2006, Ep. 8: "V FOR VENDETTA" (with Jourdain Searles!)
Box Office GROSS: The Top 50 Hit Films of 2006
This week, the lovely and talented Jourdain Searles joins us to remember remember the 36th highest grossing film of 2006, the dystopian political thriller V FOR VENDETTA! We discuss the film's curiously dissonant relation to its graphic-novel source material, its resonance (or lack thereof) with its original Thatcherite origins vs. its War on Terror traipsings and its strange decision to closely adapted a lot of the novels' structure but hollow out its context, leaving an action-packed but oddly muddled narrative that makes perfect sense that people have, ironically, mostly forgotten forgotten as a piece of cinema.
We discuss the disastrously mid work of director James McTeigue, Natalie Portman's catastrophically poor performance and the Wachowskis' decision to make the titular character a little fuckin' dweeb, less like Jigsaw and more like Batman, as well as its enduring power as symbolism, my enduring hatred for the Ain't It Cool News Butt-Numb-a-Thon, the enduring out-of-time qualities of the IMDb top 250, and how in the hell I'm familiar with all these mid-2000s R&B songs.
It was so awesome having Jourdain here, we had so much fun, and I hope you'll join us! Check it out!
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Theme Song: "Any Day Can Be Bicycle Day" by Ether Driver ( https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/ )