We’ve got a special treat for our April espresso podcast: say hello to Marcy Goldberg, Swiss-Canadian film historian, lecturer and media consultant. Marcy recently talked to the London-based author, critic and podcaster Anna Bogutskaya at a panel discussion organised by the Filmpodium Zürich. The Filmpodium is currently running a series of films in…

The pod must flow: Julie and Alan are back to talk about Dune: Part 2, and they’re once again joined by friend of the show Daniel Thron, one of the hosts of the Martini Giant podcast… and one of the people who worked on the visual effects for Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel. Did our intrepid three enjoy Part 2 a…

It’s the weekend before the Big Mama, the White Whale, the movie awards to end all movie awards: the Oscars. Who will win the Academy Awards 2024? Will Christopher Nolan And Cillian Murphy explode with the metaphorical force of a thousand suns? Will Barbie get what it can, in spite of the snubs for its director and star? What about Poor Things, Kil…

TV and murder are made for one another, and the crime series is still one of the most popular genres in television – but there’s no one quite like Lieutenant Columbo, the crumpled, harmless-seeming homicide detective played so memorably by Peter Falk, in ten seasons and 69 episodes over a stretch of 35 years (if you include the specials). What make…

Much as with Pringles, the problem with musicals is this: once you’ve enjoyed one or two, you can’t just stop. Earlier this month, Sam and Matt gave two movie musicals a second chance: A Chorus Line and Dancer in the Dark. While they didn’t necessarily come away from this with a renewed appreciation of those films, it felt to them that their conver…

Another year, another opportunity to give some films we didn’t particularly like another opportunity. Was it the films? Was it us? Was it just the wrong time to watch these? For this year’s movie revisit, Sam and Matt talk about two musicals that, at a first glance, couldn’t be much more different: Richard Attenborough’s 1985 adaptation of A Chorus…

For our first espresso podcast episode in 2024, Julie and Sam sit down together over a virtual coffee to talk about the Austrian director G.W. Pabst (1885 – 1967). Taking Pabst’s silent film classic Pandora’s Box (1929, adapted from Frank Wedekind’s play Lulu) as a starting point, the two discuss the director’s career as a filmmaker during the Weim…

Welcome to 2024! We at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture are beginning the year with a discussion of one of the greats of early Hollywood cinema: Buster Keaton, the Great Stone Face himself. Join Alan, Julie and Sam as they discuss three films by the master of deadpan physical comedy: One Week (1920), in which a newlywed couple attempts to assemble a hous…

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…

In a little over a week it’s Christmas – and what goes together better than Christmas and forging signatures, telling lies, impersonating practically anybody… and a little murder? Matt’s recently had an opportunity to check out the film adaptations of the adventures of a very naughty boy: Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley. In this month’s espresso po…

It’s not exactly a secret that Hollywood can be a tad self-centred: it loves making films about itself, sometimes lovingly so (such as in Singing in the Rain), sometimes bitingly caustic (take Sunset Boulevard, for instance). And this has pretty much been a part of Hollywood’s MO since the beginning. For our December podcast, join Julie, Sam and Al…

It’s the film that everyone’s had an opinion on, not least the devout Marvel fans and people who want an opportunity to go to the restroom during films of epic length: Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Join Sam and Matt for their discussion of Scorsese’s latest. How did the film land for a fan of the iconic American director, and what a…

This year’s Halloween has been and gone – but we’re continuing our recent run of horror-themed podcasts (with three Draculas and many more vampires) by dedicating our November episode to the late, great William Friedkin’s seminal film about demonic possession: The Exorcist. More than that, though, we’re bringing back one of A Damn Fine Cup of Cultu…

Do vampires get jealous that Dracula tends to hog all the attention? In this month’s espresso episode, Matt and Julie try to make up for this; after the most recent podcast featured not only one but three Draculas (in some cases under a different name, for copyright reasons), we’re returning to the pulsating vein of vampire fiction to talk about so…

Aside from Frankenstein’s creature perhaps, is there another movie monster as iconic as that most famous of vampires: Dracula? At the same time, has familiarity turned Dracula into something less than a monster? Is the famous count with the two pointy teeth still capable of instilling fear, or has he become too much of a cliché, even a cartoon? For…

Travels with our Sam: our resident James Bond expert/soundtrack fiend went back to La La Land itself for his summer holidays. Want to find out what Sam did on his hols? Join him and Julie as they talk about Sam’s SoCal adventures: bumping into movie stars at Starbucks, checking out the rides and the studio tours (but failing to find a good studio s…

Our summer of collaborations is coming to a close with one of the most iconic creative partnerships of Hollywood, going back almost 50 years: the collaboration between director Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams, which began in 1974 with Sugarland Express. Sam, Matt and Julie discuss this fruitful friendship, starting with Jaws (1975) and …

What’s giddy, grim, and black and white and pink all over? You’ve guessed it: just when the discourse has died down, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture goes all Barbenheimer on y’all. Join Alan and Matt as they talk about their impression of the memetic phenomenon of 2023 and discuss Greta Gerwig’s ultra-meta toy ad Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s ultra-Nol…

Our summer of collaborations continues with an iconic duo from Minnesota: the Coen Brothers are probably among the filmmakers of recent decades most associated with the (flawed) notion of the auteur – but at the same time, they’re among the directors who keep working with the same collaborators, whether they’re actors (Obviously Frances McDormand, …

As promised, one month after our espresso episode on the Indiana Jones series prior to the release of Dial of Destiny, we’re returning with another podcast that belongs in a museum! Join Sam, Alan and Matt as they talk about the fifth, and likely the final, film in the franchise. What did they think of Dial of Destiny? Is it another disappointment,…

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 J…

It’s June, and one of the year’s biggest blockbusters is just weeks away: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will be released on 30/6/2023. Will Harrison Ford, complete with hat and whip and iconic half-grin, deliver once again, as he did with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Will Old Man Jones stumble, as he argua…

Last year we dedicated the summer to some damn fine directors, from Jane Campion, Dario Argento (who was also the topic of our most recent espresso) and Ida Lupino to Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese. This year, we decided to look at some of the great collaborations of cinema, and for the first instalment in our Summer of Collaborations, Julie has…

For our May espresso we’ve got a crimson-coloured, deeply unsettling treat for our listeners. Italian horror-thriller maestro Dario Argento (Suspiria, Deep Red, Phenomena) already featured prominently in our Summer of Directors a year ago, but a spine-tingling encounter of the unmissable kind has brought Alan and Sam back to the mic to talk about h…

It had to happen sooner or later: for our May episode, Alan, Julie and Matt got together to talk about the genre of documentary films. Their subjects may not be the ones you might expect: while the likes of Ken Burns, Werner Herzog and Errol Morris get a mention, our three cultural baristas picked examples of the genre that are perhaps less well kn…

Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is not an easy watch – and for a long time it was especially difficult to find an opportunity to watch it, but thanks to its top slot in the Sight & Sound critics’ poll in 2022, it returned to a number of cinemas, giving some of us a chance to watch (or even rewatch) Akerman’s co…

What is it about films featuring androids called David that makes them, let’s say, not entirely successful with audiences and critics? Following their recent trip to the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London, Alan and Matt dedicate this this year’s Second Chances episode to two sci-fi films by iconic directors that are unlikely to feature on those dire…

Hooray for Hollywood… OR IS IT??? It’s the weekend of the 95th Academy Awards, and Alan and Matt got together in cyberspace to talk about this year’s Oscars. What are their thoughts on the Academy Awards in general? Are they big fans of the Oscars? And what do they think of this year’s nominees for the big awards: Best Actor, Best Actress and, obvi…

Our baristas have shown before that they have an eye for interesting locations in movies, in their discussion of their home towns and their appearances in films as well as in last summer’s episode on the cinema of Dario Argento. This month they’re going from a geographical, ‘on location’ scale to the more individual, designed spaces of interior and…

When we talk about cinematic serial killers, we usually think of the likes of Hannibal Lecter: charismatic sociopaths, individuals that are intellectually brilliant but utterly amoral, and whose killing usually follows some grand aesthetic design, making them queasy stand-ins for artists. Saeed Hanaei, the man who murdered sex workers in Mashhad, I…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that at least some of us here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture have a general aversion to films that are based on a true story – but it is just as true that some of the greatest films of all time took their inspiration from real events. One such film is Sidney Lumet’s 1975 crime drama Dog Day Afternoon, which tel…

For our first espresso episode of 2023, Julie and Sam got together to once again share their love of good film soundtracks and to talk about soundtrack concerts. What is the experience of watching a film while a live orchestra is playing the soundtrack? What’s the overall state of film music and movie concerts? What are some of the duo’s favourite …

For most of our podcasts, and many of our posts, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture talks about films – which makes sense, because we love cinema, but there is so much more to culture. Why is it that the conversation usually defaults to movies? And why don’t we talk about other media more often? In our first episode of 2023, Julie, Matt and Sam decide to a…

It’s that time of the year again: join the gang at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture for a festive celebration and a look back at the year. In keeping with our big summer series, the Summer of Directors, we’re thinking back on the five episodes where we talked about Jane Campion, Dario Argento, Ida Lupino, Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese. Featuring cont…

This year’s December espresso is a very special episode: a few weeks ago, Alan and Matt visited the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the London College of Communication, a place replete with scripts, research materials, production and post-production documents, props, costumes, sound tapes, publicity material and much, much more. Sadly, it’s obviously no…

Is there anything more terrifying, more capable of evoking fear, than the one-syllable word? Obviously yes – but it is still noteworthy how many recent horror films have gone for a monosyllabic title (which suggests that A24 may have a limited contingent of syllables to make up their titles). In our latest podcast, Alan is joined by Julie and Sam t…

After our recent podcast episode on festivals, Sam decided to get in on the fun as well, so he and Matt took the opportunity to talk about a festival that Sam worked on for several years: Queersicht, the LGBTIAQ+ film festival held annually in Bern, Switzerland. Sadly, we just missed the 2022 instalment of Queersicht – incidentally, the 25th annive…

Second Chances, second time: a little over a year ago we first decided to give a couple of films we’d not been overly enamoured with another try to see if time or adjusted expectations had changed anything – or if our first, negative take persisted. This year, it’s Alan and Sam’s turn to revisit films they didn’t like the first time around – and, i…

As with our September shot of espresso, in which we talked about the first season of the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, we’re staying in the land of Netflix: this month Julie and Alan talk about Andrew Dominik’s Blonde – again an adaptation, this time of Joyce Carol Oates garage-sized novel. What did our cultural baristas think of Dominik’s m…

Summer is over, as is our Summer of Directors – and this also means that the main festival period of 2022 has come to an end. The last few years, festivals have been greatly affected by the pandemic, and especially in 2020 and 2021 many of the big festivals were vastly reduced or didn’t happen at all. But this year they came back – and after our fi…

Last month, Netflix released the first season of its adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s seminal graphic novel The Sandman – and seeing how Julie and Matt met on the Neil Gaiman message board and began their ongoing conversation about films, books, TV and all things cultural there, we couldn’t really let the opportunity pass. How well does Netflix’ Sandman…

Our Summer of Directors comes to an end: after Jane Campion, Dario Argento, Ida Lupino and Robert Altman, we’ve arrived at Julie’s choice of director: Martin Scorsese. Poor Marty has come under attack in recent years, especially from fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – but ironically, Julie takes issue with Scorsese’ statements on the MCU more …

Sam’s been travelling, and in this month’s espresso episode, he talks to Alan about his first-time trip to the place that is a byword for American cinema: Hollywood! What’s it like for a European movie geek to visit the city? And what kind of stardust memories has Sam added to his portfolio? Seeing how one of the films he saw while on the road was …

Our Summer of Directors continues with Robert Altman, the maverick director whose subversive takes on quintessentially American genres helped shape 1970s Hollywood cinema. Join Alan, Matt and frequent contributor Daniel Thron from fellow film podcast Martini Giant as they discuss three Altman classics: the darkly satirical neo-noir Chandler adaptat…

A Damn Fine Cup of Culture has talked about musicals before – but this month’s espresso is a special treat: Alan has seen the production of Cabaret that is currently being shown at the Playhouse Theatre in London. He and Julie talk about the production and how it compares to Christopher Isherwood’s original stories that Cabaret is based on, as well…

Our Summer of Directors reaches its midpoint, with an episode that is special in two different respects. For one thing, we’re talking about an artist whose name should be much, much more familiar than it is: Ida Lupino, the English-American actress, singer, writer, producer, and, yes, director, whose films such as Outrage, The Bigamist and The Hitc…

We’ve talked about movies and music before, and for our June Espresso episode, Sam and Matt pick up the tune again, talking about two films they’ve recently seen that are all about the music. Sam watched Ennio, the 2021 documentary about iconic composer Ennio Morricone, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (of Cinema Paradiso fame), while Matt caught Aca…

And our Summer of Directors continues: after celebrating the tactility of Jane Campion’s films last month, we continue with a very different kind of physicality, with the variform violence done to bodies and minds in the phantasmagoric cinema of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento. Join Sam, Julie and Alan as they dissect a trio of Argento’s films, fro…

In the mood for a little cup of culture? Tune in for our May espresso, in which Alan and Matt discuss the latest addition to the MCU, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Spoiler: While they both enjoy the MCU, they were less than taken with Sam Raimi’s return to superhero movies. They both agree, however, that the MCU would benefit from ha…

Never mind that May is still firmly spring in most people’s minds: we are launching the Summer of Directors, a series of podcasts, each of which is dedicated to one particular director, and we’re doing so with an episode dedicated to two-time Academy Award winner Jane Campion, who first took the little statuette home for her original screenplay for…