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.
Over the last two years time has felt like it’s broken, or at least its batteries are way down. Nonetheless, it’s December, the holidays aren’t all that far away, and the twelfth of our monthly podcasts has gone up. (More on that later.) The pandemic is still going on, affecting our lives and our cultural habits, but that’s not going to keep us from making sure our cups are filled with damn great culture – such as Mike Leigh’s Naked, which Julie wrote about in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees.
From British ’90s drama to an interplanetary epic: the aforementioned December podcast episode was dedicated to Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel Dune – and in addition to regular cultural baristas Julie and Alan we got Daniel Thron of Martini Giant to return as our guest.
Which brings us to our trailer contributions from the team – enjoy!
Mege: Horses are simply the most cinematic of animals; they are beautiful to look at, they’re slightly scary, but essentially empathic. And when they pick up speed, they seem like made for a medium that shows their movements. It’s breathtaking what Jockey seems to be able to do with them. And Clifton Collins Jr is one of the most underrated and underused actors I know.
Matt: I’ve yet to see a single episode of Downton Abbey. It’s not that I’m actively resisting it, but it’s just never appealed enough to me to prioritise it over other series on my backlog. So it’s less creator Julian Fellowes that made me look up and take notice when HBO announced The Gilded Age (which is set to premiere in late January 2022) but its cast, which includes the likes of Christine Baranski (great on The Good Wife!) and Simon Jones (no idea if he’s a good actor, but c’mon, the original Arthur Dent!). And also… wait for it… Carrie Coon, an actor I’ve loved dearly ever since watching The Leftovers. Let’s see how this one turns out!
Sam: Nicole Kidman looks positively unrecognisable as Lucille Ball in the eagerly awaited biopic about the I Love Lucy star and her husband Desi Arnaz (played by Javier Bardem) in Aaron Sorkin’s Amazon Prime production Being the Ricardos. Kidman might pull off another stunner here after her equally unrecognisable Virginia Woolf in The Hours of twenty years ago, and the story of Ball and Arnaz’ crisis surrounding her suspicion of “un-American activities” due to her former involvement with the Communist Party surely holds enough dramatic potential. Knowing Sorkin’s writing and direction, we are at least in for positively riveting dialogues and word-heavy highlights.
Sam: What might look like an episode straight out of Black Mirror is the new feature film of short film Oscar-winning director Benjamin Clearly (Stutterer). In it, a terminally ill husband (Mahershala Ali) makes a fateful decision to have himself cloned and send his clone back to his wife (Naomie Harris) and newborn child – without her or anyone else knowing. He is urged by an ambiguously moralistic doctor (Glenn Close seems perfectly cast) but becomes more and more doubtful when he has to see his clone enter his former world. Will he survive long enough to reclaim his life? The trailer overwhelmingly lets us participate in the husband’s mixed emotions of no longer belonging and will likely make for a riveting race against time.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 