Seth Harris

Comic Book Review – Twilight

Twilight (1990)
Reprints Twilight #1-3
Written by Howard Chaykin
Illustrated Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

The late 1980s/early 1990s were a period of experimentation for DC Comics. In the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths, creators had a chance to dramatically reimagine classic characters. You have probably heard of books like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns or John Byrne’s Man of Steel. Throughout this period, “more serious” takes were published that made the books, for better or worse, more adult. One of the losses of the post-Crisis period was the non-superhero comics. Before 1985, DC still published comics that fell into the horror, war, western, and science fiction genres. The popularity of these titles had severely diminished from their peak decades earlier, but they still had a few devoted fans. One of those fans was comics creator Howard Chaykin.

The Short Films of Ari Aster Part Three

Part One & Part Two

We end our look at Ari Aster’s short films with some of his best works. We start with Basically, a monologue/character piece starring Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel). She appeared briefly in Munchausen, and Aster liked working with her. Basically was part of what would have been a web series that featured residents of Los Angeles talking to the camera about themselves and their lives. One thing the director does so magnificently is allowing his characters to take us through an emotional roller coaster. We might start hating them, then grow to empathize, then be taken back to despising them, and finally feel the pathos again. Brosnahan is a perfect actor for this task, and Shandy Pickles is a complicated & funny character.

The Short Films of Ari Aster Part Two

Part One and Part Three

TDF Really Works…well, they include it in Aster’s filmography on Wikipedia, and it has its own entry on Letterboxd. This feels like something inspired by Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show Great Job. This is another example of Aster’s sense of humor which hasn’t been quite as prominent in his two feature films. Beau Is Afraid looks like it might be going there, though.

The Short Films of Ari Aster Part One

Part Two and Part Three

This week, Ari Aster’s third feature film, Beau Is Afraid, will be released in theaters. I am a big fan of Aster mainly because his aesthetic and sensibilities match with filmmakers I already enjoyed when I saw Hereditary for the first time. The director has openly talked about his admiration for Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson (Songs From the Second Floor, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence). Both directors employ a dark sense of humor in their work, along with framing & blocking that gives scenes a slightly unreal atmosphere. Aster is also hugely influenced by The Coen Brothers, particularly when they blend elements of their Jewish background into their work (A Serious Man, for instance). Albert Brooks (Modern Romance, Defending Your Life) is another Jewish filmmaker who has shaped Aster’s cinematic eye. And then there’s Ingmar Bergman, whose movies Persona, Fanny and Alexander, and more are the source for much of Aster’s interest in exploring suffering.

PopCult Podcast – To Die For/Underground

1995 was a year with some wildly diverse films. For instance, this week we have a Gus Van Sant picture that wants to comment on the media & celebrity. The other is probably the most controversial film you’ve never heard of and is about the collapse of Yugoslavia done as a slapstick comedy.

TV Review – Deadwood Season One

Deadwood Season One (HBO)
Written by David Milch, Malcolm MacRury, Jody Worth, Elizabeth Sarnoff, John Belluso, George Putnam, Bryan McDonald, Ricky Jay, and Ted Mann
Directed by Walter Hill, Davis Guggenheim, Alan Taylor, Ed Bianchi, Michael Engler, Dan Minihan, and Steve Shill

On one level, Deadwood operates as a white dude character actor showcase. I guarantee you will spend time proclaiming some variation of “It’s that guy from that thing.” I have always been a huge fan of character actors, which is why The Coen Brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson are some of my favorite filmmakers. They can find great actors with unique looks and give them fantastic scripts to perform. The exact same could be said of Deadwood, one of the early “children’ of the success of The Sopranos on HBO. Once that series made its big splash, the network invested a lot more money in developing unique dramas with some of the most substantial writing in the industry. David Milch honed his skills on Hill Street Blues & experienced a controversial hit with NYPD Blue. Deadwood would serve as a tribute to his love of the Western genre, populating the television series with actual figures from the historical Deadwood but infusing it all with an air of Shakespearean gravitas.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review – Welcome to the Habitrails

Welcome to the Habitrails
Written and Designed by AYolland
Can be purchased here

I don’t know if I ever lived in the suburbs. I lived in neighborhoods that resembled what I saw of the suburbs on television, but these were always relatively poor working-class places. They weren’t necessarily the artifice of the suburbs but the strange dark attempt to mimic them. So when I came across Welcome to the Habitrails, it immediately stood out as a theme I could sink my teeth into. I’ve always been a fan of modern existential horror, and there aren’t many ttrpgs in that vein. Because of Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy dominates, making Habitrails seem pretty unique.

Comic Book Review – Hawkworld (1989)

Hawkworld (1989)
Reprints Hawkworld #1-3 (1989)
Written & Illustrated by Tim Truman

From their heights, the privileged in our societies can see the full scale of what they do. The people forced to live at the bottom, the ones who toil the most fruitlessly, for whom every day is a struggle to make it to the next, rarely having the means or the time to take in the state of their world. When they do, it is always a time when those at the top are brought down, when the people have had enough. In the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC Comics wanted to transform their shared universe of superheroes. Books like Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen revealed something about the genre; its audience had matured and were interested in stories that explored more than heroes beating up villains. There were moral spaces that had never been explored. Hawkman was a character in need of such a freshening up. Tim Truman, an artist/writer known for pulpy comics, was brought in to reinvent Hawkman, and he did so in dramatic fashion.

Movie Review – The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum (1979)
Written by Volker Schlöndorff
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Franz Seitz

I have not read Herman Hesse’s novel of the same name, so I won’t be able to compare this version of The Tin Drum to its source material. However, the film feels dense & literary, which leads me to believe it is likely not too far removed from the book. This decision makes the picture heavy-handed and obvious as the story progresses. Director Volker Schlöndorff’s career includes many adaptations, including the Dustin Hoffman-led Death of a Salesman and the feature film version of The Handmaid’s Tale. Schlöndorff feels very different from his peers like Herzog, Wenders, and Fassbinder; he is a little more straightforward & direct. However, there’s no mistaking what The Tin Drum is about, and that may not be a great thing as it fails to challenge the audience to think in ways that it could, given a defter touch.

Movie Review – The Marriage of Maria Braun

The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978)
Written by Peter Märthesheimer, Pea Fröhlich, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Fassbinder’s films often centered women in the protagonist roles and explored how they were trapped in damned if you do/damned if you don’t scenarios. The Marriage of Maria Braun was one of his largest productions with a budget of less than a million, but it certainly doesn’t show. This epic story goes from the middle of World War II into the 1950s. It also follows Fassbinder’s tendency to draw inspiration from the films of Douglas Sirk (All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life), telling stories of women with dignity who humble themselves to survive in a world designed for the pleasure of men. These women are complex, vulnerable, strong, determined, and broken. They are presented as human beings, something that wasn’t done often with women in much Western media of the recent past.