I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere

Mr. Holmes - A First Review

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"an admirable screen" [HOUN]</h4>
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From the tweeted still images, to the multiple trailers, to countless interviews, <i><a href="http://mrholmesfilm.com/" target="_blank">Mr. Holmes</a></i> is finally here. And it was well worth the wait. The opening scene sets the tone for the entire movie: you immediately get a glimpse of the man that is Sherlock Holmes (Sir Ian McKellen) as he is in his later years. </div>
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Shortly after the opening credits the story begins to unfold in three parts. Sherlock is now retired and living in his cottage with a housekeeper and her son. As he is growing older, dementia has begun to set in. You find that he has just returned from Japan, where he traveled to find ‘prickly ash’ in belief that it would salvage what is left of his mind. The reason he wants to desperately find the plant is because while reading one of Watson’s published short stories, Holmes notices that the ending is wrong, only he can’t remember what really happened. </div>
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The story is one of regret, hope and, most of all, family. Regret over the case that ended Holmes’ career. Hope for his quest to find a cure for his aging mind. And the family he has both lost, rejected, and found along the way. </div>
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The scenes are beautifully shot, and whether on location or in a studio the transitions between spaces and even the three different storylines is flawless. There was no confusion at what point in the tale anything falls or who is involved, and while this may seem basic practice by any writer, that they have managed to keep that while filming and editing separate but interwoven tales is worth noting. </div>
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The settings are colorful and vibrant, often in contradiction with the story being told, but this brings the world to life. Every space is well dressed and fits with the characters' personalities and stations. And you can truly believe not only are they real and in these places but you are present with them.  </div>
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As for the casting, it was refreshing to see a movie staring Ian McKellen that allows, in some cases, him to act without words. One of the many things that critics admire about him is his ability to tell a story or have a conversation without even opening his mouth. Director Bill Condon has embraced this talent in many scenes but not so many that it felt overused or gimmicky; especially when Holmes is struggling against dementia or the general tiredness of a human body that is giving out. Poignant moments that would have been diminished by words are enhanced by an actor’s ability to not only act his part but feel it. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sir Ian McKellen at the post-screening press conference at the Soho Hotel in London</td></tr>
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Milo Parker as Roger, Holmes's protege, while still relatively unknown, is already a force of his own on the screen. His command of Roger’s youthful innocence is well balanced with the child that is having to grow up before his time. His interactions with Holmes highlight both characters growth, the boy in knowledge and the man in admitting his humanity.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roger with Sherlock Holmes on the Sussex d=Downs</td></tr>
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Laura Linney shines as Mrs. Munro, who is both Roger’s mother and Holmes’ housekeeper. At times one can not help disfavor but love and weep for her simultaneously. Her hurt from the loss of her husband and sometimes bitterness she has towards Holmes is heartbreaking and so real that you can almost taste the tears she must have cried.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mr. Holmes and Mrs. Munro</td></tr>
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The rest of the cast, a full list of names that you can’t help but recognize, such as Roger Allam, Frances de la Tour, and Philip Davis, comes together with an onscreen chemistry that is sometimes lacking in modern cinema. There is even a nod to fans of Holmesian film interest with Nicholas Rowe donning the deerstalker once again as our favorite Detective. </div>
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The only real complaint is that the absence of our beloved Dr. Watson is physically tangible, more than is noticeable in <i>A Slight Trick of the Mind</i> by Mitch Cullen, upon which this film is based. Maybe that is because when thinking back to the canon, Watson often left himself out of most of the details of the stories, and in the book that translates well. However, in the film, the role appears to be split between two different characters: Dr. Barrie (Roger Allam) and the young boy Roger. And while these two make a graceful attempt at the role of Watson, the writing ultimately fails at putting them in our good Doctor's shoes.</div>
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This film is a must-see for fans not only of Sherlock Holmes but of the cinema as well. And of course fans of bees, which in a Q&A with Sir Ian recently, he assured us were not harmed in the making of this film.</div>
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<i>Mr. Holmes</i> opens in the UK on 19 June and the US on July 17<sup>th</sup>.<br />
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Mr. Holmes - A First Review

"an admirable screen" [HOUN] From the tweeted still images, to the multiple trailers, to countless interviews, Mr. Holmes ...

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by LadyRedCrest

Episode 78: Legal and Leisure Ramblings

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"the incoherent ramblings of these sots" [TWIS]</h4>
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The 15th of every month brings a new episode, and our latest is chock full of Sherlockian nuggets. There's a legal case afoot, in case you haven't heard. We cover the latest broadside from the Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. - the #FreeMrHolmes saga - and discuss the movie starring Sir Ian McKellen. We ponder Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's epitaph if written under the present clouds of the estate's business dealings.<br />
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We also take a moment to pause and reflect on the screening of the William Gillette 1916 film, our 1,000th post and the Scintillation of Scions event. It's been a busy month!<br />
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Burt takes us on an audio journey to Roslyn in the Hoboken-Free State to celebrate the 125th birthday of Christopher Morley, founder of the Baker Street Irregulars. There we hear from Morley scholar and <i>Baker Street Journal</i> editor Steven Rothman, BSI ("<i>The Valley of Fear</i>") and Terry Hunt, BSI ("The Something Hunt"), as well as two grandchildren of Morley.<br />
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Mental Exaltation</h3>
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Another installment of our successful quiz program, written by IHOSE quizmaster Nick Martorelli, is all about the legal profession in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Sandy Kozinn joined us from New Jersey to play - listen to hear how she did.</div>
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We welcome a guest reader for this episode's Gas-Lamp reading: <a href="http://www.vincentstarrett.com/" target="_blank">Ray Betzner</a>. Ray gave a touching talk at the BSI Dinner in January and an encore presentation at the Sons of the Copper Beeches in April. It is titled "A Case of Identity: Sigerson's Choice" and it is remarkable.<br />
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Finally, we conclude with some listener comments, including a very surprising duo.<br />
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<a href="http://traffic.libsyn.com/ihearofsherlock/ihearofsherlock078.mp3" target="_blank">Download</a> [Save As] | File size 43.8 MB, 1:35:25</h4>
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Links:</h3>
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<li>You may have missed <a href="http://scintillation.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Scintillation of Scions VIII</a>, but edition IX is coming next year.</li>
<li>We had a representative at the screening of William Gillette's 1916 silent classic Sherlock Holmes at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival last month. You can read <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/06/sherlock-holmes-in-san-francisco.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tim Greer's impressions of the event and the film here</a>.</li>
<li>And if you'd like to see the restoration yourself, the DVD and Blu-ray are coming out in October - <a href="http://ihose.co/1916bluray" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">order it here</a>.</li>
<li>We celebrated our 1,000th post on the site: <a href="http://ihose.co/ihose1000" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ihose.co/ihose1000</a></li>
<li>The summary of <a href="http://ihose.co/freemrholmes" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the #FreeMrHolmes saga</a>.</li>
<li>Related: you might wish to educate yourself with Betsy Rosenblatt's scholarly legal treatise <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2321343" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Adventure of the Shrinking Public Domain</a>.</li>
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Many more links, articles and images are available in our Flipboard and Scoop.it sites at <a href="http://ihose.co/flipsherlock" target="_blank">ihose.co/flipsherlock</a> and <a href="http://www.scoop.it/t/sherlock-holmes" target="_blank">ihose.co/scoopsherlock</a>, as well as on the <a href="https://plus.google.com/communities/114565123495685504221" target="_blank">The Sherlock Holmes Community</a> on Google+ (still growing, now at over 2,500 members), as well as through our accounts on <a href="http://facebook.com/ihearofsherlock" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/ihearofsherlock" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://ihearofsherlock.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tumblr</a>.<br />
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Please <a href="http://bit.ly/ihearofsherlock" target="_blank">subscribe to us on iTunes</a>, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/ihearofsherlock" target="_blank">Soundcloud</a>, <a href="http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/i-hear-of-sherlock-everywhere?refid=stpr" target="_blank">Stitcher</a> or <a href="http://www.spreaker.com/user/ihearofsherlock" target="_blank">Spreaker</a> and be kind enough to leave a rating or review for the show. And please tell a friend about us, in any fashion you feel comfortable.<br />
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Your thoughts on the show? Leave a comment below, send us an email (ihearofsherlock AT gmail DOT com), call us at (774) 221-READ (7323).<br />
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Sponsors</h3>
This episode includes three sponsors that deserve your attention:<br />
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<a href="http://www.wessexpress.com/" target="_blank">Wessex Press</a> (check out the new <a href="http://wessexpress.com/html/newspaper.html" target="_blank"><i>Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle in the Newspapers Volume 1</i></a>)<br />
<a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/" target="_blank"><i>The Baker Street Journal</i></a>, where you should get <a href="http://www.bakerstreetjournal.com/itemsforsale/subscriptions.html" target="_blank">your annual subscription</a> in now to secure all four issues and a very special Christmas Annual about <i>The Seven Per-Cent Solution</i>.<br />
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We welcome mystery writer Dan Andriacco. His upcoming novel Rogues Gallery is the latest in the Sebastian McCabe - Jeff Cody Series. Learn more on Dan’s blog <a href="http://danandriacco.com/" target="_blank">Baker Street Beat</a> at <a href="http://danandriacco.com/">DanAndriacco.com</a>.</div>
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We're also pleased to recognize Joseph Vega, William Simpson, Bob Byrne, Peter Lawrence, James O'Leary and Mary Miller for their generous support. If you would like to <a href="https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=hK1xNvhQD0hKUPaO-TnV5azaGpfRrj_75PdqgxehR-vhAaZ3WgAkiSXu6LC&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f8e263663d3faee8d96f000117187ac9edec8a65b311f447e" target="_blank">help support I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere</a>, you can <a href="https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=hK1xNvhQD0hKUPaO-TnV5azaGpfRrj_75PdqgxehR-vhAaZ3WgAkiSXu6LC&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f8e263663d3faee8d96f000117187ac9edec8a65b311f447e" target="_blank">click here</a> or on the "Donate" button in the upper portion of the site.<br />
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Episode 78: Legal and Leisure Ramblings

"the incoherent ramblings of these sots" [TWIS] The 15th of every month brings a new episode, and our latest is cho...

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by Scott Monty

Remembering Sir Christopher Lee

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"dazed at the horror of the thing" [FINA]</h4>
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Sir Christopher Lee has died at the age of 93.<br />
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Even without horror and fantasy films, Christopher Frank Carandini Lee (1922 - 2015) would still have enjoyed an illustrious career.<br />
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The son of a British army officer and an Italian contessa, Lee served in the Second World War with RAF Intelligence and the Special Operations Executive. After the war, he pursued a film career, landing a speaking role in <i>Captain Horatio Hornblower, R.N. </i>(1951), when the director wanted an actor who could fence and speak Spanish. Lee could do both.<br />
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Over the next 65 years, he would record seven solo albums and appear as a guest artist on 17 more, receive a knighthood for his charity work, and amass more than 275 film acting credits. He played the villain Scaramanga in the James Bond film <i>The Man with the Golden Gun</i>, the swashbuckling Rochefort in Richard Lester's <i>The Three Musketeers</i>, the founder of modern Pakistan in <i>Jinna</i>, and, on various occasions, Sir Henry Baskerville, and both Mycroft Holmes and Sherlock Holmes.<br />
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After appearing as Sir Henry in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1TdJjg7" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Hound of the Baskervilles</a></i> (1959), opposite his great friend Peter Cushing, Lee first played Sherlock Holmes in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1TdJqrW" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace</a></i>, an underrated international production filmed in Germany in 1962. He played a slimmed-down Mycroft Holmes in the acclaimed 1970 production of Billy Wilder's <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1QrcZHA" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes</a></i>, opposite Robert Stephens, then returned as Sherlock Holmes in the early 1990s in a pair of telefilms, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1Qre6Hh" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady</a></i> and <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1Qre8ir" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Incident at Victoria Falls</a></i>.<br />
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Despite his appearances (and second career) in recent blockbuster franchises like <i>Star Wars</i> and <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>, and his long association with the films of director Tim Burton, Christopher Lee's film career will likely forever be linked with the wildly successful and still much-admired horror movies he made at Hammer Films. Often appearing with Peter Cushing, Lee breathed new life into the tired black and white monster-film franchises of the '30s and '40s, ramping them up for the '50s and '60s with liberal doses of Eastmancolour blood, close-quarters violence, and panting sex appeal.<br />
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Though Cushing and Lee did indelible work as Victor Frankenstein and his Creature in <i>The Curse of Frankenstein</i> (1957), and as an obsessed Egyptologist and his prize in <i>The Mummy</i> (1959), the stalwart companions will best be remembered as the dauntless vampire hunter, Van Helsing, and his eternal nemesis, Count Dracula, in a series of Hammer vampire films that began with <i>Horror of Dracula</i> (1958). Lee was one of several actors, <b>Frank Langella</b> and <b>Jeremy Brett</b> among them, to have played both the Count and the Great Detective.<br />
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Sir Christopher Lee was an important player not only in many films, but in film history, and a significant contributor to celluloid legacy of Sherlock Holmes. In the mid-1980s, during the height of that decade's Sherlock-mania that included the new Granada series starring Jeremy Brett and the Steven Spielberg-produced Young Sherlock Holmes, Lee hosted a retrospective titled <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1TdJ6cW" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes</a></i>. In it, he took us on a tour throughout London - including the sitting room recreation at the Sherlock Holmes Pub - and of Sherlock Holmes as portrayed on stage and screen throughout the years.<br />
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For a brief glimpse of the man behind the movies, take a moment to enjoy this clip of Lee and Cushing before the press, while recording the narration for a documentary on Hammer Films. The ailing Cushing could not travel to London for the recording, so Lee insisted the entire project relocate to a studio near Cushing's home in Whitstable. It was the two friends' last collaboration, and, as always, they are clearly having a ball.<br />
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Please join us in standing on the terrace for one of the last links to a golden age of Sherlock Holmes and a true gentleman.<br />
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Remembering Sir Christopher Lee

"dazed at the horror of the thing" [FINA] Sir Christopher Lee has died at the age of 93. Even without horror and fantasy ...

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by Tim Greer

John, Holmes and the Emotional Connection

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"Why, what on earth does this mean, John?" [FIVE]</h4>
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What did Gary Hopkins know in 1988 that Sherlockians still argue about a quarter of a century later?<br />
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The perceptive Sherlockian blogger <a href="http://betterholmesandgardens.blogspot.ca/2011/03/meaning-of-this-extraordinary.html" target="_blank">Jaime Mahoney actually commented on Hopkins's insight</a> several years ago, but that was in another era, before the "relationship" between Holmes and Watson became the hot topic it is now. It's been the focus of much attention around the BBC "Sherlock" series and CBS's "Elementary", and the more I hear about "Sherlock and John" on the BBC show, or "Sherlock and Joan" on CBS, the more I ask myself what signs of that relationship can be detected in the actual, original Sherlock Holmes tales.<br />
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We can (and should) ignore the phrase "my dear Watson", which Holmes uses 78 times in the Canon, and the reciprocal "my dear Holmes", which Watson uses only 16 times. That was a convention of the times, just as young men sharing accommodations for financial reasons was a widespread custom. (Anybody familiar with W. S. Gilbert's early farce "Cox and Box"?)<br />
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But here and there in the stories one finds a hint about how the two men thought of one another. Clearly the friendship grew closer over time;. After Holmes's apparent death at the Reichenbach Falls, Watson called him "the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known," which sounds respectful rather than affectionate, but when Holmes reappeared in London, not dead in spite of all the evidence, Watson fainted. That brief episode was examined and cross-examined in detail after its modern expression by Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman was presented in "The Empty Hearse" last year.<br />
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Other than the emotions surrounding Holmes's death and resurrection, the Canon offers two important incidents where the partners have occasion to show their feelings for one another. One, famously, is in "The Three Garridebs" — the Canonical story many fans are longing to see dramatized by the Cumberduo — when Killer Evans pulls his revolver and shoots Watson in the thigh. "You're not hurt, Watson?" Holmes cries. "For God's sake, say that you are not hurt!" And Watson records: "It was worth a wound — it was worth many wounds — to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask." But to his friend he makes little of it: "It's nothing, Holmes. It's a mere scratch."<br />
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The other incident comes at the climax of "The Devil's Foot", when Holmes, impatient to test his theory that a west African ordeal poison has been put to use in a remote house in Cornwall, subjects himself and Watson to the same dreadful fumes. Watson describes the effect on his senses: "I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse of Holmes's face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror. I dashed from my chair, threw my arms round Holmes, and together we lurched through the door." In a moment the two are "lying side by side, conscious only of the glorious sunshine", a somewhat suggestive phrase out of context. And what does Holmes say when he regains his breath? "Upon my word, Watson!" Nothing could be more Victorian.<br />
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But it brings us back to Gary Hopkins. The name may not ring a very loud bell, but he wrote four of the scripts for the "Granada" Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, including "The Devil's Foot" in 1988. His script for that one includes a prolonged and rather cheesy hallucination scene in which Brett's Holmes sees himself bleeding hideously and relives the terrifying confrontation at the Reichenbach. (The whole thing is a foretaste of more extensive Brett hallucinations that would be seen in Granada episodes released a few years later.)<br />
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And in Hopkins's version of "The Devil's Foot", what one word does Sherlock Holmes utter after Watson urgently repeats "Holmes! Holmes!" and shakes him vigorously?<br />
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"John!"<br />
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He never calls John H. Watson by that name anywhere else in all their adventures. And if he did say it on that terrible day in Cornwall, Watson left it out of the Canon. But if he did . . . if he did . . .<br />
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