Happy Thursday, everyone! When you read this, Christmas for the Western churches is two days away, the Solstice is just past and baseball is coming back....well, someday. Lockouts suck and the owners suck. So, while I go back and forth on packing to visit my house in Richmond (why yes, we bought a house; that sentence terrifies me too) let's look at some good thrift store finds.
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There's been a weird rise in novels and movies set around people contemplating the end of the world and how they would deal with it. I mean...it's an interesting concept; if you knew for certain that the world would end, how would you react? Would you go balls-out nutty? Gather around with the family? Curl up in a ball for a few months until the inevitable end? Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World takes a comedic look at this, but it's also sneakily emotional take as well. Steve Carell and Keira Knightley might seem like an odd combination, but they bring a weird morose comedic energy that I think works well.
Besides, it has a scene with Gillian Jacobs where they stop at a TGIF that has gone into full-one party mode as everyone parties to the end and it's a hoot but also, just slightly, Lord of the Flies.
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is for rent and purchase at the usual places and streaming on HBOMax.
Two recommendations for other works about the end of the world as people wait for it:
Ben Winters is an underappreciated science-fiction author and his trilogy about a policeman determined to finish the job before a meteor wipes out the Western Hemisphere is really worth your time.
Last Night is a Canadian movie about the same subject, except in this case we don't know what the apocalypse is. It's all very vague why but we know the end is coming. Don McKellar's first directing job, it mostly follows Sandra Oh as she gets ready for the end and ending herself before then, which is of course dark as hell but this is all handled in an interestingly gentle way. I always think of how the movie keeps cutting back to David Cronenberg playing a gas company guy in his office, calling every customer on his list about how their service is about to end and precisely crossing their name off his list. It's an odd, interesting movie with a good heart.
And it's one of those interesting movies that is on YouTube for free! I love the weird genre of essentially abandoned movies that live on YT because the rights holders don't seem to care that much.
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