In 1893, having wearied of his most famous creation, Arthur Conan Doyle sent Sherlock Holmes tumbling off a Swiss mountain ledge to his death in the foaming Reichenbach Falls, still locked in battle with his nemesis, Professor James Moriarty, “the Napoleon of crime.” Holmes stayed dead for eight years. But then …

Well, I don’t want to suggest the non-possibility that director Guy Ritchie has no sequel up his sleeve to follow “A Game of Shadows,” his second neo-Holmes movie. This new one retains some of the virtues of the first—mainly the irrepressible Robert Downey Jr. in the title role; amiable Jude Law as his prickly colleague, Dr. Watson; and Sarah Greenwood’s plush Victorian production design.

But it also continues, and compounds, the shortcomings of that earlier film, chiefly the edited-to-death incoherence of Ritchie’s action scenes, with their tedious slo-mo trappings and kung-fu anachronisms, and his complete indifference to the elegant charm of Conan Doyle’s famous “consulting detective.” I mean, Sherlock Holmes in drag? Please.

While Conan Doyle did bring Moriarty out of the shadows in “The Final Problem” — the Holmes story to which this movie is largely irrelevant—Ritchie drags the evil brainiac onto center stage, which is a predictable mistake. Any character so malign must shrivel in the light; and Jared Harris (of “Mad Men”), who plays the nefarious professor, is too genial a presence to pass for sinister.

Read the full review at Reason.com

For those of you expecting what the trailer promised: a bloated, confusing, noisy, headache-inducing Christmas blockbuster weighed down with CGI and barely made watchable by the presence of He Who Makes Everything Better – star Robert Downey Jr. – you’re in for a surprise. Director Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” might be a tad bloated, somewhat hard to follow, and easily 15 minutes too long, but the director makes this umpteenth cinematic re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s intrepid detective his own and delivers a spirited, entertaining, blissfully mindless couple of hours at the movies.

Ritchie’s slovenly Holmes is a long way from Basil Rathbone’s, the actor who played the resident of 221 B Baker Street in 14 films over half as many years starting in 1939, and he’s even further from Doyle’s. The mannered, sophisticated detective is now a borderline recluse who’s utterly dysfunctional when not preoccupied with a case, a glib ladies man and ready action hero who knows how to use his fists.  As his physician-partner in crimesolving, Jude Law grabs his best role in years as Holmes’ closest friend and mother hen.

Set in London in the late 1800s, the game afoot does not involve Holmes most famous nemesis Professor Moriarty this time, but instead Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a presumably hanged ritual killer and user of the dark arts who might have risen from the dead with a master plan for world domination. Through an influential Gentleman’s Club of fellow occultists, Blackwood all but controls Scotland Yard which leaves only  Holmes, Watson and Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) — a scheming American woman from Holmes’ past with dueling loyalties and a mind just as sharp as her romantic rival’s — to stop him.   (more…)

Director Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” opens Christmas Day 2009.

The African nation of Malawi is one of the poorest places on earth, a land in which villagers easily live an entire year on less than Madonna’s annual budget for soy chai latte, and AIDS claims a depressing chunk of the population. It’s no garden spot. But last week it was as if this country, which holds on to its strong tradition of family values in spite of intense international disdain and patronization, defended its honor in the face of a scourge that might do as much psychic damage to its long-term future as disease, hunger and rejection of kabbalah. 

 When Madonna showed up, via private plane, with her personal trainer and assorted underlings, hoping to snatch yet another evidently healthy child to add to her growing, international brood – and fill a hole in her soul left vacant by the departure of a husband, and soothe her jealousy over other starlets’ ability to save the world – Malawi did something unprecedented. The country said, through a judge, “Take your millions and your treadmill and your vegan diet, and scram!” (more…)

This is an emergency Madonna update, a warning that the one-time Material Girl has turned from a bra-baring, Britney-slurping, intercourse-simulating extrovert into a greedy baby-collector. At mid-life, an unmarried Madonna is, right now, in the African nation of Malawi, choosing a matched child to go along with the tot she already purchased from the African nation like so much luggage, David Banda.

This is why Madonna is my Celebutard of the Week, in keeping with my book, “Celebutards: the Hollywood Hacks, Limousine Liberals and Pandering Politicians Who Are Destroying America,” (Kensington).

Madonna is asking a judge to let her adopt 4-year-old Mercy James, a child who, like David, has a biological father but no mother. Her grandmother was incensed. (more…)