At first blush, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has a rather dated feel to it, and comes
over almost a refugee from the late 1930s. This could be mildly disconcerting, but quality performances by a strong cast of second-tier actors bring the whole thing together in a delightfully old-fashioned comedy.
The Miss Pettigrew of the title is played by Frances McDormand, who has performed in the supporting role in a number of excellent films and is probably best-known for her Oscar-winning performance as Police Chief Marge Gunderson in Fargo (1996). She has made something of a specialty of rough diamond characters, a loving heart that shines out from a somewhat world-weary exterior.
In Miss Pettigrew she plays a stern governess, a vicar’s daughter who has some trouble dealing with the flighty upper-crust types she is called upon to serve in order to make ends meet. That is until she meets Delysia, an aspiring star sleeping her way to the top.
Delysia leads Miss Pettigrew into her high-society world, with its many dirty little secrets, blackmail and back-stabbing, embodied in the character of Edythe, played by the ever delightful Shirley Henderson. There are a number of Pretty Woman moments as Miss Pettigrew is introduced to the delights of a decadent world, a million miles from the soup kitchens into which she might fall back at any moment.
Miss Pettigrew has a foundation of common sense and a knowledge of the world’s harshness that is not shared by the bright young things around her, and more by accident than design finds herself in the role of fixer for various romantic contretemps. The film is so light and airy that it is constantly in danger of drifting off. It is anchored by Ciaran Hinds, who plays Joe, a lingerie designer and a counterpoint of studied elegance and emotional seriousness in a growing appreciation of Miss Pettigrew’s virtues.
Set on the eve of World War II, director Bharat Nalluri provides a base note of sorrow that rumbles just beneath the frothy surface. It may all end happily ever after when Delysia finally finds the courage — instilled by Miss Pettigrew — to walk into the night with the right man, but the Lancaster bombers are already flying overhead, and both Joe and Miss Pettigrew know that the future is anything but certain.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would