Author: The Barista Collective

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Filming the undead

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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.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Who kills the killers?

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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, Julie wrote one of those Six Damn Fine Degrees posts that only Julie can write: a deep dive into the life and career of Natalie Wood, or at least the early years. If you have any interest in the history of Hollywood, make sure to check out the post!

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A Damn Fine Espresso: July 2024

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Summer is a good time to catch up on films and series – in this case, the Netflix series Ripley, created by Steven Zaillian and released last spring. The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted before, most famously as Plein Soleil (AKA Purple Noon, by René Clément and starring a deliciously evil Alain Delon) and under its original title in 1999 (by Anthony Minghella, with Matt Damon as a more soulful murderer) – so what is the purpose of another adaptation? Join Sam and Matt as they ponder this question. What does Zaillian’s Ripley bring to the discussion, compared to the films by Clément and Minghella? What is the effect on the story of casting Andrew Scott as a Ripley a dozen years older than the earlier versions? What are the unique qualities of Netflix’s Tom Ripley? And is this version a more faithful adaptation of Highsmith’s story and character?

For more on Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and the various film adaptations of his adventures, make sure to check out these posts and podcasts:

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Very Steven Spielberg

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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.

Remember how excited people were when the first season of Stranger Things came out? And how that excitement perhaps flared up again with one or two setpieces in every season (“Running Up the Hill”! “Enter Sandman”!), but somehow it never quite captured that initial feeling that we were watching something that was both familiar and new? In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam argues that, just perhaps, J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 was the better Stranger Things to begin with.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: French bombshells

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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.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #82: Summer of Remakes – Wages of Fear and Sorcerer

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Our Summer of Remakes podcast series continues with its second episode: after June’s Hitchcock double bill, we’re changing country (at least once) but staying with thrills and suspense. Imagine being stuck in a dead-end town, together with other men with murky pasts and little to lose, and with little hope of ever making it out – and now imagine a big corporation offering you a ticket out of there. The only catch? You have to drive a truck loaded with volatile nitroglycerin over treacherous dirt roads. Simple as that. This is the story of Georges Arnaud’s 1950 novel Le Salaire de la peur, and to date it has been turned into two memorable films: The Wages of Fear (1953) by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Yves Montand, and Sorcerer (1977), directed by William Friedkin and starring Roy Scheider. Join Alan, Julie and Matt as they discuss these two versions of the story. Where do the original and the remake (though Friedkin did sometimes deny that Sorcerer was one indeed) make the same or similar choices? Where do they diverge? And to what effect?

For more on the films of William Friedkin, check out our 2023 Halloween episode on The Exorcist (feat. the one and only Daniel Thron), recorded shortly after Friedkin’s death.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Four Samurai and a Vampire

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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.

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees post, Julie wrote about the photographer Peter Lindbergh and what his work meant to her. So, instead of a trailer, here’s a tribute video that was made when he died in 2019.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Come for the cheese, stay for the xenomorphs

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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.

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam wrote about the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyère, an incongruous celebration of Giger’s sex-and-biomechanics aesthetic in a cosy mountain towns in Switzerland – and since everyone defaults to Alien when it comes to Giger, let’s for once feature two trailers to films that the Swiss artist contributed to that are perhaps a tad less celebrated.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Les dents de la Seine

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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.

Isn’t it typical? A good new animated series is cancelled after only one season. At least in the case of Scavengers Reign (which Alan wrote about in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees) the series was picked up by Netflix… even though they’re only showing it in select countries. Isn’t it typical?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: June 2024

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Our June espresso is a special one: differently from the vast majority of our podcast episodes, this one had Alan and Matt recording in the same room, talking into one mic – and the topic of their conversation is the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda. Matt’s local cinema, the REX Bern, recently showed a series of Kore-eda’s films, from his first feature Marobosi to his latest, Monster, and Matt’s been wanting to do a Kore-eda episode for a long time, so the two took this opportunity to finally fulfil that wish. Join them as they discuss what makes a Kore-eda film, which ones they like best, and (obviously) what they would choose, After Life-style, as the sole memory to be filmed and taken into the beyond.

For more on Hirokazu Kore-eda, make sure to check out these blog posts:

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