I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Memories of Disney murdering childhood memories

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 on Six Damn Fine Degrees, Alan reminisced on Memories of Murder – though since we featured the trailer not too long ago, here’s something else instead: Tony Zhao’s “Every Frame a Painting” video essay on Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece.

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Forever Fellini: Juliet of the Spirits (1965)

We’re back, several months after 8 1/2 (sorry!), with a film that I find frustrating and confounding – and yet I’m difficult to shake it off: Juliet of the Spirits. Two years after Fellini’s last film, and after two movies in which Marcello Mastroianni played variants (albeit more overtly attractive ones) of the director himself, Fellini cast his wife Giulietta Massina, for the first time in eight years (he’d last directed her in Nights of Cabiria) – and, in a twist on what he’d done with Mastroianni, Masina plays a character not dissimilar from herself: Giulietta Boldrini is an upper-class housewife, married to a philandering, self-centred husband, and while the details are vague but specific enough to show that the Boldrinis aren’t literally Fellini and Masina, the constellation of their marriage isn’t a hundred miles from that of the famous film-making couple.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #194: Bong Joon-Ho’s “Memories Of 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!

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the film Memories of Murder.

Towards the end of lockdown, when the cinema’s reopened, I have fond memories of my earliest trips to see movies. I mean, it wasn’t quite the same. At least half the seats in most cinemas had been removed to create gaps between punters. Masks were compulsory and the experience felt jarring. But there was still something about being able to see films again on the Big Screen – especially given concerns just a few months earlier that the cinemas might never reopen.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The Fab Five (trailers, that is)

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.

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt wrote about films and TV series that depict real-life people, the extent to which it matters if the actors look like the individuals they’re supposed to portray – and the ways in which they sometimes get it very, very wrong.

But we want to start this trailer post with the Real McCoy (or should that be the Real McCartney?), so here goes:

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #83: Summer of Remakes – Solaris

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, is classic sci-fi cinema: as can be expected of a film by Tarkovsky, it is intriguing, hypnotic, at times sublime, but undoubtedly also confounding and even frustrating at times. It is a product of its time in some ways but timeless in others. Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris (2002) is unlikely to stand the test of time to the same extent – but is it still a worthwhile take on Lem’s novel? Is it indeed a remake – and, if so, is it a meaningful, worthwhile one, or is it an uncanny replica of the original material, much like the revenants that Lem’s mysterious planet produces, possibly in an attempt to communicate with humanity? Join Matt, Alan and Sam for the third episode in our Summer of Remakes, as they discuss these two films and their takes on both. How do they compare, in their approaches to Lem’s story, and in how successful those approaches are in creating a memorable film?

For another take on the films of Steven Soderbergh, make sure to check out our 2020 episode (featuring Dan Thron of Martini Giant): A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #35: Soderbergh’s Schizopolis, Schizopolis’ Soderbergh

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #193: Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely optional

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.

There’s always something strange to watching an actor play a real person, doubly so when the actor in question is one we know, and know well, from other parts, and triply so when that real person is still alive. Oh, look – there’s Gary Oldman playing Lee Harvey Oswald, and there’s Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler! There’s Helen Mirren or Emma Thompson (did you know that?) playing Queen Elizabeth II! Is that a trio of Truman Capotes or is that Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toby Jones and Tom Hollander having a chat? We recognise Taron Egerton, but we also recognise the bespectacled pop star he’s playing. We know that neither Michelle Williams nor Ana de Armas are Marilyn Monroe, but when we watch them on screen they are somehow both. And is it comforting or monstrous (or both at the same time) that the horrible person in the Oval Office isn’t actually Donald Trump but Brendan Gleeson playing the man?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Filming the undead

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.

True crime sells, but it’s ethically dodgy at the best of times and needs to be handled with intelligence and sensitivity. Did Bob Fosse succeed with his final film Star 80 about the murder of actress Dorothy Stratten? Check out this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees by Alan to find out what he thinks.

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Criterion Corner: Moonstruck (#1056)

I’ve said so in the past: I’m the wrong person to talk to about romantic comedies. I don’t dismiss the genre altogether, but I find too many of them twee, manipulative and rather toxic, and that has coloured my perception of the genre as a whole. All too often, these films embrace iffy ideas of what relationships are and what they’re supposed to be, and even when they try to be hip and with it, they tend to espouse notions of gender that aren’t just heteronormative but downright reactionary.

But: I love it when a romantic comedy really hits. And Norman Jewison’s 1987 hit Moonstruck – which went on to win multiple Academy Awards – is certainly a prime example of this.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #192: Star 80

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.

In the early ’80s, Bob Fosse’s stock as a film maker couldn’t have been higher. Having revolutionised the world of theatrical dance choreography, he’d spent the ’70s building up a reputation as a major new directing talent. Cabaret and Lenny had been well regarded successes, and he’d ended the decade with All That Jazz – winning the Palme D’Or and four Oscars alongside healthy box office returns.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Who kills the killers?

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, Julie wrote one of those Six Damn Fine Degrees posts that only Julie can write: a deep dive into the life and career of Natalie Wood, or at least the early years. If you have any interest in the history of Hollywood, make sure to check out the post!

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