Inside Jacket

Sad to hear about the death of Peter Falk, a raspy voiced actor whose most famous role was that of a rumpled detective named Lt. Columbo. His shtick of asking that last, telling question — “just one more thing,” he’d say — became a part of popular culture while the show ran.

As this story notes, Falk’s right eye had been surgically removed at age 3 due to a malignant tumor, and it was replaced with a glass eye. That handicap became a physical trademark of Columbo because it enhanced the detective’s image as a disheveled and oddball sleuth.

If you want to read about Falk in his own words, check out his memoir “Just One More Thing.” It describes his shift from working as an analyst for the Connecticut State Budget Bureau to acting on Broadway, in movies and on television.

When I was in Connecticut over the weekend, my niece Katie was surprised that I had never heard of the website Sporcle. It offers trivia quizzes and games on a wide range of topics: Famous Faces Upside Down and First and Last Letters: Movies were a couple featured today. For high schoolers, it’s a way to kill some time — while a teacher or parent is haranguing you, I imagine.

The PWxyz blog from Publishers Weekly noted that Sporcle has a number of quizzes on Literature, including one on classic opening lines.

So when you get some time, have at it. (Once you click "start," you don’t have to answer the questions in order. Just type a title into the colored box, and Sporcle will automatically place it in the correct spot.) I’ve provided a visual hint to get you started.

This weekend the Bilderberg Group is meeting at Suvretta House, a luxurious hotel in the chic Swiss resort of St. Moritz, and the invitation-only gathering of corporate execs and government officials always sparks conspiracy claims. The group got a lot of attention last fall, when Fidel Castro published an article in a Communist Party newspaper and quoted from "The Secrets of the Bilderburg Club" by Daniel Estulin.

The 2006 book posits that a secret group of politicians and business leaders runs the world, advancing its agenda at an annual conference. Castro said the book described "sinister cliques and the Bilderberg lobbyists" manipulating the public "to install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self."

I suppose the Bilderberg Group, which was founded in 1954 at the Hotel Bilderberg in Holland, can supply us with a few thrills while we wait for Dan Brown to knock out another book. But a hotel in St. Moritz — especially one that features Teddy’s World for kids — doesn’t seem like the place to plot world domination. Shouldn’t they be meeting in a secret underground lair?

Official Trailer

With the temperature in the mid-90s here in Baltimore, it’s time to start thinking about summer movies (and air-conditioned theaters), and one of the first big-budget offerings is “X-Men: First Class,” which has been getting good reviews. The prequel examines how the mutants come to grips with their powers. Here are some early reviews for the movie, which is based on the Marvel comics series and hits theaters Friday:

– Orlando Sentinel: “X-Men: First Class” still sings the praises of Marvel Studios’ marvelous quality control of comic book movies. It’s good, clean summer movie fun where the money they spend is up on the screen — with actors and effects — so that we won’t mind spending our money on it.

– Variety: Despite a somewhat hefty 130-minute running time, “First Class” feels swift, sleek and remarkably coherent; an even longer, more fully fleshed-out version would not have been unwelcome. Visual effects designed by John Dykstra are smoothly and imaginatively integrated, and Henry Jackman’s score provides fantastic forward momentum.

– The Hollywood Reporter: Much as Casino Royale rebooted the James Bond franchise in a fresh and dynamic way, X-Men: First Class injects new blood into a franchise that, for all its profitability, had become blandly anemic. In fact, roughly the first half of this massive and very well cast origins extravaganza is arguably the best hour of Marvel Comics-derived filmmaking among the torrent of it that’s cascaded across screens in recent years.

In New York City for a quick weekend trip, my wife and I stopped for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants: Petite Abeille (Little Bee) on East 20th.

As a book blogger. I admire the restaurant’s Tintin decor — there’s even a rack of the bande dessinee books in the back. And if you can’t read French, you can surely enjoy the quaint drawings. I’ve also enjoyed the Belgian bistro atmosphere, and now that our daughter is living in Brussels, it carries even more meaning. I can imagine her lingering over a Grimbergen dark — or maybe a Gaufre de Liege. Bon Appetit!

p.s. All you Tintin fans, the new Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson movie, "The Adventures of Tintin," is scheduled for a Dec. 23 release.

Photo from Petite Abeille