Richard Brook

Found myself overcome by ennui and lethargy today, to the point that I grew bored enough to give Ritchie's Holmes another go. I'd only seen it once before, back in like January or something, so I decided to see if it was really as bad as I remembered.

My opinion is still unchanged. It's not that it's a bad movie. Quite the opposite, actually. I think if it were anyone but Holmes, it would have been a very enjoyable Victorian action flick. And there really aren't enough of those, so kudos to it for doing something about that.

It's just a bad Holmes.

Ignoring the fact that I just spent two hours watching Iron-man do a weird accent, Downey's interpretation of the character doesn't feel like Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was, depending on which story you read, dreadfully untidy, yes, but he was never dirty. He took great care to be as presentable and gentlemanly as possible, which you just don't get with Downey. Instead, you get some scruffy, graceless commoner in toff's clothing.

Mrs Hudson bugs me as well. I've always loved her. She's supposed to be able to hold her own against Holmes, and tell him off when he does something positively bone-headed (like shooting the wall). So why is she acting like she needs Watson around in order for her to be able to cope?

While it's nice to see that Mary Morstan is getting a bit more spotlight, she could have been handled better as well, I think. Her entire backstory has been re-written so that it negates the entirety of the Sign of Four. Maybe it's because that was always one of my favourites, but that really annoys me.

Irene Adler... just... what? Seriously, what? Why is it that in a film full of subdued colours, she's wearing bright pinks and blues? I hate visual cues like that. Just like Blackwood wearing leather. Why did he need to be wearing leather? I know he's the bad guy. He's obviously the bad guy. Please make it less obvious. Adler's form-fitting male dress bugged the snot out of me at all. It completely negates the maleness of the clothing. And why did she suddenly become a pirate at the end? I can handle a bit of re-hashing of the backstory, if they wanted to hetero up the story a bit, but they just went way to far with her. I don't think anyone disagrees with that, though.

Also, I bet Ritchie is kicking himself over the utter failure that was the Sherlock Scan. So many deductions could have been made so awesome, but I felt that a lot of them fell flat because we didn't get to see his thought process. That it was only ever used for the fight scenes felt like a terrible waste.

Watson was great. I still can't find a single fault with him. The plot was properly sinister and engaging. I even quite enjoyed Lestrade, and Holmes' relationship with the police in general. But I just have such a difficult time seeing it as a Holmes movie.

I didn't really discover what "fandom" was until about three or four years ago. In that time, I've gotten involved in quite a few, but only two that were "ongoing" (okay, three if you count ontd_startrek, but that's pushing it). Seems like everything else, I've either gotten into long after the fandom had run out of steam, or didn't know/care about the fandom while it was active. And the sort of stuff I like isn't the sort of thing anyone else really likes any more. The stuff that's still on that I used to like 10 or 15 years ago... well, it sucks. I haven't had an "appointment show" in years. I think my last appointment show might have been the first series of Dexter, actually. I got into that show right around the time I had discovered what fandom was, and was IMMEDIATELY frightened off by all of the incest slash that went on.

I don't even know what's going on out there these days, really. I read ONTD proper, and sort of have a vague idea. There's something called Lost, which I tried and didn't really fancy. Then there's The Sylar Show Heroes, which I also tried and didn't really fancy either. I totally don't understand what the appeal of this Glee thing is supposed to be, and apparently Dr. Horrible has a TV show somewhere. From what I've read, Law and Order seems to be getting phased out or something (I don't know. That show just repeats itself any more, anyway).

Then there's Casualty, which doesn't really have a fandom far as I can tell (and I'm also massively behind on that one. Whoops). I have enjoyed what I've seen of the Inbetweeners. That one's sort of like if Superbad and Arrested Development had a hatebaby, or something.

But my point is that there's nothing out there that I've caught on an off-chance, and after finishing an episode, thought, "OMG, I must see more of this." Is there anything REALLY good out there, or am I just doomed to fandom limbo?