Writer's Block: Fantastic plastic

[Error: unknown template qotd]Augmentive surgery? No way.

Reductive surgery? Yes, but I wouldn't have the nerve - I couldn't even consider something as permanent as a body piercing...

Ironically I did have orthodontic surgery when I was younger -- had four or five teeth out altogether -- and because my teeth have continued 'migrating' towards the front of my mouth, their appearance is just as crowded as it was back then and I still don't have a straight bite: not one of my four front incisors lines up functionally with any of the others, which makes it impossible for me to bite my nails for example.

A Tale of Two Sherlocks

I went to see the new film "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" -- despite having avoided its predecessor after being completely alienated by its advertising. (I had nothing against the idea of Holmes as swordsman, martial artist and manic Victorian eccentric -- all these arguably having basis in canon -- but the marketing managed to convince me that this film really wasn't aimed at me.) However a friend assured me that the film had actually been quite fun, and the trailer for this sequel made it look reasonably promising, while the Guardian's notoriously picky critic Peter Bradshaw gave it a 4/5 review. So I went. (Despite the fact that pictures at the local multiplex are now nearly twice as expensive for me as classics at the BFI.)

( Robert E. Downey as Sherlock Holmes )

But when compared to the start of the BBC's new "Sherlock" season it delivered absolutely no contest. "A Scandal in Belgravia" was genuinely witty (it even contrives a credible modern-day set-up for Sherlock to be photographed in that famous deerstalker) and on occasion chilling (e.g. Sherlock taking revenge for an attack on Mrs Hudson -- a set-up in which he displays simultaneously more human and more cold-blooded actions than his custom) while displaying a formidable intelligence. My heart had sunk at the announcement that Moffatt/Gatiss planned to trot out Irene Adler (who, despite the Sherlockian mythology erected around her, actually appears in only one early story in the canon and is effectively forgotten ever after) to feature in their 21st-century 'reboot': oh no, it's going to be 'Holmes in love' again.

( But in fact it isn't )

I didn't think this episode was quite so good as the opening one of the first series (the timeline felt a bit bitsy, and overall running time came across as too long as they kept piling more and more complications into the plot: I think it could have been streamlined to a shorter slot). However, it was better than any of the others so far, and an infinite improvement on the very disappointing Moriarty reveal with which we were left last time: an excellent omen for forthcoming episodes.