Six Damn Fine Degrees

Six Damn Fine Degrees #64: Madeline Kahn’s moments to shine

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!

Just like Alan (so charmingly revisited in last week’s post), one of my favourite comedies of all time is Peter Bogdanovic’s screwball delight What’s Up, Doc? (1972). Besides the great rapport between Barbara Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, the perfect sense for timing and the riotous chase up and down the streets of San Francisco, I was most in love with one supporting actress in particular, the lovely Madeline Kahn. Her role as O’Neal’s annoying fiancée Eunice could easily have been a thankless one as the target of our spite and schadenfreude. Kahn, however, infused it with so much comedic energy, her ear-piercing voice chasing after her soon-to-be lost fiancé “Howard!”, to the audience’s great enjoyment. She was not too fond of her role, however, caught in ugly frocks and atrocious wigs and constantly making a fool of herself, but she certainly left an impression on one man in particular: upcoming comedy director Mel Brooks.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #63: What’s Up Doc?

Alan Kuhl Graham1 Comment

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!

A lot is written about Hollywood’s tendency for remakes. And a lot of it seems needlessly negative in my opinion. There’s nothing wrong with having another spin at an old success, it’s a formula as old as Hollywood. Often it fails, but sometimes it’s worth the effort. I’ve not crunched the numbers but I’m pretty sure the ratio of few successes/mostly failures is probably the same as for brand new films.

But alongside the Hollywood remake there’s another interesting beast. The film that is so clearly inspired by another, which doesn’t so much wear the influence on its sleeves as don the exact same influence tuxedo. It’s not a remake because it doesn’t do anything so obvious as try to recreate the plot, or the characters but instead takes as the starting point what the film’s makers loved about the earlier film and tries to find ways to make that work in a brand new context.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #62: The Cat’s Meow

Julie4 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!

Peter Bogdanovich is probably best known for his early films such as The Last Picture Show or Paper Moon, although to a modern audience his face might be most recognizable as Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, the psychiatrist’s psychiatrist in The Sopranos. For all his many accomplishments I am perhaps most fond of his interviews. Books such as Who the Devil Made It or Who the Hell’s in It. His epic three-hour interview with Orson Welles, or the wistful Directed by John Ford. Bogdanovich was not just a filmmaker, he was a lover of movie culture and – notably – of movie lore.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #61: Tony “Scheherazade” Soprano

Matt1 Comment

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 met my now-wife back in the previous millennium. It took a while for things to work out between the two of us – anywhere between nine and eleven years, depending on how you measure and what you take as the starting point of a relationship that developed over a fairly long time, and that is still developing and growing. But especially during the first few years, there were a few constants. From the first, we went to the cinema with each other a lot. And early on, we would start watching TV series together – and once you start with a TV series with someone else, you can’t just go off and watch it on your own, because that would be simply uncivilised. Over the years we’ve watched so many series together: great ones, good ones, a fair few mediocre ones and even a couple of series that were plain bad. (I’m looking at you, Hunted and Intruders!) From Battlestar Galactica to Veronica Mars, from Ultraviolet to Lost, from House of Cards (the BBC original) to Edge of Darkness (also the BBC original).

But somehow, I would say that our origin story, our relationship as first friends and then more than friends as facilitated by television, really began with a mobster who went to see a psychiatrist.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #60: My daughter, the Marvel fan

Mege3 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!

I would have liked to dazzle you with a cool origin story, but I can’t remember how and when my favourite daughter found her love for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am pretty sure she saw the first few movies in chronological sequence at home on BluRay, too young to have seen then in the theatres, so Tony Stark, Cap and the Hulk came to her at home, and it was probably the first Avengers movie that she saw in an upholstered seat, ticket in hand, with a bag of popcorn, on the big silver screen. But she was hooked long before that.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #59: Watching Star Wars with my 10 year-old niece

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!

Do you remember when you first saw the original Star Wars trilogy? Did you possibly even see it when it first came out or, if not, at least upon the movies’ return to the cinema in their ‘improved’ version in the late 1990s? I was among the many who had gotten used to bad video tape quality since the late ’80s and was stunned when eventually seeing them on the big screen, just before the disappointment of Episode I (The Phantom Mess) hit. Even trying to think really hard, however, I can’t remember my first reaction to the big plot twists: did I suspect Darth Vader was Luke’s father? Or Leia his twin sister? Did I believe Vader would redeem himself at the end? And did I mind (as Matt so poignantly asked in last week’s post)?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #58: Redemption song

Matt2 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!

I used to be a massive sucker for redemption stories, in films, books, games, anything that tells a story. Darth Vader? Severus Snape? Buffy‘s Spike? Or, to choose a somewhat more seasonal example, Ebenezer Scrooge? Oh, yes, please, give me more of that! Conflicted villains that, at the last moment, find the goodness in their hearts were very much my thing.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #57: Naked (1993)

Julie2 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 is important to set up for the audience the worst possible picture of this guy.”

This is how Mike Leigh describes the pre-credit scene, the very first moments in his film, and the very first glimpse we get of Johnny, its protagonist. We see him from behind, committing what is, or certainly turns into, a rape. Then he runs off, steals a car, and while he is underway over the almost empty highway to London, the credits roll.

Charming bloke, this Johnny…

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #56: J. M. W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire (1839)

Mege2 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!

A year ago, a medical professional recommended that I reserve a spot in my apartment for an object or an image that would just be there for me to look at and enjoy. I made a mental list of possible candidates, getting to my number one by process of elimination, so when a picture of the young Monica Bellucci ended up in second place, it was finally clear what I had suspected all along. I had a framed print of Turner‘s Fighting Temeraire leaning against the wall, still unhung. It had been on the list early on, but I never thought it would have made it to the top spot. So up there it went.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #55: John Turner as Roderick Spode 

Alan Kuhl Graham4 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!

Whenever you watch a live action adaptation of a book that you love, there is always the troublesome business of the casting. Will those starring in the production possibly match up to the version in your head from reading the original. If the actor does a good job, they might come close to how you imagined the role initially. An actor might even still do a good job, but just be wrong. Their performance is so at odds with your own take on the role, that, even if you keep watching it you’ll mainly be quietly tutting at it.

But occasionally an actor will come along and give a performance in a role that works so well, that so exceeds the version that once played in the brain, that they become that character going forward. When you re-read the book, it’s their version that you imagine. Whatever feeble brain casting you imagined before has been sacked and kicked out the imaginary production, forever replaced by the version you saw on screen.

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