A.J. Maguire

Tag: Movie

  • A Discussion on Sherlock Holmes …

     

    So I’m sick this weekend, which is good timing since school starts on Monday so if I’m going to be sick, it might as well be now.  I’m hoping to be 90% better and climbing by Sunday night.  But that means I get to do lazy-fun things like watch movies.

    I bought Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows for Christmas and hadn’t gotten around to watching it until last night.  I enjoyed Robert Downy Jr. and Jude Law in the first Sherlock Holmes movie they put out, so I was confident I would like this movie as well.  And I did.  Those movies have a distinctly steampunk flavor to them, though that might just be the era they are written in.

    However, I have to admit that the BBC’s Sherlock — which I watched several months ago on Netflix — has forever altered the way I look at Sherlock Holmes.  They are, in a word, brilliant.

    So when I sat down to watch Downy Jr. and Jude Law go gallivanting through London I had to make a conscious effort to ignore the Sherlock and Watson duo that Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman had portrayed.

    Granted, the BBC version is really an updated Holmes, putting him into our century with Blogs and things, so it is distinctly different from the period setting that we find in the movies.  But I promise you, if you watch the BBC version of Sherlock you will have the same problem as me.

    So!

    The verdict is that Game of Shadows was really quite good — even if it did rely on the shadow camera a bit more than the first movie — and the Downy Jr. – Jude Law duo is funny in an action-packed sort of way.    However, if you’ve read the books then you know how much dramatic license was taken with stuff there.  It’s a fun romp through Europe, but slightly less Holmes-ish due to all the action.

    Watch it and enjoy it, and -then- you should go watch the BBC’s Sherlock.  That way you’re not spoiled by the Freeman-Cumberbatch performances like I was.  (Because seriously … they’re brilliant.)

  • December Mayhem! (And Rise of the Guardians Review)

    Well, NaNoWriMo is officially over.  My hats off to everyone who managed to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  That’s just crazy cool and you all deserve a cookie!

    In case you were wondering, I did manage to finish writing Dead Magic.  I got it done Monday last week, so I was way ahead of schedule and had the Epilogue written and everything.  Now I just need to type up the last 5 chapters and throw it out to my Alpha readers (( I love you, Alpha’s! )).

    Because of school I have to schedule out my time differently.  So!  On Saturday (December 1st) my son and I had a play day.  We decorated the house, put the Christmas tree up, strung lights and made giant gingerbread men.  It was a blast!  We also went to see Rise of the Guardians at the movies.

    Honestly, I loved the movie.  It was touching.  And funny.  My son walked away claiming that he wanted to be Jack Frost — which, given the backstory they gave the poor fellow, I was torn about — and cheering that the Boogeyman had been subdued.  (Sorry if that’s a spoiler but I mean … it’s a kids show and that’s the bad guy, do the math.)

    Welcome to December!  I hope everyone is excited for the holidays — however you like to celebrate them.

  • Jane Eyre

    I have fond memories of this book.  I read it while I was in advanced training in the Army.  I even remember a Drill Sergeant seeing it in my locker and asking me what in the world I was doing in the military when I read things like that.  (That’s not to say that today’s military doesn’t read, just that this particular kind of book falls out of the norm for someone you’d see in training.)

    When the movie came out last year I was so excited to see it … but didn’t.  You know, money, work, school, raising a child … oh, and writing … and I just couldn’t get out there to see it.  But I found it in the store yesterday and snatched it up.

    Needless to say my four-year-old wasn’t all that into it, but I figured I’d suffered through a gazillion hours of Cars 2 and Monster’s Inc. to deserve this little reprieve.

    And I loved it.

    I understand that they can’t fit everything in the book into a neatly packaged 2 hour film, but they did a really good job of putting the core elements of the story up there.  I’m not going to give any spoilers or anything like that, but I am going to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It’s a “big girl” story, showing us the restraint needed to respect ourselves and the hope of something better for when we do.