Sherlock

[fpb]

I could become a fan of the new BBC Sherlock Holmes serial. And mind you, I am a lifelong Holmes fan who has demanding tastes in adaptations (I hate Jeremy Brett, for instance).

Comments

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

Interesting to see how they'll update it to modern times. Sherlock Holmes, CSI?
Just curious, why didn't you like Jeremy Brett?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Hysterical. Scenery-chewer. Holmes should be nervy, but controlled.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for CSI, there is very little of the detailed and nasty forensics work of a lot of modern series - at least so far. It is pretty close to the original, only a bit faster-paced, and with very creative use of things like portable phones.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And if you are curious, go on the BBC home site and see if you can watch it online. I don't know whether areas outside Britain are protected, but that is how I am watching the first episode, which I missed last Saturday.

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

One review I read said Brett was putting a little bit too much emphasis on the drug-addict aspect of Holmes, heh. I think he started out better in the first years, before they ran out of the original Holmes stories. (Which were adapted pretty well, IMO.)

[elise-the-great.livejournal.com]

Yes, but how do you like Robert Downey Jr? *trying very hard to keep a straight face*

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

Our local PBS(non-profit) station runs a lot of BBC stuff--they showed the Brett series, as well as some Dr. Who. I'll have to check them out, they're one of the channels that comes in really well with my digital TV antenna.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Oh, one thing by which you can tell it's Moffat, there's any amount of gay jokes. We shall hope he does not actually take Holmes and Watson (who are both quite young) to bed.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Haven't actually seen him yet, but a lot of people who were disposed to hate the movie seem to have been pleased. And really, Holmes IS an action hero - untwisting twisted pokers, fighting prizefighters, pursuing speedboats in the London night, etc etc etc. And Dr.Watson has been in Afghanistan and carries his service revolver around - and uses it, too, when necessary. So I think that some of the shock about having Iron Man as Holmes may be misplaced. Not that I don't think Rathbone remains supreme...

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

I've read some Holmes stories where the underlying joke was that everyone thought they were gay, even though they really weren't, which was kind of funny if it was played very subtly. Holmes/Watson slash, though=not a fan.

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

When I first saw the reviews for the movie, I kind of went, "Wut?" But when I actually rented it and watched it, I really enjoyed it. Yes, it's kind of a steampunk version of Holmes, but it was essentially pretty true to the Holmes and Watson universe.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I hope he'll do. That's what he'll do if he has any sense - everyone thinks they are gay where in fact they are both straight and even a bit in the market. The canon Dr.Watson is pretty bloody obviously straight - married twice, and very sentimental indeed. And there is evidence that Holmes fell in love once or twice, but never admitted it.

[elise-the-great.livejournal.com]

I found the movie shockingly enjoying, and I must say Jude Law made a much better Watson than *cough* certain other attempts, and RDJ even impressed me with his failure to be a chilly, self-collected, totally cerebral character...

...but I can't see his face without thinking of Iron Man. I suspect I have been brain-poisoned.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, to the both of you: if you watch the story, there is a big clue as to the murderer - and the way the murder was done - in the first couple of minutes. And I shall be generous and give it to you: the second victim had drunk too much to be able to drive herself, yet she vanished from the place where she was supposed to be and was found in an empty lot. When you have seen the whole episode, you will go: 'YES!! THAT'S IT!!"

By The Way

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

Since this post is rather tangentially about fandom, have you seen this--->

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/07/22/super-heroes-vs-the-westboro-baptist-church/

[elise-the-great.livejournal.com]

Now I really want to watch it! I honestly didn't know they were doing a new series... time to dig up friends with BBC access.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As I told elegant_bonfire, you could try the main BBC site and go on BBC Iplayer. That is how I have been watching it.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

I saw complaints about several features that were straight out of Doyle, from which I surmise that the recent movie is rather more shocking by comparison to other adaptations (with which I am not widely familiar) than to canon.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Doesn't that always happen? Check out the recent right-wing complaints about the forthcoming Captain America movie, from which you conclude that nobody of those who complain had ever read the comic at all!

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Rex Stout's Watson Was a Woman speech?

It was clearly meant tongue in cheek, but I think the deal is that there are, in any close platonic relationship, elements that could be emphasized or reinterpreted to indicate attraction. Especially, if it's an old friendship, it will resemble in some ways an old happily married couple, because I can't think of any longterm happily married couple that are not also good friends. I think that drives most shipping fic, heterosexual or homosexual. If a character cares for a sick character, it doesn't matter what the author's intention was... there will be things there that someone, somewhere, will seize upon and start shipping the characters.

Although fandom is crazy. Characters don't have to interact in canon at all to paired in fanfic!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Stout had to fight off similar slurs about Nero Wolfe's all-male household.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Well, now, I've seen part of that more fundamental argument and think I shall leave it to others, as I haven't read the early issues.

More frivolously, "it was in canon" by itself works better as an argument for movie-suitability with Holmes than Captain America. I was reading it rather haphazardly in the early nineties, and I recall an issue where he narrowly escaped being turned into a woman and one where he did get turned into a werewolf. :)

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

I'd say that so far things look encouraging. Certainly Moffet's Dr. Watson seems v. interested in the ladies.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

That was one thing about series five of Doctor Who that surprised me -- the gay jokes were almost nowhere to be found.

Other Holmes

[dr-dgo.livejournal.com]

I recall seeing a Sherlock Holmes show that had Edward Woodward as Holmes. A rather energetic one if I remember right. Do not remember who was Watson. I do like Brett as Holmes, but have not seen the Rathbone movies.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

The BBC iPlayer is not an option outside of the UK. I've had to torrent it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I was afraid that might be the case. I hope you get it soon, because it really is not bad (except for a poor and gimmicky motivation for the killer, certainly not comparable to the original Jefferson Hope) and if it goes on on this level it will certainly end up being a superior bit of fun.

Re: Other Holmes

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The Rathbone movies were very variable in quality - some were awful - and Rathbone's partner Nigle Bruce is the father of all the bad Dr.Watson interpretation - woozy, comically stupid, and ineffective. (One has to remember that Dr.Watson is describing himself in the stories, and that he has the good taste to play himself down and smile at himself; but the stories still manage to make it clear that he is an effective, hard-working partner and occasionally a serious help in danger, with his service revolver at the ready.) But, like all forties Hollywood black-and-white products, they are gorgeous to look up - brother, they knew what to do with a camera in those days! - and Rathbone himself is a continuously superb Holmes. I havent's een Woodward, but I imagine he would be good. Cushing was nicely cerebral, but too withered - one has to remember that Holmes was a man of action who could stand up to prizefighters and resist the attentions of three professional thugs at once, and who, in The Speckled Band, straightened back the poker that Dr.Grimesby Roylott had bent (and straightening an already-bent piece of metal can actually be harder than to bend it). Rathbone, on the other hand, was the man who looked credible - and menacing - duelling with Erroll Flynn.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

This may surprise you, but I have been a Cap fan even longer than I have been into Sherlock Holmes - my interest started in Italy, as a child, when I could not even read English properly. So I can identify all the stories you mention - indeed, they are in my library in the other room in my flat. They come from the declining period of Mark Gruenwald's long run; alas, you seem to have got in just as he lost direction badly. I have written an essay on the Gruenwald Cap years for a fanzine I used to publish, which I don't think I ever reprinted in this blog - if you are interested, I will.

My point is that the fuss made about the movie adaptation's director's description of Cap as "not a super-patriot, but an ordinary Joe who tries to do his best and live up to the image cast on him" proves beyond a doubt that the people who made the fuss had never read the comic. The "ordinary Joe" is at the heart of everything that all the best Cap writers have tried to do with the character, and Jack Kirby, the author most closely associated with Cap, explicitly and repeatedly stated it as the core of what his Captain was just that. In his Captain America's Bicentennial Battles (which, in spite of the dreadful title, is one of the greatest Cap stories ever and one of the peaks of Kirby's stellar career), he closed the package with a single-page drawing of Cap out of his mask, and a parade of his arrogant and stupid enemies - from Nazi officers to Batroc the Leaper - who repeat in chorus that none of them would bother with someone so commonplace. And all the leading Cap creators - Joe Simon who created him, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Englehart, Roger Stern, Marc de Matteis, Mark Gruenwald - were one way or another part of the left-of-centre area, and Cap was consistently the defender of a moderately but distinctly left-of-centre notion of decency.