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.
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!
Choice is a blessing. I grew up in a place and at a time when only a handful of TV channels were available, and you were at the mercy of an antediluvian evil called the “TV programme”. You were bored on a Wednesday afternoon after school? Well, though, there’s nothing on. Wait an hour and you might get some anime adaptation of a European kids’ classic, with a black-haired moppet running around the Swiss Alps – and that’s if you were lucky. As a child, I watched a lot of TV, and usually not what I wanted to watch but what was available – so I’d will myself, not always very successfully, into thinking that what was available was also what I wanted to watch. And sure, as I grew older, my choices grew alongside me: more TV channels, plus there were the video tapes sent to us by my uncle in the UK – but especially TV remained this wasteland of non-choices: it’s Friday evening, the parents are out, I can watch whatever I want… as long as it’s a stupid Italian action comedy, or a French film about a couple of parents whose child dies, or perhaps, if I’m lucky, Ghostbusters or Raiders of the Lost Ark… dubbed into German. And that was one of the good evenings!
These days, TV channels still exist, but do people still watch them? Do they still follow the TV programme, and go, “Oh, look, The Godfather Part III is on, let’s watch that – or would you rather see that movie in which Idris Elba and his daughter are stalked by a lion they’re showing on Film Four right now?” More likely, people grab the device of their choice and go, “Hmm… Is it a Netflix evening or a Disney+ one?” And there, at their fingertips, are hundreds of films and TV series, and these days even games, that all come with the subscription to the streaming channels. All that choice – and it’s a curse. When you can pick from a hundred things what to watch, how can you pick? It’s a miracle that more people aren’t found dead in front of the streaming device of their choice, their finger forever poised to scroll further down on the feed.
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.
For this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Mege wrote about The Umbrella Academy. What’s this: a Netflix series that is actually allowed to run until the end?
Imagine: a body is found in a London alley in 1890. The man is naked, and it looks like he was killed by a gunshot to the head – or, more accurately, to the left eye. He also has what seems to be a strange tattoo on his left wrist. But that’s not all: the same body is found in the same place… in 1941. And, again, in 2023. In 2053, the man is found, but he isn’t dead yet – he’s clinging on to life. And four detectives from the Metropolitan Police investigate the mystery in four eras.
Sound intriguing, if perhaps in a somewhat mystery-boxy way?
Now imagine: you’ve got an engaging hook, with lots of pulp sci-fi potential – only to squander it away in a story that rehearses the same old tropes of time loop narratives and dystopian fiction, with characters that are either drab or clichéd or both, and a script that could have been written by generative AI. And the cinematography is as dreary and flat as the writing. And, in case you haven’t guessed: yup, it’s a Netflix production.
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.
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 on Six Damn Fine Degrees, Alan reminisced on Memories of Murder– though since we featured the trailer not too long ago, here’s something else instead: Tony Zhao’s “Every Frame a Painting” video essay on Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece.
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.
In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt wrote about films and TV series that depict real-life people, the extent to which it matters if the actors look like the individuals they’re supposed to portray – and the ways in which they sometimes get it very, very wrong.
But we want to start this trailer post with the Real McCoy (or should that be the Real McCartney?), so here goes:
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’s always something strange to watching an actor play a real person, doubly so when the actor in question is one we know, and know well, from other parts, and triply so when that real person is still alive. Oh, look – there’s Gary Oldman playing Lee Harvey Oswald, and there’s Bruno Ganz as Adolf Hitler! There’s Helen Mirren or Emma Thompson (did you know that?) playing Queen Elizabeth II! Is that a trio of Truman Capotes or is that Philip Seymour Hoffman, Toby Jones and Tom Hollander having a chat? We recognise Taron Egerton, but we also recognise the bespectacled pop star he’s playing. We know that neither Michelle Williams nor Ana de Armas are Marilyn Monroe, but when we watch them on screen they are somehow both. And is it comforting or monstrous (or both at the same time) that the horrible person in the Oval Office isn’t actually Donald Trump but Brendan Gleeson playing the man?
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.
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, Julie wrote one of those Six Damn Fine Degrees posts that only Julie can write: a deep dive into the life and career of Natalie Wood, or at least the early years. If you have any interest in the history of Hollywood, make sure to check out the post!
