Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  Warmer here in Chicago this week, we've had a bit of rain and it's now the worst sports day of the year as I write this.  (The day after the All-Star Game, when no major sports teams in the US have any games.)  But hey, I got to catch up on Black Widow (which I thought was quite good and as usual Florence Pugh is a damn good actor) and some reading and now, let's catch up on what I've found at the thrift stores this last week.

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There it is, my find of the week and maybe the month.  Completely unavailable on any streaming service in the US as part of a service or to rent or to buy and completely out of print on DVD (unless you buy weird bootlegs on Amazon).  I was so happy to find this for only $6.  This movie was huge for me back in the '90s for the story and especially for the fantastic soundtrack (both onscreen and on CD).  It's where I first encountered both Leonard Cohen and Concrete Blonde, both of whom perform "Everybody Knows."  It is just the epitome of what a teen "fight the man" movie in the '90s should be, never sneers at the subject and has some damn fine performances from Christian Slater and his fellow students.  

(Man, I miss Concrete Blonde, one of my favorite bands and concerts of the '90s.  Saw them once at the Vic in Chicago and they blew the roof off.)

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Marion Zimmer Bradley is absolutely completely problematic (no, she's a monster, go ahead and google it) but I just wanted to feature the cover art for this novel about intelligent giant hawks that hunt humans.  That art, by Bob Adragna, really nails what they're going for here.  Adragna I know mostly for some vastly different work; he did the new art for the Alfred Hitchcock Three Investigators books I loved as a kid, starting in 1979 and going on for a decade.  I loved these books about three kids running a mystery-solving club out of their RV-headquarters that was inside of a junkyard owned by one of their fathers.  They were a lot of fun and in my memory had some good ghostwriters going for them.  And, of course, how could I not love cover art like this?

Oh look, there's a face on that mountain!  OK, weird, but not that odd.

Look, we've all encountered haunted mirrors.  It's dark, you come around a corner, you see yourself in a mirror, it scares you.

OK, someone give that dragon a lozenge.

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I've read about half of the stuff in this already but hey, James Joyce I've never read and it has a real fun cover!  Also, it's very much a '70s edition that has that delicious acid-paper smell.  *opens book, takes huge whiff* Oh yeah, that's the stuff.  It's like weed for book lovers who don't use weed.

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I have not read All Quiet On The Western Front, probably the best novel ever written about war, in quite a while.  But my memory of it and the excellent movie version is how it's so sad and searing it is about war and jingoism and coming of age to realize a lot of what you've been fed by adults is bullshit (but not all of it).  It's a wonderful, sad novel that everyone should read just once.

And really, you should watch the movie, which is a great adaptation.  

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I'll probably never make a movie but lordy, I love books about making movies.  So discovering a book about directing documentaries (which I think is a very particular skill) and a book about making indie films as well is catnip for me.  So I had to highlight it with one of my favorite books about making movies, Rebel Without A Crew, where Robert Rodriguez talks about the experience of making a 90-minute feature for $7,000 or so (that movie being El Mariachi) and paying for it by selling his body for medical science.  It's entertaining and essential reading for anyone who wants to dip into the indie film era of the '90s.  (Unfortunately, this means you have to deal with the Weinsteins in this.  I'm sorry about that.)

Now, here's the unfortunate part of Rodriguez' book; he has disdain for the usual style of making a movie, where specific people have specific jobs, and that kind of falls into the "unions make everything go slow" nonsense.  So, be aware of that going in.

Really, El Mariachi is worth your time.  It's fun, the gunplay is good and has some good moments throughout.

And you definitely need to watch Bedhead, Rodriguez' short film from 1991 starring his siblings.  It's funny as hell and a great low-budget piece of work.