Movies – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

One Best Picture After Another #9: The Great Ziegfeld (1936)

03/08/202608/08/2026Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a comment

Welcome to One Best Picture After Another – where I attempt to watch all the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture, starting at the very beginning. And attempt to answer two simple questions – is the film still actually any good? And why did it win?

6/10

When I first looked through the complete list of films that I’d be watching for this exercise, one of the titles that stood out was The Great Ziegfeld. There was one reason for this – William Powell. He plays the lead in this film and I’m a huge fan of his. Yet despite being someone who long ago fell for the man’s charms, I’d never watched this particular film. Mainly because, unlike the likes of My Man Godfrey, How To Marry A Millionaire and especially The Thin Man, it’s not a film of his that gets remembered and rescreened alongside those classics. Even among dedicated Powell-istas (Powell-ites? Powell-ians?) its reputation is that of a bit of a dud.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: All That Was East Is West Of Me Now

02/08/2026The 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.

Earlier this week, the singer-songwriter and actor Glen Hansard died after a motorcycle crash. You could do worse than to rewatch (or watch for the first time) Once in his memory.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #107: Summer of Genre – Disaster!

01/08/202601/08/2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

When it comes to genre, there is one especially that is instantly recognisable. The moment someone says, “This ship cannot sink/this building cannot burn/this plane cannot crash!”, you know you’re in a disaster movie. The genre flourished for a brief period in the 1970s, but it never reached those heights again: even if there is the occasional disaster movie these days, it doesn’t have the draw of the classics of the genre, and it certainly doesn’t have the same kind of cross-generational star power that seems right out of a ’70s Agatha Christie film. In the third episode of our Summer of Genre, Sam, Matt and Alan look at three undisputed classics of disaster movies: Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). How do these films hold up more than 50 years later? What made the genre tick, and why was it such a staple of Hollywood cinema in the ’70s? Why was its reign so brief? And what place has big-screen disaster in today’s movie landscape?

P.S.: For more on disaster movies, make sure to check out Sam’s Six Damn Degrees post on “Pandemic and Disaster in The Cassandra Crossing”!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Robots like us

26/07/2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

In 1935, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed the Best Picture award on Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton. Does the film hold up 91 years later, and did Alan like it?

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Why, Chantal, why? A Couch in New York (1996)

25/07/202625/07/2026MattLeave a comment

Oh boy. Do you know the feeling when you hear about a film, it’s got an interesting director whose other films you’ve liked, as well as actors that you’ve enjoyed watching in the past. Not only that, but the film sounds really interesting for one reason or another: say, it’s in an unexpected genre for the filmmakers involved. It’s risky. It could backfire. But hey, it’s always worth the risk, isn’t it?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Be he moth or be he not

19/07/202619/07/2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

What better way to spend a hot summer Sunday than sitting in a cool cinema and watching a 4 1/2 hour documentary about the Boston municipal government? Or a similarly long film about the inner workings of the National Gallery? Or, indeed, an angry and unexpectedly lyrical look at the US welfare system in the mid-’70s? Frederick Wiseman has it all for you, and much more beyond, as Matt found out in June when his favourite cinema did a Wiseman programme in honour of the late documentarian.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: July 2026

18/07/202612/07/2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

As we discussed in our second podcast episode of this year’s summer series which was dedicated to the Western genre, Westerns are, among many other things, a way of the USA talking about themselves. But not all Westerns take the same, serious approach to doing so, and the tropes of the genre – sheriffs, gunslingers, corrupt railroad barons, and many more – lend themselves to a different, more meta kind of genre: the parody. In this month’s espresso episode, Sam and Julie talk about Mel Brooks’ affectionate stab at the Western, Blazing Saddles. How does it fit in their viewing of Westerns? How does it hold up more than 50 years after its original release? And what is the state of film spoofs in 2026?

For some connected reading, check out Sam’s Six Damn Fine Degrees instalment on frequent Mel Brooks collaborator Madeline Kahn and her finest moments (including “I’m Tired” from Blazing Saddles). And make sure to keep following our series, the Summer of Genre, for more discussion of cinematic genres that we love!

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Wiseman’s world

15/07/202614/07/2026MattLeave a comment

If you had told me earlier in the year that one of my favourite cinema experiences this year would be a set of long-form documentaries about subjects ranging from political institutions through bureaucracies to libraries, galleries and fine dining, and that I’d not only go and see several such documentaries three or four hours (and sometimes more) in length, after finishing one I’d want to see the next one pretty much right after? I would have laughed in disbelief.

Well, call me a convert: a one-month curated programme of documentaries by Frederick Wiseman, who died last February, turned me from someone who had heard of Wiseman into a card-carrying believer.