DVD of the Week: Mr Holmes

It feels like ages since I reviewed a movie here, although looking back it's only been about a month since the dissapointing Mockingjay Part 2. We got heavily derailed by The Hollow Crown, I guess, which is no bad thing. But it was nice to get back to it this weekend with Mr Holmes, yet another take on Sherlock Holmes, who never seems to go out of fashion, nor ways to be reinvented. Mr Holmes is an adaptation of a book called "A Slight Trick of the Mind", which I've never read, and from the outside it's looks to be a showcase for Ian McKellen and the sort of small budget awards/festival fodder that can be a little hit and miss. Thankfully, Mr Holmes is mostly hit. 

Box Set Blues: Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries

We like a good procedural cop show in our house, even if they're increasingly all the same. One is a cop, one isn't, but has a wacky side skill! They Fight Crime!. Gruesome murder, red herrings, it's usually the second character you're introduced to, job done. The joy, then, is the casts rapport, the quality of the gimmick and how much you enjoy spending time the company of the show. We've watched quite a few, and generally enjoy them, and they make a nice relaxing hour before bed sort of show for us, so we've usually got one on the go, and keep an eye out for more. Our most recent obsession has, surprisingly, not been set in modern-day America, but rather 1920s Australia, Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries. 

Book Review: Career of Evil

There was a bit of excitement yesterday when J K Rowling mentioned on a Radio 2 interview that she has "written some of a childrens book", which more than anything else seems to demonstrate the hold that Harry Potter maintains over our collective imaginations. It also helps to vindicate her decision to publish her crime series under the pseudonym "Robert Galbraith", helping to to differentiate it from the Potter brand and avoid some of the snobbery about a "childrens author" writing "grown up" books that affected reviews of The Casual Vacancy. To be honest though, as much as I enjoyed the Potter series, I am quite happy with Rowling/Galbraith the crime writer, and she can keep writing books like Career of Evil for as long as she likes.

TV Review: True Detective, Season 2

We seem to live in an era where the snap judgements required of weekly recaps, social media watching and the massive competition for pageviews mean that we are quickly developing a binary view of entertainment. This seemed especially true of Game of Thrones this year, which seemed to swing from hailed as better then ever, to condemned as a spent and hateful waste, pretty much on a scene-to-scene basis. We can add to this the second season of True Detective, which has been loudly pilloried by much of the critical set, even as they hail its first season as even better in retrospect, apparently, than anyone said at the time. So to recap, last year True Detective was a flawless (nope) masterpiece with an host of perfectly drawn characters (also nope, especially outside of the main pair) that was the best show of the year, and maybe ever (still nope). It was excellent, but it certainly wasn't flawless, but season two shows different and now ones, without always carrying forward the strengths, which may be root of the storm that broke over it.