high and low – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The 2023 Assembly of the Toshiro Mifune Appreciation Society

Jul 2, 2023The 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.

Some love them… but Matt’s more ambivalent about cult TV and cult movies. Check out this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to find out why – or you can also just stay here and watch this trailer for the cult classic The Prisoner. Because, after all, you are not a number, right?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #70: Summer of Collaborations – Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune

Jul 1, 2023Jul 1, 2023The Barista Collective3 Comments

After the inaugural episode of our Summer of Collaborations (starting with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn), we’ve arrived at the second instalment of our summer series, this time focusing on a collaboration that gave us iconic performances and classic films across a range of genres – though the one that perhaps comes to mind first is that of Jidaigeki (Japanese period drama), and more specifically, the samurai film. We are, of course, talking about the films resulting from the collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. Join Alan, Julie and Matt as they discuss Rashomon (1950), a film that mixes genre to such an extent that Wikipedia describes it, inadequately, as a “Jidaigeki psychological thriller-crime film”; Yojimbo (1961), the action-packed samurai film that Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars stole from liberally; and High and Low (1963), a police procedural crime drama about a botched kidnapping. What made the collaboration between Kurosawa and Mifune work so well? How does it develop over these three films? And just how does Mifune manage to look so damn cool wearing a threadbare kimono and stroking his chin?

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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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Knives Out

Oct 24, 2021The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Boy oh boy, as always it’s difficult to find a trailer if the post it relates to is about a song. Mege’s Damn Fine Degrees post about Elvis Costello’s “I Want You” makes it a bit easier by mentioning the Michael Winterbottom film of the same name – though it seems it only exists in very, very bad quality on YouTube. Ah well.

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Criterion Corner: High and Low (#24)

Oct 23, 2021Oct 23, 2021Matt1 Comment

I’ve seen seven or eight films by Akira Kurosawa, but other than Ikiru and Dreams, the latter of which I saw about twenty years ago and don’t remember particularly well, it’s all been the Jidaigeki films, i.e. period dramas set during the Edo period (more or less) and featuring samurai, ronin and the like. Even Ikiru, which isn’t clearly set in the past, feels like it is about the past to some extent, as it is the story of an old man looking back at his life.

High and Low immediately makes for a striking contrast: it is set in the present day in a big city, its protagonists are businessmen and police detectives. More than that, while the film was released in 1963, there are many elements that would easily translate into our present day, and while High and Low comments on class in specifically Japanese contexts, much of its commentary could work equally well outside Japan. All of this comes together to make High and Low feel modern, in terms of the story, characters and the filmmaking itself – even almost sixty years after its release.

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