A New Clue

So there might be a remake of the “Clue” movie. I’m not really sure what to feel about that. I mean, on one hand, remakes can be good (even though quite some aren’t). On the other hand, “Clue” was mostly as good as it was because of the cast, most of which, for one reason or other, won’t be available for a remake. I’m not sure someone can successfully replace Madeline Khan as Mrs. White or Tim Curry as butler Wadsworth. That doesn’t mean, though, I can’t be wrong.

The original “Clue” movie, thirty years old by now, is one of those secret gems which you either love or hate. There’s really no in-between. Either you enjoy the take on the classic Manor-Murder-Mystery genre as written by the likes of Agatha Christie or you simply find the jokes off-base and the whole story convoluted. I learned about it by accident, when a TV station showed it and I zapped in and stayed. Afterwards, I went on a hunt for the DVD and found it. Since then, it has been in my DVD player oodles of times. I just love the movie.

“Clue” is a comedic take on the classic mysteries which bring together a group of people at a place, show you there’s nobody else coming or going, and then have a murder happen. Who did it? In addition, the movie is loosely - very, very loosely - based on the board game by the same name. The six suspects take their names from the six suspects of the board game (Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlet, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, and Mrs. White) and the ground floor of the mansion is cut like the board itself (including the secret passages between the corner rooms). Mr. Body, the victim (first victim in the movie), is also from the board game, but has a different background. By the end of the movie, six people have been killed (none of them one of the suspects, of course) and the question of who the murderer is looms in the main hall. It’s then when Wadsworth, the butler, will clear up the case, one way or other.

Originally, “Clue” had a little gimmick, like many movies over time. It came with three different endings, each of them putting the blame of a different person or different persons. In the DVD version, you can either have a randomly chosen ending or you can watch all three endings one after the other (with the classic ‘the butler did it’ ending as the ‘real’ one).

But it wasn’t the gimmick which made “Clue” a classic over time. Like some other classic movies, it was a sleeper - a movie which didn’t do too well at the movie theatres, but had a long and strong life afterwards in rentals and on TV. People enjoyed the movie, even those who were far too young to watch it when it was released. The movie has a lot of great lines which can be quoted in a variety of different situations. It had a great cast, too. And it managed to keep the comedic tone despite the six murders, which isn’t easy, either. It’s also one of the few movies in which I can endure Angela Lansbury for one and a half hours. (Two others being “Death on the Nile” and “Evil under the Sun.”) She pales a little against actors like Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, and, above all, Madeline Khan.

Now there’s talk of a remake and I’m not sure if I want that. There are movies which have the perfect formula, but a formula which only works with all the ingredients the way they are. I have the feeling “Clue” might be one of those. The fact alone that it was a sleeper and not an instant hit points to it for me.

What I’m most worried about, is the off-chance of a gritty remake. Admittedly, a movie with six murders might qualify as gritty, but the fact that “Clue” managed to keep the comedic tone even with all those murders was one of its strong points. It wasn’t as if the characters made jokes about the dead, but the way the movie handled the murders and, in some cases, the hiding of the corpses (the party scenes to hoodwink the police officer especially), was fun and classy at the same time. The way the reactions dampened from the first murder to the last (when the Singing Telegram girl hardly got a reaction out of the group) was both amusing and fitting, since there is a moment when the mind will just shut down.

A new movie might not be up to par with that. On the other hand, there is also a (slight) chance the remake might be better. Perhaps there will be an even better chemistry between the new actors. Perhaps the jokes and puns will be even more on point.

Fact is, whether or not the fans want it, if the owner of the rights wants to remake something, they will do so.

Book Catchup

It’s between the years, as we say over here, and I have been doing some catching up with my books - my e-books, to be more precise. I’ve been buying several cosy mysteries over the last couple of months and I didn’t always get to read them right away. At the moment, I have the peace and quiet and spare time, so I thought I might just as well get to it.

Caught Dead Handed (A Witch City Mystery) by Carol J. Penny

I couldn’t put this one down the moment I had picked it up. It was a spurt of the moment decision to buy this one, since it was the first of a new series and I read about it in the monthly review of new cosy mysteries over at the Cosy Chicks.

Lee Barrett is returning to her hometown of Salem MA, only to find herself in trouble when she leaves after not getting the job she wanted only to find another employee of the local TV station WITCH-TV dead in the water. Lee gets tangled up in the investigation after taking the late woman’s job on a whim and becoming the new medium/horror movie host of the station. The fact that after many years her visions are returning, doesn’t make things better, neither does that fact that the dead woman’s tomcat has decided to adopt her and her aunt.

The story is very well-written and fun to read. It’s a good balance between mystery and humour and has enough twists and turns to keep me interested and reading on.

Murder on the Half Shelf and Not the Killing Type (Booktown Mysteries) by Lorna Barrett

Murder on the Half Shelf has been the first Booktown Mystery I bought as an e-book, I have the prior ones as soft-covers. It took me some time to get around to it, after I had bought it, and I have to admit the series is running into a bit of a block with this one. Tricia and her sister Angela spend a night at the newly-opened Bed and Breakfast, only to stumble yet over another murder. It’s getting a bit of a stretch to have more crimes happening, since Tricia on the whole lacks the nosiness of Miss Marple, who stumbles over stuff, because she is actively searching for it (at least that’s my impression of her).

Not the Killing Type was a little better, then. This time, there is actually a link back to Tricia again, a logical reason for her to investigate, since her sister is among the suspects - and so is she. During a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, Angela is set to become the new head of the Chamber. Suddenly, though, a third party pops up, only to get murdered a little later. Everyone who was in the meeting is a suspect and Angela and Tricia even twice so. Finally, from my point of view, Tricia also breaks off with her on-off boyfriend, the local sheriff - a guy who every time something happens starts to treat Tricia as if he’d never met her before, just because she could always have been the one who done it in his eyes. Nobody needs a guy like that for a boyfriend and Tricia is putting up with too much, anyway.

I might still give the series another try, but if things don’t change to much, it might go the way of the Coffeehouse Mysteries, which I haven’t been reading any longer for quite a while now, too. After all, there’s a few interesting new series coming up, like the Witch City Mysteries above or the two following.

Iced Chiffon (A Consignment Store Mystery) by Duffy Brown

I took my sweet time with that one, admittedly, buying it quite a while ago, but never really starting to read it. I’d taken a look in the book at amazon and then decided I wanted to have it, but somehow always found other stuff to read first, despite the fact that it was on my Kindle the whole time.

At first, Reagan, the main character of the starting series, seems a bit of a letdown, since she’s sitting in her partially renovated home and feeling sorry for herself, since her ex definitely got the best of her (everything but the house) during their divorce. He’s got the company, all the money, the younger girlfriend, and even the Lexus. Reagan has a half-finished Victorian house and more bills than she can pay. And, after Reagan and her aunt found the corpse of Cupcake, her ex’s new girlfriend, in the Lexus, he even plans to sell her house, which he still hasn’t fully handed to her, in order to pay his lawyer who helped him cheat her out of everything she should have gotten during the divorce.

But Reagan grows quickly out of her misery, taking things into her own hands, investigating the murder of Cupcake (given name Janelle), so the lawyer won’t be able to run up that much of a bill. With courage, a little bit of luck, and a lot of snooping, she does her best to get to the bottom of it all. It doesn’t always help that Walker Boone, the lawyer, seems set on telling her to stay out of it, only to help her when things are getting tough. Or that the leader of a local gang is running a bet on who will find out first, Walker or Reagan.

At the same time, Reagan turns the ground floor of her house into a consignment shop called the Prissy Fox, in order to make some money and get her bills paid - plus the food for the dog which turned up under the porch and prefers hotdogs to premium food.

The story is full of interesting characters and the strange and colourful life of Savannah. It has twists, it has turns, it has oodles of suspects (since Cupcake was making some illegal money on the side), and it has a lot of witty barter between the gang-member-turned-lawyer and the temperamental consignment store owner. I’m looking forward to more of it.

Geared for the Grave (A Cycle Path Mystery) by Duffy Brown

Also by Duffy Brown (who also wrote Iced Chiffon), but the start of another series. I haven’t finished this book, so I can’t tell where it will lead me and what will happen, but I can already tell that the heroine will be interesting and the setting is very promising, too - Mackinac Island, full of bikes and horses, but empty of cars. Evidently also having at least one murderer present, but it can’t go out to the tourists.

Scandals, Secrets, and Murder (The Widow and the Rogue Mysteries) by Maggie Sefton

This one I’ve had on my hard disk (the Kindle app on my computer at any rate) for a while, but I haven’t found the peace to read it so far. It’s not set in the present, unlike the other books in this post, but in the past of Washington DC. A senator who cheats people out of money gets murdered in a brothel, the girl who was with him is almost killed as well. The wound, luckily, isn’t fatal, since the man was quite heavyset and the weapon didn’t pierce her body deep enough.

The book brings together two unlikely allies, a widow, doing good work with her husband’s money, and the relative of a young man suspected of the murder, who had to leave England for a while. Where the widow and the rogue are going to end up, I don’t know, but I still think I will get into this one, once I can devote the time to it.

I’m enjoying catching up on my books, having the time and the peace for reading to my heart’s content. Of course, I also enjoy playing multiplayer games against friends from Challengers, even though I usually get defeated.

Back to Sleepy Hollow

Recently, a sub-station of Pro7 started to air the first season of “Sleepy Hollow.” That means people over here can finally see one of the best supernatural series made recently. I, however, have moved on already and took the chance to get the second season at iTunes yesterday. As with the first on, once I had started watching the episodes, I was caught and just had to go on and on and on. Which meant, with only 11 episodes, I have managed to watch the season in about a day (split between Friday evening and Saturday morning/afternoon).

It’s always a certain danger when a series is going into another season. I remember being completely taken with the first two seasons of “Warehouse 13” and finding the third so uninteresting I almost didn’t watch the final two seasons, which are great again. I did fear a little that the series, once in for a new season, might lose the things that made it so interesting to me: the close connection of mythology, history, conspiracies, and magic. I was afraid they would put some of that aside to boost other stuff. I was afraid action might take over, or the visible attraction between Ichabod and Abbie may.

Instead, they continued down the road they had chosen before. Yes, there is more action in the second season, but that is only to be expected, as the End of Days draws nearer and both sides get more desperate. They also expanded the pool of main characters a little. But they kept more than they changed. Just as in the first season, it pays to pay attention to the details of every episode. The situation can change from one moment to the next and what you thought you knew can suddenly be all wrong again. There is no such thing as a ‘monster of the week’ episode in “Sleepy Hollow,” either. With merely 11 episodes, there is no space for one. Even seeming ‘monster of the week’ episodes like “Heartless” or “Mama” include vital information and drive the main story. Often it takes one or two more episodes to realize the real impact another episode has had on the full story. “The Weeping Lady” seems to be a ‘monster of the week’ episode at first glance, since the ‘lady’ in question targets women around Ichabod and tries to drown them. The episode is important for the season in the long run, though, because of the outcome and the new information on both Ichabod and Katrina it delivers.

As in the first season, the monsters are not just creations of the show’s writers, either. Even though they might have taken some liberties with the material, all monsters have a solid foundation in mythology, history, or at least literature. They are very well-made (the Gorgon in the next-to-last episode took my breath away, once it was completely visible) and the writers know how to introduce monsters correctly: by not immediately showing them off.

At the end of the first season, the audience is left with no less than five cliff-hangers, every main character has their own. Ichabod is buried in his son’s former grave, Abbie is caught in purgatory, Katrina is in the hands of the headless horseman, Captain Irving has been arrested for the murders his daughter committed while possessed by a demon, and Jenny (Abbie’s sister) may be dead or still alive after a car accident. During the first episode of the second season, not only is a full story of a ‘possible future’ told, but all five cliff-hangers are resolved, too. And as much as there’s different threads running through the whole season (for both seasons out so far), they all get tied up nicely towards the end of each. It’s almost as if the show’s writers wanted to do a ‘how to’ about handling the story arcs right.

I really loved the second season of “Sleepy Hollow,” even though there’s less cliff-hangers at the end of it. I will definitely hope there will be a third one.

Returning to an old acquaintance

I was around twelve when I read “The Hound of the Baskervilles” for the first time. I actually snuck to the adult section of the library for it (and, luckily, the librarian knew of my taste for mystery and crime novels and allowed me to check it out, despite my age).

For Christmas that year I wished for a complete collection of all Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories (there was a paperback edition in pink, of all colours, out in Germany at that time). I was lucky to receive it and spent the next six months or so reading my way through it - more than once in some cases. I’ve been in the habit of rereading “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (my favourite Sherlock Holmes novel) very regularly, first in German, later on in English, for years. I might actually have been reading it once a year or more often for a long time. By now, I could probably reproduce most of it. (The only other book I ever got that obsessed over in my life was “Dracula” - in case you want to know.)

I was weaned off Sherlock Holmes later on, preferring the more ‘human’ approach by experience as shown by Agatha Christie’s protagonists for quite a while. I just didn’t have the capacity, by mind and, funnily enough, experience, then to really appreciate the deductive approach. Many more modern authors, some of which I still adore very much, also allowed me to broaden my mind. I kept coming back to Dartmoor, though, to the eerie, glowing dog and the poor Charles Baskerville, scared to death. I liked the more modern approach by Laurie B. King, the novel “The Moor.” I most certainly enjoyed the movie made by the BBC in the early 2000th. I really loved the version they did for “Sherlock.”

Recently, after I had bought my Kindle and started buying e-books from Amazon, I also acquired a full collection of all the Sherlock Holmes stories (plus Doyle’s excellent “Tales of Terror and Mystery”) and had it sitting on my hard drive for quite some time. I read the first two novels in the collection (“A Study in Scarlet” and “The Sign of Four”) while I was fighting with the end of one of my own stories, “Lightning and Ice.” Afterwards, I just read on. I’m a fast reader and most of Doyle’s stories are short (he was a master of the short story, but always thought he was destined to write long historical novels, talk about irony). I’ve finished the first collection of short stories (“The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”) and I’m hooked now. I remember a few short stories by name and a lot more by plot (I was born this way, I always remember the plot, even if I saw or read something ages ago). Yet, it’s interesting to read the stories again, quite some in English for the first time.

What surprises me, though, is how much my own brain has changed in meantime. I was on Watson’s side as a teenager, when I first read the stories. I was marvelling on Holmes’ deductions, sure nobody else could draw them. By now, however, I see what the story shows me and draw my own conclusions from it. More often than not, even with stories which I don’t remember by plot, I’m right.

I don’t get all the details, of course, since I don’t have all the experience Mr. Holmes has (or Doyle had, living in the time in which his character lived as well). Details about the clothing or behaviour that was not ‘normal’ at that time usually pass me by. Specific details about cigar ash or quirks gained through certain professions are something I can’t process, because I miss the necessary knowledge (but at least I know the earth orbits the sun). Most of Holmes’ clues are pretty mundane, though, and work with the modern world and my experience as well.

It feels as if I’m going to a new place, even though I’m really revisiting. I still admire Holmes for his ability to spot all the little clues and traces, but I rather feel like I'm racing along and keeping up with his thoughts than like I'm waiting for him to reveal them to me alongside Watson, as I have done in the past. It makes the stories something new, interesting, and invigorating for me. If you have ever seen an episode from the first season of “Sherlock,” you’re familiar with the way they made the clues dance over the screen as Holmes found them, putting the audience on the same level with him (they returned to that style in the third season, much to my enjoyment). That’s how reading the stories now feels for me, I spot the clues and my mind, much sharper and more adult now, starts spinning them around, looking at every angle, trying to put them together in a coherent story, a coherent ‘what happened.’

I’m returning to Sherlock Holmes and to his late Victorian world, but it really feels as if I’m going into a completely new world. Have you ever felt the same, in a positive way, after revisiting a novel, story, or movie that was dear to you in your youth?

My Happy End (of sorts) with "Sleepy Hollow"

In March, I complained here about Pro7 starting to air a mystery/horror series and then cancelling the whole thing after only four episodes. The series in question was “Sleepy Hollow.” Happily, iTunes allowed me to pick up the full first season now, in English, but that’s not a problem for me.

I went on a full-fledged marathon with “Sleepy Hollow,” watching the first half yesterday in the evening (getting to bed a little before 2 a.m.) and the second half this morning. I’ve just finished the last two episodes (listed as one double-length episode at iTunes) and I can just say one thing: “More please!”

The first season ends with a huge cliff-hanger, but the second season has already been confirmed, luckily. I might have to wait for quite a while (especially since I will have to wait for iTunes to offer it), but I know the story of Ichabod and Abbie will continue. On the ‘how’ I don’t even want to speculate now.

I can see now, with the whole first season under my belt, how the officials at Pro7 might have believed that the series was not worth continuing. Not because the series is bad, but because it is very complex and demands a lot of knowledge of early American history and the more or less far-spread conspiracy theories wrapped around early America. I suspect the station just thought people wouldn’t be able to follow the series, which is stupid, but understandable.

As a matter of fact, quite some stuff is explained pretty well in the series - and we have Google and Wikipedia, which means everyone can check things online they don’t understand. There is a lot of blood and death in the series, but it is dealing with the headless horseman, after all. What else is a headless rider with a sharp axe supposed to do with his time? Chop wood? Offer free rides to small children? Naturally, he is making people a head shorter.

The series so far has been written excellently, the threads merge, the story weaves in and out, with twists and turns. There are no ‘monster of the week’ episodes in the 13 (12 on iTunes) made so far. Even seeming ‘monster of the week’ episodes, like “Blood Moon” or “John Doe,” have a meaning for the overall story arc. The middle of the season, the three episodes “The Sin-Eater,” “The Midnight Ride,” and “Necromancer,” marks a change in the story, a twist into a new direction. The motives and identity of the headless horseman are revealed, the stage for the end is set, and the group that will have to stay together in the end forms. It’s very obvious the writers knew what they were doing, where they were starting, which ways they were going, where they would end up. I like that in a series, because it shows the creators take it seriously.

What to do now? Well, it’s time to wait for season 2. I still have to finish watching the series “Dracula,” so I will be entertained. It’s too bad, though, Pro7 didn’t have enough faith in their viewers to give an excellent series a chance beyond episode 4.