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As the sheer Ho-ho-honess of the season descends on us, here’s a little something for under your tree: our 2023 Christmas Special. This year we’re taking the opportunity to put a Damn Fine fingerprint on the media meme of the year: Barbenheimer. Join us – Julie, Sam, Alan and Matt, but also Damn Fine O.G. Mege and favourite frequent guest Dan Thron of Martini Giant (who took some time this autumn to talk all things Exorcist with us) – as we come up with double bills and mash-ups of wildly divergent and strangely complementary movies, taking our listeners from Paddiface and The Wizard of Chess via a very special Boris Karloff two-header and Wonkas of the Flower Moon to The Sound of Eagles and Under the Hours. (FYI, most of these are working titles that we’ll have to workshop before the final product is pushed out the door, or so Marketing tells us.) So, in the spirit of plastic dolls come to life and Cillian Murphy’s piercing eyes, of learning to start worrying and hate the bomb and of being Just Ken, we at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture wish all of our listeners happy holidays filled with good films, series, books, games and music!

P.S.: For more on Baby Face and Killers of the Flower Moon, make sure to check out these episodes:

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #42: The Complicated Women of Pre-Code Cinema
A Damn Fine Espresso: November 2023 (in which Matt and Sam talk about Killers of the Flower Moon)

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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!

A car rides into darkness. The film cuts to the three passengers and we hear noise from the back of the car.

“The f*&k is that? … Jimmy?” says the man behind the wheel. “Did I hit something?”

“… the f*&ck is that?” the man in the back says. They pull over and get out. Lit by the red back light of the car the men draw their weapons. The man in the trunk is bloodied but still alive. Swearing, they finish him off. They are Henry, Jimmy and Tommy, our protagonists.

After this violent beginning Henry’s voice-over starts with what is probably the most famous line in the movie:

“As far back as I remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”

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