DVD review from The Movie Snob:

Grand Hotel (C). I pressed onward into the Greta Garbo collection with this, the best-picture-Oscar winner of 1931-32. (Interestingly, if I understood the short bonus documentary correctly, this is the only movie in history to win the Oscar for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category.) It was also apparently one of the first movies to feature a big star in virtually every significant role, most notably Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Joan Crawford. Anyhoo, like the other Garbo movies I have recently reviewed, this one comes across as stiff and unconvincing. The setting in Berlin’s finest hotel during the Weimar era, and several figures cross paths over just a couple of days with serious repercussions. Garbo plays a temperamental and world-weary Russian ballerina. John Barrymore plays a roguish baron whose charming demeanor conceals the fact that he is also a penniless burglar. Lionel Barrymore plays a pitiful, terminally-ill bookkeeper who has decided to throw caution to the wind and try to live for the first time in his life. And Crawford plays a streetwise stenographer hired by a boorish industrialist, at first just to take dictation during a weekend of corporate negotiations, but then perhaps to become his personal secretary as well. It was probably considered a pretty sudsy soap opera back in the day, but not too interesting now.

Book review from The Movie Snob:

Living It Up at National Review: A Memoir, by Priscilla Buckley (Spence Publishing 2005). Priscilla Buckley is the older sister of famous conservative journalist and publisher William F. Buckley, Jr. She was already becoming an established journalist in her own right, having worked for United Press for several years, when in 1956 she quit in order to join the staff of her brother’s new magazine, National Review. And there she stayed for the next 43 years. This memoir tells some stories about her experiences there, which are generally pleasant little vignettes, never edgy and certainly never mean. More interesting are the chapters about her many vacations, which tended to be quite extravagant (the Buckleys’ father having been a very wealthy oil tycoon). She matter-of-factly tells stories about dove hunting in South Carolina, river rafting through the Grand Canyon, river cruising in England, ballooning in Austria, sailing in the Greek Isles and Tahiti, trekking to the ancient temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and going on safari in Mozambique. Conclusion: The rich really are different from the rest of us…