psycho – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: What a tangled web we weave

Apr 9, 2023Apr 9, 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.

The recent news that apparently a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo was in the works sent ripples of outrage through some corners of the internet – but it seems that our resident Hitchcock-phile Sam is remarkably open-minded about the possibility of someone else taking a stab at the classic.

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Headspace Oddity: I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)

Sep 9, 2020Matt3 Comments

I sometimes wonder: does Charlie Kaufman actually believe that anyone outside his mind is real? His main characters definitely seem to have their doubts. At times they seem to think that they’re the only real people in the world – and they’re not even sure of that. These characters also tend to b the Charlie Kaufman stand-ins in the films, the solipsistic, self-doubting sad sacks struggling with a distinct sense of unreality. If you need others to affirm that you exist, yet you’re not sure that they do, not really? Well, you’re in a bit of a pickle.

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The Rear-View Mirror: Bernard Herrmann (1911)

Jul 17, 2020Mege1 Comment

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!

You don’t have to be into movies all that much to have been scared by Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975). He started composing when still a teenager and also worked as an orchestrator and conductor later on. One of his first notable contributions was for Orson Welles’ original 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds. Hermann’s music must have had a hand in the fact that so many listeners thought that the Martians were really coming.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Writers, directors, psychos and other criminals

Jun 7, 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.

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #25: Psychopaths (2)

Aug 3, 2019Sep 1, 2019Matt3 Comments

Sometimes they come back: since our last episode, where we discussed black and white movie psychopaths, couldn’t contain all the cinematic psychoses, we’re dedicating a second episode to our favourite psycho killers. Starting from the question what we consider the archetypical pop culture psychopaths, our three intrepid pop culture baristas embark on a journey, beginning with the capo of New Jersey from HBO’s The Sopranos. Is Tony Soprano a narcissistic psychopath or does he really care about those ducks? We then move on to ’60s and ’70s San Francisco and gaze into the absence at the centre of David Fincher’s Zodiac, before the episode finally ends on American Psycho and the dark, cold, empty heart of Wall Street psychopathy.

If you haven’t already done so, make sure to check out episode 24, where we talked about movie psychopaths and psychopath movies, from Night of the Hunter via Fritz Lang’s M to the psycho granddaddy of them all: Norman Bates and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #24: Psychopaths (1)

Jul 13, 2019Jul 12, 2019Matt2 Comments

d1ad56da-abce-4afe-9f45-79294aede9e3 From the Weimar Republic child murderer of Fritz Lang’s M (1931) via Reverend Harry Powell from the dark fairy tale The Night of the Hunter (1955) to Hitchcock’s seminal Psycho (1960) and its twitchy Norman Bates: what better way to celebrate summer with your cultural barristas than with a chat about some good, old-fashioned classic films with and about psychopaths?

We will return to the psycho well to discuss more modern movie psychopaths for our 25th episode, coming to your earbuds this August.

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The Rear-View Mirror: Halloween (1978)

Apr 5, 2019Sep 26, 2019MattLeave a comment

Psycho never scared me. I think the main reason for this is that I came to it too late: by the time I saw Norman Bates dressed as his mother, stab-stab-stabbing his way through various cast members, I’d seen all the quotes, echoes, parodies. (You can’t be a teenager watching several seasons worth of The Simpsons without seeing an average of 17.3 parodies of Psycho. It’s a scientific fact.) To some extent, I ended up watching the film and feeling that, meh, it’s all been done before – which is unfair and inaccurate, because so often and in so many ways, Psycho did it first. I still enjoy the film for the sheer craftsmanship that Hitchcock and his collaborators put into the film, and for the impish glee with which they establish the female lead – only to kill her off. But no, Psycho never scared me.

Halloween, though? Halloween scared the living daylights out of me.

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In a world…

Sep 30, 2010MattLeave a comment

Alien. Comedian. Magnolia. Psycho. What do these films have in common, other than snappy, one-word titles?

The Onion‘s A.V. Club knows: Coming-attraction attractions: 24 movie trailers that function as standalone works of art. Worth checking out, not least because of gems such as its description of Magnolia as “a sprawling, awkward, almost brutally sincere film”.

Talking of which, I do love that trailer:

P.S.: Was I the only kid who had sort of an older-woman crush on Melinda Dillon after watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind and A Christmas Story?