Saw BBC's new Sherlock mini series and it's a 3 part set in modern times with Watson being a doctor who's just come back from Afghanistan and Holmes armed with the internet and his trusty cell phone. The first episode, "A Study in Pink" pretty much blew me away and while the next two were not as fantastic it was still overall a damn good watch and waiting for the BBC to come out with a full series. I think there are enough classic references to keep the hard core fans happy, the acting is of uniformly high quality and the two leads are pitch perfect for Holmes and Watson. Highly recommended.

Otherwise, been watching Simpsons Season 17 which I seemed to have missed out on and it's a pretty good season so far.

Been doing a fair amount of reading lately...
The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld is a murder mystery set in the early 1900s when Sigmund Freud visited America for a series of lectures with Carl Jung accompanying him. The scene is set when a madman seems to be attacking young girls who belong to high society and Freud is asked to help a victim who survived but cant remember shit. Freud in turn asks a young follower of his to treat the girl. The murder investigation proceeds at one level of the book like an old fashioned police procedural while the other thread is the jealousy of Jung towards Freud and a secret cabal that wants to make sure Freud and his theories are discredited in America. Overall a fun and engaging read except that the actual murders are completely uninspired and seem very forced.

The First Casualty by Ben Elton is a murder mystery set in World War I when a total hero of the British Empire is shot dead somewhere in France. A conscientious objector to the war and police detective who is serving time in jail for his disapproval of forced conscription is sent to France to investigate and find out who the murderer is. Elton's re-visiting the great war after the final Black Adder series and here his tone is mostly grim and the humour or what there is of it is mostly black. A pretty good book with some great passages about war but Elton doesn't really plot murders very well and chances are, the least likable person in the book is your murderer. Was the same in Dead famous and same here.

And then, thanks to the JP, read Cypress Grove by James Sallis and this is one of the best modern crime novels I've read. An ex detective living out in the woods near a small American town is drafted in by the local police to help solve a brutal and ritualistic murder but the book is more about the people who inhabit this small town and the hero who's only looking to be left alone than the actual murder.

Also read Fred Vargas's The Chalk Circle Man which is an excellent murder mystery with mysterious chalk circles appearing on the streets of Paris with harmless innocuous garbage inside the circles. then like we know it would, bodies start appearing in the same circles. There's an eccentric chief detective, his alcoholic subordinate and a whole host of interesting characters that makes this book a solid read and a few more adventures with Chief Inspector Adamsberg and his crew would be more than welcome.

Been reading a bunch of the hard case crime series and these are really awesome books if you like pulpy crime fiction. Stepehen King's The Colorado Kid is a gentle mystery about a body that washes up on the shore of a small island and the efforts the two local journalists put in to solve the mystery of the unidentified dead man. One passage in particular with the doctor looking into the throat of the dead man to see if he chocked on any food is both funny and morbid at the same time and beautifully written. Overall, a gentle and surprising tale from King. then read lawrence Block's Such Men are Dangerous about a lone ex soldier who is drafted into a plan to hijack an arms shipment from the US army. Solid, hardboiled action where the men truly are dangerous. Richard Stark's Lemons never Lie is so tough it takes a while to chew down and its basically about a part time thief and full time theater actor in a very deadly game of cat and mouse with a slightly psychotic villain. This really was one awesome read.

Le Khandige, You seem to be having a criminally good time :D

This Sherlock Holmes must be looked into. Meanwhile...

Sepukku/Harakiri - A cliched "oh woe & misfortune" middle-section doesn't prevent this scathing indictment of Samurai traditions from being a damn good watch on the whole. Expertly directed (Masaki Kobayashi) with a smoldering performance from the great Tatsuya Nakadai. If you like this, also check out Samurai Rebellion, another engaging calling of bullshit on the bushido, this one starring Toshiro Mifune.

General Knowledge wrote:
Saw BBC's new Sherlock mini series
Saw the first episode and this Holmes chump says, "Well, well not bad at all". Whatever flaws this series and the new Sherlock Holmes movie may have had, I really like the way they do Watson. Will see the other episodes now.

Midway through Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Nobbad.

last nigh inspired by you guys did some heavy reading-

Asterix the Gaul

^ woah! That was quick. Didn't get your objection though. He's not supposed to say "Well, well not bad at all"? Agree on the Watson bit, he shapes up really well in these three episodes but Holmes might irritate you more and more.

General Knowledge wrote:
^ woah! That was quick. Didn't get your objection though. He's not supposed to say "Well, well not bad at all"?
Eh, what? I'm the Holmes chump (as in Sucker for Holmesian stuff) who said "Well, well not bad at all".

Anyhoo...
The VCD cover of Ek Nanhi Munni Ladki Thi, an early Ramsay production suggested an Exorcist type flick but the film is really a different kettle with no supernatural elements. It has Prithviraj Kapoor, overly corpulent and probably reeking of booze for miles around, exuding almost the same level of seediness as Orson Welles in Touch of Evil. At one point it shows him torturing his (unknown to him) daughter (Mumtaz, sexy even if some of her wigs scream fake) and his accomplice (played by Jayant, Amjad Khan's father) who is supposed to have cared for her as a child, attempting to rape her, and then stabbing his own eyes out on learning the truth. So ya, some interesting moments there.

Die Hard With A Vengeance

total musth masala! Willis is God!

Machete wasn't bad at all. Some good action, gore and nudity. Just that it could have a bit shorter.

^^Nice. Been looking forward to this.

Saw The Other Guys with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrel and its about two misfit cops, Wahlberg who mistakenly shoots Derek Jeter right before a Yankees game and ends up as the pariah of the force and his partner Ferrel who just got an unwanted transfer from forensic accounting. There are some great gags here, particularly with Ferrel being this complete babe magnet and Wahlberg's angsty but sensitive nature along with some Steve Coogan as a dodgy investment banker, Ray Stevenson as the bad guy, Michael Keaton as the TLC quoting police captain and The Rock and Samuel L Jackson as two of New York city's hero cops. The problem though is that while the dry humour and mixed in with some truly over the top acting works quite well most of the time, the movie is also just way too long. The entire Eva Mendes role could have been left out and overall decent timepass with the odd occasional giggle.

The Score

DeNiro Vs Norton = God Vs God

winner- God! ;D

Rampage - Uwe Boll
Uwe Boll returns to the Postal theme but in a mostly humorless vein. It's a fairly crude and mean-spirited movie but in these days of torture porn movies, I guess that's not much of a knock against. In its limited way, it's actually bolder and more anarchist than the much hyped Fight Club.
Caveats: First 15 min are tremendously boring, although once the carnage starts it doesn't let up. Also, try not watching close to your PC monitor or the shaky-cam will have you heaving.

Mallika - Wilson Lewis
First half devoted to cleavage and bathing sequences. Second half has some decent campy horror moments. Overall too much filler material and the J-horror influence on these newer horror directors is irritating now. Shaapit was more consistently entertaining.

Land Of The Dead- George.A.Romero

Zombies still fucking Rule!!!

Been watching a fair bit of stuff.

Death Wish IV and V This series got more ludicrous with every successive movie. I'm sure Death Wish VI would have been set in space with aliens tentacle raping Bronson's wife and daughter, resulting in them being castrated with a light saber. But caveats aside, IV and V still make for entertaining viewing - especially V which was quite possibly the goriest film in the series. In IV Bronson is hired by a newspaper magnate to foster a war between two rival drug factions. The daughter of his girlfriend du jour dies of an OD giving him his 'motivation'. Halfway through the film after killing two entire drug families, Bronson realises he's been played for a sucker and goes after the news magnate with everything he's got. If this had been a marginally good series that actually gave a rat's ass about character development, they would have pursued the trail of thought from the intro - where Bronson wakes from a nightmare in which HE is one of the rapists that he kills. It could have been a terrific film where Bronson randomly kills people who look 'wrong' to him, deranged by his vigilantism. As it turns out I'd see one of those too before the weekend was through.

V is redeemed by a great performance by Michael Parks as gangster Tommy O Shea - think a less annoying, more menacing Jack Nicholson. O Shea is the ex-husband of Bronson's (corpse) bride to be. He gets one of his transvestite friends to smash her face through a mirror. Bronson gets pissed. You can fill in the blanks. Some hilarious gore setpieces like the transvestite gangster being killed by a remote controlled football and O Shea getting an acid bath towards the end. The violence is unrealistic and cartoony, which is just as well.

Rampage seems to have been built around a simple premise: what if Postal was not a comedy? The first 20 minutes as ravenus pointed out are extremely repetitive and boring, calling to mind Gus Van Zant's snorefest Elephant. But shortly afterward, our protagonist straps on his Kevlar suit and goes on the titular rampage. This is quite a disturbing film; sad, mean-spirited and cynical. The sequence in which Bill wanders through a lotto parlour full of elderly people too preoccupied with their game to pay any attention to an armoured armed masked man in their midst ripples with a horrible tension. I haven't seen Boll's really bad films but on the basis of this and Postal, I've gotta say he's a very effective, good filmmaker. There's a nice interview with Boll up on dailymotion and I recommend it strongly to people who have done watching this film:
www.dailymotion.com/video/xdkpy6_uwe-bol...-biff-201_shortfilms

Sherlock This was surprisingly good. Episodes II and III were not as enjoyable as the first but they've got the important things like casting and feel of the show right. The use of 2000s technology is very cool, non intrusive and not just some half assed deus ex machina. Another TV show to look forward to. Yay!

Rewatched Metal - A Headbangers Journey