Seth Harris

Movie Review – Magnificent Obsession

Magnificent Obsession (1954)
Written by Robert Blees, Wells Root, Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman, and Finley Peter Dunne
Directed by Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk discovered a love for the performing arts at a young age. While being born to Danish parents, the future director’s homeland would be Germany. In his teenage years, Sirk discovered Shakespeare and went to the cinema more often. He would speak about this period as introducing him to the intensity of emotion and the drama that comes with that. After that, Sirk studied the law and wrote for his father’s newspaper but kept wandering back to the arts. By the early 1920s, he would be directing stageplays, set on the path the rest of his professional life would follow. But, if you know anything of history, then you know Germany in the 1920s was a prelude to something terrible, and Sirk experienced it in a cruel & painful way.

PopCult Podcast – Saloum/Brokeback Mountain

An African action film inspired by Sergio Leone and The Evil Dead? Yup. A smoldering love story of gay cowboys who can’t quit each other? Got that too.

Looking at Art – Self-Portrait of Suffering

Welcome to Looking at Art. Here’s what we do: I just spend some time looking at the piece, writing down thoughts & questions I have. Thinking about how it makes me feel and trying to make connections. Then I will do some research and report back to you with any details that are relevant to the piece. Finally, I put all that together and contemplate how the piece’s meaning has changed for me & what my big takeaways are. Today’s piece is:

Self-Portrait of Suffering (1961)
Ibrahim El-Salahi
Oil on canvas
30 cm × 41 cm

PopCult Presents: The Pitch

Beginning a series of podcast experiments, we are rolling out this Patreon exclusive mini-series. CEO of PopCult Industries, Seth Harris is doing what is very loosely defined as work in his Los Angeles office when he’s visited by his streaming service’s head of acquisitions, Ariana. Ariana is here to tell Seth all about a potential show they should pick up. This week, it’s the Canadian sitcom Sort Of.

This is the first of a six episode mini-series with more to follow, a way for us to play around with the format and new ideas. For now, these are only for patrons but may possible be put up on the main podcast feed in the future.

My Favorite Cinematographers of All-Time

The cinematographer’s job is one of the most vital in filmmaking. They are tasked with listening to the director and reading over the script to capture what these people have imagined on camera. The imagination is infinite, which means this can be anything from a conversation between two people at a kitchen table to an intergalactic battle. To do this, the cinematographer has to have a masterful understanding of lighting, angles, blocking, movement, the elements of production design, the way an actor appears on camera, editing, and post-production effects that will be added later. The cinematographers on this list are not responsible for all of my favorite scenes in cinema, but they have a hefty body of work which, in my opinion, positions them as masters of the craft. Not every movie they have worked on has been a gem, but the camera shines when they have found the right collaborator in a director.

Comic Book Review – JSA by Geoff Johns Part Six

JSA by Geoff Johns Part 6
Review JSA #59 – 72
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Sean Phillips, Don Kramer, Tom Mandrake, Jerry Ordway, and Dave Gibbons

By May 2004, the plans for DC Comics’ 20th-anniversary celebration of Crisis on Infinite Earths were well underway. For the 10th anniversary, the company released Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time, a book which, as a kid, I loved because I bought every issue as it came out on the grocery store stands. Unfortunately, having re-read and reviewed it a few years ago, Zero Hour doesn’t hold up. I also re-read Infinite Crisis around that time, and it holds up better. There are great moments, but it’s sparse as a cohesive story. Geoff Johns was the primary writer of Infinite Crisis and led the team around it all. He’s aware that JSA is going to be wrapped up by 2006 for a reboot, so the stories at this point are focusing on a character or two and delivering some really satisfying conclusions to their arcs. Before that, though, Johns gives us a teasing episode told from the perspective of Per Degaton.

Patron Pick – Eternal Summer

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 Bekah Lindstrom.

Eternal Summer (2006)
Written by Leste Chen
Directed by Hsu Cheng-ping

I know this is likely several people’s favorite movie, if not that, at least something they watched as a teenager in the mid/late-2000s, and it shaped them in some way. However, this soap operatic melodrama is so corny. It’s harmless but not close to how real life and relationships play out. Oozing with broody teen angst and wallowing in the drama, Eternal Summer was certainly not a movie made for someone like me. That’s fine, but if this is a picture you enjoy, you probably won’t enjoy my review because I did not like this movie.

Movie Review – Three Colors: Red

Three Colors: Red (1994)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

In the excellent documentary short Krzysztof Kieślowski: I’m So-So… (available to view on The Criterion Channel), we get a small glimpse into the mind of this complex filmmaker. Kieślowski defines himself in this way: “I am a pessimist. I always imagine the worst. To me, the future is a black hole.” He further clarifies that he sees this as a good trait. I cannot disagree with him, as many of his thoughts in this short film felt like someone putting into perfect words a lot of what I have felt and have felt more intensely since 2020. (A side note, this comment on his visit to the United States made me feel like I have found yet another kindred soul in cinema: “the pursuit of empty talk combined with a very high degree of self-satisfaction.”) How does this kind of director make a movie centered on the theme of fraternity/brotherhood? He does it by focusing on how people communicate in the late 20th century.

Movie Review – Three Colors: White

Three Colors: White (1994)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

There are multiple ways to look at the structure & its relation to the themes of the Three Colors trilogy. One of those is, of course, the three ideals of the French Revolution: liberté, égalité, fraternité. However, Krzysztof Kieślowski is intent on subverting our expectations about these concepts. Another is through the lens of a Europe that was in the process of being partially unified. Blue is about Western Europe, White is about Eastern Europe, and Red is set in the “neutral” nation of Switzerland. There are also mood associations with color. Blue tells the story of a woman who has lost her family (she feels “blue”). Red is about passion & love, which that color regularly symbolizes.

Movie Review – Three Colors: Blue

Three Colors: Blue (1993)
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski & Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski

My first thought when I decided to watch Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colors trilogy was why this Polish filmmaker chose to make a series centered around the three political ideals of France: liberty, equality, fraternity. His explanation reveals a lot about how the director approaches his work. Kieślowski said he chose these themes because the funding he received to make the pictures were in francs which bear these three ideals as France’s motto. Kieślowski had no interest in making nationalistic propaganda for France, and instead, these ideas are often presented with a sense of irony in the trilogy, exploring them in ways that feel antithetical but ultimately uphold their meaning. Even stranger is that only one of these movies takes place in France; White is set mainly in Poland, while Red is about people living in Switzerland. While The Three Colors trilogy isn’t attempting to be overtly political, it is set against the backdrop of the most significant change to Europe since World War II, the formal treaties signed to create the European Union, a political body that has reshaped life in the continent.