alex garland – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #63: Monosyllabic horror

Dec 3, 2022Dec 3, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Is there anything more terrifying, more capable of evoking fear, than the one-syllable word? Obviously yes – but it is still noteworthy how many recent horror films have gone for a monosyllabic title (which suggests that A24 may have a limited contingent of syllables to make up their titles). In our latest podcast, Alan is joined by Julie and Sam to talk about three recent horror films whose titles fit into a single syllable: Julie has brought along Alex Garland’s folk horror Men, while Alan has picked Jordan Peele’s sci-fi monster movie Nope, and Sam chose the latest Scream, a meta extravaganza directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett calling itself a requel (now there’s the true horror!). What do our cultural baristas think of these three examples of modern horror movies? And just what makes monosyllabic titles so much more scary? Tune in to hear our answers – okay, perhaps not to that last question – in our December episode. Warning: May contain multisyllabic words!

P.S.: We had some technical issues when recording this episode and apologise for the variable audio quality… though it does make the podcast that much more scary, doesn’t it?

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The Roaring Rories

Mar 27, 2022Mar 27, 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.

On Friday, Julie gave us another one of her deep dives, this time on Agatha Christie and the books she’d set in the desert – which is a perfect opportunity to post the trailer for Death on the Nile. No, not that one. The other one.

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Hungry like the wolf

Feb 13, 2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

It’s been a very busy week – not so much on A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, but out there in the world of work. Nonetheless, we’ve had a handful of updates, starting with Matt’s musings about the particular misspellings that are his orthographical bugbear. Which, of course, leads us to Star Trek II and Ricardo Montalban’s amazing early ’80s cleavage.

Continue reading →

Tell me who you are, so I can tell you who you are: Alias Grace and Ex Machina

Mar 20, 2021Matt1 Comment

Over the last couple of weeks, we watched the 2017 Netflix series Alias Grace. It is a smart, stylish adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel, with strong writing by Sarah Polley and direction by Mary Harron (of American Psycho fame), and the acting is impeccable, especially when it comes to Sarah Gadon as the Irish maid Grace Marks who may or may not have helped murder her employer and his housekeeper. The series handles tone and genre well, navigating between historical drama, dry black comedy, true crime, gothic horror and deft commentary on gender, class truth and fiction.

And about halfway through the final episode I thought that Alias Grace isn’t all that different from that film with the robot.

Continue reading →

Determinism and the Maiden: Devs (2020)

Nov 28, 2020MattLeave a comment

2020 has been a year in which, more than ever, it’s been difficult to shake the feeling that we don’t have much agency over our lives. Things happen that are outside our control and we watch them happen, wondering if there ever was a moment when we were in charge of our everyday existence. Therefore it is probably no surprise that two recent high-profile sci-fi series tried to wrangle the theme of whether we live in a deterministic universe, even if they were both made before our sense of agency took its biggest knock in the shape of a nasty little virus: HBO’s Westworld and FX’s Devs, which was written and directed by Alex Garland.

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Dystopia, revolution and bad, bad dubs

Jul 19, 2020Jul 19, 2020The 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 installment 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.

Continue reading →

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Fun things to watch during an epidemic

Mar 8, 2020Mar 9, 2020The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Continue reading →

Annihiladaptation

Apr 18, 2018MattLeave a comment

Although I got the novel as a Christmas present, I only read Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation after seeing Alex Garland’s movie adaptation, finishing it last weekend. There are some adaptations that ruin the original for you, but that’s rarely been a major problem for me: if a story is enjoyable primarily because of what happens next, I usually don’t feel all that much of a need to read it in the first place. If there are interesting characters or ideas, if the prose is evocative and atmospheric – generally, if it’s the storytelling itself that makes the story thrilling or funny or generally engaging rather than what happens next – then I’m definitely up for experiencing a story more than once.

Annihilation

Continue reading →

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #8: Annihilation

Mar 24, 2018Mar 23, 2018Matt6 Comments

d1ad56da-abce-4afe-9f45-79294aede9e3 Tune in for episode 8 of A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, which takes us to Area X and the Shimmer. Will we come back from our discussion of Alex Garland’s Annihilation unchanged? We also spend an all too short summer vacation in early ’80s Italy with Call Me By Your Name‘s Elio and Oliver and have a quick drink with Jessica Jones (watch out for season 2 spoilers from 11:40 to 13:10). Continue reading →

No strings on her

May 5, 2015Mar 20, 2021Matt5 Comments

Can a machine ever be truly intelligent? Can it have feelings? If a machine fakes these things convincingly enough, at what point does the appearance become the real thing? Whatever the answer, Hollywood tends to remind us that it’s a bad idea to fall for robots and AIs, however seductive they look and however much they sound like Scarlett Johansson. Ex Machina is not alone in dramatising the Turing Test, but Alex Garland’s first film as a director is definitely a striking addition to the genre.

Ex Machina