Seth Harris

Fall 2023 Digest

Features
[Patron Pick] – Gran Turismo (Matt)
[Patron Pick] – Fences (Bekah)
[Patron Pick] – The Pledge (Matt)
[Patron Pick] – Like Crazy (Bekah)
Book Update – September/October
My Favorite Coen Brothers Supporting Performances

Book Update – September/October 2023

Books of Blood Volume 2 by Clive Barker

Because it was October and I enjoyed Books of Blood Volume One so much (I have read it twice), I decided to pick up the following collection by Clive Barker. This one does not have stories as strong as volume one. There are good ones here, but the weaker entries make volume one much more substantial.

“Dread” – This is one of the best and most fully developed stories in the collection. A college student comes under the thrall of a svengali who is fascinated with making people confront what they dread. This has a fantastic conclusion that is vividly rendered by Barker.

PopCult Podcast – The PopCult 2023 Halloween Spooktacular

It’s night of classic tricks & treats as our intrepid hosts dress up and go door to door. It seems like some of what they find is well worth the effort, but other things are getting some houses tp’ed.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Host: Until the Light Takes Us

Host: Until the Light Takes Us (Running from Skeletons)
Written by James Boychuk & Dylan Richardson
You can purchase this game here

Halloween means horror and there is no shortage of scary tabletop RPGs. This one is a very simple story generator centered around the end of the world & visions that predict its coming. I found this very similar to games like Alone Among the Stars where the mechanics simply provide a jumping off point for the player’s own imagination. This is not a game that takes you by the hand and guides your experience. Instead, it demands the player really dig deep and find an interesting story to tell from the inspiration given.

There’s not much more to say about it, so here’s my play through:

TV Review – Kevin Can F*** Himself Season Two

Kevin Can F**k Himself (2022)
Written by Valerie Armstrong, Craig DiGregorio, Sean Clements, Kate Loveless, Grace Edwards, and Jasmyne Peck
Directed by Anna Dokoza

There is a moment the audience should immediately expect after watching the first episode of this entire series. We get that moment in the series finale; it comes in the last 10 minutes. That was a perfect moment. It’s a shame that the journey that led us there was so bereft of interesting characters, captivating storylines, and a complete waste of a premise rich with potential to explore. Television has given us plenty of shows that play with genre & structure conventions, whether a series’ entire premise or one-off episodes that seek to explore a change in perspective. I was very excited about this with season one, but by the time it ended, I was contemplating whether to continue watching. There was only one more eight-episode season to go, so I thought, the hell with it, I’ll finish this thing. What a slog lay before me.

Comic Book Review – Batman by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale Omnibus

Batman by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale Omnibus (2018)
Reprints Batman- Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special, Batman- Madness–A Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special, Batman- Ghosts–A Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special, Batman- The Long Halloween #1-13, Batman- Dark Victory #0-13, Catwoman- When in Rome #1-6 and a short story from Superman/Batman Secret Files & Origins 2003
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art by Tim Sale

There is no dearth of Batman comics at DC these days. Since his debut in Detective Comics #27, followed by a media push with his 1966 TV series and the cultural phenomenon of Batman 1989, the character has only seen his presence grow. It makes sense that DC Comics would publish so many Batman-related books because they ultimately sell. However, with such an increase in quantity comes a lack of quality. The incredible Bat-books are not typical, so when you find them, they shine brighter than the rest. Writer Jeph Loeb & artist Tim Sale not only created one of the best Batman stories of all time (The Long Halloween), but they followed up with two more fantastic mini-series (Dark Victory and Catwoman: When in Rome). This omnibus collection combines those three plus the one-shot Halloween specials that started it all, making for one of the best value oversized collections you could pick up.

Movie Review – [Rec]

[Rec] (2007)
Written by Paco Plaza, Luis A. Berdejo, and Jaume Balagueró
Directed by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza

If you have read my reviews for a few years, you know I am not a big fan of the found footage subgenre of horror. When Blair Witch came out in 1999, I was a neophyte: a homeschooled little weirdo going into his freshman year at a private Christian college. The Sixth Sense terrified me at the time. However, in the subsequent 20-plus years, I have seen thousands more films and matured in my sensibilities regarding horror. I find films like Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity excruciatingly dull. Part of the found footage concept is that the audience must be convinced of the “reality” of the story, and to do that, you need long periods of boring, mundane scenes. The horror is contained in microchunks or held back until the very end. I’d heard people claim the Spanish language horror film [Rec] was different, that it was good, so I decided to check it out.

Movie Review – Freaks

Freaks (1932)
Written by Willis Goldbeck & Leon Gordon
Directed by Tod Browning

Tod Browning had a solid career as a director in Hollywood during the Silent Era and into the first decade or so of Talkies. He is responsible for a significant first in movies: the first Talkie horror film with Dracula. Based on a popular stage play (which was, in turn, based on Bram Stoker’s novel), Browning kickstarted the age of the Universal Horror Monster with this picture. It also gained him considerable clout and a blank check to make whatever he wanted next. MGM was interested in getting in on the horror game and offered Browning a shot at directing one for them. The filmmaker decided to go with the short story “Spurs” written by Tod Robbins. This film would be considered Browning’s magnum opus & disgusted the studio so thoroughly they cut it down from 90 minutes to 64, and the lost footage was destroyed.

Patron Pick – The Pledge

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 Matt Harris.

The Pledge (2001)
Written by Jerzy Kromolowski & Mary Olson-Kromolowski
Directed by Sean Penn

I remember liking this movie more when I saw it in college. It’s not a bad film, but The Pledge is incredibly messy. There’s a clear sense of director Sean Penn getting a day with an actor he likes and shoehorning a scene in with them. The film drips with the essence of being a picture directed by an actor. It’s more interested in being a character study that plays in the tropes of the crime thriller; that’s one of its strongest aspects. However, the script demands a plot, so throughout the entire runtime, we experience tension between Penn’s desire to play with his performers and the genre tropes indicating specific plot beats to the audience. It doesn’t surprise me that The Pledge is a movie that split critics & audiences on its release. And despite all its many flaws, it is one of Jack Nicholson’s great late-career performances.

PopCult Podcast – Little Shop of Horrors/The Faculty

We continue our Halloween celebration with two creepy tales of invasions from beyond. In the first, our aliens strike in the form of flesh-eating plants. In the second they take on the role of authority figures in a high school.