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 week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees saw Alan continue his own Lord of the Rings trilogy, which started in May, this time writing about the choices made in creating the 1981 BBC radio adaptation. Alan’s a big fan of this version of Tolkien’s epic tale, and his post may just convince you to seek out the BBC’s take on The Lord of the Rings. But as there are no trailers for ’80s radio series, or at least none we could find, here’s a trailer for Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings instead.
Talking of things that, sadly, there are no trailers for: our October espresso podcast had Julie and Matt talk about experimental filmmaker Maya Deren and her iconic short Meshes of the Afternoon. You can find various versions of Deren’s film on YouTube; here’s one, though note that the music wasn’t present in the original version.
And what else is there in our trailer grab bag?
Matt: This is a weird one: the trailer cannot really decide what tone (or even genre) it wants to be, and at least for the purpose of this preview they don’t really succeed at blending Star Trek and its well-worn tropes with the equally familiar tropes of CW-style teen drama. But then, perhaps this one is simply not for me, who used to be quite the Trek fan in my younger years, even though you’d think that the casting of Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti would make it perfect Matt fodder.
Matt: Another weird one: it’s one thing to signal that you’re not doing the same old MCU TV thing, especially after duds such as Secret Invasion. This trailer, though, makes Wonder Man look like they’re embarrassed of the MCU link. Still, I’m reasonably interested; I enjoyed Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery in Iron Man 3 and Shang Chi, and I was a big fan of at least one of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s previous trips to superhero country. (No, not the wet, fishy one.)
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 