Went to bed ridiculously late last night - or should I say this morning? - 4am. Then woke up ridiculously early -7am, even more so for a Saturday. That would mean I had 3 hours sleep - which is simply not enough for a growing being. I dreamt of emails… Yeah… Rock. And. Roll.

Couldn’t get back to to sleep so did some writing and checked up on some emails then did some illicit internet telly watching. By 12 noon I could keep my eyes open no longer and lost consciousness, pretty much. Woke up at 2pm. Pretty much the entire day gone, then. I hate that.

Could only muster enough energy to feed myself and flop back to bed, where I have been ever since, surfing the interwebz, watching even more illicit internet telly and generally being a well-informed vegetable.

Even the housemates have colluded and there has been an unusual calm and quiet. It’s like we’ve all made a pact to hardly come out of our rooms and to not bother with the usual pleasantries such as talking to or even looking at each other. It’s great.

Upshot of my crazy sleeping day is that it’s almost midnight and I’m wide awake. Dammit. Usually if I’ve spent most of the day supine I start to get antsy and cabin-feverish but I actually feel better for having done nothing. Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow, I guess. Looks like I’ll be up most of the night. Again. Which means I’ll probably wake up late and half of another day will be gone. Better get some work done while I can then.

Tomorrow, I’m finally going to see Sherlock Holmes, not holding out much hope that it’ll be brilliant but I do like Robert Downey Jr - damned fine actor - although I recall going to see Iron Man and being terribly ill (throwing up and everything. Bad, bad migraine) never had that violent a reaction to a movie before. I blame Gwyneth.

Speaking of films and fine acting, I watched The Private Lives of Pippa Lee today and it did not suck for a girlie film. Robin Wright (nee Penn) acted her little socks off and even Keanu Reeves was less slab-like than usual. I guess there is always room for surprise, afterall.

I’m not a huge fan of Guy Ritchie’s films. Not that his movies aren’t entertaining but they are kind of same-y, so I wasn’t expecting much more than switching off my brain and being immersed in an enjoyable romp for a couple of hours. I wasn’t disappointed.

The story in summary: Holmes and Watson are breaking up - as in Watson is leaving Holmes for a girl. Holmes is not happy. Meanwhile in his evil lair, baddy Lord Blackwood, played with equal parts smugness and menace by Mark Strong, is killing virgins, making spells and planning a new world order (as you do). Holmes cajoles a not so unwilling Watson into joining him for one last caper. So far, so the usual fare.

It’s essentially a buddy movie dressed up in Victoriana. A sort of Lethal Weapon with a British accent and bustles.

Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law have a really good chemistry going and an essential part of the movie, when it isn’t about the action, is about that male relationship thing. Actually Ritchie does that male relationship thing rather well.

I’m not sure that Holmes purists would be impressed but I liked the story and the way it borrowed elements from occult-fantasy and steampunk. Right up my alley. Downey Jr as Holmes was note perfect, as usual. I am so glad that man is back in action. He is such a good actor and wasted as a junkie.

Jude Law as Watson was a bit of a revelation. He acted his little socks off. I’ve always found Law to be way too self conscious in front of the camera, like he’s acting out being an actor. Actually, I don’t think it’s his fault. He’s obviously got leading man looks, so a lot of the time he’s cast as romantic lead but really Law is better as a character act

I went to see Shutter Island because I’d seen the trailer and it looked suitably alarming and it’s directed by Martin Scorsese and you can’t go wrong with a Scorsese “joint”, right? I went into the cinema fully expecting to have my socks blown off. Two hours and some later, I came out with my socks intact and a mouth full of Meh.

I didn’t hate the movie. It was okay for a psychological mystery suspense thriller (and if you need to use more than two words to get to the crux of what genre a film is, your already on shaky ground) but I had expected a masterpiece. 

So, okay, a summary of the plot:

Federal Marshals, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo Di Caprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are sent to a maximum security hospital for the clinically insane (Shutter Island) to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a dangerous murderess. However our heroes soon find that there’s a lot more to Shutter Island than meets the eye, like the sinister doctors and the even more sinister warden and the general all round spooky, crazy. As a premise it sounds fantastic but the execution? Not so much.

The movie is set in 1958 and, I suppose, Scorsese was giving us an homage to movie shockers of that era. There’s some beautiful detail in there and some beautifully shot set pieces but they just didn’t hold together. For a start, the plot twists were exhausting and convoluted, every other scene was laden with cheap shocker tropes - flickering lights, voices, hallucinations, people jumping out of the scenery to yell “Boo!”

And then there was the incidental music, which from virtually the opening shot swelled with ominous suspense and then just kept right on swelling for pretty much all of the film, bludgeoning us over the head with fact that, yes, this was indeed a thriller, and yes, we should be very, very scared.

The style was chaotic, lurching from Hitchcock to Lynch to Shyamalan but not actually being much of itself at all. When the ending came, the great payload for all our enduring patience with the land of a thousand plot twists, it was disappointing. Especially since it was the kind of ending that fans of this kind of movie would have seen before and actually seen done much, much better. It was at this point that I realised that with the replacement of a single vowel, the film could be renamed: Shitter Island. I clearly was not sufficiently gripped by the story.

To be fair, Di Caprio put in some solid acting work, and like I said, it looked stunning, but for a director of Scorcese’s calibre, it felt carelessly done.