The Barista Collective

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Do the monkey!

Feb 23, 2025Feb 23, 2025The 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.

Whether you’re a martial arts fan or not, don’t miss this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, in which Julie writes about the Hong Kong extravaganza Iron Monkey, starring Donnie Yen.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here!

Feb 16, 2025Feb 16, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

This is not your ordinary Journey to the West: for this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, which fittingly coincided with Valentine’s Day, Melanie introduced us to A Korean Odyssey (or, in the original, Hwayugi), a Korean adaptation of the classic Chinese novel from the 16^th century – set in the present day, and turning the story into a… modern-day fantasy rom-com?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: February 2025

Feb 15, 2025Feb 16, 2025The Barista Collective1 Comment

For our February espresso podcast, we’ve got a very special treat: this month, Matt and Julie talk to British writer, critic, curator and film historian Pamela Hutchinson. Pamela, a regular contributor to the Guardian and to Sight & Sound, joins us for a look at The Lady with the Torch, a selection of films that played at the Locarno Film Festival 2024 and that was recently featured (in part) at the Kino REX in Bern, Switzerland, where Pamela spoke about the films and Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat in particular. Find out more about what made Columbia Pictures special, how its co-founder and president Harry Cohn was both a terror and a boon to the studio, and how Columbia Pictures ended up offering opportunities especially to the women working there that were unheard of elsewhere – and watch out for our recommendations for the Columbia Pictures films of the era you need to see, from the biting screwball comedy of Twentieth Century (1934) to the heartbreaking darkness of In a Lonely Place (1950) and the prescient political drama of All the King’s Men (1949). Don’t miss this special treat for lovers of classic Hollywood – and a big thank you to Pamela from all of us at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture!

P.S.: As director Dorothy Arzner features in the history of Columbia Pictures and comes up in our conversation with Pamela, make sure to check out last year’s May espresso podcast for a closer look at Arzner and her films.

P.P.S.: You can find Pamela’s talk at the REX on Columbia Pictures and The Big Heat here.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck

Feb 10, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

There are few cartoon shorts better than the Merrie Melodies classic Duck Amuck – which is why Matt dedicated this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to it.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #89: Second Chances (feat. Shirley MacLaine)

Feb 1, 2025Feb 2, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

It’s that time of the year again, when we look at films we didn’t enjoy originally and give them another chance. This time it’s Sam and Alan having another look at movies they’d previously bounced off of, and both films feature Shirley MacLaine: Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) (yes, Alan hasn’t been a big fan of the film to date!) and MacLaine’s first film, The Trouble with Harry (1955), her first feature appearance and one of the movies generally considered to be lesser Hitchcock. Will our intrepid two come away with a new appreciation of these films, or will their original opinions be reinforced?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: January 2025

Jan 18, 2025Jan 19, 2025The Barista Collective1 Comment

Sometimes they come back: in late 2024, Robert Eggers broke with his series of films titled “The” followed by a proper noun with the release of his remake of Nosferatu. Following F.W. Murnau’s 1922 version, a rip-off of Dracula so good that it took on a life (or should that be undeath?) of its own, and the 1979 remake by living legend Werner Herzog, Eggers’ Nosferatu calls back to the earlier versions while putting its own spin on the material. Join Alan and Matt for their discussion of the film: What does Eggers’ Nosferatu bring to the table? How does it compare to other versions of Nosferatu and of Dracula? What are the film’s greatest strengths, and where does it perhaps falter? And where do Matt and Alan stand on big bushy moustaches?

For more talk of the undead, make sure to check out our episode “Three Draculas” from October 2023, in which Julie, Sam and Matt talk about Murnau’s Nosferatu as well as the 1958 and 1992 versions of Dracula.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Forget me not

Jan 12, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Remember this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees instalment, or have you already forgotten it? Continuing from the theme of revenge of the previous week, Matt looks back at the first film by Christopher Nolan he saw, Memento – which, while not perfect, is still his favourite movie by the director.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #88: Century

Jan 4, 2025Jan 4, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Welcome to 2025! We’re taking the new year as an opportunity to look both forward and into the past – and to do something we’ve never done before: for the very first time (no, Robin Beck, we don’t mean you!) we’ve recorded a conversation featuring all four of the damn fine core podcasters: Alan, Julie, Matt and Sam. In the first episode of the year, we’re having a look at the cups of culture (mostly film) that came out in 1925, 1950, 1975 and 2000, from Marion Davies and Zander the Great via the wonderfully meta double bill All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard and ’70s greats such as Jaws and Chinatown to the still futuristic-sounding year 2000, which brought us films as different as Gladiator, Memento and In the Mood for Love. We cap off our conversation about a century of cinema with a look at the year to come and the films we’re anticipating the most. Wishing everyone a damn fine year, or indeed century!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast Christmas Special 2024

Dec 24, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

It is that time of the year again: snow, carol singing, and Bruce Willis crawling through air vents muttering to himself before he delivers the presents. Which also means: it’s time for our Christmas Special! This year, we’re taking the topic of the summer series as the starting point, remakes – but as everyone knows, these can be naughty or nice, so we’ve asked our guests as well as our regulars to talk about their dream remakes, the ones they would like to see made, or the nightmare remakes which they wouldn’t even wish on the people at CinemaSins. From train-bound screwball comedy to sexy ’60s spies, from dodgy demons to festive skeletons, from one serial killer to a different serial killer altogether: these are the films we would love, or hate, to see remade.

A great big thank you goes out to our guests of 2024 who have contributed to the Christmas Special: film critic Alan Mattli (of Maximum Cinema, Swissinfo and Facing the Bitter Truth), filmmaker and podcaster Daniel Thron (of Martini Giant) and film historian and cultural critic Marcy Goldberg – and obviously to all of you out there who have been following our work at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture. The Damn Fine Cup of Culture crew wishes everyone happy holidays, filled with good films, series, books, games and music!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: People. It’s what’s for dinner.

Dec 15, 2024Dec 15, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

This week saw a first: a new Six Damn Fine Degrees post by our new contributor, Melanie. Taking last week’s lead on The Neverending Story, she wrote about fictions in which people run around mindscapes created by their own brains, focusing on the Chinese series The Spirealm. Make sure to check out Melanie’s inaugural contribution!