Six Damn Fine Degrees

Six Damn Fine Degrees #259: The Twilight Zone

MegeLeave a 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 moved twice in the last few years, and somehow, my complete Twilight Zone BluRay collection got lost. I suspect, quite fittingly, that it may still exist somewhere at my new place, but in another dimension. I locked myself in the basement for half a day and tried to find it, but still nothing. I miss it more than I expected. Somehow, I am still in mourning, if you can believe that.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #258: Halloween Trio

The Barista CollectiveLeave a 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!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #257: The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen

MattLeave a 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 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.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #256: The BBC Radio Lord Of The Rings Part Two: The Two Adaptors

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a 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 dark and stirring refrain swells up from the silence, musically suggesting something both epic and haunted. And then a brilliant voice is heard saying the following:

“Long Years Ago, in the Second Age of Middle Earth, the Elven smiths of Eregion forged Rings of Great Power...”

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #255: Excalibur (1981)

JulieLeave a 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!

“You can’t defeat people’s expecations.” ~John Boorman

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #253: The Untamed and the joy of fan translations

MelanieLeave a 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!

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.

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

samlinder1 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!

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 #248: Terrible fathers, vengeful daughters

MelanieLeave a 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!

The colour palette gives it away: This is Serious Drama

The Glory is a Chinese historical drama series from 2025 (not to be mistaken with the K-Drama school revenge story of the same name) whose descriptions are so innocuous they are completely misleading. For instance, MyDramaList explains: “Abandoned as a child, Zhuang Han Yan grows up in the southern countryside before returning to her family in the capital. She catches the eye of Fu Yun Xi, a deputy minister with a mysterious illness, who sees her as an ideal wife. As they navigate their relationship, they fall in love, and Han Yan reconnects with her mother while finding warmth and belonging with the Fu family.”

 I mean, OKAY. This is not technically wrong. But it completely misses the point in that The Glory is a revenge drama – specifically, the revenge of an adult daughter on her father. (And I am very sorry to pick this as my degree of connection with Alan’s musings who told such a great story of his own father taking him to see Gandhi!).

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #247: Gandhi (1982)

Alan Kuhl GrahamLeave a 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!

In July 1981, my school went a bit mad. The heir to the British throne Prince Charles was getting married to Diana Spencer, someone the media genuinely referred to “a commoner”. Parts of the UK were getting insanely excited by the prospect, and this included my classroom. The Wedding, we were told, was a Big Event. For kids, this was an event that had everything. After all, there were Princes and Princesses, images of fancy soldiers and decorated palaces, alongside lots of maps smothered with pink. Union flags appeared in the school, and no trip to the shops was complete without seeing aisles of colourful tat with crowns on it.

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