I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: No animal, but definitely mineral and vegetable

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.

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam stopped by to check out the storied, colourful career of Roger Corman: producer, director, writer, actor, and the man who boosted the careers of the likes of Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante and James Cameron.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #261: Roger Corman’s Big Little Shop of Horrors

Melanie’s review of 1980s cult musical Little Shop of Horrors through teenagers’ eyes finally gives me a chance to loop back, not only to the 1960 original directed by Roger Corman, but also to the director/producer himself, who arguably became one of the greatest masterminds of copycatting any movie hit within his own production universe. Roger Corman was running his own, wildly successful shop of horrors – actually a big, bold, fiercely independent venture of horrors, thrills, and other exploits!

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #260: Teens discover Little Shop of Horrors

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!

Moving on from the uncanny to straight up spooky: I used to love Halloween. I threw massive parties and carved pumpkins with agonised faces barfing up sepia spaghetti!

Then, I had kids.

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The Rear-View Mirror: Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

I must have mentioned it before: I’m not a fan of film musicals. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t like the genre, but I don’t like something just because it’s a musical. At the same time, there are a lot of musicals that I do like a lot, and they generally find ways of elevating the material, of making it more effective, because the characters in them have this odd habit of breaking into song every now and then.

Fiddler on the Roof
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