The Game Is Afoot: For all things Sherlockian

[Iron Maiden]

Those sort of things make for great memories, don't they?

Yes, they do! I wish I had gone to more events. Going to a matinee in those days was very economical. One show I wish I had gone to was when John Williams came to the Civic Opera House in Chicago as part of a tour he was doing. Most of the show he conducted his own film scores but he also included some of Bernard Herrmann's scores. I couldn't talk anyone into going with me and I didn't want to go alone.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Since this thread went up, I started rewatching the Jeremy Brett series. I've lost track of how many times I've watched the episodes, hell, I could practically recite all the lines and still find myself on the edge of my sofa during the climax of each episode. As God is my witness, this show, and Brett's legendary performance as Holmes NEVER gets old!



By the by, found this cool piece of artwork:

[Jim Kelly]

One beef I have is that so many of the actors who play Holmes are already old by the time they portray the character. If we say that he was born in 1854 and he meets Watson in 1887, then my back of the matchbook calculation is he's thirty-three at that time. I don't know about Watson--but given he's been in the army, I'm going to say he's about the same age. This would make both actors young, so if they were to go on to do a long series they would age with the characters.

Jeremy Brett is around fifty when he first plays Holmes. Had Brett started as Holmes a decade earlier, he would have likely had a longer run in the role, before his untimely death.

[DrNewGod]

One beef I have is that so many of the actors who play Holmes are already old by the time they portray the character. If we say that he was born in 1854 and he meets Watson in 1887, then my back of the matchbook calculation is he's thirty-three at that time. I don't know about Watson--but given he's been in the army, I'm going to say he's about the same age. This would make both actors young, so if they were to go on to do a long series they would age with the characters.

Jeremy Brett is around fifty when he first plays Holmes. Had Brett started as Holmes a decade earlier, he would have likely had a longer run in the role, before his untimely death.

Good point. Sherlock, at least, put them in about the right age-range.

[DrNewGod]

What would you consider Holmes' greatest feat of deduction in Doyle's collected works. (not to diss worthy follow-on works, but I'm narrowing it to those appearances that created the legend)

[seismic-2]

One beef I have is that so many of the actors who play Holmes are already old by the time they portray the character.

That's a valid criticism. As we were discussing earlier, Holmes should be portrayed as having athletic prowess that would allow him at the very least to defend himself and likely subdue the villain when his guilt is revealed.

[achilles]

What would you consider Holmes' greatest feat of deduction in Doyle's collected works. (not to diss worthy follow-on works, but I'm narrowing it to those appearances that created the legend)

Impossible task, if you ask me. It's literally his whole career, that's what he does.

[Greg Hatcher]

What would you consider Holmes' greatest feat of deduction in Doyle's collected works. (not to diss worthy follow-on works, but I'm narrowing it to those appearances that created the legend)

The denouement of Silver Blaze. Thor Bridge as a close runner-up. I think those are the tightest-plotted and most fairly laid out as problems the reader can play along with. A lot of the stories give you Holmes doing feats of deduction that are only explained AFTERWARD. Like the standard client introduction where Holmes rattles off a bunch of facts and then points out the various stains and so on. There aren't actually that many scenes in the stories constructed where we see what Holmes sees, in the same order.

[foxley]

The denouement of Silver Blaze. Thor Bridge as a close runner-up. I think those are the tightest-plotted and most fairly laid out as problems ehe reader can play along with. A lot of the stories give you Holmes doing feats of deduction that are only explained AFTERWARD. Like the standard client introduction where Holmes rattles off a bunch of facts and then points out the various stains and so on. There aren't actually that many scenes in the stories constructed where we see what Holmes sees, in the same order.

I agree with Greg on this one, and would probably add The Engineer's Thumb into third place.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

What would you consider Holmes' greatest feat of deduction in Doyle's collected works. (not to diss worthy follow-on works, but I'm narrowing it to those appearances that created the legend)

A difficult task to say the least. Well, from what I recently watched, how Holmes deduced the murderous scheme of Dr. Grimesby-Roylott in The Speckled Band was top notch in my mind.

[Greg Hatcher]

Just as an aside, one of the best sequences of deduction-- I think-- was the bit with Holmes over the woman's body in Sherlock's "A Study In Pink," rattling off fact after fact and explaining as he went, with Watson getting more and more awed.



Martin Freeman really sold it. Steven Moffat said in an interview that those deduction scenes are THE hardest thing to write in a Holmes story and I tend to agree.

Actually I'd say that plotting a genuine fair-play mystery that's not contrived, while still managing to engage a reader with characters and emotion, is just about the hardest thing to do in fiction, period. I'd say the only writers to do it consistently well were Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald.

[foxley]

One of my favourite bits of deduction occurs in A Study in Terror when Sherlock (played by John Neville) is sent a surgeon's kit, which is missing one knife. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a clip of the scene, but Holmes spends a few moments examining the kit through his glass and reels a string of facts that thoroughly narrow down where the kit comes from. What I particularly like about the scene is that, when Holmes explains his reasoning to Watson, everything he says is deducible from the clues and requires no leaps of logic (unlike some of the stories).

It's been a while since I watched it, but after examining the kit, he says something like, the kit had once belonged to a young man of noble birth, but had resided for some time in a pawnshop owned by a foreigner, located in a narrow, south facing street that received little foot traffic. When Watson dutifully asks how he could possibly know that, Holmes explains that the kit is of excellent quality and has a crest on the box, indicating a man of noble birth. It had been in a pawnshop because a pawnbroker's mark was still chalked on the back of the case. The pawnbroker is a foreigner, because he put a cross stroke on his 7: a common practice in Europe, but not in Britain. The fading on the velvet in the case showed that it had sat on display in the pawnbroker's long enough to be faded by the sun, and that the window faced south. That the fading cut off partway down meant that the sun never reached the bottom of the window, hence the street was narrow. And given that London is full of medical students who would have snapped a kit of that quality if they saw it in a pawnbroker's window, that it had sat there long enough to fade meant the street got few passing pedestrians.

[Greg Hatcher]

First column I did at the new stand is about Holmes vs. the Ripper. Probably out-of-date already, it's THE pastiche people keep trying. I'm not up on any new ones in the last couple of years but I'd still bet Dust and Shadow is the one to beat.

A Study in Terror is a favorite of mine. It's up on YouTube in its entirety if you are curious. Catch it quick before someone makes them take it down.

[seismic-2]

A Study in Terror is a favorite of mine.

Any movie featuring both Barbara Windsor and Judi Dench is interesting just by definition.

[Rob Allen]

The indefatigable Art "Buddy" Lortie posted this the other day:

The amazing, stupendous, incredible Conan Doyle archive!!


This is my cloud backup.

231G!!!

12,041 files, 280 folders!!!

https://tinyurl.com/y4lyhqro

[if a banner pops up asking you to sign in just dismiss it by clicking the x. There are download buttons but beware of large files if you're not using a resumable downloader like JDownloader]

Clearly you're not going to grab it all at once. It took me years. And it grows week by week. [I'll put a folder called "_NewStuff" as I add things]

There's audio; magazines; comics; Conan Doyle stories; pastiches; movies; pulps; TV and a special section devoted to Professor Challenger and the Lost World.

There's a couple of things omitted for now. Comic strips are a work in progress; there are 4 series (and numerous homages) and I need to scan a few book collections and then fill in some gaps.

And you won't find two 2019 movies because Smurf Holmes and Will Ferrell Holmes make me weep

There's a few things I don't like. I'm lacking subtitles for at least one foreign film. And at least two TV series are DVD rips; they'd be better as mp4's.

If anyone has something I don't (or upgrades) -- LET ME KNOW.

If anyone has a source for something I don't have -- LET ME KNOW.

If I made a mistake -- LET ME KNOW.

I won't announce additions; I'll just drop them into the _NewStuff folder.

Enjoy

Art Lortie