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walkingshadow) wrote2010-01-07 03:10 pm
walkingshadow) wrote2010-01-07 03:10 pm
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you are the habit i can't seem to kick
On the glorious occasion of the anniversary of her birth, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silentfire and I went to see Sherlock Holmes.
Let's break this down:
❡ Robert Downey, Jr. is still the best part of every movie.
❡ Yes, even the movies in which he does not appear. Perhaps especially those.
❡ I like that it was so obviously a Guy Ritchie film, with his trademark cinematography and the stylized fight scenes. I personally liked the device of describing the action in slow motion before watching it at full speed; it was a good way of marrying Holmes's quick, detached intellect and analysis and observation to the role of Holmes as a fighter. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong!), in the books he was pretty much the Platonic ideal of the cerebral ectomorph and not very physical, but a) it's a movie, b) it's a Guy Ritchie movie!, and c) I 110% support RDJ taking off his shirt early and often.
ETA: Thanks to bothsmallbeer and effex for telling me that Holmes DOES canonically have expert boxing (and other fighting) knowledge and skills and could—and indeed did—get quite physical! smallbeer went on to say that Conan Doyle was himself a boxing fan, and thus fannishness begets fannishness and here we all are. \o/
❡ Oh hey, there were women in this movie! I liked both of them! Mary had agency and intelligence and humor and didn't take any shit from Holmes, and didn't play the part of the jealous girlfriend even though she would have been well within her rights. Also she ships Holmes/Watson. Irene Adler was completely faaaaabulous, I am totally in love with her. And I'm in love with the fact that she and Holmes were not a couple! Fascinated by each other, stimulated by each other, fond of each other, but not involved with each other. They were platonic equals in a way male-female leads rarely ever get to be.
❡ I've seen Jude Law in surprisingly few film roles over the past decade1, and I guess I've always had a neutral-to-negative opinion of him, not helped by the thing with the nanny which made him out to be an enormous ass, but he was FABULOUS in this, so fabulous that I honestly forgot it was Jude Law and just saw him as Watson. And omg Watson is AMAZING. He is brilliant and beautiful and almost unbearably dapper, he has a gambling addiction and an old war wound and A SWORD IN HIS WALKING STICK, your argument is invalid!
❡ Clearly Watson is the original genius wrangler, but he is Holmes's equal: he has his own motivations and personality and he goes toe-to-toe with Holmes and sometimes he wins. Unlike today's TV geniuses2, Holmes doesn't simply need Watson around to be his foil and run interference for him with the mundanes, he wants Watson around because he both likes and loves him. Leading us to:
❡ They are so gay for each other! They are so—I can't even articulate it, it's like saying THERE IS A MYSTERY IN THIS MOVIE AND THEY SOLVE IT. It was basically as canonical and textual as Holmes's drug use (which was never mentioned explicitly in the movie either, but I think a fun game on re-watch will be pinpointing all the scenes in which Holmes is high as a kite). I mean, it's basically what the entire emotional plot of the movie was ABOUT. Holmes doesn't want Watson to move out, Holmes is insanely jealous of Watson's fiancée, Holmes steals Watson's clothes so he can sleep with them under his pillow until they don't smell like him anymore. Mary says to Holmes, of Watson, "I know you care for him as much as I do," and she's about to marry the guy. By the end of the movie it seems clear that they have come to some sort of mutually agreeable polyamorous arrangement.
❡silentfire and I actually got into a debate over whether Holmes and Watson are the most married, or whether they're merely in, say, the top three, with e.g. Jim and Blair who not only shared rooms and solved crime together, but ALSO had a spiritual telepathic soul bond, and Ray and Fraser who literally rode off into the sunset together. Perhaps this is a job for a poll!
❡ YOU MEANS US. Is this already the name of the Sherlock Holmes (2009) fic comm??
❡ Radio waves! AMAZING. I think everyone will be using them in the future.
In conclusion: A++ WOULD WATCH AGAIN
silentfire and I went to see Sherlock Holmes.Let's break this down:
❡ Robert Downey, Jr. is still the best part of every movie.
❡ Yes, even the movies in which he does not appear. Perhaps especially those.
❡ I like that it was so obviously a Guy Ritchie film, with his trademark cinematography and the stylized fight scenes. I personally liked the device of describing the action in slow motion before watching it at full speed; it was a good way of marrying Holmes's quick, detached intellect and analysis and observation to the role of Holmes as a fighter. From what I understand (and please correct me if I'm wrong!), in the books he was pretty much the Platonic ideal of the cerebral ectomorph and not very physical, but a) it's a movie, b) it's a Guy Ritchie movie!, and c) I 110% support RDJ taking off his shirt early and often.
ETA: Thanks to both
smallbeer and effex for telling me that Holmes DOES canonically have expert boxing (and other fighting) knowledge and skills and could—and indeed did—get quite physical! smallbeer went on to say that Conan Doyle was himself a boxing fan, and thus fannishness begets fannishness and here we all are. \o/❡ Oh hey, there were women in this movie! I liked both of them! Mary had agency and intelligence and humor and didn't take any shit from Holmes, and didn't play the part of the jealous girlfriend even though she would have been well within her rights. Also she ships Holmes/Watson. Irene Adler was completely faaaaabulous, I am totally in love with her. And I'm in love with the fact that she and Holmes were not a couple! Fascinated by each other, stimulated by each other, fond of each other, but not involved with each other. They were platonic equals in a way male-female leads rarely ever get to be.
❡ I've seen Jude Law in surprisingly few film roles over the past decade1, and I guess I've always had a neutral-to-negative opinion of him, not helped by the thing with the nanny which made him out to be an enormous ass, but he was FABULOUS in this, so fabulous that I honestly forgot it was Jude Law and just saw him as Watson. And omg Watson is AMAZING. He is brilliant and beautiful and almost unbearably dapper, he has a gambling addiction and an old war wound and A SWORD IN HIS WALKING STICK, your argument is invalid!
❡ Clearly Watson is the original genius wrangler, but he is Holmes's equal: he has his own motivations and personality and he goes toe-to-toe with Holmes and sometimes he wins. Unlike today's TV geniuses2, Holmes doesn't simply need Watson around to be his foil and run interference for him with the mundanes, he wants Watson around because he both likes and loves him. Leading us to:
❡ They are so gay for each other! They are so—I can't even articulate it, it's like saying THERE IS A MYSTERY IN THIS MOVIE AND THEY SOLVE IT. It was basically as canonical and textual as Holmes's drug use (which was never mentioned explicitly in the movie either, but I think a fun game on re-watch will be pinpointing all the scenes in which Holmes is high as a kite). I mean, it's basically what the entire emotional plot of the movie was ABOUT. Holmes doesn't want Watson to move out, Holmes is insanely jealous of Watson's fiancée, Holmes steals Watson's clothes so he can sleep with them under his pillow until they don't smell like him anymore. Mary says to Holmes, of Watson, "I know you care for him as much as I do," and she's about to marry the guy. By the end of the movie it seems clear that they have come to some sort of mutually agreeable polyamorous arrangement.
❡
silentfire and I actually got into a debate over whether Holmes and Watson are the most married, or whether they're merely in, say, the top three, with e.g. Jim and Blair who not only shared rooms and solved crime together, but ALSO had a spiritual telepathic soul bond, and Ray and Fraser who literally rode off into the sunset together. Perhaps this is a job for a poll!❡ YOU MEANS US. Is this already the name of the Sherlock Holmes (2009) fic comm??
❡ Radio waves! AMAZING. I think everyone will be using them in the future.
Footnotes:
- Including Closer, a movie about extraordinarily unlikeable characters; I ♥ Huckabees, in which he has the world's worst American accent; and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow omg lollll, a movie I had totally forgotten about until just now when I checkd his iMDB page. Also Road to Perdition, in which he was really good!
- With the notable exception of Shawn and Gus, the only M/M (rather than M/F) genius/wrangler relationship currently on television. If you haven't already, see
In conclusion: A++ WOULD WATCH AGAIN
no subject
Everything else, yes x100000.
I don't know who I would vote for in that poll (a soul-bond is a compelling argument) but Holmes and Watson have certainly been married the longest.
no subject
Thank you for that! I've only ever read Hound of the Baskervilles (and that was a long time ago), so I see a date with Wikipedia in my own future, along with the books. I can't remember who on my flist likened Guy Ritchie's approach to writing his fanfiction as viewing the canon as a toybox rather than a museum, but I love the analogy, not to mention how whole-heartedly he has embraced it.
Heh, I would totally run a poll if I thought people would take it, and if I could come up with enough characters to populate it (e.g. Gus and Shawn from Psych! Gus claims Shawn on his TAXES, what can you even do with that?). When you say "the longest" do you mean in meta terms of when they were first written, or how long they have actually been shacking up in the books? And if it's the latter, how long are we talking??
no subject
And I meant in meta age-of-canon/age-of-fandom terms. Would be interesting to draw up cohabitation timelines for some of these dudes, though!
(sorry for the repeat comment - I replied in the wrong place)
no subject
I saw this movie early (maybe ten days before it opened), and spent the entire showing thinking, "wow, my friendslist is going to go crazy for this one. And I can't really talk about it, and how INCREDIBLY GAY it is, because no one else has seen it, and I'm not really supposed to, anyway (it was a sort of hush hush screening) and anyway, SPOILERS, I would be the SPOILER MONSTER, which is bad bad bad. but I really want to talk about it! gee, I really wish my friendslist was here in this theater RIGHT NOW." It was massively frustrating.
so, it's fun to read this! and I could not agree more that RDJ is the best part of every movie.
no subject
Ahhh, thank you for that! Having spawned one of the first fandoms, it's so fitting that Conan Doyle was himself a fanboy, I love it. I saw someone on the flist who thought it was totally pointless to show the fight scenes twice, but it's really hard to differentiate anything in a movie action sequence beyond "people hitting each other really hard" (at least I personally find it difficult), and boxing is supposed to be the sweet science, plus Holmes himself is so cerebral and deliberate, so I thought it was ingenious! A look behind the curtain to see the inner workings.
Oh man, it must have been so hard to be sitting on THAT MUCH AWESOME and not have anyone to squee about it with! I know this post was 90% marveling at the gaaaaaay, but I really loved the movie qua movie with its ridiculous Victorian plot and all the explosions and the costuming and everything! And I got a huge kick out of the half-finished Tower Bridge, because I am always thrilled by that sort of historical dramatic irony.
But seriously, they are soinlove. Nom I must find ALL THE FANFICTION.