Seth Harris

Movie Review – A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
Written by Lorraine Hansberry
Directed by Daniel Petrie

The history of Black people in America is a roller coaster of emotions. That’s being said by someone who can only speak about it from an outside perspective. I’m white, so I know I’ll never fully comprehend what it means to be Black in that nation. I can say that the popular perception of the struggle for Civil Rights is entirely out of whack, at least in the white circles I lived & worked inside of in Tennessee. There’s this penchant to view these things as the “ancient past” when the brutality to hold onto segregation happened during my parents & grandparents’ lifetimes. There’s an anxiety in the white mind that leads to statements like “stop living in the past,” never mind the Southern obsession with the Confederacy, and wanting to cherish its insipid ideology. The telling of the past that doesn’t seek to soothe & fantasize about history is what people bristle at. It’s simply the truth; horrible things happened in the past, and a thread running through reality connects to the present day.

Movie Review – Picnic

Picnic (1955)
Written by William Inge and Daniel Taradash
Directed by Joshua Logan

We come to the first movie in the American Theater on Film series that doesn’t work. I wondered why I didn’t hear as much about Picnic as other entries in this series I’m doing, and now it makes sense. Picnic is attempting something ambitious, it is one of the better movies in the series for cinematic visuals, but its core ideas are muddled and clunkily handled. There are cinematographic moments here that are absolutely stunning, and that’s what makes it sting so badly that the story itself is not well done. It should not surprise me that Picnic looks so good as it was the fantastic James Wong Howe behind the camera, one of the all-time great cinematographers. Does that man know how to light and frame a scene!

Solo Tabletop RPG Review – Ironsworn: Starforged Part One

Ironsworn: Starforged (Mophidius)
Written & Designed by Sean Tomkin
Art by Joshua Meehan, Jeff Zugale, and Sarah Dahlinger

You can purchase the game here

It’s no surprise that Starforged is a science fiction “version” of Sean Tomkin’s fantastic solo rpg system Ironsworn. But it’s much more than that. Mechanically, this is Tomkin taking his system further, tweaking things from Ironsworn but also improving it. As with Ironsworn, this can be played solo, co-op, or as a traditional GM-guided tabletop experience. If you thought Ironsworn was impressive with its many themed oracles, Starforged will blow you out of the water. Everything about this game evokes the tone of the science fiction genre and helps to immerse the player in a world of space exploration and encounters with alien entities. So far, this has been my favorite solo tabletop experience doing this series.

TV Review – Deadwood Season Two

Deadwood Season Two (HBO)
Written by David Milch, Jody Worth, Elizabeth Sarnoff, Ted Mann, Victoria Morrow, Steve Shill, Regina Corrado, Sarah Hess, and Bryan McDonald
Directed by Ed Bianchi, Steve Shill, Alan Taylor, Gregg Feinberg, Michael Almereyda, Tim Van Patten, and Dan Minahan

For those who like to think about the Old West as a time of genteel masculine honor, a show like Deadwood will disappoint you. This is not a cowboy show about the white hats taking down the black hats. David Milch had no interest in making a show that propped up myths of that sort. That doesn’t mean Deadwood is a dead-accurate show; it is still a piece of fiction. However, I suspect it may be one of the closest things we’ve ever had to detailing what life was like in the lawless places of America once upon a time. This is a visceral show that doesn’t shy away from the grotesque nature of a world where medicine was not commonplace and bodily fluids flowed as much in public as in private. The Old West was a filthy disgusting place. People who romanticize it wouldn’t be able to handle it if they were sent back there. Remembering what a shithole it was helps us understand why it is so vital that we move the needle forward on the human race.

Comic Book Review – American Flagg! The Definitive Collection

American Flagg! Definitive Collection (2007)
Reprints American Flagg! #1-12
Written & Illustrated by Howard Chaykin

An acceptable madness. That’s what you are pressured to find under our current system. The development of technology & societies certainly has brought much comfort to people’s lives…well, for a minority of us. The comforts you and I experience are actually rarities on this planet. Most humans can’t just walk over, flip a switch on a wall, and have light. They can’t go to bed confident they have enough food to make it through the next week, much less the next day. They can’t turn on a showerhead and easily bathe themselves. They can’t flush their waste away and not think about it again. If you are reading this, more likely than not, you are part of that minority of people who can take comfort in the seeming ever-presence of these amenities. A vast system of propaganda ensures you always take them for granted and never think about the rest of the world. That is the acceptable madness of our times.

Movie Review – 12 Angry Men

12 Angry Men (1957)
Written by Reginald Rose
Directed by Sidney Lumet

What is justice? Any direct education I was ever given in America never taught me the answer. That was found in observation, reading, and listening. American institutions spend much time telling people what to believe justice is. They do it through copaganda like Law & Order, CSI, and the other generic procedurals that get vomited up on television every year. My perennial punching bag Aaron Sorkin spent a lot of time musing over law & justice in his work too. But what we see on the screen in this regard rarely reflects what is happening in real-time all around us. And, as much as I love 12 Angry Men as a piece of art, it doesn’t show us anything close to the truth about how the justice system operates in America. What it does instead is to provide an impressionistic breakdown of the ideologies that keep America from being a place where freedom actually exists.

Movie Review – A Streetcar Named Desire

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Written by Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan, and Oscar Saul
Directed by Elia Kazan

Things are terrible in the States and getting worse. Every day there’s another story about someone making an honest mistake and getting shot, typically being killed. People are like snarling dogs, mistrustful of others, and ready to snap at anyone who gets too close. I would argue things have always been pretty bad, and it’s just that more people are awake & aware of the situation now. Despite the American media’s vociferous attempts to lay on the myths & the fairy tales, American society has often been cruel in a downward direction. Tennessee Williams captured this mundane inhumanity in his incredible stage play, adapted here by himself & others. It’s the story of people caught up in pain and unable to connect with each other meaningfully.

May 2023 Posting Schedule

Film Series

May 1st thru 31st – The American Theater on Film, Volume One

The Little Foxes, A Streetcar Named Desire, 12 Angry Men, Picnic, A Raisin in the Sun, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Iceman Cometh, True West, The Glass Menagerie, Glengarry Glen Ross, M. Butterfly, Death of a Salesman, Angels in America

Movie Review – The Little Foxes

The Little Foxes (1941)
Written by Lillian Hellman
Directed by William Wyler

The art of performance was born from the theater. People got up in front of a crowd and acted out stories. There were no screens. It was often by the light of a fire. Or, in more developed regions, an amphitheater. When the film first became a popular trend among “the kids,” there were many adaptions of stageplays. They weren’t shot with much emphasis on style as the aesthetics of the film medium were being figured out at the time. However, after several decades movies became their own way of telling stories, with the elements of cinematography and editing helping to shape things.

Spring 2023 Digest

Features
[Patron Pick] – Parenthood (Bekah)
[Patron Pick] – The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (Matt)
[Patron Pick] – Where the Crawdads Sing [Bekah]
[Patron Pick] – Memories of Murder [Matt]
Book Update – March/April
My Favorite Single-Scene Performances
My Favorite Spring Films
My Favorite Mind-Bending Films
My Favorite Crying Scenes