Bonzuko

From: ep. 2.2

Line: (Sherlock): John! You are amazing! You are fantastic! You’ve never been the most luminous of people, but as a conductor of light you are unbeatable. … Some people who aren’t geniuses have an amazing ability to stimulate it in others.

Reference: It’s actually from The Hound of the Baskervilles, the story on which 2.2 is mostly based. Here’s the quote, just after Watson has examined a walking stick, attempting to use Holmes’ methods:

“Really, Watson, you excel yourself,” said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. “I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.”

Ariane’s transcript of 2.2 / full text Hound

The Making Learning Connected MOOC I’m in had an Introduction assignment this week, and coincidentally, I assigned a Self-Portrait project to my World Visual and Performing Arts class at DU. So I made one video to basically take care of my entry for both. Please to enjoy.   ~Jenn

As usual, find the whole shebang on Nerds In Babeland.   ~Jenn

From: ep. 1.1

Line: SHERLOCK: …and I’m sure she scrubbed your floors, judging by the state of her knees.

Reference: The line above is Sherlock noticing that Donovan and Anderson are having an affair, by such details as Donovan wearing Anderson’s deodorant, and the worn state of her knees (a catty dig about what exactly they were doing during the affair). In Doyle’s “The Red Headed League,” Holmes asks directions of the mysterious pawnbroker’s assistant, so he could look at the knees of his trousers. They were worn, stained, etc. and by seeing them Holmes ascertained that he had been digging a tunnel under the pawn shop. (Pic)

From: ep. 1.1

Event: James Phillimore disappears after returning home to fetch his umbrella

Reference: This very thing is referenced in passing in “The Problem of Thor Bridge.” It’s one of those that Watson likes to list as ones he may or may not ever tell us. He doesn’t. Below is the actual quote from the story:

“Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatchbox with my name, John H. Watson, M. D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine. Some, and not the least interesting, were complete failures, and as such will hardly bear narrating, since no final explanation is forthcoming. A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader. Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world. No less remarkable is that of the cutter Alicia, which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged, nor was anything further ever heard of herself and her crew. A third case worthy of note is that of Isadora Persano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science.”

Don’t you want to read all of these crazy-sounding adventures? I mean, what’s with the duellist and the worm?   ~Jenn

Thanks to Guy Adams’ the Case Book for the idea, and this site for the full text.

Below is an excerpt, and as usual, find the rest at Nerds in Babeland.   ~Jenn

What I just presented today at ROMOCOCO.    ~Jenn

Review: Arrested Development Season 4 

Review by: Jenn (also see this review on Nerds in Babeland)

[GENERAL SPOILER ALERT]

“I have just witnessed a 15-circle Venn diagram”–Prof. Jenn’s Facebook status, Monday morning post-season 4

I was one of those fans that sat down on Sunday and watched every one of the new 15 episodes of Arrested Development one after the other. In one sitting. I had rewatched all the old FOX episodes very shortly before the release of the highly anticipated new Netflix series, so the early shenanigans of the Bluth family were still fresh in mind as I embarked on Season 4.

Now of course the first thing anyone interested in this series wants to know is: Is it as funny as the previous three seasons? Well…

Is Season 4 as funny as the old seasons? No. Is it as entertaining? Yes. More so, if you’re the kind that likes interlocking plot puzzles (which I am). Each episode in Season 4 centers around one character as its POV character. So we basically see the same span of time (directly after the Season 3 finale with the boat, etc.) elapse over and over, with each different POV giving us more layers of what’s happening in the background of the other episodes, until by the time we get to Maeby’s story, our head is reeling with all the interconnected nodes in the plot web. This gives Season 4 much rewatchability, as there are plenty of clues and Easter-egg like treats as each episode nods to each other one.

Some highlights: the Maeby story. Maria Bamford. The scenes between Gob and Tony Wonder. The incredible goofy psychosis of Buster. Cinco de Quatro. Tommy Tune. The head-swimmingly interconnected plots. Actually I can really just call it one plot, with several different windows offering different views of it.

Bottom Line: Absolutely recommended, no question. If the first ep or two starts out slow for you, keep at it. Your brain will explode by, like, episode 7.

Image credit

From: ep. 1.3

Character/s: Sherlock’s “Homeless Network” –Sherlock uses the information gleaned from a paid network of homeless people to track down the whereabouts of an assassin called The Golem.

Reference: Holmes’ “Baker Street Irregulars” are used a few times throughout the canon, the first appearance of which is in A Study in Scarlet. Holmes always has a knack for getting on well (and respecting) the lower classes, and this is one way that he uses the advantages of the invisible yet sharp-eyed street urchins of London to help his investigation. As he says in The Sign of Four, “They can go everywhere, see everything, overhear every one.” Fun side note: in the Blu-Ray commentary, Mark Gatiss (I think? Or was it Moffatt? anyway…) remarks that they definitely wanted to have the Baker Street Irregulars in their updated Sherlock, but that having them all be little boys would have been too weird, “like Fagin.” 

This is one of those longer posts that got cut off in its original appearance here. It is about taking those Three Rules I discussed earlier and looking at them in a purely violence-oriented way. This essay served as my TSD black belt essay, and I will be revisiting it during my presentation at ROMOCOCO next week, specifically re: staged combat and action scene composition.   ~Jenn

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Acting’s Magic Three Rules in Warriorship

A while back, I wrote about how the Three Rules from Acting training (objective, tactics, obstacles) served as guidelines for writing strong prose—I renamed them the Three Rules for Protagonists. As I did so, I noticed that the Three Rules also apply to the martial arts. Having recently weeded through a bunch of old MFA musings re: the Three Rules and Mamet’s “Where Do You Put the Camera?” it hit me that his theories of simplicity in filmmaking had everything to do with warriorship and the Three Rules.

Whew. Let me begin my explanation with a Mamet quote (from the abovementioned piece):

As long as the protagonist wants something, the audience will want something. As long as the protagonist is clearly going out and attempting to get that something, the audience will wonder whether or not he’s going to succeed. The moment the protagonist, or the auteur of the movie, stops trying to get something and starts trying to influence someone, the audience will go to sleep.

As long as an action fulfills the protagonist’s objective, then it’s a strong choice. If it’s merely interesting and only interesting, it will not actually be interesting to the viewer. The same holds true for writing: the minute a writer stops writing beautiful, interesting prose and concerns herself with “what do I want” (Rule 1), she will begin to write gripping works of whatever genre. Mamet calls this “uninflected” which I love as a term for this idea of unadorned, simple,

Jamie and Jo learning about lightsabers, summer 2012

compelling work.

How does this relate to warriorship? In the martial arts, it’s so easy to fall into what I call the “coolness” trap; it’s the same trap both actors and writers fall into. It’s irresistible to the ego to write interesting stuff; to be interesting onstage: in other words, to appear cool. The ego doesn’t want to look boring or plain, it wants to look cool. It seems contrary that the least interesting choice is actually the strongest, and that the less information you give a reader/audience, the better they will get into the story. The exact same thing happens to a martial artist: we see so much over-the-top action in films that look so cool: wire-fu, elaborate long fight sequences, sleek catsuits, macho setups for sport fighting like cages. The problem for the artist’s ego is that the really cool-looking stuff of martial arts is in fact the least effective in a real fight. Same for an actor, same for a writer. And now I’m writing this, it occurs to me that we could probably say this for any art form…

The Three Rules For Warriorship:

1)      What do I want? (Objective) –do I want to attack or defend myself? Do I want to cause harm? What specifically do I want to do, physically? How do I want the fight to end?

2)       What do I do to get what I want? (Tactics) –What actions specifically do I need to achieve my objective? Weak or waffly (or “cool”) choices here will fail, in a much more obvious way than just a mediocre performance or piece of writing. In a martial arts situation, a weak tactic leads to a smack in the head or even a fatality (or a lost match, if we’re talking sport martial arts).

3)      What stands in my way? (Obstacles) –is my opponent’s guard up? Armor or weapons involved? Are there innocents anywhere? Is the law on my side? Is the space restricted, either physically or otherwise?

What’s the conclusion here? That good art should be “uninflected, … requiring no additional gloss” (Mamet again). Keep it simple. Which, of course, is the most difficult thing about mastery.

Source:

Mamet, David. On Directing Film. Penguin. New York: 1992. Print.