Books

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

The 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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Six Damn Fine Degrees #232: Home is where the books are

MattLeave 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!

Differently from some of my co-baristas here at A Damn Fine Cup, I don’t have any kids, which means that I can neither share all the books, films and series that I loved as a kid with them nor can they show me their weird and wonderful discoveries in pop culture. Which, in some ways, is perhaps what I would enjoy most about being a parent: telling them about the stories close to my heart and being there to see them discover those stories. Though I guess there’s also the flipside: I’m not sure I would be very happy to find out that a kid of mine read, say, The Neverending Story and didn’t care for it.

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

The 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:

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #228: This movie’s no picnic

Melanie3 Comments

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!

Key frame of Stalker (Copyright: Mosfilm)

As a Damn Fine Cup afficionado, you’ve probably already seen Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) or read the novel it’s based on, Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers, or both. You’ll probably have informed opinions on each of them. If you haven’t: sorry, there are spoilers coming.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #226: The BBC Radio Lord Of The Rings Part One: The Fellowship Of The Cast

Alan Kuhl Graham3 Comments

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 have nothing against the Peter Jackson The Lord Of The Rings films. They’re fine. Not damning with faint praise fine. Actually fine. Brilliantly constructed blockbusters that deliver on pretty much every front. But one thing they are not is a dramatised realisation of my Middle Earth. Because another adaptation got there first, and filled up my headspace with performances and music that will forever be entwined with my love for this story.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #217: L.A. Confidential, revisited

Julie3 Comments

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!

Director Curtis Hanson with Kevin Spacey. Image copyright Warner Bros.

Although I try to avoid plot spoilers, for those who have never seen L.A. Confidential: skip this article and see the film first. It’s worth it, and inevitably there will be minor spoilers ahead.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #211: The book’s the thing

Matt3 Comments

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!

Like Sam, I was a big fan of The Little Vampire as a kid – though, unlike him, I was a Book Firster. I loved the books by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg (at least as far as I read them, stopping somewhere around the fourth or fifth volume), and I think I may have had something of a kid crush on the vampire girl the main character fell in love with, but I couldn’t abide what I saw of the TV series. I’d been looking forward to watching the adaptation, but to me at the age of 10 or 11 it felt deeply silly. To be fair to the series, though, perhaps it was simply that I was growing out of the books at the time, and maybe I minded what I saw as the series’ silliness because it highlighted to me the ways in which The Little Vampire was, first and foremost, a series of children’s books. Not YA, not “for all ages”, but kids’ books. Which doesn’t mean that you’re magically too old for such fare at the age of 10, nor that such books cannot be enjoyable as you get older – but, for me, The Little Vampire stopped being as enjoyable as it had been originally. And, having loved the books dearly until then, perhaps that’s why I pretty much stopped reading them from one day to the next.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #203: A Tale Of Two Christies

Alan Kuhl Graham3 Comments

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!

In 2002 the UK TV Channel ITV announced that it was to begin producing an all new adaptation of Agatha Christie‘s Miss Marple novels. These would be big-budget, high-production-value affairs, with an eye on the global TV market.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #197: The Umbrella Academy

Mege4 Comments

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!

Warning: There be spoilers.

I haven’t read the comics, but have every intention to do so, but I don’t know why I haven’t praised the many great aspects of The Umbrella Academy (2019-2024). I have insomnia these days (or nights, rather), and so it takes something stronger to keep me watching attentively during the small hours. That bunch of ever-bickering unrelated siblings is a treat with comedy, drama, weirdness, psychological depth and the fear of the end of the world (more than once, hehe).

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #173: Go build me a world to my liking

Mege3 Comments

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!

To me, The Lord of the Rings is unreadable. Not because the writing is bad; it’s not. And not because I am not into fantasy; while it’s not my favourite genre, I don’t run for the hills if someone suggests a good fantasy novel to me. I have not yet read a bad China Miéville novel, if that is anything to go on. I am also not afraid of super-long novels, either – behold, I am the guy who read Infinite Jest and loved it. It’s just that investing myself in a heavy brick of a novel, there is a point where the text has to convince me that it’s worth wading through it for the next couple of days or weeks.

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