesc cu ea la casa.

Help needed!

Agatha Christie

BS säger jag bara. Klyschig, "tuff och cool" på det otuffa sättet, full av cyniska, svärande och ocharmiga karaktärer som har haft det svårt i livet. BORING säger jag bara. Blev uttråkad efter ett kapitel. Mer än så tänker jag inte slänga bort av mitt liv. Nästa nyprojekt blir Harry Potter. LÅGA FÖRVÄNTNINGAR säger jag bara.

Chapter 5B

39:37.

[audio http://www.archive.org/download/ChristieStyles/ChristieStyles05b.mp3]

In Luke 9:23-27, Jesus states that a follower must take up their cross daily. Before we go to application, let's take a moment to reflect on the cross.

The Roman army crucified people on three variations: the high cross (picture a capital "T"); the low cross (a lower case "t"); or a tree. Tradition holds that Jesus was crucified on the low cross. I'm not going to go into the intense physical agony that the person suffered. Others have written about it and Mel Gibson made a powerful movie (Passion of the Christ) depicting it. The point is that it was simply brutal to watch and agonizing to experience.

For Jesus to tell His followers to take up a cross on a daily basis must have been shocking! They could not help but have seen someone on a cross. Jesus' command and this choice of words would have been astounding. Just try to imagine their faces!

Is the path of a Christian easy?

No.

No.

And no.

(Yes, I know I only asked one question, but I wanted to make sure you heard me.)

The path is not easy because people will oppose us. Believe it or not, some people don't like Christians.

The ramifications of sin in this world will affect us. (Simply consider the possible outcomes of the current financial crisis, the upcoming election or watch the evening news...) Even as I state how difficult the path of one who follows Christ may be, I have to step back a few verses and make sure something else is addressed.

What brought on this command from Jesus? In verse 20, Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter replied, "The Christ of God." These words were words that would rock the world. It literally changed everything.

Have those words changed everything for you? Do you understand the true message of Jesus Christ?

I'd encourage you to ponder the following verses:

Romans 3:23 - for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

Romans 6:23 - For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 5:8 - But God demonstrates His own love toward us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 10:9 - That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

Romans 5:1 - Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans 8:1 - Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8: 38-39 - For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Those are powerful verses that contain God's Words to use through Paul's writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As you reflect on them, let them settle in the back of your mind and go to read the Gospel of John.

How much did Jesus Christ love you? Completely. Have you put your faith in Him? Have those little grey cells been convicted? Has it made the 12-inch leap to your heart?

The cross is a scary thing. As I imagine the reality of Christ's words, I'm struck by fear. But I'm also touched by the assurance that I see in Romans and the love I see in John.

Jesus loves you. This I know. For the Bible tells me so.

Have you given yourself to Him? Have you walked with Him today?

Yours in Christ,
Marty

I'm going back to another  book I was reading in the meanwhile, "Le chasseur de trésor, ou L'influence d'un livre" de Philippe Aubert de Gaspé fils. Officiellement le premier roman québécois publié (1837), il s'agit d'un amalgame de contes fantastiques contés dans un conte conté dans une histoire de meurtre et de sorcier avide d'or. L'auteur n'était ni un saint, ni une fine plume, et l'oeuvre fut souvent rééditée à ses débuts, mais le tout demeure une référence dans la naissance d'une "littérature québecoise". Dans le fond on la lit simplement pour apprendre de la bonne vieille sorcellerie!

by Dean Brandum

Following on from my post providing a brief history of the international co-production comes the first in a series turning the spotlight on the films tainted with this unsavoury brush. First up, the third version of Ten Little Indians (1974). Never even released on video in this country and long-unavailable on the tape format in either Britain or the United States, it has yet to appear anywhere on DVD (officially, at least) and remains a most difficult film to see. Having lingered (festered?) in my memory since a TV screening around 30 years ago, it became one of many films I have been determined to track down over the years in an obsession to place some order on the collected fragments cluttering my subconscious.

I finally found a copy and upon viewing Ten Little Indians, I was immediately gripped.  No, not for reasons artistic as it is an inept and shoddy production, lacking credibility and logic and devoid of even the most basic of thrills. Instead, the film captures most beautifully the entire euro-pudding movement, not only in its production method, but (no doubt unintentionally) as its own subtext.

""Ten Little Indians," the latest remake of the Agatha Christie story, looks less like a movie than a movie deal...an international movie mess of the sort that damages the reputations of everyone connected with it" - (Vincent Canby - New York Times)

Before we get to that we have to trace the history of this forgotten, minor landmark. It is a long tale - too long for one post. What I must do is introduce you to the inimitable Mr. Harry Alan Towers...

"I can step off a plane in any country in the world and within 24 hours have a film in pre-production" - Harry Alan Towers.

The son of a theatrical agent, Harry Alan Towers was born in London in 1920. By his early twenties Towers was becoming known to the public as a radio personality and within the industry as a producer of scripted dramatic series for that medium (many of which he wrote himself). By the age of thirty he had established offices in several countries (including Australia and the United States) distributing these series. His success in radio and ability to produce vast quantities of high quality programming saw him drafted into television by Lew Grade at the ATV network. Towers' commission was to produce television programs with the same efficiency as his radio business and he accomplished the task with relish. Although he was creating strong profits for the network, Towers was asked to resign due to conflict of interest concerns. In what acts as an indicator of his future unorthodox business practices, Towers was asked to create a nightly chat show and given a substantial production budget, Towers decided to host the show himself, be thrifty with the other costs and keep the rest of the allocated budget for himself, as a hosting fee.

After a brief foray into feature film production with a pair of B-films produced by his Towers of London banner, in 1963 Harry Alan Towers was on the run and hiding out in South Africa. Two years earlier, he had skipped bail after being arrested in New York on the charge of running a call-girl ring. Naturally, that ruled out any return to the United States, but due to a number of previous deceitful dealings in his native Britain, his creditors were eagerly awaiting his arrival home, meaning setting up a production base in Britain was also out of the question.

Undaunted, Towers teamed up with Oliver A. Unger, a producer who had made his name and fortune in the 1950s - the early years of television syndication - most notably through purchasing old cartoons from the major studios, editing them into half-hour programs and selling the packages to television networks and individual stations. Hoping to extend into theatrical film production and distribution he hooked up with the experienced Towers in 1963 and they planned a number of projects that contained exciting action, colourful backdrops and could be cheaply filmed. With Towers' showmanship, Unger's U.S. experience and the conditional agreement of several fading screen stars willing to perform in these productions, they managed to sell the North American distribution rights to the Canadian based Seven Arts Pictures (this was the company that pounced upon the troubled Warner Brothers Corporation in 1967 when they bought out founder Jack Warner's controlling interest. However, Warner Brothers-Seven Arts lasted a mere two years before a financially disastrous 1969 saw that Seven Arts stake bought out by the Kinney Corporation).

With the Seven Arts distribution deal in place and the resultant funds from the rights' sale in pocket, by 1965 they had completed an impressive slate of six feature films which they unveiled in the market section of that year's Cannes film festival. Operating under the banner of UPI (Unger Productions Incorporated) a full page advertisement in Variety immodestly announced that these were pictures of "Major Importance". With no mention of Towers' involvement whatsoever (Unger was listed as sole producer of each film) the suspicions of creditors and law enforcers either side of the Atlantic would not be raised.

Four of the titles were filmed in Africa. Mozambique was an adventure tale of diamond smugglers, 24 Hours to Kill fell into the espionage and intrigue genre that was highly popular in the wake of the successful James Bond franchise, Coast of Skeletons was a remake of the colonial drama Sanders of the River (1938) and Sandy the Seal hoped to capture the family audience. With the likes of Mickey Rooney, Steve Cochran, Dale Robertson and Richard Todd there was enough (fading) star wattage to fill out the lower half of double features in the English language markets. However the savvy Towers also peppered his cast with a number of actors popular in Germany, where Towers would later base many of his operations. The American sales had financed most of the productions but it was a silent partnership with the Munich-based Terra Filmkundst that completed the budgets. Their financing was conditional on the casting of German actors in each of the productions in order to increase their appeal in those markets. This accounts for the likes of Hildegarde Neff, Paul Hubschmid, Elga Anderson, Walter Slezak and Lex Barker in the films. The venture was a successful one with all of these titles having all territories sold by the end of the festival. However, although the rights to these titles were available individually, they were generally sold as a complete package at discounted rates when buyers paid the higher fees for the two gems in UPI's slate - The Face of Fu Manchu and Ten Little Indians.

Towers had always known the value of a good story, especially one with an inbuilt audience familiarity. The Scarlet Pimpernel series was one of his early television productions and in the early 1970s he was to film versions of Black Beauty and White Fang. More recently he has produced Blood of the Mummy, a version of Phantom of the Opera and a series of Edgar Alan Poe adaptations. Apart from their marketability as known literary commodities, these properties were also public domain titles, meaning Towers did not have to pay screen rights to the authors, much less any later royalties. But the downside to this ploy was that these titles were overly familiar to audiences, having been filmed many times, both for the cinema and television. Towers needed exclusivity with some prize material so he purchased, for £25,000, the rights to a number of novelist Sax Rohmer's books, including thirteen that featured Oriental criminal mastermind, Fu Manchu (although Towers also produced two films based on Rohmer's less known other arch-villain, Sumuru).

The Face of Fu Manchu was the first of five Towers films to feature the character (played by Christopher Lee), with the first entries resembling Hammer Studios productions, but the final pair (as directed by Jess Franco in 1970) delving deeper into the territory of sleaze and sadism that would characterize many of Tower's productions in the coming decade.

Ten Little Indians was the final film on UPI's 1965 Cannes slate and the one with the most mainstream potential. Agatha Christie had written the novel Ten Little Niggers in 1939 and upon its release was hailed her masterwork and remained her personal favourite of all her writings. The novel tells the story of ten strangers who are invited to a weekend on ‘Indian Island' as the guest of a Mr. and Mrs. U.N. Owen. Never having met their host the guests are under the impression they have been invited due to their fame and expertise in their various professions (judge, doctor, detective, entertainer etc).

Yet they never meet their host who only makes his presence felt via a gramophone recording in which he accuses each of the guests of being guilty of a serious crime (each involving the death of innocents) for which they have (so far) gone unpunished. Furious at the allegations but unable to leave the island, the guests endure a horror evening in which their party is reduced in number as one by one they are victims of an unseen killer. Central to the décor of the dining room is an ornate piece of china depicting ten Indians and with each death one is mysteriously broken from the display. The children's nursery rhyme (from which the novel takes its title) in framed in each room, which each line seemingly foretelling the circumstances of each of the guests' deaths. The invited party (who have admitted their guilt for the crimes of which they were accused) soon realize that, having searched the house and its grounds in vain,   Mr. U.N. Owen does not exist and the killer is indeed one of them, implementing this elaborate plan in order to fulfill his or her insane scheme of social justice. Suspicions are raised and tempers flare but the killings continue. Eventually Vera Claythorne kills the last suspect, her love interest Phillip Lombard. She appears to be the only survivor but the judge - already believed killed - reappears to admit he is the mastermind of the scheme. Stating he is terminally ill, he drinks poison, leaving Vera alone with a noose hanging from the ceiling. Realising that the police will believe her the killer and seeing no way out of her predicament, she hangs herself - the final piece of the judge's plan now complete and following the exact last lines of the nursery rhyme:

One little Indian left alone alone.

He went and  hanged himself

And then there were none.

Ten Little Niggers differs from many of Christie's more celebrated work in that it does not feature a sleuth (professional or amateur) solving the crime and detecting the identity of the villain. Yet it still remains a archetypal example of classical British crime fiction. Featuring prototypical aristocratic and upper-middle class gentlemen and ladies hiding dark pasts of violence and improper behavior, the plot convolutions throw up numerous red herrings until the dénouement unmasks the real criminal, an unexpected character with a once seemingly foolproof alibi. With its settings rarely straying from the confines of the mansion (a subsidiary character itself), Ten Little Niggers conforms to the ‘drawing room' characteristic of the form, as does its preoccupation with manners and conduct (un)becoming.

The novel may have been a hit in Britain but its title caused obvious discomfort American publishers. She agreed for it to be released there as And Then There Were None and subsequent edition in Britain and the Commonwealth were retitled Ten Little Indians. Christie also had the problem that the novel's downbeat conclusion proved problematic for adaptations into other media. Christie herself rectified the situation by writing a version for the stage, with a reworked ending that had not only Vera and Lombard surviving, but actually innocent of their supposed crimes. The judge was not as infallible as he (and the audience) believed, realizing the last act of his grand plan was in ruins only after he had sipped his fatal drop of poison. Certainly this adhered to the most popular aspect of melodrama in which villainy is quashed in the final moments by the virtuous, restoring a moral order to the universe and offering a catharsis for the audience (with the promise of a romantic future thrown in for good measure). However, it could be argued that for those with a more cynical bent, the original narrative restored its own order, with the judge's virtue and sense of righteousness (albeit with a brutal bluntness) righting the moral unbalance that social norms have been unable to correct. For the needs of a potentially wide audience though, the proposal that society's conventions of law and justice are inherently flawed was a notion too impalpable to contemplate.

Christie was correct. Her stage adaptation opened in November 1943 to capacity crowds London and replicated that success in New York the following year. The film industry was immediately interested and independent producer Leo V. Popkin purchased the screen rights from Christie and the resultant 20^th Century Fox production marked the first time a Christie property had been filmed by Hollywood (five previous Christie works had been filmed in her native Britain and another in Germany). Directed by Frenchman Rene Clair with celebrated screenwriter Dudley Nicholls opening it up for the cinematic approach, And Then There Were None was cast with a gallery of fine character actors including the likes of Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, Louis Hayward, C. Aubrey Smith and Dame Judith Anderson. Released in 1947 the film was expectedly acclaimed as an outstanding mystery-thriller but was tellingly praised for its casting, period atmosphere, stylish design and musical score - the hallmarks of a well budgeted studio system production of the day. It is the care (or lack thereof) taken with the material that would mark the versions filmed by Harry Alan Towers in the decades to come.

Towers' purchased the screen rights from Harry M. Popkin in the early 1960s, with Popkin believing that the story's surprise ending was too well-known by audiences for another film version to succeed. However, although he sold the property for a low sum he took a production credit on the film and a cut of any profits as part of the deal. The reason Towers was interested in the material was due to the success MGM had enjoyed with a series of Miss Marple adaptations filmed at their Borehamwood Studios in Britain. Starring the inimitable Margaret Rutherford as the amateur village sleuth, dotted with a cast of eccentric English stereotypes and a bright comedic sensibility, these inexpensive productions were very popular as mainstream releases in Britain and on the American arthouse circuit. However, after four films in as many years MGM discontinued the series as they were hoping for more than a cult following in the United States. MGM owned the rights to a large proportion of Christie's other work, except for those stories that featured Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. A notoriously difficult person to deal with, Towers never considered negotiating for her unsold stories and instead sought out this one, already purchased property. In order to replicate the feel of the MGM Marple films he hired George Pollock, the director of that series to film his version of Ten Little Indians and filled the cast with a number of well-known English Character actors such as Leo Genn, Stanley Holloway, Dennis Price and Wilfred Hyde-White. The leads were Shirley Eaton who had memorably been a victim of ‘Goldfinger' in the James Bond film of 1964 and the imported American actor Hugh O'Brian who had starred as television's Wyatt Earp for six successful seasons and was now attempting a career as a leading man in the cinema. As with the rest of the Terra Filmkundst financed films, three roles were given to German actors - Daliah Lavi, Mario Adorf and Marianne Hoppe which also enabled the film to be eligible for German subsidies and tax concessions.  Finally, in casting calculated for the youth market, American pop singer Fabian played the first of the murder victims.

Set in a Scandinavian chateau, but filmed at one of Ireland's stately homes (some footage shot in the Austrian mountains was spliced in for establishing shots), the 1965 version of Ten Little Indians was one of several British-German co-productions during the 1960s. Apart from the German subsidies available to Towers (via his ‘Tenlit' company, established just for this film and delisted shortly afterwards) the film's quotient of British talent allowed it to be eligible to take advantage of the Eady Levy. Instigated in 1949, this was a tax placed on all cinema tickets sold in Britain for foreign films. The pooled revenue was then shared amongst the British films screened that year, proportional to their box office (a percentage also went to the National Film Finance Corporation and the Children's Film Foundation). The more a British film earned, the more it could claim. This fund rewarded successful films and promoted further filmmaking ventures. However, not matter how well intentioned, the system was ripe for exploitation. American films shot in British studios were often eligible, no matter if that was the extent of their ‘Britishness'. In the late 1970s the worst abuse of the system occurred when distributors of the American blockbuster Grease purchased a £25,000 20 minute British short film about skateboarding and paired it on programs with Travolta musical. This provided enough British content for not only Grease being able to avoid paying the Eady Levy, but qualifying for £200,000 of the Eady share and virtually draining the pool in a very quiet year for the British film industry. The system was finally abandoned in 1985 in favour subsidies granted on individual proposals.

When it played it cinemas during 1965, Ten Little Indians was targeted towards a youth audience. Taking a cue from American producer-director William Castle who marketed his films with various gimmicks, Towers included a 60-second ‘Fright Break'. This entailed the screen turning black shortly before the dénouement and a narrator explaining to the audience they have one minute to guess the twist ending. Each murder is replayed on screen as a clock ticks by in the corner. The minute over, the film resumes. Receiving mixed reviews but healthy boxoffice, the major release of UPI's slate was its most successful. Towers and Unger parted ways and the Englishman entered the second period of his international co-production, known as his ‘blue phase', teaming with Spanish director Jess Francofor a series of sex and sadism shockers aimed at the growing adult film market.

After Eugenie...The Story of Her Journey into Perversion (1970), Harry Alan Towers realised that the darker environs of the sadistic sex film were losing their boxoffice appeal as they became increasingly ghettoised into grind-house cinemas and smaller drive-in chains. He and Jess Franco parted ways, with the Spanish director happily prospering in that field for several further decades.  In late 1969 Towers arrived in London trying to gain financial backing for a version of Anne Sewell's "Black Beauty". Unfortunately he arrived too late. A couple of years earlier the British-based Hollywood companies would have shown strong interest in a children's film set in the English countryside but as the decade closed they were moving their investments out of Britain. With the respectable production companies interested in neither Towers nor the oft-filmed story, he found unlikely backing through Tigon, a company associated with low budget horror and erotic films. They had previously distributed his Sandy the Seal and were intrigued by the idea of a foray into the family market. Tigon supplied part of the budget and Towers spent the next few months raising the rest of the funds in Spain and Germany. Shot in Ireland and Spain and featuring the usual assortment of international stars, Black Beauty (1970: James Hill) was well received by critics but failed to make much of an impression with audiences. Undeterred (and having made a nice personal profit from presales), he embarked on a series of further family films, each based on established, public domain, classics.

Although the Spanish-French-Italian White Fang (1973: Lucio Fulci) was a well-reviewed success, two other productions were beset by difficulties. Treasure Island (1972: John Hough) starring Orson Welles as Long John Silver and using the star's own, pseudonymous screenplay (with other names also attached for the purpose of national contribution) ran short on finances and filming was shut down on several occasions. Tower's showmanship had lured Charlton Heston to star in Call of the Wild (1972: Ken Annakin) but the star detested the experience, describing Towers as ‘shadowy' and ‘untrustworthy'. Once again finances did not flow smoothly and Heston has said that working with a West German, French, Italian and Spanish crew was just like ‘the United Nations' with lots of yelling, no-one understanding each other and nothing getting done. Heston was so incensed at the quality of the finished product that he persuaded Paramount, who owned the U.S. distribution rights, to not release the film. It eventually received a few brief screenings in 1975, after it was on-sold by Paramount to the exploitation distributor Intercontinental Releasing Corporation for a pittance. Costly and requiring much arduous location work for a market offering only slim returns, Towers never truly conquered the family film market. In 1973 he was looking for a new opportunity the on that would arise was a return to an old success, but relaunched with a decade of new skills acquired on in the fierce market of international film finance.

And now, an intermission....

„Mord im Orientexpress“ zählt zu den bekanntesten Kriminalfällen des Hercule Poirot, seines Zeichens belgischer Meisterdetektiv und Schöpfung der berühmten Agatha Christie.

Eigentlich wollte Poirot nur seine Reise im berühmten Luxuszug genießen, als er von Monsieur Bouc, dem Direktor der Schlafwagengesellschaft, gebeten wird, die Ermittlungen in einem ominösen Mordfall zu übernehmen. Ratchett, ein reicher Amerikaner um die sechzig, wurde durch 12 Messerstiche getötet in seinem Abteil aufgefunden. Auf seine unverkennbare Art beginnt der kleine, immer tadellos gekleidete Belgier mit der Arbeit. Unterstützt von Dr. Constantine, einem Griechen, und von Monsieur Bouc, dem alten Freund, befragt er die zwölf Reisenden. Er tut dies mit Logik und Rationalität, den bedeutendsten Merkmalen seines kriminalistischen Talents. Nachdem er die wahre Identität des Ermordeten relativ schnell aufgedeckt hat, führen ihn seine Befragungen unaufhaltsam in eine gemeinsame Vergangenheit aller Reisenden zurück.

Im Jahre 1928 reiste Agatha Christie mit dem Orient-Express nach Bagdad. Vor diesem Hintergrund entstand der Krimi, der 1934 veröffentlicht wurde. Zusammen mit Miss Marple schuf Agatha Christie (1890 bis 1976) mit dem genialen belgischen Detektiv Krimi-Kult-Figuren. Die Meisterin des Krimis und Bestsellerautorin schrieb rund 70 Kriminalromane, sie verfasste Kurzgeschichten und Theaterstücke. Für ihre Arbeit wurde die unübertroffene „Queen of crime“ mehrfach ausgezeichnet. 1950 wurde sie in die Londoner Akademie der Wissenschaften aufgenommen, 1956 erhielt sie den „Order of the British Empire“ und 1972 wurde sie in Madame Tussauds Wachsfigurenkabinett aufgenommen.

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Eigentlich habe ich die Agatha Christie - Collection nur bestellt, um zweimal im Monat in den Genuß eines gründlichen Verrisses zu kommen. Das der Film sehr bekannt ist, und ich vor kurzem das Adventure gespielt habe, trug auch nicht unbedingt dazu bei, das Buch spannender zu machen. Wobei der persönliche Reiz für mich darin bestand, wo das Spiel dem Roman abweicht.
Gerade dadurch, dass ich die Lösung im Groben kanntem konnte ich wunderbar studieren, wie Agatha Christie arbeitet. Im Gegensatz zum letzten Miss - Marpel - Roman (Die Tote in der Bibilotek) lagen diesmal wirklich alle Fakten auf dem Tisch. Es hat sogar Spaß gemacht, mitzuraten, wie alles zusammen passt. Vielleicht liegt Hercule Poirot mir auch mehr als Miss-Marple. Letztere geht ehe intiutiv vor und stellt Bezüge zu ihrer Umwelt an, während der Detektiv streng logisch vorgeht.
Auch das Setting, dass es einen begrenzten, isolierten Personenkreis gibt, aus welchem der Mörder stammt hat mir sehr gut gefallen. Ich lese weitere Romane mit Hercule Poirot.

Hurting Distance and The Point of Rescue, both by Sophie Hannah, are dense, cleverly plotted thrillers with breathtaking denouements, but that's not what I liked about them.  At least, I did like it, but there are lots of other books you could say that about.  What I especially like about Sophie Hannah is how human and likeable her characters are.  They're never there just to serve a clever story: they're living breathing people whom you could imagine meeting and having a conversation with.  This is very rare, I think.  My favourite book by her is out of print, but if you can hunt down a copy, I recommend Cordial and Corrosive, which is just one of the funniest, cleverest and most unexpected stories I've ever read.

I also read two new (to me) Agatha Christies.  Ordeal by Innocence was a fairly standard whodunnit: if you like Agatha Christie, you'll like it well enough.  Endless Night is creepier and more original, and well worth reading, especially if you don't know the ending, which I did.

To balance out the thrillers, I also read some location-specific fiction: Super-Cannes, which I enjoyed in a sort of plodding way – I couldn't ever quite reconcile the intensity of the action with the languid tone in which it's conveyed, though I suspect that's partly the point – and Tender is the Night, which I took a little while to get into but which I ended up loving.  I also noticed some unexpected similarities between the two, which I don't think are coincidental: a character in Super-Cannes is reading Tender is the Night very early on in the book.  But I shan't go into specifics here because I don't want to spoil anyone.

I am a sucker for a book on language, and I like swearing very much indeed whilst not being very good at it, so I also enjoyed Your Mother's Tongue: A Book of European Invective, which more or less does what it says on the tin.  When it comes to saying the unsayable the similarities between European languages are interesting, and the differences even more so.

Having successfully read some proper books (by which I mean the kind other people write about), I went back and read another Sophie Hannah book.  The Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets is a collection of short stories, and it's a bit more literary than its terrible title makes it sound.  I didn't find every story a hit, but the ones which were good (which crucially included the first one and the last one) were very good.

Then I read two Blandings books, but I couldn't tell you which they were.  It doesn't really matter: they're all good.  And now I'm on a Jeeves and Wooster, which I'm also enjoying very much.