Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Today is my daughter’s 11th birthday so we started our day with a pancake breakfast at a local diner. This afternoon we had some pizza with her grandparents and this weekend we have a lot of other events planned, including a sleepover with a friend and a trip to a zoo called Reptileland. Yes, they have a lot of reptiles.
I hope all of you are having a great week!
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
I’ve been blogging for a few years now, and thought it would be fun to share a little more of who I am with all of you.And in the process, I hope that you will feel comfortable to share a little of your story with me as well.
I was raised in a Christian home, and my Mom told me that I asked Jesus to come into my heart when I was only 4 years old. But when I was 9 years old, and sitting in my Sunday School class listening to my favorite teacher praying, I suddenly realized that I could not remember telling Jesus that I wanted to live for him. That conviction caused me to stand up in front of all my friends and say that I wanted to spend my life following Jesus forever. It’s been an adventure ever since.
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and up this week is A Knight’s Tale.
I remember watching this one shortly after it came out but not in the theater. It’s a fun one that I’ve watched more than once over the years.
I was not in the group of girls who fawned all over Heath Ledger when he was popular (and alive..his death was so sad) because I wasn’t into popular culture at the time. I was a nerd, I don’t know what to say.
I really didn’t discover Heath until he passed away.
Regardless, I enjoyed watching Heath when I finally watched this movie.
It should be noted, too, that Heath was actually not well-known when this movie was made. His breakout role was The Patriot and that had not yet been released when he was hired for A Knight’s Tale. Lucky for the director of A Knight’s Tale, Brian Hedgeland, and everyone else involved, The Patriot was hugely successful and made A Knight’s Tale more marketable once the movie when to DVD sales. It was through DVD sales that the movie made more money.
Okay, but let’s go back a bit and talk a bit about the plot of the movie for those who aren’t familiar with it.
Here is a Google description: Peasant-born William Thatcher (Heath Ledger) begins a quest to change his stars, win the heart of an exceedingly fair maiden (Shanynn Sossamon) and rock his medieval world. With the help of friends (Mark Addy, Paul Bettany, Alan Tudyk), he faces the ultimate test of medieval gallantry — tournament jousting — and tries to discover if he has the mettle to become a legend.
I read a review that called this movie whimsical and I think that is a good description.
It is full of adventure and fun and is just a perfect escape. The movie blends modern music with a story set in the medieval times.
We start with William being an assistant to a knight who, tragically, dies. William decides to become him so he can finish the tournament and he and the other serfs can get the money.
From there they decide to continue the ruse, training hard to make Will an actual jousting knight. Along the way they meet a young Geoffrey Chaucer (the writer) who is destitute and agrees to forge a patent of nobility so Wil can enter under the name Sir Ulrich von Liechtenstein from Gelderland. Chaucer has a lot of problems, though, the main one being his gambling problem, which leads William to be brought before Simon the Summoner and Peter the Pardoner who demands payment from Chaucer. Will then demands Chaucer be released and promises payment.
Will’s armor is damaged and he must go to Kate, a female blacksmith, to repair it and she agrees to do so without payment. She is pulled into their circle of friends.
Will is also delighted to find that Jocelyn, a local noblewoman, is watching. He is infatuated with her and will spend most of the movie trying to get her attention.
There will be more jousting as William travels to the World Championships and those scenes are quite fun and exciting. There is, of course, a “bad guy” — Count Adhemar of Anjou portrayed by Rufus Sewell.
I love the mix of modern or semi-modern music with the medieval time period in this movie. Bettany is fantastic as Chaucer and Alan Tudyk is just always awesome and hilarious. If you want to know more about what he’s been in you can check him out on IMdb. You won’t even believe all the voices he’s done and movies he’s been in.
One of the more famous lines from this movie is “You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting.” You may have heard this before over the years since this movie, while it didn’t make a ton of money at the box office compared to some, became a cult classic of sorts. The movie did make $117 million after being made for $65 million so I don’t think that is too bad.
Trivia:
“The movie was filmed in the Czech Republic, mainly in Prague. When Chaucer first introduces “Sir Ulrich” in his speech, the crowd doesn’t react at first because the Czech extras didn’t understand it. Mark Addy‘s loud prompt tipped them off to start cheering. The awkward moment was left in because it made the scene funnier.”
“Plenty of effort was expended creating lances that would splinter convincingly without taking out the stunt riders as well. The body of each lance was scored so it would break easily, and the tips were made of balsa wood. Each was also hollowed out, and the hole filled with balsa chips and uncooked linguine to make convincing splinters.”
Paul Bettany’s nude scene was shot on his very first day in front of a crowd of extras.
There was a period of about a year in Geoffrey Chaucer’s life when historians have no records of what happened to him. This film is supposed to be set in that year.
The first scene of two knights jousting is actually footage of an accident involving Heath Ledger’s stunt double. While filming a later scene, the opponent’s lance moved off target. The stunt double was hit in the head, and fell to the ground unconscious. The entire scene was used for the introduction.
“Heath Ledger knocked out one of director Brian Helgeland’s front teeth with a broomstick when the two were demonstrating a jousting move. It was several months before Helgeland’s mouth had healed enough to repair the damage. He says it was the only jousting injury during filming.”
“Several of the named knights were, in fact, real, though many of them are from different time periods. Ulrich von Lichtenstein was a knight and author who was said to have invented the concept of chivalry and courtly love. He boasted that he would give a golden ring to any knight who could break a lance on his armour, giving away 271 in total, but remaining undefeated. Piers Courtenay was a descendant of Edward I, born in the 15th Century. Sir Thomas Colville was a knight from the 13th Century. Roger Mortimer was the name of several related noblemen in 13th- and 14-century England. One was the lover of King Edward II’s wife – Isabella of France – and was hanged, drawn, and quartered by the Black Prince’s father, King Edward III, for his complicity in Edward II’s death.”
Welcome to the A Good Book & A Cup of Tea (A Monthly Bookish Link Party)!! This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!).
1. For Bloggers, you can link unlimited posts related to books and reading. They can be older posts or newer posts. These can be posts about what you’re reading, book reviews, books you’ve added to your shelf, reading habits, what you’ve been reading, about trips to the bookstore, etc. You get the drift, I think :).
2. Link to a specific blog post (URL of a specific post, not just your website). Feel free to link up any older posts that may need some love and attention, too.
3. Please visit at least two other bloggers on this list and comment on their posts. Have fun! Interact! Get some book recommendations.
4. Readers can click the blue button below to visit blog posts.
5. If you add a link you are giving me permission to share and link back to your post(s).
This past weekend I watched the movie The Talk of the Town with Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman. I found this movie, among many other good ones, free on Tubi. It is also currently free on YouTube.
I had seen it before as a suggested move but ignored it, thinking it was a drama. After watching it, I asked myself, “What took me so long to watch this one?!”
I loved this movie and while I always love Cary Grant, I once again loved Ronald Colman who I first saw in The Prisoner of Zenda earlier this year.
This movie starts with a fire at a factory where a man dies. Cary, portraying Leopold Dilg, is arrested for arson and murder.
Soon he’s breaking out of jail and escaping through the woods on a rainy night. He makes his way in the dark toward a small house while dogs hunt him down. The name of the house is Sweetbrook and there is a woman inside getting it ready — maybe for a guest.
Leopold breaks in the door, startling the woman.
“Miss Shelley,” he says. “Please…let me…” And then he faints and falls down the stairs.
Miss Shelley wakes him up with a bucket full of water and he asks if she can stay at the house, which he knows is a rental. She tells him he can’t stay because she knows he has escaped jail. There is a knock on the door before she can finish explaining and she tells him to run upstairs and hide.
There is a Professor Michael Lightcap at the door and he’s standing in the rain. He reminds her that he’s rented the house out and he’s here to stay. Miss Shelley, whose first name is Nora, panics because Leopold is hiding upstairs and she doesn’t want the professor to find him.
Things will get more complicated as she makes up an excuse to stay in the house overnight to make sure the professor doesn’t find Leopold.
Complications just keep arising as Nora offers to become the professor’s secretary and housekeeper during his stay, a senator arrives to tell Professor Lightcap he’s up for nomination to the United States Supreme Court, and Leopold walks down one morning to argue about the role of the law in society and Nora has to introduce him as the gardener.
This is a non-stop movie full of hilarious mix-ups, near misses, and a love-triangle that won’t be resolved until the very last minute, literally, of the movie.
As I said above, I loved this movie.
It was engaging, funny, witty, and captivating. Mixed in all the lighthearted moments were a few philosophical moments about law and justice.
Jean Arthur was delightful as Nora Shelley, always quickly rescuing the day just at the last moment, taking care of both Leopold and the professor.
Ronald Colman pulled off the staunch, uptight professor well and it was fun to see him “let down his hair” a bit later in the film. He didn’t let down his hair. It’s just a saying, of course.
Cary walked the line between an aggressive rebel and a falsely accused victim, putting his usual romantic charm on the backburner for most of the film and bringing it out in more subtle moments. This was a movie where he wasn’t a pursuing a woman as much as he was his own freedom and justice.
I spent much of the last half of the movie wondering which one of the men Nora was actually falling for and I think she was doing the same thing. She’d gathered affection for both of them but wasn’t sure if either of them had for her.
This movie was nominated for seven Oscars but it was about the same time that America started the war so more “patriotic” movies got the nod that year. Ironically the best picture went to Mrs. Minier, which was set in England, however.
According to TCM, even without the wins, The Talk of the Town “still marked an important moment in the careers of its stars Cary Grant and Ronald Colman.”
For Cary, it was a new movie after not working for a year and he was nominated for an Oscar as well. He didn’t win the Oscar but he did have his name legally changed his name from Archibald Alexander Leach, became an American citizen and married heiress Barbara Hutton.
Colman was 51 at the time and needed a spark to reinvent his career. The Talk of the Town worked and he went on to star in Random Harvest, which earned him another Oscar nomination. He lost that to James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, but still kept him at a high point in his career. Films such as Kismet (1944) and Champagne for Caesar (1950). He also finally earned his Oscar for portraying the delusional Shakespearean actor in A Double Life (1947).
I found it interesting to read that there was tension between Grant and Colman since both were used to being the lead actor and that tension was written into the script as they aggressively bantered back and forth with each other.
I also was fascinated to learn that two endings were filmed — one with Jean Arthur choosing Cary and the other with Colman. The director allowed the preview audiences to choose who she ended up with.
Trivia:
filming was to begin on January 17, 1942, the day Hollywood learned the sad news of Carole Lombard’s death in a plane crash. Stevens halted work on the set and sent both cast and crew home.
Screenwriter Sidney Buchman (who co-wrote the script with Irwin Shaw) was blacklisted in the 1950s. Consequently, Buchman, one of the men who penned Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), left the U.S. and began working in Fox’s European division. Buchman would remain in France until his death in 1975.
When the professor is unconscious on the floor, Tilney (Rex Ingram) asks Sam if he is a doctor. Ironically, Rex Ingram was himself a trained physician in real life.
Cary Grant and Ronald Colman were both paid at least $100,000 for their work in the film. Jean Arthur, who was in Harry Cohn’s doghouse and just coming off suspension, was only paid $50,000.
Whilst many characters find Leopold Dilg’s penchant for adding an egg to his borscht unique (so much so that it becomes a means of determining his whereabouts), it was not an uncommon practice to add an egg to borscht in Poland and in Mennonite communities in Eastern Europe.
A radio theatre presentation of The Talk of the Town (1942) was broadcast on CBS radio on the Lux Radio Theatre on 5/17/1943 with Cary Grant, Ronald Colman, and Jean Arthur recreating their roles from the movie. It’s a 60-minute adaptation of the movie.
Nora tells the professor that he is, “as whiskered as the Smith Brothers.” This refers to a brand of cough drops with an illustration of the Smith Brothers on the front, both of whom have a beard. First introduced in 1852, they remained the most popular brand for a century.
Memorable quotes:
Well, it’s a form of self-expression. Some people write books. Some people write music. I make speeches on street corners.
– Leopold Dilg
What is the law? It’s a gun pointed at somebody’s head. All depends upon which end of the gun you stand, whether the law is just or not.
– Leopold Dilg
Stop saying “Leopold” like that, tenderly. It sounds funny. You can’t do it with a name like Leopold.
– Leopold Dilg
This is your law and your finest possession – it makes you free men in a free country. Why have you come here to destroy it? If you know what’s good for you, take those weapons home and burn them! And then think… think of this country and of the law that makes it what it is. Think of a world crying for this very law! And maybe you’ll understand why you ought to guard it. – Michael Lightcap
He’s the only honest man I’ve come across in this town in 20 years. Naturally, they want to hang him. – Sam Yates
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
This past week was rainy and muggy but our leaves are changing and at least our nights are cooler.
The feel of autumn is in the air for sure on those cooler nights. The apple fritter scented candle my husband picked up this weekend is helping that mood even more.
Yesterday the kids and I took advantage of the “nicer” weather we had after a week of rain and headed to a playground about twenty minutes from us. It was a gloomy and muggy day, but the kids still had fun playing on the zipline and in the creek. Little Miss made a new friend she might never meet again but they had fun at least.
I capped off my night with a Cary Grant movie, The Talk of the Town. It was a bit of a quirky film that was supposed to be a comedy but bordered on a drama at times.
This week I am going to work on being less overwhelmed with the world. To do that I am going to try to go on a media fast of sorts. Very limited scrolling and almost no news. My nervous system is overstimulated, overworked, over…something.
I have a lot going on with my parents’ health right now and some other things in life so I can’t take on the hurts and pains of the world too.
And I do take them on. When I see people hurting and then see people who do not care about that hurt because they have become desensitized to the pain of others with the 24/7 news cycle I start to realize that people around me are also probably thinking these horrible things that people are writing online too. It feels like people care less these days unless it is some political cause they are behind and while they are promoting that political cause they are tearing down others and yelling that is actually the other people tearing them down.
It’s exhausting and I’ve heard this over and over and over recently —that our brains were not built for all this news and 24/7 stimulation from social media. As a pastor I listen to once said, “We were not meant to be walking around with the entire world accessible via our butt bone.”
Of course he was talking about people who slide their phones in their back pockets and can slide it out at any time and at any time see the horrors of the world unfolding in real time. We can see good things too but we all know that the worst of the worst that is happening is what sells news and makes people stop scrolling.
More of us need to put our phones down and actually interact with people. As an introvert this is hard for me to say. I don’t like people. Ha. I know there are good people out there, though, and we need to find those people and interact with them more and the grumpy mouthy people on the internet less.
It’s a goal anyhow and I want to work more toward it.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are still hosting crafternoons but completely blanked on setting up a date on September. We both started homeschooling and had other events and all of the sudden September was over. It’s crazy to me how fast it went by!
We will be announcing a date for October later on, probably next week.
If you are wondering what Crafternoons are it is a monthly Zoom meet up where we get together with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things. We do our best not to focus on religion or politics so we don’t depress ourselves.
If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here.
Erin and I are also hosting a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. It is almost over for September but you can still get your bookish links in. They do not have to be recent posts, just related to books in some way. I’ll have a new link party up on Wednesday.
I am finishing up the Nancy Drew book The Clue of the Broken Locket and will probably take a bit of a Nancy break.
These books were written for the youth of the day back in the 1930s and then rewritten a bit in the 1950s, so I get that there is some unrealistic stuff in there, but did they not know about concussions back then? I suppose they didn’t but these characters are always taking headshots waking up, getting a cold cloth on their head and a drink of water and then continuing on their day. Like in this book, a huge rock was thrown through a front door, supposedly hit the couch, and knocked two people forward where they hit their heads on the hearth and were both knocked unconscious at the same time.
Hmm….oookay….let’s go on and believe that could happen but then let’s also believe that no one thought they should take both of these people to a hospital to have them checked out???
So the Nancy Drew books can be silly at times, but they aren’t written for adults, and the mysteries themselves are actually very interesting and sometimes even give me ideas for my own book. I suppose that is why I keep reading them off and on. All that being said, it is time for a little break and to read something more mature.
That’s why I’m reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. Hahahaha! Really I just have a goal to reread The Chronicles of Narnia so I am reading another children’s book but it’s less annoying than the Nancy Drew books can be.
I am actually reading an adult book by Agatha Christie called Come, Tell Me How You Live but I put it down somewhere in the house and could not find it all week. I found it yesterday finally!
So I shall be reading an adult book this week!
I am also starting one of my fall books, A Fatal Harvest by Rachael O. Phillips, this week since I will finish Nancy Drew today and probably will finish the Narnia book later in the week.
I might start Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton this week too, depending on my mood. It’s the first book in the Hamish MacBeth Mystery series. And Emma Lion. I totally forgot I want to start that this week! That might come before Death of a Gossip.
Little Miss and I are going to finish up The Good Master this week. We did not read it last week for some reason.
I’m not sure what The Husband is reading at the moment because I forgot to ask him before he went upstairs for a nap before work and I’m going to publish this before he gets up.
The Boy isn’t reading a book right now but he’s getting ready to read a book based on the Halo games.
This past week I watched less TV than normal but I did watch one of the worst Murder, She Wrote episodes I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen a couple of stinkers and this one was…well, weird and creepy. Jessica essentially had a college guy stalking her. A college guy who looked about 30, I might add. Either way he was obsessed with her and all older women. It was …. Ew.
The Husband and I later watched another one that wasn’t very good either. That’s how it is with series, though, there are good and bad ones. Can’t be helped when a series runs for 12 years!
I stared a movie called The Talk of the Town with Cary Grant last night but didn’t finish it yet. It’s weird. That’s all I can say. It’s also funny. Cary is accused of burning down a building with a person trapped inside but escapes from jail and Jean Arthur decides to let him stay at her rental house even though a law professor is renting out the house at the same time. Cary must prove his innocence to the professor played by Ronald Colman.
It’s a bit crazy, in other words, but I really had an itch to watch an old movie.
I also enjoyed this video about comforting reads from a new-to-me vlogger:
Last week I worked a bit on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School.
I also pulled my books out of Kindle Unlimited on Amazon because I feel like Amazon takes advantage and rips of indie authors. My ebooks and paperbacks are still for sale there but they will not be exclusive there anymore. I also introduced new book covers for the Gladwynn books.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. Link up below if you want to:
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
This week fa truly set in and we also finally got some much-needed rain. When I say fall set in, I want to be clear that the temps didn’t necessarily get cooler. In fact, it was humid and sticky most days as the rain came in.
The trees are changing beautifully but I am sad that the leaves are already almost the way off our tree in the backyard.
What is the weather like where you are?
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and first up on our movie-watching list was Benny & Joon.
Benny & Joon (1993)is a quirky film I watched in 1990s and really enjoyed. It was when I first saw Johnny Depp because I never watched 21 Jump Street or anything else he was in back then.
I already knew Mary Stuart Masterson from Fried Green Tomatoes.
For the most part, the movie is funny, comfy, and sweet, but there are a couple of hard moments. In the end, though, (small spoiler ahead —–à) things actually turn out okay.
Let’s start with an online description of the movie:
Benny (Aidan Quinn), who cares for his mentally disturbed sister, Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), also welcomes the eccentric Sam (Johnny Depp) into his home at Joon’s request. Sam entertains Joon while he dreams of a job at the video store. Once Benny realizes Joon and Sam have started a relationship, he kicks Sam out of the house. This leads to an altercation between brother and sister. Joon runs away with Sam, who soon realizes that she may need more support than he alone can provide.
This movie starts with someone painting and a train rolling across the tracks to the soundtrack of The Proclaimers singing I’m Gonna Be (500 miles). Yes, that very annoying song that is an earworm and was overplayed in 1993. Okay, it’s not actually annoying. I like it! But it won’t get out of my head once I’ve heard it. And I mean for more than a week!
Anyhow, back to the movie.
After we see a woman painting we are at Benny’s Car Clinic where we see Benny (Aiden Quinn) fixing a car and chatting with his friends when a call is made from his home. His sister Joon wants him to know that they are out of peanut butter Crunch cereal.
Later at Benny’s home we meet Joon who seem a little different but otherwise fairly sane and smart.
She’s clearly very intelligent with the way she uses large phrases and big words. Still, she also seems somewhat childlike.
As the movie goes on we will lean that Joon has mental issues and sometimes likes to light things on fire.
She rarely leaves the house alone, instead staying in the house and painting. Housekeepers take care of her during the day but on this day one of them, apparently one of many, is calling it quits.
Joon is out of control she tells Benny. That means Benny is without someone to sit with Joon during the day and he’ll have to miss his card game with his friends that night because Joon can’t be left home alone very much.
His friend, Eric (Oliver Platt), tells him just to bring Joon, but Benny hesitates.
“What’s the big deal?”Eric says. “She paints and she reads.”
“Yeah, she paints. She reads. She lights things on fire,” Benny responds.
As my Mom would say, “Oh. Oh. My.”
Once at the game, though, Joon does fairly well, even if she does like holding her hand over the flame of a candle a bit too much..
We learn that Benny’s friends place real items in the pot for their poker game and this will come into play later in the movie when Joon decides to play a round while Benny is outside and Benny’s friend Mike says if she loses the hand she has to take his eccentric cousin off his hands.
That cousin is a 26-year-old name Sam (Johnny Depp) who can’t read or write and doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. He likes Buster Keaton and has been studying him, though, dressing like him and taking on his persona while being generally …. Weird.
At first Benny says he won’t take Sam but then he agrees and over time Sam becomes the housekeeper and a whole lot more to Joon who falls hard for him.
Before all of this, though, Joon’s doctor suggests that Benny have Joon placed in a group home where she will be among her peers.
Benny laughs. “She has a home.” Not only that but, “She hates her peers.”
The doctor sighs. “You might want to consider there are people more capable of handling these outbursts than you.”
Benny rejects this idea over and over again even though his whole life is put on hold so he can care for Joon. He doesn’t have a love life or any life outside of work.
There will come a time, though, when it does have to be seriously considered. I won’t give away anymore than all of this because this movie is worth a watch. It is actually sweet and when you think it is going some place you don’t want it to, it will change directions and pleasantly surprise you.
Don’t let the dark music that sometimes pops up scare you.
Mixed in with all the drama with Joon, by the way, is a potential romance between Benny and Ruthie, a local waitress who used to be in B-movies.
This movie has always charmed me. It’s made me laugh, smile, and enchanted me. I’m a big sucker for quirky movies with quirky characters.
As I watched the movie this time around (maybe my fifth time watching it), I realized that I think I am attracted to this movie because my great-aunt was schizophrenic and an artist. Maybe I saw some of her in Joon, even though I never met her. Mental illness has always frightened me. My great-aunt was sent to a mental hospital when she was in her 40s after years of acting odd. From what I understand she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and I always wondered if it might happen to me too. I liked art and I was even a little odd at times. Ha! So far I’m just depressed and have anxiety. No schizophrenia.
I should clarify that this movie never defines what Joon has but many viewers suspect a combination of conditions, including schizophrenia.
There are several classic scenes in this movie for me.
One is when Sam uses forks to make buns dance:
The other is when Sam reenacts Ruthie’s horrible acting in the B-movie (which can also be seen at the above clip)
Another is the absolute look of delight Sam gets when Benny says Joon sometimes hears voices in her head. That makes me crack up every time. It’s like he thinks the idea of her hearing voices is absolutely delightful.
Then there is Sam making grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron.
Then there is also a scene toward the end of the movie that you will have to see — you’ll know what it is when you see it.
There are also so many good quotes that come from either Joon or Sam too
When Sam is staring at Joon at one point she says, “Having a Boo Radley moment are we?”
As a huge fan of To Kill A Mockingbird, that one always cracks me up.
Later when she and Benny watch Sam make the grilled cheese sandwiches she says, “Some cultures are defined by their relationship to cheese.”
In the restaurant one day Joon picks the raisins out of her tapioca pudding and Sam asks her why she doesn’t like raisins.
“They used to be fat and juicy and now they’re twisted,” she says. “They had their lives stolen. Well, they taste sweet, but really they’re just humiliated grapes. I can’t say I am a big supporter of the raisin council.”
He then asks her if she saw those dancing raisins on TV and she says they scare her. That always cracks me up because they used to scare me too!
Some Trivia and Facts
I always wondered this so I looked it up and Johnny does do his own stunts and tricks when imitating Buster Keaton. This does not surprise me in the least.
Apparently, Wynonna Ryder was going to play Joon but she had Johnny had been dating at the time and broke up so she dropped out. I think I could actually see her playing Joon, even though Mary Stuart Masterson did great.
Johnny improvised a scene where he tasted the paint of one of Joon’s paintings. This also doesn’t surprise me.
From IMdb: “During the filming of the scene where Benny rushes to Joon’s aid after she is put into an ambulance, a house party was happening less than a block away from the shooting in Spokane’s Peaceful Valley area (it was a day scene actually filmed at night). After hours of re-takes, Jeremiah S. Chechik bribed the local revelers with a cornucopia of food from the crew’s food tent, which kept them pacified long enough to finish the scene (at around midnight).”
Though released in the UK and Australia in 1988, the song I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) was not well-known in the United States until this movie. Once it was in the movie it reached number three on the Billboard Charts in the U.S. and was played ad nauseum until many people, such as me, were sick of hearing it. (Again, I do like the song. It was just overplayed that year.)
Another tidbit directly quoted from IMbD: “In the restaurant scene between Sam and Joon, as they are discussing raisins, Sam says, “It’s a shame about raisins.” This is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the video for the Lemonhead’s hit, “It’s a Shame about Ray,” which was released the year before and in which Johnny Depp starred. (At the end of the video, Johnny can be seen carrying a curved cane almost identical to Sam’s.)”
Of the film, Rogert Ebert (a famous movie critic back in the day) said, “Benny and Joon” is a film that approaches its subjects so gingerly it almost seems afraid to touch them. The story wants to be about love, but is also about madness, and somehow it weaves the two together with a charm that would probably not be quite so easy in real life.”
For once, he actually liked a film I liked and ended his review with this: ““Benny and Joon” is a tough sell. Younger moviegoers these days seem to shy away from complexities, which is why the movie and its advertising all shy away from any implication of mental illness. The film is being sold as an offbeat romance between a couple of lovable kooks. I was relieved to discover it was about so much more than that.”
Have you ever seen this one? What did you think if you did?
You can read Erin’s impressions of the movie here.
Up next in our Comfy, Cozy Cinema is: A Knight’s Tale.
You can see the rest of the list of movies in this cool graphic that Erin made:
Today’s prompt was: Books on My Fall 2025 to-Read List
I have more than ten books on my autumn hopefuls list, but I chose ten of those to share. I am leaving out those I am reading now or have already read this month:
|| Murder, She Wrote: Trick or Treachery by Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain ||
|| Nancy Drew: The Clue of the Broken Locket by Carolyn Keene ||
|| A Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse ||
|| My Beloved (A Mitford Novel) by Jan Karon (it releases Oct. 7 but I probably won’t get it right away so this could become a winter read) ||
|| Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier ||
|| The Unselected Journals of Emma Lion by Beth Brower ||
|| A Hardy Boys Mystery: The Tower Treasure by Frankin W. Dixon ||
|| The Cat, The Mill, and the Murder by Leann Sweeney ||
|| A Fatal Harvest (An Amish Inn Mystery) by Rachael O. Phillips ||
|| The Cider Shop Rules by Julie Anne Lindsey ||
Have you read any of these books? Or maybe watched the shows based on them? What did you think of them or the characters?
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that she thought I had mentioned somewhere that I was going to read The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder. I had not but it looked interesting to me so she suggested we do a buddy read. I’ve never done a buddy read so I said I could try it with her.
Having someone to talk to about the book and bounce ideas off of about what was going to happen next was fun.
This book takes place in England and is about Freya Lockwood who used to be an antique hunter. I wasn’t sure what the term “antique hunter” meant until I got into the book. It turns out it isn’t only about finding antiques that are worth something and can be sold in a store. Antique hunting is also about finding stolen antiques and returning them to their rightful owners.
What I knew from the beginning was that a man named Arthur Crockleford had died and it upset her. It is actually suggested in the prologue of the book that Arthur was murdered.
We will spend most of the book trying to figure out not only why but who.
Freya and Arthur haven’t talked in almost 20 years and we will learn more about that as we read too.
Freya’s aunt Carole, who cared for Freya when her parents died, introduced Freya to Arthur and was also good friends with him. After Freya and Arthur’s falling out, Freya married and had a child, who is now grown.
From the book description: Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carole, Freya follows clues to an old manor house for an advertised antiques enthusiast’s weekend. But not all is as it seems. It’s clear to Freya that the antiques are all just poor reproductions, and her fellow guests are secretive and menacing. What is going on at this estate and how was Arthur involved? More importantly, can Freya and Carole discover the truth before the killer strikes again?”
Arthur leaves behind a series of journals for Freya that he calls the Antique Hunter’s Guide.
My thoughts:
This book was … okay for me. It wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read. It wasn’t the best. Overall, though, it was a fun escape – at least until about 60 percent when things got a bit confusing for me and sort of fell apart in my opinion. That totally could have been just a me thing, though. Maybe my brain wasn’t clicking as well with the second half as it did the first.
The book was clean and free of swearing and graphic descriptions so I would consider it a cozy mystery.
The one big thing this book had going for it was the characters. They were interesting and I got attached to them, though I was attached more to Carole than Freya.
The mystery is decent too, but the characters are interesting and fun to learn about.
Freya’s aunt Carole is a highlight of the book for me. She was eccentric, funny, and always on the brink of either blowing their investigation or getting them deeper in trouble. She was there to add some humor to the book it seems and I liked that.
Freya is getting her life back and finding the woman she used to be in this book, but don’t worry, if you forget that fact, the author will tell you about 50 more times before the book ends. She will also remind you that Freya has a scar on her hand about 50 times. I’m joking a bit, but those two things were repeated a bit too much for my liking. I got the point the first three times we were told Freya wanted her old life back. Though I thought we were told this too much I liked that Freya worked toward finding her former passion for antique hunting.
Here are a couple of quotes I highlighted as I read:
“This plate is different than before, but it’s still precious,” said Arthur. “Most of us have been broken in one way or another. We don’t need to hide the scars, for they make us who we are. This bread was mended with real gold.”
“I saw for the first time that I was me again — that person hadn’t left me; I’d just dived into the safety of my London home and become shrouded with the world of being a wife and mother.”
“Your journals are called the Antique Hunter’s Guide. But my hunting hasn’t been as straightforward — your guide led me on quite an adventure.”
“You can be so dramatic. He offered tea, and murderers don’t offer tea, do they darling?” Carole tutted at me.
“Carole appeared at my side and rubbed my arms like she used to do after we’d come in from a long, cold winter’s walk. “I want to show you what I meant about the vases. Come.” She handed back my phone and led me away from the darkness, just as she had always done.”
Erin mentioned when we were talking that she thought this book was a good introduction to a series and I think she’s right. There was a lot in it and a couple storylines going on, including a possible romance, but in the end they all converged, luckily.
I will warn you that this book switches from a few points of view to introduce us to each suspect or to Aunt Carole. The tense changes when the POV changes so we go from mainly first person for Freya to third person for everyone else. I thought Miller did this well so the changes didn’t bother me like it has in some other books I’ve tried in the past.
There is one more book in the series that is out — The Antique Hunter’s Death on the Red Sea. The third book, The Antique Hunter’s Murder At The Castle is scheduled for release in March of 2026.
The bottom line for me is that this is a fun read, something to pick up when you need an escape from the world. Don’t expect it to blow you away, but do expect to be sufficiently entertained.
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
