221b Blogger Street

Data as Holmes

2007-04-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

A very nice rendition of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation playing Sherlock Holmes. Everything about this costume is very well done, from the outfit to the makeup and the eyes especially. This was from DragonCon '06.

Holmes or someone else?

2007-03-02T05:31:00.000-08:00

This gentleman was at DragonCon this past year, an enormous sci-fi convention held annually in Atlanta. I don't know if he's supposed to be Holmes, Watson, H.G. Wells from Time After Time or some other character entirely. Whoever he's supposed to be he looks an awful lot like Holmes...with the exception of the mustache.

Elementary, Mr. Hooper!

2007-02-12T05:28:00.000-08:00

Hands down, my all-time favorite film is Jaws, it always has been. It's incredibly suspenseful, extremely well-written, well acted, and practically timeless. Aside from the polyester suit that author Peter Benchley is wearing in the news report scene, there is very little that dates the movie. Just about everything the characters are wearing can still be found in any beach/fishing town. But it was years later after I became a Sherlock Holmes fan that I realized that there is a Holmes reference in Jaws. In the scene where oceanographer Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) visits Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) at his home the dialogue between them and Brody's wife, Ellen (Lorraine Gary), runs as follows:

Hooper (to Brody): You know, you're going to be the only rational man left on this island after I leave tomorrow.
Ellen: Where are you going?
Hooper: I am going on the Aurora.
Ellen: The Aurora, what is that?
Hooper: It's a floating asylum...for shark fanatics, pure research, eighteen months at sea.

Now, either the writer of the screenplay, Carl Gottlieb, or the author of the novel, Benchley, must have been a Holmes fan because, as every Sherlockian knows, in The Sign of Four the speedy steam launch that Jonathan Small hires to make his escape down the river Thames is called the Aurora, and it has become one of the most famous ship names in classical literature. At the moment I don't know if the name Aurora appears in the novel. Since the movie differs so drastically from the novel it may have simply been a tributary piece of dialogue that Gottlieb wrote into the script.

RIP Ian Richardson

2007-02-09T10:35:00.000-08:00

The great Ian Richardson has passed away at age 72. He played Sherlock Holmes and also Dr. Joseph Bell in Murder Rooms. A link to CNN's obit is here.

A Study in Scarlet

2007-02-06T05:47:00.000-08:00

"Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it." (pause) "And now for lunch..."

Dr. John "Don Juan" Watson

2007-02-05T06:01:00.000-08:00

1991 was the year I became a Sherlockian. I was working in Huntington, WV and attending classes at Marshall University and had taken a small apartment there. Having no significant school work that evening I dropped in at the Cabell County Library and desperately searched for reading material. My eyes fell on a volume of Sherlock Holmes which I took back to my little flat and promptly devoured. Now, I am a great fan of the language of romance. Well-written words of woo are breathtaking to read and even more so to hear when spoken by a skilled orator or actor. At this time I had recently seen Kenneth Branagh's film version of Shakespeare's Henry V which contains some of the most beautifully-written language of love between King Henry and Katherine of France, as he attempts to woo her and convince her to marry him in a timespan of about five minutes! King Henry's words were what was spinning about in my mind when I indulged for the first time in the Holmes story The Sign of Four. It is in this dark and sinister story where Watson meets Ms. Mary Morstan who will later become his wife. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ability to scribe words of romance amid the mystery and darkness of this tale is a great testament to his ability as a writer. They seem to fit right into the situation on hand and gives the story an emotional core that it otherwise would have lacked. The following are the words that I found so beautiful, almost poetic in nature. The setting is outside a place called Pondicherry Lodge where Holmes, Watson & Ms. Morstan have been taken by Mr. Thaddeus Sholto in search of a long-hidden treasure that rightly belongs to her. The Lodge is where Thaddeus' brother, Bartholomew, lives and is soon to be found dead from a poison dart. The lawn on which our heroes are standing is pitted with holes and mounds of dirt that have been left in search of the aforementioned treasure:
Our guide had left us the lantern. Holmes swung it slowly round and peered keenly at the house and at the great rubbish-heaps which cumbered the grounds. Miss Morstan and I stood together, and her hand was in mine. A wondrous subtle thing is love, for here were we two, who had never seen each other before that day, between whom no word or even look of affection had ever passed, and yet now in an hour of trouble our hands instinctively sought for each other. I have marvelled at it since, but at the time it seemed the most natural thing that I should go out to her so, and, as she has often told me, there was in her also the instinct to turn to me for comfort and protection. So we stood hand in hand like two children, and there was peace in our hearts for all the dark things that surrounded us.
And later, Watson in instructed to take the iron box which supposedly contains the Great Agra Treasure to Ms. Morstan at her lodgings at Mrs. Cecil Forrester's home. There is no key to open the box, since Jonathan Small, the wooden-legged man from who they have acquired it, has thrown it into the river during the chase down the Thames. In order to open the treasure box, Watson borrows Mrs. Forrester's poker: There was in the front a thick and broad hasp, wrought in the image of a sitting Buddha. Under this I thrust the end of the poker and twisted it outward as a lever. The hasp sprang open with a loud snap. With trembling fingers I flung back the lid. We both stood gazing in astonishment. The box was empty!
No wonder that it was heavy. The ironwork was two-thirds of an inch thick all round. It was massive, well-made, and solid, like a chest constructed to carry things of great price, but not one shred or crumb or metal or jewellery lay within it. It was absolutely and completely empty. "The treasure is lost," said Miss Morstan calmly. As I listened to the words and realized what they meant, a great shadow seemed to pass from my soul. I did not know how this Agra treasure had weighed me down until now that it was finally removed. It was selfish, no doubt, disloyal, wrong, but I could realize nothing save that the golden barrier was gone from between us. "Thank God!" I ejaculated from my very heart. She looked at me with a quick, questioning smile. "Why do you say that?" she asked. "Because you are within my reach again," I said, taking her hand. She did not withdraw it. "Because I love you, Mary, as truly as ever a man loved a woman. Because this treasure, these riches, sealed my lips. Now that they are gone I can tell you how I love you. That is why I said, 'Thank God.'". "Then I say 'Thank God', too," she whispered as I drew her to my side. Whoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night that I had gained one.

Last sketches

2007-01-24T15:27:00.000-08:00

"I beg you, nothing, absolutely nothing, is to be moved!"

More Sherlock doodles

2007-01-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

Sherlock doodles 1

2007-01-13T14:36:00.000-08:00

I came across some old Sherlock sketches I did some years ago and thought I'd share them. More to come.

Christopher Eccleston as Sherlock Holmes

2007-01-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

No, this is not an announcement that Eccleston is to star in an upcoming Holmes production (unfortunately)...only my mere opinion that he would make a most excellent Sherlock! He has the intensity and the near-perfect Holmesian look. Who out there is more "hawkish" than Eccleston? If anyone from the BBC stops by this blog then please register my hope that you will consider this fine British actor for the lead role in some future Holmes series. Of course, considering that he bailed out of Dr. Who only after one season then chances are he may not want to take on the role of Holmes. But I can always dream. :-)

Arthur Wontner

2007-01-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

This is Arthur Wontner who portrayed Holmes in the 1930s in a film called The Case of the Missing Rembrandt. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself was said to have thought Wontner "ideal" to play the part of Holmes and I must say I agree. Even though I have never personally seen his portrayal, physically he surpasses even Jeremy Brett in his resemblance to Sidney Paget's drawings.

Rupert Everett as Holmes

2007-01-09T05:42:00.000-08:00

My friend Ronn Smith, knowing that I'm a Holmes fan, was visiting the local library and was kind enough to check out a copy of a Holmes film I had not yet seen, which he brought to me Monday morning and which I watched last evening. Sherlock Holmes & the Case of the Silk Stocking stars Rupert Everett as Holmes and Ian Hart (Prof. Quirrell from Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone) as Watson. This story is not from the Holmes Canon but the dialogue is punctuated with Holmes phrases from a variety of the stories which the dedicated Sherlockian will no doubt immediately recognize. I did enjoy watching yet another interpretation of Holmes & Watson, but on the whole I was not really impressed by it. Generally I've always liked Rupert Everett but he is horribly miscast as Holmes and really seems to not have a very good grasp of the character at all. Ian Hart makes a very good Watson, but the writers and filmmakers took some liberties that I personally did not care for. The film opens with Holmes enjoying an opium pipe in one of the local recreational drug establishments. Holmes did NOT take opium, as all Sherlockians know. He DID take cocaine and morphine when he had nothing sufficient to occupy his mind and only came into contact with opium when he was visiting The Bar of Gold incognito in The Man With the Twisted Lip. The relationship between Holmes & Watson seemed also to be very strained, with loathing bordering on hatred for one another boiling just beneath their surfaces, which made me wonder why this Watson would want to have anything to do with Holmes and why Holmes would bother putting up with Watson. They did mellow toward one another as the film progressed but even that didn't convince me that they had any real friendship. Everett plays Holmes as very cold, bored, irritated, with absolutely no humanity whatsoever, and curiously without the observational skills that so define Holmes. And even the typical icons were nowhere to be seen. Never once did he pick up a pipe (though he did smoke cigarettes continuously throughout) nor did he don his deerstalker cap and traveling coat at any time. I think he did manage to produce his lens on at least one occasion. For most of the film he presented no deduction that would lead the viewer to think that he was any more intelligent than anyone else in the film...until the end, when he revealed the true twist in the story, and THAT was the one strong point, the plot. I was very pleased with it. It did have some odd aspects that one probably wouldn't find in a Conan Doyle story but it was well-constructed nonetheless and did have a nice surprise at the end. The fact that the murderer stuffed a silk stocking into the mouths of each of his victims brought a certain Silence of the Lambs aspect to the case. I'm not sure why they brought Helen McCrory in as Watson's fiancee since Sherlockians know that he was married to Mary Morstan whom he met during The Sign of Four. This was supposed to be his second wife, I think, but even so they were very ill-matched. On another note it was nice to see Eleanor David again after so many years. For those who don't know, she's a veteran of the Jeremy Brett Holmes episode The Man With the Twisted Lip where she played the wife of Neville St. Claire. So, even though I've spent most of this posting pointing out my gripes with the film, it is definitely worth watching at least once if for no other reason than to see a different intrepretation...and to enhance one's appreciation for the fine work of the Granada team, Jeremy Brett, David Burke, and Edward Hardwicke.

Holmes bust

2007-01-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

This is a nice little Holmes bust that my friend Robert Withrow gave me for my birthday a few years ago. It's about 4 1/2" tall and sits atop my computer monitor. Note the violin on the left side of the base and the lens on the other.

Elementary sculpture, Watson.

2007-01-06T08:59:00.000-08:00

This is a clay sculpture I created while taking an Advanced Sculpture class at Marshall University in 1991, shortly after having read the complete adventures for the very first time. The piece is simply titled Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective and shows our beloved hero emerging from the center of A Study in Scarlet, the text of which is scrawled across the pages and onto his shoulders. I didn't sculpt hair onto his head, rather I scrawled Holmes' famous catchphrases across his skull in place of hair. Curiously, I forgot to put ears onto the figure. I don't remember why but I it may have been because I ran out of time before having to submit it before the class. I got an A for it, incidentally. I think I may have some other pictures of this sculpture from different angles and I will post them once I find them. I'm about as organized as Sherlock.

Great writing.

2007-01-05T05:45:00.000-08:00

Although the Sherlock Holmes stories are fairly straightforward mystery/adventure tales, they do contain some of the most wonderfully well-written dialogue in existence. I was re-reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of the four novel-length stories, and the following are a couple of much-loved passages, both uttered by Holmes to Watson: "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt." And then, as their visitor, Dr. Mortimer, rings their doorbell, Holmes remarks, "Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill."

"Pray, let me have a detailed account of the circumstances which have disturbed you."

2007-01-04T05:42:00.000-08:00

Greetings, friends. This is my first official posting on my Sherlock Holmes blog and I thought I'd start by displaying my autographed still of Jeremy Brett himself. This came back to me some four months or so before his death. I decided to start this blog because of the seemingly curious lack of blogs about Holmes. I currently belong to a local group of Sherlockians that call themselves "The Norwood Building Inspectors" but I have decided to cut my ties with them and start my own Sherlock fan group mainly because I've found the Inspector's monthly meetings to be growing increasingly dull. I haven't decided on a name for my group nor have I yet promoted the idea but I intend to very soon. So, I'll be posting what Sherlock observations and deductions that strike my fancy and I hope you enjoy your visit to my humble suite of rooms here at 221b Blogger Street.