A Sherlock for the 21st Century.

This has been a good couple of years for the World's Greatest Detective.

In 2009, the Robert Downey movie reinvented the Victorian Holmes as an action hero (not the stretch you might think if you're not familiar with the canon)and now a modern-day Sherlock is kicking butt, texting Watson and deducting his ass off on a three-part Masterpiece Mystery series on PBS.

The second of that TV trio of tales aired last night. The first one, a week ago, was so good I figured I'd better wait and see if the second was as good before jumping into the pool. Well, it wasn't, not quite, but it was still superb fun and entirely Sherlockian in a modern way.

Both efforts have perceived Holmes as a younger man than have most previous theatrical efforts and I think it serves the character well. The smart ass arrogance that is inherent  in his know-it-all attitude wears better when he still seems a bit callow; in a older man, it would be more off-putting.

In any case, I suggest you try and catch up with the TV airings. They're worth it. And never fear, PBS is the "good" public broadcast system, unlike that nasty NPR which ruined that poor Juan Williams' life and left him to suffer the rest of his days with only his $2 million Fox News contract to comfort him.
In other words, they won't be coming to get you for un-American activities shortly after the polls close tomorrrow.

I can't vouch for Wednesday, however.

There is something to be said for delayed gratification.

It is with a mixture of smug satisfaction and dark melancholy that I watch all the excitement among literate Americans (a fading sect, treat them nicely) at the arrival of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the final volume in the late Stieg Larsson's masterful trilogy, on these shores.

I ordered mine as soon as the English language version was released in Europe, through Amazon UK and had the satisfaction of finishing the absorbing tale well ahead of most U.S. readers. Thus the smugness. But now I can but recall the pleasure I had months ago and am an onlooker as so many others begin to experience the same pleasure. And that makes me sad.

All in all, I guess I'd do it the same way again. Maybe.

Lost along the way?

I have had a novel percolating in my mind for too long to remember. I know, and have written, the opening pages. I know exactly how it is going to end, right down to the final line. What I can't do, probably will never do, is get from that beginning to that ending. C'est la vie. Maybe there is no story there, just an idea I'm not smart enough to deal with.
I mention this because the developing meme among those who are defending the ending of Lost, the TV show, against those who feel cheated, most because too many questions were left unanswered, goes something like this:

The show ran for six years, for heaven's sake. It's not just a two hour episode or even a movie. You can't possibly tie everything together which happened over that stretch of time.

Really?

Let's postulate that in TV terms, a long running episode show telling a single story is comparable to a novel in literary terms.

Can you come up with a successful novel which did not, in the end, provide satisfaction in one fashion or another about all the stories and characters who passed through its pages, no matter how long the time span? Would you want to read such a novel?

I am not one of those terribly upset about the ending but there are certainly a myriad of things which seem to have been meaningless over the previous episodes. What were the numbers that plagued Hurley and kept showing up elsewhere all about? What the hell did the Dharma Initiative have to do with anything? How come Jacob could leave the island but Smoky Monster could not? What did pushing that button every 108 minutes have to with anything? Why could no babies be born on the island? These were big issues in seasons past and some or them, all of them, should have been dealt with.

I know you start out here and know you want to get to there in a project as big as this one was and invariably run into dead ends or failed storylines along the way. But that should be your problem to solve, not the audiences.

Other Visions.

To make productive use of the old Curtin’s Corner blog, I'm using it as a supplemental resource to both this site and Liquid Diet until I can  give it new life and a new identity of its own.

With that in mind, and since some of you visiting here are relative newcomers to my ramblings, I have added an Other Visions page at that site which will be home to my efforts at writing fiction, publishing new stories as they are written and moving fiction already on line into a more accessible location.

The page currently features The Leprechaun, After Billy Died and Clark in the Sky, three of my most successful stories (i.e., somebody paid me for them). These are pretty much as originally written; as other older stories go up, I will be rewriting and polishing them to some extent.

I started out to add that page on this site, by the way, because Blogger has recently added the capability of additional pages, but it seems to limit each to a single page rather than allowing several posts and scrolling over according to some set limits. That's also the case over at Wordpress, but I find it easier to deal with that there because I'm more familiar with the conventions there.

If I am wrong about that or missing something about its capabilities, I invite any Blogger expert to set me straight. Thanks.

Expanding my virtual world, one webpage at a time.

As I said when I moved the Mermaids blog over here, I will be using the previous URL,  Curtin's Corner, as a supplemental resource until I can give it new life and a new identity of its own. As part of that plan, I have added the Other Visions page over there to feature my efforts at writing fiction.

Other Visions currently features The Leprechaun, After Billy Died and Clark in the Sky, three of my most successful stories (i.e., somebody paid me for them).

Check 'em out. More to come.

This makes my day....or will make my March when it happens.

Those who have been around a while have heard me rave about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, the first volume in Steig Larrson's incredible trilogy from Sweden about crime and politics featuring one of the most unusual and memorable heroine's in contemporary fiction. I liked the series so much that I went to Amazon UK to purchase the third volume well in advance of its US release this summer.

Well, the Swedish film based on that first book is going to be released in the US next month and it appears it's going to be equally good and will adhere to the novel's storyline:



According to my friend Andersson Anders, who lives in Uppsala, both Dragon and the second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire, have been turned into films to date:

The first one seems to be very good, the second one not quite up to par. I will wait here also for the TV series next year in six parts (I think) with a lot of stuff that were cut out of the theatrical versions.

The prospect of the TV series ever making to these shores are dim at best, but I'll be first in line if and when.