How I Learned to Love Peter Sellers When Cricket and Tom Cruise Failed

Feb 08, 2010 18:26

Did a bit of TV watching yesterday afternoon/evening. The circket fizzled out pretty much from the moment the West Indies strode out to bat with Chris Gale making the return journey within a couple of overs. And like Richie Richardson found when all of the giants of the 1980s, Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Gordon Grennidge, desmond Haynes, Jeff Dujon, little Gus Logie and big Joel Garner, retired and left him with the captaincy and a bunch of recruits, with the Captain, so went the innings and the rejuvenated West Indies collapsed like... Pakistan is the comparison that leaps to mind.

Channel 9 followed with Mission Impossible 3, as JJ Abrahms put his spin on Tom Cruise trying to be the American James Bond. It was diverting for awhile is I watched what degenerated into a remake of On Her Majesties Secret Service, until I found a gem over on the ABC. Black and white like all of ABC's movies, this was no 1940's war film but one of the must see films of all time in Dr. Strangelove. This black as sack-cloth black comedy even today still has a sharpness that belies its age. The effects may have dated in places, but not as badly as you might have thought and the footage of B-52s racing across Russian tundra is good enough that it doesn't detract. The multiple roles of Peter Sellers shines, at once he gets to over-the-top ham, and underplay in the same film and develop three distinctly different characters and is surrounded by fine performances.

The power though is the story itself, and if you haven't seen it, do so. Bistling with humour from the subtle to the utterly absurd this doomsday story still seems real enough that it can be imagined for real. For those of us who missed the cold War, it's an aject lesson on what must never come to pass again, and the almost self-fulfilling policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, and not just abbreviated.

movie, cricket

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