Month: June 2024

Movie Review – sex, lies, and videotape

sex, lies, and videotape (1989)
Written and directed by Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh is a filmmaker I feel ambivalent about. Of his prolific filmography, I’ve seen sixteen of his movies, and I still don’t have a strong opinion about him. This is likely because his subject matter, themes, and tone are profoundly eclectic. The director seems quite at ease making crowd-pleasing Hollywood fare as much as he enjoys experimenting with technology and structure. Often, I have a sense of the filmmaker as a person from their work. Directors like Scorsese, Kubrick, and Altman conjure specific emotions and images for me. Soderbergh remains a blank, an enigma that exists outside of any definitions I can articulate.

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Movie Review – Heathers

Heathers (1989)
Written by Daniel Waters
Directed by Michael Lehmann

Screenwriter Daniel Waters originally envisioned Stanley Kubrick directing the screenplay he wrote while working at a Los Angeles video store in 1986. The initial script was three hours long, and the opening cafeteria scene, added in subsequent drafts, was meant to be an homage to the opening barracks scene in Full Metal Jacket. Well, Kubrick didn’t make Heathers, though I am fascinated by what the film would have been like. It is still a fantastic movie, a satire dripping with the most acidic venom toward its targets, a mockery of everything white, suburban, and middle-class in America. 

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PopCult Podcast – About Dry Grasses/Housekeeping for Beginners

Two European features make up this week’s episode. One follows a misanthropic rural schoolteacher in Turkey as he burns every bridge around him. The other is about a queer found family in North Macedonia.

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Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Sundered Isles Part One

You can purchase Sundered Isles here.

You can purchase Starforged here.

You can purchase Sea of Sands here.

To say I was happy to see Sean Tomkin’s announcement for the Sundered Isles Kickstarter this year would be an understatement. While I am not a big fan of pirate-y-themed things, any expansion of the Ironsworn ruleset is always good. Rather than just make a second science fiction-themed book, Tomkin developed a third-themed way of play while leaving the mechanics open to be easily reskinned for whatever genre you wish to play in. This is an expansion, though, not a standalone game, so a copy of Starforged is required. It is very well worth it if you don’t have a copy yet.

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Comic Book Review – Prophet Volumes One & Two

Prophet Volume One (Image Comics)
Reprints Prophet #21-26
Written by Brandon Graham (with Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, and Giannis Milonogiannis
Art by Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, Brandon Graham, Giannis Milonogiannis, and Marian Churchland

Prophet Volume Two (Image Comics)
Reprints Prophet #27-31, 33
Written by Brandon Graham (with Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, and Giannis Milonogiannis
Art by Simon Roy, Farel Dalrymple, Brandon Graham, Giannis Milonogiannis, Fil Barlow, Helen Maler, and Boo Cook

You might be a bit confused about the issues reprinted here. How is this volume one if it starts with issue 21? That’s a valid question. Prophet was the revival of a previously canceled series under Rob Liefield’s Image Comics imprint Extreme Comics. The initial Prophet series concluded in 1994 and was revived in 1995, with a second ongoing series canceled shortly after that. For over a decade, Liefield flailed around with his original IPs, as he is wont to do. In 2011, a radical revival was planned of several Liefeld properties, and Prophet ended up being the longest-running and best-executed, in my opinion. That was mainly due to the seemingly endless creativity of its writer, Brandon Graham.

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