Wiseman’s world

MattLeave a comment

If you had told me earlier in the year that one of my favourite cinema experiences this year would be a set of long-form documentaries about subjects ranging from political institutions through bureaucracies to libraries, galleries and fine dining, and that I’d not only go and see several such documentaries three or four hours (and sometimes more) in length, after finishing one I’d want to see the next one pretty much right after? I would have laughed in disbelief.

Well, call me a convert: a one-month curated programme of documentaries by Frederick Wiseman, who died last February, turned me from someone who had heard of Wiseman into a card-carrying believer.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: One K, Two K, Three K, Four

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.

Alan’s Academy Awards series continues with the Best Picture winner of 1934: It Happened One Night. (It probably isn’t that much of a spoiler to say that Alan liked that one. A lot.)

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #294: Make mine digital

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!

Most of the films running at my best local cinema are shown in digital format – but occasionally, after the ads and the trailers, there will be a slide saying something to the effect of: the following feature will be shown in an analog, 35mm version. Whenever that happens, I imagine that I hear a contented sigh from all the real cineastes in the audience. 35mm. None of those new-fangled bits, bytes and pixels. Real film: warm, grainy, as God intended.

Now, I consider myself a pretentious film geek with the best of them. But, honestly? I can’t remember a single such announcement that we’re about to see a film on, well, film rather than only a digital facsimile that didn’t make me think: couldn’t we have the digital version instead?

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One Best Picture After Another #7: It Happened One Night (1934)

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?

It Happened One Night is an Academy Award winning film that still has a high profile for a production made in the Thirties. It’s one of those movies that can be safely recommended to those who are interested in early classic cinema, and its the first film so far from all the Oscar winners that I was already a massive fan of.

But revisiting a few old friends is going to be part of this journey, and so it was joyous to dig out my own copy of this and put it in for the umpteenth time. And, unsurprisingly, it’s still brilliant. Rewatching it is also a reminder of why it’s hard to find anything new to say that hasn’t been said dozens of times before in the 92 years since it was a hit. This isn’t a complicated film: what it does is really quite simple. But it just does it so, so well.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Therwulf!

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 year, the United States of America are celebrating their 250th birthday. What better time to watch Netflix’s Death by Lightning, about the murder of President James A. Garfield by a delusional weasel of a man?

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

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

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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