Podcast

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #88: Century

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Welcome to 2025! We’re taking the new year as an opportunity to look both forward and into the past – and to do something we’ve never done before: for the very first time (no, Robin Beck, we don’t mean you!) we’ve recorded a conversation featuring all four of the damn fine core podcasters: Alan, Julie, Matt and Sam. In the first episode of the year, we’re having a look at the cups of culture (mostly film) that came out in 1925, 1950, 1975 and 2000, from Marion Davies and Zander the Great via the wonderfully meta double bill All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard and ’70s greats such as Jaws and Chinatown to the still futuristic-sounding year 2000, which brought us films as different as Gladiator, Memento and In the Mood for Love. We cap off our conversation about a century of cinema with a look at the year to come and the films we’re anticipating the most. Wishing everyone a damn fine year, or indeed century!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast Christmas Special 2024

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It is that time of the year again: snow, carol singing, and Bruce Willis crawling through air vents muttering to himself before he delivers the presents. Which also means: it’s time for our Christmas Special! This year, we’re taking the topic of the summer series as the starting point, remakes – but as everyone knows, these can be naughty or nice, so we’ve asked our guests as well as our regulars to talk about their dream remakes, the ones they would like to see made, or the nightmare remakes which they wouldn’t even wish on the people at CinemaSins. From train-bound screwball comedy to sexy ’60s spies, from dodgy demons to festive skeletons, from one serial killer to a different serial killer altogether: these are the films we would love, or hate, to see remade.

A great big thank you goes out to our guests of 2024 who have contributed to the Christmas Special: film critic Alan Mattli (of Maximum Cinema, Swissinfo and Facing the Bitter Truth), filmmaker and podcaster Daniel Thron (of Martini Giant) and film historian and cultural critic Marcy Goldberg – and obviously to all of you out there who have been following our work at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture. The Damn Fine Cup of Culture crew wishes everyone happy holidays, filled with good films, series, books, games and music!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #87: Snowpisode!

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It’s December – which means, it’s time for snow! And since the actual white stuff falling from the sky is becoming rarer and rarer in many places, your cultural baristas at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture are talking about the cinematic version: snow in films. Join Julie, Sam and Matt as they talk about films in which snow is central, focusing on the following three movies: James Whale’s The Invisible Man (1933), starring a young Claude Rains, Where Eagles Dare (1968), Brian G. Hutton’s WW2 adventure featuring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, and finally an enduring favourite of several of us at A Damn Fine Cup: the Coen Brothers’ modern classic Fargo (1996). What role does snow play in these films – and which of them is the ultimate snow movie, in which the white stuff isn’t just an aesthetic choice or a means to an end but much, much more?

(By the way, due to technical difficulties, Matt’s audio in this episode unfortunately sounds like he recorded his audio with his mic in one room and himself in another. We hope that you’ll still enjoy the conversation – and if necessary, we’ll send him and his mic out into the snow until he’s promised to do better next time!)

P.S.: If you’re interested in more talk about the Coens, make sure to check out our podcast from summer 2023:

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A Damn Fine Espresso: November 2024

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We’ve covered remakes extensively this summer, but what about their often derided sibling, the sequel? We’re taking the recent release of two high-profile sequels, Joker: Folie à deux and Gladiator 2, as an opportunity to talk about sequels. Are they all creatively bankrupt exercises in IP masturbation, or is there potential in sequels? Is the only good sequel one that gives us more of what we enjoyed the first time around, or should a sequel break with what has gone before and surprise us? Where are Joker 2 and Gladiator 2 on the continuum from more-of-the-same sequels to throw-everything-out-the-window sequels? Is Folie à deux as much of a waste of talent and money as most people said? Is Gladiator 2 a worthwhile return to Rome and to the arena that gets our thumbs-up?

For more thoughts on sequels with a bonus link to Ridley Scott, you may want to check out the following:

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #86: Stealth remakes

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For this year’s summer series, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture focused on remakes, from men who knew too much and trucks bearing explosive goods to planets that create their own remakes and finally to stars being born and dying. But these are the obvious remakes (whatever their directors might say, depending on which day of the week it is): what about iconic films – that almost no one knows to be remakes? In this episode, Julie and Alan get together to talk about two films that are infinitely more famous than the originals that preceded them: Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Maltese Falcon (1941). Why do these films escape the frequent criticism of remakes: that originality is dead and that Hollywood only knows how to repeat itself? How do the originals compare to the more iconic later films? And what’s the key to making a remake that will eclipse the film(s) that came before?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: October 2024

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On the podcast, we’ve talked about festivals before, both about specific festivals (such as Queersicht, the annual LGBTIAQ+ film festival held in Bern, Switzerland) and about the experience of going to cultural festivals of any kind. Autumn is festival season, and Alan and Sam talk about film festivals they’ve been to, from Switzerland’s festivals in Locarno and Zürich via San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain (which Sam recently visited) to the London Film Festival, where Alan regularly catches some of the more off-the-radar small films. What’s it like to attend these festivals? What is the experience like? How good are they for celebrity-spotting? And would they recommend the festivals to film fans, or are they reserved more for filmmakers and journalists?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #85: Halloween Special – Death in Venice (and Summerisle)

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The 1970s were a bad time for men travelling in Europe, doubly so if they were following the traces of a mysterious girl, and triply so if they weren’t good at listening to advice. Before you know it, you meet with a gruesome fate at the hands of cultists or misshapen serial killers, and then where will you be? Dead! That’s where. Dead in Venice or Summerisle.

For this year’s October episode, we finally fulfil a common wish of ours: join Matt, Sam and Julie as they talk about two creepy favourites of theirs, the cult folk horror that is the original The Wicker Man, directed by Robin Hardy, and the mournful, intricate, watery loops of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. Apart from both coming out in 1973 and being shown as a double bill at the time, what do these two films have in common? Why are they both such enduring classics, in spite of very clearly being products of their time? And – in keeping with our summer theme – why do the two films resist being remade, in spite of an ill-fated attempt by Neil LaBute and starring Nicolas Cage at maximum Cage?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: September 2024

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We’ve talked about the Alien franchise before on our podcast, so we didn’t want to miss the opportunity presented by the release of the latest addition to the series, Alien: Romulus, which came out in August. Join Sam and Alan as they talk about Fede Álvarez’ return to the roots of the franchise. How successful is the movie’s ‘back to basics’ approach? How scary can the film be after an entire series has done a lot to strip its iconic set of monsters of their original mystery? What have Álvarez and his collaborators done to keep all things xenomorph fresh, how do they play with an almost overpowering legacy? And what about that unexpected return from the dead: an effective homage or a tacky reference?

For more thoughts on the long-running Alien franchise, check out the following podcast episodes:

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #84: Summer of Remakes – A Star is Born

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Our Summer of Remakes is coming to an end, with a conversation about not one, two, three or four films, but a whopping five, starting with What Price Hollywood? (1932), which was adapted in 1937 into A Star Is Born – and again in 1954, starring Judy Garland and James Mason. Then, in 1976, the story got the Streisand treatment, and in 2018 we got Bradley Cooper’s version, starring himself and Lady Gaga. Join Julie, Sam and Alan as they talk about the remake extravaganza. What is it about the material that makes it so enduring? How do the films tell their story differently? And, if A Star Is Born, is such an enduring tale, what would our cultural baristas expect from a near-future remake, should one be forthcoming?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: August 2024

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Imagine not only being a cinephile, and not only writing and talking about film – but doing this professionally: being a film critic is something many of us in the blogosphere dream of. Meet Alan Mattli: Alan is not only teaching and doing research into literature and film at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, he is also a reviewer for the German-language Swiss film and TV platform Maximum Cinema and (Swiss German) the Maximum Cinema podcast. While his reviews at Maximum Cinema and on his website Facing the Bitter Truth (which he launched in 2008, while still at school), and while much of his writing at these sites is in German, you can find his writing in English on Letterboxd. In our August espresso podcast, Matt talks to Alan about his way to becoming a film critic, whether he watches films differently as a critic, and how film criticism has changed in recent years.

P.S.: Here’s a list of Alan’s favourite current film critics:

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