strange and random happenstance

One of my best friend's parents immigrated to the United States during the Vietnam War. Her father barely got out during the fall of Saigon. And the thing is, not many people cover this time in history from a Vietnamese perspective. I mean, there had to be a reason for the book winning the Pulitzer right? Some reviews likened the show to getting your dissertation in Vietnamese studies. And for that little slice of history the show captured something interesting, something unique, a look into my friend and her family's past, until it went off the freakin' rails. I know we're fully in the Robert Downey Jr. renaissance but that doesn't mean the dude can't make a mistake or two or five in his artfully heightened shoes. Whomever suggested to him that all the prominant American men in the Captain's life be played by him needs to be taken to a reeducation camp. I really thought we had moved beyond Robert Downey Jr. playing culturally inappropriate roles after the Tropic Thunder blackface debacle. And the thing there is while it was so wrong it was being used to show how wrong it was. Here it's just Robert Downey Jr. being so racially offensive that even justifying that he's all these characters because he plays the Captain's father feels like it's a bandaid for a limb being hacked off. I mean, why is Professor Robert Hammer literally Robert Downey Jr. camping it up as John Waters? If you wanted John Waters just hire John Waters! As for Congressman Ned Godwin... Sure, be some weird amalgam of a Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Film director Niko Damianos who is supposedly inspired by Francis Ford Coppola and John Landis should have led the two of them to sue for defamation if you were actually able to figure out it was supposed to be them. But the kicker is Bradley Cooper got a whole bunch of shit heaped on him for supposedly anti-Semitic prosthetics in his portrayal of Leonard Bernstein. While you could point to the long and horrible tradition of Jewface, what Bradley Cooper was doing was trying to make himself look just like a very specific person, which he succeeded in spectacularly, he WAS Bernstein. It's too bad the movie just wasn't any good. But where was the outcry for Robert Downey Jr. having a prosthetic nose for his character of Niko Damianos? Not a peep. That, my friends, is a double standard. At least people are calling him out on Doctor Doom because he's not Romani. I bet those people watched this show. Oh, and let's not forget the scene where all the characters he plays meet and have an orgy! I mean, I can't believe that this level of ego and narcissism was on a scene in this day and age. It's made me completely rethink my ever having liked him. How did he think this was a good idea? Seriously, how!?! If it wasn't for Queenie and her vaginal tears this would have been the worst show I watched this year. It will easily rank as one of the worst shows I've ever watched. Moreso because after seven episode there isn't even an ending.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: And the Emmy Goes To, Blackface, Bradley Cooper, Cultural Appropriation, Ego, Jewface, John Waters, Leonard Bernstein, Pulitzer, Queenie, Robert Downey Junior, Saigon, The Sympathizer, Tropic Thunder, Vietnam

Many people, especially those of my Dad's generation, were very excited when they heard about the Perry Mason reboot. Perry Mason starring Raymond Burr was a television staple during their childhoods from 1957 to 1966. In fact Burr was so popular as Mason that they brought him back for TV movies throughout my childhood too! Now most reviews started by saying that "this isn't your father's Perry Mason" but I beg to differ, because by the end, after an initially rough pilot episode, the show found it's feet and got Parry into the courtroom defending a mother who most definitely didn't kill her child. Most people in fact were up in arms that Perry didn't start out as a lawyer and was a PI for the first few episodes. Well here's something that may shock you, yes, this series pays tribute to the original series, especially in the final episode's credits when a certain theme song is heard, but they weren't taking just from the series, they were pulling from the books. I know! Perry Mason started out in books! Erle Stanley Gardner wrote eighty books from the thirties to the sixties ranking him third in best selling book series of all time just below a certain boy wizard and Goosebumps! Also, what's fascinating about the series is that Perry as a person and in particular Perry's past isn't explored at all. We know more about his dining habits than about his personal habits. This, in my mind, made Perry perfect for a prequel if you will. And by no means is PI Perry dragged out. We learn about his family farm, his military service, his estranged wife, his child, and his struggles to make it, before becoming a lawyer. It's a good story for the early thirties and an America struggling to recover from The Great Depression. Though, as previously mentioned, the pilot is a little rocky, my guess is this is because it was written for Robert Downey Jr. to star in and it obviously had his acting quirks put into the script so when Matthew Rhys donned the mantel of Mason it took awhile to knock the Robert Downey Jr. out of the material. But I can honestly say, by the end of the first season I was grateful a second season was on the way, which I didn't initially think I would be.     

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1930s, And the Emmy Goes To, Erle Stanley Gardner, Family Farm, Goosebumps, Great Depression, Harry Potter, Matthew Rhys, Perry Mason, PI, Pilot, Private Eyes, Raymond Burr, Robert Downey Junior, Veteran, WWI

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking
Inspired by the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: December 26th, 2004
Starring: Rupert Everett, Nicholas Palliser, Neil Dudgeon, Ian Hart, Anne Carroll, Tamsin Egerton, Perdita Weeks, Jennifer Moule, Eleanor David, John Cunningham, Michael Fassbender, Jonathan Hyde, Gina Beck, and Helen McCrory
Rating: ★★
To Buy

A young woman is found dead with a silk stocking tied around her throat, thrown up by the waters of the Thames. Her body comes to the attention of Doctor Watson and he thinks that this might be just the thing to interest his old friend Sherlock Holmes. The least it will do is get him to put down the syringe for an hour or two. Holmes is intrigued, though he'd never tell that to Watson. Within minutes of seeing the corpse Holmes makes the discovery that not only had a silk stocking been tied around the girl's throat, but that another one was shoved down her gullet. The more shocking discovery is that the girl isn't a young prostitute, but the daughter of Lord Pentney. Though the young girl's death is shocking, it won't be the last. As the aristocracy is reeling, Lady Georgina Massingham disappears out of her bedroom to be found the next morning, killed in the same manner. All of Belgravia is on alert as the killer targets their daughters. At Georgina Massingham's funeral another girl goes missing. But unlike the previous two victims she escapes. With the aid of Watson's fiance, the psychoanalyst Mrs. Vandeleur, Holmes finds the reason for the young girl's escape. She had a club foot. With the stockings and this new information from the intended victim, Holmes realizes that his supposition that the killer has a foot fetish is true. Holmes is confidant he can catch the killer, but he asks Georgina's sister Roberta to act as bait. Will this trick work, or will it needlessly put Roberta in danger?

Back when Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking first came to Netflix I remember watching it and quite enjoying it. It felt like a fresh take on Holmes and Everett seemed well cast. The problem is in the proceeding decade Sherlock Holmes has become a booming business, with Robert Downey Junior playing him on the big screen in Guy Ritchie's films, to Jonny Lee Miller on Elementary, but most importantly, there's Benedict Cumberbatch on Sherlock which has developed such a rabid fanbase. With so many competing properties quality and production values have skyrocketed. We as the audience demand more of our stories and watching Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking, we see the flaws, and not just in that annoyingly long title that I have to keep typing out. What will strike you most is that they didn't even bother to film this TV movie on a decent film stock. It lends that faux reality to it, wherein it almost feels like you're watching the news. This is actually a problem I have with all high definition film conversion, which this is obviously not. But there's a weird surreality to them making them hyper real. If you doubt my theory watch Jaws on a high definition TV, it's like watching a documentary about the seventies. But they coupled their bad film stock with a bad transfer, wherein the PAL to NTSC transfer is jittery, making it look even more shitty. But the worst decision of all was they stuck to the when in doubt use a fog machine for atmosphere school of Victorian filmmaking. There is so much fog you can barely make out any of the action in outdoor scenes, yet incongruously there wasn't enough fog to hide the modern metal structures near the cemetery!

The lack of production quality seeped over into the historical details. They very obviously had no historic adviser like Downton Abbey does. Instead they had a slouching Duchess smoking filtered cigarettes almost thirty years before they existed. I mean seriously, she wouldn't show exasperation and insolence to a police officer, she would show hauteur! And that doesn't even cover the telephones and the improper titles for the King and Queen! They seemed to want to update Holmes, but instead of going all out like Elementary or Sherlock, they added incongruities that exasperate the audience versus adding to the story. But oddly enough what annoyed me the most was the lackadaisical floorplan for 221B Baker Street, which in an odd error is actually once referred to as 222B Baker Street. Of all locations in books and films, I don't think there's any one more regulated than 221B Baker Street. Everyone knows the floorplan, and yet, here they decided to create something entirely other. An obviously ground floor great room that looks like it is part of a house, not terraced apartments. Amd seriously, Mrs. Hudson just wanders in when she feels like from the large hallway? No no and no again. If you are going to take on the greatest detective ever, the least you can do is get it right!

But then again, watching it all these years later, I seem to have nothing but problems with this production. I even question the casting of Rupert Everett as Holmes. He brought nothing to the role other than the required hawk-like profile. Holmes is fun for his excitability, his dark humor, his mood swings, yet Everett plays him almost atonally. But I blame this more on Everett's transitional period than anything else. This TV movie was made as he was switching his period focus from the humor of Oscar Wilde to the more dour dark bearded days of Parade's End, wherein I actually didn't recognize him for the first few episodes. I actually place all the blame on this shift firmly with Catherine Deneuve and that bizarre French adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Can you think of anything in recent years on television more pretentious than an all French adaptation of this story set in the 60s with Rupert Everett struggling with French dialogue? I dare you to! But Holmes is supposed to be balanced by Watson. And Ian Hart was miscast abysmally as a lecturing antagonistic parental figure for Holmes, with a very rat like face. With their ongoing bickering one wonders why they are even colleagues at all, because with this behaviour they are certainly not friends! Plus I hold a personal grudge against this actor, he played Emma's father on Bates Motel so wonderfully in the first season only to be badly recast in the newest season because Hart wouldn't return. Well Hart, I'm marking you down as the second worst Watson in history, my hatred of Lucy Liu will forever save you from the number one place.

And as with every British miniseries that mishandles Americans, my rant must now commence. I don't know what it is with Britain and their American Problem, but it is so pronounced that I seriously want to just ship them a few actors so that I will never have to listen to a bad faux American accent again. Firstly, the changing of Watson's fiance and later wife from being Mary Morstan makes no sense. Unless this is his second wife... but I think they could have bothered to mention that don't you? (Note, I think this is supposed to be his second wife, which was mentioned only once in passing in the books). Mrs. Vandeleur seems to be nothing more than an annoyingly forward American psychoanalyst  who is a slightly scandalous plot device, recommending the book Psychopathia Sexualis to Holmes. Firstly, I'm sure Holmes has read this book and doesn't need the recommendation, secondly, why did we need all this build up just so she can talk to the one surviving victim for five minutes? Anyone could have filled this need, it didn't need this non canonical character to be thrust on us! But the worst part is Helen McCrory's accent. I first want to make it clear that I am actually a fan of hers. In fact one of my most favorite new shows, Penny Dreadful, wouldn't be complete without her and her wicked ways. She is a very talented, very accomplished actress, who is never allowed to do an American accent EVER AGAIN. Her husband Damian Lewis can successfully do one, just look to Homeland. She can not. It's broad, it's flat, it's overly loud, it's annoying, it's WRONG WRONG WRONG! Don't the people who make these films realize that by doing something like this they are alienating their audience and pissing them off majorly? And it's not like this is a problem that in the intervening decade has just gone away, just look to the newest season of Mr Selfridge and those damn Tointon sisters and you'll see what I mean.

Yet all these flaws could be overlooked if the conclusion and the revelation of the killer hadn't been so absurd. Though if you're familiar enough with British actors you will know the killer from the opening credits. The motive of the killer, his being "taunted" by the young girls of the aristocracy could work, kind of. But then why is he a foot fetishist? This is never once addressed in the entire movie. I think that this would be more important than just a red herring used to suspect the shoe maker. And in what is an even weirder turn of events, it isn't Holmes who expounds on how he figured it all out and when and why, but it's the killer explaining himself FOR NO REASON to his latest victim that we get his lame reasoning for killing. He's not a Bond villain for crying out loud! In fact, Holmes is a bit of a nonentity, he doesn't matter so much for the solving of the case, in fact he bungles it more than aids it. Despite having a thousand questions as to why this and why that, it comes down to me wanting to know one thing. Why did the killer start killing? What set him off? To catch a killer you must understand him, and there is no explanation here, just a shallow foot fetishist. Plus, the reasoning that to catch a killer the first victim is of extreme importance... yes, OK, that makes sense, but why did he kill his first victim. She doesn't fit his profile at all and no reason for this is ever given. Also, the whole doubling, why would you be doing it all your life if you hadn't been planning something nefarious all your life? The fact is the more you take apart Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking, the less sense it makes. It might fool you into thinking it was OK, but then you start to poke at it and it falls apart like a house of cards. I long for the minutely plotted details of Sherlock after ninety minutes with Rupert and his friends.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bates Motel, Benedict Cumberbatch, Elementary, Helen McCrory, Parade's End, Robert Downey Junior, Rupert Everett, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking, Sherlocked

Silent in the Grave: Lady Julia Book 1 by Deanna Raybourn
Published by: Mira
Publication Date: December 1st, 2007
Format: Paperback, 435 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy
Lady Julia Grey meets Nicholas Brisbane for the first time the night her husband Edward dies suddenly. Edward was always a frail man with lingering health problems, so it wasn't a surprise. Julia knew her entire life that Edward would die young. Yet Nicholas Brisbane thinks that Edward may have been hastened to the grave. Edward hired Nicholas before his death because he had been receiving death threats, and discreetly looking into matters of this nature is what Nicholas does. When Nicholas brings this information to Julia, she pushes it aside, not believing that foul play is at work here, only bad genetics. Nicholas' heir, his cousin Simon, is also dying under Julia's roof from the same health complications.

A year later Julia changes her mind about Edward's death. While finally cleaning out his study she stumbles upon one of these death threats and realizes the vitriol that was spewed forth and that perhaps Brisbane was right. Rushing to hire him, she is met with a man who is now all objections. Nicholas Brisbane says it's been too long, there is no chance, yet Julia pushes. Finally they agree to work the case together. Despite many acquaintances and Julia's large and eccentric family, the killer might be closer than either of them thought. Dealing with dangerous Romanies, health complications, degenerate footmen, and an unwelcome feathered visitor, is what it will take to find the answer to the death of Edward Grey. The clues are all there if only Julia would see.

I am sick of widows! No, seriously people. Stop having widows be the heroines of your Victorian series. This is symptomatic of an underlying genre crutch. A woman of this time period would have no independence unless she was widowed, therefore, windows run wild. I really don't think there could possibly be that many widows solving crime during the reign of Queen Victoria. Or that many husbands conveniently dying to have this many windows. Just take window add single, slightly unsavory man, have them solve some crime, if it's the first in the series, have them solve the death of window's husband, and viola. I picked up Silent in the Grave because felicitously I had it on my shelf and it was the book for my Vaginal Fantasy Hangout Book Club in February. Let's put it this way... I was so dispirited by the formulaic nature of the book that I didn't join in the discussion on our book club night and in fact opted to do homework. Yes, I chose homework versus talking about a book. There is a first time for everything.

There where many non-conventional elements that I liked. Julia's eccentric family that has been very odd for centuries, and willing accepts that being gay is just what you are. No one offers any objections to her sister's lifestyle, which is oddly refreshing. Also the underlying Romany Culture was fascinating and, I will admit, will entrance me almost every time. Add in just a dash of mysticism, and I'm hooked. So, there where things that made this book unique, just not enough.

Now let me get to Nicholas. Ah, Mr. Brisbane. You are unkempt, ill mannered, have a few dark secrets, have multiple addictions to illicit substances, really have nothing that would appeal to a woman, and have more than a few things in common with Sherlock Holmes. In fact, it's rather odd HOW much you have in common with Sherlock Holmes... in fact, the Robert Downey Junior version to be precise. I don't know if it was coincidence, or if the newest Sherlock Holmes was just borrowing heavily from this book, which came out two years prior to the movie... but there where so many similarities I was shocked. The smokey/purple glasses where the first hint, then the fight in the Romany tent... WOW. It was quite literally the fight at the beginning of Sherlock Holmes... so, here you go, Nicholas Brisbane in the living flesh, glasses and all:

There is only one mystery left to solve. Will I pick up the next one? Probably. I now have no expectations, so perhaps I will enjoy it more.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Deanna Raybourn, Lady Julia, Nicholas Brisbane, Queen Victoria, Robert Downey Junior, Sherlock Holmes, Silent in the Grave, Victorian

As sure as the sun rises and sets there is sure to be another interpretation of Sherlock Holmes. With the recent big screen adaptation out today I thought it might be time for some pontification on that most memorable of detectives. While I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Downey Junior as Holmes with a cast rounded out by some wonderful BBC staples, I could always use another hit... though not the same kind as Holmes himself. I'm eagerly awaiting what, in the terms of geekdom, might be the most anticipated of collaborations. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are joining forces (yes that's me squealing in the background) to bring a new twist to Holmes. Sure they have been more recently tied up with Doctor Who, but that doesn't mean this will be anything like The Doctor... how about Moffat's Jekyll reimagining? Even if it is supposedly set in modern times, with Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and Rupert Graves we have a cast that I am certain to love. The three 90 minute films are in production now and I just could only wish for a Tardis to jump on into the future to catch an episode. But the real question is, how does Steven Moffat have the time? With writing the new Tin Tin movie, being the new show-runner for Doctor Who and now this!?! Sheer multitasking genius!

All this talks of the new Holmeses leads me to a very important thought... who really is the definitive Holmes? Basil Rathbone or Jeremy Brett... how do they stack up against each other. And are we to factor in parodies? Because then we have Michael Caine facing Peter Cook! Also what if we factor in Holmes' history and take into account Ian Richardson on Murder Rooms (which if you haven't watched, you really must)? The truth is, each actor brings something unique and different to the role and that one can not be compared to another or even to how we view Holmes in our minds. Of course, this being me, I do have a favorite... from a love of Egyptology and being in love with the star at an impressionable age, Nicholas Rowe as Holmes in The Young Sherlock Holmes will always be my favorite. He does not detract from the original, but adds a new layer of awesomeness. I'm sorry Elizabeth had to die... but I did like you saying my name over and over even if you did cause me to have an unnatural fear of pastries.

The history of Holmes is fascinating in and of itself. Doyle never wrote the Deerstalker, that was an invention of the Illustrator. And when Doyle had Holmes killed off, he was brought back to life by mass consensus. There are societies and spin offs and scholars and every manner of devotion possible, it's no wonder there are so many adaptations!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 3 comments  

Labels: Arthur Conan Doyle, Doctor Who, Ian Richardson, Jeremy Brett, Mark Gatiss, Martin Freeman, Nicholas Rowe, Robert Downey Junior, Sherlock Holmes, Steven Moffat, The Doctor, The Young Sherlock Holmes