kenneth branagh – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

A Damn Fine Espresso: June 2026

20/06/202619/06/2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

As anyone who listened to our March episode on three film adaptations of Agatha Christie’s whodunits can tell: no one at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture is a big fan of Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot. The erstwhile Shakespeare wunderkind tried his hand at the Belgian super-sleuth three times, with Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Death on the Nile (2022) and A Haunting in Venice (2003). Admittedly, we’re not the first ones to say an emphatic non to Branagh’s Poirot – but, having just recently taken a closer look at the Knives Out films, which feature a different modern movie detective that nonetheless takes more than a few cues from Agatha Christie, and from Monsieur Poirot himself, Sam and Alan nonetheless felt it was high time to give Branagh’s trio of period thrillers another chance.

Do they improve when approached with tempered expectations? Can they be salvaged, or do they remain not just second-best versions of these stories but downright failures of adaptation? How do the ensemble casts compare to those put together by Sidney Lumet in the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express and John Guillermin in 1978’s Death on the Nile? And just what is up with that moustache?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Stop and go

02/10/2022The 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.

Sometimes we like to mix and match our forms of culture, so in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees Julie talked about the works of William Shakespeare adapted to the screen. There’s so much great cinematic Shakespeare to choose from, so here’s a trailer for a film about staging Shakespeare instead: Kenneth Branagh’s In the Bleak Midwinter (or A Midwinter’s Tale, as the Americans know it, if they actually knew the film).

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #98: Adaptive Shakespeare

30/09/202228/02/2026Julie2 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!

“My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain.” ~ Richard III, Act V, Scene III

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Sceptred isles, hunchbacked toads

04/09/202204/09/2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Matt is inching ever closer to completing his epic journey through the works of Ingmar Bergman. This week he wrote about the lesser-known Brink of Life – but, he argues, it definitely deserves more recognition than it has received to date. That lack of recognition is reflected by a lack of a trailer – unless we search further afield and find this video advertising a Hungarian stage adaptation of the film from 2011.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #82: Murder

10/06/202201/02/2026Mege1 Comment

It’s an ugly thing to kill someone, and more or less willingly, isn’t it?

There is the sanitized version of murder in countless whodunits, where the rules are clear: someone might be dead by the hand of another, and some clever brain will figure it all out, preferably in a showdown before a chimney fire, holding a long speech that ends in a big revelation. The rules are clear; the culprit, more often than not, is punished by the law, as if this was only slightly more atrocious than any hockey game. And while any sturdily waxed moustaches might have been replaced by squint-eyed scientists, the rules still apply. Miss Marple is never wrong, but science can’t lie.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Childhood’s End

27/02/202227/02/2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Has there ever been a parody as loving of the thing it parodies as Galaxy Quest? Julie revisited this gem of a sci-fi comedy for our most recent instalment of Six Damn Fine Degrees. Though it’s hard not to still miss Alan Rickman while watching this film, isn’t it?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The Marvellous Moreau

09/01/202209/01/2022The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Look, if you’ve had enough of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we understand – and you may want to skip this week’s trailer post, since Friday’s Six Damn Fine Degrees instalment had Mege talking about sharing the MCU with his daughter: she’s a Marvel fan, and he enjoys sharing movies with her. So, for her, here’s a vintage Marvel trailer.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Love, monsters, murders – hugs?

23/08/2020The 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.