The Barista Collective

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The Fab Five (trailers, that is)

Aug 4, 2024The 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.

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt wrote about films and TV series that depict real-life people, the extent to which it matters if the actors look like the individuals they’re supposed to portray – and the ways in which they sometimes get it very, very wrong.

But we want to start this trailer post with the Real McCoy (or should that be the Real McCartney?), so here goes:

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #83: Summer of Remakes – Solaris

Aug 3, 2024Aug 4, 2024The Barista Collective2 Comments

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, is classic sci-fi cinema: as can be expected of a film by Tarkovsky, it is intriguing, hypnotic, at times sublime, but undoubtedly also confounding and even frustrating at times. It is a product of its time in some ways but timeless in others. Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002) is unlikely to stand the test of time to the same extent – but is it still a worthwhile take on Lem’s novel? Is it indeed a remake – and, if so, is it a meaningful, worthwhile one, or is it an uncanny replica of the original material, much like the revenants that Lem’s mysterious planet produces, possibly in an attempt to communicate with humanity? Join Matt, Alan and Sam for the third episode in our Summer of Remakes, as they discuss these two films and their takes on both. How do they compare, in their approaches to Lem’s story, and in how successful those approaches are in creating a memorable film?

For another take on the films of Steven Soderbergh, make sure to check out our 2020 episode (featuring Dan Thron of Martini Giant): A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #35: Soderbergh’s Schizopolis, Schizopolis’ Soderbergh

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Filming the undead

Jul 28, 2024Aug 11, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

True crime sells, but it’s ethically dodgy at the best of times and needs to be handled with intelligence and sensitivity. Did Bob Fosse succeed with his final film Star 80 about the murder of actress Dorothy Stratten? Check out this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees by Alan to find out what he thinks.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Who kills the killers?

Jul 21, 2024Aug 11, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

This week, Julie wrote one of those Six Damn Fine Degrees posts that only Julie can write: a deep dive into the life and career of Natalie Wood, or at least the early years. If you have any interest in the history of Hollywood, make sure to check out the post!

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A Damn Fine Espresso: July 2024

Jul 20, 2024Aug 4, 2024The Barista Collective1 Comment

Summer is a good time to catch up on films and series – in this case, the Netflix series Ripley, created by Steven Zaillian and released last spring. The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted before, most famously as Plein Soleil (AKA Purple Noon, by René Clément and starring a deliciously evil Alain Delon) and under its original title in 1999 (by Anthony Minghella, with Matt Damon as a more soulful murderer) – so what is the purpose of another adaptation? Join Sam and Matt as they ponder this question. What does Zaillian’s Ripley bring to the discussion, compared to the films by Clément and Minghella? What is the effect on the story of casting Andrew Scott as a Ripley a dozen years older than the earlier versions? What are the unique qualities of Netflix’s Tom Ripley? And is this version a more faithful adaptation of Highsmith’s story and character?

For more on Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and the various film adaptations of his adventures, make sure to check out these posts and podcasts:

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #45: Ripley vs Ripley – who’s the most talented?
A Damn Fine Espresso: December 2023 (in which Sam and Matt discuss the other adaptations of Tom Ripley novels)
Anyone you can be, I can be better: All About Eve and The Talented Mr Ripley

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Very Steven Spielberg

Jul 14, 2024Aug 11, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Remember how excited people were when the first season of Stranger Things came out? And how that excitement perhaps flared up again with one or two setpieces in every season (“Running Up the Hill”! “Enter Sandman”!), but somehow it never quite captured that initial feeling that we were watching something that was both familiar and new? In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam argues that, just perhaps, J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 was the better Stranger Things to begin with.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: French bombshells

Jul 7, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Can you believe that it’s been eight years since Stranger Things premiered? And that it’ll only actually end (if it does) in 2025? Let this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees take you back to the time when Stranger Things was something to be excited about.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #82: Summer of Remakes – Wages of Fear and Sorcerer

Jul 6, 2024Aug 4, 2024The Barista Collective3 Comments

Our Summer of Remakes podcast series continues with its second episode: after June’s Hitchcock double bill, we’re changing country (at least once) but staying with thrills and suspense. Imagine being stuck in a dead-end town, together with other men with murky pasts and little to lose, and with little hope of ever making it out – and now imagine a big corporation offering you a ticket out of there. The only catch? You have to drive a truck loaded with volatile nitroglycerin over treacherous dirt roads. Simple as that. This is the story of Georges Arnaud’s 1950 novel Le Salaire de la peur, and to date it has been turned into two memorable films: The Wages of Fear (1953) by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Yves Montand, and Sorcerer (1977), directed by William Friedkin and starring Roy Scheider. Join Alan, Julie and Matt as they discuss these two versions of the story. Where do the original and the remake (though Friedkin did sometimes deny that Sorcerer was one indeed) make the same or similar choices? Where do they diverge? And to what effect?

For more on the films of William Friedkin, check out our 2023 Halloween episode on The Exorcist (feat. the one and only Daniel Thron), recorded shortly after Friedkin’s death.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Four Samurai and a Vampire

Jun 30, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees post, Julie wrote about the photographer Peter Lindbergh and what his work meant to her. So, instead of a trailer, here’s a tribute video that was made when he died in 2019.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Come for the cheese, stay for the xenomorphs

Jun 23, 2024Jun 23, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam wrote about the H.R. Giger Museum in Gruyère, an incongruous celebration of Giger’s sex-and-biomechanics aesthetic in a cosy mountain towns in Switzerland – and since everyone defaults to Alien when it comes to Giger, let’s for once feature two trailers to films that the Swiss artist contributed to that are perhaps a tad less celebrated.