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.
Halloween is still a few weeks away, but October’s a good month for scary films. Are long-running franchises that basically repeat the same basic story over and over again really scary, though? Matt has some doubts in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees.
Aside from Frankenstein’s creature perhaps, is there another movie monster as iconic as that most famous of vampires: Dracula? At the same time, has familiarity turned Dracula into something less than a monster? Is the famous count with the two pointy teeth still capable of instilling fear, or has he become too much of a cliché, even a cartoon? For our spooky October episode, Sam, Julie and Matt have packed their stakes, crucifixes and garlands of garlic and are heading to deepest Transilvania to look in on three versions of the Count, ironically starting with the one who isn’t even called Dracula: F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), in which the wonderfully named Max Schreck played the famous vampire with the serial numbers filed off. Then there’s Christopher Lee, the tall, dark stranger, in Terence Fisher’s 1958 film Dracula (or Horror of Dracula, as it was called in the US); and finally, we check out Francis Ford Coppola’s self-proclaimed return to the original novel, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), in which Gary Oldman chews scenery at least as much as he nibbles on the necks of nubile Victorian ladies. How do these three films succeed at bringing the famous vampire to life (or should that be undeath)?
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.
Last week saw us looking back – or squinting, more likely – at Psycho II, so this week Alan took us back to the Anthony Perkins-directed Psycho III, a sequel that isn’t as bad as you’d expect… but does that make it a good film? Read this Friday’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to find out!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
