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.
True crime sells, but it’s ethically dodgy at the best of times and needs to be handled with intelligence and sensitivity. Did Bob Fosse succeed with his final film Star 80 about the murder of actress Dorothy Stratten? Check out this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees by Alan to find out what he thinks.
On a more cheerful note: Matt’s latest stop on his trip through his ever-growing Criterion backlog was the classic ’80s romantic comedy Moonstruck, which even a non-fan of rom-coms like Matt has to admit is a pretty good film. That’s amore, folks!
And what else do we have this week?
Matt: Sometimes they come back. Okay, when it comes to film and TV, they almost always come back. First, there’s the 20th-anniversary re-release of Shaun of the Dead. I think I saw Shaun even before Spaced, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it on a big screen and not only off a DVD. I’ve been somewhat lukewarm on much of Wright’s filmography, even though he’s undoubtedly very skilled and loves the medium – but on the whole it’s his earlier, scrappier stuff that I like most.
Then there’s the return of City of God: after a great film back in 2002 and a TV series called City of Men that I gave up on after the first episode because it felt like amateurish fanfic, Fernando Meirelles (albeit as producer rather than director) is back with a sequel: an HBO series. I’ve been somewhat reluctant to revisit the original film, mainly because I didn’t want to discover that it is less good than I remember, but perhaps this follow-up is a good opportunity to do so.
And, finally, we have the Peacock series The Day of the Jackal. I remember watching Fred Zinnemann’s chilling 1973 movie adaptation of the novel by Frederick Forsyth when I was a kid – and possibly too young for the material, though I will always be grateful to my parents for not imposing too many media restrictions on me, as I suspect that’s partly what made me the cultural omnivore that I am. The trailer for this new adaptation certainly looks competent, and I can absolutely see Eddie Redmayne in the part originally played by James Fox – but, differently from modern adaptations such as the recent Shogun, I don’t really see much that differentiates this take on the material from the earlier one. (I’ve not seen the Bruce Willis remake and therefore don’t have anything to say about it, except: poor Jack Black.) And I’m definitely not a fan of taking material that can be told in two hours and extending it into a miniseries. Though perhaps I’m wrong, and this new adaptation will justify its existence and running time. Time will tell.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 