So, the end of the year period is the time frame where I tend to do a lot of overtime at my day-job. My habit is to take the extra funds generated by the OT, set them aside, and buy myself something nice with that loot. This year it will be replacing my 10-year-old flat screen television. I am looking at a Sony X900E in the 55″ size for my next television. I will be waiting until after the upcoming copyrighted sporting event to make that purchase, as it is not uncommon for TVs to go on sale at that time.

Once the new television is installed and ready to go for a few friends and family I will then host my Cold War Movie Marathon; three films about the cold war, produced during the cold war.

1) The Manchurian Candidate (1962). I selected this film, one of my personal favorites, to capture the essence of paranoia the infused the period. With terrific performances by Lawrence Harvey, Angela Lansbury, and Frank Sinatra it is a classic.

2) The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) Based on the novel by John Le Carre this is the dark and realistic tale of an intelligence officer attempting one final field mission. This one I picked for its excellent sense of cynicism and the moral ambiguity of the both sides during the protracted contest. Starring Richard Burton this movie is pretty much the polar opposite of a James Bond movie.

3) Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) I will end the series with this classic dark comedy from film genius Stanley Kubrick. Inspired by the novel Red Alert, Kubrick started the production as a serious dramatic film, but quickly found that his preferred method of dealing with such terrible subject matter was to turn it into farce, had it remained a dramatic film I think it would have been remembered but not a classic. Strangelove by being a farce captures the absurdity of that nuclear standoff and the insanity of the period.