Movies – Page 24 – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #80: Swan song

May 4, 2024Aug 4, 2024The Barista Collective2 Comments

We often talk about the films directed by the big names at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture – but the films we end up talking about are rarely the final works of these directors. Enter Alan and Sam, who in our latest podcast episode discuss the directorial swan songs of two of the most famous Hollywood directors of all time: Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder. Why do people rarely talk about Family Plot, Hitchcock’s black comedy thriller of 1976, or about Wilder’s comedy Buddy Buddy (1981), in which Walter Matthau plays a professional hitman and Jack Lemmon the suicidal husband whose attempts at taking his life foil Matthau’s plans? Where were Hitchcock and Wilder in their careers at the time when they made these films, and how do they fit into the directors’ oeuvres? Is either film a diamond in the rough, or are they clearly lesser works?

For further damn fine reading and listening material on the two directors, make sure to check out Six Damn Fine Degrees #129: All About Fedora (by Sam) and Six Damn Fine Degrees #130: Sunset Fedora (by Alan), as well as A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #33: The Good, the Bad and Alfred Hitchcock, Sam’s first podcast appearance (still as a guest at the time).

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Bedknobs and broomsticks, lamas and firearms

Apr 28, 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.

When it comes to magic knobs, Alan’s the man for you – as his latest entry in our Six Damn Fine Degrees series amply proves.

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Through a lens darkly: Fantastic Machine (2023) and Civil War (2024)

Apr 27, 2024Apr 27, 2024Matt1 Comment

When it comes to the inventions that changed the world, what are the ones you think of? I suspect that most would come up with the likes of the wheel, the printing press, and the steam engine, electricity and the computer. But what about the device that has perhaps become more ubiquitous in the last twenty years than any other: the camera? While it is likely that fewer people own an actual, bespoke camera in 2024 than at the beginning of the millennium, everyone who owns a phone has in their possession a powerful device that can record still images as well as moving pictures, and people make use of this to an extent that would have been unthinkable before the smartphone. We’re all photographers and filmmakers: an estimated 5 billion photos are taken on a daily basis, and 3.7 million new videos are uploaded to YouTube alone every single day. What are the effects of this? Is the world different when you’re looking at it through the lens of a camera? Or, to ask differently: Are we different when we’re looking at the world, and at ourselves, through the lens of a camera?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Knowing is half the battle

Apr 21, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

It can feel strange, and sort of lonely, to find yourself bouncing off a film that many others love. Matt didn’t dislike Powell and Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going!, but other than in several other films by the director-producer duo, he found it difficult to buy into the central romance.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #178: Tell me in your own words

Apr 19, 2024Oct 12, 2024Mege3 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!

Synchronization is a tricky little bugger, isn’t it? First off, there is always something that gets lost in translation; many fine points of the original language always go out the window. Take any film in an unknown language: do you opt for the subtitles, or do you press the button that puts foreign words in the mouths of the cast? I mostly go for subtitles, because even if I don’t understand Toshiro Mifune’s precise words, I want to hear his drawls, his mutterings and his shouts. I want to be there when he finally tips over the edge and goes berserk, even if that does not involve much dialogue – either grunts and shouts, or total silence. Him unsheathing his sword is just not enough.

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Criterion Corner: I Know Where I’m Going! (#94)

Apr 17, 2024Apr 13, 2024Matt1 Comment

I’ve by no means seen all, or even most, of the films that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made together (mostly under the moniker of “The Archers”, the name of their production company), but I like, even love, the ones I’ve seen. I wrote about their wonderful A Matter of Life and Death earlier this year, and I’d consider The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp one of my favourite films.

Late last year, the BFI ran a series of Powell and Pressburger films, which sadly I missed, living in the wrong country altogether (for BFI series, that is) – but it made me aware of their 1945 romance I Know Where I’m Going!, which was released on the Criterion Collection as one of their very earliest films: it’s the 94^th release in the series, which by now contains more than 1200 titles. More than just being another Criterion release from a pair of filmmakers whose work I’ve liked a lot in the past, I Know Where I’m Going! is set in the Hebrides, so as a fan of Criterion, the Archers and Scotland, I didn’t have to think long and hard about getting the disk.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Only when I laugh

Apr 13, 2024Apr 14, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Is there such a thing as a definitive version of a story, a book, a play? Matt doesn’t think so – except when he does.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: April 2024

Apr 13, 2024Apr 19, 2024The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

We’ve got a special treat for our April espresso podcast: say hello to Marcy Goldberg, Swiss-Canadian film historian, lecturer and media consultant. Marcy recently talked to the London-based author, critic and podcaster Anna Bogutskaya at a panel discussion organised by the Filmpodium Zürich. The Filmpodium is currently running a series of films in connection with Bogutskaya’s first book, Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate (published in 2023). For our podcast, Marcy joins Julie and Matt to talk about Bogutskaya’s book, and about the women in film and TV that are scorned by some, celebrated by others, for being unapologetically angry, horny, ambitious, and sometimes downright crazy and/or murderous. What makes a female character unlikeable? Why are women judged differently for actions and attitudes that men are allowed to get away with? And what does this say about cinema and about our culture?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #177: The definitive version

Apr 12, 2024Oct 12, 2024Matt3 Comments

Even though these days I’m much more about film and TV, there was a time when literature came first for me. I studied English and American Literatures (as it was called at the time), and later I taught the subject. I had much more time – and, frankly, energy – to read a lot… and even better, while working at uni I was paid to read. And teach, do research, supervise and counsel students, do some admin, assist the professor who was supervising my PhD thesis. I didn’t love every single one of those tasks, certainly – but still, it was a very good time for someone who loved books.

It’s also during that time that I started to get into drama in earnest. Our department had a fairly active drama community, and while I never felt 100% comfortable being on stage myself, this is where I discovered how much I enjoy directing. Sadly, that’s something that didn’t survive my move into other professions: like so many, I had a choice between staying in academia, which would have come at a personal price I wasn’t willing to pay, or leaving and doing other kinds of work, and it’s the latter that won out. I miss a lot about my years working at university (and this site and our podcast are to some extent my way of making up for what I left behind), but I never regret the choice itself.

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