A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The name’s Welles. Orson Welles.

Sep 11, 2022The 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 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, our Summer of Welles (Editor’s note: Not a real thing.) continued with Sam’s post about Welles in Portugal and Spain. What better opportunity to take Sam’s mention of the dreadful 1967 Casino Royale and post this trailer for it, a great indication of just how dreadful the film is?

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The Corona Diaries: “When you play the game of Pandemic…”

Sep 10, 2022Matt1 Comment

… you win or you die. There is no middle ground.” Yeah, well, shut up, Cersei.

Remember that global pandemic? In so many places, people act as if it’s a thing of the past, but at the same time numbers have been spiking again – just the cases were much more manageable, both individually and in sum. So many people who hadn’t yet contracted the virus were getting ill, and even some that had been ill already.

My wife and I had thus far been spared by COVID-19, but almost two weeks ago she started feeling under the weather – and the next morning, BOOM. Two purple lines. A fairly high fever, coughing, and man, was she tired. The weird thing is that, if anything, I should have been the one to catch it and pass it on to her, because I am out of the flat and among people more often – but no, she was positive before me, and a couple of days later I joined the club as well.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #95: The Awesome Wells of Portugal and Spain

Sep 9, 2022Sep 10, 2022samlinder1 Comment

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!

*Piece of evidence #1: Orson Welles as a deceptive conjurer in the awful comedy version of* Casino Royale *(1967) – or just deceptively conjured up himself?*

The train has left the station. The literal one, no metaphors, no fakes: The blissful travels of my current teacher timeout have brought me across Spain all the way to Portugal within the past ten days. As I’m leaving Porto Campaña station en route to Lisbon, I marvel at Matt’s shocking revelation from last week about the impossibility of Orson Welles‘ existence. Could it really be true that one of the most famous directors was just a figment of our imagination, an image of one towering director to deceive us all?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Sceptred isles, hunchbacked toads

Sep 4, 2022Sep 4, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Matt is inching ever closer to completing his epic journey through the works of Ingmar Bergman. This week he wrote about the lesser-known Brink of Life – but, he argues, it definitely deserves more recognition than it has received to date. That lack of recognition is reflected by a lack of a trailer – unless we search further afield and find this video advertising a Hungarian stage adaptation of the film from 2011.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #60: Summer of Directors – Martin Scorsese

Sep 3, 2022Sep 4, 2022The Barista Collective1 Comment

Our Summer of Directors comes to an end: after Jane Campion, Dario Argento, Ida Lupino and Robert Altman, we’ve arrived at Julie’s choice of director: Martin Scorsese. Poor Marty has come under attack in recent years, especially from fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – but ironically, Julie takes issue with Scorsese’ statements on the MCU more than the two resident MCU-heads Alan and Matt. What else do the three of them think of Scorsese as director and film buff extraordinaire? Join us for a discussion of some of Scorsese’s less-discussed works, The King of Comedy (1982), Bringing Out the Dead (1999), and the 1995 documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. And let us know what you thought of our Summer of Directors!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #94: The Great Orson Welles Hoax

Sep 2, 2022Matt2 Comments

Hollywood. The Dream Factory. And what is a dream but a story that never happened? (Or, if you believe in the MCU, things that happen in alternate universes – which means that these alternate universes have a hell of a lot of lectures and speeches made, and lessons taught, by people who suddenly find that they’re actually naked.)

One of the greatest such ‘dreams’ brought forth by Hollywood – or, to be more frank and forthright, one of its greatest lies – is that of Orson Welles: director, actor, writer, and, if we are to believe IMDB, also Editor, Costume Designer, Script and Continuity Department, and (ironically) Self. In short, a Hollywood wunderkind supreme.

How ironic, then, that Orson Welles… play the ominous dun-dun! sound… never actually existed.

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The Compleat Ingmar #37: Brink of Life (1958)

Aug 30, 2022Aug 30, 2022Matt1 Comment

One of the things Ingmar Bergman is famous for is the great parts for women in his films, and consequently his work with great actresses. So many of the films feature complex roles for women, and while Bergman must often have been a terror to the women in his life, both in private and in his professional capacity, many of his leading ladies have said again and again that it was a gift to be in a Bergman film and to portray those characters. As much as Bergman can be criticised, and rightly so, for his behaviour towards women, we have several actresses who nonetheless were eager to work with him repeatedly – sometimes even after they had been in a relationship with him that had ended badly.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Fight Night

Aug 28, 2022Aug 28, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

When it comes to boxing movies, there’s Rocky – and there’s Raging Bull. There are other types, other flavours, but these two pretty much define the territory. Matt wrote about Raging Bull this week, a relatively recent Criterion release, and while the film will never be an easy watch, it’s definitely made easier by this visually stunning release.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #93: Mank v Welles

Aug 26, 2022Aug 26, 2022Julie1 Comment

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Criterion Corner: Raging Bull (#1134)

Aug 23, 2022Aug 22, 2022Matt1 Comment

There are films that are a joy to watch because they’re so well crafted. The director knows what they’re doing, the cinematography is stunning, the editing is masterful, the acting and writing, the score – everything is spot on.

Then there are films that are deeply unpleasant because of the world and characters they depict. You don’t want to spend time in this place, with these people, and once you’ve been there for two hours, you just want to go and have a shower and clear your brain from the memory of them.

And sometimes, there’s a film that fits both of these descriptions. For me, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is one of those films.