If you have been craving a well-written period murder mystery, then look no further than Radley Metzger’s The Cat and the Canary. However, if your tastes tend toward lush murder mystery musicals, then take a look at 8 Women. 8 Women has plot twists galore, and since I’m not one to spoil, this review will be short.

Set in 1950s France, Suzon (Virgine Ledoyen - La Ceremonie, The Beach), returns home to her family’s countryside estate while on Christmas vacation from school. In short order, Suzon greets her mother, Gaby (Catharine Deneuve - Repulsion, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), her Aunt Augustine (Isabelle Huppert - La Dentelliere, The Piano Teacher), sister Catherine (Ludivine Sagnier - Water Drops on Burning Rocks, Swimming Pool), housekeeper Louise (Emmanuelle Beart - The Story of Marie and Julien, Mission: Impossible), maid Chanel (Firmine Richard - Romuald et Juliette), and grandmother Mamy (Danielle Darrieux - The Earrings of Madame de…). Later in the film, we are treated to a guest appearance by Fanny Ardant (Vivement dimanche!) as Aunt Pierrette. Shortly after arriving, Suzon’s father, Marcel, is murdered. There are eight possible suspects in the house – all women. Eight women. The murderer could be any one of them, and paranoia quickly sets in as the women accuse each other of committing the murder.

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Dishwashing liquid commercials vary in their subject matter. Either they take an eco-friendly approach, tug at your heartstrings by demonstrating how they save animals affected by an oil spill, or they show the product’s grease-cutting power. The Palmolive brand has come a long way from its origins as a beauty product.

The above ad from the 1950’s pushes Palmolive as a beauty product promising better skin for all ages and skin types. In current times, where skincare is usually sold as a complicated system featuring many products for day and night, the original Palmolive bar advocated simple “soap facials” that would “bring new complexion beauty to 2 out of 3 women.” Today, most beauty magazines caution women to avoid soap all together, warning of their harshness on the skin and problems that could arise with residue the soap bar leaves behind. But in the 1950’s, where efficiency was key, the little green Palmolive bar was pitched to members of the entire household. There were smaller-sized bars geared toward the women using it for their skincare, and larger sizes of the bar for use in the family bath.

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“Closer Than We Think!” shouts the headline. It looks like a comic and probably ran in the funnies section of the Sunday Chicago Tribune and it's affiliates. During the late 1950's and early 1960's artist Arthur Radebaugh forecast a soon to be techno-future of magical and fantastic innovation. As a regular feature in widespread newspaper syndication, his cartoon like “Closer Than We Think!” may have fired more imaginations of the Atomic Age than any other single print source.

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A short movie that takes us back 60 years or so, to a time when Broadway and Times Square were the theater and entertainment capital of the USA. Pre Disneyfication and massive tourist invasions. For those of you who likes numbers, there were apparently 40 million twinkling lights around Broadway back then. Many of these places however are gone today. Are there any New Yorkers who appreciate this area of New York today?

For those of you who saw the posts about the Disneyland home movies taken in 1956, only a year after the park opened will most likely appreciate that the author of those videos have found another treasure from his grandparents home movie archive, San Francisco in 1958. The movie guides us around a few urban scenes, trolley cars and the Golden Gate bridge among many other things. The scene from inside the trolley car reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock's movie Vertigo made in the same year. Let's hope that he next time finds a home movie from New York around the same period. Mad Men anyone?