But I know we'll meet again some sunny day

[austin_dern]

I'd picked up a bunch of DVDs at the closings of the FYE and Saturday Something Videos --- I know I'd alluded to this --- but now I've finally got around to actually watching them and some have been surprises. For example, one was Doctor Strangelove, or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Became a Mixed-Up Zombie Finding The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky. This wasn't anything like my first time, of course; it's probably not even in my first dozen times. But it was the first time in a good while and I noticed things about it that I hadn't noticed before, or had forgotten.

The first and most startling thing is: the movie is pretty close to real time. It's probably not exactly so, but there isn't much of the time compression that makes up movies. We start with the bombers at the fail-safe points asserted to be ``two hours'' from their primary targets, and by the time the movie ends just a little over ninety minutes later, one bomber has got ... not to its primary (or secondary) targets but to a target-of-opportunity that it's still able to reach.

The other thing I'd forgotten or not noticed is that while he commands the memory of the movie, Doctor Strangelove himself is barely in it: he doesn't appear until about fifty minutes in, and he's only got about two and a half scenes. They're key scenes, indelible ones, but I think the only character who gets less screen time is that general's girlfriend who makes up the whole female presence in the film. It's startling how different a thing can be from the impression it makes.

Trivia: On attending St John's College, Cambridge, with his brother John in 1750 Erasmus Darwin won a scholarship of £ 16 per annum. Source: The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made The Future, Jenny Uglow.

Currently Reading: Divine Misfortune, A Lee Martinez. OK, I have to recommend this book to all my friends out there who are raccoon fans. Wow.

(And in other news: Dick Tracy showed the Space Coupe today! With the hint that it may be more than a cameo!)

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I've only seen Dr. Strangelove, once, in college.. actually in the school library. Jamen-Riit had to watch it for a film class, and whatever system they had in the media room let two people plug in, so we watched it. I did enjoy.

But yes, thinking on it.. for someone whose name is in the title he's not making much of an appearance. But it worked for Godot.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It's a really good movie, particularly for just how ingeniously the bomber crew carries on its mission despite, by any rational standard, being shot down several times over. And then you realize this admirable work is going to destroy the world, well, that's the sort of thing that makes me sometimes have to stop the show and decompress, laughing and cringing, for a ten-minute stretch.

And, yeah, Strangelove is up on Godot for air time but otherwise he's almost in that set of characters who get talked of but don't actually appear, like Norm's Wife on Cheers or Barbara Feldon's character on that private eye show she was on before Get Smart.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Yikes! Borders bookstores AND now FYE!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

FYE came first, at least around here, although there are further reports about Borders to come.