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Gavin picks . ..

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(12) 240min

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lt Davrd Crosby, Stephen Strlls and Graham Nash had their own lV show I'm pretty sure The Good/es would he the result. By thrs I mean three people who (:an't act and give the rmpressron of takrng far too many drugs. honestly haven't a luekrng (:lue what's gorng on here. Is this meant to he funny. war:l\y. weird or just a total mrndturtk’? I've been watehrng thrs for ten minutes so you prohalrly thrnk l haven't really given the Goodres a chance. But rt you can watch a whole errrsode of thrs, you rrrust have the Warn of a prgeon, or you're rn need of urgent psychotherapy. Basically. the Goodres rs complete bollocks. whreh no amount of weed can help make humorous. It you do Insrst on watehrng shrt lrke thrs. then I suggest you choose The :t r'errAees telews‘ron show rnstead. It's the same (trap. hut more pleasrng on the eye. God, I'm depressed. (Gavrn Fox)

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SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE

(18) 83min (Optimum Home Entertainment DVD retail) 0000

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shame on the ()ahnr Fer/ers ol thrs world. Good extras rnelude a fun 'makrng-ot' feature. an extensrye rnteryrexx' wrth Ara and wrrter Levasseur (who oeeasronally rrranages to get a syllahle rn srdewaysr, hoth lead actresses ralthough lvlarwenn rs clearly ashamed of havrng compromrsed hm artistic rntegrrty wrth a horror trlmr and a deeply drseoncertrng Nahon. grgglrng that he would relrsh the chance to play indulgent grandfathers. (Adele Hartleyr

LITERARY ADAPTATION

THE TESSERACT rtSr 93mm

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AS TEARS GO BY

(18) 100min rTartan DVD retarlr 0..

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SHERLOCK HOLES: THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION

(PG) 974mm

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The power of cinema is such that it‘s Basil Rathbone‘s equine-featured consulting detective who is indelibly imprinted on popular memory, and not the square-jawed sleuth described in Arthur Conan Doyle‘s stories. Still, it’s fair to say that with his penetrating stare and snappy line delivery, Philip St John Basil Rathbone made this famous fictional creation all his own.

Likewise, the films churned out by Hollywood between 1939 and 1946 at the rate of two a year, 14 in all - take liberties with the source material that would enrage self-respecting Conan Doyle purists. But as a result, the series (here re-mastered, but with little in the way of extras) represents a terrific example of Golden Age Hollywood mystery/horror genre filmmaking.

Matt painting backdrops and swirls of dry ice are employed to great atmospheric effect in the first and best in the series, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sinister George Zucco turns up in the second film, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, as criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty, a role reprised under a different name by the versatile Miles Mander in 1944‘s The Pearl of Death, which also introduced the memorable back-breaking brute The Creeper, played the giant Rondo Hatton.

By this time, Holmes had moved from Fox to Universal, which reinvented the series in 1942, after a three year hiatus, setting the films in wartime London and appropriating the sleuth for propaganda purposes. Conan Doyle's stories were reworked so that Holmes did battle with the Nazis, in The Voice of Terror and The Secret Weapon, and even in Sherlock Holmes in Washington.

From the outset, Rathbone and his Dr Watson, played with naturalistic bluster by Nigel Bruce, were moving from characterisation towards caricature, a good or bad thing depending on whether you‘re a Holmes purist. I myself blasted out a belly laugh when, in Baskervi/Ies' closing scene, the exhausted Holmes gaily shouts to his partner: ‘The needle, Watson!‘ (Miles Fielder)

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