Six Damn Fine Degrees #254: Fanfic? Me?

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!

Fans can be the worst – and the best. On the one hand, fans can be gatekeepers, they can be reactionary and bring out the worst in a franchise. On the other, fans can be welcoming and giving and creative. Last week, Melanie wrote about the joy to be found in fan translations. This week, I’m asking you to indulge me in a trip down Memory Lane, to my own experiences writing fanfic.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: One Preview After Another

MattLeave a comment

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, Melane swerves towards the East, introducing us to two Chinese series she’s been enjoying – The Untamed and The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty – and their fan translations, showing us once again that there’s a wealth of stories many of us aren’t even aware of.

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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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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Love, Sex, Religion, Trailers

MattLeave a comment

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.

If there’s Hitchcock talk to be had, Sam can’t be far away – and that’s also true of this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, in which Sam wrote about Hitch’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith (no, not the Brangelina vehicle from 2005, but the one starring Carole Lombard).

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A Damn Fine Espresso: September 2025

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Wow, Bob, wow: Twin Peaks forms part of the DNA of A Damn Fine Cup of Culture – if our name and logo didn’t already make that obvious. And yet, some of us have come very late to David Lynch‘s seminal series: while Sam had seen a couple of episodes, he had never watched the entire (original) series when we recorded the first episode of our Lost Summer on the late, great director and purveyor of surreal unease. So, what better opportunity than this summer (which included espresso episodes on Wild at Heart and Lost Highway) to remedy this over some cherry pie and damn fine coffee? Join Sam and Matt in the Red Room as they talk about Twin Peaks and how it holds up for someone who, for decades has heard about the series but not watched it. (You’ll be pleased to hear that we’ve adjusted the audio so that no one is speaking backwards.)

And if you’re in a Twin Peaks mood after listening to our September espresso, you may want to check out our fourth ever podcast episode, in which O.G. baristas Mege and Matt talk about the fantastic, and harrowing, Twin Peaks episode “Lonely Souls”.

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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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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: That is the question

MattLeave a comment

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’s Six Damn Fine Degrees was dedicated to one of Hollywood’s legendary foulmouths: Carole Lombard, the “Profane Angel”. Join Alan in remembering Lombard and her broad range of talents!

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Mother knows best: The Handmaid’s Tale (2017 – 2025)

MattLeave a comment

Remember those last few seasons of Game of Thrones, and especially the finale? How a series that started strong took a dive once it moved past the plot written by its original author, George R. R. Martin, and, to many of its critics, became not just mediocre but outright bad in its home stretch, turning complex, nuanced characters into caricatures of themselves?

I enjoyed Game of Thrones in its first few seasons yet also found its last third disappointing, but for me, that disappointment was rather abstract. I didn’t take the series’ nosedive personally. Sure, I would have preferred for it to remain good, but I didn’t end up hate-watching the final few seasons, I just disengaged and got what fun there was to be had out of the spectacle and the nonsensical plot developments, at arms’ length.

Sadly, this didn’t work for me with The Handmaid’s Tale.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #251: Carole Lombard, The Profane Angel

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!

Screwball comedy suited Carole Lombard perfectly. She was an engaging, and energetic performer, possessing the fine ability to invest the lines with a real sense of fun. Called upon to play the vain, the arrogant, the naïve and the street smart, she always made you want to find out what these characters were going to get up to. For all the silliness in the plots, you have to be invested in the predicament of the leads to buy into it all, and Lombard’s effortless big screen charisma made that happen.

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