PopCult Reviews

TV Review – My Brilliant Friend Season Two

My Brilliant Friend Season Two (HBO)
Written by Elena Ferrante, Francesco Piccolo, Laura Paolucci and Saverio Costanzo
Directed by Saverio Costanzo and Alice Rohrwacher

The subtitle of this season and its source material that the story is derived from is The Story of a New Name. This reflects the changes in Lila Cerullo’s (Gaia Girace) life and how one makes a name for oneself in transitioning from childhood into adulthood. Lila goes from being a Cerullo to a Carracci, and economically, she moves from poverty to comfortable working-middle class. For Lenu Greco (Margherita Mazzucco), she can leave their Neapolitan neighborhood but finds her roots as a child of poverty evident to her new acquaintances, causing others to view her as perpetually unrefined enough to ever achieve a higher status. Season Two is about the child’s transformation, whether having their dreams snatched away or transformed into something new.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Frontier Scum: Lonesome Drifter Part One

Frontier Scum: Lonesome Drifter (Chacolypse)

Download Lonesome Drifter for free here.

Purchase the base game Frontier Scum here.

Read Part Two here.

Directly based on the rules-lite Mork Borg system and its bold graphic design sensibilities, Frontier Scum is a wild, psychedelic take on a classic genre. Like with Mork Borg, the world is painted with broad strokes, just enough detail to evoke your imagination into filling in the rest of the details. Almost immediately, the book explains that it has no interest in bringing up the racist tropes that have been long interwoven in American Westerns, so this takes place in a fictional reality where none of that exists. This makes it much more like Red Dead Redemption, where you can have wildly different environments close together to capture every flavor of Western. There’s a blasted wasteland where prospectors dig for gold, a bustling city run by the Incorporation, a swamp where the dead rise, and a desert where horrors hunger.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Six

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Six (2014)
Reprints Swamp Thing #57-64
Written by Alan Moore and Stephen Bissette
Art by Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and Alfredo Alcala

As Alan Moore’s Watchmen maxi-series was making waves in comics, he was also writing the final issues of Swamp Thing. The writer was interested in connecting the elemental hero with the space/cosmic elements in the DC Universe. While the delve into the occult was successful because Swamp Thing’s character lent itself to that genre, this foray into science fiction is a more mixed bag. Moore is clearly being more experimental, and that causes the series to lose some of the humanity that made it so compelling in the early collections. These aren’t poorly written stories, but I could see them turning off some readers because of how Abby gets sidelined for a big chunk.

Movie Review – Insidious

Insidious (2010)
Written by Leigh Whanell
Directed by James Wan

I’ve never seen one of the Saw films, and I probably never will. Just doesn’t look like my thing. However, I remember being curious about the stylized world of James Wan’s follow-up franchise, Insidious. I saw the film at the time of its release and remember being somewhat entertained. I decided to watch the whole series this year because the fifth film was released. I found that the things I remember liking about this first film had aged poorly. In fact, I am confident in saying I think Insidious is the most boring, least coherent horror franchise I’ve ever seen. And I’ve watched all the Halloween movies, so that’s saying a lot.

Movie Review – The Exorcist III

The Exorcist III (1990)
Written and directed by William Peter Blatty

Exorcist II: The Heretic was a disastrous flop for Warner Bros. During the premiere, the original novel’s author recalled laughing out loud moments into the film starting. It seemed he would have his response in the form of a third film only years after the comical sequel. Even the first film’s director, William Friedkin, was on board with Blatty’s concept and how it would continue the story. Then creative disagreements broke out and came to the point where Friedkin left the picture.

Movie Review – Exorcist II: The Heretic

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Written by William Goodhart
Directed by John Boorman

Warner Brothers knew they wanted another Exorcist film after the success of the first picture. However, screenwriter William Peter Blatty and director William Friedkin had no desire to revisit this world. They told a complete story in the first picture, and the sequel would just be a silly idea. At first, the plan was to cut/paste the plot, but things quickly spiraled into unhinged territory when playwright William Goodhart was hired. He would retroactively add a backstory to Father Merrin from the first film by including the theories of a Jesuit priest who had some views about why demon possessions occurred and why some people seem to be targeted by them. Linda Blair would return as Reagan MacNeil, and even Max Von Sydow reluctantly returned to cameo as a younger Merrin. Kitty Wynn, as Sharon, the friend of the MacNeils, came back, but Ellen Burstyn flatly refused to come back as the girl’s mother. Not a great start.

PopCult Podcast – The 100th Episode

We get creative in this one.

TV Review – The Bear Season Two

The Bear Season Two (FX)
Written by Christopher Storer, Joanna Calo, Karen Joseph Adcock, Catherine Schetina, Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Alex Russell, Rene Gube, and Kelly Galuska
Directed by Christopher Storer, Joanna Calo, and Ramy Youssef

Ultimately, people don’t want to be in a state of conflict & antagonism. They want to learn, grow, and find ways to work together with others. So much of our world is informed by a media landscape that projects contrived, unnatural division. Reality television, so poorly named, delivers manufactured arguments & clashes intended for us to believe they are the truth. Even scripted narrative content is always about wars or personal contentions that go on and on and on. When do we get to see people heal genuinely or move past petty grievances in an authentic manner that isn’t cloying & artificial? The Bear is not a light show; its themes are weighty & dark. Yet, its characters are brilliantly full of life. They are capable of not living in the same rut their whole lives. Watching them struggle and grow is an absolute delight.

Comic Book Review – The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Five

The Saga of the Swamp Thing Volume Five (2011)
Reprints Swamp Thing #51-56
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Rick Veitch, John Totleben, and Alfredo Alcala

Coming off an incredible piece of horror writing, Moore keeps things chugging along at full steam in the pages of Swamp Thing. Our hero has faced the ultimate evil and has been the only one to stop it. However, there was lots of trouble bubbling over in the land of the living that directly affected the Swamp Thing. While the Crisis on Infinite Earths seems to have little consequence in these pages, we begin to see our main character connect with traditional superheroes outside of Houma, Louisiana, with this particular volume including a clash in Gotham City with Batman.

Movie Review – Touch of Evil

Touch of Evil (1958)
Written & Directed by Orson Welles

None of his peers could come close to touching the natural filmmaking genius of Orson Welles. Sometimes, you hear film people overhype a filmmaker or actor, but in this case, believe the hype. Welles delivers a film that looks like nothing else that was out at the time, pushing the boundaries of American cinema once again. Charlton Heston was cast after the release of The Ten Commandments and was curious who would direct. Welles was already in the cast, and Heston suggested the film legend helm the picture. Universal said they would get back to him. He got the picture, rewrote it, and staged one of the most visually exciting film noirs ever made.