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!
During the 1970s, the BBC were to make an annual ghost story to be broadcast over the Christmas period. Under the auspices of producer Laurence Gordon Clark, they delivered a festive dose of chills memorable enough that they have since acquired quite a cult following. These BBC ghost stories for Christmas are all excellent stand-alone dramas, brilliantly delivering a creepy, unsettling tale for the Yuletide audience.
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!
If you had asked me in the early aughts about my favourite writers, it’s very likely that Neil Gaiman would have been one of the names I mentioned. Like many I know, I first encountered him via Terry Pratchett, when I read Good Omens (1990), co-written by Pratchett and Gaiman, and fell in love with it. Next came the short story collection Smoke and Mirrors (1998), with its tales that ranged from urban fantasy and horror to stranger, more meta fare, and shortly after, I got into The Sandman (1989-1996), arguably Gaiman’s magnum opus in a big way. Once I’d made my way through the ten volumes of that series, there was a phase during which I bought almost everything Gaiman wrote. (Ironically, not his anthology comic Endless Nights, which is what furnishes this post with its link to last week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees.) I recommended him to friends, even to some of my teachers at university. After I graduated and started teaching at Uni myself, I did an introductory course on comics, and one of the texts I had my students read was issue 19 of The Sandman, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Yes, I was that kind of fan.
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!
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!
I used to get a bit miffed whenever I heard people say that films, and especially film adaptations, stunt people’s imagination. The argument went: if you read a book, you imagine what people look and sound like, but then you watch the movie of the book and your imagination gets fixed: Alan Grant looks like Sam Neill, Annie Wilkes is the spitting image of Kathy Bates, Michael Corleone could easily be mistaken for a young Al Pacino. No more freedom of the imagination, no more imagination: you read the lines, and you see and hear the actor who made the role famous on the big screen.
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!
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!
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!
Sam’s post on Hitchcock’s odd movie out, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, reminded me not only of the delights of watching a sniping couple, but also of that very specific joy that blooms when you consume something completely different and it rocks.
Remember those last few seasons of Game of Thrones, and especially the finale? How a series that started strong took a dive once it moved past the plot written by its original author, George R. R. Martin, and, to many of its critics, became not just mediocre but outright bad in its home stretch, turning complex, nuanced characters into caricatures of themselves?
I enjoyed Game of Thrones in its first few seasons yet also found its last third disappointing, but for me, that disappointment was rather abstract. I didn’t take the series’ nosedive personally. Sure, I would have preferred for it to remain good, but I didn’t end up hate-watching the final few seasons, I just disengaged and got what fun there was to be had out of the spectacle and the nonsensical plot developments, at arms’ length.
Sadly, this didn’t work for me with The Handmaid’s Tale.
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!
Speaking of sci-fi novels: You guys, I did it! I binge read all the novels of Lois McMaster Bujold’s space opera, the Vorkosigan Saga, in about three weeks. All 17 of them.
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.
This week, Alan wrote about his childhood love for Greg Bear’s novel Blood Music – which makes for a great Six Damn Fine Degrees post, but sadly, it makes the whole issue of finding a trailer difficult, since Bear’s writings had never been turned into films or TV series. However, YouTube does have a reading of the original short story that Bear expanded into the novel, so if you need one hour of audio while you’re cooking or doing the dishes, why not check this out?
