The days when ‘big films’ on Christmas telly were circled in red pen by enthusiastic Radio/TV Times readers have long since passed. Cheap DVDs and 950-odd movie channels have made the ‘terrestrial premiere’ have all the impact of the phrase ‘starring Jim Cavaziel’.
There’s always the big screen of course, with the festive flicks offering a welcome escape from hateful relatives or having to grind through the likes of The Krankies’ ‘It’s Behind You’ Panto Special on Channel Five (at least we don’t have the horrors of Disney Time and Holiday on Ice to glaze our brains over any more).
So join us at the movies and let’s see what’s on.
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Sherlock Holmes is one of the most abiding detective characters in literary history. Along with his sycophantic companion, Dr John Watson, the amateur consulting detective uses his powers of deduction to solve the most fiendishly cryptic cases in Victorian London amazing one and all with his capacity for lateral thinking and disguise as he does so.
Conan Doyle’s books have been adapted for television, radio and film on many occasions and every iteration of the classic stories brings its own idea of how the Holmes/Watson dynamic works. Just look at ‘Sherlock’, the BBC’s surprisingly enjoyable updating of the series which began with a reimagining of A Study In Scarlet and you can see that the world of Sherlock Holmes is as relevant to today’s audiences as those half a century ago.
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Stephen Fry- author, presenter, actor, and Britain’s most popular choice of dinner party guest has confirmed that he is to play Mycroft Holmes, older brother to Sherlock in the planned sequel to last year’s surprise hit film. We say ‘surprise’ because the film’s director Guy Ritchie spectacularly wrong-footed everyone in 2009 by making a competent blockbuster about the 19th century smug-bastard detective.
After a heroically terrible run of films, Ritchie has had something of a renaissance over the last few years.
First there was the marriage split. Whereas in 2000 us Brits were quite proud to have Madonna over ‘ere, buyin’ our mansions and shaggin’ our mockneys, in 2008 the dream has gone a bit sour. We were quite content with her being a humourless career disco-cyborg but then she pretended to be English.
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Hey, guess what? Avatar is the top movie at the weekend box office again! Bet you didn’t see that coming, huh?
What? You did see that coming? You saw it coming because you’ve spent the last week unable to move for millions of identical articles about how Avatar is now the second-biggest film of all time after Titanic and what it means for the future of Hollywood and how James Cameron could basically poo into a bucket and you’d all go and see it? Oh fine. Be like that.
But still, well done Avatar. But let’s see how well you’ll be doing at next week’s weekend box office, against the mighty colossus that is The Spy Next Door starring Jackie Chan and Billy Ray Cyrus. Enjoy that second-biggest film ever title while you can, Cameron.
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Happy face and sad face.
Folded:
- Snow in London (watch for the Dunkirk sprit as brave Londoners don wellies and stand on train platforms tweeting)
- Happy New Year (we hope you shall be very rich in 2010, then die of swine flu and leave us all the money)
- Music channels return to normal (no more Noddy Holder’s Drippy Xmas Number Ones, Peter Andre’s Brain Dead Christmas Crackers, etc)
- Big Cup (notice your belt running out of notches? That’s because you eat too many of these wonderfully moorish chocolates. Now look in the mirror and say you couldn’t give a fudge neither)
- Sherlock Holmes (Downey Jr. wears an epic frock coat. You won’t pull it off)
Creased:
- Snow up north (the north? You do mean Watford Gap, right?)
- Jeremy Renner from The Hurt Locker looks a bit like Jeremy Kyle (that’s gotta be horrible for the poor guy. Jeremy, we mean, not the Kyle)
- Happy New Ye- (oh, who can be bothered)
- Careless tweeting (got a work account and a personal account? Don’t go getting them in a muddle and swearing at potential customers, will you)
- Taking the decorations down (do not be despondent, if Christmas gets any earlier you will be putting them back up at Easter – which would not make sense for all manner of reasons)
Guy Ritchie may have already screwed the chances of a Sherlock Holmes sequel ever getting off the ground.
Well not Guy himself, but one of the blokes in his movie, a little known actor by the name of Robert Downey Jr. No, we’ve never heard of him either but we expect great things from his career.
Okay, enough New Year’s silliness. According to reports, despite having only just been spanked at the box office by The Over-long, Over-priced Thunder Smurfs movie, the chances of a Sherlock Holmes sequel being made are already in jeopardy. In a recent interview on The Late Show With David Letterman Robert joked about his new movie having a homoerotic subtext, in which characters Holmes and Watson are gay lovers. He also asked the audience whether or not Holmes was in fact “a very butch homosexual.” Apparently, a little well-dressed man-on-man love is enough to ruffle the feathers of the copyright holder.
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From Paul Newman eating 50 eggs in the film Cool Hand Luke, to Mel Gibson eating dog biscuits in Lethal Weapon 3, movies and food have been closely linked.
So it comes as no surprise that in order to promote the new Guy Ritchie-helmed version of Sherlock Holmes, Warner Brothers have teamed up with that stalwart of American convenience food, 7-Eleven. Because when you think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s famous detective solving crimes in Victorian London, you also think of microwaving a burrito and swigging weak, lukewarm coffee.
Since mid-November the chain has been running the Holmes promotion, the main part of which involves you using a clue printed on your coffee cup to go online and unlock another clue on a special 7-Eleven/Holmes microsite, which then takes you to another Holmes teaser site, which then presents you with another mystery. If you solve that you apparently then get more clues leading up to the movie’s opening scene, which OH MY GOD THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE MOST CONVOLUTED LOAD OF SHIT.
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