Happy Thursday, everyone! The weather is cooling a bit here in Richmond, the Halloween decorations are going up and hoo boy do I have an appropriate set of finds for the start of spooky season.
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I've fallen out of love with a decent amount of the old white male authors of science fiction and fantasy as my tastes have evolved over the years, but Ray Bradbury has always remained. His works resonate with me in a lyrical way that I can never quote express. The best I can say is that something about his Midwest yearnings of a kid who ended up roller skating up and down the streets of Los Angeles in the '30s and turning that life into an amazing body of work really speaks to me. I know I have the movie tie-in edition of Something Wicked This Way Comes around here somewhere but I was happy to grab this, part of the Bantam Grand Master Editions series from Bantam back in the '90s. In particular, Dandelion Wine is a blind spot for me.
The movie of Something Wicked This Way Comes is interestingly my introduction to Jonathan Pryce and Jason Robards; it's 40 years old this year and weirdly unavailable. (Disney+ is actually a good service but really needs to up the amount of Buena Vista and Touchstone offerings for the adults.)
There's an almost surprisingly decent miniseries of The Martian Chronicles from 1980 which has an excellent Rock Hudson performance. Also not streaming but there's a very solid DVD available.
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A documentary about Robert Englund, who was the face of horror movies for a decade? Hell yes, please. Also, there better be a whole section about Willie on V. That's the place where I first saw him, long before the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and for some reason my 11-year-old brain was so pleased by this genial guy who plays one of the aliens and got transferred at the last minute from Saudi Arabia so he's not that conversant in English. It's a lovely, gentle performance.
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WOOOOOOOOOO! John Woo, that is. Best known for his bullet and doves moves from later on, this is early Woo, a wuxia epic about betrayal and revenge that still feels part of his oeuvre. I remember seeing this on TCM a couple of years ago and being blown away by the color and the action of it and I had no idea Criterion had released it (and fairly recently; when I saw it was spine number 1174 I was very surprised it was already in a resale shop).
Last Hurrah for Chivalry is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
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