Davina wrote:

May well be cheaper to fly between stops. The train is expensive in the UK. Flights with Easyjet etc. You can also fly cheaply across to the Emerald Isle ( out local airport which is not that far from London flies to Waterford etc). If you want to let me know nearer the time the sort of itinerary you are wanting to do I can investigate to relative costs for you.

DramaGod- I'm rubbish at chess despite my dad's best attempts getting me playing from the age of 4. I was very keen but I don't have the right kind of mind for it.

The travel agency that we are using takes care of all the travel between stops as well as accomidations so that shouldn't actually be a problem. It is all in the cost of the trip. What might work is if we stay in the UK longer than what my husband is thinking and maybe take a train or something from London north to see that part of the country. It can't take that long. I mean the whole of the UK will fit inside Texas which is 790 miles long and 660 miles wide. I'm from NY state and from my home town to New York City is 260 miles and that is drivable in about 6 hours at the speed limit. More like 4.5 to 5 hours if I'm driving LOL.
Once we firm up the actual iteneary I'll definetly post it. Who knows I might actually run into someone I know. 

Dramagod wrote:

Anyone here who'd like to try out a round of chess with me via email or PM? You know what I mean. One sends their move to the other person. All you need is a chessboard and a minute of your time a day/a week or whatever's convenient for you. If we get bored in it, we'll call it quits. I've never tried it before but I've been thinking about it every now and then and it might be fun to try. Anyone interested?

I used to play when I was a kid, but admitedly this was quite a long time ago. If no one else bites I'd be willing to give it a go.

[size=125]I looked for a thread for this mini-series and could not find one so I figured I would start one.

This is a five episode movie essentially. It is filled with intrigue, action, conflicting emotions, and sex. Benedict plays the lead role of a famous mathematician who returns from China to attend his brother's funeral only to get drawn into a political game of cat and mouse with some very dangerous people and all of it tied to his brother's death.

I enjoyed the series and thought that BC did an admirable job with the role he played. I have to admit that seeing him shirtless a couple of times was not hard on the eyes. I wasn't crazy about the love scenes, but that has more to do with me than the scenes themselves. I have always abhorred love scenes wanting to get back to the action. Yeah I basically like "guy" films. 

The premise of the story is a bit scary because it is not so unbelievable. It honestly is not much different than an adaptation of George Orwell's 1984. Big brother is watching in the form of a computer database called T.I.A. (Total Information Awareness) all accessed by tracking chips and national identification cards.

My question to my British friends is this. At the beginning of each episode a narrator would come on and talk about what the episode would be about and he spoke of Orwell's work as being a book and only fiction but then he mentioned that National Identification Cards were due to be passed into law in the UK within a years time. The series came out in 2008, so I am assuming that the narrator was saying that for effect. I find it hard to believe that any UK citizens are required to carry identification cards. How would that work with out of towners and tourists? So yeah the question is - not true right?

It is a good series and has a lot of excellent talent in the cast of characters. I recognized many of the actors, although I am still not great at putting names to faces yet. It is worth a look and I think that most will find i

anjaH_alias wrote:

AliceI wrote:

I agree that Sherlock arranged the phone call about Mrs. Hudson being shot. As soon as John answers his phone Sherlock send his txt to Moriarty. He was waiting for that moment.

No, he was receiving a text from Moriarty some seconds after John left the hospital. He was called to the roof then.
By the way: I also did not know the stories before I saw Sherlock (okay, I read a lot of them in my youth, but nearly forgot most of it - it´s 25 years ago). Now I am reading them again and I am really surprised how true Moffat and Gatis are to the canon. They patchwork the stories, but the pattern, the behaviour, the relationships are very much like in the original stories. So to me it would be a great break if the phone call was not organized by Moriarty. I don´t remember any other break like that in the whole series.
Somebody said here that ASiB is totally different to the Bohemian one. That´s true, the story is different, but the pattern, the soul is still the same. The figures act in the same way as they did in ACD´s, just the story got much more components. I don´t know any situation in "Sherlock" in which the figures do the opposite of what they did in the original stories and especially TRF is very close to the "Final Problem", much more than A Scandal in Belgravia to A Scandal in Bohemia.

I just went back and looked at that sequence and I stand corrected. Sherlock and John were talking about the code and how Moriarty could have left it at the flat. John tapped his fingers on the counter and Sherlock put the pieces together. It was at that point that he texted Moriarty inviting him to come to Bart's rooftop to play.
In the next scene it is still night and John gets a call about Mrs. Hudson, so you could be right that Moriarty arranged the call to get John out of the way, but by the time John got to Baker street it was daylight and the workman was doing his thing in the stairwell with Mrs. Hudson looking on. I'm not s

I just saw Creation. Finished watching it about 2 hours ago and I have to say that it was brilliant. The struggle with his theories verses his faith is what made Darwin's story so human and gave the viewer a real ability to identify with it. The science is fine, but it's the human story that drew me in so completely. 

This story managed to fulfill both sides of the argument God vs No God. That is the discovery within Darwin's struggle and the acceptance his wife gave him when she had the option to destroy his work. To me it confirmed both sides of the argument.

Darwin's wifes acceptance through love as well as respect supports her belief in God and the fact that everything happens by his design. She could have burned the book, but she chose instead to support her husband and wrapped it for delivery to the publisher.

I think it is wonderful that Charles Darwin was a devout Christian before he developed this theory and the fact that the struggle with his faith or his loss of faith makes him so much more credible. He didn't write his book to spite the church or even to spite God himself. He wrote it to save himself and his faith, albeit a faith in truth and fact over organized religion. It saved his marriage and allowed him to become a father to his other children. How can that not be a part of God's plan? Maybe that is what his wife saw and why she didn't burn the book.

Either way it was an absolutely splendid work that I throughly enjoyed and will share with my children. Oh yes and to keep this on topic, even though Benedict had a small role he played it extremely well. I loved the scene with him and the children going fishing. 

"Children! Now which of the four of you would be the first to like to learn how to hook a worm?"

[size=125]I have had a day to think about the film “Hawking”. The thing that affected me so deeply wasn’t just the stellar performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, but by the story itself. I knew who Stephan Hawking was, but didn’t know anything about his life or how he came to succeed even with his physical handicap.
 
After watching the film I went out and looked up as much information as I could find about this rather remarkable man. I found a message written by Hawking entitled Living with ALS. Reading this paper gave me the insight to realize that BC’s performance as Stephan Hawking was as remarkable as I thought even before I had a bit more information.
 
I already knew that BC’s portrayal of the progression of the disease was very well done, due to my work both in the medical profession as well as work I have done with severely handicapped individuals. It was the performance as a person grappling with this condition that stood out so strongly. In the film Hawking never seemed to allow his condition to affect his outlook on life. That seemed a remarkable thing to me, especially considering that early on in the film he asked the doctor for details about this disease and what it would do to him.
 
The doctor very plainly explained that he would slowly lose the ability to control his muscles and when that happened they would whither and atrophy. Stephan asked about his ability to breathe. The doctor explained that breathing is an automatic function and would take longer to be affected by the disease, but that eventually he would also lose that ability as well. Then he asked how this will affect his mind, only to be told that his mind would be unaffected. That is equivalent to telling a young man of 21 that he will slowly become trapped, a prisoner inside his own body before he essentially suffocates, all the while being completely aware of what is happening to him.
 
There are only a few instances where we see the fear and the anger that any human bei

besleybean wrote:

TPTB?
The actors were chosen chiefly by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, tho I know at least Beryl Vertue was also on the panel and so maybe Sue Vertue, too.

I always use the term TPTB because I am not privy to who makes the decisions about any of the shows I watch. TPTB may very well just be those two guys or them and Sue Vertue, but since I don't really know I use that term to cover all possibilities. 
 

Switching actors now would kill the show. I am very glad that TPTB chose the actors they did. Before this show I had never heard of Benedict Cumberbatch. I have now seen him in another BBC TV movie and was stunned by how powerful the preformance was. 

The problem again with buying the DVD is that they won't play on our players over here. Those DVDs that the BBC sells are for region 2 I live in the US, that's region one.

Can someone direct me to the right place to talk about a film I just finished watching. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Steven Hawkin in it and I am still stunned by it.

Lily wrote:

I didn't notice the camera, I have to take a look at that later.

You won't actually see the camera, what I noticed immediatly was the fact that, we the viewer, were looking through that camera at the beginning of that scene as it panned from left to right. The camera was there, hidden, and we know this because of that view through it.

I didn't know about the writers saying that Moriarty is in fact dead. That being the case, that point is solved I guess.

As for Sherlock's body vs a morgue body - I'll have to agree to disagree. Why else would Sherlock enlist Molly's help? If he was going to pose as his own corpse then he wouldn't need to involver her. That would needlessly put her at risk. The body that they turned over could easily have been made up to look like Sherlock with something like facial putty.

I think that is why that one hand we see was so keen to remove John's hand from the body. You see a woman's hand peeling John's hand off the wrist of the body. I believe that was someone "in the know" who didn't want John to piece together what was actually going on.