I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The 2023 Assembly of the Toshiro Mifune Appreciation Society

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.

Some love them… but Matt’s more ambivalent about cult TV and cult movies. Check out this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees to find out why – or you can also just stay here and watch this trailer for the cult classic The Prisoner. Because, after all, you are not a number, right?

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #70: Summer of Collaborations – Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune

After the inaugural episode of our Summer of Collaborations (starting with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn), we’ve arrived at the second instalment of our summer series, this time focusing on a collaboration that gave us iconic performances and classic films across a range of genres – though the one that perhaps comes to mind first is that of Jidaigeki (Japanese period drama), and more specifically, the samurai film. We are, of course, talking about the films resulting from the collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. Join Alan, Julie and Matt as they discuss Rashomon (1950), a film that mixes genre to such an extent that Wikipedia describes it, inadequately, as a “Jidaigeki psychological thriller-crime film”; Yojimbo (1961), the action-packed samurai film that Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars stole from liberally; and High and Low (1963), a police procedural crime drama about a botched kidnapping. What made the collaboration between Kurosawa and Mifune work so well? How does it develop over these three films? And just how does Mifune manage to look so damn cool wearing a threadbare kimono and stroking his chin?

For last year’s summer series of podcasts, check this link:

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture: Summer of Directors (2022)

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