Podcast

A Damn Fine Espresso: April 2024

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We’ve got a special treat for our April espresso podcast: say hello to Marcy Goldberg, Swiss-Canadian film historian, lecturer and media consultant. Marcy recently talked to the London-based author, critic and podcaster Anna Bogutskaya at a panel discussion organised by the Filmpodium Zürich. The Filmpodium is currently running a series of films in connection with Bogutskaya’s first book, Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate (published in 2023). For our podcast, Marcy joins Julie and Matt to talk about Bogutskaya’s book, and about the women in film and TV that are scorned by some, celebrated by others, for being unapologetically angry, horny, ambitious, and sometimes downright crazy and/or murderous. What makes a female character unlikeable? Why are women judged differently for actions and attitudes that men are allowed to get away with? And what does this say about cinema and about our culture?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #79: Dune Part 2

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The pod must flow: Julie and Alan are back to talk about Dune: Part 2, and they’re once again joined by friend of the show Daniel Thron, one of the hosts of the Martini Giant podcast… and one of the people who worked on the visual effects for Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel. Did our intrepid three enjoy Part 2 as much as they did the first part? Did Villeneuve & Co deliver on the promises of the 2021 film? What are the choices Denis Villeneuve and his collaborators made in bringing this complex, much-beloved book to the screen? What was changed, and to what effect? How damn cool was the worm riding when the film finally got to it? (Spoiler: Very damn cool.) And where does Dune: Part 2 place its characters for the likely third film, based on Herbert’s sequel Dune Messiah?

P.S.: If, like us, you’re a fan of Dan Thron and his thoughts on film, make sure to check out these earlier episodes featuring him:

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A Damn Fine Espresso: March 2024

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It’s the weekend before the Big Mama, the White Whale, the movie awards to end all movie awards: the Oscars. Who will win the Academy Awards 2024? Will Christopher Nolan And Cillian Murphy explode with the metaphorical force of a thousand suns? Will Barbie get what it can, in spite of the snubs for its director and star? What about Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, The Holdovers – or the European dark horses Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest? Join Sam and Matt as they discuss their own Oscar thoughts: who was snubbed? Who was nominated but shouldn’t have been? And which films should win which awards?

For more discussion of some of the 2024 Oscar favourites and underdogs, make sure to check out these posts:

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #78: Just one more thing – The Columbo Episode

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TV and murder are made for one another, and the crime series is still one of the most popular genres in television – but there’s no one quite like Lieutenant Columbo, the crumpled, harmless-seeming homicide detective played so memorably by Peter Falk, in ten seasons and 69 episodes over a stretch of 35 years (if you include the specials). What makes the series, and the character, so enduring? Join Sam, Julie (valiantly fighting a sore throat in order to take part in this conversation on one of her favourites!) and returning special guest Johannes Binotto (video essayist and Professor for Film and Media Studies in Lucerne and Zürich) – who, counter to Columbo tradition, won’t turn out to be the murderer after all… or will he? – as they discuss their all-time favourites and guilty pleasures, ranging from fan favourites “Any Old Port in a Storm” and “Etude in Black” to darker and stranger cases such as “By Dawn’s Early Light” and “Make Me a Perfect Murder”.

(Make sure also to check out our 2022 episode on Ida Lupino, featuring the first appearance on A Damn Fine Cup of Culture by Johannes – and if you’re looking for more material on all things Columbo, there’s always Shooting Columbo: The Lives & Deaths of TV’s Rumpled Detective by David Koenig.)

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A Damn Fine Espresso: February 2024

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Much as with Pringles, the problem with musicals is this: once you’ve enjoyed one or two, you can’t just stop. Earlier this month, Sam and Matt gave two movie musicals a second chance: A Chorus Line and Dancer in the Dark. While they didn’t necessarily come away from this with a renewed appreciation of those films, it felt to them that their conversation ended way too soon – so they went back to the well to talk about their formative experiences with the genre. Which musicals did they watch growing up? How did they come to appreciate the genre? How have they experienced the difference between musicals on screen and on stage? From Jesus Christ Superstar to Aladdin, from Fiddler on the Roof to Cabaret and Victor/Victoria: how did Matt and Sam learn to stop worrying and love a good musical?

(And, as before, if you’re looking for more musical talk, make sure to check out our episode #41 from 2021: The Musical Episode!)

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #77: Second Chances (2024)

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Another year, another opportunity to give some films we didn’t particularly like another opportunity. Was it the films? Was it us? Was it just the wrong time to watch these? For this year’s movie revisit, Sam and Matt talk about two musicals that, at a first glance, couldn’t be much more different: Richard Attenborough’s 1985 adaptation of A Chorus Line and Nordic provocateur Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. What is the result of our return to these musicals? Did we come away with a new appreciation of Michael Douglas’ foray into musicals (and then he doesn’t even get to sing!), and did things finally fall into place when we rewatched the musical melodrama led by Icelandic multitalent Björk?

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A Damn Fine Espresso: January 2024

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For our first espresso podcast episode in 2024, Julie and Sam sit down together over a virtual coffee to talk about the Austrian director G.W. Pabst (1885 – 1967). Taking Pabst’s silent film classic Pandora’s Box (1929, adapted from Frank Wedekind’s play Lulu) as a starting point, the two discuss the director’s career as a filmmaker during the Weimar Republic, his emigration from but later return to Nazi Germany, and his filmmaking under the Nazi regime and the auspices of the Ministry of Propaganda led by Josef Goebbels, but also the recent novel Lichtspiel, a fictionalised biography of Pabst, written by Daniel Kehlmann. How does a filmmaker go from making progressive, formally daring and even scandalous cinema criticising the society of its day to becoming an accomplice to the propaganda machinery of the Third Reich?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #76: Buster Keaton

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Welcome to 2024! We at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture are beginning the year with a discussion of one of the greats of early Hollywood cinema: Buster Keaton, the Great Stone Face himself. Join Alan, Julie and Sam as they discuss three films by the master of deadpan physical comedy: One Week (1920), in which a newlywed couple attempts to assemble a house kit that, unbeknownst to them, a rejected suitor has sabotaged, Sherlock Jr. (1924), perhaps Keaton’s best-known and -loved comedy next to The General, and The Navigator (also 1924), with its amazing underwater scenes. How does Keaton hold up next to the other two greats of early comedy, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd? And what happened to Keaton and his career in later decades?

If you are interested in learning more about Keaton, make sure to check out Dana Stevens’ Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century, and take note of the writings of the late, great Cari Beauchamp, who wrote extensively on the era and who passed away on 14 December 2023.

Finally, all three of the Buster Keaton films discussed in this episode can be streamed on YouTube – and there are definitely worse ways to brighten your early January!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast Christmas Special 2023

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As the sheer Ho-ho-honess of the season descends on us, here’s a little something for under your tree: our 2023 Christmas Special. This year we’re taking the opportunity to put a Damn Fine fingerprint on the media meme of the year: Barbenheimer. Join us – Julie, Sam, Alan and Matt, but also Damn Fine O.G. Mege and favourite frequent guest Dan Thron of Martini Giant (who took some time this autumn to talk all things Exorcist with us) – as we come up with double bills and mash-ups of wildly divergent and strangely complementary movies, taking our listeners from Paddiface and The Wizard of Chess via a very special Boris Karloff two-header and Wonkas of the Flower Moon to The Sound of Eagles and Under the Hours. (FYI, most of these are working titles that we’ll have to workshop before the final product is pushed out the door, or so Marketing tells us.) So, in the spirit of plastic dolls come to life and Cillian Murphy’s piercing eyes, of learning to start worrying and hate the bomb and of being Just Ken, we at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture wish all of our listeners happy holidays filled with good films, series, books, games and music!

P.S.: For more on Baby Face and Killers of the Flower Moon, make sure to check out these episodes:

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A Damn Fine Espresso: December 2023

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In a little over a week it’s Christmas – and what goes together better than Christmas and forging signatures, telling lies, impersonating practically anybody… and a little murder? Matt’s recently had an opportunity to check out the film adaptations of the adventures of a very naughty boy: Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. In this month’s espresso podcast, join Matt and Sam as they talk about these adaptations that vary massively in tone, theme and quality: from Plein Soleil (AKA Purple Noon) and The American Friend to Ripley’s Game and Ripley Under Ground – not missing out The Talented Mister Ripley, of course. It’s a rare case that a series of novels is adapted not into a series of films but into very different individual movies, all treating their central character very differently. How talented are these various Ripleys, whether they’re played by Alain Delon, Matt Damon, Dennis Hopper, Barry Pepper or John Malkovich?

For a deep dive specifically into The Talented Mister Ripley and its two famous movie adaptations, make sure to check out our podcast from way back in June 2021: Ripley vs Ripley.

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