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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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Six Damn Fine Degrees #125: The Mirror Crack’d

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!

“After that, I didn’t care if I was ever again anyone’s favourite actress.” ~ Gene Tierney (Self-Portrait, 1979)

Caution: here be spoilers for the novel The Mirror Crack’d from side to side, and its adaptations.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #123: Young & Innocent

Alan Kuhl Graham3 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!

When it comes to the early British films by Alfred Hitchcock, there’s a famous few that grab all the attention: the likes of The Lodger, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps. They’re all hugely entertaining, but one of the reasons they retain their status is that watching them you can spot so many of the ideas that Hitchcock was to take to Hollywood with him and make his more famous classics. It’s like listening to the early songs of an artist who’ll go on to conquer the charts – it’s clearly the same talent, not quite as polished, but then there’s something thrilling in how unpolished it is.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #121: Your mission, should you choose to accept it…

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!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #120: Missions Impossible

Alan Kuhl Graham3 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!

Learning that films are going to disappear from a streaming service is a good motivation for finally watching them. Suddenly there’s a deadline, and if it’s missed, who knows when there’ll be a chance to catch up. So it was that at the end of February 2023, I found myself rushing through the entire cinematic Mission Impossible franchise, as a sinister countdown clock ticked down to all the films self-destructing (on that streaming service only).

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #109: Neverwhere

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!

A homeless person lies on the street covered by blankets

Different people experience London very differently. But for Richard Mayhew, the London he ends up in is nothing like any version of London we are familiar with. Well, not if we’re lucky. Up until that point Richard has led a regular life. Office job, an apartment, a fiancée and the small worries that entails. Until, that is, he finds a severely wounded woman on the street and decides to help her. In this world no good deed goes unpunished, and soon after this chivalrous rescue, he starts to become invisible. Or unnoticeable, rather, as his colleagues and even his fiancée seem not to notice him unless he gets right in their face and speaks to them. He has slipped through the cracks into another, more peripatetic London. He rapidly loses everything. Job, apartment, fiancée; because to the people around him he has all but ceased to exist. And so he can think of only one option: descend to the underground into London Below, find the woman he rescued, and somehow make a way back to his previous life.

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