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.
What better way to spend a hot summer Sunday than sitting in a cool cinema and watching a 4 1/2 hour documentary about the Boston municipal government? Or a similarly long film about the inner workings of the National Gallery? Or, indeed, an angry and unexpectedly lyrical look at the US welfare system in the mid-’70s? Frederick Wiseman has it all for you, and much more beyond, as Matt found out in June when his favourite cinema did a Wiseman programme in honour of the late documentarian.
Then, in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Julie wrote about Patrick Radden Keefe’s latest non-fiction book, London Falling. Once again, it’s rare that you get trailers for new book releases – but Keefe’s 2018 book Say Nothing was turned into an FX series, and there’s a trailer for that one, so here goes.
Finally, we also released our July espresso podcast. The topic of our main July episode was the Western genre, so obviously we took the opportunity in our espresso to go on a tangent about one of the most beloved Western parodies, Blazing Saddles.
And what else do we have for you this week?
Matt: It looks like, after Don’t Look Up, we’ve got the next attempt at a climate change-themed analogue to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. It’s certainly got quite the cast, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu is not exactly a slouch in the directing department – but I can’t help it: this doesn’t look funny or clever or angry enough. Instead, it looks shrill and self-satisfied. Here’s hoping that the trailer doesn’t do the film justice – or that I’m in a minority and this kind of satire just doesn’t work for me.
Matt: From the man who created Michael Clayton (which we talked about way back in 2019) and the fantastic Andor, comes a film… about a cellist? I definitely didn’t see that coming, but on the strength of Tony Gilroy’s work, I’m certainly intrigued. It can’t all be political thriller and/or Star Wars, can it?
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 