I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Back from the dead, and twice as bad

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.

Norman Bates is back! Well, not exactly – but for this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt wrote about his positive but patchy memories of Psycho II, and the reasons why he doesn’t particularly want to go back and find out whether the film was really surprisingly good or whether at the time it just benefited from really low expectations (and Meg Tilly, obviously).

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A Damn Fine Espresso: September 2023

Travels with our Sam: our resident James Bond expert/soundtrack fiend went back to La La Land itself for his summer holidays. Want to find out what Sam did on his hols? Join him and Julie as they talk about Sam’s SoCal adventures: bumping into movie stars at Starbucks, checking out the rides and the studio tours (but failing to find a good studio shop – what’s wrong with you, Hollywood?!), and finding the coolest ever record store with the oldest ever shop attendant. We hope you enjoy this latest espresso of a podcast episode as much as Sam obviously enjoyed his LA vacation!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Striking fear into our hearts, 24 frames per second

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.

The French have a knack for uncanny goings-on in remote rural villages – though Matt was not entirely sold on The Five Devils, in spite of some very strong performances.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Where have all the kangaroos gone?

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.

The Fellini caravan continues with The White Sheik, a satirical look at post-war Italy that indulges too much in some of the hoariest clichés of farce for Matt, but there are definitely things to enjoy.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: All sorts of murder

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.

Looking for the sexy in “sexy thriller”? Look no further than La Piscine, the hot and sweaty Alain Delon/Romy Schneider classic that Matt recently checked out in his endeavours to tackle his Criterion Collection backlog.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #72: Summer of Collaborations – Steven Spielberg and John Williams

Our summer of collaborations is coming to a close with one of the most iconic creative partnerships of Hollywood, going back almost 50 years: the collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams, which began in 1974 with Sugarland Express. Sam, Matt and Julie discuss this fruitful friendship, starting with Jaws (1975) and its iconic music that lives rent-free in the heads of millions of beachgoers before they enter the water, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and its mysterious five-note attempt at interstellar communication, and E.T. (1982), arguably the most sublime expression of that particular brand of sentimentality that Spielberg and Williams perfected early in their careers; they move on to the Indiana Jones series and the way Williams found the perfect score to accompany Indy’s nostalgic adventures (1981 – 2008 for the Spielberg-directed films); and finally ending with the last of the soundtracks heavy on iconic themes, Jurassic Park (1993), the changes in Spielberg’s filmmaking in the following years, and the ways Williams’ scores changed with them, focusing on the jazzy Catch Me If You Can (2002) and the historical drama of Munich (2005). Arguably, Spielberg and Williams quickly peaked, with some of their best work coming early in their collaboration, but did they maintain the quality of those early days? Williams created some of the most iconic soundtracks without Spielberg, but can we imagine Spielberg without Williams?

P.S.: For last year’s summer series of podcasts, check this link:

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture: Summer of Directors (2022)

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Nun of the above

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.

Earlier this week, Matt indulged in his enjoyment of badass nuns, writing about the goofy, strange, inventive Mrs. Davis.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Biting, isn’t it?

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.

From Adams to Addams: Sam took this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to dark, dark places – namely boarding school.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: August 2023

What’s giddy, grim, and black and white and pink all over? You’ve guessed it: just when the discourse has died down, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture goes all Barbenheimer on y’all. Join Alan and Matt as they talk about their impression of the memetic phenomenon of 2023 and discuss Greta Gerwig’s ultra-meta toy ad Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s ultra-Nolany drama Oppenheimer. Just why did these two films capture audiences’ imaginations to the degree that they have? Does Oppenheimer escape the traps of conventional biopics? Does Barbie manage to find a good balance between comedy, drama and message movie? And what other films should be combined into similarly striking (or strikingly mismatched) double bills?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Sometimes they come back

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.

Matt may not have been won over by the film Disco Boy – but he did like its trailer a lot, which gives us the perfect starting point for this post.

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