A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #94: Lost Summer – The Vanished

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Hundreds of films and TV series make it onto our screens each year – but just as many vanish, some before they ever make it in front of an audience. The second episode of our summer series, the Lost Summer, is dedicated to these: the films that are destroyed or vanish into some vault, the TV series that were never archived, or even the legendary scenes that are much talked about but never seen. Join Julie, Alan and Sam as they explore the romance and the frustration inherent in this vast library of lost film and TV. Why are we fascinated so much by what is lost? Why are the movie and television industries often so cavalier about preserving this cultural heritage? And which of the vanished would our cultural baristas most like to see found again?

P.S.: Make sure to check out the other entries in our Lost Summer, running from June to September!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #241: Start-up drama in Tang Dynasty China

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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!

From brotherhood to sisterhood: The Chinese costume drama Flourished Peony (2025) is at its heart a female empowerment story. It was one of the top dramas in China aired this year, featuring Yang Zi and Li Xian, the power couple who earned their first roaring success in 2019 with the crowd-pleaser Go, Go Squid.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: One for all, and all for one

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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.

Is Wes Anderson basically making the same film over and over again, with minor variations in plot, while the style, tone, cast and crew stay the same? Matt confessed this week that he sometimes thinks this is true when watching the trailers for new films by the director – but once he’s watching the actual films, it’s obvious that there is much more to Anderson than a highly recognisable style.

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The Anderson Enigma

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I think it’s fair to say that, after Wes Anderson has directed 11 feature films (12 if you count The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More, which Wikipedia does), I am something of a fan – and yet, I don’t really think of myself as such. Of his last eight films, starting with Fantastic Mr. Fox (check here for a typically wonderful Six Damn Fine Degrees by Julie about the film), I’ve loved several and enjoyed the others a lot. Admittedly, I have some issues with the early films of his I’ve seen – Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic -, but after a streak of eight movies that I like or even love, shouldn’t I be able to say that I like the work of Wes Anderson? And, if not, why?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Grab a slice and enjoy

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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.

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees: more books (Melanie wrote about making her way through Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga), so even less of an opportunity to post a fitting trailer! So, if it’s not too much of an insult to fans of the saga, here’s a trailer for the third season of a different sci-fi saga: Apple TV’s adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. Obviously we need more adaptations of long-form sci-fi!

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A Damn Fine Espresso: June 2025

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Our recent podcast episode on David Lynch, marking the start of our 2025 series Lost Summer, prompted us to pick up where that episode left of: for two of the films we discussed earlier this month, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, there are extensive sets of deleted scenes that, if they had not ended up on the cutting room floor, would have made both films into something very different. Sam and Matt watched these scenes – 51 minutes for Blue Velvet, a whopping 91 minutes for Fire Walk With Me – and talk about these and the notion of deleted scenes in general. Would Fire Walk With Me have been a better film if it had included all that material about the town of Twin Peaks, as fans and critics had hoped for when it was released? What can deleted scenes say about the virtues of leaving some things out? How do fan edits, a practice which has become highly accomplished in many cases, figure into this, and into the question of which version of a film is the real deal?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #239: Three weeks of Vorkosigan space opera

MelanieLeave a 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!

Speaking of sci-fi novels: You guys, I did it! I binge read all the novels of Lois McMaster Bujold’s space opera, the Vorkosigan Saga, in about three weeks. All 17 of them.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Just when you thought it was safe to go to Scotland again

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.

This week, Alan wrote about his childhood love for Greg Bear’s novel Blood Music – which makes for a great Six Damn Fine Degrees post, but sadly, it makes the whole issue of finding a trailer difficult, since Bear’s writings had never been turned into films or TV series. However, YouTube does have a reading of the original short story that Bear expanded into the novel, so if you need one hour of audio while you’re cooking or doing the dishes, why not check this out?

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Fellini Finale: Ginger and Fred (1986)

MattLeave a comment

Over the last two years, I’ve been making my way through Criterion’s Essential Fellini box set. Starting with Variety Lights (1950 or 1951, depending on where you check) and ending with Intervista (1987), this beautiful set included most of Fellini’s films – though not all, skipping for instance the acerbic English-language Fellini’s Casanova (1976), in which a bewigged, increasingly ridiculous Donald Sutherland fornicates his way across Europe, getting further and further away from anything approaching happiness, or even pleasure, in the process.

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