Movies – Page 18 – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: We have everything, from witnesses to werewolfs!

Oct 27, 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.

Every now and then our weekly Six Damn Fine Degrees series starts circling a certain topic for several weeks, and right now the focus is on Agatha Christie, her stories and the ways these were adapted. This week, Julie wrote one of her usual wonderful deep dives, this time on Billy Wilder’s film version of Witness for the Prosecution. Make sure to check it out!

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Everybody’s looking for something: Robot Dreams (2023)

Oct 26, 2024Oct 26, 2024Matt2 Comments

It’s Manhattan in the 1980s, and Dog is lonely. He, differently from everyone around him, has no one to share his life with – so when he sees an ad on TV for robot friends, he doesn’t hesitate. Soon a large, heavy box appears and Dog sets about assembling his new friend. He and Robot immediately hit it off, and Dog’s life changes.

Until the day he takes Robot to the beach, and everything is turned upside down.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The First Law of Robotics

Oct 20, 2024MattLeave a comment

Sometimes our Six Damn Fine Degrees posts get caught on a certain topic: a few months ago, we had several posts in a row focusing on the films of Werner Herzog, and recently they’ve entered an Agatha Christie phase. This week, Sam remembered the great Maggie Smith, writing about two of her appearances in adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories: Death on the Nile and Evil under the Sun, both of which Smith featured in, albeit in different parts.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: October 2024

Oct 19, 2024Nov 23, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

On the podcast, we’ve talked about festivals before, both about specific festivals (such as Queersicht, the annual LGBTIAQ+ film festival held in Bern, Switzerland) and about the experience of going to cultural festivals of any kind. Autumn is festival season, and Alan and Sam talk about film festivals they’ve been to, from Switzerland’s festivals in Locarno and Zürich via San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain (which Sam recently visited) to the London Film Festival, where Alan regularly catches some of the more off-the-radar small films. What’s it like to attend these festivals? What is the experience like? How good are they for celebrity-spotting? And would they recommend the festivals to film fans, or are they reserved more for filmmakers and journalists?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #204: The Best of Maggie Smith in two Christies

Oct 18, 2024Oct 30, 2024samlinder5 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!

The passing of Dame Maggie Smith in late September has caused an outpouring of appreciation and love by film critics, movie buffs and the stage aficionados alike. Rarely has there been in the loss of an actress such a display of a wide-ranging fan base, from the Harry Potter kids to the Downton Abbey addicts and from silver-age Hollywood connoisseurs to the West End audiences and independent cinemagoers, everybody seems to have harboured a deep respect and admiration for her unique talent. Channels and feeds were crammed full of shorts and reels for days, with no real end in sight.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Got milk?

Oct 13, 2024Oct 13, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Many of Criterion’s releases are the classics of Hollywood and world cinema that all film geeks have heard of: Fellini, Bergman, Varda. Or then it’s cult classics such as the original Godzilla films. Some of their releases are less known, though, such as Diamonds of the Night, which Matt discovered recently.

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Criterion Corner: Diamonds of the Night (#969)

Oct 10, 2024Oct 10, 2024Matt1 Comment

Two adolescents jump off a moving train. Shouts come from the train, and shots, but who would stop at the behest of people who are already shooting at you? The young men continue running, shedding the long coats marked “KL” (for Konzentrationslager, concentration camp – an abbreviation that was later changed by the SS to “KZ”, allegedly for its harsher sound) as they move further and further into the forest, cold, hungry, ill-prepared for their journey.

But, before long, we get the sense that, run as they might, the two men are doomed. And perhaps more than that: perhaps they are dead already.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Dead, dead, dead

Oct 6, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

For this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt took us to the scene of the crime – or, in German, Tatort, one of the longest-running series on German television. Though here’s a trailer for an Austrian episode, because everything’s more charming with an Austrian accent.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #85: Halloween Special – Death in Venice (and Summerisle)

Oct 5, 2024Oct 4, 2024The Barista Collective1 Comment

The 1970s were a bad time for men travelling in Europe, doubly so if they were following the traces of a mysterious girl, and triply so if they weren’t good at listening to advice. Before you know it, you meet with a gruesome fate at the hands of cultists or misshapen serial killers, and then where will you be? Dead! That’s where. Dead in Venice or Summerisle.

For this year’s October episode, we finally fulfil a common wish of ours: join Matt, Sam and Julie as they talk about two creepy favourites of theirs, the cult folk horror that is the original The Wicker Man, directed by Robin Hardy, and the mournful, intricate, watery loops of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Apart from both coming out in 1973 and being shown as a double bill at the time, what do these two films have in common? Why are they both such enduring classics, in spite of very clearly being products of their time? And – in keeping with our summer theme – why do the two films resist being remade, in spite of an ill-fated attempt by Neil LaBute and starring Nicolas Cage at maximum Cage?

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