Liberty wrote:

...   Anyway, you've got me wondering why a pathologist would be more suitable than a GP (who would be dealing with live drug users routinely) for examining Sherlock. 

I don't think it's a question of suitability, the dialogue in the episode goes:

JOHN (more quietly): Listen, before I do anything, I need to know what state you’re in.
SHERLOCK: Well, you’re a doctor. Examine me. (He sits down on the chair again.)
JOHN: No, I need a second opinion.
SHERLOCK (exasperated): Oh, John, calm down. When have you ever managed two opinions?
You’d fall over.
JOHN: I need the one person who – unlike me – learned to see through your bullshit long ago.
SHERLOCK: Who’s that, then? I’m sure I would have noticed.
JOHN: The last person you’d think of.
(Sherlock looks up at him silently.)
JOHN: I want you to be examined by Molly Hooper.
(Sherlock looks down, biting his lip.)
JOHN: D’you hear me? I said Molly Hooper.
SHERLOCK (cringing a little): You’re really not gonna like this.

(As always, thanks a lot, Ariane DeVere (https://arianedevere.dreamwidth.org/63351.html), though I copied from my PDF-download)

When I saw Molly in the first episode, she came across to me like a lab technician, definitely not like a surgeon! But originally she wasn't supposed to be a long-term member of the show, from what I've read, so her job wouldn't have been all that important.

And the main "hint" that John is a surgeon, as far as I remember, is that a GP wouldn't need to be discharged from the Army for a tremor in his hand and a limp. But then in HLV he clearly works as a GP - without having had the time to qualify as one, if Wellingtongoose is to be believed. (Out of curiosity, I just searched for "surgeon" in the pdf containing the transcripts of all episodes - and the first time the word crops up is on page 399 when they operate on Sherlock. John Watson, ex-army surgeon, seems to be fanon, not canon...)

In France it's a bit more expensive, but still affordable - I'll think about it (thing is, I'm not sure I like David Lynch films - I'm tending more and more to preferring straightforward storytelling without any artistic pretensions...

As for the price development - yes, it needs good timing to get a bargain: New films are (relatively) expensive, after a few years most can be had for next to nothing, a few years later prices increase as the DVDs become rarer. I bought the LOTR SEE set new for £ 18 in early 2010 - now it's at £ 69 (but there's used versions around for £ 10).

Of course, the libary is cheapest, and I found a Harry Potter special edition (2 discs) yesterday - I'm looking forward to it! Forrest Gump is there as well, but only as "normal" version, which still has commentaries. Sometime in the next weeks...

Edited to add:  I found the Harry Potter extra material disappointing: 90 % of it is for kids who want to delve deepter into the universe, not for adult cinephiles who want to know everything about film making.

I think I'm too old for Elf (I just looked it up on ImdB), even though what you are writing about the extras is what I'm looking for. I'll try to remember Criterion Collection though... Oh, I see they only seem to make Region 1 DVDs, which I try to not buy unless absolutely necessary (because I'm afraid that some day I won't have a region-free player).

As for the Lord of the Ring extras, if you are even a little bit interested in film making, I can't recommend them highly enough (the ones that come with the Special Extended Edition, where you get 4 DVDs per movie - 2 for the (too long) film and two for the bonus materials). I've said it before, I watch them much more often than the movies themselves - and I only bought the DVD set because I had watched the extras beforehand on a borrowed set and loved them so much.

I love it when movies have great bonus materials (i. e. several intelligent commentaries, detailed making of, preferably factual historical information if the film is based on or inspired by real events) - but that's not a criteria I can search for on Amazon. So does anybody have recommendations for me?

The best one by far I've seen is Lord of the Rings Special Extended Edition and Black Hawk Down, with the Alian Quadrilogy,  The Ultimate Matrix Collection  and Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World 2-Disc Special Edition close runner-ups. None of them are among my favourite movies, but the extras are great.

I'm sure there must be other bonus materials worth seeing - but where?

 

I'm not doubting anything, I'm impressed! YOU were the one who insisted on Brits being terribly lazy...

Or a perfect psychopath. Yes, we do see Mycroft differently...

Wow, isn't Mandarin a horribly difficult language?

As Rache said. I'd just like to add a few things:

Understanding a spoken foreign language is more difficult than reading (easiest), writing or speaking it! Because it's fast (no way to look something up), you have no control over the content, and not everybody uses standard language correctly (yes, speaking is actually easier, because you decide what you say - you just need to get over your fear of making mistakes, which is not something that's encouraged or taught at schoool, unfortunately).

Being from the south of Germany (Germany has a "language divide", like France, only in Germany the southern version has turned into the standard version, in France the northern) I have no hope in hell to understand a Dutch speaker. A friend of my grandmother's from Hamburg, however, could converse with a Dutch person in their native languages (Plattdeutsch and Dutch, respectively) if they both took it slow. I can sort of decipher a simple Dutch text or list of ingredients (for exapmple on a food package), but oral Dutch sounds completely foreign. Same thing for Scandinavian languages - it's easy enough to figure out that "luft" and "vatten" in a Swedish service station mean "Luft" and "Wasser" (air and water), but there's no way I could understand a Swedish speaker.

The thing that cracks me up every time is that French and English have so many problems with the other's language - when about half the vocabulary is practically the same. That's something I noticed after becoming really competent in English, when I started to relearn French as an adult. And it's completely logical - when Willy crossed the channel in 1066 he brought his language...

Unfortunately this seems a well-guarded secret amongst both French teachers in England and English teachers in France (or possibly they don't even realize - the general level of foreign language teaching at school is abysmal).

Exactly. Budget was limited, and the 80/20 rule applies in tv as much as everywhere else - so why strive for perfection in all things? Besides - is special effects/engineering like "the bed in the meadow" or "the the thing helping Benedict to fall backwards" even the same department as straightforward set decoration?

It's taken me a long time but I've finally come to accept the fact that Sherlock is not Lord of the Rings, but a tv show that's made under the same time and budget constraints as all other (non-pay-)tv shows...

I  only yesterday borrowed The Hours and have not yet watched it - from the text on the DVD there might be some similarities. Though I'm pretty sure that they don't show another perfect way for making disappear an abusive husband (that might be my favourite scene in Fried Green Tomatoes) ;)