The N.Y. Times‘ Sarah Lyall is reporting about the making of producer Joel Silver and director Guy Ritchie ‘s Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros., 11.13), a big-budget effort aimed at the knuckle-dragging popcorn-munchers who don’t know from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Basil Rathbone or Billy Wilder‘s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes or Herbert Ross‘s … Read more
There’s a story up today about Russell Crowe, 44, thinking about accepting a second-banana role as Dr. Watson in Guy Ritchie‘s Sherlock Holmes, subordinate to star Robert Downey, Jr. If true, it simply means that Crowe has moved into that 40-plus phase in which a top-dog actor figures (a) “if I like the part, I … Read more
Of all the hated big-studio franchises, Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey, Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes films (and there were only two, thank God, released in 2009 and 2011) delivered the most anguish.
Quentin Tarantino smoking a Sherlock Holmes pipe…actually a Hans Landa pipe…either way. QT: “It’s a situation, I think…I’m being fair enough to say that the armorer, the guy who handles the gun, an armorer is 90% responsible for everything that happens when it comes to that gun. But, but, but, but, but, but…the actor is … Read more
I decided a while back that Guy Ritchie‘s Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre (Lionsgate, 3.3) was almost certainly meh-level or, you know, some kind of problem. Partly because it began filming over two years ago (1.14.21), and then the previously scheduled 1.21.22 release was abandoned by STX Entertainment “without comment.” Not to mention Ritchie’s rep … Read more
I’ll watch almost anything in black-and-white Scope, which I happen to be queer for, but I draw the line at Billy Wilder‘s Kiss Me Stupid. I tried to re-watch it last night (again), and I couldn’t do it, man. I just couldn’t. (Oh, and I watched two full episodes of grubby, grimy, endlessly talky Andor … Read more
Stephen Frears and Christopher Hampton‘s Billy Wilder & Me, set to film next spring, will be film-maven catnip. The story will have to be sad, given the gradual downturn of Wilder’s career when he hit his late 60s. It’ll be one thing for serious Wilder devotionals, and another for casual viewers who might know him … Read more
From “Elemental Pleasures of Jack Reacher,” posted on 12.18.12: “Within the last week I read a comment about Chris McQuarrie‘s Jack Reacher (Paramount, 12.21) being “a ’90s urban actioner,” which the commenter intended, I gathered, as some kind of putdown. Well, take out the negative inference and he’s dead right — Reacher is a kind … Read more
HE to Joseph McBride, author of “Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge” (Columbia University Press, 9.24): “I just wanted to tell you, Joe, how much fun your Wilder book is. I was expecting the usual sequential, chapter-by-chapter approach, and I got that from your very thorough recounting of his youth in Germany. (And you went … Read more
Imagine actually paying money to wear this godawful Sherlock Holmes fall jacket. (Or whatever you want to call it.) Imagine wearing the whole wretched outfit, including the whiteside workboots. Look at that printed shirt! Unbelievable.
Dolittle is set in the Victorian era — the late 1860s, 1870s or 1880s. The underwater sea-diving suit worn by Robert Downey, Jr.‘s Dr. John Dolittle is the same model worn by Kirk Douglas‘s Ned land in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. What if Downey’s Dolittle and Sherlock Holmes characters were to somehow join up … Read more
When Joseph McBride replied at some length to my questions about Irma la Douce and his commentary on a forthcoming Kino Lorber Bluray, I replied at length also. Here’s what I said: “So unlike most critics, you’re not of the opinion that Billy Wilder peaked with Some Like It Hot, The Apartment and One, Two, … Read more