Second Breakfast with Cam & Maggie

This week's Summerween movie is brought to you by Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Christopher Marlowe - and Kevin Smith! Tusk is one of those movies that lures you in with a simple concept and a familiar actor, and then just when you start to get comfortable , you realize the door is locked and all hell breaks loose. We discuss the ways in which this movie remixes and builds upon the canons of Dracula,...

Blood of Elves, Chapter 6 This chapter is all about what we're calling the "Sapkowski couplet": after introducing complex, nuanced ideas in theory, we get to watch them play out in practicality. The merits of self-interest vs larger causes, taking action vs lying in wait, using key players as pawns vs disposing of them – we get multiple POVs playing out these ideas (with remarkable nonchalance), a...

Mike Flanagan's 2016 home invasion thriller was a rip-roaring good time! He and co-writer/star Kate Siegel put together a film that both satisfies and defies our expectations. An acute awareness of the audience's thought process, combined with the creative limitation of a deaf/mute protagonist, made for a movie experience that is part puzzle box, part one-act play. We are encouraged to participate...

Blood of Elves, Chapter 5 This chapter is full of echoes – but it's not just Sapkowski showing off, he's inviting comparisons, drawing points of contrast, and challenging everything we know. Familiar themes and old friends evolve all around us as we're introduced to Professor Dandelion, Old Man Geralt, and a nasty sea monster. We continue our discussion about tyrannical self-interest and the growi...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Summerween to bring you a dual-perspective look at the latest House of the Dragon hubbub. Cam breaks down a hopeful and informative two-part article from The Hollywood Reporter, while Maggie brings us her reactions and brief analysis of the newly released trailer. We discuss the unique challenges of prequels, the importance of visual language in TV and film (es...

Blood of Elves, Chapter 4 This is one of those chapters that you could unpack and discuss for hours. Sapkowski is not afraid to throw contradicting worldviews at the wall like pieces of spaghetti. The ideas that were debated in the abstract in Chapter 3 have come fully into practice as we encounter old friends and new enemies. Our characters debate and test the merits of Geralt's cold neutrality v...

This week, we were going to take a break from Summerween to talk solely about Netflix's new Jane Austen adaptation, but instead we're bringing you the weirdest crossover known to man. It turns out Ti West's X and Carrie Cracknell's Persuasion have quite a lot in common. Join Cam as he brings Maggie along for a bizarre ride while meditating on love, the passage of time, maternal absence, and the co...

Blood of Elves, Chapter 3 This chapter is chock-full of what we like to call "big boy" conversations: discussions on fate, destiny, prophecy, trauma, and war all work together to create moving character moments and big-picture revelations. Triss continues to flourish as one of our new favorite characters, and her outsider perspective is essential to get Geralt's forest-for-the-trees attitude under...

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Summerween programming to bring you a chilling discussion of Scott Derrickson's latest release, The Black Phone. Our boy has done it again with one of the most unsettling, emotionally gripping, and terrifyingly realistic horror movies we've ever seen. Truly astounding performances from Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, and Ethan Hawke, combined with a remarkable...

Blood of Elves, Chapter 2 Triss Merigold is the star of the show in this surprisingly special chapter. Sapkowski does it again with his knock-out female characters, as we follow Triss through her introduction to Ciri and her complicated relationship with Geralt. We get to examine the ideas of found family, the limits and cost of magic, strength in femininity, and grappling with prejudice and world...

Joel Anderson's 2008 mockumentary-style horror film opened the door for a really spooky discussion – not just about ghosts, found footage, and masterful low-budget horror – but also about grief, loss, true crime, and our role as consumers of those things. We talk about what it means for a horror film to feel "real", why we watch true crime, and how subtle special effects can be oh so scary. We spo...

Blood of Elves, Chapter 1   Guess who's back, back again – it's Sapkowksi babyyy!!! We're finally back into the Witcher books and we are over the moon. The first chapter of Blood of Elves hooked us right away, with knockout character moments, thrilling action sequences, powerful author statements, and oh yeah – Yennefer (the real one). This chapter acts as pure hype for the rest of the series, and...

Summerween Episode 4 is a Big Brain Deep Dive into a modern horror classic. Sinister (2012) was a rewatch for us, but we got SO much out of it this time around. The bulk of our discussion is centered on a *shocking* argument from Cam – this movie is a perfect Faustus story (no really, it is). This episode is about more than just a really good, really terrifying scary movie – it's about theology, E...

Discussion of The Witcher, Season 1, Episode 8: "Much More" I'm sorry, are we even watching the same show?? In a shocking turn of events, the Season 1 finale absolutely blew us out of the water. Geralt's back to fighting monsters, Ciri is much truer to her book self, and Yennefer is called out for being – well, the way that she is. Structurally, this episode followed Sapkowski's storytelling prett...

Are you looking for a fun, scary, packs-a-punch home invasion horror movie?! You've come to the wrong place. This movie is not fun, and it is not entertaining. But boy, does it pack a punch. It is DEEPLY UPSETTING. Michael Haneke knows exactly what he's doing – he takes the horror genre, flips it on its head, and exposes the true horrors of reality and of our own expectations. We are not entertain...

Discussion of The Witcher, Season 1, Episode 7: "Before a Fall" This episode felt different than the others in this season: there's no monster of the week, the plot stalled for about 45 minutes, and we're taking a lot of time to circle back to moments we've seen before. Oddly, much of the material in this episode did not originate from the books, and those bits were actually okay. This show succee...

For our second episode of Summerween, we wanted to tackle a classic horror film. Hellraiser has been a big part of the horror zeitgeist for decades, and we were absolutely delighted to experience it. Part psycho-sexual thriller, part camp horror masterpiece, this film was Rocky Horror meets Evil Dead. Julia was a special kind of protagonist, and the fantastic practical effects made for a stunning...

Discussion of The Witcher, Season 1, Episode 6: "Rare Species" This episode brought more disappointment, so to structure our discussion we're breaking down the changes made from original story to TV episode and why those matter. Changes themselves aren't bad (see the definition for the word "adaptation"), but the specific changes here make for a clunky misunderstanding of Sapkowski's story and cha...

To kick off our first installment of Summerween (a whole month of horror to manifest the superior vibes of autumn), Cam and Maggie dive into a spoiler-free discussion of David Bruckner's 2017 horror masterpiece, The Ritual. Four friends go into the woods and then…bad things happen. This folklore-filled movie is surprisingly grounded and delightfully eerie. The naturalistic dialogue and fantastical...

We so desperately want this show to be good, and this episode is definitely better than the last one, but they just can't seem to get Yennefer right. Most of our discussion centers around this one fundamental problem, as we work through the many, many things we love about the character from the books and all of the deeply strange changes that they've made for this adaptation. There's a domino effe...

Grab your shine box and join us for a discussion of Goodfellas, which has become to Cam what Pride and Prejudice (2005) is to Maggie. It's got echoes, callbacks, punchlines , timelines, world class music cues, masterful performances all around, and maybe the funniest script ever written. Topics include: "perfect" works of art, the anatomy of great film narration, the importance of Karen's role, se...

Well dear listeners, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that this episode was a world class disaster. Calanthe was girl-bossed into oblivion, Sapkowski's wonderfully crafted characters and ideas were abbreviated beyond belief, and the dialogue continued to give us "the ick". The good news is that we get the ranting off our chests at the top, and then spend some time on the few things...

Tatsuki Fujimoto's  Chainsaw Man  is bombastic, brutal, over-the-top popcorn entertainment - but it's also a remarkable story about poverty and puberty and how much we love our dogs. Cam takes a deep dive into this 96-chapter manga to discuss the series' roots in Doctor Faustus and the classic Universal monster movies, the importance of a consistent creative team and affordability in comics, and t...

Discussion of The Witcher, Season 1, Episode 3: "Betrayer Moon" After two rounds of disappointment, this episode turned out to be an absolute treat. Geralt is finally the lead of his own show, and he gets to put on his deerstalker hat and Aragorn pants and actually – get this – solve a crime. The striga is truly terrifying, and the atmosphere in that castle is A+. Yennefer continues to be a fascin...

To celebrate our one-hundred-and-fiftieth episode, we did a twenty-four-hour readathon! That's a lot of hyphens for a jaunty opening line. Join us as we discuss some truly fantastic art across a variety of mediums, including: - Heartstopper by Alice Oseman - Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner - The Secret History by Donna Tartt - All the President's Men by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein - Chainsaw...