Movies

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Here they come

MattLeave 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.

Our ongoing chain of associations, Six Damn Fine Degrees, arrives in 1989, with Julie’s entry on the BBC mystery series Campion, starring Peter Davison (who’s also played various kinds of doctors, and Doctors, throughout his career) and Brian Glover (who, among other performances, provided a particularly memorable death scene in Alien 3). And, unexpectedly, there’s even a trailer for it!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #99: Ozmosis

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Arguably, the big event movie of this year’s holiday season is Wicked: For Good, the second part to last year’s hit film Wicked. (Sorry, Avatar fans, but that’s just how it is.) Most people loved the first instalment adapting the stage musical, which in turn adapted Gregory Maguire’s 1995 revisionist take on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wizard of Oz and especially its iconic 1939 reincarnation as iconic Technicolor musical fantasy.

At the time this podcast was recorded, Wicked: For Good was just about to be released, prompting Sam, Alan and Julie to talk about the 2024 blockbuster and to revisit the Judy Garland classic. How does The Wizard of Oz stand up, and what does our trio think of the first Wicked film?

P.S.: Since we can do what Hollywood does as well, it is just about possible that we’ve split our discussion of Wicked into two separate podcasts. Watch out for the forthcoming December espresso, for good or for bad!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Attica! Attica!

The 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.

It’s only rarely that we get to show off the fact that one of our baristas is a Doctor Who fan of many, and I mean many, years. This week offered one such opportunity, as Alan got to talk about season 23 of the original run of Doctor Who, also known as “The Trial of a Time Lord”.

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Criterion Corner: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (#452)

MattLeave a comment

Most people, when asked to think about spy movies, will think of James Bond, of Sean Connery or Roger Moore or Daniel Craig. They’ll think of shootouts and stealth and suave secret agents bedding exotic beauties.

The novels of John Le Carré, inspired and informed by Le Carré’s own work for both MI5 and MI6 in the mid-20th century, are as far from James Bond as one could imagine – though it is just about possible to bend them into something more Bond-like in the name of entertainment, as happened for instance with the TV adaptation of The Night Manager that was released in 2015. As written, Le Carré’s stories are often less thrillers, though they can be thrilling, than tragedies, infused with existentialism, paranoia and a Kafkaesque sense of inevitability. And these are rarely as much in evidence as they are in Martin Ritt’s 1965 adaptation of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: No animal, but definitely mineral and vegetable

The 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.

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam stopped by to check out the storied, colourful career of Roger Corman: producer, director, writer, actor, and the man who boosted the careers of the likes of Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante and James Cameron.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #261: Roger Corman’s Big Little Shop of Horrors

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Melanie’s review of 1980s cult musical Little Shop of Horrors through teenagers’ eyes finally gives me a chance to loop back, not only to the 1960 original directed by Roger Corman, but also to the director/producer himself, who arguably became one of the greatest masterminds of copycatting any movie hit within his own production universe. Roger Corman was running his own, wildly successful shop of horrors – actually a big, bold, fiercely independent venture of horrors, thrills, and other exploits!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Mean, green, and from Outer Space

The 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.

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Melanie found joy in introducing a group of teens to the Frank Oz-directed musical Little Shop of Horrors for Halloween. Definitely one to revisit as well!

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A Damn Fine Espresso: November 2025

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Over the year, we’ve dedicated a number of episodes to the sadly departed David Lynch, his films, and his iconic TV series Twin Peaks. For our November espresso, Alan and Sam return to 2017 and to the third season of Twin Peaks that Lynch and his collaborator Mark Frost sprung on the world 26 years after we first tasted that cherry pie. For Sam, this was the first time he watched these 18 episodes, while for Alan it was an opportunity to revisit the entire series in one go. What are their thoughts on one of David Lynch’s last great works? How does it feel to return to Twin Peaks, Washington, the site of Laura Palmer’s murder, the focus of supernatural and surreal goings-on, after our loss of the man himself?

For more Lynch listening, don’t forget to check out these podcast episodes and posts:

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #260: Teens discover Little Shop of Horrors

MelanieLeave a comment

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!

Moving on from the uncanny to straight up spooky: I used to love Halloween. I threw massive parties and carved pumpkins with agonised faces barfing up sepia spaghetti!

Then, I had kids.

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