Posts tagged London
“Sherlock Holmes” Deconstructing Holmes
Dec 30th
Deconstructing Holmes
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SHERLOCK HOLMES takes one of the most famous of all fictional characters, the brilliant but eccentric London detective created in the late 1800s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and turns him into a modern-day action hero.
The setting is still London in the late 1800s, but Robert Downey Jr.
plays Holmes as just as much a martial-arts fighter as a brilliant thinker.
And Jude Law plays Dr. Watson, Sherlock’s partner, colleague, and writer of Sherlock’s famous cases, as just as much an equal in the martial arts as Holmes is.
To steal a line from somebody else, “This is not your great-grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes.”
In fact, Watson himself may be onto something, because a major subplot in this mess of a movie is that Dr. Watson is engaged and preparing to move out of their digs at 221B Baker Street.
The fault, Dear Audience, lies with the writers and the director, Guy Ritchie, known for his rock-’em, sock-’em modern-day British crime-caper comedies, but most famous for being the recently divorced husband of Madonna.
When the movie opens, Holmes is in a foul mood, and Watson says to Mrs.
Hudson, the woman who keeps their rooms as tidy as she is allowed to, “He just needs another case, that’s all.”
The last case that Holmes had and presumably solved was three months ago, but before he acquires a new case, Holmes is invited to dinner in a restaurant with Watson and his fiancee, Mary, who insists that Holmes examine her at the table and tell her what his observations reveal about her.
To say that it doesn’t go well would be the understatement of the 19th century.
Holmes eventually gets a case that involves black magic, a midget, a plot to rule England and to reacquire the United States, and Holmes’s female nemesis, Irene Adler, played by the beautiful Rachel McAdams.
Yes, this movie is more like a James Bond adventure than a story about the Sherlock Holmes we have come to know, love, respect, and admire.
The movie is preposterous, the story is preposterous, the action scenes are preposterous, even the acting is preposterous.
And, unfortunately, the ending has all the earmarks of a sequel in the works.
SHERLOCK HOLMES is a silly deconstruction of the four novels and 56 short stories that we have read and loved.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The September Issue” Over The Top
Sep 16th
Over the Top
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE is an excellent documentary about the making of the September 2007 issue of VOGUE magazine and its legendary editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, said to be the inspiration for the Meryl Streep character in the 2006 THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA.
Wintour is called the single most important figure in the $300 billion fashion industry. That is a lot of dresses, shoes, accessories, makeup, a lot of woman, and by that I don’t mean Wintour, but all the women all over the world, as well as the ones in every man’s life.
Now, I know what you are thinking: “Sure, women will like this movie, because it is all about fashion and clothes, but will men like it, too?
Of course, women will love it for the fashion, and men will love it for the beautiful models. You will see beautiful outfits on beautiful women and ugly, atrocious outfits on beautiful women.
As someone in the film says, “Anna is the most powerful woman in the United States.”
Why? Because Vogue is the so-called “Bible” of the fashion industry, and if VOGUE–meaning Anna Wintour–gets behind something, it sells.
However, as Anna herself says at the beginning of the film, “There is something about fashion that can make people very nervous.”
The film begins in 2007 in New York City, and we see what goes into the making of the September issue of the magazine, because “September is the January in fashion.” A film crew was given access to everything, including the offices, the private lives of the editors and creative directors, the photo sessions, and the trips to Paris, Rome, and London for the fashion shows, meetings, and photo shoots for the cover with actress Sienna Miller.
The film also spends a lot of time with Grace Coddington, the magazine’s creative director and “resident genius,” as TIME magazine called her.
She and Anna started working at the American VOGUE on the same day 20 years ago, and Grace serves as some of the comic relief in the seriousness of the film, as we see her frustration after spending a lot of time and money on portions of the magazine only to have Anna take them out at the last minute or order a reshoot.
THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE is over the top, but fascinating, just like fashion.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”