Happy Thursday, everyone. It's a little hazy here in Richmond as we're on the southern edge of the awful wildfire smoke (and seriously, best wishes to everyone north of us; it's absolutely awful and I hope you can stay inside if at all possible). I went to Chicago over the weekend and did some thrift shopping, so let's look at what I got.
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Ignore the price tags on this, I got them for a buck each. I've been slowly acquiring season sets ot ER lately, as it's easily one of the best medical dramas that have ever aired. (Personally, I think the best is Scrubs, which I've been told by my pediatrics nurse sister is the most realistic medical show that's ever aired.). It's kind of fun looking at the cast photos on this and seeing how the cast evolved (like how Ming-na Wen came back to the show and remained through 2004). One of these days I will sit down and watch this show all the way through again; it was for so long the culmination of NBC's killer Thursday night lineup.
And come on, I loved seeing the cast of Joy Luck Club and James Hong showing up for Ming-Na when she got her Hollywood star last week. (I kind of forgot he plays her father on Agents of SHIELD!)
Man, ER had great credits. Oddly, all 15 seasons of it are airing on Hulu, Disney+ and also HBO Max.
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Back in high school, I was a D&D player and especially in the campaigns centered around the Dragonlance world, a fantasy landscape where the continent of Krynn had been besieged by dragons centuries before but they have been gone for centuries. And, of course, at the beginning of that campaign the evil dragons are coming back and you have to find the good dragons and fight for the future of Krynn. Along with the campaign modules out of TSR, you also had a trilogy of novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman that are honestly like 10 times better than they needed to be. The Legend of Huma is a prequel novel set back before dragons had left Krynn and I'm kind of curious if this is anywhere as good. (Am I also ordering the original trilogy from ABE Books? Heck yes.)
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Time for fun schlock! This movie was really under appreciated when it came out in 2019; based on the manga Gunnm (which apparently translates to "gun dream") this is a really solid adaptation by Robert Rodriguez as director and James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis as the screenwriters. What really makes this work though is the excellent performance by Rosa Salazar. Not every actor can act through prosthetics and CGI but somehow she is pulling off acting through literal anime eyes. They keep talking about making a sequel and I hope they do so that she can get some more praise for this work. (Also, I need to finally see her Prime series, Undone, which I know had some very devoted fans.)
Alita: Battle Angel is available on Fubo, FXNow and DirecTV and for purchase/rental at the usual places.
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A few months ago, the Blank Check podcast, which looks at the filmography of directors who have had a big initial success and get essentially a blank check to keep making movies, covered the films of Sam Raimi. Now, I love his work (his Oz movie non-withstanding) but I realized I do have a big blind spot in his filmography; somehow I've never seen 1995's The Quick and the Dead. Starring Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman. A Wild West movie set in a town that has a gunslinger dueling competition, I can remember the commercials for this but for some reason I never got around to it. So I kept an eye out for it and hey, found me an old-school Superbit edition!
The Quick and the Dead is streaming on AMC+ and DirecTV and for purchase/rental at the usual places.
*sigh* Yeah, I'm not especially a Hemingway fan. But this has both the 1946 version (directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner) and the 1964 version (directed by Don Siegel and starring Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson) and frankly, that's a bunch of people that have me really interested to check these out. Plus, they're heist movies and I'm absolutely a sucker for a heist movie.
The Killers (1946) is available for rent and purchase pretty much everywhere.
The Killers (1964) is sadly not streaming anywhere, even for rent or purchase.
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A reminder that next week we'll be talking bout 1949's The Invisible Man Appears! Sadly not streaming for free anywhere but you can rent it at the usual places.
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