I saw two very different films this weekend, as I like to do, although the relationship between two brothers is important in both. In Brothers, the pair are actual brothers, while in Un prophète, they are more kindred spirits--fellow Arabs, marginalised in a French prison where a powerful Corsican gang of inmates rule the roost.
Despite its cast of Toby Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal and Natalie Portman, Brothers had the potential to be a really trite emofest: Maguire plays Sam, the elder son, the "good" son, a marine who is married to Grace (Portman). Gyllenhaal, meanwhile, plays Tommy, the black sheep--he is released from prison a few days before Sam returns to Afghanistan and generally gains no respect from anyone in his family, who have long since given up on him. Then, Grace finds out that Sam has been killed (or is, at least, missing presumed dead) and is, understandably devastated. Now, the trailer implies that from here on, we will be in cliché city and that Grace and Tommy will fall deeply in love, which will cause big problems when Sam inevitably returns having not been dead at all. Or as Joey in Dawson's Creek puts it (describing either The Last Picture Show, which is, in this episode a relevant plot point, or her own coming between two best friends):
"So, whatever I do, I'm the villain. The girl's always the villain, right? In stories like these she's always some wicked, conniving whore who manipulates her way between two brothers or two best friends."
Luckily, Brothers decides not to go down that route and is a lot more understated and complicated. We also get to see Sam in Afghanistan as he tries to make his way back to safety and the terrible things he has to go through--and to do--that explain why on his return home, he barely seems like the same person any more and while he expresses his anger and guilt by accusing Grace and Tommy of having a relationship, it is clear to us that this is just a defence mechanism. As for Grace and Tommy, you can tell in advance when they are going to kiss because they are sitting in front of a candle-lit fireplace and (crucially) there is a U2 track on the radio (Bad) over which they bond (another U2 song, Winter, having already been pimped in the credits). The kiss, though, is almost beside the point and the way Sam's daughters shy away from him on his return and just ask when Uncle Tommy is coming round hurts him more.
And while the family learns that the golden son is not perfect, the black sheep, though not becoming the model son or model brother himself, sure does do a good job renovating Grace's kitchen. The grass, each brother learns, is always greener. There is a nice parallel in Grace and Sam's two young daughters--the older one feels that everyone loves her younger sister better and that she gets all the attention. Despite the efforts of the make-up and wardrobe crews, giving Portman awful blonde highlights and making her wear an unflattering, baggy, light pink roll-neck jumper for much of the film, and despite the fact she is in mourning for a large chunk of the film, she still looks gorgeous.
Also, I finally understand why there is a plug for Carey Mulligan's BAFTA nomination for An Education in the print ad for Brothers (which I had thought was an error): she has a minor role in the latter film, playing the wife of one of Sam's fellow soldiers. With her long, blonde hair and American accent, she was almost unrecognisable after her role of gamina maxima in An Education...
There aren't many women in A Prophet. I can only think of one--Djamila, the wife of the main character Malik's surrogate brother Ryad. Malik is sentenced to six years for an unnamed offence and soon discovers that being an Arab in this particular prison ain't a whole barrel of laughs. He gets beaten up by the Corsican mafia (there is even a minor character called Corleone), who tell him he has to kill another prisoner or they will kill him. Although he then falls under the protection of the head honcho Luciani, he is never accepted into the posse and is usually forced to clear up after the other guys, make them coffee and run errands. On the other hand, his fellow Arab prisoners do not trust him because he is in with the Corsicans.
The Corsican threw me for a moment--as the film was subtitled, it isn't immediately obvious to a non-linguist when the characters switch languages. I'm not an expert in the Corsican language but it sounded a lot like Sardinian, which I do know a little about--Sardinian is one of the most archaic forms of Italian and uses a lot of forms that are much closer to Latin than in the standard language.
As the film progresses (and although it was 2h30 long, it made those minutes count and it certainly didn't drag--not when you have a scene where a carotid artery is pierced so suddenly that a huge jet of projectile blood materialises without any warning, which led to much shrieking among many audience members), Malik works his way up the prison hierarchy but it's only when he makes friends with Ryad that he starts to hope for a new life on the outside. Ryad, a cancer survivor, is soon to be released and once he is on the outside, he begins to help Malik out when the latter is allowed "leave" days, thanks to Luciani who wants Malik to carry out various "business" tasks for him. Malik soon sees the difference between his real friendship with Ryad and his fair-weather, bullied relationship with Luciani.
24 January 2010
23 January 2010
Crookèd Thieves
The following notice was displayed at the ticket desk at the cinema today:
Due to the actions of a handbag thief at this cinema, non-pocket-sized umbrellas cannot be taken into the screening rooms and should be left at the ticket desk and picked up after the film.
I suspect that the said thief probably got the idea from the cartoonish advert that sometimes plays before the trailers where a sibilant-ridden snake hisses out a warning about handbag thieves as the snake itself curls its body into a hook shape and pinches someone's handbag. It's not a laughing matter but somehow, I found the image of an oh-so-subtle thief with a ginormous umbrella that they were using to spirit away the handbag of the woman a few seats down quite amusing. I mean, does that really work?
Anyway, after two and a half hours of Un Prophète (which, with its plot of young Arab boy struggling to survive life in prison alongside the Corsican mafia, was very good), I was pretty desperate for the loo and hurried out of the screen, after almost forgetting my shopping bag. As I was walking out of the cinema, though, I realised I didn't have my hat with me. I thought I might have left it in the bathroom but I hadn't; nor could I find it in the still dark auditorium. Perhaps the umbrella thief had managed to sneak in one of those telescopic walking sticks. Or maybe Little Bo Peep had popped a long for a gritty, prison thriller.
Luckily, when the lights finally came on, the cleaner helped me to find my hat, which had got stuck behind my seat. Funnily enough, though, my umbrella was missing!
Due to the actions of a handbag thief at this cinema, non-pocket-sized umbrellas cannot be taken into the screening rooms and should be left at the ticket desk and picked up after the film.
I suspect that the said thief probably got the idea from the cartoonish advert that sometimes plays before the trailers where a sibilant-ridden snake hisses out a warning about handbag thieves as the snake itself curls its body into a hook shape and pinches someone's handbag. It's not a laughing matter but somehow, I found the image of an oh-so-subtle thief with a ginormous umbrella that they were using to spirit away the handbag of the woman a few seats down quite amusing. I mean, does that really work?
Anyway, after two and a half hours of Un Prophète (which, with its plot of young Arab boy struggling to survive life in prison alongside the Corsican mafia, was very good), I was pretty desperate for the loo and hurried out of the screen, after almost forgetting my shopping bag. As I was walking out of the cinema, though, I realised I didn't have my hat with me. I thought I might have left it in the bathroom but I hadn't; nor could I find it in the still dark auditorium. Perhaps the umbrella thief had managed to sneak in one of those telescopic walking sticks. Or maybe Little Bo Peep had popped a long for a gritty, prison thriller.
Luckily, when the lights finally came on, the cleaner helped me to find my hat, which had got stuck behind my seat. Funnily enough, though, my umbrella was missing!
21 January 2010
The Bestest Most Outstanding British Film
A couple of years ago, my logical sensibilities were offended by the fact that the film Atonement could win the Best Film BAFTA but fail to win the Best British Film category at the same award ceremony. If a film is the "best film" of all of the films in the world, how come it isn't the "best film" in Britain too? Did the Best Film category at the BAFTAs only consider non-British films? Obviously not, given that Atonement won the Best Film category.
This year, there has been a rejig in the names of the categories and the film An Education is nominated both for Best Film and for Outstanding British Film. The rewording is better, to some extent, because semantically, at least, there isn't a logical contradiction, as with saying something is the "best film" but not the "best British film." However, I would imagine that the Outstanding British Film award will be given to the most outstanding British film rather than just any old outstanding British film and so I'm still not entirely happy.
Luckily, this year, An Education is the only film nominated in both categories and as Avatar is bound to win Best Film, these logic fails probably won't be an issue, other than to pedants like me.
The nominees for this year's BAFTAs do at least correlate more closely with my own selections of the best films and best actors/actresses from the past year: three of my top six films of last year are nominated for Outstanding British Film (if you count my honourable mention) and Nowhere Boy was pretty good too, although nowhere near as good as An Education, Moon or In the Loop.
This year, there has been a rejig in the names of the categories and the film An Education is nominated both for Best Film and for Outstanding British Film. The rewording is better, to some extent, because semantically, at least, there isn't a logical contradiction, as with saying something is the "best film" but not the "best British film." However, I would imagine that the Outstanding British Film award will be given to the most outstanding British film rather than just any old outstanding British film and so I'm still not entirely happy.
Luckily, this year, An Education is the only film nominated in both categories and as Avatar is bound to win Best Film, these logic fails probably won't be an issue, other than to pedants like me.
The nominees for this year's BAFTAs do at least correlate more closely with my own selections of the best films and best actors/actresses from the past year: three of my top six films of last year are nominated for Outstanding British Film (if you count my honourable mention) and Nowhere Boy was pretty good too, although nowhere near as good as An Education, Moon or In the Loop.
An Empathetic Cinematic Viewing Experience
When you see a movie like The Road, which portrays a world almost completely annihilated by an unexplained yet omnipotent apocalypse-in-residence (or, at least, the east coast of the USA almost completely annihilated by said catastrophe)--a world where it's always raining, always freezing and everything in it is either dead or moribund--you don't just want to watch the characters in their slow, elegiac struggle to reach the coast and even just to survive at all.
No, you want to feel their pain. Perhaps that is why the Nowheresville Cineworld decided to crank up the air conditioning to the "apocalypse" setting (this world ending in ice rather than fire), even though it was barely above freezing outside. I shivered underneath my coat with my scarf wrapped around me and truly empathised with the main characters as they shivered 'neath the old, worn blankets and dirty coats in which they slept. Their gloves looked a lot warmer than mine, however. Still, at least everyone in the cinema did at least appear to have showered fairly recently and no one pointed a gun or asked anyone else if they were following her, so perhaps Cineworld hasn't yet gone down the total sensory experience route just yet.
I read Cormac McCarthy's novel, on which the film is based, when I was in hospital last summer. Possibly because of the intravenous drugs I was on and possibly because my right hand was stiff and painful from being attached to a drip for so long that it made it hard to hold books, I had to read the first 50 pages three times before I got to the end. I did end up liking it but it's definitely not my kind of book. For one thing, there wasn't enough action for me (the main characters, a father and son, move maybe a few dozen miles towards the coast and find their lives threatened at various points).
For another, we never learn enough about the characters for me to care too much what happens. They are a father and son, they love each other enormously, they are among a very small number of people to have thus far warded off death mid-apocalypse, and they give each other the hope and motivation to continue in this potentially futile trek. The boy's mother died at an earlier stage--we find out what happened but there still isn't enough back story or information for me to engage. None of the characters has a name, either, and as a nymophile (or something that means the same but sounds a little more salubrious), I object to this; I like to know people's names and naming has always been important in my creative writing.
Still, The Road is a good film. The acting is solid, the cinematography is striking if not beautiful, and given that not a lot happens, there was a surprising amount of dramatic tension. However, for me, it's not enough for a film to be composed of a number of good elements--if there isn't good character development and it doesn't have that extra sizzle, I might like it but I will never love it. The same is true of the novel: it is beautifully written and very moving, without being overly depressing or maudlin, but although the father and boy's love for each other is portrayed powerfully and movingly, without me really knowing who these people are, I couldn't get hooked. And I realise that this isn't a deficiency of the novel (or the film); just my own preferences.
No, you want to feel their pain. Perhaps that is why the Nowheresville Cineworld decided to crank up the air conditioning to the "apocalypse" setting (this world ending in ice rather than fire), even though it was barely above freezing outside. I shivered underneath my coat with my scarf wrapped around me and truly empathised with the main characters as they shivered 'neath the old, worn blankets and dirty coats in which they slept. Their gloves looked a lot warmer than mine, however. Still, at least everyone in the cinema did at least appear to have showered fairly recently and no one pointed a gun or asked anyone else if they were following her, so perhaps Cineworld hasn't yet gone down the total sensory experience route just yet.
I read Cormac McCarthy's novel, on which the film is based, when I was in hospital last summer. Possibly because of the intravenous drugs I was on and possibly because my right hand was stiff and painful from being attached to a drip for so long that it made it hard to hold books, I had to read the first 50 pages three times before I got to the end. I did end up liking it but it's definitely not my kind of book. For one thing, there wasn't enough action for me (the main characters, a father and son, move maybe a few dozen miles towards the coast and find their lives threatened at various points).
For another, we never learn enough about the characters for me to care too much what happens. They are a father and son, they love each other enormously, they are among a very small number of people to have thus far warded off death mid-apocalypse, and they give each other the hope and motivation to continue in this potentially futile trek. The boy's mother died at an earlier stage--we find out what happened but there still isn't enough back story or information for me to engage. None of the characters has a name, either, and as a nymophile (or something that means the same but sounds a little more salubrious), I object to this; I like to know people's names and naming has always been important in my creative writing.
Still, The Road is a good film. The acting is solid, the cinematography is striking if not beautiful, and given that not a lot happens, there was a surprising amount of dramatic tension. However, for me, it's not enough for a film to be composed of a number of good elements--if there isn't good character development and it doesn't have that extra sizzle, I might like it but I will never love it. The same is true of the novel: it is beautifully written and very moving, without being overly depressing or maudlin, but although the father and boy's love for each other is portrayed powerfully and movingly, without me really knowing who these people are, I couldn't get hooked. And I realise that this isn't a deficiency of the novel (or the film); just my own preferences.
18 January 2010
Beyond the 800-Year-Old Rainbow
My alma mater is having something of a celebration having reached the ripe old age of 800. Actually, it turned 800 last year but apparently with all of last year's fun and games, they must have ran out of time for the grand finale--because sure, there's always so much going on in Nowheresville. Anyway, the said grand finale turned out to be a little son et lumière show, which I thought sounded a bit lame and which meant I didn't bring my camera into work today. This was a shame because it was actually very pretty and apparently so newsworthy that it even made the London free newspaper this morning.
Undeterred, I made a little detour to Market Square on my way home this evening, just in time to see Senate House--the very building in which I obtained my BA and my (ah hem) MA only a short time ago--all lit up and with a seriously cool PowerPoint presentation projected onto its walls. Nowheresville as you have never seen it before... There were also some crazy ass bells ringing too, which I suppose counted towards the son part of the entertainment.
I had no time to stop and stare so I just snapped a few iPhone pics by precariously sticking my hand between the bars of the fence around Senate House. Not a bad sight for what may well be my penultimate Monday in Nowheresville--ever. Well, until St Jocks' turns 500 next year and if they want me to ever donate money to the college, they had better have a really kick-ass party and they had better invite me. Then again, perhaps I'd settle for Clive Owen's image being projected across New Court...
You Say Paree and I Say Paris
There was a piece in today's Evening Standard about the fuss over the BBC's pronunciation of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince in "the English way" (rhyming Prince with wince) rather than the Haitian way (rhyming Prince with the way someone from Yorkshire with a cold might say dance). I was surprised to hear the city pronounced to rhyme with wince on the Today Programme today--in fact, I did wince--but it really shouldn't come as a surprise.
After all, radio presenters don't talk about the wonderful bike rental scheme in Paree or the football team Bayern München and for good reason--different languages have different sets of phonemes and so international pronunciations help non-polyglots to understand the places people are talking about.
It's not just us lazy, self-centred English that do this either. The French enjoy the cheap shopping available in Londres and might go for a weekend break in Cornouailles--these are even spelled differently. And there's the schoolboy's favourite, Sussex, which, when pronounced en français, is homophonic with a certain way of expressing oneself orally.
My favourite was always the admittedly rarely used Nouveau York, Frenchifying the "New" but not taking the Latin for York (Eboracum) and carrying out 2000-odd years worth of sound changes (producing something like Eboraque). The Italians, meanwhile, call the Germans i Tedeschi, which requires some serious historical knowledge to work out.
In fact, given that Paris, Brussels, Milan and other commonly used place names always get Anglicised pronunciations in this country, it seems that people who only use the non-Anglicised versions for more unusual place names are clearly only showing off. So, I don't think English radio and TV presenters do need to nasalise their Princes unless they are also going to pronounce --or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch at all, for that matter.
After all, radio presenters don't talk about the wonderful bike rental scheme in Paree or the football team Bayern München and for good reason--different languages have different sets of phonemes and so international pronunciations help non-polyglots to understand the places people are talking about.
It's not just us lazy, self-centred English that do this either. The French enjoy the cheap shopping available in Londres and might go for a weekend break in Cornouailles--these are even spelled differently. And there's the schoolboy's favourite, Sussex, which, when pronounced en français, is homophonic with a certain way of expressing oneself orally.
My favourite was always the admittedly rarely used Nouveau York, Frenchifying the "New" but not taking the Latin for York (Eboracum) and carrying out 2000-odd years worth of sound changes (producing something like Eboraque). The Italians, meanwhile, call the Germans i Tedeschi, which requires some serious historical knowledge to work out.
In fact, given that Paris, Brussels, Milan and other commonly used place names always get Anglicised pronunciations in this country, it seems that people who only use the non-Anglicised versions for more unusual place names are clearly only showing off. So, I don't think English radio and TV presenters do need to nasalise their Princes unless they are also going to pronounce --or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch at all, for that matter.
17 January 2010
All That Glisters Is Not a Gold Executive Card
It always surprises me how quickly the Golden Globes come around. One minute it's Christmas and you're stuck in Blockbuster City and the next, you're looking at the nominations for the various categories, which, this year at least, don't seem to correlate very closely with the movies you've seen and loved over the past year.
Before I could make the selections for my favourite in each category, however, I had to go to see Up in the Air, the latest film from Jason "Juno / Thank You for Smoking" Reitman. I often enjoy a bit of Clooney and I'd wanted to see the film when it premièred at LoFiFest but by the time I'd booked all of my tickets to see Clive's performances, Up in the Air was all booked up. Never mind--although it was very entertaining and Le Clooney was very good in his usual charming-but-cynical role, I didn't laugh quite so much as I did during Juno.
Clooney plays a guy who travels 320-odd days per year on business--his business being firing people on behalf of wussy bosses--and who has millions of air miles and every executive club card available but not much in the way of a personal life or indeed a life. His apartment is almost bare--there isn't even a Nespresso machine! Le Clooney meets two women, one of whom is a fellow frequent flier he encounters in a bar at a corporate hotel and the other works at his company. In fact, she is a bright young thing who basically wants to start firing people over Skype instead of in person; Clooney objects, mainly because he likes his life of travel rather than because he worries about the effect it would have on the firees. He is charged with training up the Bright Young Thing in the art (or is it a science?) of firing people and they take to the air together.
As the film progresses, thanks to the two women, Clooney starts to see the error of his ways and so it is perhaps a surprise that when someone utters the line, "Your real life? I thought I was part of your real life," it is said to him not by him. Luckily, the ending is rather trite although Clooney is a lot more fun to watch when he's being the regret-free, (emotional and physical) baggage-free cynic than the slightly emo "oh hey, have I wasted a large portion of my life with my crazy attitudes?" guy who surfaces towards the end of the film.
So, onto the Globes. As ever, these aren't my predictions, just my favourites in each category. Hopefully, by the time the Oscars roll around, I will have seen all or almost all of the films in each of the major categories and I will have more to choose from (equally, I hope that the films included come Oscar-time fit more closely with my thoughts on the best films of the past year).
Before I could make the selections for my favourite in each category, however, I had to go to see Up in the Air, the latest film from Jason "Juno / Thank You for Smoking" Reitman. I often enjoy a bit of Clooney and I'd wanted to see the film when it premièred at LoFiFest but by the time I'd booked all of my tickets to see Clive's performances, Up in the Air was all booked up. Never mind--although it was very entertaining and Le Clooney was very good in his usual charming-but-cynical role, I didn't laugh quite so much as I did during Juno.
Clooney plays a guy who travels 320-odd days per year on business--his business being firing people on behalf of wussy bosses--and who has millions of air miles and every executive club card available but not much in the way of a personal life or indeed a life. His apartment is almost bare--there isn't even a Nespresso machine! Le Clooney meets two women, one of whom is a fellow frequent flier he encounters in a bar at a corporate hotel and the other works at his company. In fact, she is a bright young thing who basically wants to start firing people over Skype instead of in person; Clooney objects, mainly because he likes his life of travel rather than because he worries about the effect it would have on the firees. He is charged with training up the Bright Young Thing in the art (or is it a science?) of firing people and they take to the air together.
As the film progresses, thanks to the two women, Clooney starts to see the error of his ways and so it is perhaps a surprise that when someone utters the line, "Your real life? I thought I was part of your real life," it is said to him not by him. Luckily, the ending is rather trite although Clooney is a lot more fun to watch when he's being the regret-free, (emotional and physical) baggage-free cynic than the slightly emo "oh hey, have I wasted a large portion of my life with my crazy attitudes?" guy who surfaces towards the end of the film.
So, onto the Globes. As ever, these aren't my predictions, just my favourites in each category. Hopefully, by the time the Oscars roll around, I will have seen all or almost all of the films in each of the major categories and I will have more to choose from (equally, I hope that the films included come Oscar-time fit more closely with my thoughts on the best films of the past year).
- Best film (drama): Up in the Air (although I would really have categorised it as a comedy--relative to other films I've watched at least) -- I've seen four of the nominees
- Best film (comedy/musical): Julie & Julia -- I've only seen that and (500) Days of Summer and it was a tough call; neither was outstanding for me
- Best director: Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) -- I've seen four but if I'd seen Clint Eastwood's Invictus yet, I suspect I would have voted for that instead
- Best actor (drama): George Clooney (Up in the Air) -- by default as it's the only film I've seen, though I plan to see Invictus, A Single Man and Brothers
- Best actress (drama): Carey Mulligan (An Education) -- by default but she was great
- Best actor (comedy/musical): Robert Downey Jr. (Sherlock Holmes) -- out of the three I've seen
- Best actress (comedy/musical): Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia) -- I've seen Duplicity too but I was too busy looking at Clive to notice Julia Roberts much
- Best supporting actor: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) -- by default
- Best supporting actress: Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air) -- almost by default
- Best foreign language film: Broken Embraces -- but I suspect when I finally see A Prophet, I'll rate that more highly
- Best screenplay: Up in the Air
I don't watch enough TV to pick from the TV categories but suffice to say Mad Men, Jon Hamm and January Jones get my votes.
Hope. Despair. Vodka.
Although I was born in Hammersmith, at the now defunct West London Hospital, I haven't knowingly returned since we left London for the Shire, over 20 years ago. Ascending from the Tube this evening, then, into the generic mall attached to Hammersmith Station, I didn't exactly feel like I've been missing out for all these years.
I probably wouldn't have gone to see Three Sisters at the Lyric Hammersmith at all if I hadn't won free tickets courtesy of Time Out London. Each week, Time Out's "what's on" mailing has at least one competition to win tickets to see a play, theatre or other piece of culcha. As it only takes a couple of clicks, I usually enter every time something even vaguely interesting or otherwise enriching shows up. This week was the first time I won.
I didn't remember the play well, although I did play Irina aeons ago as part of a speech and drama exam; I tend to confuse parts with other Chekhov plays, as well as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, et al., though. I hadn't heard of most of the cast, either, apart from Romola Garai, whom I saw a few months ago at the BFI. Still, I was keen to clear some of the confusion and, anyway, free tickets are free tickets. We had pretty good seats too--we were towards the back of stalls but in the middle of the row so there was a good view.
When we went in, I thought at first that they were doing some sound checks (the play goes on general release the week after next so I assume various preview and press screenings are taking place until then)--there was loud music playing with the occasional even louder sound effect, like a clock ticking, a plate smashing or Chekhov's gun going off. It turned out that this was part of the performance and, indeed, the music continued at the end of each act, during the interval and after the bows.
The music itself was a loop of 30-second samples of a range of songs from The Smiths' Please, Please, Please... to Duffy's Distant Dreamer and Feel Like Making Love by the Bad Touch--quite an eclectic and fun mash-up, I thought. The use of sound proved to be important throughout the performance. There were mics set up at various points across the stage and sometimes characters would whisper into them so that the whispering was conveyed but the audience could hear. Minstrels stroll onto stage playing electric guitars, providing the background music to one scene, while a piano is placed in the middle of the living room at the Prozorova house, although as it is only ever played off-screen, Chekhov might argue that it is unnecessary. The characters' accents vary greatly as well, although no Slavic accents feature--Romola Garai's Masha is terribly RP, while Irina has a wonderful Irish brogue. Geordies and Northerners also make appearances and when Kulygin mocks one of his pupils for the pupil's Latin fail, he adopts a thick Brummie accent.
This theatre company, Filter, is apparently famous for their use of sound in their productions and it was certainly very striking, if a little distracting at times--especially when you're busy trying to remember which character is which (no mean feat when each person is called at least two different names and when you haven't forked out £3 for a programme). Garai was good as Masha but I was most entertained by Irina (Claire Dunne) and the Baron (Jonathan Broadbent), who had un certain air de Bill Nighy about him--maybe it was just the hair and the glasses.
There were still a few empty seats when the play began and a few more people left during the interval (including, thankfully, the woman sitting next to me, who had spent the first half drumming her fingers on her programme, sighing and falling asleep) but those who stayed were rewarded with a more entertaining second half--or perhaps the audience were just more awake. Well worth the trip way out west, in my opinion, anyway.
I probably wouldn't have gone to see Three Sisters at the Lyric Hammersmith at all if I hadn't won free tickets courtesy of Time Out London. Each week, Time Out's "what's on" mailing has at least one competition to win tickets to see a play, theatre or other piece of culcha. As it only takes a couple of clicks, I usually enter every time something even vaguely interesting or otherwise enriching shows up. This week was the first time I won.
I didn't remember the play well, although I did play Irina aeons ago as part of a speech and drama exam; I tend to confuse parts with other Chekhov plays, as well as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, et al., though. I hadn't heard of most of the cast, either, apart from Romola Garai, whom I saw a few months ago at the BFI. Still, I was keen to clear some of the confusion and, anyway, free tickets are free tickets. We had pretty good seats too--we were towards the back of stalls but in the middle of the row so there was a good view.
When we went in, I thought at first that they were doing some sound checks (the play goes on general release the week after next so I assume various preview and press screenings are taking place until then)--there was loud music playing with the occasional even louder sound effect, like a clock ticking, a plate smashing or Chekhov's gun going off. It turned out that this was part of the performance and, indeed, the music continued at the end of each act, during the interval and after the bows.
This theatre company, Filter, is apparently famous for their use of sound in their productions and it was certainly very striking, if a little distracting at times--especially when you're busy trying to remember which character is which (no mean feat when each person is called at least two different names and when you haven't forked out £3 for a programme). Garai was good as Masha but I was most entertained by Irina (Claire Dunne) and the Baron (Jonathan Broadbent), who had un certain air de Bill Nighy about him--maybe it was just the hair and the glasses.
There were still a few empty seats when the play began and a few more people left during the interval (including, thankfully, the woman sitting next to me, who had spent the first half drumming her fingers on her programme, sighing and falling asleep) but those who stayed were rewarded with a more entertaining second half--or perhaps the audience were just more awake. Well worth the trip way out west, in my opinion, anyway.
14 January 2010
State of Delay
For several months, I've had three films from my to-watch list ready at home for me to watch them: The Great Escape, The Graduate and A Bout de Souffle. Somehow, though, I've never quite got round to watching any of them and not through lack of time, either, although the lack of subtitles on the latter did put me off somewhat because although I don't need subtitles when watching a French film, I would sometimes prefer to have them, especially when tired and the films in question are part of the Nouvelle Vague.
On the other hand, I've had the DVDs for the TV series State of Play for about two weeks and I've now watched three of the six episodes. In fact, I watched all three this evening. For some reason, my cognitively biased brain finds it easier to watch three one-hour episodes of a TV series than to watch a three-hour film or even, in the case of The Gruadate and A Bout de Souffle, a film that clocks in at well under two hours.
Of course, if I start watching a film I like to watch it in one go, without interruptions, whereas TV series are conveniently broken down into easily digestible, one-hour chunks (in the UK, at least), and can legitimately be interrupted or put on hiatus at the end of an episode. I only planned to watch one episode of State of Play tonight but it was so good that I ended up watching three, telling myself at the end of each episode that I'd just watch the intro to the next one--oh, OK, just the first half; oh well, I might as well watch the rest of the episode now. I only stopped after three because the other episodes were on the second DVD and the interruption was enough for me to shut down the DVD-watching computer. Even so, it's funny that my brain finds a one-hour time slot an acceptable use of time in a limited evening and will even end up using three hours, but won't commit in advance to the use of 90 minutes to watch a film.
I enjoyed last year's movie version of State of Play, even if it seemed to get hijacked by the bloggers vs journalists debate in places to the detriment of the plot as a whole, in part because I like Rachel McAdams and, against my better judgement, Russell Crowe. Naturally, my earlier prediction came true:
On the other hand, I've had the DVDs for the TV series State of Play for about two weeks and I've now watched three of the six episodes. In fact, I watched all three this evening. For some reason, my cognitively biased brain finds it easier to watch three one-hour episodes of a TV series than to watch a three-hour film or even, in the case of The Gruadate and A Bout de Souffle, a film that clocks in at well under two hours.
Of course, if I start watching a film I like to watch it in one go, without interruptions, whereas TV series are conveniently broken down into easily digestible, one-hour chunks (in the UK, at least), and can legitimately be interrupted or put on hiatus at the end of an episode. I only planned to watch one episode of State of Play tonight but it was so good that I ended up watching three, telling myself at the end of each episode that I'd just watch the intro to the next one--oh, OK, just the first half; oh well, I might as well watch the rest of the episode now. I only stopped after three because the other episodes were on the second DVD and the interruption was enough for me to shut down the DVD-watching computer. Even so, it's funny that my brain finds a one-hour time slot an acceptable use of time in a limited evening and will even end up using three hours, but won't commit in advance to the use of 90 minutes to watch a film.
I enjoyed last year's movie version of State of Play, even if it seemed to get hijacked by the bloggers vs journalists debate in places to the detriment of the plot as a whole, in part because I like Rachel McAdams and, against my better judgement, Russell Crowe. Naturally, my earlier prediction came true:
I will, of course, now have to acquire the original TV show so that I can honestly tear the film to bits and say how it has been butchered in its transition from a six-hour TV series into a two-hour film but I do like a good thriller and this was indeed a good thriller.
10 January 2010
A Chilly Day in Soho
Regent's Park was very pretty in the snow--even the London mosque had a white frosting on top--and although the outside temperature was about minus five, after about 15 minutes of running, I began to warm up. we proceeded to Milkbar for a most excellent espresso. After some further wandering, we had a great macchiato and a quick sandwich at the cosy Fernandez and Wells on Beak Street. A successful coffee day, by all accounts!
I've been meaning to go to Polpo since it opened towards the end of last year. It has been touted as a stylish but reasonably priced, tapas-style Italian restaurant with assorted regional specialities. The restaurant was heaving at 8.30 (and even when we left, three hours later) and we had to wait 30 minutes for a table but it was worth it.
I'm no tapas expert and it was hard to know how much food we should order but the waitress assured me we had got it about right. In the past, tapas restaurants would never have worked for me--often, it's hard enough for me to find one thing I like on a menu, let alone several. Polpo had plenty of tasty dishes though. We ordered a pizzetta biancha (small and very thin pizza base with mozzarella and onion) and a couple of the chicheti to start (we each tried a potato and parmesan croquette and the prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella on a toasted bread base), and then ordered two meat dishes (a bresaola and rocket salad and pork belly with hazelnuts and radicchio) and two sides (roast potatoes with rosemary and pumpkin risotto). This proved to be just the right amount of food, although I didn't have room for pudding (I could have been tempted by a different selection of puddings). The wine was decent and reasonably priced too and most of the wines come in half-litre carafes.
When you are ordering lots of small dishes, it's easy to lose track of the total cost and so I was pleasantly surprised when the bill, including wine and service, only came to £45--not bad for a gourmet feast of yummy, small dishes that were rolled out over the course of about 45 minutes, prolonging the dining experience. Even though the restaurant was packed, the service was great too, particularly the maître d' (seen in the door on the left of the photo), who kept coming to update us on the table progress every 10 minutes or so.
I've been meaning to go to Polpo since it opened towards the end of last year. It has been touted as a stylish but reasonably priced, tapas-style Italian restaurant with assorted regional specialities. The restaurant was heaving at 8.30 (and even when we left, three hours later) and we had to wait 30 minutes for a table but it was worth it.
I'm no tapas expert and it was hard to know how much food we should order but the waitress assured me we had got it about right. In the past, tapas restaurants would never have worked for me--often, it's hard enough for me to find one thing I like on a menu, let alone several. Polpo had plenty of tasty dishes though. We ordered a pizzetta biancha (small and very thin pizza base with mozzarella and onion) and a couple of the chicheti to start (we each tried a potato and parmesan croquette and the prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella on a toasted bread base), and then ordered two meat dishes (a bresaola and rocket salad and pork belly with hazelnuts and radicchio) and two sides (roast potatoes with rosemary and pumpkin risotto). This proved to be just the right amount of food, although I didn't have room for pudding (I could have been tempted by a different selection of puddings). The wine was decent and reasonably priced too and most of the wines come in half-litre carafes.
When you are ordering lots of small dishes, it's easy to lose track of the total cost and so I was pleasantly surprised when the bill, including wine and service, only came to £45--not bad for a gourmet feast of yummy, small dishes that were rolled out over the course of about 45 minutes, prolonging the dining experience. Even though the restaurant was packed, the service was great too, particularly the maître d' (seen in the door on the left of the photo), who kept coming to update us on the table progress every 10 minutes or so.
07 January 2010
A Backstabbing Bridezilla but No 3G in My Apartotel
What do the following have in common: 3G, apartotel, backstabbing, Bridezilla, glocalization and Linux. Well, they were all among the new words added to the Oxford English Dictionary during its last update.
Etymology was what attracted me to linguistics in the first place and it was a disappointment to discover that etymology is to linguistics what natural history is to science--the collection of an assortment of specimens, which, while fascinating on an individual basis, aren't necessarily particularly useful. Chaque mot a son histoire, as Gillieron put it. Nice etymological anecdotes are, however, often the most interesting part of linguistics to non-linguists, even if many of the most fascinating word histories turn out to be apocryphal, disappointingly.
As for the OED's latest release of new words, it interests me to know when what was a buzzword--or even a hapax legomenon (also known as a nonce formation)--is deemed to be enough of a part of the English language to enter the dictionary. For example, while I think of 3G as a thing of the noughties (and a word that only entered my vocabulary in the latter half of the noughties), the OED lists a 1997 quotation as the first, non-abbreviated usage of the word. Linux, on the other hand, feels like it's been around for a long time and it has--it was created in 1991; however, it has taken almost 20 years to make it into the OED. Sorry, geeks; I guess your lingo just takes longer to become accepted.
Apartotel has been around even longer and yet is only just making its dictionary début. I stayed in an apartotel (or apart'hotel, as they spelled it) near Trafalgar Square while doing my work experience in 2000 and the first quotation given in the OED is from a 1965 Observer piece, which refers to "the Apart-Hotel ‘Casa Luxor’." Still, while the concept (a hotel that offers private, apartment-style suites alongside traditional hotel services) is quite widespread these days, the term apartotel is not. As for backstabbing, come on! People have been backstabbing one another for as long as we've been people (and probably before)--indeed, the word (albeit in the hyphenated form, which I prefer) has been around since 1855.
Of the remaining words on the list, I haven't heard of some of them (a-life? Bum rap? Panga?*); others, I have heard of but wish I hadn't and certainly wish they weren't made official: glocalization, Bridezilla, and conspiratorialist, to name but a few--not that I am anywhere near as linguistically fascistic as the Académie française, of course.
And, no SoMaRo, NoMaRo, ToCoRo and all of my other wonderful, FUDGE-y and useful coinings have not yet been granted entry to the dictionary...
* a-life = "artificial life", bum rap = "a false charge or conviction," and panga = the name for various Central/South American boat.
Etymology was what attracted me to linguistics in the first place and it was a disappointment to discover that etymology is to linguistics what natural history is to science--the collection of an assortment of specimens, which, while fascinating on an individual basis, aren't necessarily particularly useful. Chaque mot a son histoire, as Gillieron put it. Nice etymological anecdotes are, however, often the most interesting part of linguistics to non-linguists, even if many of the most fascinating word histories turn out to be apocryphal, disappointingly.
As for the OED's latest release of new words, it interests me to know when what was a buzzword--or even a hapax legomenon (also known as a nonce formation)--is deemed to be enough of a part of the English language to enter the dictionary. For example, while I think of 3G as a thing of the noughties (and a word that only entered my vocabulary in the latter half of the noughties), the OED lists a 1997 quotation as the first, non-abbreviated usage of the word. Linux, on the other hand, feels like it's been around for a long time and it has--it was created in 1991; however, it has taken almost 20 years to make it into the OED. Sorry, geeks; I guess your lingo just takes longer to become accepted.
Apartotel has been around even longer and yet is only just making its dictionary début. I stayed in an apartotel (or apart'hotel, as they spelled it) near Trafalgar Square while doing my work experience in 2000 and the first quotation given in the OED is from a 1965 Observer piece, which refers to "the Apart-Hotel ‘Casa Luxor’." Still, while the concept (a hotel that offers private, apartment-style suites alongside traditional hotel services) is quite widespread these days, the term apartotel is not. As for backstabbing, come on! People have been backstabbing one another for as long as we've been people (and probably before)--indeed, the word (albeit in the hyphenated form, which I prefer) has been around since 1855.
Of the remaining words on the list, I haven't heard of some of them (a-life? Bum rap? Panga?*); others, I have heard of but wish I hadn't and certainly wish they weren't made official: glocalization, Bridezilla, and conspiratorialist, to name but a few--not that I am anywhere near as linguistically fascistic as the Académie française, of course.
And, no SoMaRo, NoMaRo, ToCoRo and all of my other wonderful, FUDGE-y and useful coinings have not yet been granted entry to the dictionary...
* a-life = "artificial life", bum rap = "a false charge or conviction," and panga = the name for various Central/South American boat.
05 January 2010
L'enfer, C'est les Autres Candidats
I have been looking forward to watching the film Exam since it was discussed on the Kermode and Mayo Film Reviews podcast last summer, when the film was shown at the Edinburgh Festival. The premise is simple--so simple you wish you'd come up with it yourself and made it into a film--and yet Exam gets top marks for its stylish, intense execution.
Eight people are vying for a job at a mysterious, powerful and at times sinister corporation. They have reached the final stage of the hiring process and they are taken into a small room by Morpheus an invigilator, who sits each down at their desk and explains the (vague and somewhat misleading rules). They each have an exam paper on their desk and they have eighty minutes to find the answer; they are spied on by an armed guard and a camera. Of course, when they turn over their question papers, they find out they are blank so they have to find out what the question is (if any) as well as the answer. If they break any of the rules (which include things like spoiling their papers, leaving the room and trying to communicate with the guard or the invigilator).
I attended the Q&A with the writer-director-distributor Stuart Hazeldine, who said the stages through which the candidates progress trying to solve the puzzle move from practical to philosophical to psychological to physical, although he didn't plan it that way. The film turns out to be an interesting hybrid of The Apprentice, Huis Clos, The Running Man and something Kafkaesque. In fact, one of the loudest of the characters (who assign one another crude nicknames based on appearance--Black, White, Blonde, and so on), even sounds and acts like the guy who won The Apprentice last year--he even said, "that's wot I'm talkin' about," at one point although he didn't do a reverse Pterodactyl impersonation. Hazeldine doesn't watch reality TV, though, so the similarities weren't intentional (although, he said, he doesn't mind reviewers making the reference if it will broaden the film's appeal and either would be keen or agreed to put Kermode's tagline, "The Apprentice goes to hell," on the posters).
Naturally, game theory comes into it too--should they cooperate or defect? Should they work together in the early stages and then betray one other as they get closer to the end, as per The Apprentice? Some of the candidates also make the vacuous and self-aggrandising statements often seen in Suralan's boardroom. "If you take away the impossible, you're left with the truth," for example, which Suralan would no doubt dismiss as "tut." I was only slightly distracted by the fact that one candidate sounded just like Frances de la Tour and the voice of another had un certain air de Clive.
As for the Sartre connections, I felt a bit miffed when one of the characters brought up Sartre during the film, although they didn't directly reference Huis Clos, a film where three characters who have lived sinful lives and so when they die are forced to spend all eternity with one another in a bland room, decorated with Louis XV furniture. They are, they eventually realise, one another's hell. And here, the candidates are each other's rivals--there can only be one winner. Probably, anyway--who knows what will happen when the countdown ends?
Hazeldine had many other interesting things to say in the Q&A, although it's hard to say much more without giving away the plot. Suffice to say that I was utterly gripped for the whole 97 minutes (the action plays out almost in "real time" so the exam itself takes 73 minutes (cut down from 80 because it wasn't tight enough)) -- apparently some people have said it's just utterly boring and spent the whole time checking their watch, which is silly when you can just look at the countdown clock -- and was satisfied by the ending, which apparently changed a lot from Hazeldine's original vision. This isn't bad for a film that takes place with eight people in a near-empty room for its entirety; Hazeldine thinks that a future stage play is inevitable. One clever audience member mentioned that there were two filming locations in the credits, which was because the opening sequence had to be shot separately at a later date--it's worth watching this sequence carefully as a number of the details become important later on.
All in all, a stimulating and invigorating cinematic experience!
02 January 2010
Nowere Boy
No, there isn't a typo in the title of this post. It's not true that the only reason I went to see Sam Taylor-Wood's new film, Nowhere Boy, a film about John Lennon's formative, teenage years, is because I wanted to improve my ear for the Liverpool accent, but my inner phonetician just couldn't switch off during the film--luckily, there wasn't anyone in the cinema sitting close enough to me to hear me muttering to myself under my breath, trying out different sample sounds of the accent. I've always been able to do a good job of certain set phrases in Scouse, such as, "fuckin' great" and "charmin'", the former helped by the fact that I can master the alveolar tap r, which is a bit like a trilled, Spanish r that never really gets going.
After muttering to myself all the way home, I immediately logged on to the Speech Accent Archive, to see if they had any Scousers reading the "please call Stella" transcript. The SAA is great for people who know IPA because as well as the sound clips, you also get an IPA transcription, which is really useful if you want to know which exact phone the speaker is using. Unfortunately, there was a notable absence of Liverpudlians on the SAA so I turned to Wikipedia.
The entry on Scouse was brief and the section about the phonology of Scouse was briefer skill, although it did offer some insight to the way that while in 21st century Scouse, were and wear are both pronounced wear, in the past, they were both pronounced as were; the entry even mentions that John Lennon and George Harrison would have pronounced nowhere as no-were, hence Nowere Boy.
Without a copy of Peter Trudgill's classic textbook, The Dialects of English, I thought my search to improve my Liverpool accent was going to come to an abrupt halt. Then, I discovered The International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA), which is another great resource for geeky linguists and actors, set up along the same lines as the SAA: speech samples are arranged by the place of origin of the speaker and various sociological details about them are given. The speaker then reads one of two set texts, which were written in order to elicit samples of the major phonetic points of interest among different accents of interest; the speakers then continue with a few minutes of unscripted speech about their family, upbringing and the local area.
You can certainly hear the were-wear merging among the Liverpudlian speakers (there are several of them in the north-west section of this page), with nurse, work, square and her, among others, all being produced with the same vowel sound (I'm itching to include some IPA in this post but Blogger tends to mangle it; suffice to say, it is the sound that is represented in IPA by a backwards three). Sadly, IDEA doesn't yet have IPA transcriptions (just a transcription in English of the freestyle speech) but it's still a very useful site.
Some of the speakers are pretty nervous (nair-vuss) when giving their samples, with the freestyle segments being punctuated with airms; of course, the best way to elicit the most natural samples of people's language is to tell them that you are really studying what it was like to grow up in Liverpool in the 20th century and to ask them to talk about topics that are likely to be emotional and/or very personal. However, in the days of institutional review boards and bureaucracy, even linguists have to worry about the ethical dilemmas of conducting research with human subjects.
As for the film itself, I enjoyed it, even from a non-linguistic perspective. I'm not a huge fan of The Beatles but I quite like biopics and even though Kristin Scott Thomas is becoming the female equivalent of Ralph Fiennes, Nowhere Boy was understated and touching without being too maudlin; it goes without saying that it was beautifully shot and had a great soundtrack.
01 January 2010
Cop, Doc and Two Smoking Barrels
So I drift down through the Baker Street valley,
In my steep-sided un-reality.
And when all is said and all is done
I couldn't wish for a better one.
It's a real-life ripe dead certainty
That I'm just a Baker Street Muse.
-- Jethro Tull, Baker Street Muse
Having spent a year living in a mews just off Baker Street (and another three months living five minutes' walk from 221B Baker Street), I couldn't not go to see Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes movie. In fact, I'd been looking forward to it pretty much since it was announced, although, of course, none of the filming was actually done in or near Baker Street or its mewses, as far as I could determine. As the aesthetics of Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are not unappealing to me, this was a great disappointment.
I was, however, more pleasantly surprised to hear that on its release, the film received a fair number of positive reviews and certainly, it sure ain't like any other Sherlock Holmes film I've seen (although admittedly, the only one I can remember is the Basil Rathbone version of The Hound of the Baskervilles). That's all right, though, because I haven't seen any other Guy Ritchie films either; I have been tempted to see Lock, Stock... to tick another film off the IMDb top 250 but I never quite got round to it.
There are, unsurprisingly, great fight sequences including a stunning finale high in the rafters of an as yet unfinished Tower Bridge with, of course, plenty of breath-taking views of the 19th century London skyline. In some of the earlier scenes, Holmes appears to be being thrashed in a fight only for him to turn it around, with the action being paused or taken into slow mo so that he can narrate to the audience in a very clinical manner the moves he will make to overpower his opponent. The mystery and its resolution was suitably satisfying--Jonathan Creek would be very impressed. Rachel McAdams, playing Irene Adler (who could well have been nicknamed the Muse of Baker Street), was very charming as Holmes's one-time lover who is, ironically, a criminal. Thomas Cranmer--I mean, Hans Matheson--was quite an attractive if nominatively deterministic baddie as Lord Coward.
It is Downey Jr and Law as Holmes and Watson, their relationship and their chemistry that carry the film along, though. Holmes spends most of the film sulking because Watson is moving out of their Baker Street flat and moving in with his soon-to-be wife, Mary. As such, Watson doesn't have time to help Holmes anymore and keeps trying to run off to meet his future in-laws instead of solving crying (this would be, I can imagine, a tough call).But, of course, despite his best efforts Watson won't abandon his old friend when it comes down to it and the two, along with the Muse of Baker Street, team up to avert a deadly plot and tie up loose ends. Downey Jr's comic timing is, as ever, excellent, and his version of the ultra-observant, ingenious, stubborn and OCD detective is very entertaining.
In fact, my main worry is that there will be a sequel, which inevitably won't live up to the expectations set by this first...
In my steep-sided un-reality.
And when all is said and all is done
I couldn't wish for a better one.
It's a real-life ripe dead certainty
That I'm just a Baker Street Muse.
-- Jethro Tull, Baker Street Muse
Having spent a year living in a mews just off Baker Street (and another three months living five minutes' walk from 221B Baker Street), I couldn't not go to see Guy Ritchie's new Sherlock Holmes movie. In fact, I'd been looking forward to it pretty much since it was announced, although, of course, none of the filming was actually done in or near Baker Street or its mewses, as far as I could determine. As the aesthetics of Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are not unappealing to me, this was a great disappointment.
I was, however, more pleasantly surprised to hear that on its release, the film received a fair number of positive reviews and certainly, it sure ain't like any other Sherlock Holmes film I've seen (although admittedly, the only one I can remember is the Basil Rathbone version of The Hound of the Baskervilles). That's all right, though, because I haven't seen any other Guy Ritchie films either; I have been tempted to see Lock, Stock... to tick another film off the IMDb top 250 but I never quite got round to it.
There are, unsurprisingly, great fight sequences including a stunning finale high in the rafters of an as yet unfinished Tower Bridge with, of course, plenty of breath-taking views of the 19th century London skyline. In some of the earlier scenes, Holmes appears to be being thrashed in a fight only for him to turn it around, with the action being paused or taken into slow mo so that he can narrate to the audience in a very clinical manner the moves he will make to overpower his opponent. The mystery and its resolution was suitably satisfying--Jonathan Creek would be very impressed. Rachel McAdams, playing Irene Adler (who could well have been nicknamed the Muse of Baker Street), was very charming as Holmes's one-time lover who is, ironically, a criminal. Thomas Cranmer--I mean, Hans Matheson--was quite an attractive if nominatively deterministic baddie as Lord Coward.
It is Downey Jr and Law as Holmes and Watson, their relationship and their chemistry that carry the film along, though. Holmes spends most of the film sulking because Watson is moving out of their Baker Street flat and moving in with his soon-to-be wife, Mary. As such, Watson doesn't have time to help Holmes anymore and keeps trying to run off to meet his future in-laws instead of solving crying (this would be, I can imagine, a tough call).But, of course, despite his best efforts Watson won't abandon his old friend when it comes down to it and the two, along with the Muse of Baker Street, team up to avert a deadly plot and tie up loose ends. Downey Jr's comic timing is, as ever, excellent, and his version of the ultra-observant, ingenious, stubborn and OCD detective is very entertaining.
In fact, my main worry is that there will be a sequel, which inevitably won't live up to the expectations set by this first...