richard attenborough

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 July 1981, my school went a bit mad. The heir to the British throne Prince Charles was getting married to Diana Spencer, someone the media genuinely referred to “a commoner”. Parts of the UK were getting insanely excited by the prospect, and this included my classroom. The Wedding, we were told, was a Big Event. For kids, this was an event that had everything. After all, there were Princes and Princesses, images of fancy soldiers and decorated palaces, alongside lots of maps smothered with pink. Union flags appeared in the school, and no trip to the shops was complete without seeing aisles of colourful tat with crowns on it.

Continue reading →

Another year, another opportunity to give some films we didn’t particularly like another opportunity. Was it the films? Was it us? Was it just the wrong time to watch these? For this year’s movie revisit, Sam and Matt talk about two musicals that, at a first glance, couldn’t be much more different: Richard Attenborough’s 1985 adaptation of A Chorus Line and Nordic provocateur Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. What is the result of our return to these musicals? Did we come away with a new appreciation of Michael Douglas’ foray into musicals (and then he doesn’t even get to sing!), and did things finally fall into place when we rewatched the musical melodrama led by Icelandic multitalent Björk?

Continue reading →