A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #54: Movie Geography – Our Home Towns on Film

Ever watch a film made in a place you know very well, only to find that the movie’s geography doesn’t make any sense: that street does not lead to that bridge, and how would you get from this church to that square – which isn’t even in the same city? Join Sam, Julie and Alan as they discuss three films – Dick Maas’ serial killer schlockfest Amsterdamned (1988), Michelangelo Antonioni’s London-based mystery thriller Blowup (1966) and the Bern-based scenes in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), the sixth Bond adventure – that were filmed in their metaphorical back yards. What kind of expectations, experiences and disappointments come with seeing your home town on the big screen? And what’s the relationship between real geography and movie geography?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Childhood’s End

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.

Has there ever been a parody as loving of the thing it parodies as Galaxy Quest? Julie revisited this gem of a sci-fi comedy for our most recent instalment of Six Damn Fine Degrees. Though it’s hard not to still miss Alan Rickman while watching this film, isn’t it?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Hound dogs, rooftops and final frontiers

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 start this week’s trailer post than with… hang on… the German dub of the original series of Star Trek? Well, dear readers, you have Alan to thank for this unusually Teutonic blast from the retro-future! Though rather than a proper trailer, we have a TV preview for you. Beam mich hoch, Scotty!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Hungry like the wolf

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.

It’s been a very busy week – not so much on A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, but out there in the world of work. Nonetheless, we’ve had a handful of updates, starting with Matt’s musings about the particular misspellings that are his orthographical bugbear. Which, of course, leads us to Star Trek II and Ricardo Montalban’s amazing early ’80s cleavage.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The audience is listening

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.

Not all films by Ingmar Bergman can be stone-cold classics, and Matt definitely wasn’t convinced that After the Rehearsal belongs in that category. Nonetheless, this late-career TV movie set in the world of theatre has found a second life on the stage – and since YouTube doesn’t seem to have a trailer for After the Rehearsal that can actually be embedded, here’s a trailer for a Dutch theatre company’s double-header of After the Rehearsal and Persona. None more Bergman!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #53: Exactly the right number of notes – Amadeus (1984)

Some of us remember when we first heard that high-pitched giggle at the cinema, and watched as a thoroughly mediocre man, though one with an eye and an ear for genius, vowed to destroy the greatest composer of his generation: in 1984, Milos Forman’s film adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s stage play Amadeus came out – and made a great splash the following year at the Academy Awards, being nominated for eleven Oscars and winning eight of those, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (though, admittedly, it had doubled its chances of getting the latter by nominating both of its leads – a delightfully meta continuation of the Salieri/Mozart rivalry depicted in the film). Although Amadeus is often called a biopic, our baristas argue that it is something different altogether, and something infinitely more interesting at that. Join Julie, Sam and Matt as they revisit the 1984 hit and discuss its legacy.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: To Serve Woman

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 new Paul Thomas Anderson film doesn’t come along very often, and especially not one like Licorice Pizza. Mege shared his thoughts on the latest slice of PTA here.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Thirsty work

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.

Claire Denis’ films may not be for everyone, but earlier this week Matt wrote about seeing her Beau Travail for the first time, and while he bounced off of her most recent film High Life, her drama about French foreign legionnaires pulled him in considerably more.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The only good fish is a singing 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.

Annette, Leos Carax’ Sparks-scored musical, won’t be for everyone, but it’s definitely a unique film. Matt was among those who didn’t like it as much as they were hoping to, but hey, he liked the first and the last five minutes a lot, so there’s always that.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The Marvellous Moreau

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.

Look, if you’ve had enough of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we understand – and you may want to skip this week’s trailer post, since Friday’s Six Damn Fine Degrees instalment had Mege talking about sharing the MCU with his daughter: she’s a Marvel fan, and he enjoys sharing movies with her. So, for her, here’s a vintage Marvel trailer.

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