Sherlock Holmes DVD Review (copy)

By Kam Williams

If I've said it once, I've said it a kazillion times, the book was better. But in the case of this incarnation of Sherlock Holmes, we can't compare the movie to any of the 4 novels or 56 short stories based on the beloved character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, because director Guy Ritchie relied on an original screenplay collaborated upon by five different scriptwriters. The action-oriented production represents a significant departure not only from the original source material, but from the series of 14 screen classics featuring Basil Rathbone between 1939 and 1946.

Apparently Ritchie could care less about remaining faithful to Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his sidekick, Dr. Watson (Jude Law) in terms of appearance and demeanor. For the pair's personas bear precious little resemblance to what fans of the franchise might expect. In fact, this Holmes is more of a macho, butt-kicking superhero than a cerebral sleuth who leads with his grey matter.

That disclaimer out of the way, however, there is much to recommend about this adventure, especially for the attention-deficit generation weaned on the cattle-prod of incessant electronic stimulation. The supernatural storyline unfolds in London in 1891 where Holmes finds himself having to track down serial killer Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) for a second time. Despite having been brought to justice, executed and buried, the slippery patrician somehow cheated death, rose from the grave and escaped to resume his sadistic spree.

Since they neither behave nor look like Holmes and Dr. Watson, the heroes could just as easily have been named Batman and Robin or The Lone Ranger and Tonto. In any case, director Ritchie, whose career had been in a bit of a decline since casting his ex-wife, Madonna, in the remake of Swept Away, has ostensibly reversed that trend with this rollicking, rough-edged affair on the order of the best of his work ala Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking barrels.

So forget pithy sayings such as, "Elementary, my dear Watson," the new and improved Sherlock Holmes is more inclined to gloat as he doles out damage, spitting out lines like, "Weaken right jaw. Then fracture. Break cracked ribs. Heel kick to diaphragm." Downey assumes the mantle!

Very Good (3 stars)
Rated PG-13 for intense violence, startling images and one suggestive scene.
Running time: 128 minutes
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Extras: "Sherlock Holmes: Reinvented" featurette and a theatrical trailer.
If you want to watch DVD on iPad 2, iPhone 4, or back up the dvd on your computer, you can choose this DVD Ripper to help you.

Top 10 Free DVD Video Converter ( Copy )

Many video file formats, so many handheld video players, so many online video sites, and so little time. To have your favorite clips how you want them—whether that's on your iPod, iPhone, PSP or desktop—you need the right utility to convert them into the format that works for you. Commercial DVD video converter software's aplenty, but there are several solid free utilities that can convert your video files on every operating system, or if you've just got a web browser and a quick clip. Put DVDs on your iPod, YouTube videos on DVD, or convert any video file with today's top 10 free video rippers, encoders and converters.
1. Handbrake (Open source/Windows, Mac)
Back up your DVD's to digital file with this open source DVD to MPEG-4 converter app.

2. DVD Shrink (Freeware/Windows only)
Copy a DVD to your hard drive and leave off all the extras like bonus footage, trailers and other extras to save space with DVD Shrink. Download Adam's
one-click AutoHotkey/DVD Shrink utility to rip your DVD to iTunes for skip-free video play from scratchy optical media.
Honorable mention: DVD Decrypter, which Windows peeps can use to copy DVDs to their iPods.

3. iSquint (Freeware/Mac OS X only)
Convert any video file to iPod-sized versions and automatically add the results to your iTunes library. iSquint is free.

4. VidDownloader (webapp)
When you don't want to mess with installing software to grab that priceless YouTube clip before it gets yanked, head over to web site VidDownloader which sucks in videos from all the big streaming sites (YouTube, Google Video, iFilm, Blip.TV, DailyMotion, etc.), converts them for you to a playable format and offers them for download. Other downloaders for online video sites buy you a Flash FLV file, but VidDownloader spits back an AVI file.

5. Hey!Watch (webapp)
Web application Hey!Watch converts video located on your conmputer desktop as well as clips hosted on video sites. Upload your video to Hey!Watch to encode it into a wide variety of file formats, like H264, MP4, WMV, DivX, HD Video, Mobile 3GP/MP4, iPod, Archos and PSP. Hey!Watch only allows for 10MB of video uploads per month for free, and from there you pay for what you use, but it's got lots of neat features for video publishers like podcast feed generation and automatic batch processing with options you set once.

6. AVS Video Converter (Freeware/Windows only)
Rip and burn personal DVDs, convert video, create HD Video, split, join, edit, apply effects.
Convert almost all video formats including DivX, XviD, MOV, rm, rmvb, MPEG, VOB, DVD, WMV, AVI to MPEG-4 movie format for iPod/PSP or other portable video device, MP4 player or smart phone with Any Video Converter, which also supports user-defined video file formats as the output.
Key features: Convert Video between Almost Any Formats, Convert within Minimum Time, Create Movie DVDs, Manage video from HD-Cameras, Convert & Edit Blu-Ray Video, Output Videos to Various Devices, Make Videos Ready for Website, Straight from Disc to PC, Extract Soundtracks and Images from Movies.

7. Videora Converter (Freeware/Windows only)
Videora Converter is a set of programs, each designed to convert regular PC video files into a format tailored to your favorite video-playing handheld device. The Videora program list includes iPod Video Converter (for 5th gen iPods), iPod classic Video Converter (for 6th gen classic iPods), iPod nano Video Converter (for 3rd gen iPod nanos), iPod touch Video Converter, iPhone Video Converter, Videora Apple TV Converter, PSP Video 9, Videora Xbox360 Converter, Videora TiVo Converter, and Videora PMP Converter.



8. . Avi2Dvd (Freeware/Windows)
Make your video files burnable to a DVD with Avi2Dvd, a utility that converts
Avi/Ogm/Mkv/Wmv/Dvd files to Dvd/Svcd/Vcd format. Avi2Dvd can also produce DVD menus with chapter, audio, and subtitle buttons.


9. MediaCoder (Open source/Windows)
Batch convert audio and video compression formats with the open source Media Coder for Windows, which works with a long laundry lists of formats, including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AAC+V2, MusePack, WMA, RealAudio, AVI, MPEG/VOB, Matroska, MP4, RealMedia, ASF/WMV, Quicktime, and OGM, to name a few.

10. VLC media player (Open source/All platforms)
Ok, so VLC is a media player, not converter, but if you're watching digital video, it's a must-have—plus VLC can indeed rip DVD's, as well as play ripped discs in ISO format (no actual optical media required.) VLC can also play FLV files downloaded from YouTube et al, no conversion to AVI required. Since there's a portable version, VLC's a nice choice for getting your DVD rips/saved YouTube video watching on wherever you go.