Movies – Page 15 – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Forever Fellini: Amarcord (1973)

Jan 11, 2025Jan 10, 2025Matt2 Comments

It seems that Fellini’s Amarcord, a semi-autobiographical film inspired by the director’s childhood in and around Rimini, is a tremendously easy film to like. Critic Vincent Canby called it “Fellini’s most marvelous film” and “extravagantly funny”, while Roger Ebert described it as “a movie made entirely out of nostalgia and joy”.

Me, though? More than halfway into Amarcord, I would have said that I’m not a fan at all. I didn’t find it funny or joyous. One of the tropes I’m more than a little tired of is: boys will be boys – and as a result I would’ve gladly thrown all of these guys below under a car.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #216: Sometimes the best revenge is the one you forget about

Jan 10, 2025Jan 17, 2025Matt2 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!

Revenge is one of the staples of our culture. Think of Hamlet, or The Count of Monte Cristo, or even of Carrie. Think of Kill Bill or Mad Max or The Princess Bride. Revenge is a motif, and indeed a motive, that’s clear, easily understood, and it allows us to vicariously enjoy our darker impulses through others. We may fantasise about getting our own back on those who have wronged us, but we rarely put it into practice – and most definitely not as spectacularly as Maximus the Gladiator, or Beatrix “the Bride” Kiddo, or Inigo Montoya, the sword master we’ve all wanted to be at one time or another.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Oh, the shark, the cat and the chimp have such teeth, dear

Jan 5, 2025MattLeave 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.

We look back at the week that straddles two years, which for us here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture began with Matt’s retrospective of 2024, bookended by Hirokazu Kore-eda’s wonderful Monster and the wondrous Flow.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #88: Century

Jan 4, 2025Jan 4, 2025The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Welcome to 2025! We’re taking the new year as an opportunity to look both forward and into the past – and to do something we’ve never done before: for the very first time (no, Robin Beck, we don’t mean you!) we’ve recorded a conversation featuring all four of the damn fine core podcasters: Alan, Julie, Matt and Sam. In the first episode of the year, we’re having a look at the cups of culture (mostly film) that came out in 1925, 1950, 1975 and 2000, from Marion Davies and Zander the Great via the wonderfully meta double bill All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard and ’70s greats such as Jaws and Chinatown to the still futuristic-sounding year 2000, which brought us films as different as Gladiator, Memento and In the Mood for Love. We cap off our conversation about a century of cinema with a look at the year to come and the films we’re anticipating the most. Wishing everyone a damn fine year, or indeed century!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #215: Revenge Means Taking out the Trash

Jan 3, 2025Jan 10, 2025Melanie3 Comments

Have you ever thought about what vengeance means to you? Who would you revenge yourself on? The coworker who stole your promotion, the jerk who cut you off in traffic, the kid who made your life hell in middle school? Someone closer to you? And what would it look like, to actually, really, finally get your own back?

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That was the year that was: 2024

Dec 30, 2024Dec 29, 2024Matt2 Comments

Ever since the pandemic, time feels like it’s been broken. Looking back at the films and TV series I’ve watched this year, the games I’ve played, and whatever else I did over the last 12 months, my most frequent reaction is “That happened this year?!” The temporal shape of things has been out of whack for a while, and it sometimes feels like this is getting worse – like we’re all stuck in one of the trippier episodes of Star Trek. Though I think it’s time to be honest about this: in part that’s also because I am approaching the big Five-Oh (and no, I’m not talking about Hawaii). This is my last New Year’s post before finishing my half-century, and that is a pretty freaky thought.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: out with the old, in with the new

Dec 29, 2024Dec 29, 2024Matt1 Comment

It’s the last trailer post of the year, and we feel… apprehensive? Not so much about the trailers but definitely about the year to come – but until then, let’s enjoy some trailers, shall we? And we’ll begin with a collection of trailers coming out of this year’s Christmas Special podcast episode, ranging from Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock to Billy Wilder and Mary Harron. Enjoy!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #214: ’70s Movie Brat Musicals

Dec 27, 2024Jan 4, 2025Alan Kuhl Graham2 Comments

There’s a host of great directors that made their names in the 1970s, producing a body of work that revitalised moviegoing at the time and which still stands up to this day. But there is one genre that seemed to be beyond them – where their adoration of the past seemed to prevent them from producing something new and, crucially, very good.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast Christmas Special 2024

Dec 24, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

It is that time of the year again: snow, carol singing, and Bruce Willis crawling through air vents muttering to himself before he delivers the presents. Which also means: it’s time for our Christmas Special! This year, we’re taking the topic of the summer series as the starting point, remakes – but as everyone knows, these can be naughty or nice, so we’ve asked our guests as well as our regulars to talk about their dream remakes, the ones they would like to see made, or the nightmare remakes which they wouldn’t even wish on the people at CinemaSins. From train-bound screwball comedy to sexy ’60s spies, from dodgy demons to festive skeletons, from one serial killer to a different serial killer altogether: these are the films we would love, or hate, to see remade.

A great big thank you goes out to our guests of 2024 who have contributed to the Christmas Special: film critic Alan Mattli (of Maximum Cinema, Swissinfo and Facing the Bitter Truth), filmmaker and podcaster Daniel Thron (of Martini Giant) and film historian and cultural critic Marcy Goldberg – and obviously to all of you out there who have been following our work at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture. The Damn Fine Cup of Culture crew wishes everyone happy holidays, filled with good films, series, books, games and music!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a kaiju?

Dec 22, 2024Dec 22, 2024MattLeave a comment

Only a few more days until Christmas – but until the big Yuletide onslaught begins in earnest, let’s revisit what we did this week at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture… starting with Sam’s revisiting of two pastiches of classic crime stories, Clue and Murder by Death.