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Feb 15 09 4:15 PM
Feb 17 09 4:59 PM
Feb 17 09 9:21 PM
Bill Warren wrote: We watched "The Greek Interpreter" last night, and were amused by Nicholas Field's performance as chief villain Latimer--he's doing an impression of Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo from THE MALTESE FALCON (he even examines his walking-stick as Lorre does). It's a very good impression, and works well in this context, but it's almost distractingly amusing.
Feb 18 09 3:20 PM
Feb 21 09 12:55 PM
Feb 21 09 2:43 PM
Anne Sharp wrote: What's especially wonderful about Costigan's performance in "The Greek Interpreter" is that he's not just doing a Peter Lorre impression, which would have been tacky. He's playing the role in the style of Peter Lorre playing Joel Cairo, which is great.
We watched "The Greek Interpreter" last night, and were amused by Nicholas Field's performance as chief villain Latimer--he's doing an impression of Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo from THE MALTESE FALCON (he even examines his walking-stick as Lorre does). It's a very good impression, and works well in this context, but it's almost distractingly amusing.
Feb 28 09 9:34 AM
The only episodes to disappoint me were the feature-length The Master Blackmailer, The Eligible Bachelor, and The Last Vampyre.
Feb 28 09 11:12 AM
Feb 28 09 4:15 PM
Feb 28 09 4:18 PM
Feb 28 09 9:07 PM
Richard wrote: The Sign of Four with Brett doesn't get enough credit. Could it be not enough people have seen it? I don't know why fans aren't raving about how brilliant it is. Not just because of Brett, but because of the script, directing, how it's produced. It's the best realized Holmes film. It has the strongest of all the sin-in-India-catching-up-with-you backstories that Doyle relied upon for several of his Holmes adventures. It has the most striking Holmes-as-detective business of all the episodes. Plus it has a budding romance for Dr. Watson. It's good enough to be a theatrical feature. To be fair, the 1932 version of The Sign of Four has little to do with the story Doyle wrote. The 1983 version with Ian Richardson is a superior Holmes production that tells Doyle's story for the first time. But the Brett version from 1987 surpasses it and every Holmes film that came before.
Feb 28 09 10:55 PM
sirharryflashman wrote: Strong words, Richard, but I am, to some degree, largely inclined to agree with them. To my mind, and while I love the Richardson film and like large swathes of the Wontner film, the Granada SIGN is as close to being a near perfect adaptation of a canonical tale as we've seen to date (including both the Rathbone HOUND and the Cushing BBC version of HOUND, both of which are favorites of mine).
sirharryflashman wrote: At the very least it perfectly captures the tone, atmosphere and structure of ACD's Victorian romance novel. Now, don't get me wrong, it is flawed on a number of levels (Brett and Hardwicke are too old, Watson doesn't get the girl, the watch scene is absent, and most notably the basic structure, at least for a film or television movie, is severely compromised by following the novel form too closely with its energy draining denoument) but it really does, to my mind at least, warts and all, stand as the best transfer of Sherlock Holmes from the written word to any other medium. Period. Full stop.
While Hardwicke, aside from the procurring of Toby sequence, is mostly relegated to the role of wallpaper, Brett gives one of his very best performances and is simply amazing during the Pondicherry Lodge investigation of Bartholomew Sholto's death.
The casting, sets and locations are flawless. SIGN is, for my money, the jewel in the crown of the Granada series.
Mar 1 09 12:22 AM
Mar 1 09 11:30 AM
Mar 17 09 4:18 PM
Mar 18 09 3:30 PM
Jun 12 09 3:19 PM
Jun 12 09 3:43 PM
It seems to me to be a separate feature-length film, and not really part of the Case-Book series.
Jun 12 09 9:00 PM
BijouBob8mm wrote: It seems to me to be a separate feature-length film, and not really part of the Case-Book series. It, ELIGIBLE BACHELOR and THE LAST VAMPYRE are all linked under "Case Book" on the IMDB, but I don't recall their broadcasts actually bearing that banner. (Nor do the DVDs, if I remember correctly.) Did SIGN OF THE FOUR or HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES have the "Return of Sherlock Holmes" series titles on them?
Jun 12 09 9:57 PM
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