I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: “Confess, Communist!” Said the Sexy Priest

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.

A priest, a Communist and a (former) member of the Résistance walk into a confessional: while Matt’s currently enjoying a series of films by Jean-Pierre Melville, he especially enjoyed that Léon Morin, Priest was something of an odd one out, seeing how it focuses on a female protagonist.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: June 2023

It’s June, and one of the year’s biggest blockbusters is just weeks away: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will be released on 30/6/2023. Will Harrison Ford, complete with hat and whip and iconic half-grin, deliver once again, as he did with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Will Old Man Jones stumble, as he arguably did with Temple of Doom? Or will he sit in a jeep or a boat floating unthreatened through setpieces, as some might say he did in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Join Alan, Sam and Matt as they talk all things Doctor Jones in this month’s espresso podcast episode. Which are their favourite films in the franchise? What are their expectations of Dial of Destiny, in spite of the absence of Steven Spielberg at the helm? And will Alan really go and see the new film wearing a t-shirt slagging off everyone’s favourite dwarf from Moria?

P.S.: For anyone who appreciates John Williams’ contributions to the Indiana Jones movies, watch this space over the summer months!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Going places

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.

Everybody’s talkin’ about our post on Midnight Cowboy– okay, not really, but still, if you missed it, go and check our the lastest Criterion Corner, about John Schlesinger’s late ’60s classic.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: If you Press a Word long and hard enough…

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.

Most kids get a kick out of watching films that they are supposedly not old enough for – and sometimes it’s those films that shape our tastes for life. For this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam wrote about how he got to see both Once Upon a Time in the West and The Name of the Rose at an impressionable age… and what an impression they both left on him!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #69: Summer of Collaborations – Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy

Last year we dedicated the summer to some damn fine directors, from Jane Campion, Dario Argento (who was also the topic of our most recent espresso) and Ida Lupino to Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese. This year, we decided to look at some of the great collaborations of cinema, and for the first instalment in our Summer of Collaborations, Julie has been talking to Alan and Sam about one of the legendary couples of Hollywood, both on- and off-screen: Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. The two starred in nine films, many of them romantic comedies banking on the palpable chemistry that was apparent between Hepburn and Tracy from the first. Our trio of cultural baristas takes a closer look at the first collaboration between the two, Woman of the Year (1942); their last, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), finished just 17 days before Tracy’s death; and perhaps their most iconic film together, Adam’s Rib (1949), which Julie previously wrote about. What made this one of the most sparkling acting collaborations in Hollywood? Why was there this fascination with Hepburn’s characters being knocked down a peg? And how well do these films, the issues they address and the way they address these issues hold up more than half a century later?

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

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

Sources, apart from the usual ones:
The Hepburn Tracy Project, by Glenn Kenny and Claire Kenny;
The ever reliable Karina Longworth, on You Must Remember This.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Hats, cats, rabbits

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.

After two Six Damn Fine Degrees about Billy Wilder’s Fedora, there was really only one way we could go, wasn’t there? And we did do exactly that, with Matt’s memories of the loops he had to jump through before he could finally watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: May 2023

For our May espresso we’ve got a crimson-coloured, deeply unsettling treat for our listeners. Italian horror-thriller maestro Dario Argento (Suspiria, Deep Red, Phenomena) already featured prominently in our Summer of Directors a year ago, but a spine-tingling encounter of the unmissable kind has brought Alan and Sam back to the mic to talk about him: the BFI’s recent Argento screenings and a unique Q&A with the director himself! Along the way, they chat about which of his films the event has put on the map for them, what the map of Turin, Italy has to do with Argento’s cinema, and how a high-profile exhibition at that Italian city’s National Cinema Museum has recently shown how Argento is well on his way to the Italian as well as the international movie Olymp. And, last but not least, Alan has met the next generation of Dario Argento fan. Join us to find out more!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: It’s the pictures that got small

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.

For every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction – and for every attempt to rehabilitate Fedora, we get a counterpoint: in this case, Alan’s post expressing his issues with Billy Wilder’s late-career flop, drawing a direct line to his iconic Sunset Boulevard.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Big Fish

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.

We had a busy Friday this week, with not just one post but two – including Sam’s look at one of the rarely mentioned (and even more rarely appreciated) films in Billy Wilder’s filmography: Fedora.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Some hate sand, some don’t

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.

Let’s change our usual approach to Trailer Sundays and start with new trailers – because we’ve got one here that’s close to our hearts.

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