The Barista Collective

A Damn Fine Espresso: May 2025

May 17, 2025Jul 5, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

It’s been a while since we’ve been excited about the Marvel Cinematic Universe here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture – so when Thunderbolts*, the 36^th movie in the franchise was released to largely positive reviews, we were curious: had the curse of middling, directionless Marvel movies been broken? Join Alan and Matt (for once recording in the very same room!) to find out their take on the super- (or should that be anti-?) hero extravaganza starring Florence Pugh leading a team of characters from a range of other films and TV shows in the series, from Ant-Man and the Wasp to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. What did Thunderbolts* get right? Where did it step wrong? And what does it mean for the future of the MCU – which is set to continue with this year’s Fantastic Four: First Steps and next year’s Avengers: Doomsday, a film certain to attain the superhero casting singularity, seeing how it will feature pretty much every actor who has ever even heard the word “marvel” uttered?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #92: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

May 3, 2025May 2, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Does a killer title make for a killer movie? When Philip Kaufman adapted Milan Kundera’s early-’80s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being for the big screen, it made a huge splash at its release in 1988, drawing audience numbers that, at this point in time, are almost unthinkable for a drama focusing on the lives of three characters in communist Czechoslovakia – even if that drama is as erotic and adult as Kaufman’s film was. And how well does it hold up in 2025, both for those who’d seen it at the time and those who are only just seeing it for the first time? Join Sam, Julie and Matt as they discuss the film, its young stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin, the mirrors and bowler hats, and the Bourgeois dreadfulness of late 1960s, early 1970s Switzerland. What made The Unbearable Lightness of Being such a success at the time? Why is it barely talked about almost 40 years later?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: April 2025

Apr 19, 2025Jul 5, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Back in 2022, we did our first summer series: the Summer of Directors. The episode led by Alan focused on Robert Altman, the “grizzly-bear genius of American cinema”, as Ryan Gilbert put it in The Guardian. Back then, we discussed three of Altman’s most iconic ’70s films: satirical neo-noir The Long Goodbye, revisionist Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville, a scathing satire of America through the lens of the country music industry. At the time, we gave a shout-out to one of Altman’s less well-known films, his uncanny psychological drama 3 Women, but we didn’t discuss it in detail. This month’s espresso podcast remedies this: join Alan and Matt as they talk about Altman’s most dreamlike film. 3 Women (1977), starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule, is enigmatic and borders on the surreal, echoing and prefiguring the identity-blurring nightmares of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. What did Matt and Alan make of this strange, eerie film, and how does it fit in with their idea of Robert Altman?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #91: Three Sherlocks

Apr 5, 2025Apr 5, 2025The Barista Collective1 Comment

To many fans of detective fiction, he’s the greatest sleuth of them all: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. He’s figured in many stories, novels, films, TV series and video games, to mention just a few of Mr Holmes’ exploits. He survived death by Reichenbach Falls, he appeared in the Victorian era and beyond, including adaptations in present-day England and America. And yet: to date, the greatest detective has only appeared on this site very, very rarely. Well, in the podcast episode we’re releasing today, this will be remedied, as Julie, Sam and Alan share their deductions about three cinematic takes on Sherlock Holmes: the 1939 film The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Ida Lupino; Billy Wilder’s 1970 classic The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, in which Robert Stephens and Colin Lively play the iconic Holmes and Watson; and the 1976 made-for-TV film Sherlock Holmes in New York, which has Roger Moore don the inauthentic yet iconic deerstalker – and John Huston take on the role of Holmes’ nemesis Moriarty. Which of these do justice to Sherlock Holmes? Which are worth watching, and which are better given a miss? Make sure to join our trio of pop culture baristas as they get out their magnifying glasses and investigate the case of Three Sherlocks. The game’s afoot!

And if you’d like to hear more about less-than-successful takes on Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective or indeed other iconic trios, make sure to check out these past episodes:

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Christmas Special 2017, in which Damn Fine O.G.s Matt and Mege share their dismay at the final episode (to date) of BBC’s modern-day Sherlock (warning: this was our first attempt at podcasting, so the audio quality is… Victorian, one might say)
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #73: Three Draculas, in which Julie, Sam and Matt talk about three takes on another classic figure of Victorian literature, though one more likely to drain your blood than solve your murder

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Girls and Boys Come Out to Play

Mar 16, 2025Mar 16, 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.

What do people think about when they hear Switzerland? Cheese? Watches? Lax bank laws? Or is it Heidi? Though, as Sam wrote in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, it’s by no means the case that Heidi is purely Swiss – in some ways, she’s the whole world’s Swiss girl.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: March 2025

Mar 15, 2025Mar 14, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

What do our baristas do when they’re not podcasting or writing blog posts about Korean series, animated favourites, or their addiction to the Criterion Collection? In Sam’s case, he teaches at a Swiss grammar school – and he regularly stages plays at the school where he teaches. This spring, he directed a production of Clare Boothe Luce’s 1930s Broadway play The Women, which was famously turned into a 1939 film by George Cukor, and rather less famously a remake in 2008, starring Meg Ryan and Annette Benning. Join Sam and Julie as they talk about the play and the production. How does a play that is almost 90 years old hold up when staged in 2025? How does a Broadway comedy of manners work when performed by students in a Swiss town? Does The Women in a staging that keeps its 1930s context speak to modern audiences? And, perhaps most importantly: if he had the opportunity, who would Sam himself portray in this all-women play?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: What’s in the envelope?

Mar 2, 2025Mar 2, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

For a franchise that has had eleven films so far, you’d think the movies would be good, wouldn’t you? Well, Alan’s gone and watched the entire Pink Panther series of films, and he’s not a fan. Check out his good reasons to be grateful that he took this particular hit for the team!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #90: And the Oscar goes to…

Mar 1, 2025Mar 2, 2025The Barista Collective1 Comment

This Sunday, the 97^th instalment of the Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars, will be awarded in Hollywood. In keeping with the times, it has been an uncommonly heated lead-up to this year’s awards, and not everyone is a big fan of the line-up – but it is undeniably a very varied Oscars year, and the big nominees range from the controversial (Emilia Pérez) via the outlandish (body horror favourite The Substance) to the monumental (The Brutalist with its run time of over 3½ hours). Will 2025 be the kind of year where one film sweeps most of the awards, or will the Tinseltown love be spread out across musicals, biopics, dramedies, ecclesiastic thrillers and sci-fi sequels? Join Matt, Julie and Sam as they talk predictions and favourites – and make sure to tell them how wrong they were come Monday!

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

Feb 23, 2025Feb 23, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

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?