Recently watched movies

[Artemis]

^ Ditto, Arcadia.

I saw it on Friday and I'm still thinking about it, lol.

 

 

[Pseudonym]

I find I'm just not that interested, my superhero enjoyment is too fatigued. 

[Artemis]

I was feeling that way for a few years; but after a long break, my enjoyment is renewed.  I'm sure it will happen again, though.  It seems to come and go in phases.

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

We finally saw Black Panther last night.  We were the only ones there, so I'd guess it won't be in the first-run theaters much longer.

I enjoyed the dialog scenes, but the "exciting" stuff just about put me to sleep.  Oh, and I was kind of expecting the Big Surprise in the middle:

Spoiler

When a major character "dies" but we don't see the body, it's become something of a cliche that s/he isn't really dead, and will be back.  (In fact, I was pretty surprised that Dumbledore really *was* dead!)

 

[Artemis]

^ I just watched it last night for the first time as well, but at home.  What I liked best was the technology (it was awesome and pretty!), and the villain.  As villains go, Killmonger had some of the most fleshed out motives of any Marvel villain I've seen on screen, and he was also sufficiently terrifying in how callously he killed people.  Even Klaue made more sense than a lot of other villains (I'm lookin' at you, Malekith), and I was starting to enjoy his screen time, just because he was enjoying himself so much, lol.

What I liked less was the Hamlet-like plot, which gave me very strong "Lion King" vibes, lol.  Which I guess isn't the worst thing in the world, just very overdone.  It would be nice to see something more original.

Also, the Honest Trailer says pretty much everything I was thinking while watching this movie, lol.

 

"Starring: Bilbo Watson". 

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yup, good trailer! 

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Cargo (on Netflix) 8/10

I’m not into zombie anything really but this was done well. It’s a film with Zombies in it versus a film where zombies are the focus. Interesting story line and some hard parts in it. The US rating for it is TV-MA so the equivalent of our R rated films.

[Artemis]

"Sherlock Holmes in Washington".

 

Favorite moments:

"Mind my egg, Old Bean."

Watson more distressed by the outcome of a cricket match than news of murder and war.

Sherlock irritated by the distraction of Watson's pacing... and Watson isn't pacing.

"I shall write a monograph someday on the noxious habit of accumulating useless trivia."

Watson reading up on American customs and attempting to speak like an American.
Watson: "How do you do, sir?  I suppose I should say, 'How are you, buddy?  Uh, what's... uh... what's cooking?'"
Sherlock: [pulls Watson away by the elbow]
Watson: "It says here in the book, 'What's cooking...'"

Watson's excited about baseball.

Sherlock hates gum.

Sherlock: "Is your niece the kind of girl who would just disappear in this manner, of her own free will?"
Mrs. Partridge: "Ordinarily of course not, but the girl's in love!"
Watson, grinning: "In love!  Well of course, if they're in love, that's...."
[Holmes glares, Watson's smile falls]

"Watson, this is a matter for you, I'm afraid."

"This blanket is beginning to tell me many things.  Yes, just as I thought.  This blanket has had a most varied history."

"It's the last trick that counts, eh Holmes?"
"I'll remind you of that later."

"I told you: The man who had it, didn't know he had it."

The captions being wonky and writing 'Holmes' as 'Hohoes' every time.
Very Serious Evil Guy with a gun: "Mr. Hohoes, I presume."

 

 

[Arcadia]

So that's a 10/10, then?  

[Hikari]

9 hours ago, Artemis said:

"Sherlock Holmes in Washington".

 

Favorite moments:

"Mind my egg, Old Bean."

Watson more distressed by the outcome of a cricket match than news of murder and war.

Sherlock irritated by the distraction of Watson's pacing... and Watson isn't pacing.

"I shall write a monograph someday on the noxious habit of accumulating useless trivia."

Watson reading up on American customs and attempting to speak like an American.
Watson: "How do you do, sir?  I suppose I should say, 'How are you, buddy?  Uh, what's... uh... what's cooking?'"
Sherlock: *pulls Watson away by the elbow*
Watson: "It says here in the book, 'What's cooking...'"

Watson's excited about baseball.

Sherlock hates gum.

Sherlock: "Is your niece the kind of girl who would just disappear in this manner, of her own free will?"
Mrs. Partridge: "Ordinarily of course not, but the girl's in love!"
Watson, grinning: "In love!  Well of course, if they're in love, that's...."
Watson: *looks at Holmes, Holmes glares, Watson's smile falls*

"Watson, this is a matter for you, I'm afraid."

"This blanket is beginning to tell me many things.  Yes, just as I thought.  This blanket has had a most varied history."

"It's the last trick that counts, eh Holmes?"
"I'll remind you of that later."

"I told you: The man who had it, didn't know he had it."

The captions being wonky and writing 'Holmes' as 'Hohoes' every time.

 

 

That movie sounds like fun.  I will have to look that up.

Unfortunately, a long-awaited movie experience fell flat for me:  Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. (TPLOSH)

For the sake of Mark Gatiss, whose favorite movie this is, and our own Herlock Sholmes who loves it also, I really wanted to love it, too.  I had been hearing about it for years.  Learning that leading man Robert Stephens (father of Toby, then-husband of Maggie Smith) felt so overwhelmed and inadequate to the task of portraying the Great Detective, he became suicidal, I assumed the movie was going to be a quite serious treatment of a great man wrestling with his demons, including homoerotic feelings for Watson, in an era when that love daren't speak its name . . and SH would have a hard time speaking his love for anyone regardless of gender anyhow.

I went in expecting The Seven Percent Solution and experienced something more akin to Sherlock Holmes's Smarter Brother.  Perhaps I'm just not tuned to the correct frequency but this movie's vaunted greatness in the annuals of Sherlockiana failed to resonate with me.  Roger Ebert was likewise disappointed, giving the film 2.5 stars at the time of its release in 1970; the intervening 48 years have not improved it for me.  Robert Stephens is an unconventional Holmes--tall enough and elegant in proportion and movement befitting SH but his features are altogether wrong.  He looks even less like Holmes than Matt Frewer.  Colin Blakely makes an amusing and live-wire Watson . . definitely in the Bumbling Watson school, which I don't happen to care for much.  There are some very funny bits in it that I enjoyed, but taken as a whole, it's quite a bit less than its marketing would suggest.  Wilder abandons any analysis of Holmes's inner mind or the dynamic in Baker Street in favor of a madcap espionage caper involving a top-secret submarine posing as the Loch Ness monster.  There is some lovely footage of Inverness, including the world-famous loch . . . and a embodiment of Her Maj herself, VR, Victoria Regina, by actress Mollie Maureen, whose height I put at approximately 4'6".  I learned from the bonus features that the finished film was only half the movie Wilder wanted to make.  He had planned for at least 2 other separate plot strands comprising a 4-movement cinematic 'symphony' running to 3 hours with an intermission.  What made it to screen is only two of those sections.  The bonus features contain a wealth of other material Billy had planned to put in, but only in pieces . . there are script pages, pieces of audio with no surviving film footage like a radio play, and one extended scene that is visually intact but with no sound--the viewer has to read the subtitles of Holmes and Watson speaking like they are watching a silent movie, in color.  That last bit, where Watson attempts (unsuccessfully) to solve 2 ostensible murders aboard a ship were probably the best bit for me.  What a shame Billy didn't get to make the whole film he wanted to.  The bits we got feel like something of a bait and switch to this viewer.  I searched hard to find any trace of Holmes's angst over his secret passion for Watson . .but it eluded me altogether.  We do have plenty zany caper comedy, if that is your cuppa.  Robert Stephens also displays no hint at all of the inner angst which drove him to an extremity and almost killed him--he is in good form throughout.

Christopher Lee was a quizzical choice for Mycroft Holmes, being as thin as a rake.  And Mr. Wilder apparently forgot the rule above all else:  there is NO TALKING in the Diogenes Club.

Happy Sherlock Holmes Day, everybody!  Today marks Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

I checked IMDb for Mollie Maureen’s height and apparently she’s 5’2” (or very near close to it). But I could see her as looking shorter if the men in the movie were near 6’+ in height. Haven’t watched it yet and not sure if I will.

[Hikari]

6 minutes ago, SherlockedCAMPer said:

I checked IMDb for Mollie Maureen’s height and apparently she’s 5’2” (or very near close to it). But I could see her as looking shorter if the men in the movie were near 6’+ in height. Haven’t watched it yet and not sure if I will.

Hmm.  Based on her appearance in her scene with the gentlemen, I would have pegged her for a bona fide little person.  Queen Victoria was evidently a small woman, though I wouldn't have thought as small as she appears here.  I wonder if they did some movie wizardry to give the illusion that she was really that tiny.  Robert Stephens was 6'1".  Mollie appeared even smaller than this when she was standing closer to him.

I couldn't find a clip but here's a photo:

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Wouldn’t surprise me if there was some movie wizardry that went on. Camera angles can do a lot for making someone look taller or shorter than they actually are.

[Hikari]

Related:  the obituary of the late Sir Robert Stephens.  It was quite a colorful life.  He played Sherlock Holmes on the stage as well, in a revival of William Gillette's iconic play.  He had the nose and a great head of hair but it was decidedly not an authentically Sherlockian face.  The obituary writer refers to TPLOSH as 'a failure' but it is unclear whether he is referring to the general critical opinion or of Stephens' opinion of his performance as Sherlock Holmes.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sir-robert-stephens-1581909.html

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, Hikari said:

Robert Stephens ...displays no hint at all of the inner angst....

I'm curious -- why were you expecting angst?

[Hikari]

2 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

I'm curious -- why were you expecting angst?

Because it's called The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes . . It is mistitled because there is no private life of Sherlock Holmes here.  There is lots of rather low comedy, but due to the title, things I had heard about it from other sources, the fact that it's Mark Gatiss's favorite movie AND the fact that star Robert Stephens attempted suicide because he was so downcast at the experience and the burden of expectations in carrying this part, I had assumed that the script delved into Holmes's wrestling with homosexual feelings toward Watson, or at the very least, his drug problems and potentially troubled childhood/past, of which he almost never speaks.  That is why.  The concoction Wilder gives us is so light and frothy I wouldn't have thought it would drive a talented actor to want to kill himself.  Color me surprised.

This is an excerpt from Stephens' NYT obituary (written by 'Benedict Nightingale', as it happens):

By this time, he had also tried and failed to become a film star. He played second fiddle with some success to Ms. Smith in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," but he was not so fortunate with the lead role in Billy Wilder's 1969 film "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes." What Sir Robert regarded as the director's perfectionism so undermined his confidence that he had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. Moreover, the finished movie neither pleased the public nor gave him the new career he wanted.

*******

Since this film is cited by many Sherlockians as a favorite and 'the best Sherlock Holmes movie ever made', I was very surprised to find out that it was basically a critical and commercial flop when it was released in 1970.  Billy Wilder's sadistic perfectionism was all for nought in this case--what a tragic waste it would have been if Robert had succeeded in killing himself.  He had young kids.  (Son Toby was only 1, or less.)

[Pseudonym]

Not sure if this belongs here or in BC news. Trailer of Mowgli with BC as Shere Khan... I really don't like the look of it.

 

[Artemis]

^ I can't watch the trailer right now, but is that a new one?  They just made a live action "Jungle Book". 

 

 

[Pseudonym]

Yep it is, and yea I know. 🤨

I think the story is slightly different, but not different enough to have the slightest interest to me. 

[Artemis]

*Sigh*.  What I wouldn't give for some truly original content.

 

 

[Artemis]

I saw "Infinity War" again on Sunday.  I had to, lol.  I felt like I was so busy processing everything the first time through that I wasn't able to really take it all in, and I thought I might have missed things.  To my surprise, I didn't miss all that much (just a few lines), and I also wasn't as desensitized as I'd anticipated being the second time.  In fact, I was noticing more detail, and that almost made some parts just as hard to watch.  But in any case I'm glad I went, because it did help somehow to see it again.  I'm not done reading about it though, lol.

Also I found this Tumblr post before I went, and it made me laugh:

Spoiler

"Me when characters kept dying in infinity war and I didn’t even have time to process a death before the next one came:"

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Ooh, not my kinda movie, then.  Thanks for the heads-up!

[Artemis]

What kinda movie is that? 

[Carol the Dabbler]

For one thing, I prefer movies without so much of what you mentioned in your spoiler box.  (Do people in the UK spell it "spoilre"?)

[Artemis]

Well the thing in the spoiler box is an exaggeration for humorous effect, but I understand what you mean.    I would still recommend it though.  It is... an experience.