Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings
Movie Monday
Well, I should be getting a camera (my very own) pretty soon and I think I'll be able to figure out uploading pictures to the computer and therefore my Knitting Fridays won't be so lame and sporadic. Plus, some pictures of Miss M!
Krugman has a good column in the NYT this a.m. I don't think it will change hearts and minds but it's nice to know that you're not the only Cassandra out there.
HBO introduced a new series this weekend, Boardwalk Empire. I don't think I'll be tuning in (the basic reason, I don't subscribe) but because of this we got HBO free so I got to see Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie.
Interesting movie. As usual, the special effects and CGI were a tad too long. I swear they must pay for these pyrotechnics by the full hour and they all plan to squeeze every damn penny out of it. Where's a good editor, with clout, when you need him/her? OK, the very large villain speaking French was pretty novel but he plummeted Holmes and Watson to near-death long minutes before the director called "cut." Boring!
I think American movie schizophrenia is becoming even more pronounced (which sounds like an impossibility) as the technology advances. In this movie, you have some interesting points from classic Sherlock Holmes lore such as Irene Adler (spelled Irene but pronounced Irenee - something this movie missed); the origin of Moriarty (not from the canon, but interesting); and Holmes and Watson's relationship. This is all mixed in with the seemingly-endless pyrotechnics that only adolescent boys and those men whose emotional growth ended at this age love so much. Do even quality directors today have to be stuck in a thinking man's Terminator mode? Bad things can happen to your hero but if you want to keep any semblance of reason and reality in your movie, you can't have lethal bad things occur. Lethal bad things kill your hero; unless you're filming in la-la land.
This movie dances around the modern day query: Were Holmes and Watson lovers? I say "modern day query" because if you read enough Victorian era lit you'll find a sub-vein of homo-eroticism. Just read some of Bleak House where the two heroines are talking (or Dickens is talking about them) to see what I mean. I think this may have just been that period's style of writing.
Additionally, I say "modern query" because I don't remember hearing these "rumors" until the Gay movement gained ground and I can't remember ever having that this thought when reading Doyle. I think you can say that Doyle never went there.
But Ritchie does and what I get from the dialogue between Holmes and Watson (as Watson is getting ready to marry his Mary) is that whatever the relationship was, Watson is ready to move on while Holmes is still needy.
There's a lot less mention of Holme's drug use in this movie though Holmes never appears less than seedy throughout the movie.
I like Rachel Mcadams as a actress (I think she saves The Time Traveller's Wife) and her large role as Irene doesn't drag down the story. Though, did we really need the PC at the end where Holmes and Watson take a plummeting to keep the bad guys at bay while Irene figures out and implements the solution to keep all Parliament members from being gassed to death?
The plot of this movie is rather wacky and, not to give any thing away, until the end I thought that Madonna's Kabul beliefs had strongly influenced Richie. But I should have had faith in Holmes.
A final word about Downey and Law (Holmes and Watson): We have a much more robust, take-charge Watson here and both actors contribute so well to their roles that for the first time I could believe this might have been close to Doyle's vision before Hollywood so early on (1920s?) made Watson the bumbling sidekick.
Verdict: Definitely worth a Netflix rental.
Krugman has a good column in the NYT this a.m. I don't think it will change hearts and minds but it's nice to know that you're not the only Cassandra out there.
HBO introduced a new series this weekend, Boardwalk Empire. I don't think I'll be tuning in (the basic reason, I don't subscribe) but because of this we got HBO free so I got to see Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie.
Interesting movie. As usual, the special effects and CGI were a tad too long. I swear they must pay for these pyrotechnics by the full hour and they all plan to squeeze every damn penny out of it. Where's a good editor, with clout, when you need him/her? OK, the very large villain speaking French was pretty novel but he plummeted Holmes and Watson to near-death long minutes before the director called "cut." Boring!
I think American movie schizophrenia is becoming even more pronounced (which sounds like an impossibility) as the technology advances. In this movie, you have some interesting points from classic Sherlock Holmes lore such as Irene Adler (spelled Irene but pronounced Irenee - something this movie missed); the origin of Moriarty (not from the canon, but interesting); and Holmes and Watson's relationship. This is all mixed in with the seemingly-endless pyrotechnics that only adolescent boys and those men whose emotional growth ended at this age love so much. Do even quality directors today have to be stuck in a thinking man's Terminator mode? Bad things can happen to your hero but if you want to keep any semblance of reason and reality in your movie, you can't have lethal bad things occur. Lethal bad things kill your hero; unless you're filming in la-la land.
This movie dances around the modern day query: Were Holmes and Watson lovers? I say "modern day query" because if you read enough Victorian era lit you'll find a sub-vein of homo-eroticism. Just read some of Bleak House where the two heroines are talking (or Dickens is talking about them) to see what I mean. I think this may have just been that period's style of writing.
Additionally, I say "modern query" because I don't remember hearing these "rumors" until the Gay movement gained ground and I can't remember ever having that this thought when reading Doyle. I think you can say that Doyle never went there.
But Ritchie does and what I get from the dialogue between Holmes and Watson (as Watson is getting ready to marry his Mary) is that whatever the relationship was, Watson is ready to move on while Holmes is still needy.
There's a lot less mention of Holme's drug use in this movie though Holmes never appears less than seedy throughout the movie.
I like Rachel Mcadams as a actress (I think she saves The Time Traveller's Wife) and her large role as Irene doesn't drag down the story. Though, did we really need the PC at the end where Holmes and Watson take a plummeting to keep the bad guys at bay while Irene figures out and implements the solution to keep all Parliament members from being gassed to death?
The plot of this movie is rather wacky and, not to give any thing away, until the end I thought that Madonna's Kabul beliefs had strongly influenced Richie. But I should have had faith in Holmes.
A final word about Downey and Law (Holmes and Watson): We have a much more robust, take-charge Watson here and both actors contribute so well to their roles that for the first time I could believe this might have been close to Doyle's vision before Hollywood so early on (1920s?) made Watson the bumbling sidekick.
Verdict: Definitely worth a Netflix rental.
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