It's The Incredible Suit's 1000th post!

I have literally no idea how to celebrate this. Look at this lovely picture of Roger Moore as Sherlock Holmes while I think of something.

Sherlock Holmes On DVD Now! Buy Something Else!

Sherlock Holmes is out on DVD this week. According to find-dvd.co.uk, the DVD version is a little shorter than the theatrical version:

But that, like Shia LaBeouf, is irrelevant. What The Incredible Suit would like to point out today is that there are a number of other things you could spend the recommended retail price of £19.99 on which would almost certainly enhance your life more than watching Guy Ritchie turn one of literature's most cerebral, intellectual characters into an ass-kicking pair of rock hard pecs.

E, as they say, G:

For a quite literally unbelievable £4.99 you can ask the nice people at Amazon to send you The Complete Stories Of Sherlock Holmes. That's every single story Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote (56 short stories, four novels) about Sherly, and you can take it from The Incredible Suit that they're ace, even though they're, like, well old and stuff. In fact for the RRP of the film you can buy four copies of this book and give three to people you love.
Advantages: You don't have to look at Jude Law.
Disadvantages: Weighs roughly the same as a Ford Fiesta.

For less than nine quid you can get the soundtrack album on new-fangled 'Compact Disc'. It's by far the best thing about the film and features Hans Zimmer going mentile on a cimbalom. Good work Zimbo!
Advantages: You don't have to look at Jude Law.
Disadvantages: There is a picture of Jude Law on the cover. Just throw it away.

This box set of no less than FOURTEEN Sherlock Holmes films starring Bezzle Rethbowne as the titular dick can be yours for a mind-bogglingly reasonable 15 nicker. These babies represent a more faithful take on the characters and, amazingly, when Holmes puts a fake beard on it doesn't just look like Holmes with a fake beard on.
Advantages: You don't have to look at Jude Law.
Disadvantages: Some of the films are a bit cackapoopoo in all honesty.

If you're a bit stupid you could allow yourself to accidentally buy this version of Sherlock Holmes for just £4.99. It stars such screen legends as almost-porn-star-named Ben Syder and is directed by no less a talent than Rachel Goldenberg, producer of Transmorphers 2 and Second Unit Director of Alien Vs Hunter, The Terminators and 2012: Supernova, and therefore perpetrator of violent crimes against cinema. To be fair I haven't seen it, it could be amazing.
Advantages: You don't have to look at Jude Law.
Disadvantages: Features dragons, dinosaurs and a giant octopus. Actually that sounds incredible, buy it.



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A Vacuous, Irrelevant Steamroller

At long last, the interminably tedious awards season has trundled to a halt like a vacuous, irrelevant steamroller running out of vacuous, irrelevant steam. Given that The Incredible Suit has its finger on the pulse of the movie world, I thought it might be interesting to cast a glance back at some of the award winners and see what I had to say about them at the time of their release:

The Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy

The Irish Film And Television Award for Best International Actor

The Incredible Suit:
"I'm reasonably sure that Holmes wasn't American"

The Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture (Drama)

The Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Action Movie

The Incredible Suit: "Apocalyptically awful"

The Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Film

The BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Film

The British Independent Film Award for Best Director

The Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize

The London Critics Circle Film Award for British Film Of The Year

The Incredible Suit:
"It had, like, NO explosions, car chases, aliens or robots"

The Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay

The BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay

The Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay

The LA Film Critics Association Award for Best Screenplay

The USA National Board of Review Award for Best Film

The Incredible Suit:
"In no way is it exceptional, extraordinary or otherwise notable"

The London Critics' Circle Award for Film Of The Year

The BAFTA Award for Best Film Not In The English Language

The Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize of the Jury

The London Film Festival Award for Best Film

The French Cesar Award for Best Film

The Incredible Suit: "A bit rubbish"

The Oscar for Best Film and Best Director

The BAFTA Award for Best Film and Best Director

The Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Film & Best Director

The Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Director

The LA Film Critics Association Award for Best Picture and Best Director

The USA National Film Critics Award for Best Film and Best Director

The Incredible Suit:
"The kind of film the words 'six out of ten' were made for"

So now you know where to come in future for all your on-the-nose movie reviews.

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Sherlock Holmes

In Diamonds Are Forever, James Bond smuggles diamonds into the US inside the body of a deceased smuggler by shoving them up the corpse's arse. When Felix Leiter asks Bond where the gems are, he replies: “Alimentary, my dear Dr. Leiter”, thereby simultaneously paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes and hammering another nail into the coffin of early Bondian wit.


The standard of this gag is interesting, because by an extraordinary coincidence it is exactly the same standard as Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes film, and also relates directly to the location from whence Mr Ritchie produced his film, and to where The Incredible Suit recommends he forcibly return it at the soonest convenient occasion.

Now I haven’t read every Sherlock Holmes story, but I have read some, and I don’t recall quite as many explosions, tedious chases, pointless set-pieces and weak, badly-told stories as there are in this film. I’m also reasonably sure that Holmes wasn’t American, although I suppose the States could just be getting us back for casting a Welshman as Batman.

Seriously though, if you’re going to make a film called Sherlock Holmes that only vaguely resembles the source material in that the characters have the same names and it’s set in Victorian London, why not just rename the people and call it something else? Especially if you’ve taken one character - Dr Watson - and altered his status from perpetually flummoxed companion to action-hero sidekick who says and does nothing of any use or interest, and even manages to do that badly thanks to the ‘skills’ of Jude Law.

And another thing, right, let’s get some London geography sorted out here: even the most athletic type would have a job legging it through a sewer from the Houses of Parliament to Tower Bridge (a distance of about three miles) in less than 30 seconds. If an American had directed this film it would be almost forgivable, but when it’s a self-proclaimed London-phile it’s surely a capital offence punishable by ten years of uninterrupted Madonna records at high volume?

Anyway, Hans Zimmer's music is very good, although I could have done without all those incongruous Irish songs thank you very much. Oh and if you remember what I said in this post, I can tell you that it doesn’t happen. Shame really.



PS Dear Cineworld Enfield, if you could see your way clear to doing a proper job of masking your 2.35:1 screen when projecting a 1.85:1 image in future so the edges don’t just fizzle out into grey that would be lovely. It is your job after all.

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Advanced Arch-Nemesisery

It seems that everyone’s favourite toilet-related rhyming slang, Brad “I’m going for a” Pitt, is taking lessons in advanced arch-nemesisery in preparation to play Professor Moriarty in the already-planned sequel to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. What also seems likely is that Pitt will pop up in the first movie, probably in the last shot, having spent the rest of the film mooching about in shadow as an underlying presence of super-villainy.

All this popping-up-at-the-end-of-a-big-movie is all very well, but one day it’ll be regarded as a deeply unfashionable thing films did in those archaic days of the late noughties / early teens when people had to open their eyes to watch a film, the poor primitive buggers. Samuel L Jackson whiffled about in the shadows in the final scene of Iron Man before revealing himself as Nick Fury, a major character in next year’s sequel, and Robert Downey Jr – as Iron Man’s alter-ego Tony Stark – lurked nonchalantly at the end of The Incredible Hulk, not to get people to go to the sequel (hopefully there won’t be one) but to show the characters in the same universe in anticipation of The Avengers, the destined-to-be-bad-but-brilliantly-ambitious project bringing together Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America and Thor.

Edward Norton is even rumoured to be turning up late to Iron Man 2 as Bruce Banner, at which point the movie world will literally turn inside out and disappear up its own projection booth. It’s getting to be like a series of parties where the most fun guest shows up just as everyone’s getting their coats from the bedroom and everyone’s forced to carry on having fun regardless of the fact that they’re all terribly drunk and there’s no chance of getting a taxi now, they’ll all have to sleep on the floor.

This kind of thing is lots of fun and is clearly designed to get folk excited about the sequel, but I can see it becoming a dated cinema trend akin to outtakes over the credits (massive in ‘70s Burt Reynolds comedies) or casting Kevin Bacon. It’s a little-known fact that Kevin Bacon was in every single film made around the world between 1989 and 1993.

So, The Incredible Suit confidently predicts that when Sean Connery reveals himself (not literally you understand, that would be horrible) at the end of the next Bond film to be Blofeld, or Bond’s evil great-grandad, or Father Christmas, the trend will officially be declared passé and destined to be spoofed in a Keenen Ivory Wayans film at some point in a post-apocalyptic hellish future where all films are made by Keenen Ivory Wayans.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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