bambi

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Oh deer!

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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.

To what extent are our film and TV tastes determined by our parents and by what we watch growing up? In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Matt remembers the films and series he watched due to his mother: from Zulu via M*A*S*H to Bambi.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #246: Michael Caine, Alan Alda, my mum and me

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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!

In the autumn of 2009, my mother was in the last few months of her fight against cancer. In fact, she’d battled more than one cancer throughout her life, and even when she was doing well, the knowledge of how it had affected her life and the fear of its return, at some point, in some shape, was always with her. Earlier in 2009, an episode had revealed that one of the tumors had returned and metastasized, making it clear, if not to her then to most of her family members, that this would be her last fight, and it was just a matter of time until she lost it.

My father, who had retired early (not entirely of his own volition), looked after her while she was still at home, before her final stay at hospital. They’d not always been very happy together, but they had seemed to find a way of being kind with each other during the last couple of years they were both alive. But there was a weekend when my dad said he wouldn’t be around – I don’t remember the details, but I assume he needed a break, as anyone would. So my sister and I split the weekend between ourselves, and I looked after my mum for the first part of it. This meant that I prepared dinner for the two of us – pasta, predictably – and, just as predictably, I brought along a film we could both watch together. The film: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, in which Geoffrey Rush played the iconic English comedian and actor.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #60: My daughter, the Marvel fan

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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!

I would have liked to dazzle you with a cool origin story, but I can’t remember how and when my favourite daughter found her love for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am pretty sure she saw the first few movies in chronological sequence at home on BluRay, too young to have seen then in the theatres, so Tony Stark, Cap and the Hulk came to her at home, and it was probably the first Avengers movie that she saw in an upholstered seat, ticket in hand, with a bag of popcorn, on the big silver screen. But she was hooked long before that.

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Throwing down the gauntlet of 2018

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It’s saying something if the first thing I remember about the movie year 2018 is not a movie, but a character. Thanos looms large – how could he not? With one fell swoop, Marvel solved its most prominent problem and made very, very sure that we wouldn’t forget their biggest, baddest baddie. He has depth – I believe him when he says that he fulfills his mission partly against his own will, and that it cost him everything. And he – goddamn it – is successful. Of course, my experience of Avengers: Infinity War was deeply colored by my favorite daughter sitting beside me who couldn’t believe that half her favorite MCU characters went up in ashes. Maybe this was this generation’s Bambi. Continue reading →

Soap gets in my eyes

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I’ve admitted this before: I watch Grey’s Anatomy. And here comes an even bigger admission: no, I don’t just watch it because my girlfriend does. In fact, I like it – or rather, I used to like it. I liked the characters, especially Bailey and Christina.

Throughout the third season, though, I’ve started to find several of the characters kickable. In some cases that’s because they’re snivelling, self-righteous idiots. Which is fine, really; I don’t need everyone in the series I watch to be 100% likeable. I’d even say that series that try to make their characters too likeable will quickly become insipid.

They’re expecting me to speak those lines? And in front of other people?

What I mind, though, is how some characters have been reduced more and more to one-dimensional cardboard cutouts of their former selves. The worst offender in that respect is Izzie. She’s never been the most complex character – but within the confines of the genre of medical soap, she had some depth and even genuine tragedy.

Lately, though, her character has been reduced to one thing, and one thing only: pining for George. I don’t mind her pining, but I very much mind this being her only characteristic. (And no, saving Bambi does not make her a fuller, more interesting character.) Some actors can pull off two-dimensionality well and even make it into something more interesting – Bailey isn’t a cool character to watch because her writing is so much more complex, but Chandra Wilson turns the scripts into a living, breathing human being. When her material is good, Katherine Heigl does well, but with the sheer insipidity that she’s been given throughout the last ten episodes or so Izzie is becoming more and more ridiculous and unbelievable as a character.

And I can’t believe that I’m getting worked up about a medical soap! Gotta go watch some HBO, gotta go watch some HBO…