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.
Sometimes our Six Damn Fine Degrees posts get caught on a certain topic: a few months ago, we had several posts in a row focusing on the films of Werner Herzog, and recently they’ve entered an Agatha Christie phase. This week, Sam remembered the great Maggie Smith, writing about two of her appearances in adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories: Death on the Nile and Evil under the Sun, both of which Smith featured in, albeit in different parts.
On Saturday, our latest espresso podcast was released; for this month, Alan and Sam talked about some of the film festivals happening this autumn – and mentioning one of our barista’s surprise appearance at London premiere of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. (Have you ever checked the YouTube videos of the event to see if your cameo has been immortalised, Alan?)
But that’s not all for this week’s trailer post. What else do we have waiting for you?
Mege: Justin Kurzel‘s visuals are up there among the most atmospheric movies – just have a look at his Macbeth. I am not sure if a movie like The Order deserves the Kurzel treatment. And Jude Law is not exactly a happy casting decision.
Matt: I liked a lot of the Russo Brothers’ work on the MCU well enough – but I’ve not heard many good things about their streaming endeavours. The trailer for their adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State… doesn’t look very good. I don’t think an adaptation has to be slavishly devoted to the original – but if you’re going to jettison everything that makes Stålenhag’s stories and worldbuilding what they are (especially the understated menace and melancholy), why even do it? Why take a book with its very own tone and visual identity and make it more generic? If you’re going to bank on name recognition, you’re setting the people who will come because of Stålenhag up for massive disappointment – and the others won’t care about the author.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 