Word: blackwoods
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...supporting cast performs admirably, but they are overshadowed by the crime-solving pair. Mark Strong plays Lord Blackwood, the villain of the piece, a man determined to take over England and who seems to be employing supernatural powers towards that end. Strong is suitably menacing but entirely forgettable, enabling the duo of Watson and Holmes to steal the show with ease. The two leading men are accompanied by two less-than-leading ladies—Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) as Holmes’s former flame and Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly) as Watson’s fianc?...
...crime involves a member of the House of Lords, Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong, his hair shaped in a shiny black cap that makes him look like one of the Fisher Price little people), with a penchant for the perverse and the supernatural. He's caught by Holmes in the film's opening scenes in the middle of some Satanic ritual and condemned to death by hanging, but threatens to return from the grave. Holmes' favorite dangerous lady, "the woman," Irene Adler is also on hand. She's played by Rachel McAdams, who is saucy and fetching...
...literature; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was fun but he wasn't exactly Henry James. What is surprising is how bland the results are. The explosions and action sequences have an odd cheapness to them and the central plot is one of those dreary take-over-the-world routines. (Blackwood has "set his sights on America." Don't they all?) Even more surprising is that Robert Downey Jr. doesn't manage to overcome all that. In theory, he seems like such a good casting choice for a new Holmes; no actor of the appropriate age working today seems more quick-witted...
...fate of Lestat: "My hero, the Vampire Lestat, the genderless giant who lived in me, was always the voice of my soul in this novel [2002's Blackwood Farm] and it is no accident that he begins it with a cry of the heart, 'I want to be a saint, I want to save the souls of millions!' [But]by the end of the novel, confessing his failure ever to be anything but a rambunctious reprobate and Byronic sinner, he...resigned as the hero of the books which had given him life...This character who had been my dark search...
...What trick are you trying to play? Your only way out is to bow your head in submission. Otherwise you will suffer.'' She shook her fist in front of my nose and spat on the floor. Another young man used a stick to smash the mirror hanging over the blackwood chest facing the front door. He tore the mirror's carved frame off its hook and hurled it against the banister. On the hook, he hung a small blackboard with a quotation from Mao: ''When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns still remain.'' The Red Guards...