agatha christie

Six Damn Fine Degrees #264: Agatha Christie’s Endless Night

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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!

Waves crash against anonymous moonlit rocks while the credits promise an eclectic mix of British and international talent: it’s Hayley Mills and Hywell Bennet (fresh off 1968‘s Twisted Nerve), Swedish actor/director Per Oscarsson (from 1966’s Hunger) and fellow countrywoman Britt Ekland (between her Peter Sellers and Rod Stewart relationships and soon to be Bond Girl). There’s eternal Miss Moneypenny Lois Maxwell and All About Eve‘s George Sanders, and it’s directed by Sidney Gilliat (author/producer of Hitchcock’s early British films) and, unmistakeably, scored by Bernard Herrmann – its ondulating, dramatic main theme reminiscent of the perturbing romanticism of Vertigo and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Have I gone to cinematic heaven? How could I have missed a film like this one, the 1972 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s late novel Endless Night?!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: You know how to whistle, don’t you?

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.

We all love a good Agatha Christie yarn here at A Damn Fine Cup – but they’re not all cosy and twee. There’s plenty of Christie beyond Death on the Nile and Murder, She Said, and in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt writes about the darker sides of cosy crime.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #206: Cosy? Dark? Why not both?

Matt3 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 don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about Agatha Christie, her stories and her characters. Somehow, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot have always been around, much like modern mythology. Settings such as the manor house, scenes where a sleuth has assembled all the suspects and lays out all the clues, feckless local law enforcement: I knew all of these – without ever having read a single one of Christie’s novels or short stories or having seen any of the numerous adaptations. Again, I was aware of Margaret Rutherford in black-and-white movies and of Peter Ustinov in glamorous locales, sporting a silly moustache and a sillier accent. But the actual thing passed me by for the longest time.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #205: Witness for the Prosecution

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 #204: The Best of Maggie Smith in two Christies

samlinder5 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 passing of Dame Maggie Smith in late September has caused an outpouring of appreciation and love by film critics, movie buffs and the stage aficionados alike. Rarely has there been in the loss of an actress such a display of a wide-ranging fan base, from the Harry Potter kids to the Downton Abbey addicts and from silver-age Hollywood connoisseurs to the West End audiences and independent cinemagoers, everybody seems to have harboured a deep respect and admiration for her unique talent. Channels and feeds were crammed full of shorts and reels for days, with no real end in sight.

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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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A Damn Fine Espresso: April 2022

The Barista Collective1 Comment

We’ve now been doing monthly podcasts for almost five years at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture – and today we’re starting A Damn Fine Espresso: shorter, more impromptu small doses of all the cultury goodness you’ve come to expect from us! To launch the new smaller cups of culture, join Julie and Sam as they have a chat about what they’ve checked out recently. From Parisian getaways and serendipitous record stores to bad moustaches, worse CGI and films that can’t decide what they want to be…

Starting with this episode, you can get your monthly espresso where you get all of your Damn Fine goodness – so indulge in a tiny cup of our pop culture musings and let us know what you think!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The moustaches have it

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.

Is there a correct version of Hercule Poirot? And, if so – who is it? If you haven’t already done so, make sure to check out Alan’s Six Damn Fine Degrees post on just this question!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #72: The Wrong Poirot

Alan Kuhl Graham7 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!

In the early ‘70s, a British film studio hoping to make a global success decided to tap into one of the nation’s most famous exports: Agatha Christie. When it came to which of her works they would adapt, they opted for Murder On The Orient Express – a story that would allow for an exotic (if relatively cheap) location and a large cast that could be filled with bankable stars. Audiences, they hoped, would head to the cinemas thanks to the name of the author and the likes of Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Perkins.

The formula worked. The film was a huge hit, a commercial triumph topping the US box office. It also enjoyed great reviews, with critics praising Sidney Lumet’s stately direction and the strength of the adaptation. Indeed both audiences and critics seemed to mention just one flaw with the film: Albert Finney as Poirot.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The Roaring Rories

The Barista CollectiveLeave 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.

On Friday, Julie gave us another one of her deep dives, this time on Agatha Christie and the books she’d set in the desert – which is a perfect opportunity to post the trailer for Death on the Nile. No, not that one. The other one.

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