Podcast

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #59: Summer of Directors – Robert Altman

The Barista Collective8 Comments

Our Summer of Directors continues with Robert Altman, the maverick director whose subversive takes on quintessentially American genres helped shape 1970s Hollywood cinema. Join Alan, Matt and frequent contributor Daniel Thron from fellow film podcast Martini Giant as they discuss three Altman classics: the darkly satirical neo-noir Chandler adaptation The Long Goodbye, the revisionist western McCabe & Mrs. Miller and the scathing quasi-musical critique of American society and culture, Nashville. Why is it that many of Altman’s films can rub viewers the wrong way the first time they see them – or is the wrong way in fact the right way, considering the venom of some of Altman’s satire? What changes for us when revisiting these films? What are the targets of Altman’s critique, and what is its collateral damage? To what extent did the director deplore the world and society he depicted – and how much affection does he have for them? And why oh why doesn’t Shelley Duvall, the perfect Olive Oyl, get more recognition than she does?

You can find more of Dan’s movie takes in our podcast episodes on Steven Soderbergh’s Schizopolis and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, and of course at www.martinigiant.com, as well as on YouTube and TikTok.

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Espresso: July 2022

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture has talked about musicals before – but this month’s espresso is a special treat: Alan has seen the production of Cabaret that is currently being shown at the Playhouse Theatre in London. He and Julie talk about the production and how it compares to Christopher Isherwood’s original stories that Cabaret is based on, as well as the 1972 film by Bob Fosse, featuring Liza Minelli in her iconic turn as Sally Bowles. How do the various production choices change the characters and the overall depiction of Berlin during the Weimar Republic? And, obviously, what are Alan’s thoughts on the stage production: is this time jump to 1929 Berlin worth taking if you happen to find yourself in London?

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #58: Summer of Directors – Ida Lupino

The Barista Collective6 Comments

Our Summer of Directors reaches its midpoint, with an episode that is special in two different respects. For one thing, we’re talking about an artist whose name should be much, much more familiar than it is: Ida Lupino, the English-American actress, singer, writer, producer, and, yes, director, whose films such as Outrage, The Bigamist and The Hitch-Hiker are fascinating, intriguing, and unusually frank (not only for the time!), dealing with topics such as rape and its social fallout or toxic masculinity long before such topics were common in the movies, and in ways that are more intriguing and nuanced than many more modern films. The episode is also special for another reason: Julie and Alan are joined by Johannes Binotto, lecturer at the University of Zürich and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, who’s written and spoken about Lupino. (You can check out some of his work on Lupino in video and text format – in German, but it’s still well worth checking out if you understand the language or trust DeepL to do a reasonably good job of translating it.) Many thanks to Johannes for his time and for sharing his views and profound knowledge of the subject with us and our listeners!

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Espresso: June 2022

The Barista Collective1 Comment

We’ve talked about movies and music before, and for our June Espresso episode, Sam and Matt pick up the tune again, talking about two films they’ve recently seen that are all about the music. Sam watched Ennio, the 2021 documentary about iconic composer Ennio Morricone, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (of Cinema Paradiso fame), while Matt caught Academy Award winner Summer of Soul (2021) at the cinema, which combines the genres of documentary and concert film to celebrate artists from Mahalia Jackson and B.B. King to Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone and Nina Simone – and talk about the relevance of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival to African American culture and politics. Sam and Matt also discuss what, for them, makes a good film about music and musicians, and what is necessary for a musical performance to come to life on film.

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #57: Summer of Directors – Dario Argento

The Barista Collective5 Comments

And our Summer of Directors continues: after celebrating the tactility of Jane Campion’s films last month, we continue with a very different kind of physicality, with the variform violence done to bodies and minds in the phantasmagoric cinema of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento. Join Sam, Julie and Alan as they dissect a trio of Argento’s films, from giallo classic The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) via Deep Red (1975) – a film called by some the best giallo ever made – to perhaps the most famous film by Argento, the supernatural horror film Suspiria (1977). What makes these films potent to this day? How important is plot to an Argento film? How much of a successor was the director to Alfred Hitchcock? Just what is “impure cinema”? And just how does our gang draw a direct line from classic movie musicals to Dario Argento’s films?

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Espresso: May 2022

The Barista Collective1 Comment

In the mood for a little cup of culture? Tune in for our May espresso, in which Alan and Matt discuss the latest addition to the MCU, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Spoiler: While they both enjoy the MCU, they were less than taken with Sam Raimi’s return to superhero movies. They both agree, however, that the MCU would benefit from having more Benedict Wong in it. After their discussion in January, following the release of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Alan and Matt talk about the MCU at this point, what pitfalls it would do well to avoid, and what their hopes are for the coming Marvel attractions. But: how do Ingmar Bergman and LEGO figure into all of this? Well, there’s only one way to find out!

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #56: Summer of Directors – Jane Campion

The Barista Collective6 Comments

Never mind that May is still firmly spring in most people’s minds: we are launching the Summer of Directors, a series of podcasts, each of which is dedicated to one particular director, and we’re doing so with an episode dedicated to two-time Academy Award winner Jane Campion, who first took the little statuette home for her original screenplay for The Piano (1993) and, more recently, as the director of The Power of the Dog (2021). We’ll be looking at those two films in particular, focusing on the ways in which Campion portrays and questions gender roles. How does Holly Hunter’s Ada McGrath make her way in 19th century New Zealand as a woman displaced in many ways? How does Campion portray male and female modes of communication? And how do we read that marvellously ambiguous ending? Moving on to The Power of the Dog, we look at different kinds of masculinity – and how Campion’s film may have unusual, fascinating things to say about what kind of masculinity is finally more resilient. Join Matt, Julie and Sam as they explore all the black and white keys on Jane Campion’s keyboard and all the kinds of music she elicits from them!

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Espresso: April 2022

The Barista Collective1 Comment

We’ve now been doing monthly podcasts for almost five years at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture – and today we’re starting A Damn Fine Espresso: shorter, more impromptu small doses of all the cultury goodness you’ve come to expect from us! To launch the new smaller cups of culture, join Julie and Sam as they have a chat about what they’ve checked out recently. From Parisian getaways and serendipitous record stores to bad moustaches, worse CGI and films that can’t decide what they want to be…

Starting with this episode, you can get your monthly espresso where you get all of your Damn Fine goodness – so indulge in a tiny cup of our pop culture musings and let us know what you think!

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #55: Based on a true story

The Barista Collective4 Comments

What is your reaction when you read those words? Is a story better if it actually, really happened? Or are all stories partly fiction, partly true? Where does truth lie in fiction, and where does a story begin to turn into a pack of lies? Join Julie, Sam and Matt as they discuss these questions on Oliver Stone’s conspiracy epic JFK (1991), the four-part true crime/black dramedy hybrid Landscapers (2021) and Sam Mendes’ 1917 (2019). What are the ethics of telling stories based on actual events? Can fiction get at deeper truths? What are the lines each of us draws when it comes to tales based on true stories?

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #54: Movie Geography – Our Home Towns on Film

The Barista Collective3 Comments

Ever watch a film made in a place you know very well, only to find that the movie’s geography doesn’t make any sense: that street does not lead to that bridge, and how would you get from this church to that square – which isn’t even in the same city? Join Sam, Julie and Alan as they discuss three films – Dick Maas’ serial killer schlockfest Amsterdamned (1988), Michelangelo Antonioni’s London-based mystery thriller Blowup (1966) and the Bern-based scenes in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), the sixth Bond adventure – that were filmed in their metaphorical back yards. What kind of expectations, experiences and disappointments come with seeing your home town on the big screen? And what’s the relationship between real geography and movie geography?

Continue reading →