Author: Seth Harris

An immigrant from the U.S. trying to make sense of an increasingly saddening world.

Comic Book Review – Wonder Woman Rebirth Volumes 1 & 2

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Wonder Woman Rebirth Volume 1: The Lies
Wonder Woman Rebirth Volume 2: Year One
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Liam Sharp (The Lies) and Nicola Scott (Year One)

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Acclaimed writer Greg Rucka returned to the character he wrote back in the early, the mid-2000s. This time he was forced to work through the reboot of the New 52 era of DC Comics. Add to that the company-wide initiative to rework their continuity once again to find some sort of middle ground between old-school approaches to their characters and injecting modernity into them. To accomplish this Rucka decided to make his biweekly run alternate between the present day adventures of Princess Diana and her early years becoming the hero of legend she is today. This unique structure allowed Rucka to drop a reference to a past event in his present-day storyline only to follow up two weeks later with the detailed telling of that story in the past. It makes for some mind-boggling reading when jumping back and forth but reads smoother in individual collections.

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TV Review – The League of Gentlemen Series 3

The League of Gentlemen Series 3 (2002)
Written by Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith & Jeremy Dyson
Directed by Steve Bendelack

league of gentlemen series 3

With two series under their belt, the League of Gentlemen desired to inject freshness into their show. They accomplished this by upending the format of the first twelve episodes and making series 3 a succession of spotlights. This allowed for a greater depth of character development, something they were already good at but hindered due to the need to fit so many character bits and sketches into single entries. The more significant challenge was how to choose from such a broad catalog of creations that the group had created over the years. The chosen few were Pauline, Lance, Geoff Tipps, Alvin, Stella & Charlie, and a mysterious new character.

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Movie Review – Under the Skin

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Under the Skin (2014)
Written by Walter Campbell & Jonathan Glazer
Directed by Jonathan Glazer

under the skin

In the middle of the night, in a desolate stretch of road in the Scottish Highlands, an alien being arrives on our planet. This being is not here to bring a message of peace or even start a war with Earth. Her purpose is to harvest humans for consumption by her species. This involves driving around and picking up men who are alone, bringing them back to a facade of a home, and preserving them in a gelatinous liquid until they are processed. A problem begins to arise as the being starts to become interested in the emotions and experiences of these people. She finds them welcoming and warm and suddenly has an abrupt internal change of mind. But she is not a human, and this cold fact will inevitably take her down a tragic path.

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Movie Review – The Best Man

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The Best Man (1964)
Written by Gore Vidal
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner

the best man

The political convention of an unspecified party is underway in Los Angeles, and the party’s next nominee for president of the United States will be decided in twenty-four hours. The frontrunners are Bill Russell, former Secretary of State and noted intellectual wit against Senator Joe Cantwell, a Midwesterner from poor beginnings that is ultimately ruthless when it comes to his opponents. Russell has been seeing other women behind his wife’s back yet she shows up at the convention not so much to support him but because she wants to be the first lady one day. Meanwhile, Cantwell’s team uncovers information that Russell had a nervous breakdown years ago and spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. Cantwell plans to use these to torpedo Russell’s chances and secure the nomination. Between these two men is the current and ailing Commander-in-Chief Art Hockstader who appears an enigma, playing these two men against each other for own personal reasons.

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Movie Review – Happy End

Happy End (2017)
Written & Directed by Michael Haneke

happy end

Teenager Eve Laurent is suddenly thrust into the home of her estranged father and his family after her mother overdoses on antidepressants and ends up comatose. Thomas Laurent, her father, is married to his second wife who has just had their first child together. He’s also involved in an obscene affair with another woman. Anne, Eve’s aunt, owns a construction firm that has come under litigation after an onsite accident has left one of the workers on the verge of death. Anne’s son, Pierre works as the foreman on the site and appears to have emotional issues that might have led to the dangerous conditions on site. Finally, there is the patriarch Georges who is slipping into dementia and contemplating suicide to avoid what this condition will do to his mind, notably forgetting his late wife. Did I mention this is a dark comedy?

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Movie Review – Annihilation

Annihilation (2018)
Written & Directed by Alex Garland

annihilation

Lena, a cellular biologist, is finally in the mourning stages after her husband Kane was sent on a secret military mission. At the twelve-month mark, she is starting to move on when Kane appears from nowhere in their house. He falls into a coma and Lena is taken to a government base on the edge of a phenomenon called the Shimmer. Lena is informed that an object dropped from space three years prior and has created a growing field of energy. Multiple teams and drones have been sent in, but nothing has come back, and Kane is the first person to ever emerge. Lena finds out a team is about to head in days from now and volunteers herself, without informing them of her personal connection. As the quartet travels further into the Shimmer the more bizarre natural mutations, they encounter all until the real darkness is revealed at its center.

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Movie Review – Enemy

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Enemy (2013)
Written by Javier Gullón
Directed by Denis Villeneuve

enemy

Adam Bell is a college history professor that live a very routine and mundane existence. He teaches in the day, comes home to his dingy apartment, where he has sex with a non-committal lover, and sleeps. The monotony is broken when a colleague suggests he rent a movie he had seen, “Where There’s A Will, There’s A Way.” Adam watches the film but that night has a dream about one of the scenes and there, in the background, playing a hotel bellhop is a man who looks exactly like him. He watches the film again, and yes, that wasn’t a dream, it was a memory. Through internet sleuthing, he discovers the actor’s name, Daniel St. Claire and begins searching out his home and learning about his life. As Adam descends down this path of madness, he comes to a point where everything he thought he knew about his reality begins to crumble.

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Never Again

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I don’t typically get overtly political on my pop culture centered blog, but this moment in time has woke something up in me. I just can’t be complacent and silent any longer.

Here’s the deal. This is not going away. Things have to change. And we have to stop using mental health as a diversion from talking about gun control. This issue encompasses both.

Gun control does not mean taking away everybody’s guns. It involves creating a system that prohibits weapons of war from being purchased by civilians and vetting people to determine who is mentally ill and/or unfit to own a gun. Banning the AR-15 is a great start, the first on a list of weapons of war that is sure to grow. There is no legitimate reason for a civilian to own and walk around with this gun. It serves no purpose in hunting unless you like your deer tenderized into oblivion. Regarding sports shooting, AR-15s could be kept under lock and key at target ranges and rented out under supervision on the premises, only to be locked back up once the rental had concluded.

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Movie Review – The Death of Stalin

The Death of Stalin (2017)
Written by Armando Iannucci, David Schneider, Ian Martin, Peter Fellows, and Fabien Nury
Directed by Armando Iannucci

death of stalin

In 1953 Moscow, General Secretary Josef Stalin is riding high. He is in the midst of The Great Terror, a purging of intellectuals and dissidents he suspects of being disloyal not just to the Communist Party but to himself. Aiding him in these exploits is head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria, Deputy General Secretary Georgy Malenkov, local Moscow party leader Nikita Khrushchev, and Foreign Secretary Vyacheslav Molotov. One night while listening to a performance of Mozart on Radio Moscow while writing up a new list of citizens to be abducted and tortured, Stalin phones the station and demands a recording of the performance. When he receives the pressing later that night a note inside from the pianist rails against him as the cause of her family’s deaths. He has a sudden aneurysm and is found on death’s doorstep the next morning. What ensues in the backstage machinations of his corrupt cabinet of officials. They jockey and scheme, all trying to be the one person who comes out on top during this power vacuum.

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Movie Review – Black Panther

Black Panther (2018)
Written by Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole
Directed by Ryan Coogler

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Prince T’Challa is still mourning his father’s death in the wake of Captain America: Civil War and he must be coronated the new monarch of Wakanda. After defeating his single challenger, M’Baku of the Mountain Gorilla Tribe. As his first act as the king, T’Challa decides to bring in fugitive Ulysses Klaue who is guilty of murdering multiple Wakandans and stealing their precious Vibranium. This leads our hero into crossing paths with Everett Ross again who becomes embroiled in the current drama overtaking the kingdom. Among Klaue’s ranks is an even more significant threat with deep ties to Wakanda and could be the undoing of everything T’Challa is fighting for.

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