Sherlock Holmes
 

I'm not happy :(

Trailer here

It was definitely better than The Da Vinci code, but that is a low bar.

The ultimate conclusion was too obvious but didn't really matter. And, the justification given at the end for what was happening made no sense in that it did nothing to deal with that which was claimed as the cause.

But it had better energy and tempo than the first and it was a very nice replay (in locations) of our week in Rome last October. Hardly a location that we weren't standing in just months ago (though most of those locations were actually sets since no permission was given to film in church-owned facilities. Must be a daunting task for a set-building team to be told "Sistine Chapel, please."

Just wait until Guy Ritchie gets a hold of Peter Rabbit. Actually, I'm kind of intrigued since it is a such an odd genre choice.

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Other movies I"ve watched recently:

Born Yesterday - The original with Holden/Holliday/Crawford rather than Don Johnson/Melanie Griffith/John Goodman. Took a while but quite liked it by the end.

Nobody's Fool - Doesn't really go anywhere but a pleasant movie with fine performances.

Superbad - Saw it in theaters and still find it mostly hilarious. Michael Cera is wearing out his welcome though so I hope he finds range (Year 1 trailer provides no evidence of it though).

Noise - More an exploration of an interesting idea than a coherent movie. The sex scene was either unnecessary or had a purpose I couldn't divine.

Penelope - Amusing fairy tale. Only problem is that the movie had people running fright at the sight of Penelope (Christina Ricci) with her pig nose. Yet she was still completely adorable. Still looked relatively normal here (ignoring the nose) but sad to see she's apparently gone to the anorexic side based on her recent gig on "Saving Grace."

Krull - When I was a kid the spinning blade thing was the coolest thing ever and we all wanted one. And yet none of us had actually seen the movie. Should have left it that way.

Half Nelson - Ryan Gosling is going to be our next national treasure in the realm of acting. And he gives a great performance here as a history teacher struggling to function through drug addiction. Shareeka Epps also provides some great natural child acting. The only drawback is the movie is beyond deadly boring. I had to watch it over five sessions since I kept falling asleep or getting distracted by anything else.

Yeah... But it has a young Liam Neeson in it, and Kenneth Marshall was hot.

Born Yesterday - I was so curious about this movie for awhile and got to see it on TCM on Demand just recently. Loved it. I had heard people impersonate Holliday before but had never seen the real performance behind it. Good stuff.

Nobody's Fool - Liked Newman in this one. Such a cool, mellow movie.

Superbad - I can watch this one again and again. It's so much fun.

Krull - Liam Neeson's in it. I think this was one of his first films. I liked it as a kid, don't think I'd enjoy it now. I think the last time I saw it was on HBO in the 80's.

Half Nelson - Couldn't get through it. It was too dull, imho. Liked Gosling's acting in it but not enough to keep me tuned in...


Last night, I watched 3/4 of The Great Ziegfeld. It's a good film, but man it's loooong. Weird that Myrna Loy gets second billing she shows up 2hrs into the film. The spiral staircase scene is still one of my favorites of all-time.

I'm reminded how little attention I pay to movies I Netflix by taking Alex's advice to rent Tell No One. It's been sitting at home for weeks waiting for the time I can spare to uni-task watching a film with subtitles.


I may just have to return it unwatched and move on. I don't see that day coming any time soon.

We've now seen 4 of the movies nominated in the top Oscar categories, a coup in the Sloan household.

Most recently it was Slumdog and The Wrestler.

I guess I'm in the majority with Slumdog. A good watch, but I didn't find it amazing. Plus, the guy who played Maman looked too much like Michael Ian Black for me to take seriously.

I really like the Wrestler. I particularly liked that he was not portrayed as a complete asshole, or some incompetent jerkwad that couldn't handle a simple job. Just someone who though he was doing the right thing by committing to doing what he knows best, finding himself out of his element when that doesn't pay off for him. Rourke was very good, but not so amazing that I'd consider Penn's win an upset.

I just checked of the discs I currently have from Netflix, the last was mailed to me more than 3 months ago. But in the meantime I've watched 22 movies via streaming (on my regular TV with the Roku).

T4 is Awesome


That is all.

It kind of looks like a bone-headed remake of Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Anyway, how ghastly - plus that trailer is rife with all the cliche whooshes, quick edits and canned hyper-chorus music that makes me roll my eyes and decide not to attend SO MANY MOVIES! Are you trailer editors listening? I've been ranting about this for years now! Cut that shyt out!