Geoff's Miscellany

In the three most recent adaptations of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock, Elementary, and the Game of Shadows) at crucial moments Holmes is deceived by Moriarty into making a tactical error and in the mean time a song about demon forces is played.

There Are Spoilers Below

In the movie, Holmes is fooled into thinking Moriarty intended to bomb an Opera house during Don Giovanni. Upon Holmes’ arrival, the chorus of demons is played as the main character is received into Hell. 

I came across an archived usenet post linked on social media:

How come the heros of our movies are no longer Micky Rooney or Spencer Tracy playing Thomas Edison, or Paul Muni playing Erlich or Pasteur, instead Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison and Woody Harrelson playing Larry Flint? And movies whose heros are lawyers.

 

Paperwork and lawyering. Fixing and improving and advancing society by talk-talk, not building. A lawyer president and his lawyer wife. Crises of power that don’t involve spy planes and sputniks, but incredibly complicated and desceptive word defintions and complicated tax frauds. You think we’re not preparing to go to Mars because SF is too optimistic? Sure. But it was optimistic about whether or not the can-do engineering of the 40’s and 50’s, done by the kids who’d grown up playing with radios and mechanics in the 20’s, was going to continue. Needless to say, it didn’t. I’ve seen a late 1950’s book of science fair projects for teenagers that include things like building your own X-ray machine and cyclotron (no, I’m not kidding– it can be done). There are rockets in there, and cloud chambers, and all kinds of wonderful electronics stuff. But we didn’t go that way. Instead, we turned our children into little Clintons, and our society into a bunch of people sitting at PCs, entering data about social  engineering, not mechanical engineering. So instead of going to Mars, we went instead to beaurocratic Hell. Enjoy, everybody. It really could have been different. Nature didn’t stop us– WE stopped us.

The slap stick Batman of the 1960s is difficult for many to appreciate unless they’re signalling a blasé millennial irony, but as a boy I loved it. I also liked Keaton’s eccentric, deranged, yet god-like Batman. But the omni-competent, James Bond like, self-absorbed to the point of egomania, and utterly goofy Batman of Adam West was simply a joy for me. In honor of Adam West, here are a few favorite clips:

In an article which must be satire but isn’t, a woman asks:

When Will Wonder Woman Be a Fat, Femme Woman of Color?

1. She's not sedentary.
2. She's from an island without men, so modern day women's issues would have little import to her.
3. She's Greek, so she can't be.

If a film review says something like, “When will the movie (good or bad) deviate from the outdated source material?” rather than “Is this deviation from the source faithful to it while still creating a good film?” then the reviewer doesn’t care about the movie or the source.

I’ve always loved intertexuality. I especially love the interplay between books and film.

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is a great example.

The movies have many resonances. For instance, the trilogy is intentionally based upon Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Most obviously, when Commissioner Gordon reads from the book:

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

“I was wondering what would break first…your spirit…or your body!”

“If I can’t break your spirit, I sure enough can break your back.”

So many times it happens too fast You change your passion for glory Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past You must fight just to keep them alive

“Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you.”

But aside from Rocky and the Tale of Two Cities, what other literature adds meaning to the films? Two examples are Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo.