Top 10 Christmas Action

Movies Of All Time

Every year it’s the same discussion (argument?) around the Thanksgiving dinner: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie, or just an action film that happens to take place over the holidays? Many Hallmark Channel aficionados would issue a resounding “no,” but there are many good points to be made on the “thumbs-up” side: For starters, its screenwriter—Steven E. de Souza—says it is. Also, it’s set on Christmas Eve; lights and trees and Santas are featured prominently, as is a soundtrack peppered with Christmas music (Let It Snow, Winter Wonderland, Ode To Joy). Plus, the word “Christmas” is mentioned 18 times in the shooting script, and the storyline is all about family being reunited by love and duress. What could be more heartwarming than that? Okay, now that we can agree that Christmas and action movies go together, here’s a list of the top ten such films of all time, compiled by Ranker.

Double Quotation Marks Are

Not Universal: In Fact, Far From It

As readers (or writers) of contemporary fiction, we’ve come to take double quotation marks (‘’) for granted. The AP style guide makes a clear case for them—“Don’t even think about using anything else,” it says—and any variation on that theme is tantamount to American editorial heresy. However, double quotes are not universal globally; in fact, the Oxford guide insists that you “use single quotation marks for direct speech or a quote, and double quotation marks for direct speech or a quote within that.” In fact, a recent article in Book Browse notes that quotation marks as we know them only dates back to the 16th century, making them a relatively new form of punctuation. Earlier manuscripts indicated speech in a variety of other ways: by indicating the speaker's name, italicizing speech, or underlining. The visual predecessor to quotation marks was the diple (>), a mark originating in ancient Greece that was placed in the margins of texts to draw attention to significant sections. Author James Joyce simply marked dialogue with a dash, and more and more contemporary authors are omitting them altogether.

Lisabeth Salander: Possibly The

Top Fictional Hacker Of All Time?

As online saboteurs and cyber-hackers have become increasingly prevalent in our everyday lives, they’ve also become permanently established in the fictional world of international intrigue and espionage. Perhaps the most unique and compelling of all digital pirates in contemporary crime fiction is the late Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant computer programmer with a darker-than-dark backstory whose cerebral acuity has elevated her to prominence within the international “Hacker Republic.” Blessed (cursed?) with an eidetic memory and unparalleled skills that allow her to penetrate virtually any hard drive, she navigates without fear through the shadowy realm of the dark web. I mention her because you’ll find her included prominently in this list of the top ten best hacker-themed books of all time, from The Daily Swig.

Highly Unusual: The Most Unique

Murder Weapons In Crime Fiction

Readers of Roald Dahl’s Lambs To The Slaughter (or viewers of several TV productions thereof) are familiar with the use of a frozen leg of lamb as a murder weapon, which the local constabulary have difficulty finding because the perpetrator roasted it and served it to them. It’s probably the most unique manner of death in contemporary crime fiction, which is limited by a finite assortment of methods available. As author Lynne Truss wrote in a CrimeReads article last week, “The range of plausible murder methods is disappointingly small. Basically, it’s stabbing, throat-cutting, strangling, shooting, drowning, burning alive (yikes), asphyxiating, pushing off a high building, or bonking on the head.” The amateur sleuth game of Clue (or Cluedo, to those who live across the pond) highlights some of these, including a candlestick, dagger, lead pipe, and revolver, but they do not mention murder by typewriter (as in Stephen King’s Misery) or poisoned manuscript pages (Umberto Eco’s The Name Of The Rose).

Ten Best Movie Podcasts Of 2020

While 2020 has demonstrably altered the way we watch movies, change in all things cinema has been coming for some time. The advent of such streaming services as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Sling makes it simple to view a blockbuster film on your laptop or phone, a seismic shift that also has transformed the way we talk about films. As the editors of Town And Country observed this past summer, “One of the most enjoyable developments on that front is undoubtedly the proliferation of movie podcasts—part history lesson and part fan club—that let cinephiles go behind the scenes of their favorite films to find out more about who made them and why they matter. Whether you're looking to deconstruct the latest action hit, go deep on the history of a Hollywood legend, or listen to actors and filmmakers dissect their craft, these are the movie podcasts [you] can't live without. And yes, they all go better with a tub of popcorn.” With that in mind, here are ten of the best movie podcasts of 2020.

TRUE ESPIONAGE

Tour de Force: The Bugatti

Spies Of World War II

In times of war, men and women find themselves irretrievably trapped on different sides of a political wall—right and wrong, light and dark, democracy or dictatorship. This maxim was particularly true of World War II, which saw ordinary folks step up to the thin line of freedom on an almost daily basis, fighting for liberté, égalité, fraternité. The best-known fictionalized example of this fight is the love triangle involving Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund, and Victor Lazlo in Casablanca, but there were literally thousands of real-life unsung heroes who were not fortunate enough to escape on a plane to Lisbon. Take, for example, the heroic and tragic tale of the Bugatti spies, three French car racers turned Allied sleuths who were night-dropped into France near Le Mans in 1942, and established an underground network of sabotage cells and reception committees for parachuting operations. This profile in Air Mail provides details of their harrowing experiences, and the consequences of their activities.

BOOK REVIEW

Jeffrey Rinek’s

In The Name Of The Children:

Compelling, Captivating, Horrific

No work of fiction could possibly be more compelling, captivating, and horrific as Jeffrey Rinek’s true crime memoir In The Name Of The Children. This book is a highly personal story that takes the reader into the real-life investigations of a career FBI agent tasked with pursuing and capturing some of the highest-profile sexual predators of the past three decades. Blessed (possibly cursed) with an exceptional ability to draw the truth out of suspects who defied polygraphs and other interrogative techniques, Rinek was able to delve deep into the minds of perpetrators responsible for committing some of the most heinous crimes against children, enabling the Bureau to convict and incarcerate them. A stickler for details, he also explores the inner workings of the FBI itself, including the internal politics, outdated processes, and questionable decisions made by supervisors who sometimes were driven more by ego than deduction. What make this book even more remarkable is that Rinek reveals his own private battle with the trauma and stress he and his family endured as he was working to bring these pedophiles to justice. At a time when political forces attempt to distract and defame the nation’s most-respected domestic intelligence and security service, In The Name Of The Children is a much-needed gulp of pure oxygen—and should be required reading for every new and veteran agent.

HOLIDAY GIFT BUYING

Looking for a unique gift for your mystery-reading loved ones? Try the Jack Connor trilogy—Palmetto Blood, Carolina Heat, and Hurricane Blues—that features an Iraq war veteran with severe PTSD who cleans up death scenes for a living. Soon to be joined by a fourth novel in the series, Skeleton Key, coming in February.