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Six Damn Fine Degrees #155: Best fiends and purely professional relationships

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!

So, apparently Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t a huge fan of Ivor Novello? One wonders what Novello thought of Hitchcock. It’s not exactly a secret that Hitch wasn’t always the easiest director to work with. He famously said that all actors should be treated like cattle, and when he said that he was correcting an allegation that he’d supposedly said that actors are cattle. Arguably, his correction didn’t exactly do much to make him look any better. Of course, being treated like cattle might still have been the better deal compared to other ways in which Hitchcock behaved towards his actors – and particularly his actresses. (It’s no accident that one of the sections in the Wikipedia entry on Tippi Hedren’s is titled “Allegations of sexual harrassment”.)

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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 #153: Ivor Novello in Gosford Park

Julie3 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!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #151: A walk in the park without a dog

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!

I’ve been to the Europapark with my favourite daughter, and she had the good idea to go take the Valerian ride because she sort of liked Cara Delevigne in the Luc Besson movie. It’s with a virtual reality ride with a sturdy yellow helmet, but it is basically the Eurosat ride inside the silver globe, so that was a great ride for slightly nervous older geezers like me. It was also Luc Besson who co-wrote the series of Arthur and the Minimoys, and he was consulted for the park ride of the same name. It’s for the kids, but it was a pleasant change from the panic-inducing hellride called Blue Fire.

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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 #137: Cormac McCarthy

Mege4 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 high-priest of bloodshed and violence has died. While that sounds like a blood-curdling read, it comes in one of the most beautiful languages that literature has to offer. “He slept and when he woke he’d dreamt of the dead standing about in their bones and the dark sockets of their eyes that were indeed without speculation bottomed in the void wherein lay a terrible intelligence common to all but of which none would speak.” That is from his novel All The Pretty Horses (1992), and to me, it’s impossible not to be attracted and repulsed by that image at the same time.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #133: Christian Petzold

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!

There is a fine line in Christian Petzold’s films where the magical and supernatural just bang at the door and then take a glimpse through the cracks in the panelling. For the longest time, his movies are set in the here and now, and only dip their toes across the fantastical border if they need to. Said that, of course Petzold is sometimes drawn to that border, but is too smart a filmmaker to cross it too soon, or with too much showing off. Remember the water towards the end of Yella (2007)?

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #128: A case for All About Eve

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!

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