Welcome to ancient Rome, filtered through Federico Fellini’s sensitivities – which may as well be saying: unfiltered. But this isn’t your parents’ ancient Rome, or perhaps it is exactly your parents’ ancient Rome: one that is filled with corruption, debauchery and cruelty. Expect images, scenes and ideas that go far beyond the strangeness and excess of earlier Fellini films: here’s a beautiful young woman who won’t put out to just anyone, so an old sorcerer curses her so that fire comes out of her vagina (which the villagers use to light their kindling), and there’s a dead poet whose last will was that his belongings go to those who will eat his remains, so they begin to tuck in.
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.
It seems we’ve been doing our weekly feature Six Damn Fine Degrees for a while: this week saw the release of the 200th instalment – which prompted Alan to take a time-out from the usual free association and look back on some of his favourite posts and associations. Follow him down this particular rabbit hole here.
We’ve talked about the Alien franchise before on our podcast, so we didn’t want to miss the opportunity presented by the release of the latest addition to the series, Alien: Romulus, which came out in August. Join Sam and Alan as they talk about Fede Álvarez’ return to the roots of the franchise. How successful is the movie’s ‘back to basics’ approach? How scary can the film be after an entire series has done a lot to strip its iconic set of monsters of their original mystery? What have Álvarez and his collaborators done to keep all things xenomorph fresh, how do they play with an almost overpowering legacy? And what about that unexpected return from the dead: an effective homage or a tacky reference?
For more thoughts on the long-running Alien franchise, check out the following podcast episodes:
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.
Our Summer of Remakes podcast series ended at the beginning of the month, but Sam – whose idea the series theme was – had some thoughts looking back. So let’s start this week’s trailer -out not with a trailer but with what appears to be the first remake ever: Georges Méliès’ “Playing Cards”.
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!
What was the first film your parents ever took you to see at the cinema? I’m sure the latest Disney production, for many, were frequent firsts. Or even the myriad of family comedies just in time for the Christmas season? I remember it well and it was pretty standard: my parents took me to see Disney’s The Lady and the Tramp at Bern’s ABC cinema. I must have been around six. This led to more, obviously, with Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja rövardotter (1984) a particular favourite of mine.
It seems there is just as much finger pointing at movie remakes as there is in this memorable image from Hitchcock’s original The Man Who Knew Too Much. Pointing out strengths and weaknesses of originals and remakes and debating the actual point (if any) of why movies need to be remade, apart from obvious box office profit, is a staple among film enthusiasts and general audiences alike. In our four-part Summer of Remakes podcast series, we tried to dig a little deeper into the question of what remakes can and should be.
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.
Our Summer of Remakes is coming to an end, with a conversation about not one, two, three or four films, but a whopping five, starting with What Price Hollywood? (1932), which was adapted in 1937 into A Star Is Born – and again in 1954, starring Judy Garland and James Mason. Then, in 1976, the story got the Streisand treatment, and in 2018 we got Bradley Cooper’s version, starring himself and Lady Gaga. Join Julie, Sam and Alan as they talk about the remake extravaganza. What is it about the material that makes it so enduring? How do the films tell their story differently? And, if A Star Is Born, is such an enduring tale, what would our cultural baristas expect from a near-future remake, should one be forthcoming?
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!
Choice is a blessing. I grew up in a place and at a time when only a handful of TV channels were available, and you were at the mercy of an antediluvian evil called the “TV programme”. You were bored on a Wednesday afternoon after school? Well, though, there’s nothing on. Wait an hour and you might get some anime adaptation of a European kids’ classic, with a black-haired moppet running around the Swiss Alps – and that’s if you were lucky. As a child, I watched a lot of TV, and usually not what I wanted to watch but what was available – so I’d will myself, not always very successfully, into thinking that what was available was also what I wanted to watch. And sure, as I grew older, my choices grew alongside me: more TV channels, plus there were the video tapes sent to us by my uncle in the UK – but especially TV remained this wasteland of non-choices: it’s Friday evening, the parents are out, I can watch whatever I want… as long as it’s a stupid Italian action comedy, or a French film about a couple of parents whose child dies, or perhaps, if I’m lucky, Ghostbusters or Raiders of the Lost Ark… dubbed into German. And that was one of the good evenings!
These days, TV channels still exist, but do people still watch them? Do they still follow the TV programme, and go, “Oh, look, The Godfather Part III is on, let’s watch that – or would you rather see that movie in which Idris Elba and his daughter are stalked by a lion they’re showing on Film Four right now?” More likely, people grab the device of their choice and go, “Hmm… Is it a Netflix evening or a Disney+ one?” And there, at their fingertips, are hundreds of films and TV series, and these days even games, that all come with the subscription to the streaming channels. All that choice – and it’s a curse. When you can pick from a hundred things what to watch, how can you pick? It’s a miracle that more people aren’t found dead in front of the streaming device of their choice, their finger forever poised to scroll further down on the feed.
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.
For this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Mege wrote about The Umbrella Academy. What’s this: a Netflix series that is actually allowed to run until the end?
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 