in a Holmes, and is furthermore a reedy, floppy-haired, unimposing youth with a thin voice—he may give the worst Holmes performance in a seriously-intended talking picture to date (it’s odd that the more physically suitable Keating didn’t get the job). David-Lloyd, the first Welsh Watson since Dudley Moore, gets a bit more action to justify his billing—he wrestles the terminatrix bomb to the ground outside the Palace, though previously he’d taken a shine to her and invited her to the opera (though he has to cry off to go dinosaur-hunting). With the possible exception of Arends as a robot, no one makes much of an effort to be convincing or even interesting. Catriona McDonald is a hefty Mrs Hudson. As for the details, this is a rare film to put 221 on Holmes’s front door—which makes sense—though Caernarvon can’t really run to anything that looks remotely like Victorian Baker Street. In what might conceivably be a Doctor Who in-joke, it turns out that the hero’s real name is Robert, but he uses his middle name because “no one would remember a detective called Robert Holmes.” Written by Paul Bales (The DaVinci Treasure, 100 Million BC, MegaFault), who might once have read a Sherlock Holmes story: he uses that beggar who pesters Watson but turns out to be the detective in disguise bit, but weirdly gives Holmes the Batman-like trait of never using a gun—except when forced to kill his brother to save his best friend—which doesn’t square with the way the Hound of the Baskervilles was killed, for instance. Directed by Rachel Goldenberg (Sunday School Musical). Given that it’s got Sherlock Holmes and dinosaurs, it really ought to be more fun.
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Sherlock Holmes (2011)
George Anton is one of a new breed of essentially amateur filmmaker, making no-budget, non-professional feature-length efforts which get posted to YouTube rather than given even a token commercial release. He is credited on Sherlock Holmes as director, producer, editor, cinematographer and composer—and I’d not be surprised to find out screenwriter “David Wallace” is a pseudonym. Anton’s earlier Dracula (2009) uses very little of the novel and is mostly perhaps-autobiographical stuff about grubbing on the margins of the film industry, but this is a more focused effort and at least tells a proper story—because, as it admits in the end credits, it’s a close adaptation of The Woman in Green (1945), a Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Holmes film scripted by Bertram Milhauser.
The Woman in Green was one of the series of Universal films which brought the Great Detective into then-contemporary London. Though no locale is actually mentioned, Anton’s Sherlock Holmes doesn’t attempt to disguise its American locations (in Los Angeles and Florida) and includes a few cell-phones and contemporary references to establish that this is the present day. The police, represented by Inspector Gregson (Steve Acker), are baffled by a series of murders in which young women have fingers snipped off by a killer with a set of garden secateurs. Holmes (Kevin Glaser) is called in to investigate. While meeting Gregson in a bar, Holmes conveniently spots movie producer Fenwick (Gary Gansel) drinking with the purportedly glamorous Lydia (Kathy Shook)—the dialogue suggests she could be mistaken for her date’s daughter, but she’s a frankly mature and matronly femme fatale—and somehow tumbles that they’re mixed up in the case. Expert hypnotist Lydia is in league with a loudly-dressed Moriarty (Daniel Rios): their racket is to dupe rich men into believing they are murderers by having them wake up after a date with the mesmerist to find severed fingers in their pockets and then blackmailing them. The plot plays out as it does in the 1945 film, but in drab, hotel-like settings and with any trace of action or excitement rigidly excluded.
Glaser’s Holmes is short, chubby, and wears a flat cap (perhaps after the manner of those German Sherlocks of yore) while sucking on an unlit pipe. For some reason, Anton chooses to cut all Rathbone’s deductions and witty remarks so this sleuth is a tiresome bore as well as a poor stand-in for Doyle’s hero. Watson (Charles Simon) is a blithering idiot who gets lines like “there ought to be a law against fat people owning birds” and responds to an assassin disguised as a beggar with “oh bugger off—I’m on a mission of mercy.” Poor as the leads are, they’re often upstaged by walk-on players—like Ada Span as Mrs Hudson—who can barely get their lines out. Even Shook, the default leading lady, mangles her dialogue, referring to “childless tricks” when she means “childish tricks.” The scene transitions are done with comic book pages that peculiarly run the action backwards.
If you’re a Holmes completist or just curious—www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iad2dYsD7c. Anton has also made Robinson Crusoe (2008), Apocalypse Now (2012), The Passions of Jesus Christ (2012), Aliens (2013), Dead on Arrival (2013), Romeo & Juliet (2014), and Men in Suits (2015).
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Kim Newman is a prolific, award-winning English writer and editor, who also acts, is a film critic, and a London broadcaster. Of his many novels and stories, one of the most famous is Anno Dracula.
Podcasting
Can It Replace the Serials of the ’30’s and ’40’s?
by Lisa Cotoggio
A while back I moderated a panel for the Mystery Writers of America’s New York Chapter Dinner. The topic was “Solving the Promotional Mystery.”
Now while I thought that I had assembled an interesting group of publicists, marketers, and authors, who, I must say, gave an excellent overview of all authors can do to extend the sales and shelf-life of their books, the audience seemed to focus all their questions on one single point: Podcasts. Which, by the way, can be attributed to Jonathan Santlofer’s keen insight on the subject.
Jonathan is podcasting his novel, Anatomy of Fear (jonathansantlofer.com) to what has become a hugely growing audience. He explained how he sets himself up in his writer space, which is located in an old furrier loft on the lower West Side of Manhattan and reads one chapter a week to his listeners, who just love the idea of not only being able to picture his characters come to life by the very author who scribed them, but also imagining the old furrier loft from which he does his esteemed work.
As an author, it made me ponder the thought: are we as authors missing out on a generation of readers whose maturity has impaired their eyesight? Though the answer to that question is quite obvious. We now, through the magical technology of Podcast, have the ability to change it in our favor. And why shouldn’t we?
Looking back to the early days of my childhood, my father used to tell me of the nights he spent with his family gathered around the radio listening intently to every word of The Shadow, The Lone Ranger; and of course, The War of the Worlds, made infamous by the actual belief of an alien attack.
And while I belong to the tail end of the “Babyboomer Generation,” the opening lines to those three shows still haunt the dark corners of my mind merely through memories of conversations with my father, born during the era known as the “Silent Generation”:
Who knows what evil… lurks… in the heart of men? The Shadow knows!
A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-yo, Silver, away!’ The Lone Ranger!
We interrupt this program to bring….
Riveting. Wouldn’t you agree? Of course you would, which brings us back to our topic: Podcasting. A series of audio or video digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet by syndicated download through Web feeds to portable media players and personal computers. The radio of the future.
Wouldn’t we all like to have that kind of gripping attention by a beloved audience of readers? Yes. And they on the same hand would love to have us read to them. The thought of being able to relive a fascinating part of one’s childhood is a cherished moment, especially late in one’s life.
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