Author: samlinder

Six Damn Fine Degrees #290: The Hydra on film (for Matt)

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Jason fights the Hydra (courtesy of Ray Harryhausen) in 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts (Video source: Movieclips.com).

Matt was right of course in his latest instalment: the fact that this series of articles, amazingly, is close to reaching its 300th iteration comes down to the fact that our handful of writers and podcasters just simply can’t stop coming up with free (and often wild) associations for the upcoming week: from John Garfield to Garfield the cat, from camp cinema to Bill Camp, or from Christopher Lee to Metallica. Every entry almost immediately begets a next one, sometimes going down completely unexpected avenues and joining personal favourites with life-long trauma, latest reviews with childhood memories or quasi-philosophical reflections with pulp explorations. Every post-recording conversation spawns the stuff for three more episodes and two new series on average. Our team of baristas has really become the Hydra on film, popping up with a new head each time one thinks the topic at hand has been exhausted.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #287: Age perfect?

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Extreme close-up on the face of Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) as the first sunlight hits the garden behind her. Soon a ray catches her tired, ragged, desperate face. An excruciating night of middle-aged drinking lies behind her now, behind George (Richard Burton), her dishevelled yet razor-sharp husband of many years, who has dealt Martha his final blow in their night-long cruel games, innuendos and infidelities. Martha seems a broken woman now as she slowly recuperates from her sobs and the two look on into an uncertain older age. Fade out and credits over Alex North’s deceptively beautiful harp and guitar elegy that brings Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) to a shattering close.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #279: Sarajevo, my love

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

It’s one of those cinematic moments in history classes that high school students almost get to know by heart: on the morning of 28 June, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand wakes up to meet with officials at the Sarajevo city hall on a tour to convince the sceptical Bosniaks that being freshly annexed by Austria-Hungary is actually a good thing. 28 June happens to be a doubly important date for both the next-door Serbs, who commemorate the defeat against the Ottoman Empire in 1389, and for the Archduke, heir to the throne, who celebrates his wedding anniversary with wife Sophie, who has joined him on the trip to Bosnia.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #274: Berlin on film

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

At first glance, Berlin hasn’t quite been as cinematic a city as, let’s say, romantic Paris, foggy London, cosmopolitan New York or sunny L.A. However, its tumultuous history during the first 100 years of cinema has made it an ideal space for movies that used it as more than just a postcard background. Arguably, the number of times Berlin’s cityscape felt like an active participant in the plot has to be significantly higher than the myriad establishing shots of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben or the downtown zoom shot of the Hollywood sign used elsewhere.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #269: Heartstopper!

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

When Nick and Charlie touch, little squiggly cartoon flashes of electricity appear around them and you can literally feel the sparkles going off between them in the air. What seems just like an original reference to its graphic novel source material, Alice Oseman‘s Heartstopper series, proves to be symbolic for the runaway success this Netflix show has enjoyed far beyond the queer community: its truly feel-good approach is heartstoppingly essential for the present moment.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #264: Agatha Christie’s Endless Night

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Waves crash against anonymous moonlit rocks while the credits promise an eclectic mix of British and international talent: it’s Hayley Mills and Hywell Bennet (fresh off 1968‘s Twisted Nerve), Swedish actor/director Per Oscarsson (from 1966’s Hunger) and fellow countrywoman Britt Ekland (between her Peter Sellers and Rod Stewart relationships and soon to be Bond Girl). There’s eternal Miss Moneypenny Lois Maxwell and All About Eve‘s George Sanders, and it’s directed by Sidney Gilliat (author/producer of Hitchcock’s early British films) and, unmistakeably, scored by Bernard Herrmann – its ondulating, dramatic main theme reminiscent of the perturbing romanticism of Vertigo and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Have I gone to cinematic heaven? How could I have missed a film like this one, the 1972 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s late novel Endless Night?!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #261: Roger Corman’s Big Little Shop of Horrors

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Melanie’s review of 1980s cult musical Little Shop of Horrors through teenagers’ eyes finally gives me a chance to loop back, not only to the 1960 original directed by Roger Corman, but also to the director/producer himself, who arguably became one of the greatest masterminds of copycatting any movie hit within his own production universe. Roger Corman was running his own, wildly successful shop of horrors – actually a big, bold, fiercely independent venture of horrors, thrills, and other exploits!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #252: Lombard & Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Carole Lombard’s unique status as the lady of screwball comedy, as well as her unexpectedly salty sense of humour and use of language, were at the centre of last week’s post. It reminded me, of course, that the final comedic performance released during her lifetime – before it was tragically cut short by the infamous Nevada plane crash in 1941 – was Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Alfred Hitchcock’s one and only pure foray into pure American screwball (and now annoyingly mixed up with the 2005 Brangelina flick of the same name). Even though Lombard’s penultimate performance is easily eclipsed by her last role in Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be, I thought that reevaluating her Hitchcock role was certainly worth my while, especially since it’s one of the most overlooked and most easily criticised Hitchcock entries.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #249: Mommie Dearest!

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

There is no other single film that has as consistently shown up in clips and reels in my social media feed as Mommie Dearest (1981), the now legendary adaptation of the tell-all book by Christina Crawford about her mother Joan, infamously starring Faye Dunaway in a practically career-(b)ending turn. The sensationalist account of an abusive Hollywood icon and the deep psychological scars it left on her daughter must have been immediately earmarked for a movie adaptation – and what an adaptation it became! Melanie’s piece about abusive mothers, fathers and their vindictive daughters in Chinese drama series The Glory last week finally gave me a shameless chance to expose myself to Mommie Dearest in full for the very first time!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #245: The Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland Story

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Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

Sellers and Ekland as happy newlyweds? Not exactly, with Sellers recovering from his recent heart attack only months after their marriage.

Despite not ending up as the lead in Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me Stupid, 1964 really was Peter Sellers’ seminal year: not only was he following up the success of his most popular role as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series’ second (many say even better) instalment, A Shot in the Dark. He also starred in Stanley Kubrick’s darkly satirical Dr Strangelove in no less than three separate roles, for which he would garner a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

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