Author: Seth Harris

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

Movie Review – Titicut Follies

Titicut Follies (1967)
Directed by Frederick Wiseman

These days, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking the documentary is purely a vessel for true crime. The media landscape has become saturated with docs that are akin to a segment on Dateline NBC about spouses becoming homicidal or people joining cults. While those things happen, they are far outside the norm of human experience. This is why I gravitate to the documentarians of the 60s and 70s when the form flourished and we got some incredible films. Few filmmakers in this corner of cinema do it better than Frederick Wiseman. During the first half of March, we will look at six of his most highly regarded works, which turn his eye towards the institutions and offices of authority that direct life in the States.

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Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Ironsworn: The City of Eternal Night Part One

You can buy Vaults & Vows here

You can buy Feats & Favors here

Read Part Two here

In March 2023, I played through a short game of Ironsworn for the first time. I loved it, but there were definitely some wrinkles Starforged helped iron out (no pun intended). I did want to revisit Ironsworn, though, with some tweaks. This was mainly an interest in seeing how some additional fan-made products worked when attached to the core system. My story hook came from my Dungeon World Solo series, and while that was very fun to play, Ironsworn’s brilliant progress mechanics stand head & shoulders above any solo system I have encountered. If the goal is to create a sense of exploration and surprise, you don’t get better than this system. 

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Comic Book Review – Carmilla, The First Vampire

Carmilla, The First Vampire (2023)
Written by Amy Chu
Art by Soo Lee

Of all the “classic” monsters, vampires have just never clicked for me. I’ve seen many different takes on vampires from multiple cultures, but I’ve never found them particularly scary. I think part of this is that the vampire has shifted in the culture from being a strange, animal-like predator to either a fetishistic totem of erotic fiction or a metaphor for Other-ed groups we’re meant to empathize with. When that happens, the monstrous fades, and they become just a storytelling trope. I stay open to new takes on vampires, hoping that someone might make them horrific again, and Chu & Lee’s Carmilla graphic novel does a decent job of it.

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Book Update – January/February 2024

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

As a teenager, I came across this book in the now-defunct Wizard Magazine. I am trying to remember the context in which it was brought up, but I do remember the striking cover. Years later, when I took Chaucer & Medieval Literature in college, someone told me Hyperion was a retelling of The Canterbury Tales. Only at the end of 2023, at 42, I picked up Dan Simmons’ acclaimed science fiction epic to read. Wow. What an incredible treat to enjoy.

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Movie Review – The Venture Brothers: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart

The Venture Brothers: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (2023)
Written by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer
Directed by Jackson Publick

In 2020, series creator Jackson Publick announced on Twitter that Adult Swim had canceled The Venture Brothers. He and co-creator Doc Hammer had been in the middle of writing season eight when they were informed. After eighteen years, Adult Swim decided they no longer wanted more of this show. Publick & Hammer took what they had for season eight and reworked it into a script for an eighty-four-minute feature that would serve as the series finale. This film was released in 2003, marking the 20th anniversary of The Venture Brothers. 

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Patron Pick – Ferngully: The Last Rainforest

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
Written by Jim Cox
Directed by Bill Kroyer

The 1990s was a strange time for the environmentalist movement. My perspective was shaped at the time by hyper-conservative Christian fundie parents who, fed by their own propaganda sewer, insisted that anything about protecting nature from corporate greed was “new age, pagan filth.” We didn’t watch Captain Planet in my house for that very reason. Not that I was really missing anything. Upon visiting that show for the first time as an adult, I was very unimpressed, but I can now see also the stuff I did like at the time as very pandering, shallow commercialism. My parents didn’t have a problem with the mass marketing to children part of things; they loved capitalism. All this to say, I never watched Ferngully until this Patron request. Without the rose-colored nostalgia of my childhood to lean on for this one, it is pretty bad as far as kids’ movies go.

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Movie Review – A Decade Under the Influence

A Decade Under the Influence (2003)
Directed by Ted Demme and Richard LaGravenese

Across the globe, there have been numerous cinematic movements. Two of the most influential were the French & Italian New Waves. Through revolutionary experimentation with style & content, the artists behind these movements were able to show how film could tell stories far beyond what people had once imagined. These films often touched on political topics, particularly social injustice and hypocrisy among the ruling classes. The United States saw a similar but much smaller film movement in the 1960s, but something different from the upheaval brought about by their European counterparts. John Cassavettes helped birth American independent cinema, but it was not widely recognized at the time. It would be the 1970s when the States would see their own transformation of movies.

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