Distant Relatives: Dr. Strangelove and In the Loop

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through theme and ask what their similarities/differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

Great and powerful leaders

The world is run by idiots. Here’s an observation that is not at all new in the history of comedy or for that matter, humanity. Political satire is more often than not based on the assumption that the people at the top are at best incompetent to enact the right priorities, at worst adamant in their pursuit of the wrong ones. There’s a line of thinking that suggests anyone with the desire to become a politician is, by that virtue alone, unfit to be one. Never is this assertion more comically rife than in times of war, when we’re all scared and confused and asking our leaders to help us through the fog of conflict.

Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and (cue the teasing female voice) Love the Bomb and In the Loop are two films during two times of war, one Cold the other Middle-Eastern, that aren’t exactly overt anti-war political statements. That is to say the films could, I suppose, get behind a war if the people promoting and running it were ever even slightly better than horrible human beings. But in their realities that could never be the case.

Fingers on the big red button

In case you’ve never seen it, Dr. Strangelove starts off with mad General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) giving an unauthorized go code to go nuclear (literally) on the Soviet Union.

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Reader of the Day: Yonatan

We're wrapping up Reader Appreciation Month but so many people seem to be enjoying "reader of the day" that we'll keep doing them... just not every single day. Stay tuned...

I thought we'd close the month with Yonatan (you can call him "Jonathan") from Israel. Why? Well because he had a job a couple of years back that I think all of you (not to mention me) would be jealous of: talking about the movies on TV! Sweet.

He started reading The Film Experience due to the foreign film Oscar pages and he was one of many readers who started sending me regular info on their home country so I could keep up the pages. Yonatan and I share a love of really insignificant trivia. For instance, he recently wondered aloud by e-mail if Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days (1995) and Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady were the longest English language films directed by women... I countered with An Angel at My Table, also by Jane Campion, at 158 minutes but he argues that what conceived as a miniseries so it shouldn't count. Referee!?

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first moviegoing experience?
YONATAN: I'm sure I've been to a movie theater before this, but the first movie I remember being taken to see was The Journey of Natty Gann, a few months before my sixth birthday! A few months later my mother let me stay up late two nights in a row to watch the 1985 star studded mini-series "Alice in Wonderland". I had no idea at the time who those "stars" were, but I had to see it!

What's your moviegoing diet like right about now?
Three years ago I got the chance to have a weekly live movie review segment on TV. Unfortunately, I don't appear on TV anymore, but I do write reviews (in Hebrew, at edb.co.il), and attend 2-5 advanced screenings a week. On slow weeks, I also watch movies at home, bringing me to a healthy average of 200 movies a year (not including movies I watch again just for fun).

[Here's Yonatan talking about WALL•E. I couldn't understand a word but I'm certain he is saying adorable things.]

 
Your 3 Favorite Actresses. Go!
Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep. Can I say Cate Winslet and Kate Blanchett to count them as one?

Elkabetz photographed by Jérome Bonnet I haven't seen a movie with Parker Posey in years, so she's been demoted. And let me just slip in Jodie Foster, Debra Winger, Jane Fonda, Gong Li, Carole Lombard, and everybody in the world should know the Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz.

Ohmygod. She was brilliant in Late Marriage. I need to see her in other things.

Okay... They make a movie of your life. Tell us about it.
I like my life but it's pretty boring from the side and I wouldn't want to see that movie; you'll have to wait for the movie I wrote which is in early stages of development.

What's one movie you always recommend to people?
A movie that tops my list of recommendations is The Big Chill (1983). It's just perfect. The cast, the soundtrack, the dialog. It's touching and it has humor- so many great lines! Every scene ends with a punchline.

all reader of the day posts: Yonatan, Keir, Kyle, Jamie, Vinci, Victor, Bill, Hayden, Dominique, Murtada, Cory, Walter, Paolo, Leehee and BBats

Gotta Rant! Men (and Women) in Tights.

Gotta Sing....
A few days ago I read over at A Socialite's Life that Hugh Jackman is talking to Bollywood producers about work. You know... I like Bollywood just fine, sometimes quite a lot more than that, and I don't mean this as a slight but Hollywood is a crappy crappy please if one of its biggest stars has to actually leave our movie industry for another to show off his skillset. Grrrr. And, also: grrrl. (I'm fuming). I guess Hollywood only wants him to Wolverine but he has so much more in him.

Where is his big screen musical? If ever a modern male star could be a big deal singing and dancing on the screen it's him. He was amazement in The Boy From Oz on Broadway and he was thisbig. I saw him from the last row of the house with my head touching the wall in the far left corner (truth), the worst seat I've ever had for a show, and I was totally mesmerized. I think seeing him blown up on the big screen doing that same thing might kill me. But I'd die happy.

Amy Adams is another huge bankable star whose musical talent is in danger of being wasted. Lois Lane? Really? A role that any feisty actress could do in her sleep and also another "girlfriend" part to the true star. You'd think after hit movies and multiple Oscar nominations, she could get another good leading role.

The only way I want to see Amy Adams, who is so dynamite in comedy (Enchanted) and dramedy (Junebug) and in the right dramatic role (The Fighter), in a superhero movie is if she's the superhero.

The rest of the negativity must be confined to the jump. Click ahead for more on superheroes, Batman's eventual reboot and that weary-limbed Natalie Portman dancing controversy.

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First and Last

the first and last images from motion pictures...

the first image.

the last image would give it a way so let's use the last line of dialogue.

I'm in your bleedin' class next term.

Can you guess the movie?

the answer is after the jump.

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "PSYCHO"

In this weekly series "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", we look at a pre-determined movie and select what we think is the best (or at least our favorite) shot. 

 Let's stare this down right away.

The best shot in Alfred Hitchcock's immortal Psycho (1960) comes from arguably the most famous single scene in cinema's 100+ year history. It's that devastating slow clockwise turn (mirroring blood swirling down the drain) paired with a slow zoom out. Marion Crane is dead or thereabouts. Dying in the shower allows her final posthumous tears.

In what is arguably Hitchcock's most brilliant decision in a film filled with them, this moment turns the movie's fabled voyeurism (and explicit understanding of cinema's very nature) back at the audience. We've been staring at Marion Crane, foolish bird-like Marion, for 49 minutes watching her squirm in her "private trap". We couldn't (didn't want to?) save her. Now it's her turn to stare back.

How much death does the cinema need?
[read full post and participating blogs]

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