Popcorn Book Club

After covering books one through three of Alan Moore and David Lloyd's graphic novel V For Vendetta, we are getting into the 2005 film adaptation, directed by James McTeigue, written (and perhaps shadow-directed) by the Wachowski Sisters, and starring Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving. We'll talk about this being a rare case where the film may be better than the book, and what changed from the page to the screen.

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It still being November, just a little bit, we are still talking V For Vendetta. We have made it to Book Three, the final part of the graphic novel, and this week, we'll hash out our issues with the ending and discuss the allowances and issues with art-as-manifesto.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

Next week, we'll jump into the...

There were plenty of options for our first graphic novel adaptation to choose from, and I think there are few more appropriate ones for November 2020 than “V for Vendetta,” the graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd, and adapted for film in 2005. This is part two of our conversation and we were left with several questions last week: What’s going to happen to Evey? And is V secretly a theater kid?

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Though we are a little late for November 5th — Guy Fawkes Day — we unfortunately seem to be right on time for the impending threat of totalitarianism. This week we begin our discussion of V For Vendetta, the graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd, and adapted for film in 2005.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta ...

Halloween is over and Biden is president-elect, but luckily (?) for us, the horrors of America and its past are with us always! And so this week we are getting more Screen Time with the second half of the season of HBO’s Lovecraft Country.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

Still ahead, we'll start in on our next book, V For Vende...

You ever read an entire book and not really get what it’s about? I bring that up for no real reason. This week on Popcorn Book Club we’re taking in some Screen Time with the movie adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca.” Last week we talked about Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film, now we’re moving on to the brand new Netflix version, and we have some NOTES.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

an...

Over the past couple weeks, we’ve been talking about the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier—it’s a story about murder, obsession, and finding out the person closest to you harbors an awful secret. Honestly, it already sounds like a Hitchcock movie. And so sure enough, we’re taking in some Screen Time this week with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film adaptation to talk about the charm of the Transatlantic accent, and how the Master of Sus...

Have you ever had a partner who just could not let go of their ex? I’m willing to bet Daphne du Maurier did! This week we continue our discussion of the second Mrs. de Winter and the long shadow of her predecessor, Rebecca.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@MelissaFTW

and Tien has wisely gotten off Twitter but is on Insta @hanktina

In the coming weeks, we'll have Screen Time with the 1940 Alfred Hitchcoc...

Happy October, Popcorn Book Club listeners! We covered horror and monsters and cults of scary white people a few weeks ago with our discussion of Lovecraft Country, and so we’re covering the other side of this spooky season with the gothic thriller Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, soon to be a film on Netflix. Not “goth” in the sense of dressing in all black and listening to Bauhaus, but “gothic” as in romance and death!

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When you’re talking about books being adapted into movies and TV, the cliché that comes to mind is “the book was better.” But if you’ve listened to our last couple of episodes about Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (hint hint… you should go do that if you haven’t), you’ve heard our myriad issues with it. Well this week, we’re getting into the adaptation for NBC’s Peacock and now you’ll get to hear our numerous issues with that as we...

Last week, we started in on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, now a series on NBC’s Peacock. We discussed a whole bunch of people in it, none of whom—as it turns out—are the main character. If you haven’t heard our previous show, definitely go back and start there.

Today, we'll get into the thick of Huxley’s story about sex, drugs, and a complete lack of rock and roll.

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@DanaSchwartzzz

@JenAshleyWright

@koramadrama

@M...

I know one thing I’m fond of saying is that this show is not English class — there’s no required reading... or watching for that matter. But this week we are diving into our first piece of bona fide English lit required reading — Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. There’s a pretty good chance you had to read this in 11th grade, and we are reading it now because it’s been adapted into a series on the NBC streaming service Peacock. But...

I don’t know what your Twitter timeline looks like, but if it’s anything like ours, every week, like clockwork, it has been filled with people absolutely freaking out about HBO’s Lovecraft Country—how scary it is, how surprising, how interesting and refreshing a show it is. We covered the book a few episodes ago and now that the show is about halfway through its season, we are returning to Lovecraft Country to talk about how the ad...

One of the cool things about doing a show about books by contemporary writers is that…they are contemporaries. Like, if you have a question about Frankenstein, you can’t go ask Mary Shelley, she’s dead. But after our conversations about The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, we all had questions. And so we asked her! We’ve been really excited to bring you this episode because as you’re about to hear, Angie Thomas is brilliant and cool an...

This week we continue our discussion of Angie Thomas’ novel “The Hate U Give.” The book follows 16-year-old Starr Carter, a young black woman, who sees her best friend Khalil shot and killed by police in front of her during a routine traffic stop.

Now, we recorded this discussion a few weeks ago, and I want to say that it is heartbreaking that this work of fiction from 2017 is so immediately relevant in our world. It shouldn’t be. B...

Just in case you are listening to this from the future, here’s a quick refresher that the summer of 2020 was… “unusual,” though there are a lot of other words we could use. It was notable for the Black Lives Matter protests and violent clashes with cops in cities across the country sparked by a number of black people being killed by police officers.

So it might be tempting to look at Angie Thomas’ 2017 novel The Hate U Give as presc...

This is a show about books and adaptations and one subject we’ve returned to a couple of times is who gets to tell stories. Today we’re continuing our discussion of Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. Now, Matt is white, and the adaptation now on HBO counts Misha Green and Jordan Peele among its executive producers. And that is significant because not only are these black creators taking control of a black story, but also Jordan Peele ...

We don’t necessarily need to seek out literature to fill us with a creeping sense of existential dread, seeing as how we have… everything else happening right now. But there is something to be said for using horror to reclaim power. This week, we’re starting up a discussion of Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, now a series on HBO premiering August 17th. We’ll talk about the terrifying monsters hiding in the woods AND the ones right o...

Dana and Korama's friendship goes back many years, and they have mutually decided to throw all that away for an episode of Food Court with Richard Blais. We're sharing an excerpt of this week's episode, a fight between french fries and sweet potato fries.

Hear the full episode with Blais' final verdict here! And subscribe to Food Court with Richard Blais wherever you get your podcasts!