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.
Being a parent isn’t just about introducing your kids to all the books, films and series you loved when you were their age: in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Melanie wrote about the weird and wonderful shows her (by now 14-year-old) daughter has introduced her.
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.
This week, Alan risked the wrath from villagers and… older powers in order to bring us a Six Damn Fine Degrees post about folk horror, touching on recent movies Starve Acre, Fréwaka and I Saw the TV Glow.
Back in 2022, we did our first summer series: the Summer of Directors. The episode led by Alan focused on Robert Altman, the “grizzly-bear genius of American cinema”, as Ryan Gilbert put it in The Guardian. Back then, we discussed three of Altman’s most iconic ’70s films: satirical neo-noir The Long Goodbye, revisionist Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville, a scathing satire of America through the lens of the country music industry. At the time, we gave a shout-out to one of Altman’s less well-known films, his uncanny psychological drama 3 Women, but we didn’t discuss it in detail. This month’s espresso podcast remedies this: join Alan and Matt as they talk about Altman’s most dreamlike film. 3 Women (1977), starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule, is enigmatic and borders on the surreal, echoing and prefiguring the identity-blurring nightmares of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. What did Matt and Alan make of this strange, eerie film, and how does it fit in with their idea of Robert Altman?
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!
A world away from the urban landscape and its City Lightslies the genre of Folk Horror. But what is “folk horror”? One of the trickiest aspects of a discussion about any film genre is to pin down a good definition. I do rather like what Wikipedia succinctly offers on this score at the start of their entry on the subject:
“Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding.”
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.
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!
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.
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:
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Christmas Special 2017, in which Damn Fine O.G.s Matt and Mege share their dismay at the final episode (to date) of BBC’s modern-day Sherlock (warning: this was our first attempt at podcasting, so the audio quality is… Victorian, one might say)
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #73: Three Draculas, in which Julie, Sam and Matt talk about three takes on another classic figure of Victorian literature, though one more likely to drain your blood than solve your murder
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.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 