Six Damn Fine Degrees #144: Barbie

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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!

I was wrong about Barbie. I should have been right. First off, it was Great Gerwig directing it, also writing the screenplay together with Noah Baumbach, which should have been the first sign that things would not be all pink plastic and brainless banter. And I don’t think Margot Robbie has the heart to say yes to any even mediocre project. I am still not entirely sold on Ryan Gosling, but Robbie is so very good in I, Tonya that she cannot do much wrong anymore in my book.

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What Would the Algorithm Do? Mrs. Davis (2023)

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In the last couple of years, AI has become one of the trending topics, generating excitement and dread in equal measure. It is therefore no surprise that more and more artificial intelligences are popping up as antagonists in pop culture. They’re not what they used to be, however: the action franchise heroes that defeat evildoers by running, running, and running some more are not up against WarGames‘ WOPR or Terminator‘s Skynet. No, what we get these days is basically ChatGPT with an evil goatee: modern AI antagonists are all about the algorithm.

Mrs. Davis, which Wikipedia describes as a “science fiction comedy drama limited series”, is about the fight against such an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful algorithm. It is also, in no particular order, about vengeful nuns, secret orders, exploding heads, crazed whales, chicken wings, magicians, sneakers, Jesus, hypermasculinity, falafel with pineapple, and mummy issues. Oh, and the Holy Grail. Obviously.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Biting, isn’t it?

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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.

From Adams to Addams: Sam took this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to dark, dark places – namely boarding school.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: August 2023

The Barista Collective5 Comments

What’s giddy, grim, and black and white and pink all over? You’ve guessed it: just when the discourse has died down, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture goes all Barbenheimer on y’all. Join Alan and Matt as they talk about their impression of the memetic phenomenon of 2023 and discuss Greta Gerwig’s ultra-meta toy ad Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s ultra-Nolany drama Oppenheimer. Just why did these two films capture audiences’ imaginations to the degree that they have? Does Oppenheimer escape the traps of conventional biopics? Does Barbie manage to find a good balance between comedy, drama and message movie? And what other films should be combined into similarly striking (or strikingly mismatched) double bills?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #143: How “Wednesday” puts the extra ‘d’ in Addams Family

samlinder4 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!

It might somewhat seem like a bit of a short stretch from Alan’s previous piece on the long-term writing of author Douglas Adams, but here’s a chance to gush about a Netflix series that puts more than that extra ‘d’ into the famous family name: Wednesday, released late last year, puts the Addams Family daughter front and center of eight episodes and gives fresh blood to a cultural phenomenon that started over eighty years ago.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Sometimes they come back

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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.

Matt may not have been won over by the film Disco Boy – but he did like its trailer a lot, which gives us the perfect starting point for this post.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #142: Douglas Adams’ “Last Chance To See”

Alan Kuhl Graham4 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 early ’80s were a great time as a kid to discover Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. I saw the BBC TV series first, then I caught the BBC Radio series – recording each episode onto cassette for future enjoyment. And then I discovered the books. I devoured the first novel: it was like the adaptations but with more jokes. Same with the sequel The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, which was possibly one of the first “proper” books I read in a single day. Life, The Universe and Everything felt a little different, even threatening at times to tell an actual story. But still enough lunacy to keep me happy.

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I’m shooting at the man in the mirror: Disco Boy (2023)

Matt1 Comment

Seeing how we’re usually at our local cinema several times a week, we tend to end up watching certain trailers half a dozen times or more before the films are ever shown. In some cases, I might find a trailer appealing the first two or three times I see it, but by the time I’ve seen it so often that I could lip-sync along to the dialogue I feel I’ve seen enough and don’t even want to watch the whole film. Perhaps in a year or two, once it’s appeared on Film Four or on one of the streaming services we’re subscribed to, but I’m just glad to have seen the last of it for now.

Some trailers are different, though, and each time I watch them I find myself more intrigued. Often, these are the trailers that don’t much focus on plot or dialogues, they’re more about the aesthetic and the vibe of a film. The trailer for Disco Boy by the Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese is a case in point: obviously the film stars Franz Rogowski, an actor I’ve come to appreciate a lot in recent years, but more than that it was the images and the soundscape of the trailer. It was also the hints at the film’s themes: soldiers, colonialism, identity and doubling, intertwined in ways that felt poetic rather than literal. And yes, I’d also heard good things from film festivals, suggesting that Disco Boy was something to look out for.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Lights! Cameras! Tricksters!

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.

This week saw the first instalment in a new series – after his trip through Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre, Matt has begun watching Criterion’s Federico Fellini box set, starting with Variety Lights. Sadly, there’s no trailer for the film on YouTube… but here’s the next best thing: the entire movie. Enjoy!

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #71: Summer of Collaborations – The Coen Brothers & Co

The Barista Collective4 Comments

Our summer of collaborations continues with an iconic duo from Minnesota: the Coen Brothers are probably among the filmmakers of recent decades most associated with the (flawed) notion of the auteur – but at the same time, they’re among the directors who keep working with the same collaborators, whether they’re actors (Obviously Frances McDormand, but also Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, John Turturro, George Clooney, and several others), composers (Carter Burwell) or cinematographers (Roger Deakins). In this month’s podcast, we discuss three key films in the Coens’ filmography – Blood Simple (1984), Fargo (1996) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) – which all star McDormand and feature soundtracks by Burwell, and we ask ourselves: to what extent are the Coens’ films defined by the brothers’ frequent collaborators? And how much are these collaborators shaped by their work on the Coen Brothers’ films?

Note: Since this podcast was recorded earlier in the summer, we talked about the supposed ‘break-up’ of Joel and Ethan Coen, both of whom have made solo films (The Tragedy of Macbeth and the upcoming Drive-Away Dolls) since their hiatus from one another after 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – but they’ve since mentioned in interviews that they are working together on a new film.

For last year’s summer series of podcasts, check this link:

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture: Summer of Directors (2022)

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