(no subject)

You know, as a cultural institution, I really do quite dislike Black Friday. Economically, I understand it and hope it does well, but I hate the cultural mindset and frenzy, and have a deep, deep hatred for the ads.

But I always try to hit up the Hastings sale in the afternoon. They only have the huge “10 in stock at this price!” items on sale in the morning, and the afternoon is various discounted DVDs and CDs, and then 30% off used items. And so, at around 70% off the cover price, I got:

manga:

Butterflies, Flowers Vol 1
Gunslinger Girl Vol 1-6
Sarasah Vol 5

books:

Nicola Morgan: The Highwayman’s Footsteps (Highwayman’s orphaned daughter meets upperclass boy. Shenanigan’s ensue.)
Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle (Watched the movie a few weeks ago. Pretty fun, but I spent a lot of the time going “Riley Finn, what do you think you’re doing?”)

But more importantly, there was A Bin. This bin had DVDs for $5. Many of these DVDs were lower-quality, themed collections.

First, there was a “Great Cinema” collection, which is 15 older movies based on books. It has:

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)
Anna Karenina (1948)
A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court (1952)
Tale of Two Cities (1953)
Jane Eyre (1971)
Legend of the Sea Wolf (1975)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1952)
The Jungle Book (1942)
Call of the Wild (1972)
Macbeth (1961)
Of Human Bondage (1934)
Little Men (1940)
The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)
David Copperfield (1971)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)

Then there was a :Fantasy-Adventure Collector’s Set” which is 4 recent-ish miniseries from Hallmark:

The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb (I actually watched this when I had laryngitis a couple months back. I thought it was fun, though I had to keep my brain very firmly disengaged, in the “tralalala what colonialism and appropriation pretty people in pulp adve-OMG did they just say Villain sexy evil spy lady is Margaretha Zelle?” way. I did appreciate that, unlike a lot of these things, they did have the female lead-main lead, naturally, was a white American dude-be an Egyptian character, even though Leonor Varela isn’t Egyptian herself. Not that it was her first time to play one.)
Blackbeard (I think I’ve heard that this is actually good?)
Merlin’s Apprentice (I remember giggling at the previews.)
The Poseidon Adventure (Sounds bad, but it has Adam Baldwin, Rutger Hauer, and Alex Kingston.)

But most importantly there was “Clash of the Olympians.” IT describes itself like this:

Take a mythological journey back in time with this Herculean compilation of lavish sword-and-sandal films with muscle-bound men, ravishing leading ladies malicious monsters and awesome action.

All movies from the 60s:

Ali Baba and the Seven Saracens
The Avenger
The Giant of Marathon
The Giants of Rome
The Giants of Thessaly
Goliath and the Sins of Babylon
Hercules and the Captive Women
Hercules Against the Moon Men
Hercules and the Masked Rider
Hercules and the Princess of Troy
Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon
Hercules Unchained
Herod the Great
Kindar the Invulnerable
Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators

I cannot wait.

And then I had some store credit, so all of that and some Toy Story 3 arm bands for my nephew were about $33.00.

And then Amazon worked its evil wiles on me and I got Burton’s ,em>Alice in Wonderland the first 3 seasons of Moonlighting a collection of classic musicals, and a collection of Bette Davis movies. I thought long and hard about the $10.00 Mad Men sets but decided that, while I’ll probably want to rewatch at some point, I’ve been actively wanting to rewatch some of Moonlighting for a while now, and I haven’t seen most of the movies.