nosferatu

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Fix your hearts or die

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Somehow, losing David Lynch hits harder, not only because of his art, which is often beautiful and disturbing in equal measure, but also because of who Lynch seems to have been: a kind, strange, generous soul, as an artist and as a human being. As anyone looking at our front page and at the name of our site will be able to tell: Lynch had an impact on us, and his absence will be felt.

We’ll dedicate most of this week’s trailer post to the weird, frightening, wonderful worlds of David Lynch, but first, let’s have a look at what we did this week.

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A Damn Fine Espresso: January 2025

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Sometimes they come back: in late 2024, Robert Eggers broke with his series of films titled “The” followed by a proper noun with the release of his remake of Nosferatu. Following F.W. Murnau’s 1922 version, a rip-off of Dracula so good that it took on a life (or should that be undeath?) of its own, and the 1979 remake by living legend Werner Herzog, Eggers’ Nosferatu calls back to the earlier versions while putting its own spin on the material. Join Alan and Matt for their discussion of the film: What does Eggers’ Nosferatu bring to the table? How does it compare to other versions of Nosferatu and of Dracula? What are the film’s greatest strengths, and where does it perhaps falter? And where do Matt and Alan stand on big bushy moustaches?

For more talk of the undead, make sure to check out our episode “Three Draculas” from October 2023, in which Julie, Sam and Matt talk about Murnau’s Nosferatu as well as the 1958 and 1992 versions of Dracula.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Dead, dead, dead

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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.

For this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt took us to the scene of the crime – or, in German, Tatort, one of the longest-running series on German television. Though here’s a trailer for an Austrian episode, because everything’s more charming with an Austrian accent.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Four Samurai and a Vampire

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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 post, Julie wrote about the photographer Peter Lindbergh and what his work meant to her. So, instead of a trailer, here’s a tribute video that was made when he died in 2019.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Another one bites the neck

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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.

Halloween is still a few weeks away, but October’s a good month for scary films. Are long-running franchises that basically repeat the same basic story over and over again really scary, though? Matt has some doubts in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees.

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The Corona Diaries: Coming up for air

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This is Matt again, so don’t expect the artsy playing with structure you get from Mege. Things here have been looking up for a week or two now, pandemic-wise. The numbers are great, almost disconcertingly so; listening to This American Life or Radiolab podcast episodes describing the situation in New York, for instance, feels like listening in on a parallel universe where COVID-19 struck fast and struck hard, while here, in Switzerland? Well, since we’re all about damn fine cups of culture, let’s put it in cultural terms: I’ll be able to go to the cinema on 6 June.

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The Rear-View Mirror: Dracula (1931)

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Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

I am entirely the wrong person to write this entry. It should be Julie. It should be anyone other than me, really. Because I’ve tried, I really have. I went and got the Universal Monster Box set of Blu-rays. I don’t have any problems with black and white. I don’t mind melodrama or cheese. Horror doesn’t have to be gory for me. Vampires haven’t altogether lost their glitter, as far as I’m concerned.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #28: Werner Herzog

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d1ad56da-abce-4afe-9f45-79294aede9e3It is finally time for us to talk about the Grand Old Wild Man of German cinema, the director who made Klaus Kinski drag a boat across a mountain, the man who directed a film where all the actors were under hypnosis and another film where Nicholas Cage may have been one of the more normal parts of the whole. Join your cultural baristas for a conversation about Werner Herzog and his films, ranging from Nosferatu the Vampyre (1978) via Grizzly Man (2005) to Encounters at the End of the World (2007).

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