Sherlock Holmes

I love mysteries. When I was younger, I was obsessed with the Encyclopedia Brown books. The thought that a kid could be so smart, and he could help his friends, and even the police sometimes -- I thought it was awesome. Also, the EB books made you turn to the next page for the solution, so it gave you a chance to solve it yourself. I loved that, too.

When I got older, I read the Hardy Boys, and when I got older still, I read the Hardy Boys Casefiles, which was Hardy Boys for adults, with Frank and Joe, but they were grown.

When I got into middle school, I started reading the Sherlock Holmes books, and my love of mysteries grew to a whole new level. I had never encountered a character like Sherlock before. He was maladjusted, you didn't always like him, and he was rarely nice. Being so smart left him being somewhat of a social outcast, and his only friends was Dr. Watson, the only person who was patient enough to put up with his moodiness.

I started watching Sherlock Holmes movies -- a few of the ones with Basil Rathbone, the movie Young Sherlock Holmes, The Great Mouse Detective, the show Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, anything really. I was intrigued by the surely detective. I wasn't always happy with the TV and movie adaptions of Sherlock though -- many adaptions had reduced a lot of his character flaws down, thereby making him a friendly, happy, well-liked, but extremely smart guy. That's just not Holmes. A few good recommendations that were pretty good but weren't by Conan himself would be The Baker Street Irregulars, and the movie Young Sherlock Holmes.

Then, I saw the TV show House. I had avoided it, because I don't normally watch much TV -- a lot of them seem to be the same crime investigation shows with a different cast -- but after a few episodes I knew where'd I'd scene Dr. Gregory House before. He was Sherlock Holmes!! He walked with a cane, he had one really good friend who was patient enough to put up with his characer flaws, he was addicted to drugs, he was maladjusted and cynical, and he was extremely smart and solved cases most people were stumped by.

Now it seems they're gonna try to bring back Sherlock Holmes to the modern public. I saw on Yahoo news, where there's two new Sherlock Holmes movies in the works. One of them is a Columbia pictures comedy that is supposed to star Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrel that I'm hoping will be as good as The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, and not totally stupid. The other one fills me with hope, though. It's a Warner Bros. film, and when I saw who they got to play Sherlock, I thought, Wow, if they couldn't get Hugh Laurie, that guy could definitely do the part justice. They got Robert Downey, Jr. His smart alleck, cynical personality is perfect for the crabby detective, and with what I've heard about Iron Man, this movie will be fantastic, and hopefully be a box office smash.

I'm daring to get my hopes up. Don't let me down Hollywood!