Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

Happy Thursday, everyone!  Spooktober is upon us so I've already been into the horror/spooky/slash films (if you follow me on Letterboxd, or even if you don't, I'm keeping a list of what I'm watching this year if you're interested; I'm trying to do more women directors this year as well as more foreign releases). But enough of that, let's look at the things I've been finding this week.  We have schlock, we have a Criterion, we have vampire romance and we have a novel by a former US Senator that's surprisingly affecting.  On we go!

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I've been very back and forth on Noah Baumbach over the years.   I liked his Kicking and Screaming, but asides from that I just was left cold by a lot of his work until Marriage Story, which I'm in the camp of regarding as a minor masterpiece.  It was a work that seemed just so much mature than what I'd seen before (and far less sour than Greenberg and The Squid and the Whale).  But yes, I'm going to finally take a chance on his collaboration with his creative (and personal) partner Greta Gerwig.  I have very much liked Gerwig's acting work as well as her simply excellent directing and I'm curious to see what she can do if Baumbach is in playful mode, as the trailers for this seem to indicate.  

OK, and if you haven't seen Marriage Story, get on that.  It's devastating.  I went through a divorce once and it nails how even in the most amicable divorce (and mine very much was) there's simmering resentment that can boil up.  But it's not a dreary movie, it's a movie that has hope and joy to it in the end.

Frances Ha is currently streaming on a weird combination of sites like Fubo, as part of your DirecTV package, AMC+, Showtime and the Criterion Channel.

Marriage Story is streaming on Netflix.

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A goofy fantasy novel about the War for Heaven between Michael's army of angels and Lucifer Morningstar?  Why yea, I'm here for that sort of thing.  I do like a good fun religious novel that has the wit to play the subject and this looks up my alley.

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Christopher Moore is a novelist who delights in having fun with mythology and religion, whether it's someone who accidentally becomes death or the tale of Biff, the Christ's childhood pal.  He writes these goofy novels that have a lot of heart to them and this thankfully is one that I've somehow never read.  But a love story between two vampires?   For sure I'm giving it a try.  

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Yes, Senator Franken was right to resign, so let's get that out of the way.  So let's talk about the weird legacy of Stuart Smalley, a character played mostly as a joke on SNL but whom Franken then wrote a semi-serious novel based on where Stuart is trying to come to grips with his trauma and his path forward,  And then a few years later, starred in a movie that is infamously one of the worst-performing of the SNL adaptations (remember when everyone was getting one, even a terrible character like Mary Kate Gallagher?)  But Stuart Saves His Family is almost secretly a very good movie, expanding on the novels themes of trauma and family and love.  And even more so, it has one of those great Vincent D'Onofrio roles that no one talks about.  He's really, really good as Stuart's older, stoner brother who has a good character arc of his own and deserves more praise for his work in this.

Stuart Saves His Family is available for rent and purchase at the usual places.

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Let's get to the schlock.  And hoooooo boy, do I want to see this schlock.

Welcome to 1977, as American TV starts really ramping up to the golden age of schlocky mini-series and TV movies.  A "sensual blockbuster" set in Aspen among the rich and depraved?  Starring Sam Elliott as he really starts to lean into having the greatest moustache on the planet?  And with THIS list of characters below? 

Oh.  My.  Sadly, this is not available streaming anywhere that I can find but it is available for cheap through Shout Factory, our favorite purveyors of fun trash.  But even better, my library system has a copy.  Did I just request it?  Absolutely.  Because my god, look at this trailer.

This screams "minimal effort, maximum stock footage."

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Recommendation time! The Blank Check podcast has been covering John Carpenter lately and their most recent episode covered his The Thing.  Apparently when it was coming out Universal put out this interesting promotion video of him, John Landis (whose American Werewolf in London was coming out) and David Cronenberg (whose Videodrome) was next up.  It's a really interesting conversation between Landis the hucketer, Carpenter the craftsman and Cronenberg the cerebral who frankly seems the scariest person in the room.  If you have any interest in horror then you should check this out.