A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Six Damn Fine Degrees #104: They Live! (1988)

Nov 11, 2022Nov 10, 2022JulieLeave 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!

They are among us. An alien race, seeking to control us via finance, politics and the media. They are visible only to those who can See. They are everywhere. In the police force, on our newscasts, among our colleagues, and perhaps even in our beds. Some of us humans enable them, perhaps because they believe they can never beat them, because they are intimidated, or because it is in their own self-interest to do so. That is the plot of They Live! (1988).

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They create worlds: Little Orpheus, and the limits of running left to right

Nov 10, 2022Nov 10, 2022MattLeave 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.

Little Orpheus is gorgeous to look at. It is what we used to call a jump-and-run game; usually such games are called platformers these days, the various Super Mario titles probably being the most famous among them even to non-gamers, but ‘platformer’ is really less fitting in the case of Little Orpheus, which is all about running and jumping – and, as is customary in such games, running and jumping to the right most of the time. The character you’re controlling is the cosmonaut Ivan Ivanovich who finds himself in one pickle after another: pursued by pterodactyls and a Tyrannosaurus Rex in a take on the centre of the earth that is part Jules Vernes, part ’50s B movie, or navigating the innards of a giant while, or racing against the odds in mysterious Lemuria. Or actually, he’s telling these stories – which he may be making up on the spot – to the increasingly impatient General Yurkovoi, who is trying to find out what happened to his atomic bomb and how exactly this ridiculous little man sitting in front of him was involved.

Little Orpheus is undoubtedly beautiful – and yet, I felt less immersed in these worlds than I have in some technically and artistically more primitive ones. Is it that jumping and running doesn’t lend itself to immersion?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’…

Nov 6, 2022The 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.

On his grand Criterion journey, Matt got to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up… for the first time ever. It’s amazing how you can almost reach 50 without having seen some of these iconic movies – but then, as always, too much to watch, too little time.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #62: Second Chances (2)

Nov 5, 2022Nov 5, 2022The Barista Collective1 Comment

Second Chances, second time: a little over a year ago we first decided to give a couple of films we’d not been overly enamoured with another try to see if time or adjusted expectations had changed anything – or if our first, negative take persisted. This year, it’s Alan and Sam’s turn to revisit films they didn’t like the first time around – and, in keeping with our directorial focus this year, they selected two films by the same director, David Fincher. Sam wanted to give Fight Club (1999) another chance after bouncing off of the film hard when it originally came out, and Alan thought it only fair to return to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Has time softened their views? Did they find anything else, anything new in the films – or did they find even more they don’t like? Join us for this Fincher/Pitt team-up double bill and for another set of second chances!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #103: Occupants of Interplanetary (Most Extraordinary) Craft

Nov 4, 2022Nov 6, 2022Alan Kuhl Graham1 Comment

People don’t seem to get abducted by aliens anymore. Or, at least, if they still are being abducted we don’t get to hear about it. Because one of the strongest memories of my youth was the fact that, like Quicksand and Rabies, Alien Abduction was an ever-present danger. Indeed the whole idea that the Earth was being visited by Extra-Terrestrials was supported by so much anecdotal evidence that it seemed inevitable that they just had to be out there and it would all soon be revealed.

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Criterion Corner: Blow-Up (#865)

Nov 3, 2022Nov 3, 2022Matt1 Comment

I admit: sometimes I find them intimidating. The classics, the cinema icons, the films that everyone says you should watch because they are just that good and the directors who made those films. What if I watch one of those films and I don’t like them – or, worse, they don’t do anything for me and barely evince any reaction whatsoever? (Somehow it’s easier to dislike an iconic film than to be indifferent to a supposed masterpiece of the art form.) Which may go some way towards explaining the big pile of Criterion films I’ve bought but haven’t watched yet. Of course I want to watch them, I will watch them – but not just yet. I’ll get around to them. Eventually. Perhaps there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to watch them so much as it wants to have watched them.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up was one of those films for a long time – but then my kindly co-baristas here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture went and did a podcast episode about seeing our cities, the places we live (or have lived) in, on film, and Alan chose to talk about the London of Blow-Up. And at that point I couldn’t really not watch it, could I? (Mind you, it still took me more than seven months, but I think that this year has given me enough of an excuse for that sort of delay.)

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: This year, the holidays come early

Oct 30, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

The contest that was first turned into a documentary (Hands on a Hardbody), then a musical, and most recently a film by German director Bastian Günther: Hands-On, in which rural Americans desperate to win a truck spend day and night with their hands on a truck. There’s something nearly religious about this – but sadly, Matt didn’t find Günther’s film One of These Days (although it definitely has things going for it) worthy of worship.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #102: The Carpenters in Nixon’s White House (and other sweet and horrible stories)

Oct 28, 2022Oct 27, 2022samlinder1 Comment

US presidents have had an often particular relationship to music, some more political than others. When Mege touched upon Dave Grohl’s performance at the Obama White House in last week’s post, I immediately thought of the 44th President’s curated playlists and the many high-profile artists (indeed from Aretha Franklin to Beyoncé) who were happy to grace what still is by far the most musical and literary modern presidency. Contrast this with the difficulties Obama’s successor had in finding A-list musicians to perform at his functions, let alone use their music at his rallies: anyone from Bon Jovi, Neil Young, Brian May, The Rolling Stones, R.E.M. and Adele flat out declined being politicised by Trump. The former president himself apparently considers Peggy Lee’s disillusioned “Is That All There Is” his favourite song. Go figure!

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Horses you can shoot, trucks not so much: One of These Days (2020)

Oct 27, 2022Oct 27, 2022Matt1 Comment

The premise of One of These Days couldn’t be more American if it tried: once a year, the local car dealership organises Hands-On. This is an endurance contest based on one simple rule: participants must at all times – except for short, infrequent breaks – keep their hands on the pickup truck they wish to win. Meanwhile, spectators drink beers, eat hot dogs and watch the spectacle (if you wish to call it that), which ends up looking like a gruelling, torturous slog for the contestants and boring for the people watching. Who’d put themselves through several full days of this, standing outside, hands on a pickup? And why? Or has the gameshow aspect seeped into the minds of participants trying to become marginally less poor to such an extent that they actually think they’re doing this for fun as much as for profit?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: That distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice

Oct 23, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

For our first Six Damn Fine Degrees after our 100th post in the series, Mege wrote about the legendary Dave Grohl and his autobiography The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, published in 2021 – a good start to the next hundred instalments! And since Anton Corbijn’s Control (about Ian Curtis of Joy Division) got a mention, here’s a trailer for the 2007 film.