Trawling Through The Thrift Stores with Joseph J. Finn

Happy Thursday everyone!   It's a bit cloudy here in Richmond, a very pleasant day as our landscapers are working on our lawn and flowerbeds.  But you don't care about that, you want to see what range of crazy stuff I've found lately!

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This was completely indulging myself for my birthday; the Shaw Brothers (Runje, Runme, Runde and Run Run) were hugely influential in the history of Hong Kong cinema and Arrow Films, which is kind of the Criterion but for genre films, has started to put out these lovely sets of their films.  This one includes these wonderful titles:

• King Boxer
• The Boxer from Shantung
• Five Shaolin Masters
• Shaolin Temple
• Mighty Peking Man
• Challenge of the Masters
• Executioners from Shaolin
• Chinatown Kid
• The Five Venoms
• Crippled Avengers
• Heroes of the East
• Dirty Ho

Whew.  Now that's some great title work.

And I love that the included booklet has some of the great poster work for them.  (This is the American title for King Boxer.)  And apparently the restorations are quite lovely, like this.

Man, that just pops.

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I've been meaning to see this for a while and quite frankly, it's because of this picture from a wonderful book on Swinging London from back when Terence Stamp was flatmates with Michael Caine.

Like good lord, that is one beautiful man.  Also, I'm a sucker for a good boat movie, even one that I simply know absolutely nothing about besides that it's written by Herman Melville.  So I'll slap this on at some point, pull out the grog and yo-ho-ho with it.  

Billy Budd is available for rent and sale at the usual places.

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OK, this was a bit of a blind buy.  I know Satyait Ray only from the magnificent Apu trilogy and I keep meaning to watch more of his work, so I was happy to find this one that I simply don't know anything about.  It is apparently regarded as one of his greatest movies, about a woman from a rural community in India who gets a saleswoman job in Kolkotta.  

The Big City is streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.