During a friendly catch-up chat with my old friend and mentor, she mentioned a movie classic that I decided to watch: Talk of the Town (1942)

Falsely accused of arson, charming factory activist Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant) hides in Nora Shelley’s (Jean Arthur) country cottage–the exact moment an uptight Supreme Court nominee (Ronald Colman) rents it for the summer.

• The ruse: Nora passes Dilg off as the eccentric gardener.
• The clash: Fiery passion vs. cold legal theory over breakfast.
• The complications: A classic romantic triangle while trying to avoid an eager lynch mob.

Eventually, justice triumphs and Nora picks her man.

Collision (2009) is a gripping British five-part drama centered on a devastating multi-vehicle crash outside London. As detectives investigate what caused the collision, the lives of the victims, survivors, and witnesses gradually intertwine, revealing secrets, relationships, and unexpected connections. Told through shifting timelines and multiple perspectives, the series blends police procedural, mystery, and human drama, showing how one catastrophic moment can expose the hidden stories behind seemingly ordinary lives.

This looks like it might be worth a watch:

“Brothers” follows McConaughey and Harrelson, who play fictionalized versions of themselves, and whose friendship is thrown into chaos when they uncover a decades-old secret: they might actually be brothers. After Woody’s daughter’s engagement falls apart, he loads up the family and heads to Austin for an extended stay at Matthew’s ranch. But what begins as a healing getaway quickly spirals when Matthew’s mother, Ma Mac (played by Holland Taylor), accidentally lets slip a long-buried secret that the two friends might actually be brothers. As Woody turns the ranch upside down in pursuit of the truth, Matthew finds himself juggling an entirely different identity crisis: a potential run for governor of Texas. The result is a heartfelt, chaotic and wildly funny story about friendship, family, fame and the messy line between myth and reality.

Do you know these folks in your work/school/social life?

The first talked about himself a lot, jumping in on other people’s stories to tell his own slightly better version of whatever had just been said. His colleagues let him, but their faces had gone politely blank, the look people wear when they’re waiting for something to end. The second was his opposite: warm and pleasant whenever someone spoke to him, but only when someone spoke to him. He gave brief answers, handed the floor straight back, and initiated nothing. It was the third who intrigued me the most, because he was the one the whole group kept reorienting toward. What stood out was the way he moved attention around the group, asking questions and handing the floor to different people, while being just as comfortable taking it himself, telling his own stories without waiting to be asked. When he spoke, the same faces that had gone blank for the first guy came back to life. People leaned in. And even when someone else had asked the question, they would answer while looking at him. He came across as the “leader” of the group, even though he seemed to be on a similar professional rank with his colleagues.

The 2 behaviors that make you socially magnetic - Big Think

Folk med ångest (Anxious People) is a warm, quirky Swedish Netflix miniseries adapting Fredrik Backman’s novel. A botched bank robbery turns into a hostage situation at an open house, investigated by a clumsy father-son police duo. The six short episodes balance gentle humor with poignancy as eccentric characters reveal their anxieties and quiet struggles. Charming performances and Backman’s signature empathy shine, even if the mystery feels secondary. A comforting, human comedy-drama. I read the book sometime last year and really enjoyed - as I have with Backman’s other books.

Finished watching the first season of Bergerac on PBS Masterpiece. I didn’t realize this was a remake of an earlier version featured on BritBox. It looks like there were nine seasons for the original and there is only one season of the new version, although most of sources indicate there are two. Ex-cop Jim Bergerac is forced to confront a troubling past case when a wealthy woman is murdered, pushing him to overcome personal demons and reignite his investigative prowess to navigate family tensions and law enforcement scrutiny.

This was fun. I did better than I expected.

Off By — age calibration Bias: -1.3 yrs (well calibrated) Typical miss (RMSE): 2 yrs over 7 faces

Try for yourself at https://www.atvbt.com/just-a-number

I am currently reading The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen: 83 1/4 Years Old. The book is a fictional diary of an elderly gentlemen living in a care home in Amsterdam. The book includes the wit and wisdom of this elderly gentleman as he observes the characters, happenings and world around him.

As I move into my own retirement, I felt particularly connected to the story by the following text:

I, Hendrikus Gerardus Groen, am ever the civil, ingratiating, courteous, polite, and helpful guy. Not because I really am all those things, but because I don’t have the balls to act differently. I rarely say what I want to say. I tend to choose the path of least confrontation. My specialty: wanting to please everybody. My parents showed foresight in naming me Hendrik: you can’t get any blander than that. I’ll wind up spiraling into depression, I thought. That’s when I made the decision to give the world a little taste of the real Hendrik Groen. I hereby declare that in this diary I am going to give the world an uncensored exposé: a year in the life of the inmates of a care home in North Amsterdam.

Well okay, maybe I’m not going to be quite that bold, but I do plan to express my thoughts, feelings and opinions more openly going forward in life. And this blog is just the start of that.

This image was created with the following prompt: A fit young male tennis player captured in a mathematical sequence of motion, the movement of the arm and tennis racket are shown in a sequence of separate ghosted frames tracing an elegant curved trajectory across the frame, velocity vectors, acceleration arrows, Cartesian axes and time markers surrounding the objects, each position precisely plotted, diagram of technical physics meets surreal biology,, sophisticated and extremely detailed , fine indigo ink on old paper, in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci –chaos 25 –ar 3:4 –stylize 250 –hd –v 8.1

The prompt was modified from a Facebook post in the Midjourney Images & Insights. Share, Discuss Your Best Creations, Prompts. #mjbest_mathart - Starting from a prompt by Paweł Ceran (https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1FPAYqZVCb/)

The Count of Monte Cristo brings Alexandre Dumas’ classic tale of adventure, betrayal, and reinvention to life in a sweeping new adaptation. After young sailor Edmond Dantès finds his promising future suddenly shattered, his life takes an extraordinary and unexpected course. Sam Claflin leads an international cast in a visually rich production filled with intrigue, romance, shifting loyalties, and questions of justice and revenge. Even if you know the famous story, this Masterpiece adaptation offers an absorbing journey through 19th-century France and Italy–without requiring you to tackle Dumas’ 1,000-plus-page novel first.

While at some points I was challenged to keep up with the names and family connections of the characters as the story evolved, I would highly recommend this series as a must see for a classic piece of literature.