Preverts!

Those of you who are currently locked in the fetal position on top of a makeshift bed of pretzels and empty Budweiser bottles, take heart; after a week's break, I'm back and blogging again. I've even added a new section-"List o' The Week", because I am indeed a compulsive ranker of things. So take a look at my Top Ten Movie Posters In the History of Ever!

Also, 'tis time for college updatings; University of Rochester is my current first choice, though I'm still holding out in hopes that one of the West Coast schools bowls me over, 'cause I'm not exactly sure how I'd do trudging to class in four feet of upstate New Yawk snow. NYU and Oberlin also filled me with awe...and SAT-score related intimidation (don't talk to meeeee). One things for certain though; far down the road though it may be, I'm hell bent on making Columbia happen for grad school. A Jew can dream, right? (Well, according to some, the answer to that question is no, but I beg to differ). ANYWHOOOO, in these dog days of summer, I decided I'd introduce you, the reader, to a film that ought to provide a very generous amount of much-needed laughs-

DR. STRANGELOVE (OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB)

The 25: Biting Cold War satire that still pinches a nerve.

This is either the funniest tragedy ever captured on celluloid or the most despairing comedy. Maybe it's both. Hell, maybe it's neither. The point is that this savage, caustic epic of human stupidity doesn't just resist categorization. It transcends it. Love it or hate it (I can almost guarantee you won't be stranded in the middle ground), but you've gotta acknowledge its originality. The Molotov cocktail of a final product is a mixture of such preternaturally precise ingredients that no one's had the balls to try recreating the recipe for over four decades. As with Stanley Kubrick's other masterworks, 2001, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut (if you disagree, shah!), to watch this picture is to come down a serious case of cinematic doublethink-you pine for more like it, but deep down you know that even a thousand well-financed replications couldn't bottle the magic captured here, entrancingly and exclusively.

The more plot I reveal, the less you'll pee yourself with rampant delight at Terry Southern's high-wire act of satirical storytelling. So, stripped of the scintillating specifics, it's about General Jack E. Ripper, who goes behind the government's back to order the nuking of Russia (the why and how are quite funny), and the efforts of the nebbishy President (Peter Sellers), a patriotic nutjob of a general (George C. Scott), a somewhat rational British group captain (Sellers again) and the ex-Nazi scientist of the title (Sellers numero tres) to stop said bombing (how they go about this is quite, QUITE funny). In short, we're peeling back the veil of secrecy surrounding government ops. When Hollywood movies attempt to do this, they tend to go one of two ways. The administration is either A) Full of stereotypically slimy characters with real-life parables tacked on to a select few (hey, that dude behaves like Cheney) or B) Full of garden-variety moles (o hai, Salt). Either way, we are almost always delivered from the bone-chilling idea that evil runs amuck in our government agencies; for every Raymond Shaw there's a Bennett Marco or Pamela Landy ready to save the day and assure us that our lawmaking bodies, while riddled with corruption, are receiving just the right, IV-drip amount of virtue to keep us safe and sound. But Kubrick goes a ballsier, more bruising route, suggesting that behind closed doors lies a kindergarten playground of such flagrant self-obsession and overwrought prejudice that the upright few are silenced or just flat-out ignored. Every laugh is a nervous one. Take the famous "War Room" scene for example. A general and a Russian diplomat roll around on the floor wrestling over a camera. "He was taking pictures of the big board!", the general pouts, pointing emphatically to the massive strategic map on the wall. "Gentleman", the president shouts, "you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!" We crack up because obviously this shit is absurd, but also because we're afraid to face the fact that such absurdities are, at this rate, pretty much inevitable in years to come, and the few principled people around to put a stop to them may be able to do nothing but helplessly chastise the crazed perpetrators. See what I mean about this really being a tragedy? This is a portrayal of the possible future so unflinching it would give Kurt Vonnegut blue balls.

How did Kubrick do it? Oh, I know his techniques, sure-how he kept some actors in a vice grip of deception(he never told Hayden the film was supposed to be a comedy until after its release, and he used Scott's warm-up takes rather than his word-for-word ones, to the actor's chagrin) and let some have free reign (Sellers, whose comic know-how was so overpowering that production often ground to a halt as the cast and crew ruined thousands of takes with spontaneous laughter). But that still doesn't answer my question; how did he create a prankish gut-buster that also serves as a horrifying work of modern-day prophesy? How did he put up on screen the most despairing vision of human nature ever backed by a mainstream studio...and make us laugh? And do so without creating an unholy MESS?! But then again, Kubrick is the most mysterious of all filmmaking legends, and any attempt to discern exactly how he achieved what he achieved will be a failed one. I'll wonder how the man pulled it off till my dying day, but what matters is this; he did do it and it worked then and it works now and by God I marvel at it.

Singular Scene: Strangelove lays out potential post-apocalypse plans.