Holmes ReRead Project & Two Recs
In the books department:
Thanks to
figgy_newton's kind gift of a Kindle, I've been rereading all of the Sherlock Holmes stories that I can get for free. (Oddly enough, the short stories are all free, but I have yet to find the longer novellas in a free edition--slightly annoying.) I'm about 85% percent of the way through The Adventures of... after which I'll get right to the Memoirs of.... My Mom read me these stories when I was a kid and we watched the Jeremy Brett versions on Mystery!* As I reread the stories now as an adult, I'm struck by Conan Doyle's penchant for melodrama that sometimes takes a turn for the ridiculous. For example, in my most recent adventure, "The Noble Bachelor", Holmes kept insisting that the simplest explanation was the most obvious and that Lestrade was (typically) making a mistake focusing on some minor part of the issue at hand. (Honestly, I feel a little sorry for Lestrade in these stories; he never has all the information that Holmes does and even though he does dumb things, his heart is in the right place.) Of course, it's up to Holmes to do the thinking Lestrade can't or won't, but does he really have to be such a misanthrope about it? Oh wait, I think I'm missing the whole point of the stories. Anyway, these are very entertaining rereads, and I like hearing Watson's steady voice do the narration. Of the "neither here nor there" variety is Conan Doyle's random remarks about how women are flighty, emotional creatures who cannot be relied upon. I usually zone out during those sentences.
In the non-flighty women category, I've had the good fortune to see three amazing female characters recently, who are truly "strong", in the best sense of the word (and not stereotypically Strong Female Characters, as pop culture appears to have embraced lately.) One of them is the title character of the movie "Hanna" and the other two are the female leads of the show "Burn Notice."
I was pleasantly surprised by "Hanna", which was a movie that I'd meant to catch in theaters, but ran out of time with. It's very dark and violent, but tempered by a reverence for the choices of its lead character. The repeating visual and plot motifs of circles, fairy tales, and lost innocence are for the most part well done and only a little heavy-handed. Cate Blanchett plays the villain, with an incongruous American accent and a very red wig--she's like an evil Dana Scully, pretty much unstoppable except by our main character. And the main character, Hanna... well, wow. Just wow. She moves through the world like an alien with a mission, stopping only to consider what she never had for seconds before continuing towards her goal. I kind of want a sequel, to see what she ends up doing with herself, given the training and background she has.
And when it comes to female characters with unusual backgrounds who never give up, we have the two female characters in "Burn Notice", the main character's mother, Madeleine, and the love interest of the show, Fionna. It sounds dismissive to say that they're the main character's mother and girlfriend, but they're far more than just those roles. Madeleine functions as the show's moral compass and a pillar of strength the face of a past relationship that was almost certainly physically abusive, while Fionna is fierce and passionate about her work. I love that in four seasons (63 episodes), the show had a damsel-in-distress plot in only four episodes or so, while the main male character was held hostage, in trouble and needing rescuing more than half the time. I started to long for a crossover with "Leverage", especially if Parker and Sophie had a moment where they went out to lunch with Fionna and Maddy and talked about the heists they'd all been involved in. That would be all sorts of epically satisfying!
* Funny side note: the Mystery! opening sequence was my first introduction to Edward Gorey's work. It was a great pleasure to see the set for Vincent Price and Diana Rigg at Edward Gorey's house in Massachusetts a few summers ago.
Thanks to
figgy_newton's kind gift of a Kindle, I've been rereading all of the Sherlock Holmes stories that I can get for free. (Oddly enough, the short stories are all free, but I have yet to find the longer novellas in a free edition--slightly annoying.) I'm about 85% percent of the way through The Adventures of... after which I'll get right to the Memoirs of.... My Mom read me these stories when I was a kid and we watched the Jeremy Brett versions on Mystery!* As I reread the stories now as an adult, I'm struck by Conan Doyle's penchant for melodrama that sometimes takes a turn for the ridiculous. For example, in my most recent adventure, "The Noble Bachelor", Holmes kept insisting that the simplest explanation was the most obvious and that Lestrade was (typically) making a mistake focusing on some minor part of the issue at hand. (Honestly, I feel a little sorry for Lestrade in these stories; he never has all the information that Holmes does and even though he does dumb things, his heart is in the right place.) Of course, it's up to Holmes to do the thinking Lestrade can't or won't, but does he really have to be such a misanthrope about it? Oh wait, I think I'm missing the whole point of the stories. Anyway, these are very entertaining rereads, and I like hearing Watson's steady voice do the narration. Of the "neither here nor there" variety is Conan Doyle's random remarks about how women are flighty, emotional creatures who cannot be relied upon. I usually zone out during those sentences.
In the non-flighty women category, I've had the good fortune to see three amazing female characters recently, who are truly "strong", in the best sense of the word (and not stereotypically Strong Female Characters, as pop culture appears to have embraced lately.) One of them is the title character of the movie "Hanna" and the other two are the female leads of the show "Burn Notice."
I was pleasantly surprised by "Hanna", which was a movie that I'd meant to catch in theaters, but ran out of time with. It's very dark and violent, but tempered by a reverence for the choices of its lead character. The repeating visual and plot motifs of circles, fairy tales, and lost innocence are for the most part well done and only a little heavy-handed. Cate Blanchett plays the villain, with an incongruous American accent and a very red wig--she's like an evil Dana Scully, pretty much unstoppable except by our main character. And the main character, Hanna... well, wow. Just wow. She moves through the world like an alien with a mission, stopping only to consider what she never had for seconds before continuing towards her goal. I kind of want a sequel, to see what she ends up doing with herself, given the training and background she has.
And when it comes to female characters with unusual backgrounds who never give up, we have the two female characters in "Burn Notice", the main character's mother, Madeleine, and the love interest of the show, Fionna. It sounds dismissive to say that they're the main character's mother and girlfriend, but they're far more than just those roles. Madeleine functions as the show's moral compass and a pillar of strength the face of a past relationship that was almost certainly physically abusive, while Fionna is fierce and passionate about her work. I love that in four seasons (63 episodes), the show had a damsel-in-distress plot in only four episodes or so, while the main male character was held hostage, in trouble and needing rescuing more than half the time. I started to long for a crossover with "Leverage", especially if Parker and Sophie had a moment where they went out to lunch with Fionna and Maddy and talked about the heists they'd all been involved in. That would be all sorts of epically satisfying!
* Funny side note: the Mystery! opening sequence was my first introduction to Edward Gorey's work. It was a great pleasure to see the set for Vincent Price and Diana Rigg at Edward Gorey's house in Massachusetts a few summers ago.