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.
How do you remember your teenage years? Matt remembers them being heavily pixelated – which gave him an ideal in into the time capsule that is Perfect Tides.
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!
Extreme close-up on the face of Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) as the first sunlight hits the garden behind her. Soon a ray catches her tired, ragged, desperate face. An excruciating night of middle-aged drinking lies behind her now, behind George (Richard Burton), her dishevelled yet razor-sharp husband of many years, who has dealt Martha his final blow in their night-long cruel games, innuendos and infidelities. Martha seems a broken woman now as she slowly recuperates from her sobs and the two look on into an uncertain older age. Fade out and credits over Alex North’s deceptively beautiful harp and guitar elegy that brings Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) to a shattering close.
Continue readingJoin 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, Julie turned the conversation to the iconic Once Upon a Time in the West by the equally iconic Sergio Leone.
As this blog as much as the many BILLY shelves in my living room stacked with DVDs and Blu-rays can confirm, these days my main media are probably film and TV. However, when I was young, and well into my 20s, I was very much a librophile first and foremost, which is also what determined much of my education and my early professional path. And while he wasn’t there when I got started on a lifelong love of books pretty much as soon as I learned how to read, Stephen King was probably the first writer I obsessed over.
I don’t know when I last read one of King’s novels, but it’s definitely been at least ten years. I don’t much feel the need to return to his world, to visit our old haunts in Castle Rock and Derry. Although it may sound arrogant or pretentious, I’d say I’ve outgrown him – but, and perhaps more importantly, I’d also say that I grew up as a reader in the company of Stephen King.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 