Six Damn Fine Degrees #207: Howard Hawks’ Ball Of Fire Reignited

Alan Kuhl Graham3 Comments

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!

1941’s Ball Of Fire is an absolute gem of a film. Powered by a whip-smart script from Billy Wilder, it tells the story of fusty linguistics Professor Potts (Gary Cooper) falling for the quick-talking Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck at her very. very best) as he conducts his own research into slang. It’s a romance that encompasses all the essentials for a great screwball comedy – sassy innuendo, comic misunderstandings, a brilliant ensemble cast, the thrill of crime and, of course, the slow, academic research required in the compilation of Encyclopaedias.

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: You know how to whistle, don’t you?

MattLeave 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.

We all love a good Agatha Christie yarn here at A Damn Fine Cup – but they’re not all cosy and twee. There’s plenty of Christie beyond Death on the Nile and Murder, She Said, and in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt writes about the darker sides of cosy crime.

Continue reading →

A little less algorithm, a little more curation, please

Matt1 Comment

The Cinema REX in Bern, my favourite cinema, and indeed the best cinema in Bern/Switzerland/Europe/the world, shows new releases, mostly independent films or world cinema – but that’s not why they’re my favourite: it’s their curated programme. More or less every month, they’ve got a programme focusing on a theme, genre, country or filmmaker – in parallel to which they will also be running other, longer-term series, e.g. on film history or LGBTQI+ cinema or kids’ movies. Thanks to the REX I’ve seen classics on the big screen that otherwise I might not have had the chance to see at an actual cinema, from Apocalypse Now to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, from North by Northwest to Fanny and Alexander. The other movie theatres in the city that have survived the Great Cinema Purges of recent years also offer curated programmes, such as a series on Cult Movies and Worst Movies, but none are focused as much on providing a curated programme.

Continue reading →

Six Damn Fine Degrees #206: Cosy? Dark? Why not both?

Matt3 Comments

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!

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about Agatha Christie, her stories and her characters. Somehow, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot have always been around, much like modern mythology. Settings such as the manor house, scenes where a sleuth has assembled all the suspects and lays out all the clues, feckless local law enforcement: I knew all of these – without ever having read a single one of Christie’s novels or short stories or having seen any of the numerous adaptations. Again, I was aware of Margaret Rutherford in black-and-white movies and of Peter Ustinov in glamorous locales, sporting a silly moustache and a sillier accent. But the actual thing passed me by for the longest time.

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: We have everything, from witnesses to werewolfs!

The 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.

Every now and then our weekly Six Damn Fine Degrees series starts circling a certain topic for several weeks, and right now the focus is on Agatha Christie, her stories and the ways these were adapted. This week, Julie wrote one of her usual wonderful deep dives, this time on Billy Wilder’s film version of Witness for the Prosecution. Make sure to check it out!

Continue reading →

Everybody’s looking for something: Robot Dreams (2023)

Matt2 Comments

It’s Manhattan in the 1980s, and Dog is lonely. He, differently from everyone around him, has no one to share his life with – so when he sees an ad on TV for robot friends, he doesn’t hesitate. Soon a large, heavy box appears and Dog sets about assembling his new friend. He and Robot immediately hit it off, and Dog’s life changes.

Until the day he takes Robot to the beach, and everything is turned upside down.

Continue reading →

Six Damn Fine Degrees #205: Witness for the Prosecution

Julie3 Comments

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!

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The First Law of Robotics

MattLeave 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.

Sometimes our Six Damn Fine Degrees posts get caught on a certain topic: a few months ago, we had several posts in a row focusing on the films of Werner Herzog, and recently they’ve entered an Agatha Christie phase. This week, Sam remembered the great Maggie Smith, writing about two of her appearances in adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories: Death on the Nile and Evil under the Sun, both of which Smith featured in, albeit in different parts.

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Espresso: October 2024

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

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?

Continue reading →

Six Damn Fine Degrees #204: The Best of Maggie Smith in two Christies

samlinder5 Comments

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!

The passing of Dame Maggie Smith in late September has caused an outpouring of appreciation and love by film critics, movie buffs and the stage aficionados alike. Rarely has there been in the loss of an actress such a display of a wide-ranging fan base, from the Harry Potter kids to the Downton Abbey addicts and from silver-age Hollywood connoisseurs to the West End audiences and independent cinemagoers, everybody seems to have harboured a deep respect and admiration for her unique talent. Channels and feeds were crammed full of shorts and reels for days, with no real end in sight.

Continue reading →