The Hour: A Stylish British drama about 1950s Journalism

The following post is written by Matthew Smith, you can check out more of his articles on his blog by clicking on this link. 

With a style that’s a cross between The Saboteur and LA Noire, and a plot based around a situation that’s always high-pressure, the BBC’s new drama The Hour got even better in its second episode last night. With every aspect of 1950s London painstakingly recreated, it’s certainly the series to watch – whether you’re a journalist or not. Here’s a taste of what you’re missing if you’re yet to take a tour of the set of the BBC’s pioneering news programme.

Visually, the show has a mysterious style with great use of colour. The drab greys of the newsroom are augmented with the odd red item – a technique that is beautifully balanced. Every tiny detail of the set was fine-tuned to replicated the 1950s perfectly; in their preview two weeks ago, ShortList magazine revealed how the ends were cut off of cigarettes to match the shorter ones of the time, and every piece of paper on each reporter’s desk features a story that they really would have been covering in 1956.

But the programme’s real merit is its insight into the world of journalism. In the second episode, Egypt took control of the Suez Canal, and the team convinced an Egyptian politician to appear on The Hour. Enter the pressures of journalism. The producer wants to conduct a live interview to hear his side of the argument, while her BBC superiors want to cancel the interview to maintain the line of the British government. It’s a perfect example of a difficult choice in journalism: please the bosses, or push the boundaries of the industry?

Personal struggles are also well represented. Main character Freddie Lyon is a reporter who feels that he should be the front man of the programme. Meanwhile, the face of The Hour, Hector Madden, is struggling to hold his own in front of the cameras (thanks in no small part to Freddie, who deliberately hands him the wrong interview questions). Eventually, Freddie decides to help Hector before the Egypt interview. “How do you know exactly the right questions to ask?” asks Hector. “Because I’m not afraid of the answers,” Freddie replies. It’s inspiring stuff for aspiring journalists, with real weight behind the script.

The two plot lines came together brilliantly in the finale interview, in which Hector’s newfound talent for interviewing leads the Egyptian politician to declare ‘the end of the British Empire’. It’s an insightful programme, showing the kind of work that led to modern-day programmes like Panorama and Newsnight. Throw in a mysterious, espionage-laden story line, and it’s a compelling TV drama that’s not to be missed.

Episode three of The Hour airs on BBC 2 next Tuesday at 9pm. You can catch up with the series on iplayer.

Matt Smith is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker currently studying at Brunel University, West London. He presents The Niche, a cultural radio programme on Radio Brunel, is the student newspaper’s Technology Correspondent, and blogs about the media, politics, entertainment and sport.

Limbo, a twisted fairy tale now available on the PlayStation Network

On the 20th of July Limbo finally become available for the PlayStation Network, the stylish downloadable title had already been available on Xbox Live for about a year, but due to some exclusivity rights too uninteresting to go into here, I’ve only just this week got my dirty little mittens on it.

Limbo is a side-scrolling platform game, kind of like Mario, but nothing like Mario. The controls are wonderfully simple, you can go left or right, jump, climb, pull and push, there’s no health bar, no heads-up display, no score system, no weapons and no inventory. You play as a small, bright-eyed boy, who wakes up in a bleak, lonely wood (with no prior backstory or cutscene) and all you know is that you have to keep moving forwards because, well, that’s what you do in games, right?

For perhaps the first time, I really felt like I was playing some kind of interactive cartoon, and the lack of any menus on the screen certainly fed this fanciful illusion. As you journey through this oddly beautiful landscape, you begin to encounter obstacles and puzzles that block your path, and it soon becomes apparent that this environment is not only unfriendly, but disturbingly violent. The boy is little more than a silhouette, but his big head and scout shorts gives him a Christopher Robin appearance, which would be twee if it weren’t for the endless horrifying deaths I put him through, as I stumbled blindly into bear traps, spike pits and buzz saws, ripping the child limb from limb too many times to remember.

There is a trial and error element to Limbo, as many of the traps are so fiendish, the only way of figuring out how to avoid them is to die and die again. And while the whole game takes place in an undefined, charcoal world of thick blacks and washed out greys, each death felt painful, even without a single splash of red. The use of sound here is incredibly important, it would have been easy to build a mournful soundtrack to cheat a feeling of anxiety, but for the most part the music is absent. Limbo is at it’s best when eerily quiet, with only the faint woodland ambient washing over you, soaking you in loneliness and dread, the buzzing of flies drawing all of your attention, right up until the horrible crunch of some unnoticed trap hammering into your skull.

Limbo really feels like a journey, as you venture through a powerful, primal forest into a wasteland of butchered trees, a forgotten city and, eventually, into the belly of some vast, industrial machine. The landscape is intense, totally monochrome but never fully defined, a grey mist lingers over you, and washes out the background, creating a mysterious world of eery light and dancing shadows.

Sadly, the game loses a lot of it’s personality during the later parts of the game, and the feeling of tension swiftly vanishes as soon as you leave the wood. It’s a real shame, because the intoxicating, archaic woodland has a ton of personality, it’s rich, immersive and very, very oppressive. Shadows play tricks on you, tangled branches look like grouping fingers, bloated corpses hang from trees or bob in pools of thick, murky water. You use the dead to ferry you across lakes, or drag their bodies onto tripwires to set off immense traps, and all the while the little silhouetted Christopher Robin says nothing, you just keep moving forward.

This forest section of the game is very evocative, a kind of dark fairy tale, teasing a mythology that is rightly never explored. Understanding the uncanny, and the underlying themes of fables, and death, the Danish game developer Playdead have constructed a game that is saturated in meaning, while remaining ambiguous and only vaguely hinting at a story. Playdead understands the significance of the gargantuan bugs that haunt your step, and the ethereal little girl who plays beneath a broken tree house, these are tied to nursery rhymes and the old wives tales of folklore.

There are many themes that are touched upon in Limbo, from the obvious tale of two lost spirits to the death of nature, the rise of the soulless machine and the uncanny worlds of dreams and death. While Limbo never fully explores these ideas, it is refreshing to see them as the subject of a video game, and the consistent art style creates a fantastical world that is strangely beautiful in spite of itself. Limbo is not a long game, and it is not a hard game to complete by any means, but it is an experience, and it masterfully creates a deep, rich, suffocating world that is a joy to inhabit.

Limbo was released on the PlayStation Network on the 20th July 2011, and is about £10. You can check out the trailer below, although if you’re unfamiliar with the game you may want to skip it, as it spoils some of the surprises. You can check out the official website by clicking on this link. 

Spider-Man Begins (again)

 

Like a colourful fungus, rising from the freshly slain carcass of Spider-Man 3, a reboot of the “puberty-metaphor” franchise is headed for a 2012 release. Directed by Marc Webb (ho ho) whose previous efforts have included 500 Days of Summer, and starring the rather talented Andrew Garfield, The Amazing Spider-Man will reinvent the character… Again. The question is, does anyone care? Seriously? Anyone? It’s perfectly understandable that these sort of superhero flicks need a reboot every once in a while, Chris Nolan obviously did a fantastic job with Batman, and it was right of the studios to burn all records of Joel Schumacher’s films, even if they are still seared into the brains of those unfortunate enough to have seen them already.

Teenagers being confused and/or annoyed

However, apart from the cinematic mess of Spider-Man 3, Sam Raimi’s films were pretty decent, and, well, the last one only came out a couple of years ago. Can the world really not go without Spider-Man for a while? Given the sheer volume of superhero movies coming out at the moment, could Spider-Man not just take a well-earned break? Well no, because familiarity is a powerful tool in the film industry, actually it’s the predominant attraction of putting comic-book superheroes up on the big screen. No need to come up with an original idea, just make a lop-sided, witless re-imagining of a beloved character and people will come in droves to see their icons in all their cinematic, 3D glory.

Peter Parker/Spider-Man, presumably about to say something hilarious

Depressing? Not really, you don’t have to watch these films, and so what if Samuel L. Jackson turns up at the end of every Marvel movie, to remind you to watch any you might have missed? You can always choose to ignore the laughably forced Avengers team-up, starring all your favourite Marvel heroes. Actually no you can’t, because the recent Marvel films are little more than feature length trailers for a hundred and fifty million dollar cash-in (directed by Joss Whedon). Oh well, maybe the Spider-Man reboot will steer clear of the superhero exploitation, indeed it seems more likely it’ll be ripping off Nolan’s Batman– I dare say The Amazing Spider-Man may even be “darker” than the previous, upbeat instalments. These movie studios, eh? Squeezing the juicy drops of potential from even the crustiest of franchises. Oh well, Snow White and the Huntsman is out in 2012, lets all go watch that instead.

The Amazing Spider-Man will be in cinemas on the 3rd of July 2012 and will star Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy and Rhys Ifans as Dr. Curt Connors. If, like me, you were wondering what a Spider-Man film would be like if it were directed by Wes Anderson, you can find out by clicking on this link.

The Colour of Pomegranates

I am entirely the wrong person to review The Colour of Pomegranates, the film was not made for me, it is strictly for the initiated, preaching to the choir as it were. However, that’s exactly what I did do, over on the Gorilla Film Magazine website. The Colour of Pomegranates will be getting a special edition release next month, so I revisited the 1968 classic to try and give a fair review of a knowingly absurd art film.

In case you’re unfamiliar with Sergei Parajanov’s ’masterpiece’, The Colour of Pomegranates is a (kind of) biography of Sayat-Nova, an Armenian poet in the 18th century. I suppose Sayat-Nova’s story is told internally, so to speak, in that we experience his life by watching his soul, the film attempting to emulate his art. We also experience the Armenian culture, in a kind of surrealist tour of their world.

The problem I have with The Colour of Pomegranates is that I don’t believe in it. Call me cynical, but none of the performances portrayed had any depth or meaning, indeed the actors/performers just looked false, like children playing make believe. The film was, at times, very funny, with a lot of the scenes too absurd to take seriously, particularly when the oddities are in contrast with the stoic expressions on the characters faces. While I’m sure there is an element of humour to the film (otherwise it’s worse than I thought) it is not enough to engage for very long, and while Pomegranates does indeed transport you to another world, it’s insistence on itself leaves you alienated and a little annoyed, it feels more like a travel brochure, highlighting the surrealism and saying “look how great this is”.

However, in dismissing The Colour of Pomegranates as a pretentious art film I am being a snob, in the same way a builder is a snob because he won’t at least try tea without adding three spoonfuls of sugar. I may not appreciate the film, but that is not to say I believe it’s bad, in fact I can see how it may justly be named a masterpiece. The Colour of Pomegranates has a heart, it has personality, and it has a story to tell, albeit in a fragmented, heavily stylised manner. However, you will have to be enlightened to enjoy it, because it is certainly more art than film, and in my mind seems to ignore the qualities of film that I love. There is one thing that the film achieves that I cannot fault, and that is the portrayal of it’s protagonist/subject matter Sayat-Nova, whatever you think of the film, you do get a sense of who this guy was, and his life is lavishly celebrated with orchestrated set pieces that resemble works of art.

The Colour of Pomegranates special edition is released on the 29^th of August this year, thanks to Second Sight Films, and is a must for any fans of the film. The special features include a commentary by Anthropologist Levon Abrahamyan, who talks about the Armenian culture, a huge part of the film. There’s also a 75 minute ‘making of’ documentary.

To read our full review of The Colour of Pomegranates, click on this link.

An Animated Debate: Stephen Fry vs Ann Widdecombe

Featured on the Intelligence Squared website, this amusing animation is clearly designed to make the famous Stephen Fry/Ann Widdecombe debate accessible to those usually unwilling to give this sort of thing a try. The debate is formed around a simple/unimaginably complicated topic: The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. Aaandd Discuss.

They’ve got their debating hats on

Ann Widdecombe very much thinks that the Catholic Church is a force for good, while Stephen Fry respectively disagrees, and Christopher Hitchens snorts derisively in the background- his argument is left out of this particular animation, but you can see what he has to say (and find links to the debate in it’s entirety) by clicking here. Acid tongued Christopher Hitchens is obviously very passionate about dismantling religion in all it’s hierarchical forms, but it’s very interesting indeed to see Stephen Fry’s take on the whole thing. While Ann Widdecombe manages to say a lot without saying very much, Stephen Fry skilfully crafts his argument, in a clear and simple manner, stating exactly what it is that he thinks is wrong with the Church, and questioning the so called moral values of religion.

It has to be said that this particular animation is very, very one sided, and gives Fry the last word on the matter (in a wonderfully final exclamation). However, Gorilla Film Magazine can hardly begrudge someone for being bias, given our own content, that would not only be churlish but downright hypocritical, and besides Stephen Fry speaks with such elegance and grace. If God truly does hate fags, as seems to be the case, then I don’t care whether he exists or not, I’m with Stephen.

Why Do Videogame Movies Suck?

It is generally agreed among lovers of film that videogame adaptations are terrible. Just terrible. Aside from a guilty pleasure, or something to laugh at, there’s really no place for the videogame movie, and the reason for this is staggeringly simple. Unfortunately the trend continues, as most people are of the opinion that an adaptation just hasn’t been done right yet, give it a few years and filmmakers will finally work out how to bring your favourite Japanese RPG to the cinema screen. The problem with this assumption, apart from the fact that it’s wrong, is that it encourages studios to keep pumping out bland titles and expecting the already assembled fanbase to buy the ticket.

Timothy Olyphant is a likable screen presence, so exactly the wrong person to be playing agent 47 in 2007’s Hitman

Take the mind-bogglingly popular Uncharted title for example, a movie is in the works, with Neil Burger (Limitless) set to direct and Columbia Pictures throwing it’s money at it, based on the highly successful series of videogames. Uncharted already has a massive following, so whether or not the movie will be a piece of shit is kind of a moot point. The franchise as it stands is based on 1930′s serials and pulp magazines, with characters like Dirk Pitt and Doc Savage inspiring the protagonist Nathan Drake, who explores the same fantastical environments you would find in books by Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Rider Haggard. As a game it works well, as a film it will feel like a cheap rip-off of Indiana Jones.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

The aforementioned staggeringly simple reason that videogames do not make good films is this; they are both visual art forms with similar narrative structures, and they’re just too similar to bother adapting. At this moment in time videogames still seem to be copying the storytelling method of film, in that you play through a level and are rewarded with a cutscene of characters interacting. In most cases there is a three-act structure, so the narrative of a game is actually closer to film than television is.

Mark Wahlberg in the hilarious 2008 comedy Max Payne

Personally I think games can be so much more than that, if they just embrace the one thing that makes them interesting: the fact that they are interactive. There’s certainly better ways for videogames to tell stories, rather than grinding everything to a halt for a poorly acted cutscene, but there is encouraging evidence to suggest that games are evolving. For now, games are still taking all their storytelling cues from films, which makes it slightly worrying when films try to do the same with games.

In 2010 Paul W.S. Anderson’s silly action horror stopped being fun with Resident Evil: Afterlife

It you take a look at the Resident Evil film franchise, the love child of Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich, the series attempts to emulate the games as closely as possible. Sadly, the films pay tribute to the very worst parts of the game series, such as the pathetic Matrix-lite Wesker, and the pointless ruby mind-control plot device. Regardless of the dull plot and bad acting, W.S. Anderson‘s Resident Evil feels like an extended music video constructed of clips from the fifth game, where every villain is introduced in super slow motion, and the camera is more concerned with making them look cool rather than scary, totally destroying any possibility of tension.

A dramatic scene from 2010′s Tekken movie. No seriously, this happened

There’s no real violence either, especially in Resident Evil: Afterlife, so you’re not even rewarded with a sick satisfaction whenever an annoying character dies, because they just get dragged away to die off screen. To be fair, the latest Resident Evil game did much the same thing, presumably because action titles sell better than horror, but at least it was fun to play. With the film all you can do is watch, or bury your face in your hands.

While able to pass itself off as a silly horror movie, the 2006 Silent Hill has nothing on the wonderful game series

There is so much the medium of film can offer to justify a book adaptation, particularly if the filmmaker is confident enough to offer the audience something different. The Shining is a good example of a film offering a unique experience that couldn’t be achieved by simply reading the book. The Lord of the Rings films really brought to life Tolkien’s mythology, and introduced a new generation to a world they may not have previously invested in.

With videogames it’s already there, the story is on the screen, and people can actually interact with it. There’s simply no reason to turn a game into a film, especially when so many games are heavily inspired by movies anyway.

In 2005, the Doom adaptation managed to be incredibly dull, despite it’s wacky premise

Fans will always buy a ticket to see their favourite game on the big screen, because they will always misunderstand why they love the game in the first place, and movie studios will continue to exploit this. Fans are so blinded with love that they don’t know what they want, and this is presumably why the superhero movies are so successful, because movie studios simply take a character that is already popular and throw loads of money at them. But comic book adaptations still have more to offer because fans can see their heroes in ways they had never done so before, whereas with games you’re seeing characters in exactly the same way as you’ve already seen them.

2010′s Prince of Persia was a generic blockbuster with a lack of monsters and a disappointing ending

The only way a videogame adaptation would work is if the filmmakers didn’t try to please the fans by adding in nods and winks that are totally pointless, and mimicking the game as much as possible, such as Resident Evil did (incidentally the comic book equivalent would be The Watchman film, visually spot on, but with no soul, and ultimately misses the point completely). The Prince of Persia film attempted to do something differently, by using the game as a template to make another Pirates of the Caribbean style franchise. It was, of course, rubbish, but for completely different reasons, such as the dreadful ending, which undermined the entire experience.

2003′s Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life starred Angelina Jolie wearing a skin-tight swimsuit. Despite this, the film sucked

While it may be possible to make a good videogame movie the question is why? Why bother? The video game industry is already a visual medium that is making a ton of money by ripping off blockbuster films, with the added bonus of being interactive. The only reason movie adaptations are being made is that they have pre-packaged fans and are likely to make money. And any filmmakers who genuinely love the game will do a Zack Snyder and totally miss what made the game enjoyable in the first place. Here’s a hint, Paul W.S. Anderson, it wasn’t the fucking kung fu.

Thoughts on The Thing, a prequel

I am a huge fan of John Carpenter’s The Thing, it may even by my favourite horror movie, it’s an unflinching, remorseless bastard of a film, darkly intense and totally nihilistic. Carpenter perfectly captures the sense of terror and paranoia, while simultaneously piling on the gore and the goo with such gusto as to portray a deep affection of the genre.

It is probably unsurprising that I was somewhat concerned when news came of a 2011 prequel to The Thing, to be produced by the same people who brought us the reboot of Dawn of the Dead (by no means a bad film, but nothing to shout about). Our return to the world of The Thing focuses on the Norwegian camp, which is gingerly explored by Kurt Russell’s R.J. MacReady in the original film. The Norwegians are the first to discover ‘The Thing’ and so come to a rather gruesome end, while it’s true that we only know for sure that four of them die, I imagine that number will increase dramatically. My concern for a prequel to this classic horror film has been replaced with cautious optimism, the trailer seems to suggest a faithful attempt to capture the fun of the original, with plenty of scares and a healthy dose of gallows humour.

John Carptenter’s The Thing will always be a horror classic, and a fairly faithful adaptation of the book it’s based on, far superior to the 1951 version, The Thing From Another World, which is a rare example of a 50′s horror film that I found to be disappointing, especially as it missed the point of the story entirely. While I’m certainly not a fan of this disgusting trend of remaking classis horror films (and I’d like to just take this moment to say, fuck you Michael Bay, and while I’m at it, fuck you Rob Zombie too) I am interested in the idea of a new The Thing, if only because it seems to be embracing what made 80s horror movies so much fun, rather than attempting to reinvent old classics as desaturated, angsty torture porn (fuck you Michael Bay and Rob Zombie).

There has been a noticeable trend of great directors attempting to craft the perfect b-movie, Frank Darabont made The Mist, Martin Scorsese recently directed Shutter Island, and there’s a good chance Guillermo del Toro will make At the Mountains of Madness, while it’s true Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. is no great director (he hasn’t made any other films) I do believe The Thing prequel wants to be in this category, and I really hope it is.

UPDATE: It was rubbish.

The Eddie Izzard Story

At 25 years old Eddie Izzard is feeling morose, by the same age Orson Welles had made Citizen Kane, whereas Izzard was still an unknown. You have to be a certain kind of person to feel upset that you haven’t already made one of the greatest films of all time, but that’s ambition for you. And if anyone were going to surreptitiously take over the world, it would be Eddie.

Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story is an hour and forty minutes, a little longer than the average movie, and charts the entire life of the action-transvestite comedian. Using archive footage and talking heads with people who knew him growing up, the flashy, spirited documentary is packed full of interesting things. Eddie Izzard himself is our guide, and attempts to explain how he became such a star, as well as exploring his past, and some painful memories regarding his mother, who sadly died of Cancer when he was just a boy.

Eddie Izzard’s rise to success was by no means easy, and the footage of his early stand-up and street performance is proof of how far he’s come. We see a totally different comedian, when Izzard was still young and inexperienced, lacking his trademark surrealist personality. Young Izzard is, frankly, a bit of a dork (albeit a lovable one) but it would be a very real turning point when he eventually reinvented himself as a rock star. If there’s one thing that seems to define Izzard, and is recognizable as a constant throughout his life, it’s his doggedness, he just won’t give up, and suffers all the uncertainty and embarrassment without letting it stop him for a moment. If nothing else, you really feel how much he deserved his eventual success, just from his passion and the amount of work he put in.

The great thing about this documentary is how dense it is, there’s plenty to absorb, and Eddie Izzard doesn’t shy away from being totally honest. He is a man who craves attention, and although he’s very close to his father, he desperately needs to fill the gaping hole his mother left when she died. This seems to be the predominant driving force for his work, the love and attention of hundreds and thousands of adoring fans, which almost, but not quite, distracts him long enough to forget he’ll never again experience the love of his mother.

Another huge contributing factor to his success is that Izzard is constantly on ‘go’, never stopping long enough to relax or reflect. Almost as a visual metaphor for this constant energy, Izzard ran seven weeks of back-to-back marathons across the UK for Sport Relief, with only about five weeks of training. He is a man who seems incapable of stopping, and has immersed himself in film and television, as well as huge stand up shows. Although as an actor Izzard is fairly average, as opposed to being a star as a comedian, he pointed out that when he started performing comedy he was only average, and besides he’s wanted to be an actor since he was a child.

I watched Believe: the Eddie Izzard story (which originally came out in 2009) on BBC iplayer, check it out by clicking on this link. When they take it down, it’ll probably be available to watch on YouTube or something, or you could just buy the DVD.

Eddie Izzard will next be seen playing Long John Silver in Sky1′s TV film Treasure Island, check out the pictures below and see what you think. Personally I think he’s well cast (although can anyone really match Tim Curry’s performance?) and the look of the character is certainly something different to what might have been expected. Different is good though, different seems to define Eddie Izzard.

Filming for Treasure Island takes place in Ireland and Puerto Rico for broadcast in 2012.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

The Pirates! Band of Misfits is an upcoming stop-motion film produced by everyone’s favourite stop-motion studio people Aardman Animations. The film stars Hugh Grant as ‘the Pirate Captain’ and is based on the superiorly titled book The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists. The film is directed by Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt, and is distributed by Pathé, just like Chicken Run was.

The plot: Pirate Captain (Grant) sets out on a mission to defeat his rivals, Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek),for the Pirate of the year Award. The quest takes the Captain and his crew from the shores of exotic Blood Island to the foggy streets of Victorian London.

There’s not much to say about The Pirates! Band of Misfits at the moment, other than it looks bloody good. Watch the trailer.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits will be released on the 30th of March 2012

The Trailer for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Revolver, all these films have something in common; they suck. I am not a fan of Guy Ritchie, on the one hand he irritates me because he almost predominately makes films about parody gangsters, on the other hand he is just a terrible writer. The awful, witless Revolver movie proved to me that Ritchie thinks himself far more clever that he actually is. However, that said, I liked Sherlock Holmes, partly because Guy Ritchie didn’t write the script, partly because there’s a lot less of the parody gangsters, but mostly because Guy Ritchie introduced us to a fairly unique take on the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr. Watson. While the actual story isn’t exactly a head-scratching mystery, the film is a fun, silly adventure with some cool set pieces and great chemistry between the leads; Robert Downney Jr. as a an appropriately disheveled Holmes, and Jude Law as a refreshingly intelligent Watson.

The clever casting was integral to the success of Sherlock Holmes, and it would seem the sequel has done it again, With lovable Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock’s older, smarter brother) and putting Jared Harris into the doubtlessly pointy shoes of Professor Moriarty. Sherlock Holmes obviously won’t be a masterpiece, but I’m betting it will be a lot of fun, and even seems to have more heart than most of the blockbusters showing at the moment. If nothing else it will remind audiences that it is possible to have a lighthearted fantasy adventure without making a pantomime, like Pirates of the Caribbean 4, a porno, like Transformers 3, or immoral bullshit like The Hangover 2. What I mean is, If nothing else, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows won’t treat it’s audience like shit.