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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Six Damn Fine Degrees #172: I do not like this guy at all!

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.

As Alan talked about in his Six Damn Fine Degrees instalment last week, there are very good reasons to dislike some actors even when we enjoy their performances and the films they’re in. The same is true for directors, producers, writers, and so on. Hollywood has its fair share of bigots, racists, antisemites, homophobes, abusers, and various bastards of any shape or size. And the more we find out about what went on in yesteryear’s film industry, the more skeletons pop out from the closet. This may make our feelings about some of our favourite films more complicated, but I’d agree with Alan: all in all, it’s better to know.

However, sometimes we develop irrational dislikes of the faces we see on the silver screen. I started off hating Eddie Redmayne for no better reason than, well, literally disliking his face… and, yes, his acting style and often his choice of roles. Possibly his voice as well. But I’m mostly over it. Mostly.

But for a long, long time I nursed an irrational dislike of an actor who had done even less than poor Eddie to deserve my ire. Reader: I used to hate David Morse.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Requin killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?

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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.

How do we handle knowing rather unsavoury things about the actors and filmmakers whose work we like? This week, Alan wrote about his approach, focusing on Charles Coburn, that most avuncular of bigoted racists, best remembered perhaps for his role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

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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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Six Damn Fine Degrees #171: Charles Coburn, Gentlemen Prefer Hate

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.

Being a fan of the Golden Age of Hollywood comes with a price. As much as you can celebrate the writing, the glamour, the celebrity even the innovation of those times, it’s very hard to immerse yourself in that era without coming up against a sad truth. Maybe it will be a scene somewhere in the film that casually drops in racism. Or an offensive stereotype with but a few seconds of screen time. And sometimes it will be the appearance of someone who you have learnt was a horrible bigot.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: These dead are made for walkin’

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.

Over the last few weeks, our Six Damn Fine Degrees took us from Herzog to Kinski – but we may not have ended up with the Kinski you’d expect, in Sam’s most recent post!

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Girl, you’ll be a woman soon: Poor Things (2023)

Matt4 Comments

When I think of the films of Yorgos Lanthimos, many things come to mind: first and foremost, his deadpan absurdity (Lanthimos is part of a film movement referred to as the Greek Weird Wave), but also recurring themes such as the arbitrariness of social mores, sexuality, heteronormativity, and structures of power and authority. What I associate most strongly with Lanthimos, though, the unease they evoke. Even when they make me laugh, Yorgos Lanthimos’ films are often supremely uncomfortable.

Which is why it comes as something of a surprise that his latest film, Poor Things, which tells the story of an infant whose brain, Frankenstein-style, is implanted into the body of an adult woman and who finds liberation through sexuality, may just be Lanthimos’ most feel-good film.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #170: Whatever happened to Nastassja Kinski?

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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.

These days, with director Werner Herzog still nourishing his infamously conflicted yet cinematically so fruitful relationship with Teutonic titan Klaus Kinski (even spoofed in Documentary Now!, as described in last week’s post by Matt), it is an almost forgotten fact that for a while, some forty years ago, a very different Kinski made her way into the audience’s consciousness: his daughter Nastassja.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Directing movies is a complicated profession

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.

There should be a fictional documentary about a society of film fans that consider mockumentaries entirely true, and that have constructed an elaborate conspiracy theory around how subjects too dangerous are defused by turning them into mockumentaries. You can’t handle the truth about Spinal Tap, or Kiwi filmmaker Colin McKenzie, or the Mayflower Kennel Club Show. But in the meantime we have mockumentary greats such as “Soldier of Illusion” and “The Goof Who Sat By the Door”.

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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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