Seth Harris

Comic Book Review – Klaus

Klaus (2016)
Reprints Klaus #1-7
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Dan Mora

So many origin stories have attempted to explain Santa Claus’s roots. I just reviewed a middling Netflix animated film a few weeks ago, also titled Klaus, that provided its own explanation. I’ve always been a fan of writer Grant Morrison and their genre-reinventing work in comics. From devouring their run on JLA in the 1990s to going back through their catalog to read Animal Man and more modern work, like Seven Soldiers and Morrison’s extremely engrossing Batman work, I am a fan. Not an uncritical one, though. Some of Morrison’s work just doesn’t click for me, but I always know they will do something interesting, and at least the kernel of fascinating ideas will be in there.

Movie Review – Kokomo City

Kokomo City (2023)
Directed by D. Smith

I have started to feel despondent about the state of documentaries in America. It seems everything that comes out is in the true crime genre. While some of these have been entertaining, like Wild Wild Country, most of them are fancier & longer Dateline segments. I want films that dive into the lives of interesting people or topics like the Maysles Brothers, Barbara Kopple, or Frederick Wiseman. I was so happy to find this doc, which is not just about fascinating people but very artfully made.

Movie Review – The Quiet Girl

The Quiet Girl (2022)
Written and directed by Colm Bairéad

This one got me. I could feel the lump in my throat during the first moments. By the final scene, I was a sobbing mess. Why? The Quiet Girl is a film of tremendous emotional depth, a story about empathy & human connection. It’s also a meditation on how the circumstances of life are simply not fair. Children are born to bad people. Good people lose their children in tragedies. It doesn’t feel right, but it happens. The universe can be a cold place. Yet, humans are capable of bringing great warmth into it. On top of the story, it’s a story spoken in Irish, a language moviegoers don’t often hear, a delicate, lyrical way of speaking that adds to the tenderness of the picture.

Movie Review – Priscilla

Priscilla (2023)
Written and directed by Sofia Coppola

I became aware of Elvis in the late 1980s. Having been born in 1981, I arrived a handful of years after the music icon was found dead, a result of drug addiction & a life not generally lived well. I have faint memories of a rerun of John Carpenter’s Elvis TV movie, starring Kurt Russell as The King. I also remember seeing tabloid news programs talking about Elvis sightings, guessing this was around 1987, the tenth anniversary of his passing. I have never felt any connection to the singer. I know his catalog of songs like anyone of my generation does. They were just in the pop cultural air. I’ve never watched any of his films. I’ve never sat and listened to his albums.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
Written by Christopher McQuarrie & Erik Jendresen
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

This year (2023), I watched/re-watched the entire Tom Cruise-Mission: Impossible oeuvre (I only get a few chances to use that word). As far as big Hollywood productions go, it’s not among the worst. I do hand it to the filmmakers involved that they always try to go with practical effects whenever possible, and CG is used in ways that never take me out of the films. Almost every scene is an actor in an actual location or set, not a motion capture/green screen. I don’t think Tom Cruise is an actor. Really, he’s the textbook definition of a movie star. The films under Christopher McQuarrie have improved with each entry, and I like including physical comedy as part of action sequences. These are silly movies, after all, so let them be silly.

PopCult Podcast – Passages/Cat Person

Two more 2023 releases are spotlighted in this episode. The first is a very modern love triangle centered on a filmmaker who is extremely difficult to like. The second may be one of the worst adaptations of a short story we’ve ever seen.

Solo Tabletop RPG Actual Play – Starforged: Abyss of Shadows Part One

[Image source]

Read part two here & part three here

When I first started playing Starforged earlier this year, I wasn’t keen on just using the setting that came with the game. The beauty of Sean Tomkin’s Ironsworn system is that it is incredibly modular and easily adaptable. So, I wanted to play a science fiction-style game and did a rough sketch of the type of universe it would be. I wanted the entire toybox of popular science fiction tropes and subgenres, but all in one reality. This is what I refer to in my notes as the Megaverse. The physical distance between these places in a singular galaxy is vast, something abstract that keeps them separate enough but can allow for fun crossovers.

Comic Book Review – Ice Cream Man Sundae Edition Volume One

Ice Cream Man Sundae Edition Volume One (2022)
Reprints Ice Cream Man #1-12
Written by W. Maxwell Prince
Art by Chris O’Halloran & Martin Morazzo

Image Comics is one of the most dramatically transformed companies in the industry. It began as an escape hatch for popular Marvel artists of the time to gain independence, and the stories focused mainly on superhero types; specifically, it felt like every title attempted to mimic Spider-Man or the X-Men, most but not all. Today, Image is a place where comics creators can get their start with concepts they own, or veterans can shift from the big two and develop stories that neither DC nor Marvel would be interested in.

TV Review – Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas

Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (1977)
Written by Jerry Juhl and Paul Williams
Directed by Jim Henson

There is nothing else quite like the Muppets. Growing up in the 1980s & 90s, the Muppets were a constant presence in the media. Sesame Street lives on, and everyone knows who Kermit, Miss Piggy, and the rest are, but the Muppets and Jim Henson were more than that. You had films like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. There were shows as different as The Muppet Show, Muppet Babies, Fraggle Rock, and other less successful attempts. The throughline in all these things was the belief of Henson and his cohorts that incredible storytelling could still be done through the ancient art form of puppetry. Good puppetry completely blows the best digital effects out of the water. How a highly skilled puppeteer can manifest a multi-dimensional character is always more impressive.

Movie Review – Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)
Written and directed by Jalmari Helander

The mixing up of Santa lore is a prevalent trope in modern Christmas fare. While it’s becoming more common to see dark, action-oriented Christmas movies over the last few years, Rare Exports was one of the first. I saw this when it was initially released in 2010, and this was my first rewatch since my initial viewing. I found it to be entertaining & charming on my original viewing, but now, thirteen years later, it has not held up very well. There’s a fantastic kernel of a premise at the center of the film, but it never entirely comes together and commits the greatest sin an action movie can: it becomes interminably dull.