HOLMES AND WATSON GO OLD SCHOOL
A special one-off episode of the BBC’s Sherlock means new wardrobes and new murders
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride: “You’re mad,” was Benedict Cumberbatch’s initial reaction to the idea of transplanting his incarnation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth back to his original Victorian-era stomping grounds. After all, the eminently modern nature of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes is a huge reason for the popularity of BBC series Sherlock.
Nevertheless, the actor was soon convinced that writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat could accomplish something just as distinctive and idiosyncratic with Sherlock: The Abominable Bride, a one-off throwback that airs worldwide on Friday night and plays a theatrical engagement at participating Cineplex locations next week.
Cumberbatch’s co-star Martin Freeman was presumably less difficult to convince, given that his oldtimey Watson gets to wear such an impressive moustache as the twosome investigate a series of murders in 1890s London.
What with the abundance of misty evenings, creepy carriages and guntoting ghosts in bridal veils, the goings-on could not be more gothic. Even if some Cumberbatch devotees may wince at the sight of their man in a Basil Rathbone getup (including the requisite deerstalker), they’ll still be happy to get something to tide them over until Season 4 returns the duo to our modern age.
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride plays Cineplex locations at multiple times on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Magnificent 70mm: Surely there’s no bloodier way to inaugurate 2016 then devoting the year’s first afternoon to watching The Wild Bunch, one of many classics that can be seen in all its splendor in TIFF Bell Lightbox’s “Magnificent 70mm” series of widescreen presentations; Sam Peckin- pah’s 1969 western plays Friday at noon. The program also includes Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (Saturday at 3:45 p.m.), West Side Story (Saturday at 12:15 p.m.) and a Stanley Kubrick twofer of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Friday at 3:30 p.m. and Sunday at 9 p.m.) and Spartacus (Sunday at 12:30 p.m.).
One of a tiny few recent 70mm efforts by modern-day auteurs — you can see Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight at the Varsity — Christopher Nolan’s McConaughey-enhanced sci-fi epic Interstellar plays Sunday at 5 p.m.
New doc faves at the Bloor: Try as you might to prove otherwise, you can only watch Star Wars: The Force
Awakens so many times before you get hungry for great stories that take place on this planet. The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema sates that craving with a canny selection of eight recent non-fiction essentials, all of which are up for the Cinema Eye Audience Choice prize. One of the final efforts by the late great Albert Maysles, Iris screens Friday at 4:30 p.m. and Jan. 10 at 4 p.m. A portrait of Nirvana’s doomed frontman, Kurt Cobain: Mon
tage of Heck screens Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and Jan. 11 at 9 p.m. Amy reveals how it all came off the rails for poor Miss Winehouse on Sunday at 8 p.m. and Jan. 8 at 9 p.m.
Then William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal go mano-a-mano in Best of Enemies on Tuesday at 3:45 p.m. and Jan. 13 at 4 p.m.
Four more Cinema Eye nominees — Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, The Wolfpack, Meru and The Hunting Ground — also share the Bloor’s screen with the cinema’s continuing runs for Our Last Tango, Noma: My Perfect Storm and the 2015 Cannes Lions Awards.