Seth Harris

Solo Tabletop RPG Review – The Wretched

The Wretched (Chris Bissette)
Writing, Design, & Layout – Chris Bissette
Design Consultant – Matt Sanders
Wretched Logo – Liz Gist

Most solo tabletop RPGs are centered around journaling which has been a sticky point for me in the first two reviews. I don’t really journal, my posts here on PopCult Reviews are about as regular as I sit down and write about my thoughts. But I understood that for these games to have their full impact, I needed to be able to document the experience in some way. The solution I thought about goes back to being a kid (again). I filled up reams of spiral-bound notebooks starting at seven and going into college. I eventually trashed these notebooks during a move around 13 years ago (yes, a lot was lost, but I have moved a lot and just was exhausted from lugging so many things around). Within were lots of things: sketches & ideas for video games, I went through a period of drawing comic book covers after discovering books about the Silver Age, and I loved creating a tv show and writing episode descriptions. I was a weird kid; many might argue I am a weird adult. So, I thought that for the games where it worked, I’d like to frame each journal entry as an episode in a tv program. That just happened to work perfectly with The Wretched.

My Favorite Films About Love

Brief Encounter (1945)
Written by Noel Coward
Directed by David Lean

David Lean’s breakout film, Brief Encounter, feels so simple, but within this context, he delivers one of the most complex & realistic love stories ever put to film. Laura is a bored English housewife whose shopping trips to a nearby town provide her an escape from the drudgery of suburban life. She meets the virtuous doctor Alec Harvey through an acquaintance, and an unspoken attraction blooms between the two. Laura starts making her trips weekly to meet up with Alec, sharing a cup of tea and some quiet moments together. They are both married, and this fact looms over their encounters, keeping them from crossing certain lines despite feeling pulled toward each other. There is such a beautiful melancholy to this film, an understanding that attraction doesn’t happen conveniently & there is much about it we can’t explain. The rigid social expectations of the time will prevent Laura & Alec from being together. It may be better that they aren’t. There’s a chance that this is an escape for them that, if they were allowed to consummate it, would lose the magic that the restraint provides. Few dramas today handle the complexity of infidelity & attraction outside of marriage in such a nuanced & thoughtful manner.

Read my full review here.

Comic Book Review – JSA by Geoff Johns Part Five

JSA by Geoff Johns Part 5
Reviewing JSA #46-58 & Hawkman #23-25
Written by Geoff Johns & David Goyer (#46-51)
Art by Sal Velluto, Leonard Kirk, Keith Champagne, Don Kramer, Wade von Grawbadger, and Rags Morales

I just got impatient. It has been 2 ½ years since JSA by Geoff Johns Book Four was published. After I decided to do this series, I read that DC was publishing Book 5 in March, but I simply didn’t want to wait an indeterminate amount of time for the rest of JSA to be reprinted. Watching that atrocious Black Adam movie made me realize I missed the JSA of the 2000s, so I figured out a way to split the remaining issues into three clusters and read through them. One of my biggest takeaways was how the JSA was unlike anything else at DC Comics. The Justice League are big movie blockbusters (or they should be when written correctly), while the JSA is much closer to Claremont’s X-Men, a story about a diverse family of superheroes, they have their own lives, and these personal elements often intersect with the team’s adventures. I even found myself getting teary-eyed a couple times reading these issues because Johns finds a way to make the most obscure DC superheroes extremely human & so their losses hurt, or when we have to say goodbye, it is bittersweet.

Movie Review – Babylon

Babylon (2022)
Written & Directed by Damien Chazelle

Never before in the history of cinema have movies been so technically proficient. Cinematography is always reasonably strong when you come across a studio-produced film. The lighting is pitch-perfect. You cannot beat today’s sound design. All production design elements are spot on, from set dressing to costuming to make-up. The behind-the-scenes people deserve far more credit than they get. They are the laborers who make it feel effortless while putting their total energy into the job. I wish I could say the same about the directors & screenwriters of these big Hollywood pictures, though, but that would be a lie. From Black Adam to Don’t Worry Darling to the seemingly endless Marvel movies to the litany of reboots/sequels/reimaginings, there is a dearth of actual talent steering these movies. I have never been the biggest Damien Chazelle fan, but I enjoyed Whiplash, La La Land, and First Man. They were well-made movies with some strong performances. And then we have Babylon. This is where I get off the Chazelle train.

Movie Review – Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation

Namibia: The Struggle For Liberation (2007)
Written & Directed by Charles Burnett

Charles Burnett has always wanted to make movies but has yet to be afforded the same opportunities as his more establishment-compliant peers in Hollywood. So in the 1990s, the director settled into making films for PBS, particularly documentaries often focused on Black history and individuals, attempting to go deeper than the cursory glance most Americans have of these figures in school. Martin Scorsese even included Burnett as one of the directors of an episode of his The Blues docu-series. Burnett also directed several made for tv movies, including an adaptation of the historical novel Nightjohn for the Disney Channel in 1996. However, one of Burnett’s most constant themes throughout his work has been centered on liberation, Black people pushing against white power structures to find genuine freedom, not wage slavery & oppression with a freedom label slapped on it.

Movie Review – The Glass Shield

The Glass Shield (1994)
Written by Charles Burnett, John Eddie Johnson, and Ned Welsh
Directed by Charles Burnett

Charles Burnett continued making movies after My Brother’s Wedding, despite it being taken away from him in the editing room. In 1990, he directed what is arguably his best film ever, To Sleep With Anger, which I previously reviewed. That was my introduction to Burnett a few years ago, coming across this movie I’d never heard of with Danny Glover. The 1990s for Black filmmakers was an extremely fruitful period. Directors like Spike Lee & John Singleton found enormous fame and opportunities. People who worked on their films in various production capacities also emerged as writers & directors. Burnett was clearly aware of the types of movies finding a foothold with audiences, stories of the Black experience, especially regarding racism. But none of the pictures Hollywood was making ever really zeroed in on the most insidious problem in these communities, but Burnett sure as hell was going to talk about it.

PopCult Podcast – Better Call Saul/Nobody

Bob Odenkirk is a man of many faces. Today we talk about two of them.

Comic Book Review – Seven Soldiers

Seven Soldiers (2010)
Reprints Seven Soldiers of Victory #0, Shining Knight #1-4, Guardian #1-4, Zatanna #1-4, Klarion the Witch Boy #1-4, Mister Miracle #1-4, Bulleteer #1-4, Frankenstein #1-4, Seven Soldiers of Victory #1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by J.H. Wiliams III, Simone Bianchi, Cameron Stewart, Ryan Sook, Mick Gray, Frazer Irving, Pasqual Ferry, Yanick Paquette, Serge LaPointe, Doug Mahnke, Billy Dallas Patton, Michael Blair, and Freddie Wiliams II

I will not be able to fully unpack Seven Soldiers in this small setting. This is a book worthy of its own full-length book detailing the references, symbolism, and meaning that Grant Morrison has packed into it. I will spend this time talking about how much I appreciate and enjoy this book, touching on some thematic and structural aspects as we go. This cannot be an exhaustive deconstruction of such an overwhelming piece of comic art.

Looking at Art – Mural de La Plena

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 selection is:

Mural de La Plena (1952-1954)
Rafael Tufiño
Painting, Mural, Oil on Masonite (20 panels)
4.6 m x 9 m

I chose this piece because it comes from Puerto Rico, and Ariana is from Puerto Rico. Beyond that and the essential information above, I have yet to learn about the history of this mural. I do know bits & pieces of Puerto Rican history. It is a colony (labeled ‘commonwealth’) of the United States. Puerto Rico was handed over to the United States in 1898 after being a Spanish colony since Columbus landed there. It was initially inhabited by the Taino indigenous people, who are now primarily interracial, having been forced into & more recently chosen to be in relationships with non-Taino people. Puerto Rico, like Washington D.C., is a place where the citizens do not have representation in the U.S. federal government and therefore are denied the rights enjoyed by the mainland states, Alaska, and Hawaii. They may vote in presidential primaries but are legally forbidden to vote in the general election unless they have residency in the States.

Movie Review – My Brother’s Wedding

My Brother’s Wedding (1983)
Written & Directed by Charles Burnett

The career of Charles Burnett has always been one plagued with obstacles. When he was coming up, you couldn’t be a Black filmmaker with deeply artistic inclinations and not have a ton of shit thrown in your path. Today, Black filmmakers benefit from how he carved out a way, and they routinely express their admiration & gratitude for what Burnett did. Killer of Sheep did incredible in the foreign film festival circuit, but when Burnett returned to the States, there wasn’t even a whisper about the movie. In his homeland, he would work in obscurity, a seeming refusal among the white film critic establishment to even acknowledge his work existed. In the 1980s, Burnett was still working, making movies that spoke to him with little focus on their bankability. He definitely would like to have been given the acclaim his white peers received, but that would never happen.