Dr. Strangelove

 

       Moving onto another Stanley Kubrick movie, after being horrified by A Clockwork Orange is a political black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, a movie in Kubrick's filmography filmed in the early sixties on the threats of nuclear warfare between the United States and formally Soviet Union. Here's an interesting thing, you can pit both, Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange together and Dr. Strangelove is just a slap stick, goofy comedy about Governments wanting to not push the button but are so incompetent. While A Clockwork Orange is a great and disturbing movie, is a movie that you are just horrified and needs a lot of liquor and therapy to calm your heart, which is pounding like a sledgehammer.  

       A film about what could happen if the wrong person pushed the button -- and it played the situation for laughs. U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden) goes completely insane, and sends his bomber wing to destroy U.S.S.R. He thinks that the communists are conspiring to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people. 

       To all the fans out there, who've seen great political satire movies or shows like The Thick of It, In the Loop or Veep. You all should give thanks to the Late Stanley Kubrick, because he without a doubt set the standards for what political black comedies should be and still are to this day and especially give thanks to Armando Iannucci for making that satire better, though Kubrick is the golden Pioneer for bringing great political comedy a new name, and especially being hilarious when making this movie at the same time. Before I go any further, I should mention the filmmaking experience, as well as the madness and genius behind Stanley Kubrick. When it comes to making movies a lot of actors and actresses would say that working with Kubrick was a great sense of madness and more importantly miscommunication, sometimes when you’re making a movie you have to a good sense of numerous takes so, when you go to editing room you find the best take and use that for the film, and a good some of takes would usually take five to ten takes tops maybe fifteen takes and that's a big if. Though with Kubrick it would most certainly be forty takes and he wouldn't tell the actors on how they should improve the scene and numerous actors and actresses would talk about how difficult to was working with him hell, Shelley Duvall had a nervous breakdown when working on the Shinning because of how and maybe annoyed she was when making a film with Kubrick. So, when watching the film and you see George C. Scott's performance you can obviously tell that the man is literally losing his mind, from the number of times he had to perform numerous takes, and he later talked about the monstrosity it was working with Kubrick. Though by the end of the day when you watch a Kubrick film or any of his work he does deliver in a great sense, because all of his work is pure greatness, (besides 2001 and Shining) and sure you can talk about his techniques in directing and how somethings that I wouldn't do as a director, but deep down the man delivers in every way possible almost in a strange way of Bill Walsh yelling at his coach, and yet his coaches when they went on to do other gigs in the NFL used the same tactics so, deep down there's something although I doubt you can use Kubrick's tactic in today’s movies. The last time I actually watched a movie with Peter Sellers was a small comedy called Murder By, Death, upon which the British actor plays an Asian detective (LITERALLY AN ASIAN), and I was never into the Pink Panther films, I was more into the cartoon, but with this film he's literally playing three characters though I'm not going to tell you who he's playing but, for some reason they guy is playing three characters while being directed by Kubrick, and he should get a ton of praises because he's playing two characters that are interacting with one another and sure at the time you have to shoot these actors in one camera shot and use a double as well as using audio dub to make it look like they're talking to each other, and sure now you can use technology so that one actor who plays two characters or twins can act in one frame of the shot but at the time it really wasn't possible but with this movie Kubrick was able to make it work without anyone noticing which character Peter Sellers was playing. Unlike A Clockwork Orange where it's extremely dark but still the greatest film out of Kubrick’s work, despite not wanting to watch this film fifteen times and giving everyone a fair warning about what you're about to see. Dr. Strangelove is one of those films I would highly recommend watching because it's extremely funny and stellar moreover comedic performances from both Peter Sellers and George C. Scott and a lot of familiar actors like Slim Pickens before Blazing Saddles and late, great James Earl Jones furthermore other familiar actors that seem like I've seen them in movies but I don't quite remember. But more importantly movies like Dr. Strangelove are great examples of political comedy were it almost reminiscence too today’s politics as extremely dumb and incompetent, as well as a whole lot of brownnosers. And Dr. Strangelove is a great example of these comedies still standing the test of time and if you’re tired of today’s politics I would highly recommend watching this great movie so, you can feel better, because you can have a sigh of relief to know that your parents growing up in the Cold War era would know that they're struggles where not so bad, as of today's world and in my opinion we may have disagreements but then there's these movies that give us laughter and joy at the end of the day.