Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph Finn

Happy Thursday, everyone!  MLB playoffs have started White Sox go to Houston tonight and we have...er...preseason NHL and NBA.  Yay.    

Programming note: I have to travel for family emergency stuff so next week might be on hiatus, might not, we'll see.  Also, today's column is going to be short.  So let's get to it!

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I took the opportunity to upgrade my copy of The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, the 1943 Powell and Pressburger saga of Blimp as he starts out a young man in the British Army in 1902 and progresses through two World Wars and the slow death of the British Empire.  A fascinating portrayal of a man who has history passing him by but doesn't give up, played beautifully by Roger Livesey and wonderfully support by Deborah Kerr and Anton Walbrook (I particularly love Walbrook as a German aristocrat/soldier who starts as Blimp's enemy but becomes his fast friend).  Walbrook would go on to star in The Red Shoes for Powell and Pressburger and Kerr in Black Narcissus; Livesey would do A MAtter Of Life And Death for them, among other films.  The trio's work for P&P is easily one of the best film collaborations in history.

I've talked before about Criterion's odd corporate structure with Janus.  One of the offshoot things is that there are a few films that Janus puts out in cheap-o no special feature DVDs, like y old copy of Blimp shown here.   The image quality is of course absolutely excellent but there's nothing like the features on the blu-ray I just got.

You can see the size difference in the cases here.   Pleasant surprise in the special features?  A commentary with Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese!  (Powell survived to 1990 and Scorsese is a massive fan of his, talking many times about their influence on his career.)  And ooh, an interview with Thelma Schoonmaker.  Who is Scorsese's long-time editor since the '70s and later married Michael Powell.  

Hey, wanna see Uncle Marty introduce the film and talk about what it means to him?  Of course you do!

Watching that video, it's a great demonstration of why I think P&P are among the quintessential British filmmakers.  It's them, Mike Leigh and Andrea Arnold.  (I'm putting Lynne Ramsay in her own category since she's Scottish.)   Directors who made films about Britain that both loves it and knows the faults.  You can do far worse than going through their filmographies.

The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp is streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.

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My recommendation for this week was my Spooktober watch of last night (on Criterion as well as Tubi with ads), Angst (1983).  An Austrian movie about a killer released from jail who immediately goes back to his killing ways, this is harsh stuff that's almost shockingly good in how it's directed and filmed.  (Seriously, Zbigniew Rybczyński is credited as the cinematographer, I know absolutely nothing else about them and I would watch anything else they filmed.)  I cannot recommend this enough without also giving all the content warnings.

That's Erwin Leder there; the only other thing I know him from is as the chief engineer in Das Boot.  Between that and this I really need to dig more into his filmography.