Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  I hope your week is going well as we head into the weekend.  Baseball is humming along, the White Sox (as of Wednesday) have a winning record, hockey is limping to an end and now that I'm double vaccinated I'm planning to go back to the movie theaters next week after my wife's second 2 week period is over.  With all that in mind, what silliness did I find this week?

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Let's start with something I know is good!  Scalzi writes excellent military science-fiction that isn't just "rah rah kill aliens rah!" work.  This is part of his Old Man's War series, where humans are out there in the universe, making allies and competing for a limited number of planets and resources, and they've been steadily ticking everyone off and the universe has decided to bite back.  A lot of fun, but Scalzi has a great balance of comedy and action in his work (people keep comparing him to Heinlen, but he's Heinlen without the more...troublesome of his weird hangups about anyone who isn't a white cis male; Heinlen is a classic author for a reason but there's also a reason not as many people read him anymore).

(Also, check out his The Android's Dream; it's a standalone novel in a world where humanity has joined a galactic federation, but we're on the lower rung of the ladder in both culture and military strength.  Now that one's funny as hell as we try to get to the cool kids table.)

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This week's schlock!  Samuel L. Jackson!  Meat Loaf!  Robert Carlyle!  Emily Mortimer!  I've never heard of this before!  Directed by Ronny Yu, who also directed Freddy Vs. Jason (boo!) and Bride of Chucky (pretty good!); he also directed one I've never seen but I remember has a pretty good reputation, The Bride with White Hair, which I should check out.  I have no particular hopes for this movie but what the hell, I'm up for a movie that has Emily Mortimer with a sniper rifle.

And then...and then....we get to the opening of this trailer, which convinced me I have to at least give this movie a shot.  Because...what?

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On to the classy stuff!  Of the two Douglas Sirk and Rock Hudson movies I've seen, I certainly prefer the magnificent and sad All That Heaven Allows (did you know they made nine movies together?), but this is definitely up there in the stratosphere of a director knowing how to use an actors particular skills and persona and gravitas.  This is melodrama honed to an almost painful point, with Hudson and Jane Wyman working off of each other to magnificent result.  (I've always thought it's a little unfair to Wyman how she was for quite a while defined as being the first wife of that guy who went on to become one of the worst US Presidents (and Rock's sad story with Nancy Reagan, that horrible person, makes it all the more unfortunate); Wyman was an actress of a high level of skill and once in a while got a movie like this that showed it off beautifully.)  Check this movie out some time; it's such a grand piece of love from tragedy that takes its time in getting there to great effect.  Also, hell, it's Sirk and it looks wonderful.  Full credit, of course, to cinematographer Russell Metty (who also did the brilliant work on Spartacus).

I so love those old trailers that show the book cover and books of the time that have the book opening to start the movie.  I was weirdly delighted when the Twilight movies resurrected that trope, to the point of starting the first movie with the first page of the first novel and ending the last one with the last page and then closing the book.  

And hey, if you want to read more about Sirk and Hudson, Mark Rappaport wrote a really interesting essay on the two over at Criterion!

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Do I already own this, sure?  In both paperback and a book club edition?  Absolutely!  Was I going to pass up one of the original printings for a buck?  Hell no!  And hell, this isn't even one of my favorite Kings (and I don't think it's one of the better movies, though Michael Rooker is quite good in it).  But I'm a dumb completist who wants every King work; I grew up on him and I've been happy to see people in general grow into realizing he's a pretty excellent wordsmith.  (And he and Tabitha seem like genuinely nice people who've done a lot of good work for Bangor and have helped out aspiring filmmakers by licensing their work for short films for as little as a buck, depending of course on whether it's a student film or something for a major studio.)

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Finally this week, something I only know by reputation.  I of course should have read Richard Wright long ago, but perhaps I was simply intimidated (and let's be frank, like most people who went to high school in the '80s, it was really a steady diet of white guys, some of whom like Hemingway and Updike should have been left behind years ago).  So I pledge that as soon as I am done with the book I'm reading now (Sally Field's memoir, which is much more interesting and compelling than you might think) I will start this.