Movies

Forever Fellini: La Strada (1954)

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If I Vitelloni was the first of the films in Criterion’s Essential Fellini box set that justified the director’s reputation, La Strada more than confirms it. This is a beautifully made, heartrending film that deftly balances its tendencies towards the sentimental with a nuanced characterisation and an empathy that extends to those who may seem least deserving of it. And Giulietta Masina as Gelsomina steals the film, even though the main roles are all excellently played. Her performance is rightly remembered as iconic.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The common denominator of filmmaking is not harmony

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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, Matt wrote about less-than-ideal actor/director relationships – mentioning along the way one of the most iconic fraught relationships in cinema, so let’s give the word to Messrs Kinski and Herzog.

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Artistic fingerprints: loving stop-motion animation

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It’s somewhat strange for me to say that I have a favourite kind of animation. It depends on the individual film, on the individual artists. I love Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away and Porco Rosso and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. I love the vibrant, expressive, always surprising computer animation of the Spider-Verse films as much as that of WALL-E with its Roger Deakins-like, classically handsome lighting and cinematography. I love Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant, the Looney Tunes classics, the medieval inspirations of Cartoon Saloon’s The Secret of Kells and Wolfwalkers. The styles and techniques with which these films were made were meaningful choices, and they were the right choices.

There are films I love in all kinds of animation. But if I did have to choose a favourite between these styles and techniques, I would have to say it’s stop motion.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #155: Best fiends and purely professional relationships

Matt2 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!

So, apparently Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t a huge fan of Ivor Novello? One wonders what Novello thought of Hitchcock. It’s not exactly a secret that Hitch wasn’t always the easiest director to work with. He famously said that all actors should be treated like cattle, and when he said that he was correcting an allegation that he’d supposedly said that actors are cattle. Arguably, his correction didn’t exactly do much to make him look any better. Of course, being treated like cattle might still have been the better deal compared to other ways in which Hitchcock behaved towards his actors – and particularly his actresses. (It’s no accident that one of the sections in the Wikipedia entry on Tippi Hedren’s is titled “Allegations of sexual harrassment”.)

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: This one begins and ends with Japan

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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.

Sometimes it’s hard to top our first experience with an actor, a director, a writer, isn’t it? Matt’s first Kore-eda film was After Life, and he’ll gladly admit that he will use any opportunity to talk about the director’s beautiful take on what happens after we die. Watching the Criterion release of After Life let him indulge in two of his loves.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #74: The Exorcist

The Barista Collective3 Comments

This year’s Halloween has been and gone – but we’re continuing our recent run of horror-themed podcasts (with three Draculas and many more vampires) by dedicating our November episode to the late, great William Friedkin’s seminal film about demonic possession: The Exorcist. More than that, though, we’re bringing back one of A Damn Fine Cup of Culture’s most beloved guest stars: Daniel Thron, of Martini Giant fame. (We were planning to bring him back around this time for a second Dune podcast, but, well, things happened.) Join Julie, Sam and Dan as they talk about the masterpiece that has endured over the decades, in spite of a franchise that has truly plumbed the depths. Come for the projectile vomit and turning heads, stay for the surprising humanity of a film about a young girl and a mother driven to the edge. And that’s before we even get to Dan’s Kentucky accent!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #154: Ivor Novello – All Downhill From Here?

samlinder3 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!

Julie’s wonderful reminder of silent film star Ivor Novello, whose most lasting screen appearance must indeed be Hitchcock’s The Lodger, but whose popular legacy was assured thanks to Robert Altman’s inclusion among the Gosford Park kaleidoscope of characters, reminded me of that other Hitchcock he made – and that’s why for my follow up post, it’s all Downhill from here!

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Criterion Corner: After Life (#1089)

Matt6 Comments

You arrive at a sort of waystation. The people working there give you a room, they provide food, and they tell you what has happened.

You’ve died.

Also, you’ve got three days to choose a memory of yours. The staff will take that memory, turn it into a short film, and that will be what you are left with, and what is left of you, for eternity.

So, go ahead. Choose. It can’t be all that hard, can it?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Livin’ it up

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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.

The first two entries in Criterion’s Essential Fellini collection, Variety Lights and The White Sheik, both have their appeals – but third time’s the charm for Matt, as he describes in this week’s post on Fellini’s I Vitteloni.

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Forever Fellini: I Vitelloni (1953)

Matt4 Comments

It was bound to happen sooner or later. I was somewhat lukewarm on Variety Lights and The White Sheik; both films had things to like about them, but neither made me look forward to watching the remaining dozen films in Criterion’s collection dedicated to Federico Fellini. The third film in the collection, I Vitelloni, didn’t immediately seem like a big step up. As in the previous two films, we get men behaving badly (towards women, but not only), feeling entitled to all the best life has to offer and feeling sorry for themselves when they don’t get it. They’re more grating because of how the film plays a lilting Nino Rota score that suggests we’re to consider all of this as a lark: boys being boys, that sort of thing. But then, around the halfway point of I Vitelloni, something changes: a note of desolate sadness creeps in, a despair underlying the laddish performativity of it all, slowly but surely becoming the film’s dominant tone.

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