PopCorn de Ben Elton me ha parecido una lectura deliciosa y muy divertida por su corrosividad que plantea una reflexión ante la hipocresía de la moral de la sociedad americana (y occidental) y el poder de los medios de comunicación. Aspectos que no se han querido afrontar y, por tanto, no han dejado de crecer en las casi tres décadas transcurridas desde la publicación de la novela

Reseña completa en Vagando por Urano
https://vagandoporurano.blogspot.com/...

An interesting book that deals with responsibility. Very funny in parts and a pretty good thriller ending in the absurdity of the compensation claim mentality.

Written around the time of Natural Born Killers and the rise of Quentin Tarantino, this is a blatant satire on the themes that NBK evoked at the time.

Unfortunately, it hasn't aged well at all: I didn't laugh once and the bits that were clearly satire come off as lazy. This is not fair: I'm sure the book was fresh and a riot back in the late 90s. But now it feels like a slapdash effort, akin to Elton's Meltdown, based on the 2009 economic crisis.

Yet I also suspect this was an overpraised darling of its time (the sleeve review blurbs are incredibly enthusiastic), because it's not a good book. At times, I felt I was reading a poor imitation of a Chuck Palahniuk story. Not likely - Elton wrote this before Palahniuk's work became widely popular. Still, it's a seedy, cynical work with shallow caricatures for characters.

Ultimately I enjoyed the character of Wayne, the psycho killer, most, because he turns out to be another enlightened killer - not unlike Cormac McCarthy's Anton Chigurh. Yet overall this felt like a moralistic, smart-ass novel that isn't very creative about the themes it's trying to cover.

In a way, Popcorn seems to be as exploitative and shallow as the media culture it's critiquing. Maybe that was the point. But it's lost on me.

I'm not a great fan of Ben Elton's puerile style. Despite that, I was pleasantly surprised. This is a jarring and slightly disturbing novel. OK, Hollywood violence is a bit of a slow target - easy to poke fun at, and an easy victim of Elton's slapstick. But there's somewhat more to this book that just a Brit laughing at American absurdity. The story is of Bruce, an Oscar winning Hollywood director who makes gruesomely violent movies - which also happen to be obscenely popular. Then there are Wayne and Scout, a pair of psycopathic murderers who don't think twice about gunning down innocent passers by, and are proud of it. One day they break into Bruce's house and hold him and his family hostage, demanding that he appears on national TV to say that his movies are responsible for their violent behaviour. But this cliched plot begins to twist and distort; once the police and the media arrive the distinction between perpetrators and victims blurs, and by the horrific climax, it's not clear where the crime ends and the entertainment spectacle begins. Elton jumps and shifts his writing style - sometimes simple prose sometimes movie-script with stage directions, sometimes brutally explicit and sometimes frustratingly lacking in detail - and this adds to the feeling that the violence of the big screen, and the harsh realities of life are becoming hard to separate from each other. Of course, I was always likely to empathise with this position, because TV and movie violence is a pet hate of mine. But the conclusions are so compelling that I'm amazed that everyone doesn't just throw away their TV set like we did.

didn’t finish

The Cohen Brothers minus Clooney and Pitt.

This weird little book managed to hold my attention after the first chapter. But did I like it? I'm still not really sure.

Not a single character showed redeeming qualities: two murdering psychopaths; a money-grubbing, Oscar-winning director; his snarky ex-wife and spoiled teenaged daughter; the model hoping to ride the director's tarnished coattails into 'serious' acting. Even the secondary characters towards the end were drawn in a negative light. The editing was sloppy (missed prepositions, wrong words, missed words) which often interrupted what might have been an enjoyable moment. And the plot was pretty thin. Plus the writing style was inconsistent.

I chuckled once or twice. I cringed a lot. In the end, I realized that this is less a story and more a comment on society's relationship with the media. There's a lesson and a caution, both are worth the short time it takes to finish the book.

A fast paced interesting plot line. It bares a likeness to the Sharron Tate murders but the interesting underlying premise is that the media directs life rather than life directs the media.
The epilogue needs to be read by everyone.

For ages it felt like I was stuck in the honey bunny scene in Pulp fiction. However it was clever and the epilogue probably explains why everyone is still so outraged with each other. Imagine if Ben Elton could’ve foreseen smartphones. Television feels perfectly twee now!

An absolutely fantastic read.

This book is an amazing achievement. It has it all- it's funny, witty, thrilling and a brilliant page turner, while simultaneously honing in with laser precision upon the issue of whether watching violent films begets real life murder and violence.

This solemn issue is right at the core of the narrative, and yet the book has a lightness of tone that keeps you turning the pages.

It's an astounding work of satire- deserving of all the praise it's received.

For some reason the bright cover and title of the book put me off picking it up for years- it just looked like it would be a frothy silly book.
I was wrong on both counts- I can't believe it's taken me this long to read this.

Highly recommended- 5 amazing stars

Si te gustan películas como Pulp Fiction este libro es para ti. Muy bueno.

Oscars night and the winning director of ultra-violent movies gets his home invaded by a couple of ultra-violent killers that he's more or less accused of creating (even by the killers themselves, at least since they think they can benefit from it). Echoes strongly of "Natural Born Killers" and "Kalifornia" and the hostage situation of Elton's own "Blast from the Past". Smart, well written (as always) and very successful use of differing timelines. But the story drags on a bit, and I do not care enough of any of the protagonists to really care or want to know what happens to them.

Muun muassa legendaarista brittiläistä Musta kyy -sarjaa käsikirjoittanut englantilainen Ben Elton on mielenkiintoinen tuttavuus kaunokirjallisten romaanien maailmassa. Eltonin neljäs romaani Popcorn, 2000 (Popcorn, 1996) on herkullinen sekoitus jännitystä, huumoria ja hersyvää Hollywood-satiiria. Romaani lienee saanut innoituksensa kaksi vuotta aiemmin ilmestyneestä Oliver Stonen ohjaamasta Natural Born Killers -elokuvasta (1994), niin samanlaiseksi tarinan tappajapariskunta, Wayne ja Scout, ulkoiselta olemukseltaan, eleiltään ja käytökseltään kirjassa kuvataan. Romaanin satiirin kohteina ovat Hollywood-maailman tekopyhyys ja minäkeskeisyys, kaiken kattava ja sisälleen sulkeva amerikkalainen televisiokeskeisyys sekä väkivaltaelokuvat kopiomurhaajien innoittajina. Vakavalla naamalla Elton ei suinkaan näitä asioita käsittele, vaan iskee sanallista pilkkakirvestään ironian ja satiirin verhon takaa. Ja kyllä: romaanin herkullisimmassa kohdissa saa nauraa lähes ääneen. Kekseliäällä tavalla Elton viljelee ironiaansa myös kuvittamalla tarinansa kohtauksia elokuvakäsikirjoituksen muotoon. Välillä veri kyllä lentää siihen malliin että pilkka on vähällä osua kirjailijan omaan nilkkaan. Tai sitten se on juuri satiirin tarkoitus. Tätä on saatava lisää!

"Nykyään voi olla viaton, vaikka olisi kuinka syyllinen."

Arvioni: 4,0 tähteä viidestä.