Agatha

Screenshot: NetflixLines are drawn at The School for Good and Evil, the place where “every fairytale begins.” Friends Sophie (Beetlejuice on Broadway’s Sophia Ann Caruso) and Agatha (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series’ Sofia Wylie) are set up to become great enemies when they’re enlisted in opposing schools—yes, one on the good side and the other on the evil side. Things get complicated when they realize there may have been a mistake. The film, directed by Paul Feig (A Simple Favor, Bridesmaids), is based onthe…

Agatha Christie was arguably the first modern literary celebrity, and it follows that her long writing life, from her first published novel in 1920 to her death in 1976 at the age of 85, has been thoroughly picked over, not only by journalists during her lifetime but by the author herself in her autobiography. Any biographer wishing to bring a new perspective to Christie’s story is therefore working within obvious limitations, not least that many of the most intimate and revealing letters written or received by her were…

Fun and festive frights can be found at Oogie Boogie Bash at Disney California Adventure during Halloween time, as well as at Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. Disney Parks recently invited io9 to attend both Halloween experiences on a tour filled with tricks and treats; we…Read more... Fun and festive frights can be found at Oogie Boogie Bash at Disney California Adventure during Halloween time, as well as at Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Walt Disney World’s Magic…

The witty, pre-pandemic Daniel Craig vehicle Knives Out whetted an appetite once more for spoofing Agatha Christie. Queue-jumping that film’s sequel (due out later this year) is this rival meta-spoof, the feature debut of Tom George, whose imaginative BBC Three Cotswolds slacker comedy This Country offers few hints that a postwar, London-set whodunnit might be George’s next achievement. See How They Run ponders that cornerstone – or millstone – of the Christie legacy, her tourist bucket-listed play The Mousetrap, focusing…

Dir: Tom George. Starring: Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan, Adrien Brody, Ruth Wilson, Reece Shearsmith, Harris Dickinson, David Oyelowo. 12A, 98 minutes.Could the all-star whodunnit finally save us from the monotony of superheroes? That’s the tantalising promise embedded in See How They Run, which may feel as cynically constructed as any of Marvel’s corporate-minded affairs, but goes down as sweet and light as a fondant fancie. It’s an equal-parts concoction of Rian Johnson’s wry, self-aware Knives Out and the aristocratic…

Being threatened, as we are, with an endless string of ropey yet lucrative Agatha Christie movies with Kenneth Branagh phoning in anuzzer rurbeesh turrrn as the Belgian sleuth, this comedy is a relief. It’s a likably silly and relentlessly camp whodunnit spoof from screenwriter Mark Chappell, centred on Agatha Christie’s long-running play The Mousetrap, and an imagined brutal homicide that took place backstage in its London West End theatre in 1953 – when the production was a mere 100 performances old.A brash Hollywood…

If Agatha Christie remains elusive, it’s not for the want of those trying to find her. Janet Morgan’s official biography of 1984 and Laura Thompson’s equally detailed but ultimately more impressionistic portrait of 2007 have both been updated and reissued; and there are numerous other analyses that try to understand how the woman who routinely described herself as a housewife became Britain’s bestselling novelist of all time. Enter historian Lucy Worsley, whose declared intention is to rescue Christie, who died in 1976 at…

Agatha Christie was sitting quietly on a train when she overheard a stranger saying her name. In the carriage, she said, were “two women discussing me, both with copies of my paperback editions on their knees”. They had no idea of the identity of their fellow passenger, and proceeded to discuss the most famous author in the world. “I hear,” said one of the ladies, “she drinks like a fish.”I love this story because it sums up so much about Agatha Christie’s life. They both had her paperbacks. Of course they did. Christie…

One of the lasting mysteries about the Disney Plus series WandaVision is how exactly Agatha Harkness knew of the potentially fourth-wall breaking Evan Peters who had previously played Quicksilver in another film franchise. When fans got their first glimpse of Evan Peters appearing in WandaVision, many assumed that the multiverse had finally broken open and we were about to get wacky returns of many characters from previous film continuities. In the end though, it turned out to be a character named Ralph Bohner.…

Loki season 2, Echo, Ironheart, and Secret Invasion will all premiere in 2023 on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar. Meanwhile, the WandaVision spin-off has been retitled Agatha: Coven of Chaos, and it's expected in late 2023 or early 2024. At San Diego Comic-Con 2022, Marvel Studios unveiled six live-action series that will be part of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Daredevil: Born Again is the sixth — it's the biggest of all but it arrives last in 2024.) Marvel Studios also showcased a trailer for Secret Invasion…