Movies – Page 86 – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

The Rear-View Mirror: Häxan (1922)

01/05/2020MattLeave a comment

Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

Häxan, a Swedish-Danish silent film from 1922, is a fascinating cultural artifact in so many ways, even before you get to the bit where witches kiss the devil’s behind. Historically, culturally and cinematically, it constitutes a trip to a very different time and place – both in terms of its depiction of medieval Europe and of when and where it was made. There is a strangeness to the film that is intriguing, but at the same time its format is oddly familiar – more so now, perhaps, than it would have been ten, twenty years ago. Because, essentially, Häxan is an extended video essay.

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Vikings in the Rear-View Mirror, Humming from the Back Seat

30/04/2020MegeLeave a comment

There’s this man, Bill Drummond, who tells us to Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow and All Music Has Disappeared. All instruments and all recording devices, too. We wouldn’t even know what music was, and we would have to re-invent it by using our voices. That is Drummond’s mission. He has fun with the concept, but he is also utterly serious – driven, almost. He gathers people all over the world (prayer groups, schoolkids, construction workers) and tells them that they are part of a choir called ‘The17’. He tells them what to sing and records them. He arranges people in a huge circle, for instance in Berlin, calls the project ‘Surround’, and has them shout at each other like in Chinese Whispers. He has become a performance artist, using print, graffiti and paintings in his latter years, but music and sounds are at the center of what he does, at least in this documentary.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: You can call him Al

25/04/202026/04/2020The 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 installment 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.

About endlessness: La Flor (2018)

22/04/202022/04/2020MattLeave a comment

What better way to while away a pandemic-caused lockdown than by watching something really, really long? Isn’t that exactly what makes Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and their like such an attractive proposition these days? Most of us have to stay home more or less all the time, so having things to keep us busy – books, films, TV series – is a lifesaver. The longer, the better, right? We don’t want to be done barely a week after we’ve started!

So a fourteen-hour film should be just what the doctor ordered, wouldn’t you say?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Women, women, and (dancing) women and men!

19/04/2020The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

The Rear-View Mirror: Benny Hill (1924)

17/04/2020Matt1 Comment

1924 was a good year in culture. James Baldwin was born, author of the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), the collection of essays Notes of a Native Son and If Beale Street Could Talk, which Barry Jenkins adapted into a beautiful movie in 2018, and much, much more. So was Marcello Mastroianni, the archetype of the disaffected Italian playboy, and Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall. The composer Gabriel Fauré died (you’ve certainly heard the sublime “In Paradisum” from his Requiem), as did Franz Kafka – and indeed Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin. Thomas Mann’s novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) was published, as well as E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India.

In other words, there would be a lot to write about with respect to 1924, so honestly, there is little excuse for… this.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Bunnies, bunnies, bunnies!

12/04/202012/04/2020The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: They’re not dead yet (trailers, that is)

05/04/202005/04/2020The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #31: Mind the gaps

04/04/202030/03/2020MattLeave a comment

d1ad56da-abce-4afe-9f45-79294aede9e3 We’re back after a three-month break – and right in the middle of a pandemic. What better time than this to listen to some new podcast goodness, though? And what better time to look at the gaps we’ve all got in our film-watching track record?

This month, Julie and Matt talk about the huge swathes of cinema that we’ve missed so far – the genres, eras and countries we’re barely aware of, the directors that everyone loves but we bounced off of, the films we’ve got on an ever-growing pile on a bookshelf that we keep telling ourselves we should finally watch. Grab a hot, fresh cup and join us for episode 31 of A Damn Fine Cup of Culture! Continue reading →

The Rear-View Mirror: Harry Dean Stanton (1926)

03/04/2020Matt1 Comment

I first saw Harry Dean Stanton in Alien, I think, though it is just about possible that I’d previously seen him in another film (Private Benjamin, perhaps? Or one of the TV episodes he’d done previously?), but I don’t think I would’ve noticed him. I have to admit that even in Alien he didn’t stand out as such, but that’s because that film was perfectly cast. Everyone ended up being perfect in their parts, so you can’t really blame Stanton for not being more perfect than everyone else.