LOL, come on.... just look around... on the dvd, various news... The National Film Museum, Inc. & FOCUSfilm Entertainment's restoration project....

Here's an interview I found....

Henninger Interactive Media Interview

The prints are over 50 years old.... they didn't do a Capra class job by far but they definitely did some work here.

http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_ite...item_id=544270

"Preserved and restored in 35mm by the UCLA Film and Television Archive..."

Totally agree. You can't restore a film and leave out an entire scene. There was no restoration done. The DVDs actually look worse than some of the VHS copies around. Focus did nothing to those films but transfer public domain prints onto DVD. They didn't even get decent public domain prints.

The MPI versions will hopefully do justice to these classic mystery films.

I'm sorry, but you just don't have a clue.

One of THE most EXTENSIVE restoration projects ever undertaken was "Lost Horizon". The amount of money they spent and the time involved was just gigantic. In the final dvd cut there were scenes that were completely missing.

Unfortunately, even when hundreds of prints are used in restoring a film; the entire movie can't be restored. If you really knew anything about the restoration of old films you would at least know this.

I have no idea how many prints they used to restore the Sherlock Holmes movies, but to make the statement like you just made above is completely ludicrous.

Now it's my turn to LOL. The "National Film Museum" is the name of a budget company that releases public domain prints. And they do some of the crappiest work out there in public domain releases -- including this Holmes set, the Elite "Masterworks of German Cinema" set, the Slingshot "One Step Beyond" release, among others.

They are not a museum. And they do not do film restoration. They just have that name to make it seem like they do... and apparently it works.

That "article" that you linked to is a press release from the company that is full of inaccurate information and marketing doublespeak. Again, these films are not 'restored'. They got a print, authored it to DVD, and released it. That's the extent of the 'work' they did. It's the same work that Madacy, Alpha, and dozens of other budget labels do.

I'm sorry, but I do. Anyone thats ever watched the Focus DVDs could easily tell there was zero restoration done and the prints are just crappy public domain junk.

There is a big difference between film restoration like the work on Rear Window and Vertigo, digital restoration like Criterion does to clean up their DVD releases, and just slapping a crappy public domain print onto a DVD which is what the National Film Museum does.

You need to get a clue. Focus did a carefull restoration, but didn't notice they left out about six minutes of footage in Terror by Night? Footage, I might add, that is on the VHS and even the cheap $5 DVD versions put out by other companies. Yeah right.

If you're on a budget and have some patience, The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has over 150 Holmes radio adventures that can be downloaded from their site for free.

Or.....

There's also www.rusc.com, which has many SH radio adventures.

"Loaded with DVD Extras" it says. Is anyone else as underwhelmed as me with these extras? Not even the trailers?
Oh well, if it turns out to be actually a good digital restoration of these classics then I guess I shouldn't complain too much about this.

I consider a commentary to be an excellent extra.

Its $50 for 4 movies, so just getting them restored is an extra feature enough for me.

I must have seen each of these 14 films at least 80 times. When I was a kid, a local station ran Sherlock Holmes Theater every Sunday night for about 20 years. I am thrilled that I will now be able to own restored versions of these films. Any extras are just icing on the cake.

http://www.dvdfile.com/software/revi...escoll_v1.html

dvd file reviews the first collection.. but there are no extras!!! How disapointing!

and now more mishaps... according to the digitalbits forum, http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=159945 , there are in fact commentaries... dvdfile just messed up. I hope this is true, and it may be the case because normally dvdfile reviews usually mention something as to why certain titles don't have any extras and/or whether or not its worthwhile as a bare bones edition.

This is a silly statement.
MPI is simply releasing them in the order they were made.

Not exactly "Loaded" (as the front of the packaging suggests), but there are extras. Unless MPI is flat-out lying on the cover. ....

How long are each film??

Why does the box says xtras if there aern't any???..

I thaught only American studios are guilty of false advertising on dvd's???..I guess the U.K are just as bad

Each film runs just over an hour which is the standard length of a 40's "B" mystery.

MPI is releasing two versions of these titles. The titles in the box set come with all the extras. The standalone titles that can be purchased individually have no extras.

I have no idea why they're doing it this way, but most diehard fans of this series will be picking up the box sets anyway so it's a moot point for us.

I have both volume 1 and volume 2 on pre-order and can't wait for these to come out. They've been at the top of my "most wanted on DVD" list for some time along with the Charlie Chans.

btw, I'm looking for STL for the first collection in case anyone is ordering from Amazon.

[email protected]

thanks!

Dan Ramer clarified on the digitalbits forum that he received 4 seperate copies and assumed that they were the same in the collection. However, it appears that the collection will still contain extras (unless they incorrectly list a commentary track on the packaging and then there is none, like the mishap with the H20 commentary listing). Therefore, the only way to get the extras is to get the box set.

In case anybody's interested in these two titles:

From The Digital Bits:

Got volume one today and I want to give a bit of a warning. The extras on the set are greatly exagerated. I would have paid the $48 I spent for just the movies, because the restoration is very good. The films have slight flaws that I have noticed, but overall look very good. Comparing these to the horrible Focus release is like night and day.

As far as the extras. The photo gallery and movie posters is really just a 2 and a half minute little montage thats hardly worth mentioning and only appears on Sherlock Holmes Faces Death. Also the only movie with the David Stuart Davies commentary is Sherlock Holmes Faces Death. He talks about all four films in that one commentary.

So the extras are only on one disc and MPI slapping loaded with DVD extras on the front of the case is really a complete lie.

Still a great set, but MPI exagerates how great.

Volume two is a repeat of Volume one. Nice transfer and very few extras. The extras are only on The Scarlet Claw. The other three films are bare bones. The transfers are very good again and its well worth picking up just for the movies.

The extras on The Scarlet Claw include: an introduction by Robert Gitt explaining the restoration, audio commentary by David Stuart Davies, a short photo gallery.

The set also has a nice booklet, like volume one had, that has some nice information about each film.

Awesome! V2 just shipped yesterday to me... and I just preordered V3 on Amazon.

I can't give enough compliments on how good the A/V quality is on these films. Where possible, the original camera negatives were used which makes several films look like they were shot in 2003 instead of 1943.

Even "The Scarlet Claw", for which no good elements existed, looks very, very good.

I encourage all fans of classic detective series to pick these sets up. Strong sales will encourage Fox to release the Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto films (which were also recently restored).