Liberty wrote:

..... I think he was planning to get Moriarty's network (rather than just Moriarty) right from the beginning. ....

Or maybe even before - depending on whether Mycroft decided all alone to feed Moriarty information about Sherlock (THoB) or whether the brothers planned that together.

As for the OP's question: For me there is nothing to ruin about TRF. It's easily my least favorite episode. I hated it when I first saw it (right from the beginning - John at the therapist - and why does he go back to the woman who got it all wrong? - which immediately destroys the illusion that maybe this time Sherlock might not die), and I hated it when re-watching it last night. For me this episode has absolutely no redeeming features. Okay, Benedict deserves a BAFTA award for his reaction to Richard Brook, but those few seconds are not enough for me to put up with a plot that makes no sense whatsoever and people behaving completely erratically.

Starting with John going on about Sherlock's celebrity status - when HE f***ing started it in the first place with his blog! Then there's Moriarty playing the fool in the Tower (and what did they charge him with? Destruction of a showcase and lèse-majesté? He didn't steal anything...),  Sherlock behaving like an absolute idiot in court - and again when Lestrade wants to ask him a few questions... (the talk with Kitty Riley wasn't exactly clever, either, but at least in character... Disrespecting the judge shows a level of idiocy that makes me wonder how Sherlock managed to graduate...)

Explaining in the next episode that Sherlock's behaviour was part of a grand plan doesn't help with that - I'm too much in the moment when I watch an episode. And in the moment nothing makes  sense. Moriarty probably had a nice life - so why does he insist on getting locked up? And doesn't the Crown Prosection Service have a way to detain criminals in the case of a jury misjudgin

mrshouse wrote:

Kitty, don't want to be nitpicking here, but this seems to be the correct origin of the word and not made up.

That's not the part I have a problem with - I just put it in quotation marks because I remember it as having been said by whatshername. I have a problem with a VULCAN proposing sabotage!
 

I have seen neither Tokyo Story, nor any of the others in Vhanja's list of "Good Movies" - I'd probably call them "art films" or "film d'auteur" - or possibly even boring (I will check out Tokyo Story, though, to see for myself).

For me a good movie is one that achieves what it wants to do. Schindler's List is a great movie, in my mind, because it is both a completely serious monument to the Holocaust and watchable (entertaining somehow sounds wrong for the subject matter...) - actually it's amazing. I'm glad I've seen it. And seen again, and taped.
I love Three Kings - incredibly entertaining and a political message.
Whereas I could perfectly well live without LOTR. Yes, I admire the love and enthousiastic work that went into it - I watch the extras (on the SEE) much more often than the films (the extras are really inspiring to me) but a co-worker summarized LOTR as: "They walk, and they fight, and they walk some more - why should I watch that?" and I don't completely disagree (no need to defend the film - I know there's more than that! I've seen the films, read the books.)

So I guess it really just comes down to personal taste. Unless, of course, one wants to analyze a film for a university course

As for whether a film acquires a deeper meaning for a viewer, I'm pretty sure that depends as much - or more - on the viewer's mindset at the moment of watching than on the film itself. And then one has fond memories of the film which will influence future viewings (I still love Flashback and Field of Dreams).

Somebody mentioned their reaction to Inception - that film left me completely cold and I have no desire to watch it again. But I had a similar reaction to Matrix (the first one) - what if it was true? What is real, how can we tell? (But from a "Money in - entertainment out" point of view the Wachowski brothers' best movie is "Bound"!)

Btw, I also think that the Hollywood/elsewhe

I watch it for the characters and the visuals (in that order). I'm on the forum for the fun of "error-hunting" which then leads to learning all sorts of things - from the legality of pocket knives to human anatomy.

(I am perfectly capable of watching absolute crap - like Moonlight - if I like the characters whereas I'll switch off recognized "works of art" - like Last Tango in Paris - if I don't like them.)

Back to visuals: Does anybody understand when I say that for me the pilot could just as well have been filmed in 4:3 aspect ratio (you remember, back in prehistory that was what tvs looked like...) whereas I'm really, really happy to have a nice big 16:9 screen for the series as it is now?

What, you want me to list all (of what I think are) errors of all nine episodes here in this thread?

Oh my god, yes! That part is so moronic - and Sherlock's "joke" so cruel - John should have slugged him again - that I switch off the episode before they get to the underground car.

nakahara, I think we'll have to agree that we expect completely different things from a crime story - so different that it's actually amazinig that we are both watching Sherlock ;) I've left Miss Marple behind a very long time ago, never got into Poirot, don't know who Fantomas and Scalander are. I'd have to re-read Arsène Lupin, I don't remember anything outrageous but I might have been so preoccupied with language problems that I didn't notice the plot holes.

My heroes are Robert B. Parker's Spenser, Lee Child's Jack Reacher and I have read all the Dick Francis novels. And quite a lot of John Grisham and Andy McNab...

A story need not be realistic in the sense of "this is likely to happen". But there should be an internal logic to the plot. OT example: I've never gotten into Superman - how can he possibly fly? Whereas I was agreeably surprised (my expectations for films based on comic books are very low) by The Amazing Spiderman - being bitten a spider, developping some of its abilities and buying a costume makes enough sense for me to be able to suspend my disbelief (if instead of buying and dressing into a costume the character had just changed his skin colour at will they'd have lost me right there - see the difference?)

Now, Sherlock Holmes is not a comic book superhero, he's not a magical creature and he lives in what is supposedly our London of the 21st century. For me that means the show should respect the laws of science: No chemical analysis with microscopes,  weights that obey gravity, people who feel when they are stabbed and when a Doctor's CV is shown on screen, it should look like a medical CV! The list could go on endlessly - and it will, Harriet is right, "it's fun to find errors and plot holes" - but elsewhere.

The last big fandom I was somewhat involved in was Highlander. And there the makers didn't acknowledge them directly as "fans" in the show (would have been difficult, as Immortals are supposedly living mostly unrecognized amongst us). But they did introduce a society of "Watchers" who observe and record... And they most definitely catered to the fans with first VHS tapes, then DVDs with bonuses, tie-in novels, episode guides, conventions, imitation swords - you name it, they did it. Actually I think the BBC could learn a thing or two from Davis-Panzer...
For lack of tv I've no idea what's going on right now, though...

Sorry, I've stopped reading on page 6 of this thread because I need to get rid of something:

Be wrote:

I have seen it on wednesday because I was interested in Benedict's work. I am not a Star Trek fan at all. So I can't really appreciate it. I don't want to offend anybody, but:

If one likes science fiction movies, it is probably o.k. Action scenes, fight stuff, 3D....explosions.
I personally can't stand the lack of logic in the development of the plot. Plot what plot? Logic what logic?......
 

I believe Start Trek into Darkness and Sherlock suffer from the same problem: Writers who are too much in love with the original material and forget that the show should make sense for people who've never heard of the original.  On page 6 was a link to a wonderful "commentary" on STiD (http://www.io9.com/star-trek-into-darkness-the-spoiler-faq-508927844)
which expresses my thoughts exactly. And it occurred to me that using "The Eugenics Wars of the 1990s" in 2013 is exactly the same thing as having somebody in 2010 beat a corpse with a riding crop to find out about post-mortem bruising.

Unfortunately I hadn't even heard of Benedict Cumberbatch when watching STiD and I was not overly impressed (much preferred Eric Bana in the first one).

Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan was probably the best of the movies with the old crew (most of which were crap - except no. IV, The Voyage Home, the one with the whales - and if the next Abrams movie is based on that I'll be seriously angry) - why did they even remake it? The Wrath of Khan actually made sense - from his point of view Khan was justifiably angry (he thought his wife's death was Kirk's fault) and wanted to kill Kirk. Whereas even after two viewings (in the cinema in 3D and on DVD) I still don't know why the new Khan wanted to destroy - well, whatever he wanted to destroy...

And what I really, really, don't understand is how th

In French it was:

Je suis
SIM_
locké

Only problem with that: There is no French word like "locké" (locked - for PCs etc. - is verouillé. The -é corresponds to -ed - past tense for many verbs). They must have bet on the fact that all French students are supposed to learn English at school...
 

No, the impact is not the same when you don't have to wait between seasons. I know - I watched all three seasons more or less continuously (TRF and TEH on the same evening).

But worse, I think that in a few years time, when the visuals are no longer as stunning, because the camera "tricks" have been re-used in other shows, people will wonder what all the fuss was about. All that will remain is some fabulous acting - and who watches the fabulous tv actors of the last decades?