If I hear one more comment about how the Sherlock Holmes movie doesn't have anything to do with the literary Holmes, I am going to kickbox said person across the room. It's a comment only made by people who *think* they know the books because they saw a handful of the old Basil Rathbone movies, which had only a nodding acquaintance with his character. Since I spent my childhood and early adulthood pouring over the complete annotated editions (in the original typeface and everything, just as it appeared in the Strand) I feel that I have some authority to speak on the subject. The actual literary Holmes didn't stroll about blithely pontificating and sidestepping any action, and neither did he wander around *in town* wearing a deerstalker and tweed cape- considering the fashions of the time, it would have been as if Philip Marlowe routinely wandered around 1940's LA in a Woolrich jacket and a buffalo plaid hat with earflaps, i.e. utterly out of place in an urban setting. Off the top of my head, he boxed semi-professionally under an assumed name, used and abused cocaine, depending on his mood and work level, played the violin obsessively (again, depending on his mood and work level), studied martial arts (and practiced them!), could shoot, hike, and ride, was considered an expert on an incredible variety of subjects and had written well-respected monographs on most, and more than once dealt with villains physically as well as mentally. His final battle against Moriarty was at the top of a waterfall, for crying out loud!

Okay, internet, you've been warned. Don't make me get the books out and create a master list of quoted references backing up the modern interpretation, because I bloody well will.