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Jeremy Brett ended his riveting run as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous sleuth in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994), the final set of episodes in the long-running Granada Television series. In The Three Gables, an old widow receives a suspicious offer of a large sum of money to move out of her depressing mansion and leave absolutely everything behind. Holmes looks into this strange proposition and comes face to face with an enforcer and powerful pugilist, who Holmes cuts down to size with verbal agility. This adaptation may, in all honesty, be an improvement on Doyle’s original story. The Dying Detective features Brett in a particularly strenuous and emotionally compelling performance as the Great Detective. Following his uncharacteristically provocative threat to expose a murderer, Holmes becomes mortally ill and delirious. Brett, who was actually suffering from cardiac problems at the time, certainly looks the part of the doomed hero, and his urgency in (more…)

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The six episodes of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes continue Granda Television’s excellent series starring Jeremy Brett as as the ideal incarnation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional hero, while Edward Hardwicke brings stellar support as the courageous, good-hearted Dr. Watson. The suspense is strong and the acting superb in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax. Watson is taking a holiday in the English countryside, where he meets the charming Lady Frances and then worries after she vanishes from sight. As in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes puts Watson on the case and instructs him from afar. In The Problem of Thor Bridge, Holmes is approached by an American senator (Daniel Massey, Brett’s one-time, real-life brother-in-law) to clear the name of a governess in his employ, the lady having been accused of murdering the senator’s wife on his estate and leaving her body on Thor Bridge. The solution is among the most complex and satisfying of the Great D (more…)

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Murder by Decree has the distinction of being not only one of the best Sherlock Holmes films, but one of the best pastiches (i.e., a Holmes fiction created by someone other than author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) featuring the late-Victorian Era detective. Christopher Plummer is very good as Holmes, and James Mason redeems the many mishandled screen portrayals of Dr. John Watson with a rare, insightful performance. The story may not be unique in post-Doyle Holmes adventures–the private investigator pursues Jack the Ripper during the latter’s reign of monstrous murders in foggy London–but the script by John Hopkins (Thunderball) is keenly intelligent, developing concentric circles of power and evil with great subtlety. Before losing himself in Porky’s, director Bob Clark did a masterful job of surprising audiences with Murder by Decree, convincing viewers they were watching one kind of drama but then unleashing something very different, very unsettling. –Tom Ke (more…)

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This 1970 Billy Wilder comedy-drama about a major defeat in the career of Sherlock Holmes may have little to do with the legacy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but in its uncut form it happens to be one of the finest films of the decade. Robert Stephens makes a perfectly splendid Holmes, brilliant, sophisticated, and deeply flawed, while Colin Blakely plays Dr. Watson as a drinker and ladies’ man with more personality and intelligence than is often granted him by filmmakers. The case (which has some echoes of Doyle’s story “The Bruce-Partington Plans”) begins with Holmes aiding the distressed Madame Valladon (Geneviève Page), who is searching for her missing husband. The inquiry shifts to Scotland, and despite a stern warning from the hero’s brother, Mycroft Holmes (Christopher Lee), Sherlock pursues events that reveal a top-secret government plan. Lush, energetic, funny, gorgeous to look at, and ultimately tragic, the film is layered with Wilder’s familiar colli (more…)

The other detectives of late Victorian England Crime abounded in late Victorian and Edwardian times–from the streets of London to the country houses of the nobility; from the royal apartments of Vienna to the hotel rooms of quiet Copenhagen. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective took on many of the era’s crooks, killers, blackmailers, and schemers–but so did the fictional sleuths of other celebrated writers of the time. Great British actors including Derek Jacobi (I, Claudius; Cadfael), Judy Geeson (To Sir, With Love), Jean Marsh (Upstairs, Downstairs), Robin Ellis (Poldark), and John Thaw (Inspector Morse) deliver riveting performances in this classic mystery series. Relying on brain over brawn, their characters outwit, outthink, and outmaneuver the most ruthless of adversaries–and all in ways Sherlock Holmes would have considered much more than elementary. As seen on public television.

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In Prelude to Murder the legendary Sherlock Holmes must apply his keen ear for music to help solve this thrilling case. A trio of music boxes contains the hidden secret to vast riches, and a group of criminals is willing to kill for them. When the first of these victims is a friend of Dr. Watson, Holmes is on the case. This is the last of Basil Rathbone’s portrayals of the iconic Sherlock Holmes, and certainly one of the best. This amazing colorization, created with a new cutting-edge digital technology, breathes new life into this already excellent film. Also included on this DVD is the original black-and-white version, beautifully restored as well. This is the definitive DVD edition of Prelude to Murder.

The legendary Sherlock Holmes squares off once again against his nemesis, the diabolically brilliant Professor Moriarty. Moriarty kidnaps the inventor of a new wartime bombsight, and threatens to sell the invention to the Nazis. England’s fate hangs in the balance (more…)

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Jeremy Brett’s portrayal of Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the best filmed version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective, showcasing Holmes’s dazzling brilliance without ignoring his unnerving intensity or drug dependencies. First aired on Britain’s Granada Television in 1984, the series offered perfect casting (David Burke, replaced later in the run by Edward Hardwicke, played Dr. Watson as Holmes’s sturdy companion and chronicler rather than as a buffoon), marvelous period music by Patrick Gowers, and a running time of almost an hour per story, which allowed superior detail and faithfulness to the original source. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes marked the beginning of the long-running series. Highlights of these 13 episodes include “A Scandal in Bohemia,” which introduces Irene Adler (Gayle Hunnicutt), whom Holmes uncharacteristically describes as having “a face a man might die for”; the chilling locked-room mystery “The Speckled Band”; the introduction o (more…)

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After co-writing and starring in Mel Brooks’ smash hit Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder graduated to his own directing debut with another spoofy take on a cultural icon. The 1975 Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother gives Wilder some great trademark meltdowns, even if the movie doesn’t sustain its initial comic energy. Wilder plays Sigerson Holmes, third (and bitterly resentful) brother to the more fabled Sherlock and Mycroft. Two Young Frankenstein co-stars help bring the game afoot: Madeline Kahn, as an opera singer with a problem in distinguishing truth from lies, and Marty Feldman, as a Scotland Yard man with “photographic hearing.” The long early sequence that introduces all three characters to each other–and culminates in a lunatic song-and-dance number, “The Kangaroo Hop”–is truly funny, and Dom DeLuise summons up some broad yoks as a singer with a bad toupee. The British are represented by Leo McKern and Roy Kinnear, as well as a mysterious (more…)

This IDC study presents data for and an analysis of the EMEA Blu-ray Disc (BD), HD DVD, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-R/RW, combo, and DVD-Rec markets. Data for 2005-2007 is based on actual sales figures; data for 2008-2012 is forecast. Storage formats are grouped into six categories: CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, combo, DVD-Rec, and professional optical/removable storage drives. Detailed data for each category is provided in terms of market value and unit shipments. Market share is provided for ROM versus recordable drives. Additionally, unit shipments are analyzed and forecast by slim versus half-height (HH) form factor. The optical drive market started to adopt BD in small numbers in 2007. The PC market’s adoption of DVD burners is saturating, and the market is commoditizing. This will accelerate the push for Blu-ray. “DVD burners will remain the bread-and-butter business for ODD vendors. Despite Blu-ray’s win over HD DVD in the format war, BD drive adoption will be limited in 200 (more…)

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This 1985 adventure directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man) and written by Chris Columbus (Gremlins) may not have much to do with the Sherlock Holmes of Arthur Conan Doyle’s invention. But it is a delightful and somewhat unexpected combination of exciting elements: Victorian-era, foggy-London mystique, Gothic horror, and Indiana Jones-like exotica. Nicholas Rowe plays Holmes as a schoolboy at a boarding academy for young men. Paired with the owlish, reticent young Watson (Alan Cox), Holmes embarks on the solution of a mystery that involves a hallucinatory and lethal drug, and a religious cult celebrating ancient Egyptian rites of mummification. Levinson makes handsome and crisp work of this Steven Spielberg production, without a trace of the treacle that often found its way into other Spielbergian projects at the time (The Goonies). Rowe is wonderfully convincing as a teen incarnation of the Great Detective, and while Cox mostly maintains Hollywood’ (more…)