This wasn't our plan.

The plan was, since we were alone for New Year's Eve, to see Avatar for a second time. Seeing as how all plans of seeing that flick with family members over the Christmas holiday got blown away by the 911 call, an overnight in the emergency room, and several trips and many hours as a visitor in the hospital.

As the wife paid for our tickets (she always does... she has the money and all the community discount cards), the gal warned us "Our 3D machine is broken. What we're showing tonight is only in 2D."

Well. What's the point, then? I mean, if we want to see this film again in just 2D, we might as well just wait for the DVD.

I suspect we'll be buying it, even though it's not that high on my Favorites list. Wife and youngest son like it a lot.

So. For New Year's Eve? Go home and watch something at home? I think not.

Sherlock Holmes starts in 25 minutes, though...

We had both agreed this was a film that could wait. If not for a DVD rental, maybe even until it came on network TV. You see, our great expectation was that they would ruin this story and character the same way they ruined The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Von Helsing... by making them into exagerated, fantastic tales of computer generated UNreality. Giant castles with falling bridges spanning impossible chasms. Carriage rides along impossible roads laid stupidly at a cliff's edge. Horse-drawn carriages leaping over fallen bridges. Huge submarines when the world was just starting to work with steel in salt water. Massive gas guzzling cars before a transmission had ever been invented.

I can suspend my disbelief over vampires, werewolves and invisible men in order to enjoy the tale of "What if?" But don't expect me to look the other way when you start playing with the reality of the world.

Sorry, but making impossible fantasies out of good stories just irritates me.

Trailers for Sherlock Holmes looked like it was going to be more of the same.

It wasn't.

Holmes is Holmes. Perhaps a little dirtier than in other versions, but he does nothing superhuman. Just terribly observant and compulsive. And the devices introduced, while ahead of their time, are technically realistic, if maybe a little too contrived. There is no magic, no weirding of the real world.

We liked it. A lot. Go see it.

Jude Law makes a perfect Watson, but we were both most pleased at the casting of his Mary. Or, more accurately, the directing of his Mary. For she is exactly the woman you expect and hope Watson would end up with, rather than the frail lady commonly expected in that era.

All in all, it was a pleasant, unexpected way to end 2009.