The two faces of Sherlock.

Two tributes to the legendary Sherlock Holmes. 

The first, a modernised version of Sherlock Holmes, set in our day and age, for the small screen by the BBC.

The second, set in the original time and place by a director of no mean repute.

Both efforts as disparate as chalk and cheese. 

Or apples and oranges.

Or J.R.R Tolkein and Barbara Cartland.

Or Audrey Hepburn and Courtney Love.

Or Colin Firth and Fabio. 

Or... I can continue, but I am sure even the more thick-skulled out there have managed to get the picture by now! So why don't we cut to the chase and get down to discussing each of these. 

However, before I begin, let's put something into context - when I think Sherlock Holmes, I cannot think of anyone but Jeremy Brett.

To me, he is and will always be the quintessential Holmes. I imagine, if Arthur Conan Doyle lived, and/or if Sherlock Holmes existed, both would have whole heartedly approved of Jeremy Brett. He made the sharp, caustic, brooding, cold and solitary detective come to life with an intensity that no other actor playing Holmes could quite match up to. Infact being the perfect Sherlock Holmes became his fatal flaw - one that took over his life and ultimately broke down his health. As he said once, 

"Some actors fear if they play Sherlock Holmes for a very long run, the character will steal their soul, leave no corner for the original inhabitant. Holmes has become the dark side of the moon for me. He is moody and solitary and underneath I am really sociable and gregarious. It has all got too dangerous"

So when the new attempts were being made to revive Sherlock Holmes, one hoped that both the creators and the actors of each of these, knew exactly how large the shoes they were stepping into, were.

And that is something the BBC version seems to have taken into account quite sincerely with it's absolutely superlative attempt at resurrecting a modern day Sherlock, who lives in today's London, uses modern day technology like GPS and his Blackberry (or is it an iPhone?) and has nicotine patches instead of the omnipresent pipe. Sherlock may be modernised and so may be his adventures but the man, the methods and the personality remain the same; if anything, there is an attempt to define his personality further and explain why he is, who he is with the Asperger's syndrome and little touches here and there...

Benedict Cumberbatch is absolutely, absolutely brilliant and riveting as Holmes' modern day avatar. He may belong to the 21st century, but he is every inch the Sherlock Holmes one knows; with his high cheekbones, his long coats (which have now become London's fashion must have of the season), his aloof manner, his incredibly fast dialogue delivery, his eccentricity and his awareness of being cleverer than almost everyone he meets, all add to bringing to life the socially inept, arrogant, cold and eccentric genius who is also the world's best consulting detective. And this is a role BC plays to nothing short of perfection. He is almost as good as Jeremy Brett and that is the biggest and the best compliment any Sherlock and Brett fan can give!!!

One can never have enough of gazing at BC, can they? ;-)

Martin Freeman as the down to earth, exasperated and yet loyal to a fault, Dr Watson who now blogs instead of writing novels is the perfect foil to the genius of Holmes and he is a welcome change from all the stuffy and almost simple Dr Watsons one has come across in the past versions! 

This season was one notch up vs the last, with creators/ writers Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Steve Thomson doing a superb job lending the age old stories a modern twist. Each plot was an adaptation of the original and yet one couldn't but admire the audacity and cleverness which went in making them different. So, Irene Adler became a dominatrix with a soft spot for Holmes in Scandal in Belgravia, Dartmoor became an army base and the ghostly hound of the moors was instead an apparition caused by an evil scientist's experiments with hallucinogens in The Hound of the Baskervilles and Sherlock and Moriarty meet for their final battle on top of St. Bartholomew's hospital instead of Reichenbach falls. 

Each episode was sizzling with tension, suspense and drama, whether it was in the exchanges with Irene Adler who met Holmes wearing nothing (my favourite episode) and managed to create quite the dent in the detective's usually unruffled demeanour, or the fact that Sherlock Holmes experienced fear for the first time in the Hound of the Baskervilles and thus proving, he is almost as human as the rest of us or the electrifying battle of wits with his arch nemesis, Moriarty and his fear of losing in the Final Problem.

Now that Season 2 is over and Moriarty is dead and the internet is abuzz with theories on how Sherlock survived the fall, I cannot wait for Season 3 to air. And I sincerely wish BBC would be less sadistic and increase the number of episodes to more than a mere 3 each season!!!

Unfortunately the same sentiments cannot be expressed for the other Sherlock. Normally one would assume a a movie that brings together a hot-shot talented director like Guy Ritchie and a brilliant actor in Robert Downey Jr, would be a sure shot winning combination. However, in this case, the two together, manage to defy all odds and turn what could have been a winning combination into a disaster par excellence!

First, Robert Downey Jr (and I am a fan of his otherwise), doesn't from any angle, and by any stretch of the imagination, look like Sherlock Holmes; he is too short and looks too much like a pit bull terrier to be the tall, angular detective. 

Secondly, if the person who was in charge of conceiving Sherlock Holmes' look, had bothered to do their home work right, or had even taken the effort of making even one cursory visit to Wikipedia, they would have known that while Holmes was eccentric and untidy, he had a "cat like love for his own personal hygiene" (this is thanks to my cursory visit to Wikipedia)!!! 

Sadly they didn't, so instead, we are stuck watching Robert Downey Jr walking around sporting a week long stubble & looking like he hasn't bathed in a month. Which makes him look even less like the arrogant, dispassionate and super intelligent detective he sets out to play; instead he ends up looking like a homeless WWF wrestler who is missing his "Will work for a bath" sign!!!

Thirdly, I was under the impression, and I think Arthur Conan Doyle would agree, that when Sherlock Holmes had adventures, they had a distinct cerebral element. However in this avatar, esp in the Game of Shadows, Sherlock Holmes has no time for the matters of deduction, mainly because he is busy going around giving Jackie Chan a complex and trying to prove he is indeed the love child of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, Tomb Raider! 

Then, we come to the plot. If Shakespeare were writing the review, he would have called it, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"! Atleast in the first one, there was some semblance of a plot & and some interest because of the supernatural element. In this one, the creators simply drop all pretence at trying to think of a plot and decide to make a Western instead, full of mindless action, action and then some more action, so much so that the brain loses all feeling and sensation after a point of time!!! Even a talented actor like Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish version of the Girl with the Dragon tattoo) walks around with a "What the hell am I supposed to be doing here?" expression on her face! 

The only mystery worth pondering over in the movie was why Stephen Fry (Mycroft Holmes) was walking around butt naked in front of his servants, and that is one mystery I didn't manage to crack (no pun intended!) even after the movie ended.

Only 2 things kept me glued to my seat - one the fact that I had shelled out 17 odd pounds (combo meal, really bad decision) and the knowledge that this movie was making 2 people more miserable than me; somewhere in their graves, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jeremy Brett were tossing and turning and howling in excruciating pain!!!

My advice, avoid it like the bubonic plague, unless of course you have a masochistic streak or you prefer not using your brains when you watch a movie!

Ringing in the new

Does the first post of a brand new year have to be an obvious, predictable one about NewYear resolutions???

I guess the answer is a yes, esp when you are running out of ideas on what to write and in any case, nobody bothers to read the meanderings of your idle mind, so how does it matter what you write anyway? 

So here I was, all geared up to write a post on that one topic that over-rides all others in my new year (and every other occasion led) resolutions - that very predictable/useless/yet impossible to achieve issue of  "Eat healthy. Exercise regularly. Lose weight".

It never works yet it is amazing how it makes to the top of my list each yr, when I discovered a similar note on my iPad which said just that with even more specific targets like lose 8-10 kgs by my b'dy in April.

Very reasonable the set target seemed this time around, as against my usually impossible, harebrained plans to lose 10 kgs in 10 days, that for obvious reasons never, ever work, but why in heaven's name do I not remember making this, all complete with shrink like advice on how to not give up on myself and be less critical of myself when I fail....... 

When the hell did I make this??? Holy mother of God, I cannot remember making this! What is it? An early onset of a rare form of Alzheimer's? Or am I hurtling towards old age faster than most? Panic stricken, I try to frantically recall which episode of Oprah would have caused this. (Note for the uninitiated - all such plans to alter my life & discover the new or real Me, sometimes both, are always post some episode of Oprah that work brilliantly well for the next 5 days before fizzling into oblivion)

But hold on for a second right there, I haven't watched a single episode of Oprah since I moved to London, which was about 8 months ago. And no one in their right minds, not even a half eccentric like me, makes NY resolutions in mid March! Then a niggling little bit of doubt starts to creep in .....could it be.... was it ...... oh yes, sadly but surely it was! I was looking down at a New Year resolution that I had made for 2011, one that after having written down, I had promptly forgotten about!

In a nutshell, in the start of 2012, here I was, exactly where I was in 2010, experiencing that sense of deja-vu that comes in these simple steps!

1. make that list of resolution to turn your life around - 

2. follow it for a whole of 3 days - 

3. find extremely valid reasons why its not working out as well as you expected it to -

4. Junk it & forget all about it till the beginning of the next yr!

Now if that wasn't an eye opener, then I don't know what is!! So enlightened, I tell myself that this year I am finally, finally going to learn from the mistakes of my past and be more realistic and smarter about my new yr resolutions! 

Yes!! So instead of going crazy trying to diet and lose weight, I shall take the higher, less exhausting and more food filled road and be comfortable in my own skin! (Let me clarify - when I say less exhausting, I mean physically, lest my sister who is a shrink decides to take offence at my flippant attitude to self acceptance and tries to murder me!)

After all, didn't Goethe say, "If God had wanted me otherwise, HE would have created me otherwise"? ;-)

So now that I have made peace with myself & come to the conclusion that I shall not be focussing my energies on diet and losing weight, all the time that I shall have to spare can go in more fruitful ventures that may actually end up being more successful! So I have decided to attempt and get a list down to see what all I can do with that time...

Thus, here is my top ten wish - list (being smarter, I have also got rid of the term 'resolutions' as well) for 2012 -

1. Be more regular with my blog. So what if nobody reads it. I shall be the writer, the reader, the editor, the audience, the fan, the critic, et al!

2. Read atleast 12 good books that have been sitting catching dust on my bookshelf.

3. Learn 1 new language

4. Do atleast one trip with only my camera for company.

5. Spend more time photographing my favourite subject - nature.

6. Grow some more flowers and a few more vegetables other than tomatoes this year.

7. Spend less time on Facebook. Be off my laptop when my kids are around. Which also means not surreptitiously checking FB on my phone when I am with them or with the hubby!

8. Clear my life of self centred pigs & annoying morons who don't make even a bit of difference to my life and make time and room for those who do.

9. And, each time I get exasperated, annoyed or exhausted with my brats and want them to do things my way, to never lose sight of this poem by Diane Loomas -

If I had my child to raise all over again,

I'd build self esteem first, and the house later.

I'd fingerpaint more, and point the finger less.

I would do less correcting and more connecting.

I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.

I would care to know less and know to care more.

I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.

I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.

I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.

I'd do more hugging and less tugging.

I'd see the oak tree in the acorn more often.

I would be firm less often, and affirm much more.

I'd model less about the love of power,

And more about the power of love

10. And Oh! finally before I forget, here's the most important one - to find a job, one that sends in some much needed moolah every month into my bank!