Friday 4 October 2013

Sherlock Holmes- A Study In (Some Hue of Red)


Last winter my mum dared to take me on a trip to the book store. One can never expect what they are going to end up having when they enter a book store and I left with two new books and a new notebook. And I use the term 'new' in the sense that I have not own these copies before, and I have read The Hobbit before so even then the story isn't new to me.



(The book next to Sherlock Holmes is my Kindle which I did not purchase at the book store that day.) Slowly I have been making my way through my books and school books and finally I finished The Hobbit and got started on the very large and very heavy The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I haul that book, plus my other school supplies, to my classes every day (except Tuesdays and the weekends) and I am moving through it quite fast to my surprise and joy. Last week I finished the first tale called 'A Study in Scarlet' and loved it to bits, although was less enthralled by the Mormon backstory. Don't get me wrong, I love Mormons- no really my cousins and a few of my close friends are- but these parts were rather long and I kept wondering what they had to do with the main story of Holmes and Watson finding the killer.

Nonetheless it is a thrilling tale and cleverly concocted and then unraveled but I couldn't help but constantly compare it with the BBC television show 'Sherlock's adaptation of this story 'A Study in Pink'.

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I am a firm believer in the book is better than the movie, because most of the time it is true and most of the time the movie doesn't even use the book as a guideline it uses it more as inspiration. I know when writing a screenplay that inspiration can draw from anywhere, but when you are making a movie based off a book there are certain elements from the original story audiences want to see and if they don't get what they want, the movie is then dubbed as worse than the books.
I found my dream job! 
After reading 'A Study in Scarlet' I came to the conclusion that it was a very good story but it was a fairly short story, and unless they wanted to incorporate the victim's long back story, there wasn't enough material there to make an hour and a half television episode based off of it. But it did make an hour and  half television show and it deviated quite a bit from the original story and to be perfectly honest, I don't mind.

It might have to be the fact that I watched 'Sherlock' before I read the book which swayed my judgment, usually I do try to read the book before seeing the movie/television show, but in this case my parents started watching 'Sherlock' and I watched with them before I even owned a copy of any Sherlock Holmes. But now I do own a copy of Sherlock Holmes and I have read the first tale and I can compare the story to the television show.

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Of course it takes place in modern times and has a cast beyond perfection- at least better than the movies, I love Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law but they shy in comparison to Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. This means that there is a lot of modern technology used and I think that it is sad to say that even 100+ years later it is still perfectly accurate to say that Watson was a war doctor in Afghanistan. In particular to the case they are solving in the story, the book's version and the show's version are completely different and opposite right down to the meaning of the letters 'RACHE', and I found that a bit bothersome, but Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat (the creators and writers) somehow found a way to make the story similar but brand new. I thought I would hate how different the two stories are, and maybe it is because I watched before I read, but I love it, so much that I've watched both seasons of Sherlock countless amount of times. Also I've always liked Moffat's work it is always well done and he knows how to play with your emotions- and I really wouldn't want to argue with this:

Moffat!
^ It is really bad photoshop but still so true.

Going forward in the book I shall enjoy trying to identify which stories inspired the television show episodes (if not obvious by the title) and I will enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed the show. I now know they differences can be monumental, but in some weird way it works to me.

Now to sit and wait for season three...
Hahahaha series 3 of Sherlock hahahaha *cries*














































.... I imagine I would finish my entire book by the time that happens.

-Charlotte

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