Tag: mystery

Sherlock Returns, Adler Strikes

A Scandal in Belgravia

4 out of 5 stars

Masterpiece Mystery finally began airing the second season of Sherlock Sunday evening, May 6, 2012.   Based loosely on Doyle’s original story entitled “A Scandal in Bohemia“, and featuring the provactive Irene Adler, revamped and rewritten by Stephen Moffat (of recent Doctor Who fame). 

The scandal erupts in Belgravia, instead of Bohemia, and reaches as high as the British throne, and as far away as across the pond to involve the Americans (heavy handed ones .. poor Mrs. Hudson).  The episode begins, though, where we left off at the end of the first season.  Moriarity bookended the episode, but pulled the strings on many of the key characters. 

Sherlock and Mycroft are two peas from the same pod … no doubt about it.  They have quite the surreal conversation at one point, musing to each other if they are odd for their lack of emotional attachment to others. 

I’ll have to wait a couple of days to watch next week’s episode “The Hounds of the Baskerville” but the previews look thrilling.

Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Four out of Five Stars

My husband and I braved the last-Sunday-before-Christmas-crowds at the Legends shopping center to watch this latest installment in the Sherlock Holmes universe.  Strangely, our theatre (the largest one at the Phoenix Theatre complex) was sparsely populated for the mid-afternoon matinee.  Be that as it may, we thoroughly enjoyed the film. The musical score grated less on the ears this time (more classical orchestration instead of the out-of-tune upright piano cacophony overused in the first movie). I can’t wait to re-watch this on DVD so I can pause it and examine certain scenes minutely. Even with my photographic memory, modern day editing gives viewers nanoseconds to absorb an incredible amount of relevant detail.  Despite the dreary gray British and French winter countryside, the cinematography was gorgeous, the highlight being the Swiss Alps.  The action frequently sported ultra-high-speed slow-motion sequences, punctuated with excellently choreographed audio.

Book Review: CryoBurn

CryoBurn (Vorkosigan Saga, #14)CryoBurn by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really only 3.5 stars, but the last chapter made it 4 stars for me.

If you strip away the space opera and science fiction, this story boils down to a mystery/thriller where the old adage ‘follow the money’ proves axiomatic again.

Miles is on a new (to us) planet, Kibou-daini (settled by people of Japanese heritage). An entire culture mortally afraid of dying (pun intended) to the point where millions, if not billions, of citizens have chosen cryo preservation rather than the more traditional final frontier (i.e. Death). Oddly, since they are not dead, as citizens they still retain their votes in this democracy, albeit by proxy held by ever larger more monopolistic corporations. This sparked quite a few intriguing interpolations both in the characters and my own internal ponderings.

As Emperor Gregor suspected, thanks to his Komarran familial connections, Miles uncovers a plot that could pose an inexorable glacial threat to a third of the Barrayaran Empire and manages, in his usual manic hyperactive style, to expose and diffuse said threat.

Cameos by Ekaterin, Mark and Kareen. Briefer cameos by Ivan and Gregor in the last chapter, but have a box of tissues handy.

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