hi

Is "The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection" that's going to be released on
June 27, 2006 by Mpi Home Video double sided?

Kurt

Well they issued all the films as single titles on individual discs, I would imagine that the boxset would just be a collection of those packaged together.

You could always email MPI. They replied to me fairly quickly.

I was going to buy their Holmes discs, but a company here in the UK released a boxset of the films using the same restored masters as MPI and a lot cheaper for me that importing the MPI discs from the US to me here in the UK.

That set was seven dual-layer discs with two films on each.

Didn't know they were repackaging these. I bought all of them through the years and they are among my favorite discs. Jeremy Brett was amazing. Hope they don't condense them down using DVD-18s though for this set. Usually they just take all the current discs and put them in a more compact box set.

You're thinking of the wrong Sherlock. It's the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce collection that's being released by MPI. BTW, the film restoration that was done on these movies at UCLA is nothing short than miraculous.

Well, the Amazon product description has this to say:
Those are going to have to be 5 pretty magical disks if they're not DV-18's.

Although, now that I think about it, those movies typically ran about 75 minutes a piece. You could conceivably stuff 3 into one side of a dual layer.

Well, I have all of these already as well and I agree they have wonderful restorations and even the two Fox films that weren't restored look pretty good. The films are pretty short so they can probably put 3 films on a standard DVD9 so I don't think these will be DVD-18s.

Hmm yes, but these restorations look so fabulous it would be a shame to compromise on the bitrates (as I recall these were very high on the original single film discs) just to ram three onto one DVD-9. Though the later films are very short, around an hour long.

The simplest solution is to go for the single disc editions.

I wouldn't touch anything on DVD-18's with a baregpole!

And yes, the restorations are absolutely superb. As I said they were released as a boxset here in the UK with the company using the same UCLA restored masters.

The only puzzle is that one film is missing it's original end credits (the version with the famous deerstalker and pipe silhouette), puzzling because several of the low quality public domain editions have the original I'd have thought that a low quality original would have been better than a better looking replacement, but there you go..

I totally agree. I'm definitely keeping my current versions. I like having them on their own disc and the cases MPI used for them were pretty nice and fairly compact with 4 discs per set.

I have most of the Bretts... DDD's 20% off sales have been very helpful putting that collection together... Nigel was good but Jeremy was the definitive Holmes to me.

As has been said this thread is about the series of films starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes.

It is quite true that, in fact, the Rathbone sequence is the least faithful to the books - excluding the first two, the films are set in the wrong period and have only the very vaguest connection to the books, and indeed at the end of the series are little more than War Propaganda films with Holmes battling diabolical Nazis with a patriotic message on the end! The Voice of Terror and Sherlock Holmes in Washington having particularly cringeworthy examples!

So it seems strange, but to me, Basil Rathbone remains the quintessential Holmes, even though later series actually portray the character and stories very faithfuly indeed.

In the same way, I always think of Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, even though she only did four films again with great liberties being taken. Again various later adaptations are far more faithful to the books, but there, it's one of those things.

I would agree with you about Rathbone's Holmes but strongly disagree with you about Rutherford's Miss Marple. Having actually read some of both Conan Doyle's and Agatha Christie's stories/novels before watching the film adaptations, I can say that the biggest difference is that Rathbone managed to get the character right despite having to deal with horrible plots whereas Rutherford is nothing at all like Miss Marple as envisioned by Christie. Rutherford is entertaining, as always, but she's nowhere as faithful to the original character as Rathbone always tried to be.

So I guess it depends on whether or not you've read the original stories.... Sorry to get off-topic.

I agree with this. Rathbone was a fairly good Holmes though Brett nailed the character like no one else since he could show the full range of the character. Rathbone did not have the freedom to do this in the 30's and 40's films. Rutherford was playing herself. Those Miss Marple movies are entertaining comedies, but have nothing at all in common with the character in the books. The stories are also a mess with some of them coming from Poirot stories.

MPI missed a golden opportunity here. Had they repackaged them in 14 slimlines using the original poster art (which is very good) as the covers I would rebought the set. The original 4 pack cases they used were cheap and flimsy. Two of mine are already broken. The restorations of these films were excellent, the packaging of them was less so.

I remember a long while back listening to a radio interview with a writer/producer type who was working on a new proposed Sherlock Holmes TV series (I can't now recall if this particular effort ever came to be or not). There was a long discussion of which early actors were the best Holmes, and which actors the most faithful to the character as portrayed in the Doyle stories. And the interviewer asserted that a few of the other earlier actors were a better Holmes than Rathbone.

The producer said that it didn't matter; that for a general audience nowadays Rathbone IS Sherlock Holmes. And to increase the chances of success they'd be needing to cast someone who resembled Rathbone in appearance and in mannerisms.
(But that conversation may have happened before the Brett series was on; so it may no longer apply.)

I had read the entire Holmes canon twice before seeing any of the films, so attention to detail definitely affected my tastes.

I still see Rathbone as the definitive Holmes, for as much reason as anything that generic depictions of SH over the years since the Rathbone movies seem to always use a very similar likeness to Basil.

And of course, Brett was quite terrific later in the role, and the Granada adaptations are FAR more serious and faithful than the Universal films. Still given the generational differences of when the two were made, it's like comparing apples and oranges. The advantage that both actors had in their interpretation of the role is that they were equally proficient at portraying superior intellect in a way that few other screen actors typically can. Admittedly, the script conventions of the older SH films could make Holmes look occasionally pretty foolish in order to move the plot, which I think is why some viewers interpret Brett's Holmes as being a 'truer' interpretation than Rathbone's.

I loved the older films as a kid, and then ended up reading the Doyle stories later when I was a teenager, so my view on the original films wasn't colored in the same way as someone who might have read the stories first. And consequently, I have a greater fondness for the old B&W films than some aficionados, I guess.

I would like to add that while Rathbone and Bruce were making Sherlock Holmes movies they were also starring in a Sherlock Holmes radio series from
1939-1946.

I just picked up the Complete Collection from Costco for $79.99. I always felt this set was grossly overpriced, so was happy to get it at eighty bucks. But what a disappointment -- no booklet, the packaging is garbage, and the trays came loose immediately. No wonder, when all that holds them together is one thin piece of clear tape. I checked Amazon's comments on the set, and found a report that HOUND freezes at around 1:08. And so it did on the DVD player on my computer. On my Panny the picture froze for 4 seconds while the sound continued(!!!) and then resumed. Has MPI offered a replacement disc for this defect?

glad I got the UK set for $30. Nearly the same set, but better put together and crystal clear PAL.