"My God! It's Full of Stars"/"Depending on the Breaks"

Today is Thursday, 26 July 2007.

Paths of Glory. Spartacus. Lolita. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Napoleon. A Clockwork Orange. Barry Lyndon. The Shining. Full Metal Jacket. Eyes Wide Shut.

The masterpiece: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

(Along with Fail-Safe and Testament, one of the Top Five movies about the threat, still with us, only a half-hour’s launch away (less if submarine launched), of nuclear genocide.)

“I think continually of those who were truly great.
…
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.” --- Stephen Spender

Yes, I’m speaking … writing? … of the great film director Stanley Kubrick, born this date in 1928. (Hard to believe he’s been gone from us since 1999.)

(I included the Spender quote as a sort of yardstick: Tarantino is excellent, I love the Dogs and the Fiction, but he hasn’t yet achieved greatness.)

Speech, of course, came before writing, so perhaps we can think of writing as crystallized speech. And seeing and hearing and touching came before speech, so perhaps we can think of speech as crystallized seeing and hearing and touching.

Movies forcibly show us another person(s)’ vision of reality. Speech and writing force us to show ourselves the realities others attempt to communicate.

Well, enough philosophy and anthropology. Watch Strangelove and Jacket. Watch 2001, and, among many other things, remember the nostalgia that never happened.

Alas, alas, alas.

Speaking of which latter, a bauble: