Author: The Barista Collective

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Shave and a haircut…

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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.

What better way to start the Sunday trailer post than with barbers and meat pies? I mean, everyone needs to look good and everyone needs to eat – and who’s more aware of this than one Benjamin Barker… though most people might know him better under his alias: on Friday, Julie took our Six Damn Fine Degrees feature to dark places to write about Sweeney Todd.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #50: Daniel Craig’s Bond farewell in No Time to Die

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No, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, we expect you to podcast… Obviously we cannot let a cultural phenomenon such as Daniel Craig’s final James Bond outing go uncommented – especially since Alan, Julie and Sam already talked about the Bond franchise a year ago in preparation for the (oft postponed) release of James Bond: No Time to Die. In the meantime, it has been time to watch No Time to Die, and our three intrepid baristas return to finish their mission. Did they enjoy Daniel Craig’s last hurrah as MI6 agent James Bond? What were they shaken and/or stirred by most? What did they think of the villain, the women, the hidden lair – and especially the ending? Just as importantly: whither James Bond? Where do we want the franchise to go next? And… who do we want to have a crack at the iconic secret agent next?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Shots fired

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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.

Once again: what do you do if you want to post a trailer, but the post it refers to isn’t about a film? Books and music are difficult – but with musicals it’s a bit easier, because even stage shows get trailers nowadays. So, while there’s no Uncle Sam analogue in it, here’s a trailer for a recent(ish) staging of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins. Because, hey fella, feel like you’re a failure? Feel misunderstood? C’mere and kill a president! Trust me, it’ll all make sense if you read the post.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Knives Out

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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.

Boy oh boy, as always it’s difficult to find a trailer if the post it relates to is about a song. Mege’s Damn Fine Degrees post about Elvis Costello’s “I Want You” makes it a bit easier by mentioning the Michael Winterbottom film of the same name – though it seems it only exists in very, very bad quality on YouTube. Ah well.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Magic, mayhem, artificial colouring

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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.

Sadly, this week started with Matt not particularly enjoying Ingmar Bergman’s The Rite, a TV adaptation of a stage play that is at the same time bitter and tacky. Sorry, Ingmar, that’s not a combination that many people could pull off, even if they’re as talented as you and your cast, consisting of Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin and Anders Ek. Also, for the purpose of the Sunday trailer post, there doesn’t seem to be a trailer of The Rite available on YouTube – so here’s something else about rituals and masques and the like. Enjoy this trailer of the film adaptation of John Fowles’ The Magus! (Is that something of a tenuous link? Probably!)

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: A PTA meeting to look forward to

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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.

What do you get if you put together revenge, toxic masculinity and probability mathematics? Add some Mads Mikkelsen, season generously with action and black comedy, and you might end up with Anders Thomas Jensen’s Riders of Justice, which Matt wrote about last week.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: My god, it’s full of stars!

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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.

While 2020 and 2021 weren’t exactly great years for cinemas, they were pretty good for cinema. Plenty of good, interesting films came out – if not always in the preferred format – during the ongoing pandemic, and one of those found a grateful audience in Mege: Miranda July’s Kajillionaire.

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Footnotes: The Music Makers

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We thought long and hard about whether we wanted to put musical excerpts in our podcast episode on movie soundtracks, but in the end we decided against it – not least because these pieces should be heard in their entirety, and they tend to work best when you listen to them along to the respective scenes from the films they’re from. So, below you’ll find our picks and some more of our thoughts about these wonderful tunes and composers.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #49: The Music Makers

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Bernard Hermann, John Barry, Ennio Morricone, Jerry Goldsmith: so many of our favourite movie moments wouldn’t be the same without their iconic soundtracks. What would Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud be without Miles Davis’ melancholy jazz trumpet? Or the title crawl of Star Wars: A New Hope without John Williams’ epic orchestral fanfare? What does music add to films that can’t be done in any other way? Can great music make a mediocre or even bad film memorable? What about films that use pre-existing music? And can there be too much of a good soundtrack? Join Julie, Matt and Sam as they discuss their favourite movie music moments!

Want to listen to the music we talked about for this episode? Check out our Footnotes post for some choice soundbites!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: To every brief candle, its wick

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

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.

Phew… Busy, busy week – but not so much here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, sadly. (Next week there’ll be more going on, promise!) Nonetheless, we did have a post by Matt about how he thinks we should stop worrying and learn to love the potential in remakes and reboots. So, let’s start with a trailer for one of the best remakes ever! Warning: There be bees.

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