A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #110: Guillermo del Toro

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

October is over, Halloween has been and gone – but the spooky season never really ends. Following neatly from last month’s episode about cinematic ghosts, we’re finally getting around to talking about a ghost story on film that is close to our hearts… but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Our November podcast is dedicated to that Mexican master of the macabre, spooky and fantastic: Guillermo del Toro. And, in true Damn Fine Cup of Culture fashion, we’re approaching this director, who has often been labelled “visionary”, by taking a closer look at three of his films. Starting with Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), continuing with what is perhaps the greatest success so far in del Toro’s career, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and then circling back to his Gothic ghost story The Devil’s Backbone (2001), we look at what we love about the films of del Toro, but also what we find frustrating about his brand of storytelling. Which del Toro is the real deal: the one that makes films about big-fisted demons who hunt other demons and fantastic beasts of all shapes and sizes? Or the one that tells stories about historical trauma and the fight against fascism through the lens of genre fiction?

P.S.: Since The Orphanage (2007), another spooky tale about Spain’s dark history which was co-produced by Guillermo del Toro, gets a shout-out on the episode, you may also want to check out our 2025 Halloween episode on horror films whose title begins with the ominous word “The”.

P.P.S.: And, seeing how Matt likes the Hellboy comics a lot more than the Guillermo del Toro adaptations (he hasn’t seen the more recent movie takes on the character), here’s a blog post almost 20 years old about the joys of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comics.

Continue reading →

Six Damn Fine Degrees #311: Showing the monster

MelanieLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

First, a disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for Exit 8 and Backrooms. But it takes quite some time to get there!

When my daughter was six, she asked me, “What actually are monsters?” I had to think about that one – even at that age, she asked questions that go beyond surface curiosity. I finally told her: “Monsters are just creatures that haven’t been categorised yet.” If biologists got hold of a mythical monster, they’d taxonomy the hell out of it and then it would stop being mythical. It would be just another animal. If you look at some of the predators roaming our earth, they fit the picture of monsters. But we call them, for example, Architeuthis dux and stick them in a classification drawer. All is well. The human mind can rest, satisfied.

Architeuthis dux. I like to call him Archie.
Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Minivers and Minions

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

This week, Alan arrived in 1942 with his series of One Best Picture After Another: who still remembers Mrs. Miniver? And, perhaps as importantly, should the film be remembered better than it is?

Continue reading →

Six Damn Fine Degrees #310: Where are the aliens that are truly alien?

MattLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Before the eponymous alien of Ridley Scott’s film was turned from a biomechanical, psychosexual horror into a murderous bug, it was something much more potent. Even if functionally it’s basically not much different from the bogeymen of slasher movies, for which the original Halloween‘s Michael Myers is certainly the platonic ideal, it is also something more. I don’t like to use the term ‘cosmic horror’, mainly because it seems too flabby and loose a definition to be particularly meaningful, but the antagonist of Alien was more than just a monster or a killer in a rubber suit. When Ash, reduced to a head on a table, calls it the “perfect organism” and praises its “structural perfection” and its “purity… unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality”, he’s reinforcing what’s already there in H.R. Giger’s design: the alien (I still don’t like calling it a xenomorph, the kind of term beloved of people who prefer leaden lorecraft over imagination) is, well, alien. Even when you know it’s a guy in a rubber suit, it doesn’t feel like it. That head, the extendable jaw, the acidic blood, and its uncanny ability to blend into the shadows so that every piece of industrial engineering aboard the Nostromo seems like it’s alive and out to get you: the alien is a living, walking nightmare.

But while this is true, functionally the alien isn’t particularly, well, alien. It can be understood. It functions, on a naturalistic level, like a predator (no, not that kind of Predator! that’s a diffferent movie!), and on a structural level, like the aforementioned bad guy from a slasher movie. Truly alien aliens are exceedingly rare in so much storytelling, especially visual storytelling.

Continue reading →

One Best Picture After Another #15: Mrs. Miniver (1942)

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a comment

Welcome to One Best Picture After Another – where I attempt to watch all the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture, starting at the very beginning. And attempt to answer two simple questions – is the film still actually any good? And why did it win?

7/10

When I was first thinking about embarking on One Best Picture After Another, I had a look at all the films that had won Best Picture. It’s an odd collection: you have your bone fide classics, your populist barnstormers, also there’s quite good films that probably didn’t deserve the prize, the absolutely WTF, what were they thinking?! winners – and then a final category: the What? winners. Films I didn’t recognise, had never seen and hadn’t even heard of. The likes of Cavalcade, The Life Of Emile Zola and Cimarron.

And Mrs Miniver.

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: A sky the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

Remember when the future was neon and everything was cyber? Matt has spent much of the last couple of months in Night City, the exhausting but fascinating virtual world in which Cyberpunk 2077 is set.

Continue reading →

Six Damn Fine Degrees #309: The Day The Alien Universe Changed

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Alien is one of my favourite films ever. Every aspect of the production seems to come together in a perfectly judged piece of engrossing world creation – while also evoking a uniquely unsettling atmosphere. The cast is also wonderful: many films have tried to imitate this roughneck spaceship crew, but not one has ever got close. And finally, and obviously, there’s the alien herself – a masterpiece of chilling design. Here is a threat from outer space unlike any other.

Continue reading →

They create worlds: City life, Cyberpunk-style

MattLeave a comment

One of the things that video games can do magnificently is create worlds. These posts are an occasional exploration of games that I love because of where they take me.

My first few visits to Night City weren’t auspicious: this place was too loud, too shiny, too neon. The people were annoying, the traffic lethal, and wherever you looked, there’d be advertisements, more often than not featuring so much sexual innuendo or outright T&A that you’d almost forget there could be any other body parts. And, obviously, the ads wouldn’t be silent, because that would have meant that you could ignore them, so from every other speaker you’d get the sound of moaning interspersed with someone trying to sell you something. They do say that sex sells, but what these ads were selling me on was, first, noise-cancelling headphones and, secondly, a quick flight out of Night City.

Except I couldn’t: I was a cyber-enhanced mercenary with a biochip in my head. A biochip containing the engram of legendary rock star/terrorist Johnny Silverhand – and, slowly but surely, Johnny’s consciousness was overwriting mine. So, sure, I could leave Night City and live the quiet life for a few weeks – until my own mind would be completely erased and, to all intents and purposes, I’d be dead. Or I could stay in Night City, tolerate the noise, and try to find a solution to my predicament… or die trying.

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Lazy Sunday, wake up in the late afternoon

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

When people think of John Ford, they mostly think Monument Valley and the like – but, in the case of one film that is perhaps unfairly remembered most for beating Citizen Kane to the Best Picture Award at the 14th Academy Awards, Ford told a story set in a Welsh mining town. Check out Alan’s entry on How Green Was My Valley in his One Best Picture After Another series.

Continue reading →