Sherlock is Over

[Ali]

You'd never have made it to England anyway. There would have been a load of Daily Mail readers blocking your way with placards saying "Foreigners Cause Cancer!".

[Atelier]

Stuck in a fashion rut: Jessie J wears some unflattering leopard print leggings

Reunited and it feels so good! Mark Wright and Arg continue their bromance over a candlelit meal for two

I read a comment on a DM article once, and my brain cell count dropped to critical levels.

About Sherlock, I also think the Hound of the Baskervilles episode wasn't as good as the others, quite tense though. I actually preferred the new Holmes movie over the third episode, the slow-mo sequences in A Game of Shadows were awesome.

[InCreator]

Watched Baskerville episode yesterday... it sucked. Whole episode consisted basically someone being scared, someone walking somewhere and sherlock acting totally crazy.
Also, secret military base had less security than a square meter of Victoria station.

Spoiler

"Bad dude used gas to drug us, it's in the fog"
* Proceeds to stand in the fog and discuss it for next 15 minutes

[close]

Did they hire another writer?
Pity... Show felt much more powerful in first few episodes.

[8BitFreak]

I wasn't sure about this show.  I'll have to check it out.

The Sherlock Holmes movies they put out recently with Robert Downing Jr. were complete and utter embarrassments to the Holmes name.  I mean, despite being a long-time Sherlockian I get that they took some artistic license with their portrayal of Holmes and Watson.  Even granting that, they were still complete crap-fests which seems to be standard fair for Hollywood these days.

My favorite portrayal of Holmes remains Jeremy Brett in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from 84-94.

[Ali]

I'm not sure you'll like the BBC's Sherlock, but I found the Guy Ritchie film to be very boring and very stupid and I found Moffat and Gatiss's version to be neither of those things.

[InCreator]

Last(? third) episode was even worse than Baskervilles' one. I admit, there were some moments when it felt almost exciting, but it was killed in mere seconds later. Ending/roof encounter made no sense to me whatsoever. Nor did the magical spell of healing

[veryweirdguy]

I've only seen the first Ritchie film, but yes, I found it to be a complete mess, while I like the series a lot.

[Dave Gilbert]

Watched Baskerville episode yesterday... it sucked. Whole episode consisted basically someone being scared, someone walking somewhere and sherlock acting totally crazy.
Also, secret military base had less security than a square meter of Victoria station.

Spoiler

"Bad dude used gas to drug us, it's in the fog"
* Proceeds to stand in the fog and discuss it for next 15 minutes

[close]

Honestly, this is no worse than what happened in the original Holmes books. There were some stories where

Spoiler

an obscure plant or drug from some faraway land was basically the reason for EVERYTHING that happened, including hallucinations and very bizarre deaths

[close]

So using that as a benchmark, the new BBC Sherlock is still very faithful!

[Igor Hardy]

I've watched only 2 episodes of the BBC Sherlock and while I enjoyed them I have to say the show is far sillier and messier than the Ritchie films, so I don''t understand the Ritchie bashing from anyone who swallows the utter ridiculousness of the BBC one (other than for the fact his films are Hollywood made).

[Ali]

The BBC's Sherlock is certainly silly, which is no bad thing. It's also witty, atmospheric and well paced.

As far as I recall Ritchie's action sequences are tediously overblown, the jokes are too few and far between to keep the thing alive and there was no mystery.

Although there is a certain amount of fun to be had by London dwellers with the impossible geography of the journey from Westminster to Tower Bridge.

[Igor Hardy]

As far as I recall Ritchie's action sequences are tediously overblown, the jokes are too few and far between to keep the thing alive and there was no mystery.

The action sequences are visually overblown in both - the movies and the TV series (e.g. the gun in the safe sequence in 2.01), but of course in the films they go on for much longer. And - definitely - not everyone has to like the pulpy, slapstick action movie feel Ritchie went for, but if you'll say those elaborate scenes are not dynamic enough or badly designed for their length, then I'll strongly disagree.

The BBC's Sherlock is certainly silly, which is no bad thing. It's also witty, atmospheric and well paced.

I agree it's fun. But the atmosphere and melodrama levels alternate between something set in the real world and a Bond-like parody of it. It is not always that successfully witty either. The characters spit out sarcastic remarks with a frequency that often makes them look like insecure high schoolers trying to show the others that they are the coolest of the pack.

As for mystery or lack there of in the films - there was plenty of good mystery in the first Sherlock Holmes, but sadly almost zero in the 2nd one (which makes it a much much worse outing). In general I don't recommend A Game of Shadows that much - the first one is the one to watch.

[Stupot]

The characters spit out sarcastic remarks with a frequency that often makes them look like insecure high schoolers trying to show the others that they are the coolest of the pack.

That's because they're English

[Mati256]

What Ritchie does is making an action movie from 2011 but set in 1880. It reminds me of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". Sherlock is not himself anymore, he is just an action hero. I also hated Ritchie's Watson.

What BBC does is taking the Sherlock Holmes from the books and place him in 2011 with cell phones and Internet.
I'm a big fan of the books and really like how they adapted them, "The geek interpreter" was a great joke if you know of the story.

I really like all Guy Ritchie's films, but if I had to choose I would choose BBC's Sherlock..

[Snarky]

The first of Ritchie's Holmes movies was entertaining enough as an action movie, but a Sherlock Holmes who doesn't solve the case by keen observation and astonishing deduction (but instead some sort of mystic trance that leads to a completely unsupported insight) is no real Holmes. For all its flaws, Sherlock is the real deal.

[Anian]

I'm sorry, but I don't see how people get so touchy about Sherlock Holmes. SH has a problem with the fact that in essence all detective stories are kind of better for episodic stories/cases (like say Poirot) and indeed that's how the origianls were written.
That being said, the first Ritchie movie had a good amount of everything in the mix (mystery, action, comedy, old and new ideas, atmosphere etc.) and the Game of shadows turned more into an action movie. Personally I liked it, but I liked the first one more. I think the third one is gonna have trouble at box office, but I will go and see it, I like an action movie that has a lot of story in it. Because I haven't read that much of the stories, I think I have a clearer stand on the movies as movies and not as "this is not what the book said" baggage. A lot is subject to interpretaion, you might like or you might not, that's it.

I haven't yet watched the 2nd season of Sherlock (the BBC we get here is some lame thing with Weakest link and Eastenders on repeat pretty much all the time). But first season was inreresting and fun.

[Igor Hardy]

a Sherlock Holmes who doesn't solve the case by keen observation and astonishing deduction (but instead some sort of mystic trance that leads to a completely unsupported insight) is no real Holmes.

Are you serious? That's not at all what happened. The scene that you mention was sort of a recap of facts for people in the audience who didn't remember all the clues, so that they keep up with Holmes' deductions.

Spoiler

The entire point of the movie was that the supposed supernatural events were elaborate magic tricks for goodness sakes!

[close]

Anyway, the only real deal are the books.

[Snarky]

I'm sorry; Sherlock draws a pentagram on the floor and kneels in it, takes a drug, cuts his wrist with a dagger and performs some kind of ritual, has a feverish hallucinatory vision and collapses into unconsciousness. That's not a mystic trance to you? Well, whatever you call it, it's egregiously un-Holmesian.

[Igor Hardy]

I'm sorry; Sherlock draws a pentagram on the floor and kneels in it, takes a drug, cuts his wrist with a dagger and performs some kind of ritual, has a feverish hallucinatory vision and collapses into unconsciousness. That's not a mystic trance to you? Well, whatever you call it, it's egregiously un-Holmesian.

You can call it a trance if you want, but there's nothing "mystic" about it. Basically it's just something visually dynamic to show to the audience while Holmes goes over the facts in his head. The ritual and the pentagram are part of Holmes' search for a pattern in the killings, which were... (suprise, suprise!) ritualistic and done under the pretense of black magic (the pentagram shows the visual pattern on the map - similar to certain puzzles in Discworld Noir and Gabriel Knight).

I can agree with you to the extent that Holmes having some eerie hallucination of Blackwood can also serve as a red herring for the audience. It helps keep them wondering till the very end if perhaps there are indeed some supernatural forces at work (one of the main themes of the film). Yet there's nothing "mystic" or "unsupported insight" about the scene per se. By the end of the film all pretense of supernatural is dispersed, and at no point in the story does Holmes confess to taking the possibility of its existence into account.

[Snarky]

I'm not saying Sherlock found the answer by actual magic, or believed that the crimes were performed by magic. I'm saying that the main scene of him solving the case is presented not as rational deduction or even a creative leap of inspiration, but as a shamanic trance. And that's something I consider an abomination in a Sherlock Holmes story. (I wouldn't really be upset if real supernatural elements were at play, as long as Holmes tackled them with his usual method.)

I don't think you can brush off the sweating, eye-rolling, chanting, falling unconscious Holmes as "going over the facts in his head," and I think the justification for staging the ritual doesn't hold up. If he knew, as we accept, that there was no actual magic involved, then the ritual is just a stage show, a distraction from the actual mechanics of the illusion. In fact, you see him "go over the facts in his head" just prior to this scene (it's presented as whispery snatches of dialog from before), but then he gives up in frustration and starts messing with the ritualistic paraphernalia.

Incidentally, there are clear echoes of From Hell (movie and comic) in this scene as well as in the mystery as a whole.

It's been several years since I saw the movie (I rewatched just this particular clip yesterday), but as I recall there is very little actual sleuthing going on, apart from some chemical analysis. Holmes doesn't collect many clues, and when he solves the case he doesn't really outline how he solved it, which is the linchpin of the whole "brilliant detective" genre.

[Igor Hardy]

I'm not saying Sherlock found the answer by actual magic, or believed that the crimes were performed by magic. I'm saying that the main scene of him solving the case is presented not as rational deduction or even a creative leap of inspiration, but as a shamanic trance.

Then what do you understand by the expression "shamanic trance", if it doesn't involve either magic or belief in magic? Are you upset that Sherlock drinks something, then hallucinates? I don't see anything dodgy about how Holmes came to his conclusions about the killings - we never follow his thought process exactly really.

It's been several years since I saw the movie (I rewatched just this particular clip yesterday), but as I recall there is very little actual sleuthing going on, apart from some chemical analysis. Holmes doesn't collect many clues, and when he solves the case he doesn't really outline how he solved it, which is the linchpin of the whole "brilliant detective" genre.

Holmes collects and observes clues at every single place visited during the movie. Towards the end he gives several very elaborate explanations on how Blackwood did what he did. He might have omitted how exactly was the scientist murdered, but as far as I can recall all the other crimes and tricks are covered. So I'd say the genre's linchpin is strong with this film.

Now, if you were to criticize A Game of Shadows, then I would agree that Moriarty proved to be a rather unremarkable opponent for Sherlock on the intellectual level, and the storyline lacks any true mystery to solve - thus the "brilliant detective" linchpin gets broken (or bent). The only time Moriarty really "fools" Holmes is based on him quickly changing his plans, knowing Holmes is hot on his trail.