A Damn Fine Espresso: February 2026

The show must go on: our recent podcast episode on Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead got Sam and Matt thinking. While there’s a long-standing link between the stage and the screen, theatre and cinema are nonetheless different forms of art. What makes theatre tick differently from film? What translates well from one format to the other, and what is lost in the process? Where could a lot of cinema perhaps learn from the stage? What films are there based on stage plays that survived the transition from one medium to another – and perhaps even benefited? And what movies escape the conventions of cinema and bring a dollop of theatrical magic onto the screen?

P.S.: For more theatre talk at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, make sure to check out last year’s March espresso, in which Sam talks to Julie about putting Clare Boothe Luce’s Broadway play The Women – famously made into a film by George Cukor in 1939 – on the stage. And for a discussion of Miloš Forman’s brilliant film adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, may we recommend A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #53: Exactly the right number of notes – Amadeus (1984)?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The smaller they come

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, Matt revisited some of the time loop stories he’s enjoyed most.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #101: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Heads. Heads. Heads. If you have a moment, why not join us as we flip coins and somehow always end up with the same result? In our February podcast, Julie, Sam and Matt remember the late, great Tom Stoppard, in particular his seminal play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) and especially Stoppard’s 1990 film adaptation of the same title, which starred Gary Oldman, Tim Roth and Richard Dreyfuss. How does Rosencrantz and Guildenstern land only a couple of months after Stoppard’s death on 29 November 2025? How does this quintessential piece of metatheatre translate onto the screen? Is it better to be alive or dead in a box? Can we give you love and rhetoric without the blood? And was there a moment, at the beginning, when they could have said no?

P.S.: For more on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (both the play and the film), and on why Roger Ebert was wrong about the screen adaptation, check out Julie’s Six Damn Fine Degrees #176 from way back in April 2024.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Waiter, there’s a worm in my desert!

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.

Can one not be on a boat? Is England just a conspiracy of cartographers? And what’s the use of a short, blunt human pyramid? Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead may not answer any of these questions, but it’s definitely worth visiting and then revisiting – as Julie can assure our readers.

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