Dressed To Kill

No Chime To Die

Dressed To Kill
USA 1946
Directed by Roy William Neill
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

Dressed To Kill is the third of five movies that I know of, to bear the exact same title as each other. However, for our purposes here, it’s the fourteenth and final of the Sherlock Holmes films made by first 20th Century Fox and then Universal, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as the faithful Dr. Watson (I’ll get into why it was the last a little further down the page). It also, once again, features Mary Gordon as Holmes housekeeper/landlady Mrs. Hudson, although the interior room of 2212B Baker Street seems to have grown considerably in size again for this one. Inspector Lestrade as played by the incomparable Dennis Hoey does not make any appearance here, he already had his series swansong on the previous film, Terror By Night (reviewed here) but he is mentioned in it at least. Actually, I’m guessing he must have already been engaged in shooting another movie because this one is firmly set in London and features a large police presence.

The plot is similar in some ways to The Pearl Of Death (reviewed here), which was loosely based on The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons. In this one it’s three music boxes made by a prisoner and sold off at auction which are the things everyone is looking for. Holmes has a photographic memory for the tune that’s played on one of the three when an old friend of Watson, a music box collector who has bought one of them, is showing off his collection. It’s a good job Holmes can remember it note for note because he’s suddenly also trying to track down the music boxes when Watson’s friend is murdered by a henchman of lady antagonist Hilda Courtney (played by Patricia Morison), the super-villainess of the story who needs the boxes because they contain the key to the whereabouts of some forged Bank of London plates for five pound notes (the proper, big old five pound notes of yesteryear, I might add).

Holmes figures out, from his music box and a remembrance of the other, that a few notes have been changed on each rendition of the tune, Once A Jolly Swagman... so he consults with a criminal who he cleared of murder by proving he was cracking a safe somewhere else, who he knows is an expert on music. Eventually he figures out the coded messages in the tune variations and it’s one of those films where the villains are racing to get there first and murdering people as they go. Holmes himself eludes a deathtrap just in time while Watson is being duped by the lady in question. It’s been a while since Rathbone’s character went in disguise in the movies and, he doesn’t on this occasion either, but Patricia Morison does to steal one music box right from under the noses of Holmes and Watson.

And, yeah, it’s another entertaining, Holmesian romp with the added extra, if it’s your thing, of Nigel Bruce doing a Donal Duck impression. It doesn’t go down well with the young girl he’s trying to cheer up, for sure. It’s interesting to see the racially targeted humour of the day has stood the test of time and continued over the years too, nicely preserved here. For example, when Holmes is querying the price each music box sold for with the owner of the auction house, he asks why such a low price was paid for the third. Was there something wrong with it. The answer was, of course, that Mr. Kilgore, the man who bought it so cheaply, was a Scotsman. Yeah, alright then. if you say so.

Another point of interest, although it’s been mentioned in the films before, is Watson’s role as Holmes’ sensationalist biographer. In the short stories, originally published serially for many years in The Strand Magazine, it’s known to Holmes that Watson publishes lurid accounts of their adventures in that very magazine. In this film... and much more than a passing reference this time, much is made of Watson’s stories published in The Strand which, was just about still going when this film was made and set contemporary to its time... the magazine was going from late 1890 (with a January 1891 cover date) until it ceased publication in March of 1950 with Issue 711. Much is also made of the famous, ‘The Woman’ from the Arthur Conan Doyle story A Scandal In Bohemia, aka Holmes’ female nemesis Miss Irene Adler (who, although only actually appearing in one of Conan Doyle’s stories, has been used in various forms by many writers and in many films since).

As usual, Rathbone and Bruce are absolutely brilliant and everyone does very well. Indeed Miss Morison was so convincing in her disguise as a lowly housekeeper that, when she went to eat lunch in the studio canteen still in costume, she was told to get out and eat with the rest of the extras as she wasn’t supposed to go near the stars. She must have been delighted that her disguise on this day’s shoot was so good it even fooled the canteen staff.

But things were troubled with Rathbone and he decided to quit the role, both in the films and on the radio (although he would occasionally play Holmes on stage and was, in other ways, dogged by the role throughout his career). He felt that, since his first film for Fox, The Hound Of The Baskervilles (reviewed here), the role had been like a cookie cutter template producing repetitive impressions. I’d myself argue that Rathbone was so good in the role in every one of his fourteen Holmes films (all made between 1939 and 1946 with a two year break in between the Fox and Universal periods... so they were really knocking these things out quickly, to be fair) that it was criminal to leave a role which was evidently so popular with cinema goers internationally and, to this day, I’d argue that, despite the obvious intentional differences to the original stories, he was the one, definitive Holmes. On the radio, they recast Tom Conway in the Holmes role opposite Nigel Bruce’s Watson for a while... and having seen him in a fair number of Falcon movies and a few other things... that might not have been a bad choice. They also considered recasting the films with him in them and continuing the series but... well, I don’t know why that didn’t happen but, perhaps it possibly had something to do with the fact that the producer/director of the majority of the series, Roy William Neill, dropped dead of a heart attack seven months after the release of this film. I don’t know.

All I do know for sure is that Dressed To Kill is another high point in the series and that Rathbone and Bruce certainly went out on a good one. Heavily recommended and a fitting, if early end, to one of the greatest film sequences in cinematic history. And that's me finished with the Rathbone Holmes reviews but, fear not, more Sherlock Holmes reviews will be coming to this very blog in the not too distant future.

Sherlock - The Final Problem

Mary Entry, My Dear Watson

Sherlock 4.3 - The Final Problem
UK Airdate: 15th January 2017 BBC 1

Warning: Some slight spoilerage here.

Oh rats. This is absolutely not the review I wanted to be writing today, in the wake of last night’s season finale of Sherlock. The show has been a bit hit and miss since it first started and there’s usually one clunker per series but... yeah, The Final Problem isn’t good. In fact, I would go as far to say that it’s not only the worst episode of this series... it’s the worst of all four series. Not a good one at all and, ultimately for me, very disappointing.

Okay... so was fully expecting the re-entry of Mary Watson into the plot this week. Perhaps a continuation of her back story thread and how it was, maybe, intertwined with Moriarty and Euros Holmes but... nope. She has a brief cameo where she enters the show via another video clip at the end and I mention this here purely to justify the title of this blog post. I was going to be using this title whether she reappeared or not, you see... I didn’t want to waste it. Alas, my ideas at the continuation of her storyline seem almost blown out of the water... up to a point.

And that point is... I’m now forced to give up on the idea that Molly Hooper was behind everything. The Molly-arty figure, so to speak. Alas, she remains a footnote in the lives of Holmes and Watson and I think that’s a waste of a great character and, indeed, a great actress. In fact, the entire episode seemed a waste of great actors and actresses, to be honest, because if there’s one thing you couldn’t fault here... perhaps the only thing... it’s the quality of the acting from all the usual suspects in this. So Cumberbatch, Freeman, Gatiss etc were all exceptional in this one... they just didn’t do very well as characters, I would say. I know the plot was dealing with things from childhood but I don’t think they had to make all the dialogue that childish. Also... it all seemed a bit too theatrical and cypherish, to me. Which is a shame.

On that subject, though, the one member of the cast who really won out in all this stuff was, in fact, the wonderful Louise Brealey in her one scene here as Molly Hooper. She played it in such a way that you really wanted to know what kind of day she’d been having and why she was responding like she was. It was a brilliant scene and pretty moving and her performance made you wonder why the heck the rest of the characters hadn’t been written as well as that this time around. This scene between her and Sherlock, at least her side of it, seemed to be the only ‘real’ and moving thing happening in the entire show, to be honest.

On the subject of Mary Watson... well there’s room for another series in a few years if they decide to go down that route and it would be a fairly simple matter, I would have thought, to bring her back into the role. Of course, the split between Amanda Abbington and Martin Freeman probably makes that highly unlikely now but, I’m certainly not going to rule that one out yet. Especially since I want to know who mailed the P.S. DVD she’d recorded at the end of the episode.

Okay, so there was a lot not to like in this and I really don’t want this to turn into a laundry list of complaints. Especially since I’m still really keen on the series and most of the people I know have now given up entirely on it and haven’t even bothered with Series Four. I still think it’s a good show and, honestly, one really bad episode out of three is not too bad an average, is it?

Okay... so things like the absurd skill at reprogramming people that Sherlock’s sister has really does go into the realms of fantasy. Yeah, I know there are real life precedents for this kind of thing but they really whacked this up to the Nth degree here. On the other hand, Sherlock is pretty much an invincible breed of super science hero and, maybe it’s fitting that his latest nemesis also has super powers of her own, so to speak.

There’s also the question, by way of an example of shoddy ‘run through the wet paint before someone sees you’ writing issues inherent in this week’s installment, of why Sherlock, Mycroft and Watson would feel the need to break into the compound in which Sherlock’s sister, Euros Holmes, is supposedly imprisoned when Mycrioft pretty much outranks the top brass there anyway. If they suspected the lunatics were already running the asylum then they should surely be better prepared for what was waiting for them. If they weren’t then... why the heck would they break in there in the first place? They could just walk in with authority over everyone there. So, yeah, taking the time to prove that security is lax seems a bit of a stretch of an excuse to show those kinds of action scenes here, methinks.

But all this, however, is distracting me away from one of the main reasons why I had a hard time with the episode.

It was dull.

Simple as that. I kept checking my watch to see how long we had to go because it was dragging. There were no interesting plot twists or developments and even the media induced enhancements were few and far between and certainly didn’t add much when you noticed them. About the only little clever thing I did like was the shot of the ashes from Musgrove Hall continuing to rain down on Mycroft in Sherlock’s study at the aftermath of his story... quite liked that nice little touch but there just wasn’t enough of this kind of inventiveness, I felt, in this episode. I got quite bored by the end of this one.

So there you have it. The Final Problem was not much of a series finale and, from what I understand, I’m not alone in that conclusion. I was actually going to part with some cash in a week or two to buy the complete series blu ray coming out next week but, after seeing this clumsy nightmare of an episode, I’m not sure I’d want to after the disappointment of that climax. I’m still hoping that we’ll get another series in a few years’ time (preferably with lots of Mary and Molly in it) but for now... well... I’m kinda glad they’re all taking a break from it, to be honest.

Sherlock - The Lying Detective

Mary-tricious

Sherlock 4.2 - The Lying Detective
UK Airdate: 8th January 2017 BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers from the outset.

And here we go again. This is an almost text book episode of what Sherlock is all about and what it’s always been about since the very first episode aired... It’s all about being very clever in its use of the media to both play with the way the content and information is delivered to good dramatic and comic effect while still using the flexibility of this rug-pull of a malleable breaking of the fourth wall, on a purely narrative level, to be able to wriggle out of anything. For that reason, I really loved it. However, another thing that has remained consistent throughout the majority of the series is the fact that on the level of the actual content delivered... and I mean the writing and its inability to use those same techniques to sustain trust or be anything less than obvious, for the most part... it lives up to its normal standard and is also, unfortunately,  fully represented in the chemical make up of this weeks episode.

In other words, it was an entertaining romp but, unfortunately, not clever enough by half.

Now then... this didn’t stop me enjoying this one, I have to say, and I found it to be a much stronger episode than the previous one but... it felt like a stop gap so Holmes can get Watson on board again after the ‘possible’ death of his wife in the previous episode. And, yes, I’m still not buying into that whole ‘Mary is dead’ idea just yet... if I’m going to make myself look stupid on that front then I can at least drown properly without flapping my arms this way and that in terms of my suspicions of where the last episode might end up.

So, despite the excellent performances of all the usual suspects in this one... Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Una Stubbs, Rupert Graves and Mark Gatiss... not to mention the always brilliant Toby Jones playing a really unlikeable serial killer who, alas, because the writing telegraphed his character too much, wasn’t surprising anyone (but, as usual for Jones, he did it so well)... my attentions were fixated on just two things throughout this episode. One of them was the whole Mary Watson thing and I’ll get on with my one last chance at second guessing that in a minute. The other thing was... alas... thrown in my face, so to speak... and that also had its roots in the previous episode.

In last weeks episode, Dr. Watson had a dalliance, albeit in text form, with another woman. This week... after I was sure that Holmes wasn’t actually talking to a dead woman... another character in the story had some chips by the River Thames with Holmes and, at that point, my thoughts marinated  to... wasn’t that the lady on the bus from last week but with different coloured hair? And then I told myself I was probably wrong and moved on until another scene with Watson and his therapist and, looking at her I thought... no, wait! Isn’t that the woman from the bus from last week? And then I moved on again because... well I kinda stopped playing that game and I assumed my gut instinct was wrong. Well, it turns out I was completely right in that all three women were, in fact, the same person... the only thing I didn’t quite see coming was her relationship with one of the main characters but.... yeah... you know... my gut was right.

And so I’ll come to Mary. I’m still not convinced her death wasn’t staged... possibly by Mary (and Molly... and I’m still not giving up on my Molly-arty theory either, for now) and the reason I’m still clinging onto this sad conviction that she might still be alive (at least until the conclusion of next week’s episode, at any rate) is because Moffat seems keen to make it seem almost impossible to the viewers at home that she could be anything but dead. So we have the ghost of Mary Watson talking to John Watson and giving him advice... or do we? Well, it was stated and is quite obvious that the ghost of Mary Watson is just a projection created by John Watson to deal with her death and... well... that psychological manifestation doesn’t have to mean that she’s actually really dead, does it? As long as John believes that she’s dead then he can have whatever ghost he likes playing around inside his brain. And that’s where I am at the moment and part of me sincerely hopes I’m wrong in my suspicions because, frankly, it would be nice if Moffat and Gatiss were able to run my mind around in little circles because I hate being right about a lot of the stuff I see on TV and at the movies... kinda numbs the emotions, so to speak. Time will tell... seven more days of that man made temporal construction known as a week should reveal the end game on this one... we shall see.

Other than all that though... great little episode despite the obviousness but with the quality... and this is a gift that Moffat seems to have... to still inject great dollops of humour into the programme even when the two main protagonists of the series are in their darkest places. Some of the dialogue, as always, was pretty wonderful... it’s just the broader strokes on these things which sometimes screw these up a little, methinks. So... wonderful performances, cool and innovative use of the medium to show things in the usual, marvellous, Sherlock manner and, as always, a really nice score by David Arnold and Michael Price which comes out on CD on 27th January (if you were wondering... pre-order it specifically from Silva Screen before the release date here now and you should get the special limited bonus disc of the score to The Abominable Bride thrown in too, if you get your skates on).

Despite some obvious moments, not a bad bit of viewing for a Sunday evening. British television has still got it, I reckon, and Sherlock is very much one of our finest exports. Looking forward to the next one now... just to see if any of my wild theories are right.

Sherlock 4.1 - The Six Thatchers

Catching Mary Hell

Sherlock 4.1 - The Six Thatchers
UK Airdate: 1st January 2017 BBC 1

Warning: A big spoiler for this episode and a possible speculative spoiler for the third episode being broadcast in a couple of weeks. All this will be clearly marked in the text.

Okay, so we’re finally on what is being touted as the possible last series of the BBC programme Sherlock. I’ve been kind of a fan since the first episode although my level of enjoyment has been really hit and miss, to be honest. Usually, the easier I see the solution to the episode, the less I’m likely to enjoy it... although there have been some fairly interesting stylistic choices, coupled with some good dialogue writing, throughout the programme's run.

The latest episode is now, as I’m being continually reminded on Twitter and elsewhere by an audience who seem to be fast running out of patience with the last series, more of a soap opera rather than stand alone cases but, honestly, that’s part of the appeal for me. I always tend to value character development and progression above the content of a story so this show is absolutely doing something right for me... otherwise I would have stopped watching sometime in the first series, I suspect.

This episode is all about the perceptions of events, if I’m right about certain things...

For instance, we have John Watson being lured by a honey trap and there’s a certain feeling that the progression of what may or may not have happened between him and another, as yet unknown, character is somehow involved in a bigger end game than it first appears. In fact, the episode starts off with Sherlock Holmes being called to get rid of Moriarty and being asked what he will do about the very real ‘threat from beyond the grave’ of his regular nemesis. When he says that Moriarty is dead, I think he is right to a point but I suspect there’s a bigger end game which is ‘afoot’ here.

The episode was a rich in entertainment, if not quite as enthralling as I’d hoped, hotchpotch of absolutely top rate performances of all the usual suspects - Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Amanda Abbington (as Mary Watson, my favourite one in the show), Rupert Graves, Una Stubbs and Louise Brealey as Molly Hooper, who I’ll mention speculatively in my possible spoiler section. And, of course, we have Mark Gatiss playing Mycroft wonderfully and he also wrote this episode, with his usual display of good taste and furious pacing.

Okay, so all the red text below contains the big spoiler for the episode and also contains possible spoilers for the conclusion of the series...

When, a few weeks ago, Martin Freeman announces that he and Amanda Abbington had called off their long standing relationship I was somewhat disappointed (purely, I guess, because their on screen relationship is easily mistaken for their off screen one to casual viewers like myself and they make such a nice couple). It also signalled to me that there was a strong possibility that the Mary Watson character would be written out at some point in the near future and, as it happens, that’s what seems to have happened in last night’s episode. She knocks Sherlock aside and takes a bullet in the heart that was meant for him. And I was upset about this because a) I thought they’d wait until the final episode of the series to do this and b) I really love the character so much. However, after waking in the middle of the night where my brain must have been clearly occupied with this problem, I’m now beginning to think I was right... they might be waiting until the final episode to kill her off, or maybe not kill her off at all.

That is to say, and it may be very wrong and wishful thinking to say this, that I think there’s a strong possibility that Mary’s death could have been staged to help convince the real enemy that Holmes and Watson are no longer working together and then, in some way, get the villain of the piece to overplay their hand. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time a character in the show has had their death faked. I might be wrong but... I don’t think we’re quite done with Mary Watson yet, to be honest.

I know it’s a wild theory and I kinda hope I’m wrong about it so my respect for Moffat and Gatiss goes up but... I think that the death was faked for reasons pertaining to a ‘long game’ Holmes is playing against Moriarty. And when I say Moriarty, I mean the person who created Moriarty in the first place. Now Molly was one of many at the big showdown and saw Mary Watson die. She’s even helping Watson with their daughter. However... isn’t she the first person we saw in Series One with Moriarty? Is she, and this sounds a little ludicrous as I type it but it’s just my fan theory so give me the benefit... but is there a chance the murder of Mary was staged specifically for her to witness and she could be, in fact, Holmes nemesis. After all, Moriarty’s ‘ghost in the machine’ seems to realise Holmes is still alive and Molly was the one who helped Holmes fake his own death at the end of Series Two. So maybe she is the mind behind the whole game, as it were? I don’t know and I’m probably going to be proven wrong about all this but at least I’m writing it here in this blog so, if it is just wild fiction on my part, you can all see me getting it wrong in public. Hopefully, if I am wrong, you won’t stop reading my reviews because of it. ;-)

End of spoilers...

And so that’s that for the latest Sherlock. We shall see where we are after next week’s episode, which I expect may be a ‘mostly’ stand alone story. I’m looking forward to it because it’s got Toby Jones in it and I think he’s a terrific actor. And I’ll try and get the review of that one up either on the Monday or, more likely, the Tuesday after it airs. So hope to see you here again in a week or so.

And for anyone playing this year’s cryptic movie quiz... I hope to get the results up either tomorrow or the day after. Hope you enjoyed playing.

Sherlock - The Abominable Bride

Data Fiction’s Fatal Diction

Sherlock - The Abominable Bride
UK Airdate: 1st January 2016
BBC 1

Warning: If you hadn’t already figured out certain things from the way this episode was marketed then there are some big spoilers right from the start of this review.

Okay... so this special episode of Sherlock, The Abominable Bride, is both a roaring success and a huge disappointment at the same time but I’m definitely happy to be able to say that because, truth be told, I thought it was just going to be a bit rubbish. So I’m glad that it turns out to be a well put together episode, despite it’s slight pretensions to supposedly setting Sherlock back where the series has never gone before... in the original times and places pertinent to the original character. Disappointed, however, because there weren’t any real surprises in this one and any suspicions you may have had about knowing exactly where it was going all pretty much come to pass by the end of the episode... and also into the next series, I suspect.

Being as I’m an avid Doctor Who watcher, I’ve learned to distrust Steven Moffat’s pre-publicity - often delivered via false words from the mouths of his actors when interviewed - intensely. The number of times I’ve heard something was going to happen on the show and then it’s been overturned and denied before, as it happens, it actually coming to pass just like it was planned to after all is... well, lets just say there’s no way I take anything coming out of one of his productions with anything other than several grains of salt.

Therefore, when the news hit that the new special episode of Sherlock would be set in the past, I failed to believe that was the whole story and, although the various photos coming from the set did seem to suggest that the episode would be taking place in Victorian London, I couldn’t really see that as being the end game of this one and I was pretty sure it was all going to be tied up with the actual running series, possibly even addressing the last season’s cliff hanger ending at some point in the narrative. So I kinda believed for a long time that the show would ‘actually’ be set in the present day, following on from the last episode, and I just hoped they didn’t do the reveal as... “Oh, this episode was all a dream.” Then, thinking about how they could possibly do it I figured out that probably the most plausible version would be to have the majority of the episode taking place in Holmes’ head... in his ‘mind palace’... but I similarly hoped that this wouldn’t be the case because, frankly, that pretty much amounts to the same thing as the ‘dream’ scenario in terms of cop out thinking.

Alas, right from the opening of the episode, before it even started, we are treated to a recap of the previous three series and from that point on I was pretty sure we were going to be tying up to the previous episode in some way. About 15 or 20 minutes in when Holmes starts talking about how ‘The Bride’ of the story could possibly survive a bullet to the brain was when it was completely confirmed... I was pretty sure the character was talking about Moriarty’s exit at the end of Series Two and it didn’t take too long before the bleed throughs from the ‘real world’ of the present day started playing out to that scenario. Which is  kind of a shame but I really can’t blame the episode’s writers, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss for taking that route. When the ‘original’ version of Mycroft Holmes, played as convincingly as ever (and more so) by Gatiss himself mentioned the term ‘virus in the data’, which the writers tried to cleverly conceal in a list of other euphemisms which were actually ‘of their time’, then it was all but spelled out for anyone noticing it. Unfortunately, I also believe that it also spells out where the next series is going to be going too, once it’s written and aired.

So, okay... that was the really bad stuff about the episode but, you know what, there’s some pretty great stuff too and the whole thing was nothing if not entertaining. The way Holmes’ mind plays with the past in a way which makes use of the critical deconstruction of the original Conan Doyle stories as published by The Strand magazine is really rather brilliant and I just loved Una Stubbs portrayal of Mrs. Hudson as she punishes her famous residents for Watson not giving her character any lines in the stories and, also, loved the suffragette angle to the episode... which seems to have been misconstrued as a bad thing from what I saw of Twitter last night but I can’t think why. Perhaps I didn’t understand that stuff properly... there was me thinking it was a positive support for feminism but... apparently no?

Actually, from what I saw of Twitter last night, this has been the one and only single handedly derided and badly received episode of the show to date and I really can’t think why that would be. Especially since, as I said at the start of this review, there really were no surprises in this one. Or maybe it’s the lack of the unexpected that people are complaining about?

Anyway, all I can add is my own support to the episode by saying that the performances of all in this were glorious and the general clever visual and audio syntax which has become synonymous with the style of the series is still very much in place. I was worried, actually, that this wouldn’t be the case because a shift back to the past is often mistaken by writers and directors as something which needs to be told in the language and style of that point in history but, luckily, the team behind the show once more got to have their cake and eat it by explaining away the dynamism of the storytelling by not, actually, setting it in the past. So it’s not intrusive unless, I guess, you really didn’t know what was going on but I suspect most of the viewers weren’t particularly surprised by this one, once they’d seen the necessity of having a recap at the start so... there you go.

Frankly, the main problem I have with this is, as Holmes concludes at the end of the episode, there’s no way Moriarty escaped death by his own hand. That means, therefore, the Moriarty which has saved Holmes from exile is, in fact, an electronic simulacrum or, as Mycroft so aptly names, a virus in the data. So the only real question as to the reappearance of the arch criminal of the series is... is this a 'legacy' virus or is it being controlled by a human being? If the latter, is it a new super villain or, is it indeed Mycroft resurrecting the appearance of Moriarty himself to help his little brother return credibly to the fold after the events of the last episode in Season Three? I don’t know when we’ll find that out but I’m guessing it’ll be a while because they seem rarely able to schedule the actors in a time slot together to shoot each series, it seems to me... even if a series is always only three episodes long.

But there you have it... some bad stuff but tastefully bundled into a sweet confection of an episode and with a lovely bit of scoring from the usual suspects David Arnold and Michael Price to boot. Disappointing, yes, but certainly tremendously entertaining and a heck of a lot better than I was expecting from it, I can tell you. Still looking forward to the next series when it comes... even if I do think I know pretty much all the answers in this case. Sometimes, the execution and professionalism with which the obvious is presented... can be enough.

Sherlock - His Last Vow

Bow Vow

Sherlock: His Last Vow
Airdate: 12th January 2014

Warning: One big spoiler at the end but I will warn you in the text before this happens.

Well this is an interesting contrast to the other two episodes comprising this third series of Sherlock. Whereas the previous two were trying to keep up the lightning fast pacing and the quick fire dialogue, they both seemed to be suffering from having a lot of padding to them... possibly as a symptom of that very same style of pacing they were trying to maintain.

This third and last episode of Series Three doesn’t suffer from the same problem. In fact, even though it’s crackling along almost faster than the speed of the imagination, it still feels like they’re kinda trying to cram too much into the episode and you maybe feel like you almost want it to slow down a little.

Almost.

It’s a good episode, though, tying up the arc started in the first of this series (a small arc, to be sure, with such stupidly tiny season lengths) regarding the man behind the John Watson bonfire in the first episode and it also has a kinda “surprise” arc which was almost... again, “almost”... something you didn’t see coming until it happened regarding a new, regular character who also started out in the first of these three episodes. And actually, that sums up the contents of this particular installment quite well...

It’s an episode where there are a lot of what are presumably supposed to be twist revelations throughout but, I’m afraid, one where everything is quite obvious before it’s actually revealed... Sherlock’s girlfriend and why; the identity of the assassin; the mind palace... which is what happens when you plot a convoluted story without enough episodes and years gone by to throw people off the trail by letting them become used to characters over a period of time, I guess.

However, where this one at least scores in that sense, depending on your point of view, is that you don’t see most of the twists until they’re almost upon you... for most, not all, of the episode I was only a few minutes ahead of the game and this is because, I would imagine, that the blistering pace of the editing coupled with the always excellent flair for visual metaphor was entertaining and distracting enough that, apart from the whole “mind palace” thing which is kinda obvious from the start, you’re only five minutes ahead the whole time.

Now, I’m trying to be cagey here because I don’t want to give away the ending to this one for people, but I still need to talk about it so forgive me if it seems like I’m talking around the subject for those who have seen the episode. Holmes' final solution to the problem was not, as some have said, out of character in any way in terms of violent solutions sometimes being used on a problem... these are sometimes required in the kind of milieu this character inhabits (and, frankly, it was an obvious move in this case). However, what is out of character is the fact that Sherlock couldn’t deduce what was really going on, and what his big mistake was, in plenty of time to work out another solution... especially when most of the audience had probably got there before him.

This kinda continues the theme which really hit home in last weeks episode, that they seem to be making Sir Arthur Conan Doyles character a lot less smarter than he used to be (especially after the way they’ve built him up in the last two series’) and a lot more human. I think they really need to be a little more careful here. Holmes should have been on top of things and if they carry on too much in this vein then the audience, let alone some of the other characters, may start to lose faith in him. This is, after all, Sherlock Holmes, the great literary detective, not Inspector Clouseau.

However, as I said earlier, the episode was extremely entertaining, and I was especially happy with this one because it was more in keeping with the tone of the first series in terms of having three very good, even excellent, episodes as opposed to the second series which had an absolutely brilliant opener and then kinda lost its way. So I am really pleased, in general, with this third series.

One other minor criticism of the episode is this though...

And it’s a big spoiler so please do not read further unless you’ve seen this or have no real interest in seeing it...

Like Mycroft, who is only mentioned in four of the original stories, Moriarty is not a regular character in the original source material. He actually appears only once and is mentioned a few more times. That’s it. So the bit at the end of this episode which very much seems to be signalling that Moriarty is not dead and has kinda come to Holmes’ rescue, probably quite deliberately, in that Holmes now seems to be needed and will therefore beat his murder charge, is more or less built on the reputation that this character has had over the years. He’s not a regular character but, since people seem to need a Napoleon of Crime type of counter-point for their heroes in modern day story telling, this is probably a good way to keep people’s interest without actually leaving it on a proper cliff hanger (thank goodness).

I would have to say, though, that I was kinda expecting something like this to happen with Moriarty before long. He is usually depicted as being the equal of Holmes in intellect and so, if Holmes can fake his own death, it should be no problem for James Moriarty to also figure out similar arrangements (and I never did believe that suicide at the end of the last series anyway). But so what... as per usual, the performances in this episode were all great and help make the characters believable, the imagery was fine, the editing and music stunning... etc. A real triumph of a TV show, once more, and veering away from the direction it was taking in the last series, which is a good thing. Looking forward to Series Four, preferably in less than two years though.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Holmes Is Where The Heart Is

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 2011 US

Directed by Guy Ritchie

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: Elementary logic should lead you to deduce the presence of spoilers lurking in the shadows of this review.

Ok then. Since I’m really not a lover of gangster pictures (seen enough gangsters in my school days to ever really feel the need to watch glamourised renditions of these hooligans) I’d never seen a Guy Ritchie movie until his first take on Sherlock Holmes a few years back.

Now I’ve always loved the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce versions of Holmes and Watson at the cinema (even though Bruce’s Watson is far from accurate to the original material) and so the prospect of seeing Holmes modernised into an action hero was less than appealing at the time and I was in two minds whether to see it or not until an old friend expressed an interest in going and dragged me into London with her to check it out.

As it happens, I really enjoyed myself with that first movie. Holmes hadn’t been made into the complete buffoon I’d feared and the introduction of action sequences that I’d worried about so much (forgetting that Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation actually was into bare knuckle boxing at one point in his career) was cleverly underpinned with a bullet-time like series of slow motion sequences which showcased Holmes’ keen speculative intellect in fighting intelligently before the shots were replayed at normal speed to show multiple facet’s of Holmes in what turned out to be an intriguing and hugely entertaining series of set pieces.

Added to this were the shining acting talents of Robert Downey Jr, Jude Law and their various co-stars... not to mention Hans Zimmer’s gorgeous score which still gets regular spins in my CD player. Frankly, that first Guy Ritchie Holmes’ movie was damn good.

Which is why I was, perhaps, just a little disappointed with Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, being Ritchie’s second foray into the world of pulp fiction’s greatest super sleuth and also my second Guy Ritchie movie. But, having said that, I do find myself wondering just why I felt this one didn’t live up to the blood and thunder of the first movie.

Certainly, this one in set on a larger scale with only a small portion of it set in England and I did enjoy the sense of Victorian London that Ritchie managed to squeeze into every frame of the first film. This feels conspicuously absent in parts of this one. And it’s not like this international road-trip of a movie doesn’t hang together as well as it should either... all the threads come together and make perfect sense as the film builds up to Holmes’ famous “last stand” at the Reichenbach Falls... and we all know how that one ends. Actually, this is one sequence where I think Ritchie (or at least the suits pushing the buttons in Hollywoodland) let the movie down a bit as this movie leaves viewers in no doubt as to the final outcome of that infamous fight and it would have perhaps have been a stronger ending if the producers had been brave enough to have left Holmes for dead (as he was for a time before Doyle resurrected the character some years later) for a while and followed up in the next movie in the series... rather than bring Holmes back at the end of this one. Missed opportunity I feel... and more than a little gutless.

Hmmm... well since I can’t seem to adequately explain why this one didn’t quite pass muster with me, I can only assume that this is one of those handful of Hollywood blockbusters which actually takes a little while to grow on you and I suspect that, when the time comes to pick up the DVD (and I will), I’ll enjoy it much more on the second viewing than I did the first.

So let me tell you about the good things this movie’s got going for it.

Well, for one thing... Guy Ritchie has a marvellous, extended, slow motion escape/chase sequence about three quarters of the way through the movie and though I’m not exactly a fan of slow motion in movies (except when a true artist like Dario Argento uses it at the end of Four Flies On Grey Velvet, for example) this sequence was a bit of a tour-de-force and it was a pleasure to watch the way various actions and details had been cinematically “enhanced”, pushing at the visual language of the form in a rather attractive manner. The acting performances were, once again, all top notch although I did feel that the chemistry between Holmes and Watson was a little less brighter than in the last movie. Also, Eddie Marsden’s brilliant portrayal of Inspector Lestrade is sidelined to what amounts to a little cameo role at the end of the movie and Stephen Fry’s inclusion as Mycroft Holmes is immensely watchable but, not necessarily a very faithful rendition of the character (again, I blame that one on the writers myself).

Jared Harris’ performance as Moriarty was an absolute casting coup and I found myself very impressed by the way the high intellect of the character was combined within the animally magnetic personae of this bear of a man. Such a perfect choice and pitch perfect performance as Moriarty, culminating with a speculative slow-motion “pre-fight” fight sequence in which both the minds of Holmes and the nefarious Napoleon of crime were equally engaged... the “telepathic” communication between the two (yeah, you changed the rules there didn’t you Ritchie... I saw!) forcing Holmes to quickly tip the scales and sacrifice himself to stop Moriarty dead.

On the other hand, Noomi Rapace (who played Lisbeth Salander in the original adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and its sequels), while being unbelievably brilliant in her performance and also being in possession of one of the most distinctive and beautiful faces of any actresses working in her profession, was a little bit wasted in a role which tended to sideline her talents a little too much. Which is a shame and a mistake on the writers/producer’s parts because, frankly, when she’s on screen she absolutely lights it up and she’s the one you are watching when the other actors are speaking their lines. Absolutely great screen presence.

Another downer in this one is the fact that, while I appreciated the humour at Holmes expense in the original movie, the character is treated somewhat more as a joke in this one. Holmes’ fire is somewhat subdued by his treatment at the hands and attitudes of the other characters this time around and I could have done with a few more scenes of him asserting his intellectual rigor over scenes of him fannying around in ladies dresses and suffering the indignity of riding a mule instead of a horse.

Talking of which... Zimmer’s score is, once more, an excellent contribution to the movie as a whole (and I’m sure once I hear it out of the context of its place in the sound mix of the actual film I’ll appreciate it even more) but I was surprised and dismayed to hear him doing a reorchestrated cover version of Ennio Morricone’s musical score to the film Two Mules For Sister Sara during the “Holmes rides a mule” sequence instead of coming up with something of his own. A possible case of temp-trackitus I expect. That being said, of course, it was a more than competent cover (of a much better original) and does nothing to detract from the rest of his brilliant score.

And that’s about it for this one. An entertaining but somewhat less satisfying confection of a movie than the previous film, this one is still worth a watch if you’re a fan of that original outing and the spectacle of some of Guy Ritchie and his team’s mise-en-scene and editing style is surely worth a look if you get the chance. I’m not the biggest fan of this one... yet. I do, however, think it will probably strike me as a better movie when the DVD comes out and I’ve had time to let the first impressions sink in a bit better. Nevertheless, a fine film to view as part of this year’s Christmas viewing... if one has nothing better to do.

A Wordsworth to the Wise

Thought this might be an opportunity to give my readers a quick pointer to Wordsworth Editions. People may remember this publisher, who introduced us to the idea of the £1 classic back in the early nineties.

Well, they’re still going strong and their editions are still exceptionally "value for money" (ok cheap, then) ranging at prices from £1.99 to £2.99 which, when compared to the cost of many modern paperbacks and given the extraordinary array of books available from Wordsworth Editions, is truly staggering. They’ve recently released my favourite Jules Verne novel, Mysterious Island, as part of their range and I’d urge any interested parties to pick this up as soon as they can - I remember waiting ages for a special order of this novel only a few years ago and when it finally came through it cost about a tenner! Wish I’d waited until now.

Of special interest is their “Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural” series of classic reprints. There are some great “value for money” editions of some absolutely terrific titles lurking beneath the covers of these distinctive black and charcoal grey editions (with their odd embossed and spot varnished blood and skulls), many of which I might never have been aware of if it wasn’t for the existence of this company.

Richard Marsh’s truly amazing tale of The Beetle for instance, which outsold publication of its nearest rival Dracula (also available in an excellent Wordsworth Edition) by a significant margin, is on their listings... and once you’ve read it you’ll see why it outsold the Stoker classic - it’s fantastic. This was apparently the source novel for a silent film of the same title, so if anyone can get ahold of a copy or give me any information as to its status as either a lost film or something from which the footage still survives... please contact me.

If you’re a fan of recurring characters, they have some complete collections of some very interesting ones... for instance, “The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost Finder” by W.H. Hodgson or “The Right Hand of Doom and other tales of Solomon Kane” by the legendary Robert E. Howard. Plus lots of stalwarts of the genre such as Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle (and not just his Holmes stories, although these are obviously all covered... my first read of the Professor Challenger stories was via a Wordsworth Edition called “The Lost World and other stories”).

Contemporary writers are also on board with this label, such as David Stuart Davies and his remarkable tales of Sherlock Holmes adventures “previously unwritten” (like The Tangled Skein, which pits Holmes and Watson against Dracula).

And for all you people who like to know where your movies and TV shows have grown from, an interesting batch of short stories await you from this sterling publisher... an M.R. James collection, for example, which includes his “Casting The Runes” most famously adapted as Night of the Demon (or Curse of the Demon depending on which version you know)... an Ambrose Bierce collection which features “The Damned Thing” (most recently made into a Master’s Of Horror episode)... Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” (which was the basis for many vampire films based on tales of the Karnsteins - including Hammer’s three movies kicking off with The Vampire Lovers)...Lafcadio Hearn’s “Oriental Ghost Stories” (which includes the tales which were the basis of Masaki Kobayashi's masterpiece Kwaidan... or Kaidan, depending again on which edition you have)... the list goes on. Do some research because I think you’ll find it’s worth it.

I should probably stop gushing now... suffice it to say that I owe Wordsworth Editions an enormous debt when it comes to exposure to a lot of great tales which I might not otherwise have read. From D’Artagnan to Dr Nikola and from Robinson Crusoe to Rouletabille, these editions are not to be missed and I personally consider this particular publisher to be providing, frankly, a wonderful and much needed (in these jaded times) public service rather than running a business... although they seem to be managing to do both quite well.

For details of all their editions go here... www.wordsworth-editions.com