james bond

Six Damn Fine Degrees #199: Parental Guidance Suggested?

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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!

What was the first film your parents ever took you to see at the cinema? I’m sure the latest Disney production, for many, were frequent firsts. Or even the myriad of family comedies just in time for the Christmas season? I remember it well and it was pretty standard: my parents took me to see Disney’s The Lady and the Tramp at Bern’s ABC cinema. I must have been around six. This led to more, obviously, with Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja rövardotter (1984) a particular favourite of mine.

So far so good.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: The Quick and the Undead

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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.

Sam wouldn’t be Sam without his deep, abiding love for all things James Bond – so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his first Six Damn Fine Degrees entry of 2024 would focus on the special agent with a license to kill, and Roald Dahl’s connection to Bond.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #164: Double-O-Dahl

samlinder3 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.

Oddly enough, my first encounter with a Roald Dahl story did not come via Mathilda or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, nor with The Witches (even though I saw the Anjelica Houston version early and loved it!), Fantastic Mr Fox (so joyfully discussed in Julie’s last post) or one of his many short stories (repeatedly adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents). It was that one foray of the world-famous children’s book author and macabre genius into the world of James Bond that I was compulsively obsessed by starting at age 12: his screenplay to 1967’s You Only Live Twice.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #135: Amazing Avengers Associations

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!

Everything is connected: Just think of Emma Peel, Tracy Bond and Olena Tyrell, all played by Diana Rigg!

Reading Alan’s insightful observations about the Dark Phoenix saga from last week and his reference to British cult series The Avengers (1961-69; renewed in 1976/77, The Movie in 1999), I was reminded what these Six Degrees posts are really all about: connecting everything in the world of film, music and culture to everything else. And there is hardly another series that represents that principle of six degrees removed as well as The Avengers!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Shave and a haircut…

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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.

What better way to start the Sunday trailer post than with barbers and meat pies? I mean, everyone needs to look good and everyone needs to eat – and who’s more aware of this than one Benjamin Barker… though most people might know him better under his alias: on Friday, Julie took our Six Damn Fine Degrees feature to dark places to write about Sweeney Todd.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #50: Daniel Craig’s Bond farewell in No Time to Die

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No, A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, we expect you to podcast… Obviously we cannot let a cultural phenomenon such as Daniel Craig’s final James Bond outing go uncommented – especially since Alan, Julie and Sam already talked about the Bond franchise a year ago in preparation for the (oft postponed) release of James Bond: No Time to Die. In the meantime, it has been time to watch No Time to Die, and our three intrepid baristas return to finish their mission. Did they enjoy Daniel Craig’s last hurrah as MI6 agent James Bond? What were they shaken and/or stirred by most? What did they think of the villain, the women, the hidden lair – and especially the ending? Just as importantly: whither James Bond? Where do we want the franchise to go next? And… who do we want to have a crack at the iconic secret agent next?

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Footnotes: The Music Makers

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We thought long and hard about whether we wanted to put musical excerpts in our podcast episode on movie soundtracks, but in the end we decided against it – not least because these pieces should be heard in their entirety, and they tend to work best when you listen to them along to the respective scenes from the films they’re from. So, below you’ll find our picks and some more of our thoughts about these wonderful tunes and composers.

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: A bad apple a day keeps the husband away

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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.

Hoo boy! This was a busy week here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, starting with Matt’s post on the mildly absurdist Greek dramedy (such a bad word for such a wide range of stories!) Apples. He wasn’t entirely won over by it, but there’s still a lot to enjoy here.

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A Damn Fine Cup of Culture Podcast #46: Post-pandemic cinema

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It is July – and in many countries, cinemas are open again, albeit with some restrictions. Have our intrepid cultural baristas already been back to movie theatres – and if so, what has it been like to be back after several months? How have they coped with half a year without cinemas? How has COVID-19 affected movie theatres and cinema goers alike? And how will the cinema landscape change after the pandemic? Even if we’re looking at a summer and autumn with open movie theatres (fingers crossed!) and upcoming blockbusters like the new James Bond and Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited, often-postponed Dune, will cinema be the same? Join Alan, Julie and Matt as they discuss these and other issues concerning post-pandemic cinema!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Do you think death could possibly be a boat?

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.

Last week it finally happened: A Damn Fine Cup of Culture was deemed too raunchy by Facebook. Okay, that may not be quite accurate – truth be told, we will probably never know why Facebook suddenly decided that we’d violated their T&Cs with the name of our page. Was it the “damn”? Was it that we made claims to the extraordinary quality of our cups of culture? Or was it something else entirely, like the wrong number of capitals? Anyway, we are now back on Facebook, complete with what some people might consider naughty words in our name. Let’s see what Mark Z comes up with next, shall we?

All of this happened on the same day that Sam posted another wonderful instalment of Six Damn Fine Degrees, in honour of two of the Grande Dames of dubbing: Marni Nixon, who featured in many a film musical without getting the credit she deserved, and Nikki van der Zyl, the woman who gave a voice to so many Bond girls. We can hear a (sadly, very small) handful of her lines dubbing Ursula Andress in the trailer for the Bond film that started it all, Dr. No.

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