A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

Hundreds of films and TV series make it onto our screens each year – but just as many vanish, some before they ever make it in front of an audience. The second episode of our summer series, the Lost Summer,… Continue reading →

Our recent podcast episode on David Lynch, marking the start of our 2025 series Lost Summer, prompted us to pick up where that episode left of: for two of the films we discussed earlier this month, Blue Velvet and Twin… Continue reading →

This month’s podcast kicks off our summer series for 2025: the Lost Summer is all about what we’ve lost – directors, actors, films – and what this means to us. We’re starting with one that is very close to our… Continue reading →

It’s been a while since we’ve been excited about the Marvel Cinematic Universe here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture – so when Thunderbolts*, the 36th movie in the franchise was released to largely positive reviews, we were curious:… Continue reading →

Does a killer title make for a killer movie? When Philip Kaufman adapted Milan Kundera’s early-’80s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being for the big screen, it made a huge splash at its release in 1988, drawing audience numbers that,… Continue reading →

Back in 2022, we did our first summer series: the Summer of Directors. The episode led by Alan focused on Robert Altman, the “grizzly-bear genius of American cinema”, as Ryan Gilbert put it in The Guardian. Back then, we discussed… Continue reading →

To many fans of detective fiction, he’s the greatest sleuth of them all: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. He’s figured in many stories, novels, films, TV series and video games, to mention just a few of Mr Holmes’ exploits. He… Continue reading →

What do our baristas do when they’re not podcasting or writing blog posts about Korean series, animated favourites, or their addiction to the Criterion Collection? In Sam’s case, he teaches at a Swiss grammar school – and he regularly stages… Continue reading →

This Sunday, the 97th instalment of the Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars, will be awarded in Hollywood. In keeping with the times, it has been an uncommonly heated lead-up to this year’s awards, and not everyone is… Continue reading →

For our February espresso podcast, we’ve got a very special treat: this month, Matt and Julie talk to British writer, critic, curator and film historian Pamela Hutchinson. Pamela, a regular contributor to the Guardian and to Sight & Sound, joins… Continue reading →

It’s that time of the year again, when we look at films we didn’t enjoy originally and give them another chance. This time it’s Sam and Alan having another look at movies they’d previously bounced off of, and both films… Continue reading →

Sometimes they come back: in late 2024, Robert Eggers broke with his series of films titled “The” followed by a proper noun with the release of his remake of Nosferatu. Following F.W. Murnau’s 1922 version, a rip-off of Dracula so… Continue reading →

Welcome to 2025! We’re taking the new year as an opportunity to look both forward and into the past – and to do something we’ve never done before: for the very first time (no, Robin Beck, we don’t mean you!)… Continue reading →

It is that time of the year again: snow, carol singing, and Bruce Willis crawling through air vents muttering to himself before he delivers the presents. Which also means: it’s time for our Christmas Special! This year, we’re taking the… Continue reading →

It’s December – which means, it’s time for snow! And since the actual white stuff falling from the sky is becoming rarer and rarer in many places, your cultural baristas at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture are talking about… Continue reading →

We’ve covered remakes extensively this summer, but what about their often derided sibling, the sequel? We’re taking the recent release of two high-profile sequels, Joker: Folie à deux and Gladiator 2, as an opportunity to talk about sequels. Are they… Continue reading →

For this year’s summer series, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture focused on remakes, from men who knew too much and trucks bearing explosive goods to planets that create their own remakes and finally to stars being born and dying.… Continue reading →

On the podcast, we’ve talked about festivals before, both about specific festivals (such as Queersicht, the annual LGBTIAQ+ film festival held in Bern, Switzerland) and about the experience of going to cultural festivals of any kind. Autumn is festival season,… Continue reading →

The 1970s were a bad time for men travelling in Europe, doubly so if they were following the traces of a mysterious girl, and triply so if they weren’t good at listening to advice. Before you know it, you meet… Continue reading →

We’ve talked about the Alien franchise before on our podcast, so we didn’t want to miss the opportunity presented by the release of the latest addition to the series, Alien: Romulus, which came out in August. Join Sam and Alan… Continue reading →

Our Summer of Remakes is coming to an end, with a conversation about not one, two, three or four films, but a whopping five, starting with What Price Hollywood? (1932), which was adapted in 1937 into A Star Is Born… Continue reading →

Imagine not only being a cinephile, and not only writing and talking about film – but doing this professionally: being a film critic is something many of us in the blogosphere dream of. Meet Alan Mattli: Alan is not only… Continue reading →

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972), an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, is classic sci-fi cinema: as can be expected of a film by Tarkovsky, it is intriguing, hypnotic, at times sublime, but undoubtedly also confounding and even frustrating at times.… Continue reading →

Summer is a good time to catch up on films and series – in this case, the Netflix series Ripley, created by Steven Zaillian and released last spring. The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted before, most famously as Plein… Continue reading →

Our Summer of Remakes podcast series continues with its second episode: after June’s Hitchcock double bill, we’re changing country (at least once) but staying with thrills and suspense. Imagine being stuck in a dead-end town, together with other men with… Continue reading →