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.
In Alan’s countdown of Academy Award Best Picture winners from the very beginning of the Oscars, he’s arrived in 1936 with The Great Ziegfeld. The film stars William Powell, so Alan’s bound to love it. Right?
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 interconnectedne
Diane Morgan (creator and star of Ann Droid) puts robots squarely at the centre of the BBC’s latest TV comedy.
To me when I was growing up, the anarchic sense of liberation that British humour offered on television was an essential tool to cope with the impending doom of the late stage Cold War world: Monty Python gave more than their middle fingers to conservative British society, their offspring (Fawlty Towers, A Fish Called Wanda) stretched the boundaries of propriety to the brink, and seemingly endless reruns of Rowan Atkinson in Black Adder and especially Mr. Bean cemented the sense of absolutely absurd, often silently physical comedy. I only discovered French and Saunders a bit later, but their spoofs of anything but the kitchen sink must have added another joyful layer to the rich cake that British TV humour became to me. There was a sense of security in having these characters and sketches available all the time, and their spread on YouTube and social media has made them even more timeless since.
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.
Earlier this week, the singer-songwriter and actor Glen Hansard died after a motorcycle crash. You could do worse than to rewatch (or watch for the first time) Once in his memory.
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!
There’s something fun about discovering a show via word of mouth. When friends who know you well start asking if you’ve seen the latest thing on television because, in their opinion, it’s “very you”. And then the subsequent joy when you finally get round to watching it and discover that it is indeed “very me”.
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.
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.
What better way to spend a hot summer Sunday than sitting in a cool cinema and watching a 4 1/2 hour documentary about the Boston municipal government? Or a similarly long film about the inner workings of the National Gallery? Or, indeed, an angry and unexpectedly lyrical look at the US welfare system in the mid-’70s? Frederick Wiseman has it all for you, and much more beyond, as Matt found out in June when his favourite cinema did a Wiseman programme in honour of the late documentarian.
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.
In 1990, Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins came out, a biting musical about the men and women who felt called upon to kill a US president. Through a set of historical characters, from John Wilkes Booth via Lee Harvey Oswald to Sara Jane Moore and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme (who both attempted, and failed, to kill Gerald Ford), Sondheim shows us his bleak version of the American Dream: “Everybody’s got the right to be happy” – and what better way to achieve happiness and fill the emptiness inside yourself than to kill yourself a POTUS?
All of these would-be and actual murderers are pathetic in their own particular ways. They are angry at the world and the ways in which it doesn’t conform to their wishes. They are attention seekers who wished to put their imprint on America, having little to offer the world apart from their own warped ideas of greatness and how to achieve it. And perhaps none of them are more pathetic than Charles Guiteau: a liar, a thief, a narcissistic failure.
Few people, other than Sondheim fans, know Guiteau’s name. Even fewer know the name of the man Guiteau killed: James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States of America.
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.
This week, Matt returned to the Zone. No, not the Brothers Strugatsky’s Zone, nor Tarkovsky’s, and not even the Zone of the original Stalker trilogy of video games. No, this time it’s the Zone of Stalker 2 – and it’s an even more inhospitable place than it used to be… though it may just be the most beautiful take on this particular post-apocalypse.
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.
