2nd Day of Xmas

On the second day of Christmas, The Arts Muse suggests you take in a movie, and an unusual one at that. It's a film of the Monteverdi opera "L'Orfeo" (1 p.m. today, Irvington Town Hall Theater). Even if you don't love this movie interpretation of what is generally acknowledged to be the first real opera, the music is so stunning that you won't be disappointed. Plus, the story is particularly poignant, with Orpheus risking his own life and descending into Hades itself to rescue Eurydice, the wife he loved and lost. (Collective sigh here, please.)

Speaking of movies, I went to the multiplex Christmas night, something I've never done before. But with the relatives all safely tucked in their beds and, I hope, visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, I decided to give myself the gift of "Sherlock Holmes." Like so many Christmas gifts, it was a mixed blessing.

This "Holmes" is more visceral than cerebral, a notion foreshadowed by the gazillion coming attractions in which, to paraphrase the old SCTV comedy series, "things blowed up real good." Still, I liked some of the dizzying special effects, the grittiness of 1880s London, and especially the relationship of Oscar-y Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Felix-y Watson (Jude Law), who, like an old married couple, can't live with or without each other. (Together and singly, they are superb, with Downey making Holmes' almost-antisocial brilliance entirely believable and Law very much his own man as the nonetheless appropriately exasperated sidekick.)

I know many purists out there will scoff at this version. So being just a tad obsessive — like the ever-preoccupied Holmes — I watched part of "Holmes for the Holidays," Turner Classic Movies' attempt to cash in on the new, oft-soldout film by airing a marathon of movies featuring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson.

Rathbone, who also played Hollywood villains, is considered by many to be the quintessential interpreter of the role. Yet the Holmes films in which he appears are no more faithful to creator Arthur Conan-Doyle than Guy Ritchie's new movie is. For one thing, they are set in the time in which they were made, not the 19th-century. I suppose it's just natural to take liberties with such seminal figures.

In our own time, the trend has been to portray Holmes and Watson as men in the fighting prime of life, even on PBS. (I bet Rathbone and the grandfatherly Bruce were in the prime of their lives when they made their Holmes movies. It's just that as health has improved, middle age looks better.)

Our own youth-obsessed, go-go-go age wouldn't have it any other way. It's elementary.