Religious issues tend to be very controversial, and if it concerns the founder of a religion, any depiction that deviates from the well-accepted view can provoke a number of feelings. And so it was with this movie, The Last Temptation of Christ (released in 1988), that sought to depict some events and theories that are not part of accepted Christian lore. For example, if a movie seeks to portray that Christ was not the son of God, or had a relationship with a woman and had a child, or did not die on the Christ, there can be a huge backlash. And so it was with this movie, which remains banned in some Christian dominated countries, and also provoked a backlash that was far more severe than the studio and the director (Martin Scorsese) expected. In recent years, there has been some acceptance of the movie’s portrayal of Jesus as one who confronts all the human weaknesses and overcomes for his vision; the movie sought to explore all the sentiments that would have driver such a person. In the end, the movie did not too well at the box office.
Scorsese had been looking to make a movie on the life of Jesus for many years, and had taken the film rights of the 1960 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, even getting a screenplay for the movie ready by the late 70’s by Paul Schrader, and production was even planned in 1983 with Paramount as the studio. But by late 1983, the project was cancelled by the studio, and then Universal Studio took up the project again in 1986 with photography starting in 1987. The movie was entirely shot in the African country of Morocco.

The movie has many concepts that do not gel with standard Christian philosophy, such as the concept of Jesus making crosses used by the Romans to kill Jewish prisoners by crucifying them, by portraying Judas as a far more complex and positive character (obsessed with ensuring a revolution by the Jews against the Romans rather than the betrayer he is positioned in standard Christian philosophy).
The movie starts out with the internal conflict in Jesus, who realizes that God has some plan for him, but that he is also human. When he starts to make the crosses for the Roman army, he is branded a traitor by Jewish revolutionaries. Judas is sent to kill him, but he waits and watches Jesus’s message about love, and joins his ministry. Jesus starts preaching to people, saving the life of Mary (a prostitute) from a mob. Jesus is still working his way through what his aim in life is, and starts attracting disciples. Satan tries to sway Jesus 3 times, but each time Jesus refuses to get swayed. More events happen in the life of Jesus, but which convince him that the path of violence is not for him. He has asked Judas to get the temple guards to take him away, which happens after the Last Supper.
And then Jesus is put on the cross by the Romans since he is deemed a security to their current rule; and then the most controversial part of the movie. He is convinced by an Angel (actually Satan) that he is not the Son of God, and he should lead a normal life; where he meets Mary, makes love to her and then has a family. In the end, he is found by Judas near his death, who calls him a traitor, and that the angel was actually Satan. Jesus goes back to the cross, and then it is revealed that all this was a dream, and dies on the cross.

The Hustler (released in 1961) was a movie ostensibly about a pool game, about the efforts of a talented pool player to defeat the reigning pool champion, about the tribulations that he had to suffer in this process, including the losses. In reality, The Hustler is now defined as a movie defining the character of a person, the winning and losing that makes up the character. The movie is classified as a classic movie, continuing to rate positive reviews. The characters look like real characters, with their anguish, their weaknesses, their obsessions, and how they shrug off adversity in the face of an ambition. The movie also benefited the game of pool to a very high degree, since pool was declining in popularity for decades; but the movie had a big role to play in pushing the popularity of the game into reverse direction, making pool popular again. The movie is now compared with the later ‘The Color of Money’, but while the later movie is more smooth and polished, The Hustler is a much more raw look at human emotions, about what makes a person win or lose. The Hustler got a number of Oscar nominations, 9 in all, and won 2 (Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White (Harry Horner and Gene Callahan) and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Eugen Schüfftan)).
Newman was nominated for Best Actor role, but did not get the award, instead getting it decades later for a role that was a continuation of the movie, The Color of Money (with some critics calling the Oscar award as a recognition that he should have got the award for the Best Actor role for The Hustler).

The movie was based on the 1959 novel (of the same name) by author Walter Tavis, and the book was adapted by Sidney Carroll and Robert Rossen for the movie, with Rossen directing the movie. The main stars of the movie are Paul Newman as Eddie Felson, Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats, Piper Laurie as Sarah and George C. Scott as Bert.
The movie is the story of “Fast Eddie” Felson (Paul Newman), who is traveling with his friend Charlie (Myron McCormick) chasing “Minnesota Fats” (Jackie Gleason), a famous pool player. He meets Fats at Fats home town, and they agree to play for money. Eddie is ahead, but gets carried away and refuses to quit even when Charlie asks him to quit; then a professional gambler Bert Gordon (George C. Scott) is called over by Fats, and he diagnoses Eddie as a loser, without character; and sure enough, by the time that everything is through Eddie has lost everything except for $200.
Eddie meets an alcoholic girl, walking with a limp, Sarah Packard (portrayed pretty well by Piper Laurie); she refuses to take him in initially, but after they meet again and again, she lets him into the house. Eddie continues to hunger to challenge Fats again, and Charlie and Eddie have a face-off and then separation. And then Eddie ties up with Bert, who agrees to back Eddie in return for a 75% take from the returns. And then Eddie will challenge Fats again, but at what cost to Eddie ?

The Murder on the Links was a book, written by detective write Agatha Christie, published in 1923, and starring Hercule Poirot and Hastings. The book was like many of Agatha Christie’s books, written with the current societal conditions of that time, and with a large number of characters in the book. With these characters and the complexity of the plot, it was hard to make a guess as to who the actual villains are; another notable part of this book was that Hastings sort of broke with Poirot midway during the book, when it started becoming clear that a woman that Hastings loved, Dulcie Duveen, could be a suspect. At one point Hastings physically held down Poirot and let Duveen flee; but Poirot does not get side-tracked, and at the end, Poirot brings them together again. The book was more French based than English, with the crime being committed in a French location, and the investigating magistrate and detective both being French. Interestingly, this book was dedicated upon its release to her husband Archibald Christie, who later acquired a lover and divorced her a few years later.

The book starts with Hastings falling in love with a bright vivacious girl (who seems to ignore him to some extent as an old fashioned person); he tells Poirot about this when they meet, and then Poirot gets a wire (among the many mundane pieces of mail that he gets including requests to find lost dogs) from the South of France asking for help from a Monsieur Paul Renauld. Poirot is interested and decides to go there along with Hastings; they reach the villa Villa Genevieve in Merlinville-sur-Mer on the French coast where they discover that they are too late; Monsieur Paul Renauld is already dead. He was killed just a few hours ago and left in a shallow grave.
He was killed after 2 masked invaders came into the home around 2 AM, tied up his wife, and took him away wanting to know a secret, and then they killed him. However, apparently the door was open and there was no sign of forced entry. Their son Jack had been sent away on business, and there were three female servants in the house. And there is a French investigating magistrate, as well as a egoist French detective.
The story involves ladies who used to visit Monsieur Paul Renauld at night, a decades old murder crime, a fight between father and son, an altered will, an apparent second murder, a missing weapon, and many twists in the story. Read the book, it is pretty interesting.

‘The Secret of Chimneys’ is one of the early works of Agatha Christie, with the word Chimneys referring to a mansion, used in more works by Agatha Christie. Like some of the other books written by Christie, it incorporates political intrigue of that time, with assassinations, spying, monarchies, double identities, and so on. If you read the plot in one go, it can seem somewhat outlandish and out of this world, but if you get into some pleasure book reading and watch the plot twist and turn, then the book can be very interesting. In this case, the book deals with a monarchy of the fictional country of Herzoslovakia located in the Balkans, which had overthrown the king some time back and setup a Republic, but now wanted to restore the monarchy and had identified a relative of the murdered king, and had extended him an invitation to come back and take the throne (although in modern times it is difficult to find a country which would do something like this, unless it is setting a king for ceremonial purposes).

The cause of the uprising in the country was primarily due to the queen, who was a dancer, was of common stock, and was propped by a revolutionary organization to trap the king, but she double-crossed the organization and instead married the king. She was the primary cause of the uprising in which both the king and queen were killed by a mob. But, in a turnabout, the people want a distant cousin, Prince Michael Obolovitch, to take over, and the British are broking this deal (and since no one does something for free, they are looking for oil concessions in the country). However, this entire situation is mixed with some memoirs that could prove embarrassing, and which are being sent for publication. Mix this with some lady’s letter up for blackmail, and political discussion in the mansion of Chimneys, and you have a very interesting tale.