Monday

Dental check up first thing before work, all good. They are a lot nicer to me now.

Kept yesterday really quiet - felt like I needed it - plenty to do this week. Starting from a position of disinterest and lack of enthusiasm.

Watched 'Sherlock' last night. hated it. Thought it was a horrible, self indulgent, smug, self satisfied mess of in-jokes and lazy writing. Lots of back-slapping, camp humour and under-development. So, what they are saying is - Sherlock didn't solve the case, didn't twig that Mary was a 'bad-un' ( I did, she was obviously too smart and too 'involved' - she had more screen time than her husband) - the bad guy at the end beat him, because Sherlock didn't solve the case - even though the whole mind-palace thing was rubbish and full of plot holes, it's also lifted directly from Thomas Harris' 'Hannibal' - in almost every detail - and any fool could see that the interior of the library would never be a match for the modernist house 'upstairs'. There was far too much camp comedy (Mrs Hudson, exotic dancer and coke baron... really... ) and almost no real invention or reference to Conan Doyle - except general gist (The Master Blackmailer is one of Conan Doyle's best works ) and, obtusely - the bit about 'The East Wind Coming) - which actually comes from the Basil Rathbone films and written to encourage a sympathetic attitude to the UK from America before they joined WW2. I just thought it was junk. I do realise that I'm probably in the minority here... but that's how I felt.

Afterwards, I watched the American remake of 'Let The Right One In' - one of those curious exercises where an exceptional and original European film is remade, shot for shot, for an English speaking audience. See also 'The Vanishing' and 'Funny Games'. It wasn't bad - very accurate, good on the atmospherics, but so faithful to the original that it just wasn't worth doing - with one exception, they edited the most disturbing and intriguing element from the plot and made 'Abby' into the one thing she wasn't. I thought that was a bit cowardly.

Sad to hear that Alexandra Bastedo died last week, she was the star of The Champions, which was basically an early X-Men and played on Sunday afternoons when I was a kid on TV. I loved it, she was fantastic, married Patrick Garland in later life and ran an animal charity. She's also famous (in my house) for being host of the Miss World competition once when it was a major cultural event (Long time ago) and cocking up really badly - at one point saying 'Oh Fuck' to a global audience of millions after she'd made a mistake. She made a few films along the way, including Casino Royale, Batman Begins - and even popped up in Eastenders once. She was spectacularly attractive and very much 'of the time'. Popular culture, wise - she's the cover star of 'Rank' - the live LP by The Smiths. Another little bit of the past vanishes forever.

Really struggling to get into the work mode today, very slow start.