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Movie Review – Paradise Now

Paradise Now (2005)
Written by Hany Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer, and Pierre Hodgson
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad

It was once said that the suicide bomber was the “poor man’s atomic bomb.” There’s an immediate revulsion many of us in the West have when we see stories or hear about suicide bombings. I think it’s the intimacy of the act. Rarely do you see talking heads on the news react so strongly to stories of drone bombings or Western airstrikes. The suicide bomb seems to be an outgrowth of the act of self-immolation, the act of setting oneself on fire as a form of protest. The argument against suicide bombings has been that they kill many innocent bystanders. I would refer again to the formalized attacks on civilian populations by the West that are not held to this same standard. Paradise Now is the story of a suicide bomber and seeks to understand why a person would feel as if they have no other options to be heard.

PopCult Podcast – 2023 Favorites

After an unexpected series of delays due to illness, we are back to talk about our favorite things and films of 2023.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Blades in the Dark Solo Part Two

Read Part One Here.

Inspector Benjamin de Winter stands in the middle of his basement, looking up at the perfect hole cut into the ceiling, a path directly into what had been, until this evening, his secure vault. He crouches down and lifts the gate on the box at his feet. Matte black objects, each a handful, dart out and skitter across the basement floor.

Comic Book Review – The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Two

The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume Two (2020)
Reprints X-Men #132-141, X-Men Annual #4-5, Uncanny X-Men #142-153, Avengers Annual #10, Marvel Fanfare #1-4, Marvel Treasury Edition #26-27, Marvel Team-Up #100, Bizarre Adventures #27, Phoenix: The Untold Story
Written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne
Art by John Byrne & Dave Cockrum

In my last review, I held back on discussing two characters introduced in the previous couple of issues collected in that omnibus. I’ll talk about them now, as one proves to be a core element to the next phase of Claremont’s run. Emma Frost debuted as part of the Hellfire Club’s first volley to capture Jean Grey and bring her into the fold. I had read these issues years ago and didn’t remember that Emma gets taken off the board fairly quickly. This means when the X-Men finally meet the entire Hellfire Club, Emma is catatonic and not part of the action.

Movie Review – Divine Intervention

Divine Intervention (2002)
Written and directed by Elia Suleiman

Santa Claus runs across a hill near Nazareth in a panic. He’s pursued by a gang of knife-wielding youths. He runs out of steam. They catch up with him. Everything moves so quickly. Santa looks down. The hilt of the knife extends from his chest. He stumbles back. Collapses. That is how Elia Suleiman begins Divine Intervention, another of his vignette comedies. Is this a heavy metaphor about Western culture being driven out by the Palestinian youth, a shocking, dark comedic scene to grab the audience’s attention, or both? My answer is yes.

Movie Review – Chronicle of a Disappearance

Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996)
Written and directed by Elia Suleiman

I don’t have a large platform, though it has grown significantly in the last year. I don’t assume that many eyes see what I do here. However, I feel an obligation to do something regarding the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, something that began in 1948. Because I focus on media, I thought a film series spotlighting Palestinian cinema might do some good. At minimum, it would elevate some pieces of art that deserve to be seen. In early 2020, when the Trump administration assassinated Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani, I saw a rise in the old Islamophobia I remembered seeing in my college days. In response, I did a series spotlighting Iranian films. I’m glad I did. I think Iranian filmmakers have been doing incredible work for a long time. With the vitriol and rancor towards Palestinians eclipsing anything I saw in 2020, I decided to do this.

Movie Review – The 400 Blows

The 400 Blows (1959)
Written by François Truffaut and Marcel Moussy
Directed by François Truffaut

You’ll hear this annoying thing from hack directors who get justifiably reamed in the reviews for lousy work. They’ll say that people who are critics are just incapable of making their own art. It’s silly to say that because it tries to say that a thoughtful critique of a piece of art is invalid unless it praises that piece of art. François Truffaut loved movies since he was a child; as a young adult, he secured a job at Cahiers du Cinéma, becoming known as one of their most brutal writers. He earned the nickname “The Gravedigger of Cinema” and was the only Cahiers writer not invited to the 1958 Cannes Film Festival. After seeing Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, Truffaut doubled down on his dreams of making his own feature film. This led to The 400 Blows (alongside Goddard’s Breathless) and the birth of the French New Wave. It seems like critics can make great art, too.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Blades in the Dark Solo Part One

Blades in the Dark (Evil Hat Productions)
Designed and written by John Harper

Purchase Blades here
Purchase Alone in the Dark here

Read Part Two Here

Blades in the Dark was a huge game. I backed it on Kickstarter. But that was when I “fell out of love” with the hobby because of some very toxic personalities I had encountered. There was so much social media drama at the time that soured what made these games fun for me. Blades is also a very dense text at the start. There are no accusations of these being rules-lite, though once you get a flow of how it plays, it feels straightforward. I remember reading one of the Kickstarter drafts and not having the bandwidth to parse it all. Since then, Blades has helped birth a whole new subgenre of game, Forged in the Dark. When I started playing solo games, I noticed how many FiTD titles there were and decided I should probably see if Blades could be played solo. And it could.

Comic Book Review – The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume One

The Uncanny X-Men Omnibus Volume One (2020)
Reprints Giant-Size X-Men #1, X-Men #94-131, and X-Men Annual #3
Written by Chris Claremont and John Byrne (w/Len Wein & Bill Mantlo)
Art by Dave Cockrum & John Byrne

Last year, I read through the initial X-Men run featuring the original five. Stan Lee & Jack Kirby started out as the creative team, quickly stepped aside, and the title just never found its footing. There was a great stint when Roy Thomas wrote with Neal Adams on pencils; that was a standout, but overall, it was a forgettable comic book. For five years, the X-Men book reprinted its sixty-six issues, and as Marvel got closer to running out of stories to reprint, they decided to do something new with the concept. Len Wein was doing double duty as writer & editor at Marvel in the mid-1970s and worked with artist Dave Cockrum to create some new mutants to shake up the X-Men dynamic. He also pulled in a character he’d introduced around the same time in the pages of Incredible Hulk. It was a short, clawed Canadian superhero named Wolverine.

Movie Review – Last Year at Marienbad

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Directed by Alain Resnais

Spoilers if you have not watched Twin Peaks: The Return. Like in the very next paragraph. You have been warned.

In the closing moments of David Lynch & Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return, Special Agent Dale Cooper stands with Laura Palmer outside her home in the titular town. They’ve just discovered the woman living there is not Sarah Palmer and has no clue who Laura is. Cooper does not know what to do next but is an investigator. He stands, staring into the distance, trying to grasp onto anything. He utters the final line of the show: “What year is it?” Laura screams. Darkness falls. Credits roll over the image of Cooper sitting in the red room, Laura whispering something in his ear. We are unmoored from time; past/present/future mean nothing. What do we have if we don’t have time to cling to?