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.
Meanwhile in Sherlock Holmes news, I found a podcast discussing the Jeremy Brett episodes. It's called Goodnight, Mr. Holmes, after Irene Adler's line in "Scandal in Bohemia." I've been rewatching the Granada episodes lately, though I think I will skip some later episodes that I remember as bad, such as Lady Frances Carfax and the Master Blackmailer.
I'm also rereading Doyle's "Speckled Band" play in which he not only changes the characters names, but also changes the setting. Now it's no longer an early case in 1883 when Watson and Holmes are young bachelors. Instead Watson has moved out and is now engaged to Mary Morstan; Billy the page is there, actively thwarting Holmes's cocaine use. Watson is clearly older, having befriended Mrs. Stonor in India and known her daughters since they were in school. Also the Stonor sisters are no longer twins; Violet (Julia) is now older than Enid (Helen), so I guess that's where Granada got their idea to make the sisters not twins anymore. Speaking of dogs, instead of a cheetah, Rylott has what he calls a "boar-hound" which apparenly is a Great Dane. Siva is now guard dog prowling the grounds, and she gets shot dead by Holmes, just like other ill-treated and abused dogs in the canon. Like, what does ACD have against poor dogs?
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