"I Am Now About to Summarize" [ENGR]

As we bid farewell to 2011, we thought it was only appropriate to take a look back at how our little site progressed throughout the year. We offer you, dear reader, this snapshot of activity on the Baker Street Blog and hope that you find it useful. This was a year of growth and change, and our aim is to continue to bring you the best of the news of Sherlock Holmes and popular culture.

A note about the image to the left: for those of you not familiar, that is the state of the art photographic technology that's traditionally used at the BSI Dinner.

Now then. Let's look at a few areas of interest and see if we can make anything of it all. We're looking forward to receiving your feedback in the form of emails and comments.

Read more...

"The Two Gentlemen Passed Us" [HOUN]

It's the end of the year and we're catching up on some of the passings that have occurred over the past couple of months. The following are a pair of BSI obituaries of some longstanding members of the Baker Street Irregulars.

J. Warren Scheideman
J. Warren Scheideman, BSI ("Count Von und Zu Grafenstein") died in a suburb of Chicago on August 25, 2011 at the age of 69. He received his degrees from De Paul University and went on to become a member of the faculty in 1984, moderating poetry readings and teaching things as diverse as Film Noir and Science Fiction. A new course in Film Noir, being taught now, stated on its syllabus,

"This course is dedicated to Warren Scheideman who hatched its plot, investigated its subject, and taught its lessons to many students across many years." 

One of his colleagues wrote that Warren’s dissertation on the analysis of curriculum was remarkable, and added that the faculty and students had been inspired and enlightened by his brilliance and thoughtfulness. He wrote a 452-page book on adult learning, which was published by the University and has become an important volume in the world of adult education.

Warren was a member of The Hounds of the Baskerville [sic] and Hugo's Companions. He was widely published in many Sherlockian journals, including the Baker Street Journal and Canadian Holmes, with titles such as "Hugh Boone's Twists on Victorian Society." He was invested into The Baker Street Irregulars in 1982 as "Count Von und Zu Grafenstein."

James H. Bready

James H. Bready, BSI ("The Disappearance of James Phillamore") died in Baltimore on October 29, 2011 at the age of 92. He graduated from Haverford College in 1939 and earned his Master's degree from Harvard University.
During World War II, Mr. Bready served almost five years in the Army's Counterintelligence Corps in the European Theater. Discharged at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4, 1945, at Fort George G. Meade, Mr. Bready, still dressed in his uniform, began working as a Baltimore Evening Sun copy editor at 8:30 the next morning. During his long career, Mr. Bready was a general assignment reporter and later feature writer, editorial writer and columnist. He was remembered by his former paper here.

In 1949, Mr. Bready had interviewed Evelyn Waugh, the English novelist who was visiting Baltimore. His counterpart at The Baltimore Sun, who was also assigned to do an article on the writer, was Russell Baker. Mr. Baker recalled meeting Mr. Bready in his 1989 memoir, saying that "The imagination, wit, and graceful lilt of his writing made him one of the glories of the Evening Sun."

In 1954, Bready's first "Books and Authors" column appeared in the Sunday Sun. He became the paper's arbiter of the Baltimore literary scene, vetting books and assigning them for review. At a time when bylines were rationed conservatively and not necessarily a reporter's birthright, Bready was in the position to offer both a book's author, and its reviewer, some ink. This power, coupled with his fair treatment of the region's writers, made Bready a popular name in Baltimore. The column ran biweekly and then monthly through 2005.

For 30 years until 1984, Mr. Bready was the Baltimore correspondent for Time, Life and Fortune magazines, and had been Encyclopaedia Britannica's designated writer for its entry on Maryland.
Mr. Bready was also the author of several books, The Home Team, an illustrated history of Baltimore baseball, and Baseball in Baltimore published in 1998, which is still sold on Amazon.

Mr. Bready was a longtime member of the Baltimore Antique Bottle Club and had amassed through the years an extensive collection of material related to Maryland rye whiskey. In his retirement he wrote the first detailed study of pre-Prohibition Maryland rye, which was published by the Maryland Historical Society.

Mr. Bready was a member of The Six Napoleons of Baltimore and served as their Gasogene in 1954-55. He was invested in The Baker Street Irregulars in 1955 as "The Disappearance of James Phillimore."

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Please remember these fine men and all previous Irregulars whom we have remembered in these pages. May they rest in eternal peace on the other side of the Reichenbach Falls.

"The Second Morning After Christmas" [BLUE]

It's that time of the year when we reach into the archives and pull out one of the old favorites that seems to survive the test of time.

Not only do we recycle the content, but we ignore our editorial mandate to avoid reusing a quote for the post title. However, in the case of "The Second Morning After Christmas" [BLUE] which has been used in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010, we find that we have a post that continues to please, so we'll continue the tradition. Just as the Wall Street Journal annually reproduces a 1949 editorial written by Vermont Royster called "In Hoc Anno Domini," we saw no reason to avoid replication here.

If this is new to you, please feel free to share and use this at your own Sherlockian society holiday meetings. The only thing we ask is that you attribute the poem to its rightful author.

So, we bring you "Two Days After Christmas," a tribute to "The Blue Carbuncle" in the style of Clement Moore's A Visit from St. Nick.



Two Days After Christmas


For those of you inclined more to listening rather than reading, here's the audio version, courtesy of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.

A note about the lead image for this post:
This is the dust jacket from the first book to be published by the Baker Street Irregulars. The deluxe edition included "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" with blue-tinged plates of two of the Sidney Paget illustrations from the original Strand Magazine. It also included an essay by Edgar W. Smith, BSI titled "The Story of the Blue Carbuncle," as well as "A Note on the Baker Street Irregulars." We have included a link below to purchase this through Amazon.

We have the pleasure and honor of wishing you "the compliments of the season."


Please consider visiting our sponsors (in the right column and footer of the site) from time to time. It helps defray the costs associated with running this site. Thank you for your generosity.
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"It Arrived Upon Christmas Morning" [BLUE]

Usually we save our Christmas greetings on this site for "the second morning after Christmas." But in this case, we found a relic from our digital version of Holmes's own "large tin box" [MUSG] containing notes of his early cases.

In our own instance, the artifact is an animated gif that we found and sought permission (some four years ago) from a member of Holmesian.net named "whorl". We had misplaced the image, and then did not have an appropriate hosting service to be able to share it with you.

Now, on Christmas morning, that has all been solved. We're proud and honored to bring you The Bloo Sparkly (click for the fullsize image), a retelling of "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" with stick figures, which you can see below. If you're reading this on a feed reader or via email, please click on "The Baker Street Blog" in the header of the email to advance to the website to see the animation. The slides advance automatically, so if you need to start over, just hit F5 or refresh your browser to start over.


For a larger version of the image, please click through to this link.

We hope that your holiday is an enjoyable one. Expect to see us back here again in two days (i.e. "the second morning after Christmas" [BLUE]).


When you make purchases from the links we share, it provides us with a stream of revenue to help keep this site running. Thank you for your generosity.
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“Those Shots Must Have Told Him that the Game was Up.” [HOUN]

Editor's note: this is another review in our continuing series from our contributors. If you would like to contribute to the site, please click here.


It has been three years since the original Guy Ritchie reboot of the Sherlock Holmes film franchise. At the time, Holmes hadn't been seen on the big screen in years, and excitement for this new take on the classic character was huge. We were promised a faster, rougher Holmes from the director of “Snatch” and “Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels,” and that’s exactly what we got. The best part? It was fun, if not exactly true to the original characters and tales as told by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” opened this weekend to a substantially different reception. While the original film brought in over $60 million it’s first weekend, GAME barely topped out at $40 million. Were we all just tired of waiting three years to see more of Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes? Or have we seen all that Ritchie had to offer and just don’t feel the need to pay to see any more?


Part of this reviewer’s personal apathy towards seeing the film was the fact that, yes, I enjoyed seeing the original “SherlockHolmes” for Christmas in 2009, but that’s before the BBC television series,“Sherlock,” had aired. Seeing Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman embody the fully-modernized Holmes and Watson in Mark Gatiss and Stephen Moffat’s three episode series is everything you hoped the big-budget Ritchie film would be: clever, exciting, and extremely well done. If “Sherlock” didn’t exist as a series, then maybe, just maybe, GAME wouldn’t have disappointed quite as much as it did.

“Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” finds Watson (the handsomely-mustachioed Jude Law) about to marry, and Holmes teetering on the edge of psychosis. Is Holmes manic, has he lost his edge? the film seems to ask. The film never misses a moment of making Holmes seem, well, incredibly ridiculous—whether he is downing a glass of formaldehyde rather than brandy, or trotting along on a tiny pony while everyone else rushes by on their full-sized horses. If the filmmaker’s objective was to make Holmes look downright silly, rather than classically brilliant, or even heroic, then consider this movie a success.

The film is much more an action film than a well-written mystery, centering around the machinations of Holmes’ latest obsession, Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris, whom Americans will recognize from the AMC series “Mad Men”). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the climax happens at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, which is not an incredibly exciting plot point to anyone who knows anything about the canon of Holmes stories.

That being said, there were some very beautiful shots in the film. The scene with Holmes, Watson, and their gypsy companion, played by Noomi Rapace, running through the woods while under heavy artillery fire leaps to mind. My viewing companion (not a Holmes aficionado) enjoyed the film very much, so I believe it stands on its own as an enjoyable time at the movies. I can’t help my reservations at recommending the film, though. Any movie that sets out to make the Great Detective seem silly overall is doing the legacy quite an injustice. 

Word is that the green light has been given to a third film as well, so we’ll just have to endure more action-packed ridiculousness from the Ritchie group. All of this Hollywood Holmes stuff just leaves me wondering, ‘When does the BBC “Sherlock” air in the US?’ This reviewer is ready to see some really taut storytelling and acting as befits the great Sherlock Holmes. 

Jill Brumer is a small business owner, college drama professor, and all around creative type who has lived all over the States. She has her father to thank for purchasing her first Sherlock Holmes story when she was twelve years old- the fascination has never stopped!

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"You Will Find That the Clips Are Too" [GOLD]

The BBC series "Sherlock" is making is second series run on BBC One this holiday season.

If you missed the first one (viewed in the United States on Masterpiece Mystery), you're in for a real treat. The series takes the original stories and characters and updates them for the 21st century. Watson is returning from Afghanistan (strange how some conflicts never end) and Holmes is an oddity of a consulting/science machine that lives alone in Baker Street. The two share rooms and Watson is there to chronicle Holmes's cases (albeit with Dr. Watson's Blog rather than the Strand Magazine). And instead of chemical retorts and tobacco ash research, Holmes relies on GPS and his iPhone, among other devices.

Lest you thumb your nose at such a modernization of the character, o traditional Sherlock Holmes fan, let us remind you that the Basil Rathbone series was almost, in its entirety, set in modern-day England. This new series manages to update the stories while paying proper respect to the stories from which inspired it. The co-creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are each students of the Canon.

Here we have a two-video playlist of clips from the upcoming season.

The episodes should be truly excellent, with titles like "A Scandal in Belgravia," "The Hounds of Baskerville," and "The Reichenbach Fall," all clearly taken from "A Scandal in Bohemia," The Hound of the Baskervilles and "The Final Problem."

Have you seen the first series? What are your expectations from the second? Let us know in a comment here on the site.

When you make purchases from the links we share, it provides us with a stream of revenue to help keep this site running. Thank you for your generosity.
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"The Curious Sequel of our Investigation" [SOLI]

Editor's note: the following is the first is a series of reviews by contributors to The Baker Street Blog.


I should start by mentioning that I enjoyed Guy Ritchie’s first “Sherlock Holmes.” There were elements that grated, but I thought it was an overall fun action film. To quote Roger Ebert, “The less I thought about Sherlock Holmes, the more I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes.” For the sequel, “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” I was already familiar with Guy Ritchie’s version of Holmes’ world and was able to become a little more immersed in the story, having established the rules of the game in the first film. Though there were certainly still points that could have been improved upon, I left the theater with a grin on my face.



The film starts with Watson at his typewriter, establishing right away that this is all one long flashback - we are viewing his account of the adventure. The year is 1891, and a series of bombings throughout Europe have led to the straining of already tense relations of the continent’s nations, particularly those between France and Germany. 


To assure the viewer of exactly what we are in for, as if we didn’t know, things start with a very loud bang - literally. Along with an explosion, we see Holmes in disguise, Holmes fighting multiple opponents in the same slow-motion style as was utilized in the first film, our first glimpse of Moriarty being delightfully creepy without becoming melodramatic, and a character ends a brief cameo by being murdered. All of this happens before the opening credits.



I should take a moment to point out that it is not all one massive adrenaline rush. I thought the movie was well paced for an action film, and there are a few quieter moments that are taken advantage of, particularly the wedding of Dr. John Watson and Miss Mary Morstan. It is a brief scene, but in it we see Holmes’ reaction to his best and only friend getting married, and it is appropriately bittersweet. On the other end of the emotional spectrum are moments of suspense given weight by Jared Harris’ shiver-inducing performance as Moriarty. When Holmes and his archenemy meet face to face for the first time, it is all restrained gentility and diabolical undertones. They even manage to work in a nod to the original Canon.

As I said before, this is a sequel and works within the already established changes of the first film. Differences from what fans of the Great Detective might expect are to be, well, expected. This time there were two elements that sort of threw me off, though as more of a mild annoyance than anything else. Holmes is seen in disguise many times in this film, and while that is excellent in concept, the disguises themselves were obviously designed to get a chuckle from the audience, rather than show Holmes’ skill in the art. Then there’s Mycroft Holmes. Stephen Fry gives an excellent performance, he rejoices in the character’s stuffy aristocratic omniscience, is given a fun tweak in calling Holmes “Shirley” just to annoy his brother... and then we see him in his office, nude. Not doing anything in particular, apparently just preferring not to wear clothes while he goes over correspondence and tells an understandably flustered Mrs. Watson (who is nicely utilized - take that Doyle) that he is starting to understand why a man might possibly want to associate with “a person of your, ah... gender.” The scene is funny, no denying it, but very superfluous.



The only issue I had with the film itself, outside of Canonical derivations, was one sequence in which the heroes and company are running through a forest and the slow-motion I had grown accustomed to seeing for the majority of Holmes’ fight scenes becomes so excessive it killed the momentum of the film at that point. Lots of explosions? Fine, it’s a Guy Ritchie film with anarchist bombers and steampunk weapon manufacturers (automatic pistol, anyone?), there will be lots of explosions. An over-the-top moment for the villain to torture his nemesis while singing along to opera? The cliche actually works well, which was somewhat surprising, thanks largely to the torture itself being relatively mild and Jared Harris obviously enjoying being evil so much. The slow-motion, however, works when Holmes is narrating his thought process for each fight, but to have an entire scene of running with explosions and trees shattering from artillery fire all done in jerky stop and go slow-motion is too much. They’re trying to escape - just let them run!



One thing I think many people had problems with in the first film was Robert Downey Jr’s performance. I have to admit, it grows on me. His Holmes is manically obsessed with Moriarty, to the point where the start of the film made me wince a little. “Please don’t let him be this crazy the entire film”, I thought to myself. 


Fortunately, while maintaining his own brand of a quirkier, scruffier Holmes, the craziness gives way to a comparatively much more Holmes-ish intensity. His fights are all well choreographed, more like dances with weaponry than fights, and Downey gets to display some of his martial arts knowledge by working it into Holmes’ demonstrations of bartitsu. He also gives something of a justification for his character’s strange behavior. While dancing around a room in which he knows an assassin is hiding, his partner (a rather two-dimensional gypsy played by the lovely Noomi Rapace) asks, “What do you see?” His response? “Everything. That is my curse.” As was hinted in the first film, this is a Holmes who literally observes everything, and can’t turn it off. No wonder he’s a little crazy.

Fortunately for him, and us, he has Watson. I loved Jude Law’s portrayal of the Good Doctor in the first film, and he does not disappoint this time either. Watson primarily provides backup with his trusty revolver, but he is still granted some clever moments of ingenuity. Law’s portrayal of Watson, in addition to maintaining a slight limp through the whole film, is every bit the soldier, a soldier who simply wants to have his honeymoon in peace and quiet but who will also follow his friend no matter what because he knows he is needed. 

[POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT]
They maintain the “Odd-Couple” bickering that was seen in the first film, but there are some small touches this time around that add shades of a deeper bond to their friendship, making them a little more believably best friends rather than just action hero partners. For example, during Watson’s very impromptu bachelor’s party (Holmes is not the best best-man in the world) the doctor declares that he is going to gamble. Holmes’ response is that Watson should give him the wedding ring, a request which Watson scoffs at and derides as Holmes has never professed any interest in performing his ‘best man’ duties. Holmes, mildly abashed, very quietly protests that he doesn’t want Watson losing the ring on a bet. This reference to Watson’s “gambling problem” (the fact that Holmes keeps his cheque book locked up and that Watson is ‘familiar with the turf’ at the very least) also illustrates how much Holmes really does watch out for his friend. Similarly, Watson gets to display how much he cares about Holmes a couple of times, once when he thinks Holmes has died, and once when he... well. Thinks Holmes has died. The first happens on a train. The second happens at a peace conference by a waterfall in Switzerland.

It is a great scene. I knew what was coming and I still gasped.



The Russian playwright Anton Chekov once said, "If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act." Apparently, the writers behind “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” must have studied, or at least Googled, Anton Chekov. Every reference made to everything throughout, no matter how ridiculous it may have seemed initially, gets used and/or referenced and/or wrapped up at a later time... except, of course, for the fate of Holmes and Moriarty. We know Holmes lives - so does anyone in the audience who hasn’t read the books by the very end - but it is still a classic (campy?) question mark ending, with just enough being left open for the next film in the franchise to expand upon. And, to be honest, this time I’m rather looking forward to it.

Kate writes at The Diary of Dr. Watts.
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"Still, Elementary As It Was" [BLAN]

The latest stills and posters are out for Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. It's a reminder that production has ceased and we're in the home stretch for the screening, which will be on December 16. If you happen to live in the UK, you can see the film (alternatively known in some circles as "Sherlock Holmes 2") at your local ODEON cinema - click through to find the one nearest you.

And while we have a good sense as to what to expect from the last film, there is no doubt that the sequel brings to us a certain level of intrigue, as it features not only Holmes's archenemy Professor Moriarty, but also his brother Mycroft Holmes. Both characters seem to have more hair than their original illustrations in "The Final Problem" and "The Greek Interpreter," respectively.

You can have a look for yourself at the 60 images (stills, posters, etc.) on the Yahoo! Movies site.

We've included some of the stylized posters here for your enjoyment. If you're reading this on email or an RSS reader, please click through to see the slideshow.




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