PERIOD & MORE PERIOD - "MR HOLMES" AND "SUFFRAGETTE"

Are you in for a couple of good recommendations? Movies this time. The latest I've seen and liked, both released in theatres in the last months of 2015: Mr Holmes starring Sir Ian McKellen, directed by Bill Condon and based on 2005 Mitch Cullin's "A Slight Trick of the Mind", and Suffragette with a stellar cast including Carey Mulligan, Anne-Marie Duff, Romola Garai, Helena Bonham-Carter, Meryl Streep, Ben Whishaw and Samuel West and directed by Sarah Gavron.

Ian McKellen as the retired Sherlock Holmes with little Milo Parker (Photograph: Allstar/BBC Films)

HOW TO BECOME SHERLOCK HOLMES! BOOK BLAST & GIVEAWAY: SHERLOCK ACADEMY BY F.C. SHAW

Sherlock Academy by F.C. Shaw

 Teachers in disguise, secret libraries, hollow books . . . All these and more await eleven-year-old Rollie Wilson at the mysterious Sherlock Academy of Fine Sleuths. When Rollie and his best friend, Cecily, are invited to attend a school where children learn the art of detection just like the great Sherlock Holmes, they discover a strange burglary has been committed and a mystery is afoot. Determined to investigate, Rollie discovers that appearances can be deceiving, the truth can be hurtful, and friends sometimes turn into foes. Does Rollie have what it takes to follow in Holmes’s footsteps? Can he use his skills to solve the mystery and save the school from an unknown villain?     

Praise for Sherlock Academy

For anyone who's ever wanted to be Sherlock Holmes, this is your chance. -- Adam Glendon Sidwell, Bestselling Author of Evertaster 

My students love this book, and have asked for it again and again. It makes them feel as if they are in the story; they keep wanting to know what might happen next. Delightful story that invites anyone who loves mystery to dig in and figure it out! – Amazon Customer  

Grab your copy from

AMAZON.COM

HOMES OF CLASSIC LITERATURE

At many a time we can become lost between the pages of a good book. Immersed in its fantasy and mysterious tales, the captivating characters, scenes and a little imagination can easily take you there. This infographic delves into some classic stories from The Hobbit to the depths of The Secret Garden to show you nine of the famous homes found within these tales. Ready for the tour?

NEW (COSTUME) DRAMA SERIES ON TV: PARADE'S END, THE PARADISE, DOWNTON ABBEY THREE AND AN AMERICAN SHERLOCK, ELEMENTARY.

Parade's End

It's been I while since I last posted about period drama or TV series. I hope you haven't been thinking that I have been neglecting one of my passions,  because I haven't. I have been watching several new series in fact, only I didn't have time to write about them. For example,  I watched all the five episodes of BBC2 Parade's End starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Adelaide Clemens, Rebecca Hall, Rufus Sewell and Rupert Everett among other great actors and actresses.

Adelaide Clemens as Miss Wannop

Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's tetralogy,  Parade's End,  was broadcast on BB2 in September. The 5-episode series is intelligent, refined TV drama that I hope you'll come to see and appreciate sooner or later. I am not a huge fan of Mr Cumberbatch 's male charms but I do recognize his talent as an actor. I love his voice and his cerebral performances, especially as Sherlock, but I didn't watch this drama especially for him.  While I liked the series very much for its themes and its brilliant script (not an easy task to adapt modernist prose), and loved the costumes and beautiful locations as well, I couldn't sympathize with its hero. Not Mr Cumberbatch's fault, mind you,  but ChristopherTietjens's uprightness, stiffness and stubborness didn't let me feel any tenderness nor sympathy for the martyr of society he wanted to become. 

BAFTA TV AWARDS TONIGHT - WILL MY FAVOURITES WIN THIS TIME?

Richard Armitage & Miranda Raison (Baftas 2009)

The Bafta  TV Awards Ceremony is tonight at the Southbank Centre in London. It will be broadcast on BBC1 from 8.00 p.m. Here are all  the nominees in the different categories.

I've always followed this event with curiosity and great expectations in the last few years hoping my favourite series and actors won. Though has never actually happened. it was worth it all the same since,  at least,  I got new pictures, videos and some times interviews of Richard Armitage taking part in the ceremony, though only to give the prize to someone else (on the left)

I'll have a look at the show on BBC1 tonight to support Dame Maggie Smith and Benedict Cumberbatch, hoping they get the recognition they deserve.

They've been nominated as Best Leading Actress and Best Leading Actor respectively for their roles as Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey (ITV 1) and Sherlock Holmes in BBC1 Sherlock. 

Sherlock series 2 has been already honoured with three BAFTA TV Craft Awards: Sherlock won awards for best sound: fiction, best editing  fiction and best writer (Steven Moffat  for the wonderful A Scandal in Belgravia). 

GOOD TV DRAMA & BRITISH LITERARY TRADITION: SHERLOCK 2 AND TREASURE ISLAND

Collage from Enchanted Serenity of Period Films

It's not a secret I greatly appreciate British TV drama. Their productions are mostly very good, especially those revisiting the literary classics. Well, also modern drama is sometimes brilliant . I loved Spooks very much , for instance,  but I also liked the Moving On series,  The Hour, A Single Father. I started watching British TV or buying DVDs  for my interest in period drama, a genre in which they are masters,   especially when it comes to adaptations of  classics. And this is what they are amazing at : adapting their classics  respecting their literary tradition. Something we totally lack on our TV here in Italy. I've seen so many beautiful series in the last three years: Austen's novels adaptations were brilliant, but also Gaskell and Eliot, Dickens and Thomas Hardy among others. My best favourite quite recent classic series are The Buccaneers, Our Mutual Friend, Daniel Deronda, North and South, Wives and Daughter,  Middlemarch, Jane Eyre 2006, Bleak House,

AT THE CINEMA: SHERLOCK HOLMES 2 - A GAME OF SHADOWS

What did you do last weekend? Christmas shopping? I hope you had as much fun as I did . I  went to Rome with my husband and we had a pleasant evening, only we were more trying to avoid the Christmas shopping crowd than joining them. So, we hid inside a ...cinema!

Avoiding the shopping crowd was not our only aim. We had seen the first Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes 2009 film  (my review) - we had liked it a lot - so we didn't want to miss the second one: Sherlock Holmes, A Game of Shadows. 

The worst of Victorian London is on screen from the first moments:  its smell of dirt and alcohol, the misty nights and the fights. If you've seen Holmes/ Downey Jr in the first film, you know he is not a bit the dusty, stiff, prim detective of the tradition, wearing a deerstalker and a trench coat, but a cool action hero, a smart dandy, free and easy, irresistible and unbeatable.  Either you love him or you hate him but seen the figures of the success of the  first installment, it seems very difficult to resist him!

THE NOVEL, A BRITISH PASSION. WATCHING FAULKS ON FICTION - PART I THE HERO

This is quite an interesting programme for one who's fond of  English classic literature like me.  In it,  Sebastian Faulks reflects on  the fact that millions of novels are read every year. And also on the fact that very often we return to the old ones again and again. Why? Is it the prose? Is it the plot? Or is it the writer? In recent years, he says, people talking about novels have focused on authors. In his opinion, instead, the only people who matter are the characters: the heroes, lovers, snobs and villains. People whose inner life we get to know so well that they are more familiar to us than our family and friends. So much so,  that it  is in the power of their experiences that we see our all lives in a new light. These characters live beyond their time and beyond the page. The lives of these characters help to understand ourselves. 

Here are some of the classic heroes he introduced: 
Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Becky Sharp, Sherlock Holmes.

AT THE MOVIES - SHERLOCK HOLMES 2009

I was at the cinema this afternoon and I was surprisingly glad to see the new SHERLOCK HOLMES film.

Guy Ritchie’s movie matches Sherlock Holmes’s intellectual ability with incredible physical strength and agility turning our beloved Victorian “consulting detective” in a new unbeatable modern hero. A very fascinating one, impossible to resist his oomph. Robert Downey Jr. gives a very convincing performance. Watson, his loyal right-hand man and friend is the first who can never say no to him. I’ve always imagined Watson as short, fat and not very young so … Jude Law? Not that I want to claim about the change, but he … rather surpasses any optimistic expectation.

Holmes’s infallible deductive method is still there. Do you remember? He believes that “From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other." Thanks to his method and the help of Dr Watson, in this story set in London in 1891, he uncovers an incredibly devilish plot by an occult-dabbling secret society known as the Temple of the Four Orders with Lord Blackwood (fascinatingly evil Mark Strong) eventually leading it on a quest for world domination.

Many fighting scenes, lots of them , but accurately made and mostly amusing. I usually don’t like them but they were fun, this time. Holmes defeats very frightening bigger-than-him guys and you believe it possible. He studies them with his cunning observation and finds out what their weaknesses are!

As for female characters, the only woman to impress Holmes in Sir Conan Doyle’s work was Irene Adler, who was always referred to by Holmes as "the woman". Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term—even though he does mention her actual name several times in other cases. Adler is one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, though she actually appears in person in only one, "A Scandal in Bohemia". She is in this film too and is a very smart brave young woman who has only a fawl, she loves Holmes. Irene is interpreted by vivacious Canadian actress Rachel McAdams. The other woman in the movie is Dr Watson’s fiance, beatiful and intelligent Mary ( Kelly Reilly ) , who is immediately seen as a rival by Holmes.

Another interesting point is the possibility of Holmes having bipolar disorder (also referred to as manic depressive disorder) which has been suggested many times but most notably  in this new movie adaptation. Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal has been called "inauthentic" because of the implications of his performance, but some of Watson's observations in "A Study in Scarlet" provide crediblity to the claim, as Watson notes: "Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would lie upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night."

Let’s say something about the setting. The Tower Bridge still being built, Ritchie's London is gloomy, smoky, wet and portrayed as metallic and grey. Impressive photography.

So, did I like it? I enjoyed myself. No sense of guilt, I was amused and entertained.

N.B.No offence is meant to purists or to spectators with different opinions.

I only have one regret:  dubbing. I mean, it was strange, they spoke Italian (though Holmes’s voice was an excellent one, Luca Ward’s) . So I promised myself I'll have to watch it again, in the original version, as soon as the DVD is released.

SHERLOCK HOLMES 2009 OFFICAL SITE

FRIDAY NIGHT MYSTERY

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF THE SILVER STOCKING (2004)

I usually enjoy watching mystery or detective stories, especially if they are very smartly built around a murder case and not too bloody. I hate horror movies, in fact. So, when I bumped into a 2004 TV movie , starring Rupert Everett as a convincing Sherlock Holmes last night, I was caught up in its foggy intriguing atmosphere and forgot all I had to do. I remained there, sitting still till the end, trying to conjecture who the serial killer murdering teenage girls might be. It was broadcast on BBC PRIME, a satellite channel I sometimes watch because it proposes British programmes from BBC (old series of Spooks, Dr Who, The Vicar of Dibley, Doctors, Eastenders among others) .

I'm not a very good detective but I guess I could be an excellent helper, like Dr Watson (Ian Hart , below, in this version).

So, I tried to guess and infer from the clues ... I got the right culprit but I wasn't able to ... solve the case.The culprit had an alibi which had to be denied. Fortunately, Holmes was as brilliant as ever and saved, with the help of loyal Watson, the last chosen victim from the murderer. Just a second before it was too late, of course!

THE PLOT

November 1903. Fresh from an opium den in London's East End, Sherlock Holmes relaxes with green tea and a book on beekeeping, paying no heed to Dr Watson's plea for help with a baffling case.
The corpse of a shabbily dressed young woman has been discovered in the mud flats of the Thames at low tide. Police assume she's a prostitute, but Dr Watson suspects something more and goes to his old friend Holmes, now retired and at very loose ends.
The original screenplay - not an adaptation from Conan Doyle - by Allan Cubitt re-unites an estranged Holmes and his friend Watson in a desperate bid to solve a case which threatens to overwhelm the privilege and tranquillity of Edwardian aristocratic society. The victims are in fact chosen among girls from ancient aristocratic families. The murderer uses the girls' silk stockings to torture and finally kill them.

THE CLIP

P.S. There a new Sherlock Holmes coming out next Christmas time starring Robert Downey Jr as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson. Have you heard about it?

HERE'S A TRAILER