{"id":731,"date":"2009-12-30T19:24:53","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T00:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=731"},"modified":"2009-12-30T20:17:31","modified_gmt":"2009-12-31T01:17:31","slug":"sherlock-holmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2009\/12\/30\/sherlock-holmes\/","title":{"rendered":"Sherlock Holmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My wife and I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie today.<\/p>\n

We loved it!<\/p>\n

I haven’t read all <\/em>of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels like my wife has, but I’ve read enough to have cringed when the movie was first announced.<\/p>\n

Guy Ritchie?<\/em> I thought.<\/p>\n

Oh, sure, the boxing scenes he directed in Snatch <\/a>are wonderful, but I envisioned Holmes with explosions and plenty of fisticuffs.<\/p>\n

And that’s definitely what movie goers get in this movie.<\/p>\n

But they also get an analytical Holmes whose brain drives him mad when he’s not on a case…just like in the stories.<\/p>\n

Holmes’ addictions aren’t spotlighted, but they don’t need to be; most fans know about his addictions, and they are definitely alluded to.<\/p>\n

Granted, Doyle <\/a>didn’t write Holmes and Watson as back-to-back battlers, but Holmes is <\/em>a practitioner of martial arts in the stories, so it’s not too much of a stretch to make him a good fighter. (And even during the fights in the movie, his analytic side rules over knuckles and brawn. The Dubliners’<\/a> “Rocky Road to Dublin”<\/a> during the fight didn’t hurt, either!)<\/p>\n

Watson isn’t a bumbling idiot like he’s often portrayed in film and TV adaptations of Doyle’s stories; the tension over Watson’s fianc\u00e9e is there, too.<\/p>\n

So many of the quirks and traits in the stories and novels are there.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed the movie more than I’ve enjoyed the Basil Rathbone<\/a> and Jeremy Brett<\/a> portrayals of Holmes (although Brett, physically, is<\/em> Holmes!). I even enjoyed the movie more than I enjoyed PBS’s Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So far, almost everybody I’ve heard from about the movie — including those on a LiveJournal Holmes group<\/a> — have enjoyed the movie, too.<\/p>\n

This is why I think that’s cool:<\/p>\n

Driving home after the movie, my wife and I chatted about how great it would be if the Sherlock Holmes movie gets people reading and rereading the stories.<\/p>\n

Even if the movie were horrible, if it gets kids, teens, and adults reading Doyle’s cherished stories, how bad is that?<\/p>\n

*\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

When a book is made into a TV show or movie, there’s always the fear that it’s not going to live up to the book. When it’s a classic, like the Sherlock Holmes stories, fans become even more <\/em>worried.<\/p>\n

Hollywood has definitely ruined a lot of great books and characters, but Sherlock Holmes<\/em> holds its own and and pays respect to one of the most loved characters in fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My wife and I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie today. We loved it! I haven’t read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels like my wife has, but I’ve read enough to have cringed when the movie was first announced. Guy Ritchie? I thought. Oh, sure, the boxing scenes he directed in Snatch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[62,23,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}