Seth Harris

TV Review – Neon Genesis Evangelion: Episodes 1 thru 6

Neon Genesis Evangelion
Episodes 1-6
Written by Hideaki Anno, Yōji Enokido, and Akio Satsukawa
Directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hiroyuki Ishidō, Tsuyoshi Kaga, and Keiichi Sugiyama

My track record with anime has not been fantastic. I find I more often prefer anime films over long-form series. Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue) has become a favorite, though I have yet to see Paprika. Hayao Miyazaki is a genre of animation unto himself, so if anything, that’s an entire branch of anime separate from the rest. Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) is a visionary whose work staggers me every time I see it. While I haven’t done a deep dive into it yet, Mamoru Oshii’s work, like Ghost in the Shell, is fascinating. When it comes to anime shows, my most significant exposure was being in the room during college while friends watched Dragonball Z on Toonami every afternoon. I was not a fan. I had other friends who were into things like Inuyasha, and I watched films like Vampire Hunter D. A few years ago, I took in a couple of Attack on Titan episodes, but it just wasn’t for me.

PopCult Podcast – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp/A Matter of Life and Death

It’s a World War II Powell & Pressburger double feature today. In one film we follow the storied life of a career soldier in the British Army as he watches the world change around him. In the other a British soldier gets a second chance a life that might be snatched away from him.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Wanderhome Part One

Wanderhome (Possum Creek Games)
Designed and written by Jay Dragon
Book design by Ruby Lavin
Art by Sylvia Bi (cover) and Letty Wilson (interior)

Purchase this book here

Read Part Two here.

“Life is about the journey, not the destination.” This would be an apt blurb for the game Wanderhome, which is all about characters traveling across the land on their way home. This is not a journey of combat; this is after all of that. This is what happens after a war ends or a disaster strikes. Or this is just what your character does; their job entails that they are wanderers, delivering messages or attending to the shrines of forgotten gods scattered about the landscape. This is a pastoral fantasy game whose most apparent inspiration would be the films of Studio Ghibli. The land of Haeth is full of small communities across a variety of biomes, and your character can visit them on their long journey back to their home.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Little Town: Bright Hills Episode Five

Little Town
Designed & Written by Gustavo Coelho

You can purchase this game here.

For this session of Little Town, I decided to play around with the system a bit more. If you solo play tabletop RPGs, then you know this is what often happens. You have the idea of what you want and find ways to bend and twist the mechanics to fit that. For me, it was the idea of having another character I controlled connected to the mystery who could have parallel scenes to my protagonist. I have them sharing a Clock so as not to complicate things, and as you’ll read, they meet reasonably quickly. I was thinking of how Twin Peaks presented Dale Cooper as its protagonist, but many characters had side stories that didn’t always intersect with what he was up to.

Read the last episode here.

Comic Book Review – X-Men: Fall of the Mutants Omnibus

X-Men: The Fall of the Mutants Omnibus (2022)
Reprints New Mutants #55-61, Uncanny X-Men #220-227, X-Factor #18-26, Captain America #339, Daredevil #252, Fantastic Four #312, Incredible Hulk #336-337 & 340, and Power Pack #35
Written by Chris Claremont, Louise Simonson, Peter David, Ann Nocenti, Mark Gruenwald, & Steve Englehart
Art by John Romita Jr, Marc Silvestri, Walt Simonson, June Brigman, Todd McFarlane, Sal Buscema, Jon Bogdanove, Kieron Dwyer, Keith Pollard, Kerry Gammill, & Bret Blevins

Mutant Massacre was not the end of the shake-up Claremont wanted with the X-Men books. With the pending launch of Excalibur and Wolverine’s solo ongoing set to start, the writer stepped away from New Mutants, handing the reins to X-Factor writer Louise Simonson. The Fall of the Mutants would be a crossover in theme only; each of the three X-books at the time would have a contained storyline to dramatically shift the status quo. There are some light mentions of events in the other books, but nothing that would force readers to buy all three. The tie-ins to other comics are even less necessary and can easily be skipped (as I did with many).

TV Review – The Kingdom Season One

The Kingdom (Mubi)
Written by Lars von Trier, Niels Vørsel, and Tómas Gislason
Directed by Lars von Trier & Morten Arnfred

Twin Peaks is my favorite television show, and it was a worldwide phenomenon that we rarely see these days. As choices in media have expanded exponentially with streaming, in 1990, broadcast television was still the dominant home entertainment option. Twin Peaks was unlike anything American TV networks had ever shown, and this uniqueness allowed it to flourish outside the States in places like Japan, Denmark, and more. Filmmaker Lars von Trier was so inspired he developed his own TV series about a Copenhagen hospital filled with similarly eccentric characters with a supernatural bundle of secrets roiling beneath the building’s foundations.

Announcement – Screen Play: Corp Borg

Coming in March to the PopCult Patreon.

For their second series of Screen Play, Ariana and Seth embark on an odyssey across the bleak & bloody demon-infested world of Corp Borg, a rules-lite tabletop RPG inspired by the hit game Mork Borg.

For more info on Corp Borg click here.

Movie Review – Irma Vep

Irma Vep (1996)
Written and directed by Olivier Assayas

“Cinema” is a term used to describe the production of films as an art or industry. Now, those are two very different terms, art and industry. They are the two points of tension that films have endured since they became popularized. In reading Hollywood: An Oral History last year, I was fascinated with the early chapters in how the interviewees describe how American film enthusiasts were just slapping together things and figuring out what these “movies” were or could be.

Movie Review – In the Soup

In the Soup (1992)
Written by Tim Kissell and Alexandre Rockwell
Directed by Alexandre Rockwell

One of the misconceptions about being an artist is the glamor of living in squalor. I don’t recommend it as I was someone who has lived in less than stellar circumstances. You can still produce great art without living in poverty if you can avoid it. There’s not much romantic about being unable to afford groceries for a week or feeling an icy winter draft blow through poorly insulated windows. There’s also the misunderstanding that working in the arts is about refusing to compromise your personal vision. The challenge is balancing your perspective with getting work to pay your bills. Writing is a job like any other that involves taking gigs and doing what you can to get to the next one. Along the way, you keep working on the personal pieces, and one day, they come to fruition.

Movie Review – The Player

The Player (1992)
Written by Michael Tolkin
Directed by Robert Altman

Robert Altman has been one of my favorite directors since I first learned of him in college. I’d known of his movies, the Robin Williams-led Popeye, especially as a kid. It’s hard to nail down precisely what appeals to me about Altman, but his signature of having large, sweeping ensemble casts is one of them. While his stories might have a protagonist, they are not who the film is entirely about. Altman loves to let his camera wander like an eye, using advancements in sound recording to give the audience snippets of conversations. It’s the voyeurism of Hitchcock paired with a California pothead vibe. The Player couldn’t be a more perfect film for the director, who had struggled through the 1970s and 80s with a contentious studio system. Altman’s loose narratives and penchant for being over budget made the executives & accountants fume.