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.
Can you believe that it’s been eight years since Stranger Things premiered? And that it’ll only actually end (if it does) in 2025? Let this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees take you back to the time when Stranger Things was something to be excited about.
And what else is there to get excited about? How about driving a truck filled with nitroglycerin? Or, alternatively, listening to our Summer of Remakes podcast about The Wages of Fear and Sorcerer?
And what else is there to get excited about this week?
Mege: This is the movie that Greenaway goes to for further study. Or maybe Tinto Brass has copied Greenaway‘s style. What both have in common is a geometry, an order to things that otherwise deal with chaos, transgression and death. And of course Helen Mirren has worked for both.
Matt: When I was a kid, Emmanuelle was the byword for a certain kind of softcore that at least pretended to be more classy than the tacky, smutty films they’d show on German TV (not the state-funded channels, obviously) late at night over the weekend. Not that I ever watched it, but I remember the picture of a topless ’70s woman sitting in a rattan chair, and supposing that this is what people meant when they talked about ‘erotic cinema’. It comes as something of a surprise that Audrey Diwan, who directed Happening (based on Nobel Prize laureate Annie Ernaux’ memoir), has directed a reboot, starring Noémie Merlant (who’s no stranger to films with an erotic edge)., Naomi Watts and Will Sharpe. This one looks decidedly more like a genuinely erotic film – which will probably make it so much less suited to teen boys’ vague fantasies. In these days of readily available hardcore porn, I guess young teenage boys no longer need the rattan chair fantasy.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 