|
| 
 enlarge | Director: Simon Cellan Jones
Actors: Rupert Everett, Nicholas Palliser, Neil Dudgeon, Ian Hart, Anne Carroll
Studio: BBC Warner
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $13.41
You Save: $6.57 (33%)
New (40) Used (8) from $11.95
Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 35271
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 97 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: WARDE2390D
ISBN: 1419816160
UPC: 794051239020
EAN: 9781419816161
ASIN: B000AOEMVY
Theatrical Release Date: 2004
Release Date: October 25, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW, Factory Sealed items direct from the Studios. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-29 of 29
 Good but could have been better. October 27, 2005
Michael Burke (Oklahoma City, OK United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have been a Sherlock Holmes fan for years. Books and movies. I have yet to see anyone who nails it perfectly. Jeremy Brett is my favorite followed by Ian Richardson and Basil Rathbone. Rupert Everett made a good Holmes. He plays him as young and arrogant. A Holmes before Watson and experience made him into the man he becomes. Ian Hart plays Watson superbly, finally a Watson who takes action and thinks on his own.
My only problem is with the screenplay. It is a great mystery to put Holmes to the test, however someone needs to make Allan Cubitt read some of the original Doyle stories. Holmes hardly ever works openly with Scottland Yard. And in this movie as well as the previous Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes is doing drugs in the middle of a case. Anyone who knows Holmes knows the only time he does drugs is when there is no case to stimulate his mind!
Let these two actors try another one together but get a different screen writer, one who knows the characters, Cubitt is not your man.
Sheer Burlesque. October 26, 2005
mirasreviews (McLean, VA USA)
35 out of 41 found this review helpful
"Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking" was written by Alan Cubitt based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic "Sherlock Holmes" characters. This story finds Sherlock Holmes (Rupert Everett) semi-retired and Dr. John Watson (Ian Hart) engaged to be married to outspoken American psychiatrist Mrs. Vandeleur (Helen McCrory). When the body of an aristocratic young woman is found on the banks of the Thames, strangled, with a silk stocking stuffed in her mouth, Holmes takes the case. When another young woman of high birth is abducted, it becomes clear that a fetishistic serial murderer is preying on the daughters of high society.
The Sherlock Holmes of "The Case of the Silk Stocking" is smug, cheeky, flippant, and, frankly, unethical. He bears no resemblance to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character. All period films are to some degree burlesques of the era in which they take place, but this one is over-the-top. Rupert Everett's Holmes makes no attempt at being a Victorian or Edwardian gentleman. He acts like a spoiled pseudo-intellectual dandy home from university. Some of his actions would be outrageous even now and are certainly preposterous in a film that takes place in 1903. Alan Cubitt made no attempt at writing his characters in their own era. Ian Hart does a decent job as Dr. Watson, and he coincidentally played Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in a brief scene in 2004's "Finding Neverland" about author J. M. Barrie. Audiences will either be able to stomach this Sherlock Holmes, or they will not. But Jeremy Brett's interpretation of Holmes from the 1980s and 1990s is still relevant, and reruns of those episodes would be more entertaining than "The Case of the Silk Stocking".
 What were they thinking? October 24, 2005
ThisWas (New Hampshire, USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I apologize for my one-star rating but Amazon does not enable me to select zero stars.
Positive comments about this production:
- Nice camera work, in spite of an overactive fog-machine, with good editing of action shots.
- Nice music during the ending credits (BBC website indicates this was Boccherini's "La Musica Notturna Delle Strade Di Madrid").
- The broadcast ended after 90 minutes although the WGBH broadcast schedule threatened that it was a two-hour production.
Stuff that needs work:
- Plot. Program descriptions in advance of the TV broadcast will have already revealed that at least two young women are murdered most foully, so I don't think this is a spoiler. Does it make any sense that the families of these women would attend a fancy dress Royal Ball a day or two after the murders? Or that the villain could easily stroll unobserved through a London townhouse from a young lady's bedroom downstairs through a hall with the unconscious young lady tossed casually over his shoulder? And then stroll down a London street, again unobserved by any servants or passersby? Screenwriter Allan Cubitt didn't successfully eastablish the necessary ingredients of "opportunity" or "motive" for the crimes, and his characters did not act believably.
- Acting. Rupert Everett did not create a new Holmes, but instead attempted to channel the spirit of Jeremy Brett (who is not a bad role model). Ian "Dr. Watson" Hart did the best he could and Eleanor David was appealing in a badly written part. I would describe the other actors as "one-dimensional" except that cardboard has two dimensions.
- Dialog. Neither true to the spirit of Arthur Conan Doyle's books nor a fresh twist, the dialog fell between into a tired cliche-dom.
Summary: I have enjoyed modern writer's attempts to update original Sherlock Holmes stories or write new ones. It's unfortunate that this particular story was chosen for an expensive production.
 The Clothes Hound of the Baskervilles October 24, 2005
A. Hickman (Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
This was fun. The atmosphere was so thick you could cut it with a knife (and then lose the knife), but I've come to expect that from Holmes and the BBC. Everett and Hart make such an engaging team as Holmes and Watson, that I didn't mind, too much, when the mystery came up short. A couple of the minor players made an impression: Michael Fassbender, as a footman, and Perdita Weeks, as Lady Roberta. But it's the Holmes-Watson dynamic that sells the show. This time we are treated to Holmes' apparent jealousy at the prospect of Watson's impending wedding-to an American widow, no less! By the way, this Watson is no bungler, ala Nigel Bruce; he even gets the jump on Holmes in one instance. Everett's not about to make you forget Basil Rathbone, however, and there is a scene where Holmes appears in a rather transparent disguise that makes you nostalgic for the Holmes who impersonated a Music Hall performer in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." But Everett puts his own, patrician stamp on the character; he probably would have been too good looking for Sir Arthur's tastes, but the rest of us will welcome him back in the inevitable sequel.
|
|
|
Web Design, Maintenance, and Hosted by K9Sites.com | |