Always something new to watch

I cannot imagine being bored in a world so full of wonderful books, music, TV shows, and movies.  On the latter two fronts, these trailers fill me with hopeful anticipation.

The Sherlock special.



Doctor Who's new season.



And, of course, Bond, James Bond.



I look forward to all of them!

Sherlock Holmes

Saturday night, after a lovely sushi dinner, a group of nine of us trundled off to see Guy Ritchie's take on Sherlock Holmes. I liked it a great deal, but I didn't love it, probably in part because my expectations were so very high that the film had very little chance of meeting them.

First, a quick run-down of some of the many strong points. London looked amazing, with every set and CGI'd backdrop quite splendidly grimy and yet still lovely and impressive. Both Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law were excellent, infusing their characters with depth and enough craziness and affection for one another to make them consistently interesting. Downey did an especially good job of showing us the madness and loneliness and overwhelming boredom that so plagued Holmes. The story functioned as it should, taking us to the mystic side and then ultimately, in proper Holmesian fashion, showing us the rational world behind the mystery. Guy Ritchie's typical odd cuts worked well, as did the occasional dive into Holmes' mind as he analyzed and visualized a sequence of actions before beginning it.

The main weakness, at least to my taste, is that Ritchie pushed the superhero angle too far--a complaint I did not expect to make. Though I'm a big fan of this side of the consulting detective, I also see Holmes as not quite the super-fighter and action hero that Ritchie portrayed here.

Still, that is a quibble about a delightful film that I quite enjoyed and that I encourage you to see.

In anticipation of the Sherlock Holmes film

From the moment I first saw the trailer, I have been eagerly awaiting this movie. We won't see it tomorrow--we have other Christmas traditions that are more important--but we will be there Saturday night. A few folks have asked me why I cared so much, so I thought I'd answer the question here.

First, if the teaser is any indication, the movie is made of awesome. I love Guy Ritchie's work, I'm a huge fan of Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law is a fine actor (though a bit cold on screen in most roles), and the Holmes cum action cum steampunk vibe is immensely attractive. If Sherlock Holmes as a character debuted in this movie, I'd want to see it.

More important to me, though, is the fact that I have loved the Holmes stories since I was a child. (I've avoided re-reading them for that very reason, but now I will probably go back and finally try them again.) They were among the very first stories I read as a very young kid, and they triggered lifelong loves of mystery, the power of the mind, superheroes, and science fiction.

I know the last two points may seem odd, because few would call the Holmes stories superhero or SF fiction, but in many ways they were. Holmes was the self-made superhero, the man who through his abilities and his efforts transcended his limits and became more than human. Similarly, in these stories Conan Doyle so perfectly portrayed the rationalist mindset that was a mainstay of at least Golden Age SF that when I started reading SF almost immediately thereafter, it felt like home. It still does.

Holmes also appealed so much to me because he was so clearly boiling and churning under the still surface he worked so hard to evince. His anger, his passions, his pain--all were eating at him, under control most of the time but not always, not always.

I've felt since the first of the Jeremy Brett BBC Holmes episodes that Brett was the perfect Holmes, but that didn't stop me from being able to enjoy repeat viewings of the Rathbone shows (yes, I still like them) or most of the many Holmes movies. I don't expect Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey, Jr. to unseat Brett, but I do believe that Ritchie's vision of the character and my own are not so far off from one another, and so I quite look forward to the film.