Happy Thursday, everyone! Still in the 90s here in Richmond but hopefully we'll get some rain soon because frankly, our garden could use it. But hey, school is starting for kids, the cooler weather is coming so let's see what I found recently!
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My Dinner With Andre is one of those movies that I know by reputation and yet, somehow, I've never actually seen. So hey, this was an easy pickup for me. I know Malle mostly for Au Revoir Les Enfants, his 1987 masterpiece about how he was at boarding school during WWII where the priest running it, Père Jacques, was harboring Jewish children from the Gestapo. It's a wonderful and harrowing piece of work that has stuck in my head forever.
My Dinner With Andre is currently on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel.
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On a much sillier level, long before the CW had what came to be know as the Arrowverse with Arrow, The Flash and all the various DC shows that were in that grouping, they tried first with Birds of Prey. Based on the really excellent comics by Gail Simone and Chuck Dixon, this makes some definitely weird choices in adapting the characters. Black Canary is a teenager runaway with precognitive abilities and Huntress is the '60s alternate universe version where she's the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. They stuck with what was Barbara Gordon's role at the time as Oracle, who had previously been Batgirl, was shot by the Joker and is now a badass information broker and leader in her watchtower. I'm not sure the series quite works, but it's an interesting try for 2002 in a world where X-Men were pretty much the successful adaptation of the time (so of course, a lot of the show is very blue-toned). Dina Meyers in particular is quite good as Barbara and it's a bummer that the show didn't run longer for her portrayal. And hey, Mia Sara as Harley Quinn is pretty good!
But oy, the tagline on that cover is terrible.
I have to imagine this was part of some PR package for the WB; their advertising back in the day was weird. Birds of Prey is all on Tubi, so knock yourself out.
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A series that I only know by reputation, so I figured, what the heck since I was at the delightful The Book Loft of German Village in Cleveland, which is very worth your time if you're ever in the area. (And then walk up the block to Katzinger's deli and get the reuben, it's delicious.)
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Finally this week, the intersection of classy and trashy were my pop culture tastes live. Grady Hendrix is a fantastic horror novelist (in particular, Horrorstör is a deeply unsettling novel set at an Ikea analogue where things slowly go really really wrong and it uses how you can never find your way out of an Ikea to great affect), but he's also a historian of his genre and this might be the best book by someone in that vein since Stephen King's Danse Macabre. Organized by various genres like Weird Since, Real Estate Nightmares and Creepy Kids, Hendrix (who I think is around my aged based on a lot of his references) really digs into the horror paperback scene of the day, when you were buying a lot of these off of the spinner rack at the 7-11. There's talks about themes and trends and keyhole covers and what really makes this book shine is that the publisher, Quirk Books, ponied up to print this all on glossy paper with an amazing amount of color scans of the covers. There's a lot of work put into this book and even though I read it when I came out I finally ponied up for my own copy for my Books On Books shelf.
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That's it for this week folks. I punted on Invisible Kid this week but I'll get that out to you next time. Remember, it's available on the Internet Archive. Meanwhile, please enjoy this bonus WB promo commercial from back in 2000 and try to remember all the names and what show they were on.
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