Amateur Holmesian Scholarship

Will Ferrell confirmed in an interview that his comedy take on Holmes and Watson has been delayed due to the Guy Ritchie film.

“It’s just a question of the Robert Downey Jr. one that they’ve just shot which I think will come out during Christmas or something like that, I think everyone just wants to see – well, that one’s probably going to be a hit franchise, and whether that is something you want to go up against, would it just inform the audience to allow for us to do a comedy version, or would it feel like oh, we’re just trying to copy them, even though I think we wrote our script before they did, I don’t know. Yeah, we’re thinking about it.”

Newsarama gave a very positive review to the manga ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’ published by Self Made Hero. I’ve got my copy on order from Forbidden Planet, expecting it in the next few days.

The LA Times had an interesting article on the ‘new’ Sherlock Holmes. They talked to Barbara Roden who gave some interesting sound bites, for example

“We’ve had to rely on our parents’ or grandparents’ Holmes,” said Barbara Roden, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars fan group who runs Calabash, a press in British Columbia for Sherlockian research. “I’m hoping we get a 21st century Holmes, one for our generation.”

Finally, WB will be putting out a Sherlock Holmes app for the iPhone/iPod touch. No word on what that will be but my money is on it being a tie-in game.

I was reading an essay by Barbara Roden about why Doyle never put Holmes against Jack the Ripper. The essay isn’t the most interesting thing I’ve read but I did come across this snippet:

“Remarkably, one person who did attempt to solve the Ripper murders was Dr Joseph Bell. Aided by a friend, Bell scrutinised the Scotland Yard suspects and some of his own. He and his friend worked towards their separate conclusions; then each wrote down the name of the person they suspected, and exchanged papers. As Bell noted, ‘When two men set out to investigate a crime mystery, it is where their researches intersect that we have a result.’ When they opened their papers, both men had the same name. They presented their findings to Scotland Yard – and the murders ended a week later. Unfortunately, their results have never been made public.”

She lists her source as ‘Elementary, My Dear Watson’ by Graham Nown.

I’ve asked about this on the ‘Casebook of Jack the Ripper’ forum and they’ve speculated that this could be an urban myth, which would fit in with things I’ve read about the case. I’m going to attempt to find out more about this as it’s a very interesting area of speculation, particularly as I do know that Arthur Conan Doyle was a member of a crime solving club.