As always, click to enlarge...A friend pointed out that I didn't include The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) in my overview of the many cinematic faces of Sherlock Holmes. Based on the 1974 novel by Nicholas Meyer, the movie starred the great, if erratic, British stage actor Nicol Williamson as Holmes, Robert Duvall (!) as Watson, and Alan Arkin as Sigmund Freud. Using his methods, Freud assists Holmes in breaking an addiction to cocaine, which in turn allows Holmes to solve a case and by doing so avert a general war in Europe. In a sense, Seven Per-Cent is a post-Sixties artifact that would not have been possible without the drug experimentation of that decade and the drug excesses of the Seventies, during which cocaine achieved (if you want to call it that) widespread popularity. It's been a while since I've seen Seven-Per-Cent, but I recall a particularly enjoyable scene in which Holmes and Freud exchange deductive observations about each other...
Mixed message...
It Didn't Work The First Time Dept: Sarah Palin likes the Founding Fathers as much as she does newspapers and magazines. Not even Glen Beck buys it...
WWOZ picks the best albums of 2009...
The Byrds were one of the finest groups of the Sixties, as good and as important as any band not named The Beatles. Peter Tibbles traces the Byrds family tree here...
Believe...
Australia is big...
Life, death, song, longevity, gloom, grace, resolve, tenacity, and misery in Haiti. (Thanks to Foxessa for the link.)...
Speaking of whom, Foxessa writes that Americans expect Haitians to behave in ways that we would never ask of ourselves...
Pike Place purple...
I stopped at a road house in Texas. A little place called Hamburger Dan's. I heard that old jukebox a-playin' a song about a truck driving man...
Posts
7 comments:
That first f. link goes to Australia ....
Love, c.
The Auth cartoon about Robertson is right on the mark!
I liked the novel version of The Seven Percent Solution, but the movie did nothing for me at all.
And what an interesting Byrds family tree!
F: Link fixed. And I also repair the acknowledgment so it didn't read as if I were thanking you for all of Haiti's problems.
Roy: I barely recall the movie, so it must not have made much of an impression with me. There's a sword fight at the end on a moving train (now that had never been done before), meaning that Seven-Per-Cent represented an early stab (pun intended) at Holmes as an action hero. The novel was followed by a sequel called The West End Horror, in which a young George Bernard Shaw induces Holmes to investigate a grisly murder.
I've been remiss in stopping by here so I may have missed your updates, but how is the wrist? Are you still getting physical therapy?
I hope you enjoyed your weekend with visiting family member!
Love, C.
It was great! Thanks for asking.
This is a bit late but I’ve been up the country for a week or so (cue Canned Heat).
Thanks for the pointer to my column. I really appreciate it.
Yes, Australia is a really big country as those maps demonstrate. The other side of that is that there aren’t many people, only about 21 million, and half of those live in Sydney and Melbourne.
Peter Tibbles
Post a Comment