Z/Web

Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Cool book of Sherlock Holmes short stories. I’ve read a number of Holmes stuff, but never this collection, which was apparently done after Doyle “killed off” Holmes in a previous story. It was six years before he used this book to bring Holmes back from the dead. The first story explains how that happened (Holmes was never dead, of course, but in hiding, something I found a bit odd for Holmes to do). The other stories deal with various adventures of the famous dectective, and they’re very cool. A few are simpler and involve less “detecting,” and a few annoyingly rely on knowledge Holmes has that Watson, the narrator, does not, making it nigh impossible for the reader to figure out the mystery. But the best thing about Holmes has always been his manner of stating something outrageous as fact, seeming gaining the knowledge from a supernatural source. But of course, once the explanation is provided, it seems too simple. It’s much like a magician’s trick, which seems impossible (did they cut her in half???) but is disappointingly down-to-earth when the secret is revealed (there were two women, one curled in each half of the box so the feet wiggled and made you think it was the same woman lying down). The magical explanation is much more satisfactory and fascinating.

Wonderful, quirky, odd, fantastic film! The premise is based on odd concidences that plague the life of Amelie, a young French girl, warping her view of reality from childhood. For instance, she loves her cold fish doctor father very much and longs for him to embrace her, but the only time he touches is her is during her annual physical, and thus her heart beats very rapidly when he examines her, making him think she has a weak heart and thus the family can never go on vacation and she must go to a special school. In another scene, she witnesses a car accident while taking pictures and a cruel neighbor tells her that her photo-taking caused the accident. She goes home and sees all sorts of tragedies on the news that night and imagines she caused them! But she’s not a doormat: when she figures out the neighbor’s “joke” she gets him back by disconnecting his TV antenna during the big soccer every time the French team is about to score (she’s listening to the game on a portable radio so she knows when to disconnect and reconnect the signal). Thus the girl grows up with a vivid imagination. As an adult, she works as a waitress in a small cafe, when she finds a hole in her apartment that reveals a secret compartment which contains a small box of a boy’s treasures (marbles, pictures, etc.). She decides her mission is to become a do-gooder, and her first task is to find the man who owned the treasure box and return it to him. What would a man say to have his childhood treasure returned to him after 40 years? Of course, the results are comic and heart-warming. Later, Amelie tries to be match-maker to her friends with great success, and then tries to set herself up as well, but the latter task proves much more difficult, with every trick failing. Eventually, though, Fate is kind and she and her mate finally connect and all live happily ever after. This film is just beautiful, one of the best films I’ve ever seen. I could watch it again and again and again, it’s so deep, and the frantic pace means you’re sure to see new things in it every time you watch. Just magical.