Movies – Page 46 – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’…

Nov 6, 2022The 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.

On his grand Criterion journey, Matt got to Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up… for the first time ever. It’s amazing how you can almost reach 50 without having seen some of these iconic movies – but then, as always, too much to watch, too little time.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #62: Second Chances (2)

Nov 5, 2022Nov 5, 2022The Barista Collective4 Comments

Second Chances, second time: a little over a year ago we first decided to give a couple of films we’d not been overly enamoured with another try to see if time or adjusted expectations had changed anything – or if our first, negative take persisted. This year, it’s Alan and Sam’s turn to revisit films they didn’t like the first time around – and, in keeping with our directorial focus this year, they selected two films by the same director, David Fincher. Sam wanted to give Fight Club (1999) another chance after bouncing off of the film hard when it originally came out, and Alan thought it only fair to return to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Has time softened their views? Did they find anything else, anything new in the films – or did they find even more they don’t like? Join us for this Fincher/Pitt team-up double bill and for another set of second chances!

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Criterion Corner: Blow-Up (#865)

Nov 3, 2022Nov 3, 2022Matt1 Comment

I admit: sometimes I find them intimidating. The classics, the cinema icons, the films that everyone says you should watch because they are just that good and the directors who made those films. What if I watch one of those films and I don’t like them – or, worse, they don’t do anything for me and barely evince any reaction whatsoever? (Somehow it’s easier to dislike an iconic film than to be indifferent to a supposed masterpiece of the art form.) Which may go some way towards explaining the big pile of Criterion films I’ve bought but haven’t watched yet. Of course I want to watch them, I will watch them – but not just yet. I’ll get around to them. Eventually. Perhaps there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to watch them so much as it wants to have watched them.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up was one of those films for a long time – but then my kindly co-baristas here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture went and did a podcast episode about seeing our cities, the places we live (or have lived) in, on film, and Alan chose to talk about the London of Blow-Up. And at that point I couldn’t really not watch it, could I? (Mind you, it still took me more than seven months, but I think that this year has given me enough of an excuse for that sort of delay.)

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: This year, the holidays come early

Oct 30, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

The contest that was first turned into a documentary (Hands on a Hardbody), then a musical, and most recently a film by German director Bastian Günther: Hands-On, in which rural Americans desperate to win a truck spend day and night with their hands on a truck. There’s something nearly religious about this – but sadly, Matt didn’t find Günther’s film One of These Days (although it definitely has things going for it) worthy of worship.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: That distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice

Oct 23, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

For our first Six Damn Fine Degrees after our 100th post in the series, Mege wrote about the legendary Dave Grohl and his autobiography The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, published in 2021 – a good start to the next hundred instalments! And since Anton Corbijn’s Control (about Ian Curtis of Joy Division) got a mention, here’s a trailer for the 2007 film.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: October 2022

Oct 22, 2022Oct 21, 2022The Barista Collective1 Comment

As with our September shot of espresso, in which we talked about the first season of the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, we’re staying in the land of Netflix: this month Julie and Alan talk about Andrew Dominik’s Blonde – again an adaptation, this time of Joyce Carol Oates garage-sized novel. What did our cultural baristas think of Dominik’s much-debated and much-derided film? Spoiler: though the two come at the film from slightly different perspectives, neither is a big fan of the film. Join them for their discussion about Ana de Armas’ performance, biopic vs Hollywood fable, and (of course) all the talking fetuses you want!

If you’re interested in more on Blonde and Marilyn Monroe, make sure to check out Christina Newland’s BFI interview with Andrew Dominik, Farran Nehme’s thoughts on the film (please note that this is behind a paywall) – and obviously our episode on Marilyn the icon, her movies and her legacy from September 2020!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: For all your cheeseboarding needs

Oct 16, 2022Oct 16, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

What would Matt be, or do, without his beloved Criterion backlog? He recently got around to watching Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place, a film he hadn’t known previously, and wrote about it here. Definitely worth it already for Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame!

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Criterion Corner: In a Lonely Place (#810)

Oct 13, 2022Oct 13, 2022Matt3 Comments

Humphrey Bogart is a strange leading man: while charismatic, he is not exactly handsome, and as he got older, the contrast between his charisma and his lack of conventionally good looks got bigger. He wasn’t afraid to play characters that were unpleasant, though interestingly so, and he didn’t shy away from his characters’ dark sides, their cowardice, neediness, pettiness and egotism. Look at Fred C. Dobbs, his character in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre: he’s not a Disney villain, he is not an evil mastermind, he is a small, pitiful man, really, who meets a pitiful end. How many Hollywood leading men at the time were happy to play such roles?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Kingdoms, bears and broken mirrors

Oct 9, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Matt is almost done with his extended trip through Ingmar Bergman’s films, and before the final double-whammy of Fanny and Alexander in its TV and cinematic versions, he watched Autumn Sonata – undoubtedly a good, well-acted film, but not necessarily one that brings anything new to the director’s oeuvre… other than a certain iconic actress with a very familiar surname.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #99: “And if you gaze long enough into Shakespeare…”

Oct 7, 2022Feb 28, 2026Matt2 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!

In last week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees post, Julie wrote about Shakespeare on film. In the post, she also talked about “less faithful adaptations”, which made me wonder: what do people generally consider a faithful adaptation of Shakespeare? Does faithful mean as close as possible to what those performances at the Rose Theatre or the Globe, back in the heady days around the turn of the century (16th to 17th, that is)? All in one location with minimal set changes, no artificial lighting, all female characters played by boys, that sort of thing? Because, most likely, that kind of stylised, formalised performance would be so alien to many people that they’d consider it downright avantgarde.