A Short Sherlock Holmes Post

After an encouraged viewing of the first two episodes of the BBC's Sherlock, I realized that I had still not seen the recent movie. Netflix instant failed me, so I set out today to find it. A local used media store in my area (an establishment that receives a healthy amount of my income) would surely have it, as they usually carry many copies of popular films as they are bought and sold in very large quantities for a short time after release. This movement of goods has an added benefit. Due to supply and demand, the price is usually driven down to a price that is affordable by many. The movie had been out for a while, though. Would I be so lucky as to find it? Aye. One copy awaited me, nestled snugly in the wrong place. The organization at this location is usually impeccable, so I assume that it was handled and placed in the wrong place that very day by a potential buyer who, for some reason, decided against purchase. Their decision resulted in my victory, and I found my prize leaning nonchalantly against the film "Shoot 'Em Up" (which I also grabbed as an added bonus). I was right about the cost: $4.99 for an immaculate copy. I paid the clerk and walked out a champion. This evening, I reclined in my usual spot, put my personal computer aside, and sat down to view the film.

It was good.

~The End~

Epilogue: The BBC series is enjoyable, too

The Bat

I've been on a Batman kick lately pretty bad. I've been reading the comics for the first time (Knightfall storyline), and started rewatching the old Animated Series from 1992. It was on FOX in the afternoon, if I recall right, and is still considered to be a great iteration of Batman. It was a different kind of cartoon at the time and featured more adult themes than other cartoons at the time, including drug use and people actually getting killed every now and then. It was dark and gritty, and it wasn't unknown for episodes to have an unhappy ending.

One of the better things it featured were making some of the villains just normal people who were pushed too far or made a poor life decision. Sure, there are a few villains who are just criminals or thieves but they were notorious for fleshing out classic villains more. For example, they came up with the idea of Mr. Freeze being a tragic character who was out to cure his dying wife instead of being a cold-themed mad scientist (his first episode actually won the show an Emmy for his performance).

Another thing I love, is that it has a fully orchestrated soundtrack with each episode done as if it were an animated film, with the music actually matching the onscreen action, and even going so far as to give themes to characters. I also looked up that they would record the entire dialogue for the show with every actor in the room. This let them have more realistic reactions to each others dialogue, which helped the show tremendously.

Anywho...

Most of the villains have very specific themes that let most people know who's involved with the crime being committed. But sometimes Batman doesn't seem to realize it. Case in point, I saw an episode involving plants acting up, and Batman was SHOCKED to find it was Poison Ivy. Seriously, who did he think it was? The OTHER plant-based villain in the show? Or whenever Joker breaks out of prison, Batman never seems to find him until after he commits a crime, but his hideout is always an abandoned carnival, or a toy factory, or something even close. I'm just saying if he knew what he was doing, the first place I'd check would be any carnivals, circuses, or toy factories, or toy stores, or what have you, because the odds are he would be at one of those (also, Gotham City sure looks like it has a bunch of abandoned carnivals).

Finally, for the uninformed, Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) was the voice of the Joker. He does a fantastic job on that performance (Ron Perlman also does a voice for Clayface, which is a pretty good episode too).

I'll probably have more Batman posts later, but for now, this is all I got.

The Lost Goodwin

I recently resumed watching Lost. I watched the first season around 2 years ago, but when I started Season 2, I kind of wandered off for a while and never came back until last month. I began with Season 2, since I figured I'd just remember everything that happened a few episodes in (I did). Right now, I'm on the first half of Season 3, and I haven't had time to get back to it in a few days. But that's not what this post is about.

I heard from my friend Amber that there was a character named "Goodwin" in the show. Being the self-obsessed man I am, I was excited. What would the character who shares my name be like? I waited with anticipation for my namesake to appear.

In Season 2 of Lost, one of the characters is running through the jungle when he stumbles across a body impaled on a stick. The character chasing him catches up and refers to the impaled body with the following: "His name was Goodwin."

...... Great.