Movies and Dogs

Thunderstorms have been so loud in the mornings lately that they sounded like trains roaring on tracks. Looks like we're in for more rain and cold weather next week. Well, it's better than ice and snow.

Meanwhile I've seen some small movies lately. Sarah's Oil is another Angel Studios film, a fictionalized biography of Sarah Rector, a Black girl in Oklahoma who inherited Indian land with oil on it. This is back in the early 20th Century, a bit before the Osage murders depicted in Killers of the Flower Moon. So Sarah and her family are in danger not only from swindlers but also murderers. There is a white character named Bert Smith who helps Sarah dig for the oil, but he's an imperfect ally who succumbs to greed and fear when a villainous oil company tries to cheat Sarah out of her land. For animal lovers, I will warn that someone shoots a dog off screen, then it disappears; people assume that it died but it later comes back, like a miraculous sign. Some faith-based movies are indeed heavy-handed, but this one didn't annoy me really, and they did show Bert learning his lesson and listening to NAACP people to help Sarah win.

The other movie I watched was Rental Family starring Brendan Fraser. He's a struggling actor in Japan who gets a new job with a company that sends actors to role play in real life for people. His first job is to pretend to be a groom in a staged wedding, so that the bride can marry her lesbian girlfriend and leave for Canada without her family objecting. Other roles are more ongoing, such as playing a father to a girl and befriending an old, dying man. It's a sweet film about modern loneliness, and the need for connection with friends and family. The Japanese cast is good too, and it's a really heartfelt story.

HOUN and VALL changes

I have watched a few of the old Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Mostly they were the Universal movies set in the 1940s. They were okay mysteries, but I was annoyed with Watson being portrayed as dumb, old, and blustery. I had always assumed that the 20th Century Fox movies would be in the same vein. But recently I finally watched the 1939 Hound of the Baskervilles, actually set in Victorian times. I was pleasantly surprised that Watson is smarter here and more competent.

Though Holmes does tease Watson about his deductions being wrong, he still trusts Watson to go to Scotland Yard and bring the hansom cab driver for questioning. In Dartmoor, Watson figures out that Barryman is signalling with the candle in the window. After Selden tries to kill them, Watson sensibly says they shouldn't follow him and should return home. When Holmes appears in disguise as a peddler, Watson is suspicious, and he notices that his limp changes legs. So I appreciated these glimpses of a stronger, intelligent Watson.

However the movie changes several things from the book. The most trivial is changing Barrymore to Barryman. Beryl is made Jack Stapleton's stepsister, with no knowledge of his villainous plot, nor his secret Baskerville lineage. She's also blonde and English, clearly not the former Beryl Garcia from Costa Rica. The movie cuts the whole subplot about Laura Lyons too, and avoids any hints of adultery, unjust marriages, or Frankland being cruel to his daughter. Meanwhile, Dr Mortimer's wife is a medium who conducts a seance. The hound is suitably scary, but with no glowing phosphorus, and the dog's attack on Sir Henry lasts a long time before he is rescued. In the end, Stapleton escapes, running out of Baskerville Hall, and Holmes shrugs it off, saying he's got police waiting for him. We can only guess if he'll be arrested or die in the Grimpen Mire, like he should. Also the movie ends on an abrupt and crazy note, as Holmes says "Quick Watson, the needle!" and Watson grabs his medical bag to follow him, as if he fully approves of giving Holmes cocaine. Like, what the hell? So it's an imperfect HOUN adaptation, but better than I was expecting.

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Dog Lash Solved

Oh, I almost forgot again. Happy Native American Heritage Month! In a five-part miniseries of Molly of Denali, she has been traveling the U.S. with her Grandpa Nat, who is making a documentary about indigenous knowledge of volcanos. This allows Molly to interact with kids of different tribes and to spotlight their culture in the live-action segments. The only downside is not much interaction with her friends Tooey and Trini back in Alaska. With the attacks on PBS's funding, I worried that the show would be canceled for DEI, but the producer says there's more:

"There’s going to be an interactive game that comes out with the ‘Epic Adventure," Evans said. "Then we have another interactive game coming out later in 2026. We have another episode that will be premiering in 2026 as well. So more great stuff to come."

Meanwhile, I finally solved a mystery from the Sherlock Holmes story "The Speckled Band"! In Roylott's room, Holmes finds a "dog lash" hanging on a corner of the bed. Watson says, "The lash, however, was curled upon itself and tied so as to make a loop of whipcord." So he clearly describes it as a small whip. But who on earth whips dogs? Is that a thing that Victorian people do? I kept imagining what context you would need a whip for. Dog racing? Fox hunting?

Some movies and other adaptations of the story treat the "dog lash" as an innocuous "dog leash" instead. But now I've found a Wikipedia article on the extinct profession of Dog Whipper. Apparently people did once use a whip on dogs who were being unruly or aggressive in church. This job eventually became obsolete, but clearly there was enough memory of it in Victorian times that Doyle felt no need to explain the existence of a "dog lash" in his story. So yes, the lash is a whip, not a leash. But now I wonder what "dog tongs" look like.

Revivals

I was puzzled and disappointed by the sudden end to the government shutdown, with no real progressive goals accomplished. But I am too busy at work to rage about moderate Democrats and wheeling/dealing in Congress. Does this resolve the SNAP funding crisis? Do the furloughed workers get their backpay yet? There will probably be another government showdown in January too.

In any case, reopening the government now forced Mike Johnson to finally swear in Adelita Grijalva into the House, so that's good at least. And the Epstein scandal has blown up again with the release of new emails. So maybe once they hold the vote, more will come out to bring him down. Would he possibly have enough shame to maybe resign or something? But we'd still have to fight the resulting Vance administration. We'll see.

I admit that it annoys me that several posts on Bluesky lately are just repeated explanations of Epstein's allusion to the dog in "Silver Blaze". I mean, how many times do you need it said? Sherlock Holmes in general has been in the news lately with the dapper "Fedora Man" at the Louvre revealed to be a French teen who is a fan of Holmes and Poirot; he just dresses like that at school all the time. Also James Bond writers recently complained of how to resume the franchise after the death in Daniel Craig's last Bond film, so lots of people on Bluesky referenced how ACD resurrected Holmes. And Bond has been recast and rebooted several times like a regenerated Time Lord. Like, how is this a problem, Horowitz?

In chronology news, I found this post about the first Sherlockian scholar, Helen Elizabeth Wilson. She doesn't give specific dates for the cases, but does arrange them in a brief biography in 1898. Too bad she died young of typhoid fever, but it's good to see that women were in the fandom at the beginning, despite the chauvinists at the Baker Street Irregulars.

Blue Wave

The elections on Tuesday were so good! Definitely something to lift my mood. I had been worried, as I saw a stupid Charlie Kirk sign during early voting. Again, it wasn't at the polling place, but at the same restaurant where I saw a pro-Trump sign during a previous election.

The sandwich-throwing guy also got acquitted this week. Trump is still defying the judge's orders to fund SNAP, and they're appealing the ruling. What a shitty guy, to starve people, especially with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. Grocery stores wanted to give discounts to SNAP people to help, but apparently the government told them they weren't allowed to do that. Fucking bastards.

Meanwhile the shutdown continues. Is Mike Johnson that desperate to hide the Epstein files? How can we force him to swear in the new Representative? Fucking coward.