When we talk about cinematic serial killers, we usually think of the likes of Hannibal Lecter: charismatic sociopaths, individuals that are intellectually brilliant but utterly amoral, and whose killing usually follows some grand aesthetic design, making them queasy stand-ins for artists. Saeed Hanaei, the man who murdered sex workers in Mashhad, Iran in the years 2000 and 2001, isn’t that kind of serial killer, and Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider isn’t that sort of film. In this month’s espresso episode, Alan and Matt talk about Abbasi’s film, which got an ambivalent reception when it came out at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022. Choosing to put more of a focus on the killer than on his victims, and staging the murders starkly, Holy Spider was accused of some of being exploitative – but how does a film go about depicting a series of killings in which an entire society is implicated responsibly and tactfully? Tune in to hear our duo’s take on Holy Spider, its depiction of violence against women and how Abbasi’s film uses a fictionalised journalist protagonist (played by Zar Amir Ebrahimi) to tell a story about, as the director puts it, “a serial killer society”.
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!
To Kay Francis, 1932 was just another long year. She had made The False Madonna, Strangers in Love, Man Wanted, Street of Women, Jewel Robbery, One way Passage, Trouble in Paradise and Cynara (yes, all of those in ’32).
Of these, One Way Passage was Kay’s favorite and Trouble in Paradise was her best. But before these two, one of her most charming pictures released that year was Jewel Robbery. In what can be considered almost a preface to Trouble in Paradise, she plays a cheefully jaded Baroness who becomes the enthralled victim of a very unorthodox and very polite robbery, subsequently falls hopelessly in lust with the suave gentleman robber, and vice versa.
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.
From Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe to William Powell and Myrna Loy: in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Alan takes us back to the diminishing returns of Thin Man sequels – while providing us with two potential Thin Man drinking games, only one of which should lead straight to alcohol poisoning.
For a while, I’d catch all new Pixar releases at the cinema. I missed out on Toy Story, their first feature film, when it originally came out, but I remember enjoying A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, and I loved The Incredibles when it came out (though I have to confess that I never enjoyed Finding Nemo as much as most people did). At the time these were something we’d not seen before, not in this quality. Obviously Pixar’s artistry was amazing, in a genre that, when the first few Pixar films were released, was still fairly new – and with each film, the company would introduce new innovations. The fur in Monsters, Inc. (apparently there were over two million hairs on Sulley that needed to be animated), water and the way it was lit in Finding Nemo, the way musculature behaved on human beings in The Incredibles: Pixar were technological innovators as much as they were artists, but above all, they were storytellers. Their movies were technological marvels from the first, but most people aren’t wowed by textures or shaders alone: if these aren’t used to tell interesting, engaging stories, the films that use them won’t be remembered. I mean, how many people still talk about Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within?
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!
When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer realised they had a hit on their hands with 1934’s The Thin Man, it was inevitable that they’d demand a sequel. Two years later, they got it with After The Thin Man. The title references the fact that the action takes place directly after the first film. That had ended with the two leads boarding a train in New York for their home in San Francisco. The sequel starts with them arriving. This title went on to become effectively the brand for these films; four more were to follow with Thin Man in the title.
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.
Matt tried his best to go back in time to stop himself from writing this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, but we know how such things usually end: with Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe sitting in a dark cinema where they’re showing Vertigo.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that at least some of us here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture have a general aversion to films that are based on a true story – but it is just as true that some of the greatest films of all time took their inspiration from real events. One such film is Sidney Lumet’s 1975 crime drama Dog Day Afternoon, which tells the story of a failed, fateful armed bank robbery in ’70s New York. The film, which stars Al Pacino and John Cazale, was nominated for six Oscars at the 48th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor and Editing, and it won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (written by Frank Pierson of Cool Hand Luke fame). Join Julie, a big fan of the film, as she talks to Sam, who watched it for the first time for this episode, as they discuss Lumet’s classic and its sensitive, nuanced and empathetic handling of its characters and themes
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!
“Somewhere in here I was born… and here I died. It was only a moment for you… You took no notice.”
Even just reading those words gives me goose bumps. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a film that’s not light on ominous, eerie moments, it is probably the one scene that most gets under my skin, even after I’ve seen the film a half-dozen times. It is strange and uncanny (even if it is actually part of an extended con), but also, and perhaps most of all, it is sad, as many of my favourite ghost stories are. The woman in front of you pointing at the tree rings, pointing out where she was born, first, and then where she died.
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!
Do you still remember the first DVD you ever purchased? I will certainly never forget mine: the restored version of Alfred Hitchcock’s ultimate classic, Vertigo. Not because of the 70+ Swiss francs I paid for it – a fortune for a 17-year old back then and yet a pittance for the movie-hungry teenager that I was – but how it increased my love affair with Hitchcock and this particular movie. And how it left me in awe at the restoration process that brought this masterpiece back to life on the then-state-of-the-art DVD format – a process that back then topped everything that had gone into salvaging film stock before (thanks to Julie’s post from last week for reminding me of it).
It had taken Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, the two restorers in charge, over two years to complete the incredible feat of examining and saving the original camera negative of Hitchcock’s 1958 film and discover in horror the state it was in. After restoring stunning versions of Lawrence of Arabia, My Fair Lady and Spartacus before, however, the two remained undeterred by the insurmountable-seeming challenge of raising Vertigo from the dead.
Their problems were manifold and of dramatic proportions: The negative itself had enormously faded from lack of proper storage and the sound elements, they found, had been thrown out in the late 60s. After all, Vertigo had not been the intended hit and Hitchcock himself pulled it from release after some time, only for it to disappear in obscurity until re-released in 1984 after his passing. The version shown at cinemas then, however, was equally based on imperfect prints and contained the errors Harris and Katz needed to adress in their long restoration process.
I had loved Hitchcock and particularly Vertigo ever since watching it in German-dubbed 4:3 pan-and-scan versions taped off television broadcasts in the early 1990s, which says a lot about how good this film really is. Hearing of the restoration and spending all my money on that first DVD player, I was naturally extremely curious what the new version would look and sound like. Having added a then-illegal NTSC-switch to my PAL machine, I was finally ready to push play on this US release (at this point, most DVDs were still only released in the States but unplayable on European players) of restored Vertigo.
The result was stunning, to say the least: Harris and Katz had freshened up every single frame of the film, transferring it to its original VistaVision 70mm glory, which more than doubled the detail of information on the film strip. According to the original Universal press release and this insightful article in the Chicago Tribune at the time of the restoration release in 1996, everything was done without digital help and therefore by hand, sometimes comparing more than a handful of prints for reference for each bit of film.
Never had the colours come out as perfectly – the burnt orange of Golden Gate Bridge when Kim Novak’s Madeleine throws herself into the bay in front of Jimmy Stewart’s Scottie; the red tapestry at Ernie’s restaurant when Scottie is mesmerized by a ghost-like Madeleine in a stunningly green dress for the first time; the neon light in Kim Novak’s sordid hotel room (now as Judy), casting an eerie green on the big lie she’s been fooling Scottie with; and the horrifying purple of the nightmare that plunges Scottie into the abyss of depression under the presumption that Madeleine died at his hand. The difference to everything I had seen was mindblowing and my love for the film was deepening by the minute.
The Harris and Katz effort, however, didn’t just completely restore the visual but also the audio dimensions of Hitchcock’s masterpiece: Having found only copies of the film without separate dialogue, sound effect and music tracks, the two were forced to digitally remove the dialogue from one version and re-record the sound effects altogether (using in parts original motor or revolver sounds from the 1950s). Their work was greatly helped by the discovery of the original recordings of Bernard Herrmann’s seminal soundtrack, only to discover that half had been done in pristine stereo quality in London, whereas the rest of the sessions had been moved to Vienna for a sub-par mono recording due to a strike among studio musicians at the time.
The two restorers still managed the almost impossible and created a convincing new stereo surround 6-channel track to a film that had never sounded as good. Now, astonished audiences including myself, could not only see details they had never perceived but also hear and feel the full emotional and dramatic impact the filmmakers and composer had intended.
The 1996 Harris and Katz restoration, to me, is still the singlemost impressive example of its kind I have seen. Since then, I had the chance to attend several screenings of such pristine prints, including three accompanied by large film music orchestras, and I wouldn’t want to see Vertigo any other way anymore. Its impact on me is still the most significant cinematic experience I have had, and I will be forever grateful for still remembering almost every detail of what a quantum leap the new version really was.
My DVD was given away long ago and BluRays and digital platforms now partly offer probably even better resolutions and versions, but one never quite forgets that first purchase, the unpacking of the disc, the reading the liner notes and the deep-dive into Bonus Disc materials before pushing play on the actual movie: the unashamedly perfect version of Vertigo!
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