Movies – Page 37 – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The 2023 Assembly of the Toshiro Mifune Appreciation Society

Jul 2, 2023The 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.

Some love them… but Matt’s more ambivalent about cult TV and cult movies. Check out this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to find out why – or you can also just stay here and watch this trailer for the cult classic The Prisoner. Because, after all, you are not a number, right?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #70: Summer of Collaborations – Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune

Jul 1, 2023Jul 1, 2023The Barista Collective3 Comments

After the inaugural episode of our Summer of Collaborations (starting with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn), we’ve arrived at the second instalment of our summer series, this time focusing on a collaboration that gave us iconic performances and classic films across a range of genres – though the one that perhaps comes to mind first is that of Jidaigeki (Japanese period drama), and more specifically, the samurai film. We are, of course, talking about the films resulting from the collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. Join Alan, Julie and Matt as they discuss Rashomon (1950), a film that mixes genre to such an extent that Wikipedia describes it, inadequately, as a “Jidaigeki psychological thriller-crime film”; Yojimbo (1961), the action-packed samurai film that Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars stole from liberally; and High and Low (1963), a police procedural crime drama about a botched kidnapping. What made the collaboration between Kurosawa and Mifune work so well? How does it develop over these three films? And just how does Mifune manage to look so damn cool wearing a threadbare kimono and stroking his chin?

For last year’s summer series of podcasts, check this link:

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture: Summer of Directors (2022)

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #136: Some like it cult

Jun 30, 2023Oct 12, 2024Matt3 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!

The classic series The Avengers has frequently popped up on my radar, and it’s usually mentioned in positive terms. And yet, I’ve never bothered to seek it out. Too much to watch already, too many things that come first on my TV bucket list – and that’s before I even get into the favourites I’d like to revisit – if the streaming services of my choice haven’t taken them off their catalogue and erased out of existence, that is. Same with, say, Miami Vice, or Absolutely Fabulous or (don’t tell Alan) Randall and Hopkins (Deceased). And, to be honest, one main reason is that people talked about them with a great sense of reverence – or they don’t talk about them at all. They’re cult TV – and that’s something that tends to make me hesitate.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The silent treatment

Jun 25, 2023Jun 25, 2023The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Jean-Pierre Melville is mainly known for making films that could be described stylish gangster existentialism. Le silence de la mer however is very different from Le samouraï or The Red Circle – but no less compelling, provided you can get into its much more internalised drama about a different kind of resistance from what we’re used to at the movies, as Matt argued in his post.

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Criterion Corner: Le silence de la mer (#755)

Jun 25, 2023Jun 25, 2023Matt2 Comments

There are many kinds of resistance. The one that’s perhaps most familiar to us – more so from the cinema screen than from personal experience, most likely – is that of taking up arms against the oppressor. The French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville made a number of films in which the French Résistance and its fight against the occupying German army featured, most famously perhaps Army of Shadows (which may come up more prominently in a future post), and as one might expect, the film depicts a heroic (if bleak) armed struggle.

While the setting is a similar one – the Second World War, occupied France -, the resistance of Le silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea) is of a very different kind; as is, arguably, the characters’ struggle with each other and with themselves.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #135: Amazing Avengers Associations

Jun 24, 2023Oct 12, 2024samlinder4 Comments

*Everything is connected: Just think of Emma Peel, Tracy Bond and Olena Tyrell, all played by Diana Rigg!*

Reading Alan’s insightful observations about the Dark Phoenix saga from last week and his reference to British cult series The Avengers (1961-69; renewed in 1976/77, The Movie in 1999), I was reminded what these Six Degrees posts are really all about: connecting everything in the world of film, music and culture to everything else. And there is hardly another series that represents that principle of six degrees removed as well as The Avengers!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: “Confess, Communist!” Said the Sexy Priest

Jun 18, 2023The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

A priest, a Communist and a (former) member of the Résistance walk into a confessional: while Matt’s currently enjoying a series of films by Jean-Pierre Melville, he especially enjoyed that Léon Morin, Priest was something of an odd one out, seeing how it focuses on a female protagonist.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: June 2023

Jun 17, 2023Jul 1, 2023The Barista Collective3 Comments

It’s June, and one of the year’s biggest blockbusters is just weeks away: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will be released on 30/6/2023. Will Harrison Ford, complete with hat and whip and iconic half-grin, deliver once again, as he did with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Will Old Man Jones stumble, as he arguably did with Temple of Doom? Or will he sit in a jeep or a boat floating unthreatened through setpieces, as some might say he did in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Join Alan, Sam and Matt as they talk all things Doctor Jones in this month’s espresso podcast episode. Which are their favourite films in the franchise? What are their expectations of Dial of Destiny, in spite of the absence of Steven Spielberg at the helm? And will Alan really go and see the new film wearing a t-shirt slagging off everyone’s favourite dwarf from Moria?

P.S.: For anyone who appreciates John Williams’ contributions to the Indiana Jones movies, watch this space over the summer months!

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In France, they call it le Fleabag: Léon Morin, Priest (1961)

Jun 15, 2023Jun 15, 2023Matt1 Comment

She’s in her 30s. She’s smart, savvy – and perhaps a little too proud of her critical abilities. She’s an atheist, and when she enters a church and sees the confessionals, what she thinks of isn’t faith or confession, she thinks of how she can challenge the curates. So she talks to the young, sexy priest, seeing if she can shake his faith – and the conversation that develops with them, over several meetings, is as much about belief and ethics as it is an extended flirtation. She is drawn to him, and while he doesn’t say so, his actions suggest that the attraction isn’t one-sided. What exactly is he trying to convert her to – and what is she trying to convert him to? And where can this ongoing, and increasingly erotic, duel of wits lead?

The young woman is Barny (played by Emmanuelle Riva, icon of French arthouse cinema), and the sexy priest (Jean-Paul Belmondo, just one year after Breathless) is the title character Léon Morin. But even considering how much of a cliché the constellation is – a sexy priest, an attractive young woman -, it is difficult not to think of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s modern classic Fleabag.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Going places

Jun 11, 2023The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Everybody’s talkin’ about our post on Midnight Cowboy– okay, not really, but still, if you missed it, go and check our the lastest Criterion Corner, about John Schlesinger’s late ’60s classic.