Sherlock vs Elementary: Two TV shows take on the modern Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman

Elementary
Starring: Johnny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, Adian Quinn

Category: Mystery, Drama

When Sherlock came out, I was blown away. I had no expectation whatsoever. First, the movies studios have expanded and shaped the Sherlock Holmes stories to suit their own mold and the result is that many people who are aware of Sherlock Holmes have the movie images and stories in their minds. This sometimes is not true to the books. Second, there have also been too many interpretations of the Sherlock Holmes series that have tried to be different but end up no where near and often incomprehensible. I'm looking at you The Return of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes Returns.
You have to go back to the original stories to appreciate Holmes entirely. His character was often less pleasant and manners more rough than the movies often show. This was acknowledged by Dr, Watson who serves as the narrator in almost all of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Most of the movies characters come across as polite but slightly eccentric Englishman. Did you know that the hat that is famously associates with Sherlock Holmes, the deerstalker hat, was never mentioned in any of the stories directly? He also never wore them often or in the city. It is his unique character in the stories, alongside his brilliant powers of deduction, that made him so appealing. In fact, Dr. House from the TV series House was noted for his similarities with the Sherlock Holmes in that they both use methods of deduction and logic, apply the knowledge of science and being sort of out of the mainstream social behavior. I consider Dr. House a worthy successor to Holmes but with the medical knowledge (and responsibilities) of Dr. Watson.

After watching Sherlock, the BBC version, I felt like giving it a standing ovation. The BBC series captures both of the characters wonderfully. The series not only captures the essence of Holmes, especially his idiosyncrasies, but manages to transport the character and intellect intact into the modern world. He is not easy to get along with as he is a driven, logical and focused individual. Like other geniuses, he worldview is different than most and that makes it harder for others to understand. What they see as something surprising and unexpected, Holmes sees as mundane and predictable.
And this is not just any modern world but modern-day London with it's character and personality intact. If this were an American production, you would have gotten cliches by the truckload. But since this is the BBC, London itself is a character, the more dank and dark one that Holmes inhabits.
The deep character links to the original books extend to Dr. Watson. While Dr. Watson severs as the narrator in many of the Sherlock Holmes books, there are some details as to who he was before he met Holmes. I found it especially delightful that they managed to incorporate and update his experience in Afghanistan. The original Dr. Watson was in the Anglo-Afghan war while the modern Dr. Watson also served in the modern day war on terror in Afghanistan. Both left the war with scars.
The storylines bear some resemblance to the original but appropriately updated and expanded. The pace is unsettling as it speeds up and slows down on a dime yet looses none of the drama that it tries to invoke. I thought I would be offended with the expansion of several of the minor characters but I wasn't. They were done with a purpose and properly fleshed out to add to the mystery but not enough to distract or bore.

Elementary, on the other hand is a mixed bag. I first wanted to write this off as another American TV series literally stealing from their British counterparts (you would be surprised how many popular shows are just copycats). But again I was surprised. I would like to say that Johnny Lee Miller was taking cues from Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Holmes but he could have easily been sourcing from the source material. It's easy enough to point to other TV characters and draw parallels. But you have to remember that almost every cop show where some thinking is required to solve crime owes something to the Sherlock Holmes stories (sorry, Walker Texas Ranger and Fall Guy). And every anti-hero, anti-social detective character has their roots to Sherlock Holmes. So the question of who is copy whom should never arise. Finally, Adian Quinn, playing the Lestrade role, makes a good bridge between Holmes's existence and the law. I hope he has more to do and his character further expands.

The Adjustment Bureau: Adjust What You Think This Movie is About

Starring: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Terence Stamp
Category: Romantic Thriller
A really simple question with a big answer. How far would you go for the one you love? We have loved many people in our life. Whatever you may say, the love ebbs and flows over time. But what if you were given a glimpse of what might be, taste what it would feel like but ultimately denied it by forces you have never known before? How far would you go to have it back, to have that love back?
The Adjustment Bureau tells the story of shadowy organization that enforces "the plan". The plan is a document that is designed to keep humanity intact. The Adjustment Bureau ensures that it is followed by intervening in people's lives, either nudging them towards choices or triggering events that force a decision to be made in a certain way. In extreme cases, the Bureau intervenes directly and changes people's memories or thoughts so that they would act or do things "according to plan". The bureau has been around for a very long time. They may have great powers but seem to be as fallible as anybody else.

David Norris, who is running for a seat on the US Senate, finds himself at odds with the Bureau when he tried to start a relationship with Elise. He first meets her just before giving his concession speech after losing the Senate seat election. She inspires him to write a speech that makes him a favorite to win in the next election. However, she leaves quickly  because she was being chased by the hotel security.

An Adjustment Bureau agent, Harry Mitchell, fails to spill coffee on David one morning. This causes him to make the bus and meet Elise again. They make a connection and she gives him her phone number. The Adjustment Bureau realizes that this has changed the course of future events and goes about forcefully re-aligning events and people so that it will follow the plan. David discovers them but is only stopped. Instead of having his memory changed like the people around him, he is told about the Bureau and warned not to contact or find Elise again. The phone number is confiscated and destroyed.
The rest of the movie is about an elaborate cat and mouse game between the David, and later Elise, with the Adjustment Bureau. It is explained why the bureau does what it does and give hints as to why David is special. David on the other hand refuses to give up on Elise and goes to great lengths to find her and be with her. At every turn, the Adjustment Bureau is waiting and thwarts their attempts, finally bringing in a specialist.
The movie is the story of one man's devotion and his unwillingness to accept what is given to him. He wants something that he sees as something better and make sacrifices to get it. In this case, the love of a woman whom he is attracted to. His attraction to her is more cerebral as she is from a different background than him and has a different outlook on life. He finds her refreshing because she is not impressed by what he does but rather who he is. David Norris realizes that Elise brings out the best in him and the best parts he never realized was there. For that, he was willing to risk every thing.

The Good, the Bad and the New of TV: The New

This season, it seems like there are a lot of new shows. I waited for a few episodes to pass by before saying anything. I feel like not talking about shows that don't make it because it will be another Love Bites all over again. So frustrating. Here are the new shows I am watching in no particular order.

• Person of Interest - Jesus with a gun. Jesus kicks butt. The saviour saveth the damned and the guilty alike. He is the right arm of god and while the other guy used to think he was. I could go on and on but I'll spare you the more cornier taglines. Whatever the reason is, people love watching Jim Caveziel save people; either all at once or one at a time. And the creepy guy from Lost is back in the shadows pushing buttons, just where we like him to be. It got creepier last week because he crossed into the area of the consequences of changing fate. 
• Whitney - The first episode was a bit too loud, both in terms of music and characters but it got better. It pushed the wrong buttons initially with me but by the third episode, its found a solid footing to build on. Definitely this year's quirky-sexy sitcom in the tradition of Friends and How I Met Your Mother. For once, it is not set in New York but in Chicago. But since most of it is on set, you won't notice the difference. This situations that the characters find themselves in are both unsettling and funny. One to watch. 
• The New Girl - Zooey Deschanel's shtick is cute in movies and the directors usually tame it within the context of the story and with editing and directing limits. It works great that way. I'm not sure it should be unleashed to its full force weekly. Partly, the problem is her co-stars. I'm sorry, but you have to bring your A game to go up against Zooey and her energy. Every week. Right now they are just two-dimensional, over-sized adolescents. Not in a funny way. While she is alive and quirky, the other characters seems bland and often cartoony. It has gotten a pick-up but I think unless things change, this could be a single season series.
• 2 Broke Girls - Kat Dennings is in her element as a smart-mouthed waitress (the other type being the waitress with the heart of gold) who takes in the privileged daughter of a rich embezzler. Her father's assets are frozen so all that she has left is what hers. Which is just her wits (and often lack of). They both want to open a bakery and are saving up for it. It is a nice mix of street-smart humor and fish-out-water situations. Strangely enough, there are depths to the main character that are revealed regularly and makes the series stand above others. 
• Unforgettable - Think of Psyche without the humor. Falls into the "crime solving with a super power" category. Poppy Montgomery is Carrie Wells, a detective with the ability to remember details from any day of her life. Although not the center of the series, it does act as a key feature. She is drafted by he ex-boyfriend to help him in difficult cases. The nice thing about this series is that it has several running themes: the leads past relationship and their near flirtations, a long-running arc about Carrie's search for the person who killed her sister and Carrie's relationship with her mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's. I just can't get it out of my head how similar Carrie is to Olivia from Fringe. 
• Prime Suspect - Gritty cop series with a less than cordial squad room. I think they were aiming for House with guns. At the center is a unlikeable but efficient detective, who solves the difficult cases. Constantly with a chip on her shoulder, she gets what she wants at almost no thought to others.
• Terra Nova - Family-centric drama set in the pre-historic times of Earth. It's great that they spend more time on the family drama than the whole adventure aspect. Haven't seen much yet. But good actors, quality scripts and a strong storyline will make this a one to savor. 
• Hart of Dixie - Medical student Zoe Hart is forced to move Alabama and do General Practice for a year by her professor when he points out her terrible soft skills (bedside manners, interviewing skills). She is about to give up when finds out that the practice she has inherited is from her real father and decides to stay. Full of typical fish-out-of-water scenarios, this soft-focus series on life in the South has it's charms but is still feeling about its ways. At first more Doc Holywood than anything else, then taking a lesson-of-the-week format, it needs to bring those long story arcs into the forefront to make it stand out.

There'll be more on each series as the season progresses.

TV: Bones - Science with Heart

Starring: David Boreanaz, Emily Deschanel, Michaela Conlin, Eric Millegan
Category: Mystery, Drama

I was really late coming to Bones. It also came with a few false starts. I caught a couple of episodes in Season 3 and wasn't impressed. There were too many CSIs and me-too series. I was also cheesed off at the whole NCIS vs Criminal Minds thing. Really? 2 teams with exactly the same make up. Father figure leader with tortured past? Check. Tough as nails, street-wise former cop. Check. All-knowing / All seeing Lab dweller. Check. Learned, technical, academic figure. Hot, burnette, smart, butt-kicking female. Check. At a glance, it didn't strike me how Bones was different from the others. Also it is shot in really bright lights. In comparison to the CSI series, being schooled in the X-File school of near-zero lighting and illumination-by-flashlight, it was like it was sponsored by the power companies.
I was intrigued by a few episodes in Season 3. Enough to make it a point to catch the premier of Season 4. What a mess that was. Agent Booth came off as the ugly american and it felt like a travelogue rather than a crime-drama series. So I stopped watching.
Then I caught an episode involving Ryan O'Neal as Dr. Brennan's father and another one featuring Steven Fry as Booth's psychologist. I was hooked.

It was a good time to catch the series. While the series is about the cases centering around Booth and Dr. Brennan, the series does not skimp on character development for the other characters; Anglea, Hodgins and Dr. Saroyan, Dr Sweets. It is nice to see a series that has it's characters go in very different directions. The different personalities are distinct and yet they can interact both professionally and personally. This helps to make the series relate to it's viewers.

TV: Fringe

Starring: Anna Trov, Joshua Jackson, John Noble, Lance Reddick
Category: Sci-Fi
I just watched the seventh episode of the third season and I am excited beyond belief.
I've been watching this since the beginning and for a long tine I introduced it to friends as a more edgier, more Sci-Fi X-Files. FBI unit investigating the strange and unknown; that bill fits them both. Similarities don't end there. It was also threatening to be like the X-Files that it had story arches and stand-alone episodes. Especially the first season where you could see they were carefully repeating the lore each and every episode so that you could broadcast some episodes out of order. Another way it was also mimicking the X-Files was the way it was threatening to become insular, self-referencing and plain old confusing to the average viewer. Show creator J.J. Abrams went through great lengths to distance this from his other TV creation, Lost, which invented new levels of confusion. His promised to keep Fringe accessible to all and for the first season, it worked.
Then in mid-second season something snapped. That is the only I can describe it as. Suddenly, it abandoned it's hand-holding pace and script structure (repeating introductions, etc). It was as if the people driving the show suddenly pressed the accelerator. All of a sudden, events that were hinted on and inevitably to occur in some future episode a season or two away, occurred in rapid succession. It was as if someone threatened to pull the plug and the story writers decided to tell as much as possible before someone did.
This has happened before in other series, where the pace of story development picked up so much that soon there was nothing left or new to tell. That was the problem with the X-Files too. Once the nature of the aliens and their human conspirators were known, everything else after that seemed bland and seemed tacked on. They even began repeating themselves by making Mulder missing yet again.
However, for Fringe, it was as if someone decided that their viewers were smart enough and if some people didn't get it by now, those people would never get it anyway. They knew that not only were their viewer smart, they were smart enough to see the plot points that they were building up to. So instead of making a spectacle out of it or milking it for all it's worth, they simply got it over with and moved the story forward.
Where they moved to is something really interesting. This is where I can't decide whether I like it or not. Spoiler alert ahead. One one hand, the concept of two worlds colliding is really great. The show even has a different color opening titles to help users orient themselves as to which world the episode is primarily set in. But having two parallel character sets can be confusing. To make it more confusing, one character from one world has crossed over and taken the place of the other, pretending to be the version of themselves in that world. This is coming close to Lost-confusing levels. So far, a lot it is managed through distinction. By having distinct characters that does not exist in the other world play major parts (and have a lot of screen time) clearly indicates the different scenarios and essentially hints to viewer which world they are viewing. This could be quite confusing to watch but show is juggling this story very well.
Fringe has turned out to be a delight to watch and follow. Even if you don't normally like Sci-fi, the show also works as a drama, with plot twists that are surprising but not as mind-bending as those on Lost. If you are new, the background story is getting a bit thick by now. It is worth watching the DVDs for the first two seasons to catch up and watch the slow burn turn into a raging fire. Like real fire, I hope the show writer can control it and not get consumed by it.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe - really I do

Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
Category: Horror, Mystery

10 is a long time and the world continues spinning, like it or not. 10 years is a long wait for another X-Files movie and the question is whether there's anybody left who cares about another X-Files movie.
Good thing the passing of time was not lost on Chris Carter. Instead of simply picking up where the TV series ended, he let time take it's course and began the movie where the characters would most likely be now or at least where the progression would have reached a holding pattern or stalemate.
And that is where the characters are caught in. A stalemate in their lives. Scully is back to being a doctor, doing what she wants, finally making a difference. Mulder is hiding, sort of. Officially, the FBI are looking for him. In reality they know where to find him. But they are probably just as happy to leave him be. Just in case he becomes useful again.
editor's note: This post got truncated. Half of it is lost. My apologies and I will restore this soon.

Commentary: Movie Trailers and their evil existence

Trailers are supposed to entice the public to see the movie. Have you ever noticed that trailers are always uncredited? Often, it's not the moviemaker who creates the trailers. Sometimes they don't even have a say as to what goes in it. Yet the success, financially at least, of a movie rests in part on trailers and the buzz they generate. So the reason for a trailer's existence is to make people want to see the movie, regardless of anything else. Even if it means including scenes that never make it into the movie. Even it it means showing scene from the ending. Whatever it takes to make moviegoers want to see the move and go to see the movie. Given this nature of which trailers are born and the controversy it stirs up with the moviemakers, the trailer-makers would probably prefer to remain anonymous.

From the various DVD commentaries and interviews I've heard, what usually happens is that after principal shooting is over and the editing process begins, the marketing people look over all the raw footage and choose what "works" or what might interest people. Damn story or any sense. That's why in trailers you'd see things that either do not make it into the final cut (nor in some cases even the extended cuts) and things that are right at the end of the movie, giving it away.

Not all trailers are like that. There are teasers. These just give glimpses of what the movie will be. It may not even contain any actual part of the move. Just look at the Harry Potter movie teasers or the Terminator 3's teaser's. The best of these are Pixar's. Their teasers tell something about the movie but doesn't contain any scenes from the movies. In fact, it is accepted fact that Pixar's teaser scenes will not make it into the movie. Yet, it does what it's supposed to do: make people want to watch the movie.

I think that there is a hidden code in trailers put in by trailer-makers that goes something like this, "If the movie is bad or I don't like it, the trailer will include a scene from the end of the movie or close to it or include something that'll give the movie away." Maybe it's a way of telling other trailer makers what they think about the movie without breaking confidentiality agreements. Perhaps some trailer-makers think they are doing a public service by doing so. That way, when you get close to the ending, you go, "Hey, I've seen this already. He'll do this and she'll do this. What the..? The ending is given away in the trailers". Those who understand this will pass it along... and the result is the movie not liked and watched by few.

But this has become a trend in trailers that even good movies suffer. I have watched movies and liked it while watching it only to be disappointed to see that the ending was shown already in the trailers. I understand it if the movie was a 'ride' movie, something that you get on and know what the end of the ride is going to be. However, this 'format' of trailer making is the norm now. It has come to a point that I don't even watch trailers anymore, fearing it might spoil my movie-going experience.

So the thing that was created to garner interest has done exactly the opposite. What a shame. I used to really enjoy trailers. The movie might be months away but by the time it comes, I really want to watch it, having watched the trailer for the upteenth time. Now, I don't bother. And I am not alone. If those marketing types have detected this trend, they are not flinching. They keep on following the same format. Doing otherwise would be an admission of guilt.