Matt – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

They create worlds: Return to the Zone

Jun 18, 2026MattLeave a comment

One of the things that video games can do magnificently is create worlds. These posts are an occasional exploration of games that I love because of where they take me.

Way back in 2007, the Ukrainian video game developer GSC Game World released Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, a game that some would describe as a diamond in the rough, while others called it masochistic Eurojank. The first Stalker game, based on the Strugatsky brothers’ classic sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic and influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky’s loose film adaptation Stalker, was soon followed by Stalker: Clear Sky and Stalker: Call of Pripyat. All three games were janky and brutal, offering not conventional power fantasies so much as gruelling expeditions into the Chernobyl exclusion zone surrounding the power plant at the centre of the 1986 disaster. They weren’t fun games – but they were unique, atmospheric, and different from pretty much all shooters at the time.

GSC Game World’s games weren’t for everyone, but they found a community of fans. A sequel was announced, then cancelled, until, in 2018, Stalker 2 resurfaced. The game was scheduled for release in 2022 – a schedule that proved impossible to uphold when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. In spite of setbacks, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl finally came out in November 2024. Two years later, I got around to returning to GSC’s new version of the Zone: from the Strugatskys’ region pockmarked by objects left behind by mysterious aliens, via Tarkovsky’s wet, verdant purgatory, to the surroundings of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, a region populated by warring factions and mutant creatures, and strewn with reality-bending artefacts.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: So Long, Marjane

Jun 7, 2026MattLeave 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.

Two days ago, we learnt of the tragic death of Marjane Satrapi, French-Iranian writer and filmmaker, perhaps most famous for her graphic novel Persepolis and its later adaptation into a film, also by Satrapi. If you haven’t yet seen (or read) Persepolis, make sure to seek it out – it is a story that is timely not only because of its author’s untimely death.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #105: Summer of Genre – The Benoit Blanc Whodunit

Jun 6, 2026Jun 6, 2026MattLeave a comment

We’ve arrived at June, which can only mean one thing – it’s once again time for a Damn Fine tradition: our summer series. This year, we bring you the Summer of Genre: four episodes, from June until September, each dedicated to a genre that is close to our hearts. And we’re launching our Summer of Genre with one of Julie’s favourites – the whodunit. But not just any whodunit: Julie, Alan and Sam have got together to discuss Rian Johnson’s Knives Out mysteries, from 2019’s inaugural murder mystery via 2022’s Glass Onion to last year’s Wake Up Dead Man. Since our part-time sleuths, part-time cultural baristas are big fans of the classical whodunit (for key evidence in this particular case, make sure to check out this March’s podcast episode, Three Christies, featuring the same star-studded cast), Johnson’s modern-day riffs on the clasical format are the logical next step. But will our intrepid trio exonerate Johnson and his private detective Benoit Blanc, or will they reveal their unquestionable guilt once and for all?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #289: The many faces of A Damn Fine Cup

Jun 5, 2026Jun 12, 2026MattLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

I’ll freely admit to it: sometimes when I follow Julie in our ongoing associative chain, it can feel quite daunting – the reason being that Julie is just such a treasure house of knowledge when it comes to cinema. Not that I’m a slouch in this department, or at least that’s what our yearly results at the best local cinema quiz suggest – but it doesn’t compare to Julie. Because Julie reads so goddamn much about films, actors, directors, studios. And here I am, an avid reader who, nonetheless, barely ever reads any non-fiction books. I have some memoirs of directors and actors standing in my bookshelf, but if push comes to shove, I’ll grab a novel over anything that looks like it comes from the Land of Non-Fiction. So, if Julie goes before me in our Six Damn Fine Degrees series (which is soon approaching its 300^th instalment! how crazy is that??), I know that I’m following our resident professor of filmology and filmography, the woman who knows why Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon is a pack of porkies. She’s the one who can write a post such as last week’s about screen icon Elizabeth Taylor and how her private life, her public persona and her work in cinema formed a very particular blend.

I’m the guy who can take one of Julie’s well-read, heartfelt posts about actor John Garfield and, going from the sublime to the ridiculous, follows up with a post about a certain orange, lasagna-loving fat cat.

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Criterion Corner: The Trial (#1191)

Jun 4, 2026Jun 5, 2026MattLeave a comment

“Someone must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”

Back when I went to school, it was clear that, at some point, we would be reading something by Franz Kafka – and, at the time at least, chances were it’d either be The Metamorphosis (published in 1915), in which a man wakes up to find himself changed into an enormous insect, or The Trial (published in 1925), that foundational work of paranoid fiction. If I remember correctly, we ended up reading both, though from the time I mostly remember the 1915 novella, perhaps also because of that memorable MTV short from the channel’s “Feed Your Head” series. But while The Metamorphosis still has that deliciously fantastic angle of a man turning into a bug (admittedly, at my current age I find that premise less fantastic than I did as a teen), arguably it’s The Trial that feels the most universal – and its footprints can be found across culture and cinema.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: In brightest day, in blackest night

May 24, 2026MattLeave a comment

How do you remember your teenage years? Matt remembers them being heavily pixelated – which gave him an ideal in into the time capsule that is Perfect Tides.

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They create worlds: Perfect Tides (2022)

May 21, 2026May 22, 2026MattLeave a comment

One of the things that video games can do magnificently is create worlds. These posts are an occasional exploration of games that I love because of where they take me.

What do you think of when you think of your teenage years? Do you think of hormones and crushes, of defying your parents and going to parties you shouldn’t have gone to? Do you think of crushing insecurity and emotions that could go from elation to depression within seconds, based on how someone did or didn’t look at you?

Quite honestly, when I think of my teenage years, the thing that perhaps comes to mind most is this: chunky square pixels.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: There’s no place like home

May 10, 2026MattLeave a comment

Casting is a tricky business – and sometimes you get exactly the right person… a few decades too late, as Alan argued in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, using Christopher Lee’s Saruman and Jack Nicholson’s Joker as examples.

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Butch & Johnny & Sundance & Henry: a duo of duos

May 9, 2026May 10, 2026MattLeave a comment

It’s Hollywood arithmetic at its finest, really: first, take one movie star with enough sex appeal and charisma to power the Eastern Seaboard, give him a lead role, and rake in the dough. Now, take two movie stars with sex appeal and charisma: 1 + 1 = 2. Two times the success and the dough. Or it may even be exponential, so you get the amount of dough squared.

And if this has worked once, what are you going to do? How about making another film with that duo of stars that has worked so well previously? You could even get back the director who helped make the first film a hit. What worked once is certain to work a second time.