"Dangerous at Both Ends and Crafty in the Middle" — Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Review

Sherlock Holmes doesn't like horses; not the Sherlock portrayed by Robert Downey Jr in Guy Ritchie's new film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, anyway. "They are dangerous at both ends...and crafty in the middle," he complains when French gypsy Simza (Noomi Rapace) provides him with a steed on which to escape to Germany. 

I suspect Ritchie wanted Holmes's description to apply to the movie as well but although I was entertained, SH:AGoS, to coin an acronym, felt a little bit like Pirates of the Caribbean 2: fun but a little too long and not especially coherent.

I'll admit that SH:AGoS had a lot to live up to--not just on the basis of its predecessor (which I predicted would cause expectation problems for any sequel) but also because of the excellent BBC TV series Sherlock, which I loved and which is returning to TV screens anon. There are plenty of action sequences, stylish freeze frames and down-the-barrel-of-the-gun/cannon shots, chases and hilarious scenes with Robert Downey Jr in disguise. 

The bromance between Holmes and Watson (Jude Law) continues and is even amplified, despite Watson's marriage to Mary (Kelly Reilly) towards the start of the film and his subsequent attempt to go to Brighton on his honeymoon. Jared Harris (known to me as Lane Pryce from Mad Men) was suitably cold, calculating and clever as Moriarty and Rapace did her best but was under-used as The Girl with the Tarot Cards and a Potentially Wicked Brother. Naturally, Stephen Fry managed to steal many of the few scenes he had, playing Holmes's brother Mycroft — Sherlock may have worn a number of creative costumes throughout the film but he couldn't top Mycroft's birthday suit...

All the right elements are present in SH:AGoS, then, but the plot felt seriously confused. Much of what I felt was build-up in the first hour or so ended up being the main plot. There definitely wasn't enough craftiness in the middle. Again, this is partly a product of wanting to watch Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock instead, with his constant and infuriating deductions and genius; Downey Jr's Holmes has brilliant moments but they seem too brief and we see more of him rushing around and getting into fights. The latter isn't necessarily worse; the former is just more my kind of thing.

Daunt Books Tote Bag Update

Shortly after I posted my tote bag gift guide last week, I spotted a new variation of a very familiar bag, while walking along Marylebone High Street: it was the Daunt Books tote but in a deep crimson colour, rather than the standard racing green.

I stopped by Daunt today to try to track the bag down and I was a little worried when only the green bag was on display but when I asked, the sales assistant had a supply underneath the counter. They cost £8, like the green ones, but are limited edition — when they run out, they won't be making more. As the dark green isn't really my colour, I decided to snap one up (and I even bought a book!).

And although part of the point of these bags is to allow them to be as sun-faded or otherwise old-looking as possible, reflecting how long you've been a Daunt devotee, I think the new crimson totes would make a great present, especially for a bibliophile — or a Marylebone maven.

Che Peccato

In Italian, as in French, there are two words for shame: vergogna, which means "embarrassment" or "disgrace," and peccato, which usually means "sin" but is also used in expressions like che peccato ("what a shame"). There is plenty of shame in both of its senses in Steve McQueen's new film of the same name.

There is also plenty of Michael Fassbender, starring as Shame's anti-hero Brandon, who is a sort of Patrick Bateman for the 2010s. He is successful in his job, has a swanky apartment with hundreds of neatly arranged LPs and one of those old-fangled record players, takes great care of himself and likes to fantasise. Brandon is also a covert sex addict and we spend most of the film watching him as he seeks gratification. 

He preys on women on the subway; he easily steals the ladies his boss David (James Badge Dale) tries to chat up; he downloads vast amounts of porn; he visits hookers and underground, anything-goes sex raves; he tells girls he has just met what he is going to do to them, in graphic detail; and he pleasures himself. When he isn't doing that, his gestures are still very sexual — his vigorous shaking of a sugar packet sparks the interest of his co-worker. His work computer is confiscated after it has been infected with a virus but even then, David thinks — hopes, perhaps — the huge porn cache was acquired by an intern. He isn't happy with the way he lives his life (hence the eponymous shame) but he doesn't think he can change.

Enter Sissy (Carey Mulligan), Brandon's younger sister, a struggling singer with a troubled past, whom he hasn't seen for a long time. She wants to crash on his sofa indefinitely because she has nowhere else to go, but their relationship is difficult and fraught. He thinks she needs to stop being dependent on other people; she thinks he never gets close enough to anyone else to be able to depend on anyone. He disapproves of her relationships; she disapproves, when she finds out, of his own vices.

There dialogue in Shame is scarce (and most of the dialogue we do get involves arguments) and a lot of long shots of Fassbender staring broodingly across the subway car or from his bed or into space, accentuated by Harry Escott's dark, haunting score (the main theme is reminiscent of Moby's Mistake). There isn't really much in the way of plot and some of Brandon's escapades are shown in achronological order with long interludes of silent anguish. 

Fassbender is very good as the tormented Brandon but the character remains something of a cipher; by the end, we don't really know him any better than we did at the start of the film, although perhaps this is part of the point. Mulligan also performed well in a role that could easily have become too hysterical. The ending offered little resolution, not that there was exactly much plot to resolve, other than a sense of circularity and Brandon's sense of resignation to his own particular variety of hell. As Garcin put it in Sartre's Huis Clos, "Eh bien, continuons..."

Time Bandits

I've written before about George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's seminal work, Metaphors We Live By, which was a key text on my semantics and pragmatics course at university. One of the key ways in which language changes, the authors argue, is through metaphors: comparisons of two concepts or objects which share some similarity of meaning and an imaginative or creative — but not real-world — link. 

The authors then attempt to categorise many of the most common groups of metaphors, which shape our language and the way we think: happy = up, sad = down ("you're in high spirits," "I'm feeling down"); argument = war ("I demolished his claims"); love = war ("I won his affections").

One of the biggest categories is the time = money group, of which there are plenty of examples. "He's on living on borrowed time," "stop wasting my time," "I'm investing my time in...", and so on (TheFreeDictionary has many more). The abundance of this type of metaphor does suggest that the time = money concept is well ingrained in our minds and well codified in our language. But what if it was literally true that time was money? 

This is the subject of Andrew Niccol's film In Time and Niccol seems to have studied the time = money chapter of Lakoff and Johnson's book at great length given how often the characters in his screenplay speak in these metaphors. Yes, we know that time is the currency in this fictional universe but we're not brain damaged; you don't need to keep beating us over the head with the metaphors (figuratively, of course)!

Linguistics aside, having time literally represent money is an interesting idea. In this alt universe, the good news is that people stop "ageing genetically" at the age of 25 but the bad news is that they only live for one more year unless they can buy themselves more time. But when a bus ride might cost you one hour on one day and, thanks to inflation, two hours the next, many people are quite literally living on borrowed time. On a practical level, introductions can be confusing when everyone looks 25. Justin Timberlake, who plays our hero Will Salas, is actually older than his on-screen mother Rachel (Olivia Wilde). And it's not obvious whether Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried) is Pete from Mad Men's mother, wife or daughter.

Due to some very bad timing, Will inherits over 100 years from an old man who is bored of living but despite running to meet his mother, she "times out" seconds before he can transfer some time onto her clock. He's pretty sad for a few minutes but then realises he can finally visit some of the more exclusive "time zones," which would have cost far too much for him to even enter before, and he cheers up a little. 

He buys some swish wheels (cost: about 70 years) and gambles, winning a time-fortune from Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser). But before he has time to enjoy his new-found wealth, he is tracked down by Raymond (Cillian Murphy), a timekeeper, whose job is to make sure time isn't misappropriated and that arrivistes like Will learn their place in the world. If everyone could live forever, you see, why would anyone bother going to work in the factories and how could society function? Will's inheritance/winnings are confiscated by Raymond, leaving him only two hours on his clock. 

Nonetheless, he kidnaps Sylvia and they speed off in his new sports car, on a quest to buy themselves some time to think. Later, she inevitably comes around to Will's way of thinking and the two of them become a sort of Robin Hood meets Bonnie and Clyde, "redistributing" time in a way that leads to hella crazy hyperinflation not seen since Weimar Germany.

This is all rather silly but sometimes clunky script and the odd plot hole aside, In Time is quite fun. Timberlake and Seyfried are fine, if not outstanding, as the two leads, and most of the best scenes have Cillian Murphy in them. In any case, it definitely wasn't a waste of my time watching the film [That's enough time metaphors. Ed.]

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

I didn't really feel like going to the cinema today, much less to see a 2h30 epic in the poky little Panton Street Odeon, but having missed the reviews of Margaret when it was first released, when I finally caught up, it sounded like the sort of film I might like. And as it's only being shown in a handful of central London cinemas, Panton Street it was.

I don't know much of the back story regarding Margaret's release, other than that various problems, including in the editing, have delayed its release for several years. And I'm still not quite sure whether I liked it. Despite all the editing, the film still clocked in at 150 minutes and while it didn't drag at all--there were far too many barely linked sub-plots and minor characters for that--it felt like there should have been a much more efficient way of telling the same story.

Anna Paquin stars as Lisa Cohen, a 17-year-old who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her stage actress mother and her younger brother. She attends a posh prep school on a half scholarship and makes good grades, although her strong and sometimes ruthless opinions often get her into trouble. She's not very good at geometry but persuades geeky Darren (John Gallagher Jr) to help her cheat and flirts with her friendly geometry teacher (Matt Damon). 

Her father (played by Kenneth Lonergan, who also directed the movie) lives in California with his girlfriend. She and her father get on well, in their semi-detached way, but she doesn't care much for his girlfriend. She tries to shake off Darren's advances, although sometimes leads him on, and instead seems to like Paul (Kieran Culkin), who has a girlfriend but who is easily talked into taking Lisa's virginity, in what is an awkward but wonderfully realistic teenage sex scene.

This might be enough drama for one teenager but Lisa seems to crave more. Towards the start of the film, a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) ploughs through a red light, crushing a woman, Monica (Allison Janney), crossing the street. She dies in Lisa's arms before the ambulance can make it. But it was Lisa who was distracting the bus driver, running alongside the bus because she wanted to ask him something. Perhaps because of this, she tells the police that the light was green and the accident wasn't the driver's fault. 

Overwhelmed by her own guilt, Lisa tracks down the executor of the dead woman's estate (she had very little family; only a cousin from out of state), Monica's friend Emily (Jeannie Berlin), eventually admitting her own role in the accident and encouraging Emily to seek justice against the driver. She becomes so obsessed with this notion of justice that her relationship with her mother deteriorates rapidly, as do her grades.

And so it continues for another two hours, at the end of which, there isn't much resolution. In itself, this isn't a problem but it felt like some of the characters and some of the scenes could have been culled entirely. We see long sections of some of Lisa's classes, with Lisa and her classmates getting into heated political debates. 

In English, meanwhile, despite the attempts of her teacher (Matthew Broderick) to interest her in Shakespeare, she often has no comment. She prefers her own drama. There were also too many quirky, overly opinionated characters, I felt, which meant that a number of scenes consisted of people talking over one another, not listening to one another and getting way too angry and emotional way too quickly.

I did think it was an interesting film and raised a number of interesting issues but equally, I felt it was overly ambitious, trying to do too many things at once and, as a consequence, not always doing an adequate job. Paquin was sometimes a little more hysterical than necessary and I'm not sure she could quite pull off 17, even back in 2005, when Margaret was filmed. 

As for the other characters, I'm not sure we saw enough of them to pick any stand-outs. The script also felt as though it might have been partly improvised; at least, at times it felt a bit clunky and repetitive, with characters having the same old fights again and again, with little progression.

Bex's Christmas Gift Guide: Bonus Totes Amaze Edition

I had only planned to do three Christmas gift guides this year but since I posted the last guide, I've spotted a couple of cool tote bags. I included one in my gift guide for girls but I also culled a couple of others from my original longlists, so I thought I'd do a special round-up of my favourite tote bags. These make great gifts: they're stylish, light, eco-friendly, easy to wrap/mail, and you can even put several smaller Christmas gifts inside them — definitely much cooler than a stocking!

Bags for readers and writers
1.  Kate Spade New York for Strand canvas tote. $12.95. Stand Books in New York are famous for their tote bags, which are ubiquitous in Manhattan and beyond but Kate Spade's collaboration with Strand is a much more colourful, girly version. It's also a nice way to give someone a Kate Spade bag without breaking the bank.

2. Daunt Books totes. £1.50 and £8. When I first moved to Marylebone, I realised I had to buy a new it bag. Fortunately, the Daunt totes, which I've spotted in Cannes, New York, and beyond, as well as well as in the quartier, are a bargain at only £1.50 for the smaller, natural cotton version and £8 for the larger, sturdier, green version (which also has an interior pocket for your phone or keys). If you buy enough books, you may also get one of the bags thrown in free. Either way, I use my green tote almost every time I do a big shop and it's showing no signs of wear and tear. 

Edit: I spotted someone on Marylebone High Street today with a dark fuchsia version of the large tote, which looked totes amaze, as they say in Chelsea, apparently.

3. Vintage typewriter tote from TheBoldBanana via Etsy. $10. Perfect for a writer — or would-be writer.

Stylish sacs
4. Grey alphabet tote from Oliver Bonas. £12.50. These totes have a bright yellow zipper, which looks gorgeous with the light grey fabric of the bag (very Philippe Starck) and provides extra security for your belongings.

5. 'My other bag is made of solid gold' tote from Rob Ryan. £22.95. This double-sided tote has the same anti-bling slogan and star on both sides, blue on one side and pink on the other. Blue and pink are my favourite colours, so this would go with all my outfits! Ryan's contrary 'I love what you hate' design is also nice.

6. Liberty print tote. £20. These bags are a relatively inexpensive way of buying a Liberty print accessory. I really like the subtle band of print at the top of the bag and in the lining. Another version of this tote has the print on the straps and side panels (£15).

Totes for foodies and oenophiles 
7. Bordeaux wine tote from Maptote. $13. These totes are the perfect size for slipping in a nice smooth red and would be a great way of making a bottled gift more interesting. Maptote also has different designs for other regions.

8. Pun-tastic tote from Puncontrollable via Etsy. $17. Puncontrollable's totes have minimalist designs and cute captions; 'whisky business' and 'you Chinook me all night long' word work well for a gourmand.

Miscellaneous
9. Modern Toss tote from Magma Books. £5.95. This bag, which displays the command, "Buy more shit or we're all f*cked," may well have been commissioned by George Osborne.

10. Totes for geeks from Our Shop. £9 and £12. This tote with red or blue grid lines would make a nice present for anyone who has a bit of a graph paper obsession. This 'geek' tote makes a more obvious statement.

This Week I've Been Mostly Reading...

...books whose titles begin with the definite article. I keep a to-read list in Evernote, which I update every time I hear about a book I think I will like. The list tends to stay the same size, as a lot of these books turn out to be published in the US and I feel bad about constantly making my library order books that aren't published in the UK. Yes, I could also buy the books but a) I read too much to afford to buy all the books I read and b) I have limited shelf space and so only have room for books I think I will read again. Anyway, here are four of my most recent reads:

1. The Litigators
I got into John Grisham when I was about 13 when I saved up tokens from the Daily Torygraph to obtain a free copy of The Pelican Brief and, around the same time, when we watched A Time To Kill on my school bus. Since then, I've enjoyed most of his books, especially the ones whose titles begin with the definite article. 

Sure, they are quite formulaic and sure, the writing is sometimes sloppy but Grisham spins a good yarn and before there was The Good Wife, his books were the main source of my secret cravings of a career in the law. More recently, the books have been a bit hit and miss and The Litigators harks back to some of the books from Grisham's golden age, like The Street Lawyer and The King of Torts.

The plot is as follows: a cop-turned-lawyer and an ambulance-chaser run a "boutique" law firm. Meanwhile, a young Harvard Law grad can't face another 14-hour day at one of Chicago's biggest law firms and, after a long interlude in a bar, stumbles into the boutique law firms offices. Together they try to win a mass tort case against a drug company that may have a dodgy drug. The case is dodgy and the two older lawyers are dodgy but the young Harvard lad is resourceful and sympathetic, almost to the point of being a Mary Sue. David vs Goliath is hardly unusual for Grisham and there was plenty of silliness and caricature in The Litigators but, as ever, I found myself enjoying it nonetheless.

2. The Deadly Touch of the Tigress
The Guardian's mini-review of Ian Hamilton's book wasn't exactly glowing and was fairly dismissive of the comparisons made on the back cover to Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, but I liked the sound of The Deadly Touch of the Tigress. At the point I ordered it from the library, I'd been ploughing through several non-fiction tomes and wanted a fast, fun read. The eponymous tigress is Ava Lee, a Chinese-Canadian "accountant" or fixer for the forensic accountancy she runs with Uncle, a family friend. Her job is to recover several million dollars, which have been stolen from the nephew of an old friend of Uncle, and which have long since vanished into the Caribbean and beyond.

Ava knows how to find things out and she knows how to persuade people to see things her way — like Lisbeth, she is highly proficient in self-defence, and doesn't do a bad job of beating the crap out of guys a foot taller than her five-foot-three self. She is also very particular about her brands, although she prefers Chanel bags, five-star hotels and, oddly, Starbucks Via instant coffee to 17-inch PowerBook G4s and other Apple kit. Maybe it was just the author's PR who prefers these things. 

In any case, as in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I found the name-dropping a little distracting. Ava's hunt is fun at first but loses momentum about halfway through. It was gripping enough for me to power through to the end, although I was pretty sure I knew how it would all end.

3. The Diary of the Lady
I picked up Rachel Johnson's diary of her first year spent as the editor of the relic that is The Lady magazine while cruising my library for something I hadn't read yet. Johnson, is, of course, sister of Boris, and the Johnson genes definitely come across in the writing. Johnson minor was happy in her existence writing regular columns for various newspapers and magazines and writing chick lit, but then loses one of her most profitable columns and is worried she'll have to get a proper job — maybe even...in an office. 

Instead, she is persuaded to apply for the job of editor at The Lady, Britain's oldest weekly women's mag, whose Covent Garden offices seem not to have been renovated since the magazine's launch in 1885. She hasn't edited since her student days but figures she'll learn on the job, which isn't easy when she has been tasked with boosting the circulation figures while knocking a few decades off the average age of her readers. What follows is a funny, if often predictable, account of her first year, with enough publishing in-jokes and hey-that-is-annoying moments to keep me amused. Because let's face it, wouldn't we all love to be the editor of The Lady, or similar?

4. Mary Boleyn
Technically, there is no definite article in the title of Alison Weir's new biography of Anne Boleyn's less famous, (probably) older sister, but as both the UK and US subtitles run with thes, I thought it counted (the former is 'The Great and Infamous Whore' and the latter went for a coyer alternative, 'The Mistress of Kings'). 

It is difficult to establish exactly what happened in Mary Boleyn's life (even as to whether she or Anne was the older sister), Weir reminds us, partly because there are so few primary sources and partly because of the long-established hype about Mary's affair with Henry VIII. But if anyone can do it, Alison Weir — biographer of other elusive historical females, such as Katherine Swynford, Isabella of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine — can. 

And Mary Boleyn is a real piece of historical detective work. Long years of Mary's life go undocumented and only one of her letters survives, which makes for a lot of assumptions and speculation. But Weir provides a compelling and surprisingly detailed account of Mary Boleyn, who proves that slow and steady sometimes wins the race and whose descendants include Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill and Kate Middleton.