The drive to Oceana, West Virginia, mirrors the opening sequence of The Shining. From nearby Beckley, it’s a treacherous 20-mile journey along a two-lane road that dips and curves through the Appalachian Mountains.

“You feel like you’re cut off, and it adds to this feeling of hopelessness,” says Oceana resident Mike Moore.

The British have an insatiable appetite for crime fiction, whether it appears in print or on television screens. Putting aside the twee tea cozy mysteries of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot, however, these thrillers are not only taut but also bleak depictions of the psychological fallout from murder: tracing, as novelist Ruth Rendell has done so well in her work, how crime affects not just the victim, but also those left behind. Murder doesn’t just destroy a single life; it corrupts everyone with which it comes in contact.

ITV’s superlative murder mystery Broadchurch, which wraps up its eight-episode run tonight in the U.K. (it heads Stateside later this year on BBC America), explores just that, a gorgeously realized and emotive thriller that revolves around the murder of an 11-year-old boy, Danny Latimer (Oskar McNamara), in a seaside town on the Dorset coast, and the investigation by the police and the media to unmask his killer.

One woman holds the reins at Gucci.

Behind the walls of the storied Italian fashion house, creative director Frida Giannini quietly controls all aspects of the label, from discovering—and rediscovering—fabrics to casting models for its runway shows. An up-close portrait of her artistic process is the focus of a new documentary, The Director, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday night.

Directed by Christina Voros and produced by James Franco (former classmates at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts) the film, composed in three acts, spans 18 months with Giannini and shows how she transitions between her role as the public face of the company and the creative brain of the brand—as well as her ability to conquer the feminist hurdle of balancing a demanding job with a fruitful family life.

Look Out, Dad.

David Beckham's three sons enjoyed a kickaround at the Paris St Germain training ground this weekend. 10 year-old Romeo tackled Swedish star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, while 14 year-old Brooklyn dribbled past Brazilian star Thiago Silva.

In 1844, German poet Heinrich Heine penned several feuilletons—similar to the “Talk of the Town” section of The New Yorker—that touched on contemporary art, literature, and music. Reviewing that year’s musical season from Paris, he coined the term Lisztomania to describe the insane fits of hysterics directed toward Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt during his performances.

Prior to the release of their fourth studio album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, the French rock quartet Phoenix had remained an underground band, despite being around for nine years. Their lead singer, Thomas Mars, helped produce the soundtracks to all of his wife Sofia Coppola’s films, and the song “Too Young,” from their first album, United, was memorably featured in Lost in Translation. But, like so many of their fellow countrymen, they hadn’t “broken” the States. And their previous effort, It’s Never Been Like That, sold just 92,000 copies in the U.S.

Every year the television networks roll out massive slates of new television shows, and, reliably, there are at least a dozen of them that audiences watch and wonder, “Who let this on air?” Now, the answer will be: you.

We’re waist-deep in the strange new waters of online original programming now, and, as such, Amazon is changing things up with the launch of its first slate of original series. Late last week the Web juggernaut posted all 14 of the the “TV” pilots it ordered and asked the public to view, rate, and review them all. Of the eight comedy and four children’s pilots posted, those with the most views and best viewer feedback will be ordered to a whole series. In other words, only the most popular ones—those you like—will move forward.

Season 3 of HBO’s NSFW smash drama Game of Thrones has brought in a slew of new faces to enrich its latest season. But one particular newbie, Lady Olenna Tyrell (née Redwyne) of Highgarden, who appears as King Joffrey’s bride-to-be’s grandmother (played to perfection by Dame Diana Rigg) has us scratching our heads: Haven’t we seen this character before? The white-haired woman with a wicked wit—who rarely holds her tongue—shares an uncanny resemblance to another one of television’s great grandmothers: Downton Abbey’s eternally disapproving Dowager Countess Violet Crawley.

The pair appear to be cut from the same cloth: Both are wealthy, powerful, opinionated, and viciously sharp women who deliver scathing one-liners that leave you both in awe of their cleverness and instantly goaded. Below, The Daily Beast pits these two deliciously dour dowagers against each other in a battle of one-liners. Can you tell these characters’ most withering quotes apart?