Posted on 12/11/2014 9:58:15 PM PST by mylife
Thoughts on the two programs? I love a good sleuthing show, but Elementary seems to muck up 100+ years of Sir Author Conan Doyle to me.
I love Sherlock Holmes and can’t stand the new version. I guess I’m a purist. Jeremy Brett was brilliant as SH in the 1980’s.
LOL!
Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are excellent despite the PC injections from BBC
While not a mystery.
“Peaky Blinders” is very good.
I watched that on Netflix. Great show.
They are good actors, it’s just a bit manic for my taste.
Based on real events.
Jeremy Brett was a bit manic too.
Holmes was the ballast.
Yes, I read that. I watch all the British mysteries as soon as they come out on Netflix.
The "straight" performer always has a much more difficult role, especially playing against the guy whose part is intentionally written to steal every scene.
The supporting cast was also outstanding.
I really like the idea of doing a complete new series every season. They apparently had some difficulties this time around; it's going to be airing late, and there will be more "big names" in this installment.
Anyone that watched SOA had to be impressed with the job Walton Groggins pulled off.
He definitely was WAY OUT of his “The Shield” dirty cop that ended up with somewhat of a conscience then a real bad ass in “Justified” to pull off the trannie love interest of one of the bikers.
Whether one ‘likes’ the characters he plays he sure shows some good range and he is the type of character actor that seems to fit the role....
I watched ‘The Bridge’ and agree that it ‘jumped the shark’ long about Chapter 11.... I do NOT like that everything shot in a room you can hardly see the characters in.
They went from making a bedroom at night looking like high noon and a scene in a living room or kitchen on a sunny day look like they are in a closet....
It looks like these shows ‘run out of stream’ after 5 years.. I used to enjoy Law & Order and ‘they’ hung on to SVU which has turned into a soap opera...
And Good Wife was getting unbelievable but is seemingly struggling the last year or show..lost its edge about the time that single father showed up with his kid in tow then the goofy lawyers...little bit goes a long way.
The only thing REALLY true to form is they don’t pull ANY punches with Chicago Politics(up to the reappearing of a box of ballots) AND seemingly a launching pad for LIBERALS.....expect Hillary and/or Fauxahantos to make an appearance... BO’s puppeteer (VJ) is almost a ‘regular’...
I can hardly wait for 4k then they can do completely black scenes with outrageous music soundtracks that make dialogue impossible to hear without closed caption on.
Have you noticed every series now ends with a pop song playing over scenes with no dialogue? Cheap footage.
Will not watch anything with Harrelson in it.
And I thought Woody Harrelson was excellent too. And they were great together.
“Jeremy Brett was brilliant as SH in the 1980’s.”
The best ever. I doubt anyone will ever be better.
I find that the writers of Sherlock portray him as oddly unaffected by and detached from the modern PC madness all around him in the same way Doyle portrayed his Sherlock being similarly unaffected by the Victorian mores of the day. Doyle’s Watson was “up” on all the various social fads and high society “isms” of his day (and was always trying to “inflict it’ on Holmes as to make him more socially conscious) as is (and does) the Modern Watson. That is why BBC’s Sherlock is so brilliantly done...Doyle really could have written Holmes this way had Doyle lived in our present era.
Elementary takes Holmes in another direction which I’m not necessarily against. The strong acting by the lead Miller saves the show from sinking into banality and quite a few episodes have had some unique quirks in their plots. Lucy Liu is a fine actress and a person of high intelligence. I do think there is an attempt to turn Elementary into more of an “ensemble” cast show, a sort of a “Friends” show laced with murder and mayhem, which ultimately may cause the series to sag and fall apart before reaching its potential. The inner intimate dynamic interplay between Holmes and Watson was always the key of the success of the Holmes stories...and any attempt to dilute that relationship by adding weird regular characters like the female “protoge” “Kitty” character weakens the series. They need to back off on the political “psychobabble” a bit and just concentrate on the murder, theft, and mayhem plots, many of which are actually quite brilliantly conceived. I found myself thinking on a couple of the Elementary episodes that I would have like to see how Cumberbatch or Downey would have approached the plots with their respective Watsons/actors in tow.
I do have to make a nod to Robert Downey’s movie versions of Holmes, especially as to the treatment of Watson’s wife’s character...making her an essential part of the movie. Brilliantly done! Holmes and Watson becomes Holmes and “one flesh coupled Watsons”...the relationship remains essentially two people. The actress displayed a “ oh well I just met Holmes’s naked brother, it’s just another day with Holmes and Watson “ kind of attitude. I hope they do a third movie!
that make dialogue impossible to hear without closed caption on.
Have you noticed every series now ends with a pop song playing over scenes with no dialogue? Cheap footage.
= = = = = = = = = = = =
During Baseball playoffs last year the MLB Network not only had some pretty bad announcers (Cal Ripken acted like he had never played the game - and he is used to speaking in public etc) that seemed unprepared - which leads me to believe that one more in the booth won’t really make it any worse, so why not at least put the ‘regular’ teams announcer at least for the home games..—someone who followed the team and can (supposedly) pronounce peoples names.
ANYWAY, it was pretty bad and seemed like the crowd noise was being piped(like the phony laugh track - Laugh track - If you have to tell me when to laugh it must not be very funny) in as the crescendo of the ‘crowd’ was overriding the announcers (not that it mattered, just made it hard to pay attention)...
I forgot about mute and CC...however even baseball is a ‘background’ for me - usually on the computer with the game or a show in the background and yes, the constant ‘overplay’ of something is annoying..
Especially when one is carrying tinnitus around and you the ringing is so loud you think the person next to you can hear it AND so loud that on occasion I can’t hear it..
Right from the Yogi Berra page -
that place is so crowded nobody goes there anymore....(Which actually, makes perfect sense)
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