Author: samlinder

Six Damn Fine Degrees #164: Double-O-Dahl

samlinder3 Comments

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.

Oddly enough, my first encounter with a Roald Dahl story did not come via Mathilda or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, nor with The Witches (even though I saw the Anjelica Houston version early and loved it!), Fantastic Mr Fox (so joyfully discussed in Julie’s last post) or one of his many short stories (repeatedly adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents). It was that one foray of the world-famous children’s book author and macabre genius into the world of James Bond that I was compulsively obsessed by starting at age 12: his screenplay to 1967’s You Only Live Twice.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #159: The delightful anarchy of Gremlins 2 (1990)

samlinder4 Comments

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

The perfect follow-up to the mixed media delight of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (so lovingly remembered in last week’s piece by Julie) for the pre-Christmas season, in my mind, is clearly the most insane, self-referential sequel of them all!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #154: Ivor Novello – All Downhill From Here?

samlinder3 Comments

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!

Julie’s wonderful reminder of silent film star Ivor Novello, whose most lasting screen appearance must indeed be Hitchcock’s The Lodger, but whose popular legacy was assured thanks to Robert Altman’s inclusion among the Gosford Park kaleidoscope of characters, reminded me of that other Hitchcock he made – and that’s why for my follow up post, it’s all Downhill from here!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #152: Movies as rollercoaster rides

samlinder2 Comments

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!

Among the many ways popular American blockbusters have been commercialised and marketed, the theme park ride at locations such as Disneyworld, Universal or Warner Studios literally made rollercoaster rides out of movies designed to shake and thrill their audiences at cinemas to begin with. Jaws (1975), considered by most to be the first true summer blockbuster, still has its legendary spot in Universal Studio City, which I was able to witness this summer going back to L.A.: somewhere along the studio tour and just after passing the original Bates Motel does one drive by remnants of Amity Island, mostly small houses and a pond, in which a scuba diver gets suddenly and unceremoniously eaten in front of visitors’ eyes, just before ‘Bruce’ the shark himself unexpectedly pokes up his mouth out of the water for a quick but intense fright.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #147: The Exorcist, Too!

samlinder6 Comments

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!

An Ennio Morricone-scored movie that exists in a variety of versions? When reading Alan’s latest insightful piece on the many cuts initially made to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, I couldn’t help but be possessed by my teenage memories of watching that infamous sequel to a great horror classic, Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and learning about the many different re-edits it had gone through – to no avail: The movie was a massive critical and commercial failure and, despite releases of all kinds of versions, has found few friends since.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #143: How “Wednesday” puts the extra ‘d’ in Addams Family

samlinder4 Comments

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 might somewhat seem like a bit of a short stretch from Alan’s previous piece on the long-term writing of author Douglas Adams, but here’s a chance to gush about a Netflix series that puts more than that extra ‘d’ into the famous family name: Wednesday, released late last year, puts the Addams Family daughter front and center of eight episodes and gives fresh blood to a cultural phenomenon that started over eighty years ago.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #139: The key to doomsday cinema

samlinder2 Comments

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!

As our last two posts cleverly pointed out, movies dealing with the end of the world are almost as old as cinema itself. Yet, combined with times of crises, war and disorientation such as the present day seems to be, the genre has always been even more fruitful and frightening.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #135: Amazing Avengers Associations

samlinder4 Comments

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!

Everything is connected: Just think of Emma Peel, Tracy Bond and Olena Tyrell, all played by Diana Rigg!

Reading Alan’s insightful observations about the Dark Phoenix saga from last week and his reference to British cult series The Avengers (1961-69; renewed in 1976/77, The Movie in 1999), I was reminded what these Six Degrees posts are really all about: connecting everything in the world of film, music and culture to everything else. And there is hardly another series that represents that principle of six degrees removed as well as The Avengers!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #132: Cowboys, monks and (first) videotapes

samlinder3 Comments

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!

Matt’s charming piece on his first encounter with Indiana Jones’ first adventure and his parents’ media pioneering brought back my own childhood memories of how I first discovered movies on videotape – and particularly which two films I watched over and over for family reasons.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #129: All About Fedora

samlinder7 Comments

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!

Julie‘s lucid case for All About Eve over Sunset Boulevard as the ultimate satire on Hollywood stardom reminded me that beside these classic companion pieces, there is a third: a bookend, so to speak, a swan song: Fedora (1978), Billy Wilder‘s last truly big-budget film, a film so maligned and obscured, it took me years to come by it and begin to appreciate it as the wonderful gem that it is.

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