One Night at the Peacock Hotel

Back in 2000, I co-produced a movie called Retiring Tatiana. Shot on the cheap, the movie was written by the star, Tony Winters. Shot in L.A. and in Tony's home town of Detroit, the film got both a video and DVD release and was featured in that year's Pan-African Film Festival where it took home the "Audience Award." (That was a pretty big deal because the film was in competition with movies like Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog, starring Forest Whitaker.)
Tony has since written a number of other scripts (including a fantastic bio-pic about Sam Cooke) and several plays. He's now looking to raise money for a production of his most recent project, One Night at the Peacock Hotel. Check it out on KickStarter here.

Fun with Shakespeare

I am a big fan of anything that makes Shakespeare fun and Shakespeare the Bard Game looks like a lot of geeky fun. In it, you play an Elizabethan-era theatrical impresario collecting manuscripts.  The product description says a game lasts about an hour and can be played by gamers 12 and up. It's not cheap ($40), so replay-ability would have to be a factor.
The Bard Game is also called Shakespeare the Board Game,
If you fancy card games more than board games, for $8, you can buy Shakespeare's Insult Playing Cards. For two dollars more, you can get Shakespeare's Quotes Playing Cards.
If you like playing with words, there's a Shakespeare edition of Magnetic Words to create your own epic poetry. For less than $10, your refrigerator can be the most erudite appliance in town.
Another great silly Shakespeare thing is a stuffed Shakespeare doll from Little Thinkers. Priced at $16.10, it's a little expensive for something so whimsical, but it's pretty great. 

My all-time favorite frivolous frippery of a Shakespeare toy has to be this Shakespeare action figure (with removable quill pen!!!)

Toto, Thank God We're Not in Kansas Any more

Feminist Fiction Friday--The Winter Palace

Eva Stachniak's beautifully researched historical novel about Catherine the Great is a big juicy read. Told from the point of view of a young woman who enters the Winter Palace as a seamstress and becomes a spy (a "tongue") on behalf of the young woman who will one day be the Empress of All Russia, the book is filled with sex, intrigue and treachery.
The story is told by Barbara (called Varvara in Russian), a Polish book-binder's daughter who turns out to have a natural knack for espionage, although her lessons in it include deflowering at the hands of the spymaster, Alexei Bestuzhev, the Chancellor of Russia. The two women whose lives bookend the story--the ruthless Elizabeth (daughter to Peter the Great) and Catherine--seemingly could not be much different but as Varvara realizes, Catherine has her own agenda and her own methods.
There is love in the book, and a fair amount of sex, but that aspect of the story does not drive it. Probably the most intense man/woman connection in the entire novel is the one between Varvara and her spymaster, and in later scenes, when he tells her some harsh truths about her situation, we know that he is right because we're told so in Catherine's own words at the very beginning of the story.
If you're looking for an historical novel that's long on detail and layered with great observations, you should take a look at The Winter Palace.

Courtesy of Grammarly

My sister's pet grammar peeve was the Its/It's thing (mine is Your/You're) and she would have enjoyed this silly cartoon courtesy of Grammarly.

Update--This kind of behavior will not be tolerated

Why is Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke the only reporter covering the story of the CNN camera operator pelted with peanuts? Today the young woman gave her feelings about the incident. You can read the update here.  The CNN employee does not think much has changed in terms of race relations.

 Last night Condoleezza Rice rocked Tampa with her speech about growing up in segregated Birmingham and not being allowed to eat at the local lunch counter. It was a great speech and a bit of a thumbing of the nose at Romney and Ryan and their not-so-subtle cracks appealing to the birther crackpots.
 I couldn't help but think that a Rice/Clinton race would be an epic political event with two extremely smart, extremely shrewd foreign policy experts going head to head.

ThugLit is back

It's actually been back for awhile. There's now a new ThugLit page on Facebook so if you do the FB thing, you should go here and like it.