| Peter David.net

My wife, whose name apparently was similar to someone on a watch list somewhere, was on the no-fly list (now gone from it, thankfully) while Abdul Mudallad, who was in the terrorist data base, was NOT on the no-fly list.

Thank God some fast-thinking passengers and a misfired inflammatory device prevented an even greater tragedy. In the future you can probably kiss good-bye to bringing baby powder on an airplane now. What worries me is that, a few years ago, some idiot tried to sneak on explosives in his shoes and now we all have to remove our footwear to get through security. This guy smuggled in explosives in his pants. Not liking where this is going. Maybe the next big thing for male fliers will be the convenience of travel kilts.

PAD

So over in that corner we had “Avatar,” embracing a host of story cliches under the apparent belief that technological advances in movie making were sufficient to rise above them and make the film more than it was, instead of having the unoriginality of thought dragging the whole enterprise down.

And over in this corner, we have “Sherlock Holmes,” a character who would seem the epitome of old hat, tired, overdone, so much so that there hasn’t been a Holmes feature film in American theaters in twenty years (although he has been omnipresent on television in incarnations ranging from the Jeremy Brett to Hugh Laurie as the Holmesian “House.”)

Yet the new “Sherlock Holmes” film that debuted Christmas day shows how everything old can be made new again–in this instance by returning to the source material in ways that even those who fancy themselves Holmes fanciers are unaware were ever part of canon.

Continue Reading “Cowboy Pete Investigates Sherlock Holmes” →