We spent most of last week just sitting around with family celebrating the life and mourning the death of my brother-in-law Paul. It was a long, difficult week. But we did have a little fun as well. The funeral was on Thursday so on Friday we went bowling and then played Dominoes.

At some point, my wife and I went to McKays, a wonderful little used book/music/movie store and I bought a few things. Honestly, I was pretty much dazed at that point so I didn’t really know what I was looking for so I just grabbed a few things that looked fun.

I am a big fan of boxed sets where you get several movies from an actor, or director, or maybe that cover a theme. These usually don’t include the big named films but will give you some lesser-known films for a cheap price.

The Tough Guys set has three films each from Kirk Douglas, James Cagney, and John Wayne. I’ve not heard of most of them (except The Strange Love of Martha Ivers which I think I already own and is excellent) but I’m looking forward to watching some lesser movies from three actors I really enjoy.

I love me some Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey. The disks in this collection come in those cheap snap cases, but I’m hoping the movies are good.

For reasons that are beyond me (besides racism) the 1930s found a lot of white actors playing Asian detectives. A number of actors (most famously Warner Oakland) played Charlie Chan in a series of films, Boris Karloff played Mr. Wong and Peter Lorre starred as Mr. Motto.

I’ve seen several of the Chan and Wong films and quite liked them so I’m interested to see what Lorre does as Motto. It is pretty gross watching these very non-Asian actors play Asian characters (often stereotypically so) but I have definitely learned to overlook any number of varying degrees of offensiveness in older films. You really can’t judge films made nearly 90 years ago by 2020 standards. Here’s hoping the actual mysteries are enjoyable.

Lastly, I grabbed another Maigret book. I always look for that series whenever I go to a book store.

What have you all picked up recently?