Second Breakfast with Cam & Maggie

"The Voice of Reason 4" & "A Question of Price"

Destiny is the centerpiece of this story - what is it, when is it decided, and who can influence it - and so our discussion leans heavily on the charac…

Part one of our two-part exploration of Tolkien's appendices, this episode covers the most interesting nuggets and lore extracts found in Appendix A. Topics include the history of Sauron and Numenor …

"The Voice of Reason 3" & "The Lesser Evil"

Another Witcher story, another perfect volley of curveballs and provocations. Sapkowski is an absolute wizard, flipping his monster hunting formula on its …

Now this is a damn good horror movie!

Join us for a wildly enthusiastic breakdown of lean and mean new Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a fun little field trip to the house from the original movie! Discus…

What a calm and uneventful week in the Tolkien fandom! We're back to discuss the Rings of Power trailer and the hyperbolic, useless "discourse" that followed it. We talk about fandom and emotional in…

Autumn de Wilde's 2020 adaptation of this Jane Austen classic is just as magical and faithful to the source material as the 2005 Pride & Prejudice, but it has a strikingly different tone and style. W…

Here we are, at the grand finale of our Tolkien coverage! To honor the occasion, we've gone through all of our old notes and put together a fun little retrospective, covering: our best running theori…

"The Voice of Reason 2" & "A Grain of Truth"

Come for the vampires and the silver sword, stay for allusions to classic American literature and brutal refutation of Pascal's wager. Sapkowski is a mast…

Lions and tigers and divisive experimental animation styles oh my! We're taking a look at Ralph Bakshi's 1978 Lord of the Rings adaptation today and neither of us has ever seen anything like it. We d…

We're switching things up again today to look at a painting - in this case one of Vincent Van Gogh's most provocative works, Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette. Maggie's got all the historic…

Discussion of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King [Extended Edition] in Glorious 4K! 

This finale is so operatic and meticulous that the occasional flaws really stand out. This film's edito…

Holy monarchy, Batman! We were absolutely blown away by this (as the film labels itself) “fable of a true tragedy”. Join us as we dive into the Kubrickian elements of this film and the ways in which …

Discussion of The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King [Extended Edition] in Glorious 4K! 

Maybe more than any of the other Peter Jackson Middle-earth movies, ROTK is a story of interpretation a…

Christopher Tolkien is back with the fourth volume of his History of the Lord of the Rings, Sauron Defeated. We discuss the unused epilogue starring a middle-aged Sam updating his daughter on the fut…

Well this one is an emotional rollercoaster - the last Tolkien chapter has arrived, and we finally get a peek behind the curtain! Tolkien gives us a glimpse of Middle-earth's heaven and much more inf…

"The Voice of Reason 1" & "The Witcher"

Boom! The first short story of the Witcher universe starts off with a bang. Morality, politics, wizards, violence - this story is teeming with provocations and…

GEE WHIZ this chapter is divisive, and Cam and Maggie certainly have differing opinions on it! Join us for a big ole discussion about satisfying story structure, Tolkien's geopolitical commentary, cu…

Join Maggie and Cam as they dive into Maggie's favorite movie of all time. We dig through all the structural / stylistic choices that make this a perfect adaptation of the book, even when it seems to…

Can you go home again? Does "home" change or do you change? Tolkien meditates on these questions beautifully in this chapter, which feels like a throwback to early Fellowship. Geopolitics and class c…

End of the year, time for lists and rankings! Well, we thought it was stupid to rank and number and limit things by genre / medium. So instead, Cam and Maggie have prepared top five lists for the bes…