Saturday, January 4, 2014

The Empty Hearse


Welcome back! You guys have been missed!

The episode opened with an explanation of how it happened. My reaction was, "wow, that's quick." I can't be the only one who was expecting the mystery to be dragged on throughout the episode, maybe even the whole season. Almost too quick. This is a trick... But, I wouldn't put it past Moffat to do this, open the episode with the how and just get it out of the way. And then, I thought, well this is too much. I mean, with the dummy and the bungee jumping, and kissing Molly; it's outrageous! BUT, still wouldn't put it past Moffat to write something like that (mind you, this is before the opening credits so I didn't know that it was actually Mark Gatiss who wrote "The Empty Hearse"). Of course it was fake! (Or was it?! Hmm...)

And, of course, it had to be Mycroft who found him. Yes, it was explained later that Mycroft has always known that Sherlock's death is faked; Mycroft actually helped the plan. But I wouldn't put it past the two of them to actually fake one's own death and have the other figure it out.

As John said, it doesn't really matter *how* Sherlock did it; the most important question is *why*? Apparently, it's to destroy Moriarty's network. And here I thought that it was just two men going against each other intellectually. But, of course, Sherlock does have his own network (the homeless people), so it should have been obvious that Moriarty had one too. I'm gonna need to go back and rewatch season 2 (or maybe season 1 too) to figure it out.

Back to the "how" question, there were, if I remember correctly, three theories presented in the episode; the last of which seemed the most plausible, but they didn't actually say that it was the correct one. Yes, it was Sherlock telling the story, but he might have been explaining it to trick that guy. Sherlock's story included the rubber ball in the armpit bit to stop the pulse at the wrist, like so many fans' theorized. I'm still not convinced that they have told us the real story; we might have to wait until the end of the season. Which is just 8 days from now, so it's not a particularly long wait. Especially after how long they've made us wait since the actually event happened...

In Time

I finally watched it! I have no idea why it took me this long; I guess being a Justin fan, I was afraid that it wasn't a good movie. But I have heard pretty good things about the movie, and yet I kept on delaying watching it.

In Time is a movie set in the future, when time is literally money. Those who are rich can live forever; those who are poor have to work day to day to earn enough time to make it until tomorrow. Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) belongs in the later category. He wakes up every day with only 24 hours to live. Some rich guy who I forgot the name of, played by Matt Bomer, gave all his time to Salas because he's lived "too long" and was tired of it. Before doing so, he told Salas that for the rich people to live forever, a number of the poor must die; that's how they keep the earth from overpopulating (or at least that's how I understood it). Salas then set out to right the wrong, steal what had been stolen from them, their time, their life. He meets Sylvia Weis (Amanda Seyfried), the daughter of the very rich Philippe Weis (Vincent Kartheiser). Salas got his gifted time stolen from him, had to go back to where he came from (the ghetto), and fought the system to let his peers live.

The premise, time *is* money, is definitely interesting. As much as I love Justin, I wasn't sure about him being a lead in an action movie. Actually, I don't think it was even that; I was just very apprehensive about anything Justin related, because I just want everything he's touched to be the best. Yes, my expectations weren't very high, which is probably why I enjoyed the movie.

Quite a few lines were very corny ("What are we gonna do?" "Whatever we have to." And then they run away), but as an action movie, it was pretty good. I did think that they should have added a few humorous lines. The premise and tone of the movie afforded that, but the chance wasn't taken. Justin has good comedic timing, and, in my opinion, a bit of funny dialogue would have helped the movie. I loved Justin's delivery of "unfuckingbelievable" when the timekeeper (Cillian Murphy) just would not give up chasing them.

I was impressed by the cast of this movie. Along with the names I've mentioned, there's Johnny Galecki and Olivia Wilde. Wilde plays Will's mother; that was bizarre. Murphy and Kartheiser were particularly impressive, I thought.

Side note: Not that his character was very annoying in this movie, but during the scene where Salas had a gun pointed at Philippe Weis, I wanted Justin to pull the trigger because I've only seen Kartheiser in two things, Angel and Mad Men, and I absolutely loathe both his characters.

It's a decent movie, with an impressive cast, but the dialogue could have used some rewriting. I liked that, at the end, Salad did become a thief. I kinda wanted him to turn into the bad guy -- because that would be a twist -- but he was just being the Robin Hood character, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. I'm not convinced that the "system" was wrong, though. Sure it's unfair, but maybe that's how it's supposed to work. Society is not meant to be fair. We don't know if what they're doing is actually fixing anything.

It was thoroughly enjoyable though, and I'm a bit embarrassed, as a big Justin fan, that it took me this long to finally watch it. The only other movie starring Justin that I have yet to watch is Runner Runner, and looking at the reviews I'm not particularly rushing to watch it.