The Game is Afoot

Most of the films I watch these days are either on my computer screen or on my large flat screen television. The word television is a misnomer though, without television programming what does one really call the large media display these days? Accordingly, after discovering a set of rabbit ears, I hooked them up to the monitor and discovered that the only over the air broadcast station that I can pick up is channel 55 out of Long Island. No CBS, ABC, NBC or FOX, any of which would be nice heading into the NFL playoffs. And we allow Connecticut based stations to broadcast how? But that’s for another post.

Big movies deserve to be seen on big screens, so heading over to the local movie theater meant I was intrigued by the new Sherlock Holmes movie. What a treat that was. As a big Holmes fan, I was eager to see how the character could be reinterpreted. The Guy Ritchie directed film didn’t disappoint. It was inspired casting to have Robert Downey Jr. play Holmes. Unlike say, having Daniel Craig play James Bond with no suave underpinnings, Downey fit the role of Homes down to every little quirk. Holmes the experimenter, Downey the risk taker, Homes the bored and unchallenged, Downey the self destructive acting talent. His counterbalance, Dr. Watson, is flawlessly portrayed by Jude Law. Together they on the chase through an exquisitely detailed Victorian London.

The unfortunate part is that under Ritchie’s direction, the scenes are shot at a breathtaking pace, never giving the scene it’s role in the story. Victorian London is so much a part of the Holmes lore, that it isn’t until a climatic scene atop the Tower Bridge, notably in construction, that you get the spectacle of the world of Sherlock Holmes.  But that doesn’t mean that scenes fill out the minute details that is the bread and butter of any Holmes story. The clues are all there, but the mystery unravels through expository montages rather than delivering the satisfaction of joining along the chase. For real mystery fans then, the pace of Sherlock Holmes night be too scattered to deliver the classic appeal of a mystery solved. As with reinterpretations of beloved characters though, that knowing every detail makes it difficult to break new ground. So accepting that we know that Holmes is going to brilliantly deduce the clues, catch the bad guy and save the world, let the action unfurl and allow this Holmes to deliver the adrenalin rush of the chase rather than the intellectual games of previous versions.

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  • Barnstorm

    I think the reason is because the FCC mandated that all TV stations had to start broadcasting in a digital format several months ago. Everybody with rabbit ears was able to get a federal credit to buy themselves a digital converter box. My brother in Virginia had to get one since he refuses to pay for cable. I’m frankly surprised you were able to pick up anything.

    Ernie Kovacs said it best; Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done.

  • turfgrrl

    Barnstorm: Actually I *should* be able to pick up all the stations I used to over the air. Norwalk is within 30 miles of NYC and New Haven, so there’s quite a few that should appear. No need for a digital converter box, my television/monitor already has a decoder built in. The LA Times reports here on the subject

  • Chris Donahue

    Turfgrrl…
    I just saw this online and thought it might add a slightly different dimension to your post…
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_free_broadcasters_in_peril

    • turfgrrl

      Chris Donahue: Thanks Chris. I think they’re making a mistake. Satellite and cable subscribers, imho, will decline as people move more to selecting what they want to watch show by show instead of aggregated like it’s been. Why subscribe to hundreds of channels with nothing on? The minute that someone figures out that people will pay to get what they want to watch at an affordable price then the new model will click. For example, I’d sign up to see Cleveland Browns games, plus whatever else seems interesting, streamed into the turfgrrl channel where I can program say 10 hours of stuff each week instead of having some corporate conglomerate figure it out for me. It’s sort of what I do now, except for the Browns games because a) they really sucked this year and b) the NFL hasn’t figured out what MLB has.

  • just asking…

    How do you know what you want to watch until you’ve seen a part of it? It’s the same problem I have with satellite radio. Sometimes just cruising the FM dial surprises me and I listen to something that I would not have chosen — simply becuase I did not know and hadn’t heard it. AfroPop, for example, drifted into my consciousness on a long, boring trip down the Thruway. Loved it. “Scan” is my favortie feature on the radio. And, while I watch very little TV, I also “scan” and watch portions of things that look interesting. I hardly ever watch a whole “show” or sit down to watch a series. I guess the future for ADD people like me is to “focus”….ah well.

    • turfgrrl

      just asking: I get what you mean. Classic techie argument on search versus browse. Back in the day, Yahoo! offered browse and Google offered search. Google won. Amazon refined it with the if you liked x then you might like these …. I don’t think there’s a clear answer on how people find stuff they want to experience, but the idea that you can find anything you want where and when you want it is the driving force in shaping behaviors. I sometimes wish I could sit on the couch and channel surf ahoy. But I can’t anymore, so I have to take a more active role in my entertainment. I could hook up a large hard drive and create my own mix of Gilligan’s Island episodes, Bond movies and science documentaries on Peruvian mummies, however I would get bored with those choices soon because of the lack of something different.

      On the music side of the equation, I can jump from my playlists to pandora, slacker or an internet radio web stream, and get that random new factor whenever I want it. Yet it’s the same device, iPhone or iTunes that I’m using to play music. I think the same will happen to video/movie/tv as well. In fact I’m in the boxee beta program to see what an aggregated browse/search of all video sources will be.

  • Secondhand Rose

    One of the major reasons I gave up cable over 5 years ago was because I was being forced into paying for channels I never watched. I have never understood why consumers cannot simply pay a user fee for the service and then a small charge for each channel they wish to watch. I have absolutely no interest in Spanish-language game shows or soap operas, sports and sports programs, “chick flicks”, home shopping networks, or most of what passes for sitcoms these days. Give me US and world history, documentaries, cooking shows (as opposed to food-based programming like the failing Food Network whose once-loyal fans are fleeing in droves), science, and a couple of movie channels and that’s all I’d need to be happy. That’s what my friend tapes for me and that’s all we watch. My 2 televisions are used mainly as a place to play tapes and DVDs these days. And I don’t miss cable one bit.

  • BLARNEY

    I don’t know about Sherlock, but I just returned from watching “Avatar” in 3D and I cannot imagine where special effects in film can go from this point on.

    I can’t remember the last time I saw a theater packed at a 3 PM showing on a weekday. I also cannot remember the last time I heard people clap at the end of a movie.

    The last time I was so engrossed in a movie I was watching was “Saving Private Ryan” on the big screen.

  • Secondhand Rose

    Wow, you thought “Avatar” was that good, huh? So did my ex and my daughter. As for me, I’ll have to take your word for it. The “message” I got after watching the coming attractions turned me completely off, so I’m not planning on seeing it.

  • BLARNEY

    I am a special effects buff, so whether it is Avatar or Saving Private Ryan it is the SE folks make it look real. The story of Avatar was the old “Big bad country takes stuff from poor weak guys.” A movie that Liberals should like as it makes the military the villain. IN ANY case it’s a masterpiece in Special Effects, right down to making the Avatars look (right down to the facial expressions) like the actors that actually played them via computer scanning. As I discussed with some friends, that in the future it looks like actors will be paid less and less as their AVATARS are used for most movies. The ON-LOCATION movies will be shot in front of blue screens and then computer generated backgrounds will be added that look better than the real location.

    I would suggest seeing it just for the shots that are made of the planet of “Pandora” they are breath taking. You know they are not real but your mind cannot quite stop marveling at them. Kind of like wrapping your mind around how big is the Universe and then thinking there may be millions of parallel universes, or actually think how SLOW the speed of light is when traveling in space to a star 800 million light years away.

    Not hard to tell I am a science fiction/fact buff also.

    String theory not withstanding