A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #106: The Western

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After last month’s episode on the Knives Out mysteries, our Summer of Genre embraces today’s date and continues with that most American of genres: the Western, and the ways in which the genre is frequently used to tell, retell and revise the foundational myth of the United States of America. And since it would be silly to discuss this among jaded Europeans only, we’re bringing back a guest and Damn Fine friend for this episode: Daniel Thron, who’s been on the show to talk to us on everything from Steven Soderbergh via the films of Robert Altman and The Exorcist to the arid sandscapes of Dune, both Part One and Part Two (which means that you may just get to hear him again in a few months when Denis Villeneuve finishes his epic trilogy). Join us for a talk that starts with the classic, iconic John Ford western My Darling Clementine (1946) and then takes us all the way to 2007 for the revisionist The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and the darkness of the Coen brothers’ neo-western No Country for Old Men. How do all of these films tell stories about the ever-changing, ever-same frontier that is the United States of America?

P.S.: For anyone who can’t get enough of Dan’s voice, make sure to check out CG Garage, a podcast dedicated to the movie industry.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #293: High Society And Other Technicolor Remakes

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!

Last week, Julie wrote about two attempts to tell the same story on the big screen – a reminder that, ever since the beginning of cinema, people have gone back to what has gone before to have another stab at it. And as long as there have been remakes, there have been critics giving them a bad reputation. All my life I’ve had to read movie think pieces that declare that cinema is doomed by the lack of new ideas, as exemplified by the latest high-profile remake.

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C’mon and shoot a president: Death by Lightning (2025)

MattLeave a comment

In 1990, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins came out, a biting musical about the men and women who felt called upon to kill a US president. Through a set of historical characters, from John Wilkes Booth via Lee Harvey Oswald to Sara Jane Moore and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (who both attempted, and failed, to kill Gerald Ford), Sondheim shows us his bleak version of the American Dream: “Everybody’s got the right to be happy” – and what better way to achieve happiness and fill the emptiness inside yourself than to kill yourself a POTUS?

All of these would-be and actual murderers are pathetic in their own particular ways. They are angry at the world and the ways in which it doesn’t conform to their wishes. They are attention seekers who wished to put their imprint on America, having little to offer the world apart from their own warped ideas of greatness and how to achieve it. And perhaps none of them are more pathetic than Charles Guiteau: a liar, a thief, a narcissistic failure.

Few people, other than Sondheim fans, know Guiteau’s name. Even fewer know the name of the man Guiteau killed: James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States of America.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto

MattLeave 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.

1933 has arrived – at least in Alan’s series One Best Picture After Another, which is dedicated to all the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture in chronological order. What did our time-traveller think of Cavalcade? (And if you want to form your own opinion: here, in the absence of a trailer, is the full movie.)

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One Best Picture After Another #6: Cavalcade (1933)

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?

Cavalcade has a lot in common with previous winner Cimmaron. Just like that film, the story here stretches over decades, focusing on a few characters as they change and develop over time. It also references major events over that period, as we watch them impact on the ordinary lives we are following. Both films belong on the list of Oscar winners that have truly been forgotten by the passage of time.

It also shares the quality that it is utterly mystifying to me how such an incredibly awful film won the Best Picture Award.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Christmas… in June?!

MattLeave 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, Matt returned to the Zone. No, not the Brothers Strugatsky’s Zone, nor Tarkovsky’s, and not even the Zone of the original Stalker trilogy of video games. No, this time it’s the Zone of Stalker 2 – and it’s an even more inhospitable place than it used to be… though it may just be the most beautiful take on this particular post-apocalypse.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: June 2026

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

As anyone who listened to our March episode on three film adaptations of Agatha Christie’s whodunits can tell: no one at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture is a big fan of Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot. The erstwhile Shakespeare wunderkind tried his hand at the Belgian super-sleuth three times, with Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Death on the Nile (2022) and A Haunting in Venice (2003). Admittedly, we’re not the first ones to say an emphatic non to Branagh’s Poirot – but, having just recently taken a closer look at the Knives Out films, which feature a different modern movie detective that nonetheless takes more than a few cues from Agatha Christie, and from Monsieur Poirot himself, Sam and Alan nonetheless felt it was high time to give Branagh’s trio of period thrillers another chance.

Do they improve when approached with tempered expectations? Can they be salvaged, or do they remain not just second-best versions of these stories but downright failures of adaptation? How do the ensemble casts compare to those put together by Sidney Lumet in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express and John Guillermin in 1978’s Death on the Nile? And just what is up with that moustache?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #291: Homer in the Age of TikTok

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!

I admit that I needed the help of the next generation in writing this post. This is because there are only two experts on Epic: The Musical in the house and neither of them is me. The fifteen-year-old is currently studying for her biology exam, but the twelve-year-old was kind enough to assist.

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