News

Meryl Streep joined the cast of Only Murders in the Building in season three and returned for the series in season four. Her character Loretta Durkin, a struggling actress, eventually becomes a love interest for Martin Shorts character Oliver Putnam.

As the relationship blossomed on screen, rumors began to fly off screen suggesting a real-life romance. The pair insist theyre just friends, but its hard to deny the wonderful on-screen chemistry and evidence that fans feel suggests something more might be brewing between the co-stars.

Meryl Streep and Martin Short Have Both Endured Loss Their Relationship Timelines

Meryl Streep, an A-list actor with a record 21 Academy Award nominations and three wins for her best movies, has been acting since the 1970s. Despite how successful she has become, Streep always kept her personal life out of the spotlight. She was dating and lived with actor John Cazale in the 1970s. Sadly,...

Emma Thompson is talking some sense and sensibility into the modern romantic comedy debate.

The “Sense and Sensibility” and “Love Actually” actress recently called out the assumption that rom-coms hinge on formulaic tropes, comparing the genre to other types of films, such as presumably male-centric action movies.

“Romantic comedies are no more formulaic than any other kind of movie. We’re just ruder about them in the same way as what was described even by Jane Austen as ‘stupid female literature,'” Thompson told Variety. “George Eliot said all of these gothic romances that started when women started to write books were absolutely shat upon from a great height by pretty much everybody. But what’s interesting is that the male storytelling, the ‘this is where I save the world,’ it’s just as obvious, just as if not more repetitive.”

Thompson continued, “A really good romantic comedy is actually quite hard to come by.

Maeve Wiley of Sex Education is known for many things from her ever-changing hair to her cool-girl attitude, but most notably, Maeve is a devout reader. Since the first episode, she has always had a book in her hand from feminist literature to the classics, and consistently makes references to her favorite works. Though these novels may seem like arbitrary details, they may have more depth than casual viewers might think.

Prior to Sex Education's upcoming (and starkly different) season 4, Maeve is notorious at Moordale High for being tough, at times unapproachable, but also incredibly intelligent. She uses her wits to help Otis with their sex therapy business and often offers wisdom to Aimee on her personal problems. However, despite being street-smart and emotionally intelligent, Maeve's intellect is truly rooted in her love of reading.

By having her current reads and book references come up again and again, the show...

Now returned from its brief hiatus, Legends of Tomorrow will continue on Tuesday next week and some new images have been released for the forthcoming episode “The Great British Fake-Off.”

Like many Legends episode titles that riff on famous properties or phrases, it’s merely referencing the wildly popular genteel cooking show, and will sadly not feature Sara and co. finding themselves having to infiltrate a cake decorating competition to save George Eliot from being poisoned by Charlotte Brontë being influenced by a demonic Jane Austen, or something equally demented that we’ve come to expect for the show. Instead, it sees Constantine and Zari searching for another piece of the Loom of Fate in Edwardian England and becoming trapped in a boarding house with a number of Encores it’s safe to assume don’t wish anything good for them.

The clashing period outfits seen in the stills promise...

In the novel “Middlemarch,” George Eliot praises those of us who do good without getting our fifteen minutes of fame: “…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number […]

The post A Hidden Life Review: Malick takes us back to the 1940s appeared first on Shockya.com.

Jessica Chastain’s Freckle Films has optioned the movie rights to Dinitia Smith’s historical drama “The Honeymoon: A Novel of George Eliot.”

Smith’s novel, published in 2016, recounts Eliot’s honeymoon in Venice in June, 1880, following her marriage to John Walter Cross, a man 20 years younger. Eliot, who was 60 at the time, was recovering from the death of George Henry Lewes, her companion of 26 years, and contemplating questions about her physical decline, her fading appeal, and the prospect of loneliness.

The story explores the possibilities of redemption and happiness in an imperfect union. She died in December, 1880.

George Eliot was the pen name for Mary Ann Evans, who decided to use a pen name so that her work would be judged on its own merits rather than risk being stereotyped at a time when much of women’s writing was limited to lighthearted romances. She became one of the...

A biting sense of topicality pervades this passionate account of the murder of protesters at a mass pro-democracy protest in Manchester in 1819

Mike Leigh brings an overwhelming simplicity and severity to this historical epic, which begins with rhetoric and ends in violence. There is force, grit and, above all, a sense of purpose; a sense that the story he has to tell is important and real, and that it needs to be heard right now. The film has an uncompromising seriousness, as much like George Eliot’s novel Felix Holt as Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy, the poem inspired by Peterloo.

On 16 August 1819, at what we would now call a pro-democracy demonstration in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, an excitable band of cavalry and yeomanry – whose commander had airily absented himself for a day at the races – charged with sabres drawn into a crowd of 100,000 unarmed people, many of...

[Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers from Season 2 of “Anne With an E,” including the finale “The Growing Good of the World.”]

The first clue of the feminist direction “Anne With an E” would take in Season 2 is in the episode titles. Each is a quote by George Eliot, the nom de plume of writer Mary Anne Evans, a woman who broke the rules to make it in a man’s world during Victorian times. Although Season 1 had hinted that Anne (Amybeth McNulty) would be fighting back against gender norms and even received an Eliot novel from Aunt Josephine (Deborah Grover), this year, multiple stories converged to send a firm message about what women can do.

The main storyline in the finale “The Growing Good of the World,” in particular challenged the town of Avonlea to embrace change in the form of the female schoolteacher Miss Stacy (Joanna Douglas). Even though her teaching methods were unorthodox, and therefore suspect...

Fair warning to Christopher Plummer, or any future actor who might try to take on the role of J. Paul Getty on FX’s “Trust” — you’ll have to go through Donald Sutherland first, dead or alive.

The FX series, executive produced by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy, has a three-season plan in place for tracking the story of the Getty family, one that will trip back and forth in time to document different eras. And the 82-year-old Sutherland told IndieWire that given his age, he had “warned” FX’s John Landgraf that if they wanted to ensure that he’d appear in future seasons, they should go ahead and shoot scenes with him now.

Because here’s how he feels about being recast, should the worst happen and he not be able to return: “If I’m dead and there’s a possibility to come back from Heaven — or...

This strange, exasperating documentary reveals the women behind the persona of the bestselling male writer who claimed to be the son of a prostitute

This intriguing if sometimes exasperating documentary features intertitles in punky cut-out lettering, maybe in homage to The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle. It is about a notorious literary hoax, from an era when misery memoirs were all the rage. Ten years ago, the bestselling young author Jt LeRoy – supposedly the son of a prostitute, writing harrowing fiction avowedly based on his horrific childhood – turned out to be a woman called Laura Albert. But was that a hoax? Didn’t Mary Ann Evans claim to be a man called George Eliot?

Related: Jt LeRoy unmasked: the extraordinary story of a modern literary hoax

Continue reading...

Film critic Thelma Adams moderated a provocative discussion with filmmakers Courteney Cox (feature directorial debut "Just Before I Go," Friends actress, actress/producer/director Cougar Town), Debra Granik (Academy Award nominated director/co-writer "Winter’s Bone" nominated for four Oscars, "Down to the Bone" Best Director at 2004 Sundance Film Festival), Leah Meyerhoff ("I Believe in Unicorns" her debut feature premiered at SXSW 2014, previous award-winning short films have screened in over 200 film festivals), and Jenna Ricker (wrote, directed and produced her first feature film, "Ben's Plan" awarded Best Drama at the Aof Festival, Distinguished Debut at the London Independent Festival, and honored with the Mira Nair Award for Rising Female Filmmaker).

According to Celluloid Ceiling (the report by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University) only 6% of directors working in the top movies in 2013 movies were women; a 3-point drop from 2012. Only 16% directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, cinematographers in 2013 were women. Women directors working independently, outside the Hollywood studio system, are finding more opportunities, but there is still a vast inequity.

Moderator Thelma Adams cited some additional statistics to which the panel commented about their dismay of the reality of these numbers before jumping in on the question:

What is this thing with the title women’s panel?

Granik: There’s always a question whether it’s a ghettoization of women or raising them up by using the word “women” as a gender identifier. Using language that allows a person to be a person without a gender identifier can feel more powerful than using the word “woman”.

Meyerhoff: We all struggle with how to identify as a female director. When I came to film, I felt I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. I founded a female filmmaker collective --Film Fatales (http://www.filmfatalesnyc.com/#!leah-meyerhoff/c14fk) for this reason. There’s strength in numbers.

Cox: I had one man on set of a project I directed, who would go to other people to get their opinions before he would come to me, the director. I called him up so I could understand why he was doing that. And then I told him to get over it.

How do stories live without gender?

Kathryn Bigelow’s name came up in the discussion (the first woman director to win the Oscar) and how Hurt Locker was not categorized in Hollywood terms as a female film. The panelists agreed that there are myths about what audiences want, and wanting to make movies about women was important despite the naysayers; there is indeed an audience for these films – the box office numbers confirm this.

Whining?

I asked the panel their advice to student filmmakers about breaking into the (independent and/or Hollywood) industry, opening my question with the quote from director Agnès Varda: “Stop categorizing us as women filmmakers,” which I cited in an article I wrote about her at the Locarno Film Festival this year, and the vitriolic Facebook post comment I received from a male producer: “Stop complaining and just make movies.”

Granik: We’re going through pushback. There’s often that accusation of complaining, calling women “whiners” when discussing this topic. The reality is that it’s not so easy for women to get a film financed. For students, they need to come to their power and work together as a collective. Their power is not to look at the industry for reasons to make films; go smaller. Work together

Ricker: I was on panel at Sundance and a producer on the panel said: “I won’t trust money with women directors.” The producer was female. For students at college now, they need to start working with their peers -- these are the people with whom you’ll be forming meaningful work relationships, which will continue after you graduate. Take advantage of these relationships at school.

Perhaps using male pseudonyms might further women’s careers

Adams : There was George Eliot.

The directors agreed that their first names were often a hindrance in getting hired, and jokinly added that in order to get the word out about women directors was to start the hashtag: #wheresthecock.

Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting at Purchase College Suny, and presents international seminars on screenwriting and film. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com, http://su-city-pictures.com/wpblog...

See 26 More Clooney Wedding Photos! Subscribe now to People's digital edition and get 26 Bonus photos from inside the ceremony, the parties and more, starting today - and pick up the new issue on newsstands.He's won Oscars and nabbed Golden Globes. Heck, he's even taken home the MTV Movie Award for best breakthrough performance in 1996 for From Dusk Till Dawn. So what accolades are up next for George Clooney? Perhaps a Nobel Peace Prize. At least that's what his close friend John Lambros predicted, maybe only half-jokingly, for the actor - and his barrister bride, Amal Alamuddin - during a...

Every week, Vulture faces the big, important questions in entertainment and comes to some creative conclusions. This week we parsed the Oscar nominations, collected the best moments from the Golden Globes, and revisited George Eliot's Middlemarch. You may have read some of these stories below, but you certainly didn’t read them all. We forgive you.Q: What's the big news from the Oscars?A: While there weren't any Ben Affleck–size shockers this season, there were still a number of pleasant surprises, such as Sally Hawkins's Best Supporting Actress nod for her work in Blue Jasmine. For movie critic David Edelstein, the nominations confirmed that this was "one of the most remarkable years ever for lead male performances." To get yourself up to speed, you can listen to the nominees for Best Original Song and stream the nominees for Best Documentary Feature. The full list of Oscar nominees is here.

Writers often worry about the dangers of outside influence, but what about the non-literary inspirations they are far more comfortable admitting to? Andrew O'Hagan talks to six novelists about their passion for a second artform

The divine counsels decided, once upon a time, that influence is bad and that too much agency is the enemy of invention. Harold Bloom can't be blamed for that: he certainly pointed to the danse macabre of influence and anxiety, but to him the association was perfectly creative. Elsewhere, writers have always been blamed for being too much like other writers, or too much like themselves, and even now, in the crisis of late postmodernism, we find it hard to believe that writers might live happily in a state of influence and cross-reference. Yet anybody who knows anything about writers knows that they love their sweet influences.

What I've noticed, though, is that the influences...

They're funny and passionate. One of them can even rock a pastel pantsuit. Hadley Freeman hails her female heroes whose accomplishments deserve some serious respect

Betty White

These days, White is mainly known for two things: 1. Being old, and 2. Being funny about it. But there is so much more to her than geriatric self-mockery. Aside from her brilliant performances on The Golden Girls and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, White was one of the first women to take control of her own acting career by co-founding a TV production company in the 1950s. She was also nominated for the first best-actress Emmy in 1950, and her book about this period of her life, Here We Go Again: My Life in Television, is as funny as it is inspirational. Still sharp as a tack in her 10th decade, she is not only a hilarious actor but a hysterical off-the-cuff guest on American talk shows,...

London — He may just be a footnote to history, but Dr. Isachar Zacharie is having a posthumous mini-moment, thanks to the Hollywood-sparked surge of interest in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

Zacharie was buried in London's famed Highgate Cemetery in 1900, but he is only being added to the cemetery guide Friday, joining such notables as communist philosopher Karl Marx, novelist George Eliot and punk pioneer Malcolm McLaren as a likely draw for visitors to the north London landmark.

Zacharie's claim to fame? He was Lincoln's foot doctor. And a good one at that, if the president's signed endorsement can be taken at face value.

"Dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with great success, and considerable addition to my comfort," the 16th president of the United States wrote in 1862, when the United States was gripped by civil war.

Zacharie's connection to Lincoln has long been known to historians, but Ian Dungavell,...

What made film-maker Judd Apatow want to be be funny? Or inspired novelist Stephenie Meyer to create a world of vampires? In My Ideal Bookshelf, more than 100 writers and other cultural figures were asked to share the literary journeys that helped them realise their ambitions and find success. Here are four

• What would your 'ideal bookshelf' be, and why?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, novelist: 'All my characters drank ginger beer'

I grew up in a university town in Nigeria. I was an early reader and, what I read as a young child, were mostly British and American books. I was also an early writer. And when I began to write, at about the age of seven – stories in pencil with crayon illustrations, which my poor mother was obligated to read – I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading.

All my characters were white and drank ginger beer, because the...

London, Nov 12: Literary works by Thomas Hardy, George Eliot and Em Forster have fallen in popularity over the last two decades, according to a new research.

They are the books that have stood the test of time - not to mention the ones we are all supposed to have read, but an analysis of reading habits has revealed that some of the most celebrated classics of English literature have fallen out of fashion in recent years, the Telegraph reported.

While their popularity plummet over the last two decades, those by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and George Orwell have fared much better.

The study involves a comparison of lending.

We’re shocked that Summit Entertainment and Stephenie Meyer have yet to announce some kind of detox program to help those of us who’ve spent up to seven years addicted to the Twilight books and movies. Aren’t they worried about the withdrawal we’ll all experience once we’ve seen Breaking Dawn – Part 2 a few times and have no more Edward and Bella to look forward to? Well, not to suggest that there is anything that can replace Forks and the Cullens in your heart, but we have a few new obsessions you might consider taking up. Which you choose all depends on why you became a Twi-crack addict in the first place. Read on and then suggest your own!

If you love Twilight because of …

… its star-crossed lovers plot, you’ll love:

Warm Bodies, the novel by Isaac Marion and upcoming Summit movie starring Nicholas Hoult. Zombie...

Did I just drink some Felix Felicis?

That’s the only explanation I can think of for how lucky I feel to check out this EW exclusive video of part of an extended chat between Daniel Radcliffe and J.K. Rowling.

When their talk was first released on the Blu-ray for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, fans were psyched to see the woman behind the story sit down with the star and discuss all matters of Hogwarts, fame, and Quidditch.

And now, thanks to Warner Bros.’ Harry Potter Wizard’s Collection set, out Sept. 7, you can watch the full version of that conversation.

From Captain Mainwaring to Patrick Bateman, positive representations of the banking profession are hardly abundant

Why are there so few positive images of bankers? One reason surely is that the banker exists as a figure on to which we project things we cannot stand about ourselves – how we are mired in acquisitiveness and inflamed by the desire to put our Gucci-loafered foot on the throat of our fellow man or indeed woman. Or maybe it's just me.

Bankers have an even worse reputation than journalists in novels and films. At least us grubby hacks sometimes bring down presidents or topple venal corporations in Hollywood cinema

Bankers are rarely allowed such narrative development. Instead they are often irreversible reptiles, tempting us innocent Adam and Eves into their sick, debauched world where we will max out our credit cards. Think Michael Douglas's Gordon Gekko in Wall Street and his dreary eulogy to avarice: "Greed,...

From World & Film

Hollywood seems to be getting serious in its on-again, off-again romance with the nineteenth-century novel. Things started heating up late last year when director Joe Wright (“Atonement”) fast-tracked his high-gloss production of “Anna Karenina.” Then came “Submarine” director Richard Ayoade’s very promising cinematic rendering of Dostoyevsky’s "The Double," starring Mia Wasikowska, who’s suddenly become the redux romantic heroine of choice with her finely calibrated performance in last year’s gothic iteration of “Jane Eyre” and her upcoming title role in the upcoming adaptation of Flaubert’s "Madame Bovary", which added Ezra Miller, the creepy kid from “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” to its talented cast earlier this week.

Now it seems that romantic novels may have upgraded to “trending” status — a distinction that places the last century’s literary giants in dubious company alongside the likes of “The Avengers” and John Travolta’s...

Superbad and Paul director Greg Mottola is in talks to adapt a novel from Jeffrey Eugenides called The Marriage Plot for the big screen. This is definitely a different kind of film for Mottola. The story is described as a coming-of-age love triangle that takes place in the early 1980s, and focuses on a "bookish English major caught up in the affections of two men. As the romance of her favorite 19th century love stories begins to seep into her own life, the trio move from college to the real world."

I've enjoyed Mottola's films over the years, and I'm sure he'll do a fine job with this. I'm just not how much interest many of you will have in it. Is this something you'd watch?

Here's the description of the book:

It’s the early 1980s. The country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever.

Writer/director Greg Mottola has been tapped to adapt Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jeffrey Eugendies’ novel The Marriage Plot. Mottola is probably best known for helming Superbad, but he also wrote and directed the excellent coming-of-age dramedy Adventureland and helmed Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in 2011’s Paul. Variety reports that Mottola is in early talks to write the script for the project, and they speculate that Mottola could also direct given that his schedule is clear in the near future. The story focuses on a love triangle involved three graduates of Brown in the 1980s. Producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network) acquired the feature rights last November, and it appears he’s eager to get things going. Mottola most recently directed the pilot and created the visual language for Aaron Sorkin’s highly anticipated new HBO series The Newsroom, also produced by Rudin. I’m a huge, huge fan of Adventureland,...

What's writer-director Greg Mottola been up to lately? After a trifecta of films in "Superbad," "Adventureland" and "Paul," the writer-director was noted to be adapting Leanne Shaption's 'Important Artifacts' for Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman, before turning to television to helm the pilot for Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom," which will air next month We now have another project to add to the mix with Mottola teaming with literature-loving "Social Network" producer Scott Rudin and Sony for an adaptation of "The Virgin Suicides" author Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot."

Mottola will produce and adapt Eugenides' novel although, at this stage, it's unclear whether he will helm the project -- Variety simply speculates, noting that he doesn't have anything on the horizon, implying it might be on his radar. The story does sound like something in Mottola's wheelhouse as it's an '80s-set story of a bookish English major caught...

Greg Mottola, best known for directing Superbad and Paul , is in talks to adapt Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot for the big screen, Variety reports. Released last year, the novel is officially described as follows: It.s the early 1980s. The country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafés on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine tries to understand why .it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had...

With there being more than six months between its acquisition and this potentially big item, any and all development on The Marriage Plot has been conducted behind closed doors — except, obviously, until now. Variety reports that producer Scott Rudin is angling toward Greg Mottola (Superbad, Adventureland) to direct, having already put him in early talks for the Sony-backed Jeffrey Eugenides adaptation.

The latter’s novel, published just last year, is an ’80s-set story of three recent Brown graduates trying to find their place in the world and, along the way, getting into a love triangle. The lead, Madeleine Hanna, is “a bookish English major” who finds parallels with a relationship that forms between her and two friends, Leonard Bankhead and Mitchell Grammaticus — two very different friends, of course. After they all graduate from college and make decisions about the direction of their lives, things only become more emotionally tangled.

If you ask me,...

Catherine Tate is to star in new Sky Arts comedy 'Psychobitches'. The comedienne will take on the dual roles of Adolf Hitler's girlfriend Eva Braun and French singer Edith Piaf in the programme which is part of the channel's Playhouse Presents series. The 30 minute comedy, puts history's most famous women into the psychiatrist's chair and shines a spotlight on their psychoses and obsessions. Starring Rebecca Front as the therapist, the programme will also feature Sharon Horgan as Jane Austen and Frieda Kahlo, Katy Brand as Joan of Arc and George Eliot, Sheila Reid as Mother Theresa, Samantha Spiro as Mary Whitehouse and...

Kevin Spacey begins his run as the deranged titular king in "Richard III" tonight at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. Directed by Sam Mendes, the play reunites the actor and director, who previously worked together on "American Beauty," a film that earned them both Academy Awards.

"Richard III" is the final production in The Bridge Project, a collaboration between Bam, The Old Vic and Neal Street theaters that launched in 2009 with Mendes' staging of "The Winter's Tale" and "The Cherry Orchard," and continued in 2010 with "As You Like It" and "The Tempest," also by Mendes.

"Richard III" completed its run at The Old Vic in 2011 and embarked on an international tour later that year, including stops in Hong Kong, Istanbul, Beijing, Sydney, Doha and San Francisco.

The play has received solid reviews abroad -- Michael Billington at the Guardian called it "a beautifully clear, coherent modern-dress production,...

Charlotte Brontë detested Jane Austen. Hyperbole? Listen to the words of the author of Jane Eyre, writing to Gh Lewes, the free-thinking editor and author who became George Eliot's partner. In 1848 – after the novel's publication had brought "Currer Bell" (Charlotte's pseudonym) notoriety among the London literati – Lewes advised her to read Pride and Prejudice. "Why do you like Miss Austen so much?" Charlotte – "puzzled" – replies. "I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers," with "no open country – no fresh air – no blue hill – no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses."...

As Deadline tells us, super-producer Scott Rudin is going to Jeffrey Eugenides for one of his approximately thousand forthcoming projects, with it being reported that the Oscar winner, “sing his own money,” has picked up the rights to The Marriage Plot. Eugenides‘ most recent novel was only published last month, but another work from the author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex — something that doesn’t come very often — was sure to garner some kind of attention for an adaptation.

The book centers on “three Brown graduates in the early 1980s who wrestle with love, religion and coming of age.” If the early involvement of someone so esteemed and that Ivy League synopsis weren’t enough to give off a vibe of prestige, several strong reviews should help push you over. Not that you have to think this will be good; things are just looking up for the project as of now....

In the prudish days of Victorian England, a quarter of London’s female population suffered from hysteria — a misguided catch-all medical diagnosis of female malaise, melancholia, and anxiety. Suffering women of means found treatment from male medical specialists — quacks actually — who offered “pelvic massage.” Fortunately, there was a brilliant doctor willing to roll up his sleeves and get to the heart of the matter. In Hysteria, a romantic comedy that premiered Thursday night at the Toronto Film Festival, Hugh Dancy portrays Mortimer Granville, the buttoned-up but idealistic inventor of the vibrator. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the progressive daughter of London’s...

Previously on Torchwood, Captain Jack had some vertical and horizontal-type gay sex, which didn’t please most of you as much as the titillating media foreplay that proceeded it. Post-coital he called Gwen to talk about their complicated love affair, but she shut him down because she, like us, was over that shit after Series One. Esther proved herself competent as a sleuth/hacker, while Rex proved himself soulless. Good thing that have a mask for that these days.

Four!

The People: [They are still very much living.]

Suburbia

Esther: The way my sister has her windows boarded up and pit-bulls guarding the front porch and a cross-bow aimed at my forehead, you’d think it’s the Apocalypse around here.

The camera: [Hugs her face]

Esther’s sister: I am batshit crazy, which you’ve always known, Sister, but now I am batshit crazy and locked inside my house with two small children, both of whom are wearing HazMat suits,...

It's over: The 2010-11 TV season as measured by Nielsen officially ended Wednesday night (May 25). It was a rough year for new series -- only a handful of first-year shows made it to a second season -- but a number of veteran shows had strong seasons, and a few in particular went out with a bang.

As for others, well, let's just say that it's probably a good thing they have the summer off to rejuvenate.

We've watched dozens of season and series finales over the past couple of months. Here are Zap2it's picks (in alphabetical order) for the best and worst of the bunch.

The Best

"Brothers & Sisters": As a season finale, it was excellent. All the major stories of the season were wrapped up with just a few small teases for the next season, and we got a fun wedding with a hilarious musical number by the men.

Why are we always driven by the elusive goal of living forever? A new book argues that we should give up on perfectability and embrace our mortality. Malcolm Jones talks to philosopher John Gray.

The English political philosopher John Gray has a quarrel with progress. It's not that he doesn't believe in it. Indeed, he cheerfully admits that science and technology have, in many ways, improved our lot. "Remember what DeQuincey said in the 1820s in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater: a quarter of all human suffering is toothache. It would've been true then. Now we don't suffer that," Gray says, by phone from his home in Bath. "Progress in dental science is real. And it's only one example of a respect in which the growth of knowledge is absolutely real."

Related story on The Daily Beast: Rise of the Superbacteria

The problem, according to Gray, is that while technology improves,...

Brothers & Sisters will not be returning to ABC in the fall. Something tells us the producers knew the season 5 finale would likely be the series finale when they ended it with Nora quoting George Eliot in voiceover at Sarah’s wedding — “It’s never too late to be what you might have been” — and dancing to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” In case you missed it, watch the final moment of the series below. Rip, Brothers & Sisters. You were no longer the show we fell in love with, so we can’t pretend we’re devastated to see you go,...

... to be what you might have been. - George Eliot

With the requisite pre-wedding chaos, twists and tear-jerking moments abound from endearing characters, Brothers & Sisters concluded its fifth season Sunday.

The amusingly-titled "Walker Down the Aisle" featured Tommy doing just that, returning to escort his big sister as she tied the knot for a second time with Luc.

There's a lot going on elsewhere on relationship fronts. Saul is worried about going to the next level with Jonathan, while Justin has strong feelings for Tyler.

Oh, and Kitty is pregnant with Seth’s baby. [crickets]

Before the wedding, Luc is thrown off when his mom, Gabriela, arrives without his dad, who he was expecting to see with his mother for the first time in, oh, decades.

Luc frets that something happened he's unaware of, while Paige's boyfriend is allowed at the reception but not the wedding, and Brody is persona non grata,...

The Walker wedding extravaganza on "Brothers & Sisters" went just as expected, because everything going awry is how this show rolls. A 180-degree turn from the Season 4 finale crash that left the Walker clan in pieces, this episode was a nice shift for the Season 5 (possibly series) finale.

The episode begins with Sarah (Rachel Griffiths) having doubts about marrying Luc (Gilles Marini) while she's on the outs with Nora (Sally Field) over dating Brody (guest star Beau Bridges). Halfway through the episode, several unlucky turns in the wedding have added to her already fragile state and Sarah takes a breather right before she's to walk down the aisle.

The entire episode seems to pivot on the next scene. Brody is there in his mobile home and lures Sarah in with a beer. Once inside, he tells her that the necklace she picked from Nora's jewelry box is the one he gave Nora when they were young,...

Goethe cursed attempts to set Faust to music – but composers kept trying regardless. As Terry Gilliam's version opens, Stuart Jeffries recounts a litany of depression, devils and duels

There is a curse on any composer rash enough to set Goethe's Faust to music. The German literary genius declared only Mozart capable of adapting his epic drama of damnation, sexual betrayal, witchcraft and freeform philosophic meditation. Selfishly, Mozart had died in 1791, almost 20 years before Goethe completed part one. So forever after, we have been doomed to suffer Faustian adaptations that the author would have disdained.

Perhaps Goethe's curse was issued because of That Thing he had with Beethoven. When Goethe met Beethoven (What a film! Hugh Bonneville as genteel, bewigged Goethe; Russell Crowe as Beethoven, surly and spoiling for a fight), the former bowed like a courtier; the latter didn't even remove his hat. You can see how...

"Death disports with writers more cruelly than with the rest of humankind," Cynthia Ozick wrote in a recent issue of The New Republic.

"The grave can hardly make more mute those who were voiceless when alive--dust to dust, muteness to muteness. But the silence that dogs the established writer's noisy obituary, with its boisterous shock and busy regret, is more profound than any other.

"Oblivion comes more cuttingly to the writer whose presence has been felt, argued over, championed, disparaged--the writer who is seen to be what Lionel Trilling calls a Figure. Lionel Trilling?

"Consider: who at this hour (apart from some professorial specialist currying his "field") is reading Mary McCarthy, James T. Farrell, John Berryman, Allan Bloom, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Edmund Wilson, Anne Sexton, Alice Adams, Robert Lowell, Grace Paley, Owen Barfield, Stanley Elkin, Robert Penn Warren, Norman Mailer, Leslie Fiedler, R.P. Blackmur, Paul Goodman, Susan Sontag,...

An English prof gains a cult following on campus through "Jeffbook," his 3,221-entry (and counting) experiment in literary criticism, conducted exclusively on Facebook. His StairMaster mastery and Red Bull-slamming ability may also have helped.

Some academics wring their hands over whether they should submit their pensées exclusively to sterling, closed, peer-reviewed journals, or whether they should submit to less stodgy open-access journals. And then there's Princeton's Jeff Nunokawa, who opted for a very different publishing venue: Facebook.

Jeff Nunokawa is "master" of Princeton's Rockefeller College. (Some universities call their dorms "colleges"; a "master" is a sort of professorial social chair.) And according to Princeton Alumni Weekly, Nunokawa is among Princeton's most legendary figures.

Rumors about Nunokawa abound. Some people claim that he reads a book a day, others that he never sleeps. He can quote pages of poetry from memory. “He does an hour on the StairMaster every day at...

From an unflinching portrayal of the life of a Victorian prostitute in The Crimson Petal to a comically dreadful wife in the film adaptation of One Day, Romola Garai is set for stardom. But while she is uninhibited in her work, don't try asking about her private life...

Ker-flunk, ker-flunk. Romola Garai thumps across the wooden floor of the photography studio with the grace of a flat-footed Cyberman. She seems unable to control her shoes – a pair of Christian Louboutin platform heels. She looks so elegantly beautiful from the ankle up that her clod-hopping progress is particularly amusing. In the end the photographer comments.

"Yeah," says Garai and stares dispassionately at her feet. "I can't really do shoes."

Garai, it transpires, has very firm ideas about what she does and doesn't do; the way life should be lived, what's important and what she can really do without, thank you very much.

Filmmaker James Ricketson applied for script development funding using a pseudonym and a fake Abn number but the result was counterproductive, to say the least. Should artists be allowed to use pseudonyms when applying for public funding, or is the Government right to scrutinise such actions, taking them to their last consequences?

Ricketson writes:

“It is an offense under the Nsw Crimes Act,” the bureaucrat informs me in a letter, “to dishonestly make a false statement with the intention of obtaining a financial advantage.”

My crime: Making an application for state Government funds to write a screenplay. The bureaucrat’s title: ‘Deputy Director General, State & Regional Development and Tourism, Industry & Investment Nsw’, herinafter referred to as Ddgsrdtiinsw.

It all began when the chief executive of Screen Nsw, Tania Chambers, wrote to me in relation to a script development application of mine: “In your Preliminary Notes, you state that: ‘(name of...

Computer scientists and an English literature professor teamed up to map social networks in 19th-century British novels. In the process, they upended a tenet in literary theory. Welcome to Jane Austen's Facebook.

Facebook may be the subject of an Oscar-contending movie, but it has yet to become the subject of great literature. Nonetheless, though the social networking site is relatively new, social networks themselves are not. Indeed, they're as old as society itself, and as such, social networks are reflected in works of literature. The thought occurred a few years ago to a Columbia University PhD candidate in computational linguistics, David Elson. Also a film buff and lover of stories, Elson wondered if there might be a way to use software to map social networks within novels.

“I started thinking about how storytelling works as a language, with a syntax that we pick up as children and that differs from culture to culture,...

Something terrible happened in Cambodia about 30 years ago. But exactly what that was has been lost. The “Killing Fields” movie and the survivor literature have created a powerful but now rather formulaic evocation of a place and time of terror. I kept hearing this phrase of George Eliot’s rattling round my head: ‘that roar which lies on the other side of silence.’ I wanted to hear the roar.

I felt it necessary to get, somehow, to the epicenter of the storm that engulfed the country. If you could, as it were, get past the corpses and survivor accounts to the people who were actually causing the deaths, then you might learn something more profound about violence and what it is to be human.

When I first went to Phnom Penh in 2006, I planned to make a film about the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge as they awaited trial...

"I need you out here," Russ Meyer told me on the phone in 1977. It was 6 a.m. He could not conceive that I might still be asleep. "Have you ever heard of the Sex Pistols?"

"No," I said.

"They're a rock band from England. They got a lot of publicity for saying 'fuck' on TV. Now they have some money and want me to direct their movie."

"The Sex Pistols?" I said.

"Their manager is a guy named Malcolm McLaren. He called me from London. He said their singers were big fans of 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.' They go to see it every weekend they're in London. It's playing at the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road."

No director except possibly for Stanley Kubrick was better informed than Russ about where his movies were playing. Kubrick used to call specific theaters to complain about light intensity. Russ used...

I started walking around London in my mind. It started when I wrote the entry about Jermyn Street. In mentioning Wilton's I should have mentioned that on my first visit there I ordered roast turkey with fresh peaches. I know, it sound like the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore routine about the Frog & Peach, but nevertheless that's what I had, with a raspberry syllabub for dessert.

In my mind my walk didn't stop when Jermyn Street ended at St. James. I imagined walking down St. James and into the park, and around the ponds. And admiring the view of Westminster Abbey from the bridge. And then perhaps out one end of the park toward Victoria or into Pimlico.

Pushing on now, following an instinctive guidance system in my mind, I stop for coffee at that little street (I know just how to find it) with all the cafes and an assortment of street venders.

George Eliot. Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte). It has been more than a century since the likes of Mary Ann Evans and the Bronte sisters have had to disguise their gender in order to be considered worthy of a place in the literary firmament. But are they worthy? Apparently not.

A little more than a decade ago, an unknown author decided with her publisher that in order for her novel about a young wizard to sell to middle-school boys, she’d go by the more ambiguous J.K. Rowling. Just this week, the debate reached a boiling point when Publisher’s Weekly (Pw) announced their top 100 picks for 2009 -- and not one of the top 10 was penned by a woman.

The list unleashed a flurry of posts and comments across the blogosphere, most notably a press release entitled Why Weren’t Any Women Invited To Publishers...

James McAvoy was quite exceptional in The Last King of Scotland and it was his character who actually provided the perspective for the story and the movie itself. However, no Oscar nomination - not even for Best Supporting Actor. As Robbie Turner in Atonement, McAvoy "shows a sheer emotional range that's completely new to his career." says Derek Elley @Variety, "And McAvoy is a dynamo, nailing every nuance in a complex role." adds Peter Travers @Rolling Stone, and yet, still no Oscar - not even a nomination.

- - -

- - - Even before McAvoy appeared in these movies, he was already an exceptional actor -  Inside I'm Dancing, Starter for Ten, Bright Young Things. He was also the recipient of the first Orange Rising Star award, an addition to the established awards at the BAFTA.

Fast forward to the 2010 Oscar race, when Sony Pictures Classics announced it has...

James McAvoy was quite exceptional in The Last King of Scotland and it was his character who actually provided the perspective for the story and the movie itself. However, no Oscar nomination - not even for Best Supporting Actor. As Robbie Turner in Atonement, McAvoy "shows a sheer emotional range that's completely new to his career." says Derek Elley @Variety, "And McAvoy is a dynamo, nailing every nuance in a complex role." adds Peter Travers @Rolling Stone, and yet, still no Oscar - not even a nomination.

- - -

- - - Even before McAvoy appeared in these movies, he was already an accomplished actor -  Inside I'm Dancing, Starter for Ten, Bright Young Things. He was also the recipient of the first Orange Rising Star award, an addition to the established awards at the BAFTA.

Fast forward to the 2010 Oscar race, when Sony Pictures Classics announced it has...