Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: The Shining!

Theme: Hotel California - The Eagles

Which clues did you overlook?

Stanley Kubrick's kinos are the most talked-about in the history of the medium, in large part because, like his mutual influence David Lynch (Kubrick screened Eraserhead for the Shining cast to put them in the right mood), he was a cryptic son of a bitch. The Shining might even edge out his own Eyes Wide Shut for the most theorised-upon of films, with each viewer convinced it has some deeper meaning than the surface-level narrative suggests. Is it about the gold standard? Generational abuse? Occult themes? This is hilarious because it makes Stephen King seethe; he wanted everyone to appreciate his deep takes on alcoholism (bad) and white peephole (worse).

"And then the spooky ghost said...THE HECKIN EN WOOORD NOOO HELP ME NІGGERMAN I'M GOING INSAAAANE AAAAAGH" - Stephen King, The Shining, page 1.

Personally, I suspect Kubrick's real deeper meaning was specifically to mock King: I'm reliably informed the wrecked car in this scene is the make and model driven by Jack in the novel, in a cheeky visual metaphor for Kubrick smashing King's sophomoric vision beneath his own weightier take:

Yeah, I'm not going to look it up. I'm pretty sure Rob Ager confirmed it, but he has four hundred and twenty billion videos about The Shining so if you want to find which one, happy hunting.

Not content to limit his trolling to King alone, Kubrick further ridiculed the characters and plot with subliminal details like having Wendy dress like Goofy, and the cast by demanding ludicrous numbers of identical takes for random line readings. But whatever hidden meanings may have been intended, it's the hypnotic mood of the picture that makes it one of the most rewatchable of kinographs. To be honest, I never found it scary at all, but really funny, but I don't think that's a problem or even altogether unintentional. Nicholson's famous "here's Johnny" line was an ad-lib that Kubrick kept in despite his reputation for autismal micromanagement, most likely because it's a great laugh line and Kubrick found the material funny and the fact most of the audience were baffled by it funnier. He also hated furfags ahead of the curve:

"Yiff in hell subhumans" - Kubrick in the editing room, doing the Kubrick stare.

But if we're to put on our serious hats, the most persuasive theory about The Shining to me is the pedo one: Jack reads a Playgirl magazine with an article about incest, which has been widely interpreted to mean he's fucking little Danny, and quotes Lolita (the novel about a guy trying to justify fucking a 12-y/o girl, which Kubrick adapted in the 60s) when attempting to talk down Wendy from trying to fend him off with a baseball bat. This is by no means incompatible with my fuck-Stephen-King interpretation, because King later wrote a child orgy in It, so it's entirely possible Kubrick was calling King (the author with the drinking problem) a nonce via his literally-him stand-in Jack.

Pedos in the glamorous world of entertainment? Well now I've heard everything.

Just for fun though, here's a wildly different theory that makes you go hmm in an altogether contradictory direction. Perhaps the fact the same movie can be spun off into what seem like endless variations of interpretation is what makes it so perennially fascinating. You'll be watching it forever...and ever...and ever.

RANKED: The Top Ten Moar Animals! (Nudibranch Edition!)!

Theme: The Mollusk - Ween

It's that time of year again: Tuesday.

Spanish Shawl Nudibranch

Nudibranchs are psychedelic-looking sea-slugs that eat small cnidarians, absorb their stinging nematocysts, and repurpose them for their own defence against larger predators, sort of like you with donuts, minus the last part. The Spanish shawl one is purple and orange, and kind of looks like Sanic the Hedge Hog OC.

Blue Sea Dragon Nudibranch

The blue sea dragon is also a nudibranch, despite looking nothing like the Spanish shawl. This is a recurring theme with nudibranchs, which come in many shapes and sizes, from four millimeters to 23 inches long, according to the summary of the first result on Bing. They are also found all around the world where there are oceans. Nudibranchs can't swim for shit and simply drift where the tide takes them.

Anna's Chromodoris (Nudibranch)

This one is blue and yellow. The orange things on the front are rhinophores, while those on the back are gills, or vice versa; idk.

This one

Found off Dahab in the Red Sea, this one looks really cool. IDK what it's called though.

Opalescent Nudibranch

This one has perhaps the coolest name of any animal. I want to use "opalescent" more in conversation, but I'm not sure how. Enter the opalescent nudibranch; problem solved.

Green one

Some nudibranchs can photosynthesise. Note that this is in stark contrast to you, who can't do anything right.

Blue Velvet Nudibranch

No doubt named for David Lunch's kino of the same name, the Blue Velvet (1986) nudibranch also appears to be impossible to photograph in focus. I went through like three pictures of this thing on Bing Dot Com Image Search and it's a point of principle I never click a fourth.

Hopkin's Rose Nudibranch

This one makes the cut in part because it doesn't even look like a sea slug at all, looking more like an anemone unless you catch it at the right angle to spot the rhinophores. Hopkin must have been so stoked to coin this rose, holy shit bro.

Variable Neon

This lil bro kind of reminds me of the dragon on the Welsh flag, which is by far the best flag and prompts the question: why don't more flags have cool dragons on them instead of lame blank slabs of colour like some bullshit you'd go see in the Tate Modern?

Vexillology is a solved game, you can all go home.

Cole's Nudibranch

All nudibranchs are hermaphroditic. Some have been known to eat one another. Most live in shallower waters but deep sea ones have been known. I hope you've learned something today, because you sure haven't reading my takes on B movies and shooting whipped cream directly down your gullet.

Supermarionation Tuesdays: Fireball XL5!

Theme: Fireball - Barry Gray

Mommy rudely interrupts my sacred gaming time to ask if I want tendies. STUPID mommy shouldn't have to ask (2025, colourised).

Gerry & Sylvia Anderson's followup to Supercar began as space opera but largely lapsed into sitcom by the end. The adventures of space Chad & Stacy Steve Zodiac and Doctor Venus, backed by Robert the Robot (every relation to Robby) and Dr Beaker clone Professor Matthew Matic, were the stuff of every schoolboy's idle daydreams in the back of class, but for no clear reason the focus shifted overwhelmingly to side characters like Commander Zero, Lieutenant 90 (possible relation to the later Joe), and Zoony the Lazoon, who mostly bickered away in Space City (whence Fireball launched weekly on railtracks, at the trivial cost of its rocket-powered sledge, which sailed off a cliff).

A good gag would have been to reshoot just this shot with a mountain of these wrecked sledges poking up into frame whence they've accumulated at the bottom of the cliff. I'm in the mood for typing "whence" this week.

This was a tooty move if you ask me*, but those early episodes still slap. It's obvious the puppet-makers had great fun coming up with designs for Star Trekian ayylmaos, most of which were recognisably humanoid, like the Bogdanoffs here:

Whamen: this is what you actually look like when you get that buccal fat removal shit.

The Bogdanoffs prepare to give Venus the Goldfinger treatment.

But other designs were more wildly inventive, like the sinister PLANT MAN:

Oh no look out he's got a syringe! Note that the Plant Man built a model of the Space City tower out of Lego on his workbench. Aww.

Even though the space setting gives pretty much unlimited scope for stories, sometimes the team got bored and wanted to do another setting, like a circus or a western, so they just did. Matic invented a time machine just so they had a pretext for a western episode, which nodded heavily to their OG work, Four Feather Falls:

Sadly, they didn't rig up a squirty flower from a prank shop to the puppet's mouths so they could spit in a spitoon, so you'll just have to pretend they did.

Fireball also introduced a trend of dream episodes that allowed the creators to blow up all their key buildings and vehicles without having to permanently bum out and/or traumatise their little kid viewers, but if you're feeling mean you can always shut the TV off before the reveal so they think that's just how the series ended.

Now, son, what did we learn from the horrific 9/11ing of Space City? That's right: violent death can come for you at any time. Now, off to bed! You've got preschool in the morning.

*"Tooty" is space slang for whack/crazy in the show, and possibly in the 60s when it was made.

Greatest Album of All Time of the Week: Operation Mindcrime!

On the album art, Dr X resembles Lenin or Castro. In the "Eyes of a Stranger" video they cast a dead-ringer for Charles Manson, suggesting a deep insight into the parallel cult dynamics at play.

Queensrÿche might have ripped off "Comfortably Numb" with their shameless bid for radio play "Silent Lucidity", but I'd argue they own Pink Floyd's entire discography anyway because their signature album, 1988's audacious concept-driven Operation Mindcrime, mogs The Wall so hard in its sonic rampage through alienation, sex, drugs, guilt and radicalisation that it makes Geoff Tate legally Roger Waters' daddy. We could talk about the stellar sequencing of rapid-fire bangers or the insanely cinematic production, but it's the fact the psychological depth of the character study stays with you as long as the melodies that makes it both a 10 for album and for concept. Queensrÿche understand the process by which their resentful, TV-addled malcontent falls into the nihilism and murder of an antifa-type revolutionary movement, penning fever dream screeds as on point as they are incoherent to reflect his scrambled worldview. Compare and contrast how Nikki slips from jaded loser to fanatic to desperate renegade with the way Waters' Pink becomes a natzee because Waters wants you to know how much he hates le natzees and for not a reason more*.

It's no mistake that Nikki first asserts "Just watch the television/Yeah, you'll see there's something going on", then follows up with "I'm tired of all this bullshit/They keep selling me on TV/About the communist plan". Nikki is one of those super-sleuths we all know who's figured out that Fox News is propaganda but earnestly believes every word out of CNN. It doesn't matter nor occur to him that it's the same little box in his apartment selling him both lines: like Plato's cave-mates, he perceives only symbolic reality. He rejected his old conviction that "only America's way was right" and now rants and seethes about everything that he imagines is American in character, like a borderline engaged in splitting. He reveals the stark gulf between libtard self-delusion and actual character with lines like "Educate the masses/We'll burn the White House down".

I'm not even exaggerating when I say that Nikki is as well-observed and developed a protagonist as something out of Dostoevsky: the addictive personality that craves the needle and the dopamine rush from the confirmation of his delusional beliefs is both a plot point and a timeless, devastating metaphor. Nikki sneers at politicians and evangelists caught up in sex scandals but pitifully orbits a prostitute. His abjection feeds his narcissistic fantasies, with characteristic lack of insight: "Religion is to blame/I'm the new Messiah". He's a ticking time bomb and the perfect useful idiot for Dr X's scheme. But it's not just the lyrics that paint such a stark picture of this unhappy soul: there's a strange pseudo-harmonic effect at play between the plaintive angst of Tate's tormented vocals and the squealing guitar tone that buries any "oh, that's dated" brushoff of the classic metal operatic vocal style and guitar tuning; imagine a death or numetal band sounding half as raw with twice as rough production. That's right, you can't; retvrn.

*Waters now wants to stop the genocide in Gaza. Hey asshole, maybe you shouldn't have made ziolatrous agitprop for the boomer truth regime facilitating it? Food for thought, had you the palate.

Sword and Sorcery Tuesdays DOUBLE BILL: Deathstalker! and Deathstalker 2!

Theme: Deathstalker - Tower Hill

The original Conan, as written by Howard, might have seemed a tad amoral at times: he was variously a mercenary, conqueror, destroyer, pirate, thief, kidnapper, loiterer and public urinator, but he had his own code, as complex and inscrutable as it might have been. Deathstalker (whose name is actually Deathstalker) has no code whatsoever, overtly disdains the notion of heroism, and at one point tries to rape a woman who is actually a man transfigured by the villain's sorcery. This isn't really a problem, since the movie never pretends he's a good guy, but it's kind of funny just watching a complete asshole slash and burn his way through the typical hero plot beats.

Me to the suspiciously glowing egirls in my DMs.

The core of the story is a gladiatorial tournament, sort of like what you'd get in a Street Fighter game, only instead of M. Bison, the villain is Douchar the Magnificent, whose dickhead face tattoo switches sides in one of the more glaring continuity errors in flickstory, but no matter. Douchar (yeah, I forgot his real name. This ain't Ozu) brilliantly schemes to have the strongest fighters in the land off one another to remove any troublemaking competition to his reign.

Douchar looks like the world's #1 consumer of Doritos and XXL T-shirts with inverted pentagrams and Baphomets on them.

Sensing that our protagonist might be a tougher prospect to control than the rest, he troons out his sidekick with a spell to make him resemble the captive princess Douchar himself intends to wed, then sends him to Deathstalker's bedchambers to seduce him and stab him while his defences are lowered. It does not seem to occur to Douchar that promising Deathstalker his own betrothed in front of everyone makes him look like a literal cuckhold, nor that he probably could have simply recruited Deathstalker into his fold because Deathstalker doesn't give a shit about morality.

"GTFO tranny janny, YWNBAW" - Deathstalker. Personally I felt Raimi was just a little on the nose here.

Fortunately for Deathstalker, he realises something is amiss before actually raping the hapless stooge, but his lust interest (Lana Clarkson, Barbarian Queen) is not so lucky and gets rekt trying to comfort what she thinks is a distraught princess. At least she didn't get strapped to a rack or raped this time!

This could be us but you playin'.

You'd think her untimely demise would be the motivation for Deathstalker to win the tournament and avenge her on Douchar's face-tattooed ass, but instead our antihero forgets all about her and proceeds to fight-to-the-death his friend who betrayed him but had a change of heart and confessed his betrayal, which is sort of like if Hank Solo merked Lando Calamari in Revenge of the Jedi (based). Again, don't bother trying to discern a moral message from this; Deathstalker likes violence, simple as.

"I have the power!" - Kull the Conquerer.

Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans (not to be confused with Clash Thereof) is less a sequel and more a lighthearted parody of the original, and of sword and sorcery flicks in general. It also has the classic B-movie trait of recycling random footage from its predecessor (and, I think, Amazons!).

"I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jests, of most exquisite fancy" - Hamlet.

John Terlesky replaces the much taller and rippeder Rick Hill and his version is more charming rogue than DGAF Gigachad meme. While this makes him and the movie more likable, paradoxically it also makes it less hilarious, because Deathstalker just doing whatever the hell he wants because he rocks the He-Man build approaches peak hilarity. But II is nonetheless a broadly charming comedy, and wins instant points with me because it actually does the maymay:

ebin XDDDD

Monique Gabrielle costars as the dubiously psychic princess, ousted by her evil twin, who nudges Stalker into saving the land from Evil David Bowie, fighting a checklist of guards, zombies and Amazons along the way, including this chick who is credited as "Queen Kong":

Happily, Mr & Mrs Kong were confident their little angel wouldn't have to worry too much about bullies making fun of her given name.

"Freak out in a sun-age night-dream ohh yeah" - Evil Bowie.

There's not a joke that isn't cornier than Centeōtl's stool, so the viewer's goodwill sinks or swims on the chemistry of the two leads. Fortunately, I'm about 90% certain these two were fucking IRL between takes, besides having so much more fun with the material than it warrants that they drag it up to 8/10 territory, vindicating yet again my conviction that casting Chads and Stacies and excising grimdark pretensions is just the most basic foundation necessary for entertainment to thrive.

You just know.

Deathstalker received at least two more sequels (presumably also in name only) but none of the cast seems to have returned for them and I don't get the sense they have the same cult following as the first two, but if I ever get around to watching them I'll throw out an update. Until then, do whatever it is you were planning to do anyway!

Supermarionation Tuesdays: Supercar!

Theme: Supercar - Barry Gray

Gamers will be shocked to learn that Supermarionation is not a strategy game starring Nintendo's Italianest plumber, but instead refers to a process of filming puppets in sci-fantasy action shows for kids' TV invented by Bri'ish madlads in the 1960s. While the most famous of these was Thunderbirds, the journey of refinement that led up to it saw various prototypes aired, including this week's showcase: Supercar!

What would you do for the flying car?

The premise is simple: German Professor Popkiss and Bri'ish Doctor Beaker have invented the titular vehicle, piloted by nominal protagonist Mike Mercury. All the Supermarionation protagonists had these space-age cool-guy names: Fireball XL5 had Steve Zodiac, while Stingray had Troy Tempest. None of the protagonists really did much except be easygoing Chads, except for Captain Scarlet, who was more of a sarcastic dick Chad. In fact, Mike Mercury barely did anything at all, since Supercar could be piloted remotely by the Professor. Nor had they quite figured out the Chad phenotype later modelled by the Tracy family marionettes: Mike had gap teeth, a gargantuan proboscis, and the browline of an archaic hominid.

Mike looking like he's about to club the Professor with a bone.

Just as Mike served as a prototype for later heroes, the Thunderbirds fan will see early sketches of stern-to-cantankerous patriarchs like Jeff Tracy and Commander Shore in the more genial Professor, and of stuttering savant Brains in Doctor Beaker, with his catchphrase "satisfactory, most satisfactory". "Don't have a cow man" it ain't.

Beaker rocks the world's most optimistic combover.

Another trend they wisely phased out in the later shows was the "cute" animal companion: Supercar's Mitch the Monkey begat Fireball's Zoonie the Lazoon, both of whom were more annoying than cute, though the fault always lay with their human costars, who would gift them free run of the labs and control rooms, which they would invariably trash. These were toned-down into the more endearing seal from Stingray, and finally dropped.

Science genius Doctor Beaker asserts authoritatively that Mitch is a chimpanzee, which is wrong. Chimpanzees have black fur, no tail, and are not known to make good pets or roommates, because they're insanely violent.

Another motif that made it as far as Fireball was the evil yet inept eastern bloc spy duo: in Supercar, Master Spy and his hapless sidekick Zarin; in Fireball Griselda and her hapless husband Boris. Master Spy followed the classic trajectory of recurring villains, at first being somewhat credibly menacing, but quickly becoming a joke after his failures began to stack up too high. Fortunately, the Supercar crew went easy on him: each appearance would end in his capture, but then they seem to have just let him go in between episodes, as he would always show up again later with a new whacky scheme.

A good way to subtly disguise yourself is to dress like a pirate from the neck up.

But the most perplexing thing about the show is that the opener has Mercury & co. rescue little Jimmy, Mitch, and Jimmy's pilot brother from a raft after they bailed out of their crashing plane, only for the older brother to disappear from the show, never to be mentioned again, while Jimmy and Mitch are basically adopted and tag along on missions for the remainder of the show. What became of Jimmy's brother? Did our heroes whack him and harvest his organs? Is he in Jon's basement with Lyman? You decide!

Lyman is still missing since his last sighting in 1983. If you have any knowledge of his whereabouts, leave a comment and subscribe to Heavy Metal Classic Albums on You Tube Dot Com.

While Thunderbirds was mainly focused on rescues and Captain Scarlet on stopping the Mysterons' schemes against Earth, Supercar alternated freely between rescues, treasure hunts, crimefighting and the surreal: the final episode concerned Mitch swapping places with a giant ape who played drums in a band he saw on television. While it's obvious that Supercar was more of a stepping-stone to greater things, it's still fun to revisit 470 years on. From these modest beginnings, Supermarionation was to reach heights still unmatched in small screen action entertainment.

Greatest Movie of All Time of the Week: Tabu!

Theme: Leah - Roy Orbison

Hipster objections aside*, Robert J. Flaherty invented the documentary with his Eskimokino Nanook of the North and F.W. Murnau cut such all-time classics as Faust (but is better known for accidentally ruining vampires with the death-by-sunlight gag, which later halfwits would play literally, in the biggest nerf ever suffered by a stock monster). It may come as no surprise then that when these two titans of silent cinéma teamed up, they unleashed a kino for the ages. Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, set on Bora Bora, is the best movie of all time you'll see this week, and concerns the doom incurred by two young lovers who breach a Tabu (1931)!!!

>tfw no etc. etc.

Reri (Anne Chevalier) is the young maiden selected to replace a late vestal virgin on a neighbouring island. I'm not sure if this was a real tradition but the Society Islands did have an elite caste of Arioi, who were permitted sex but not children; any that were born to them were ritually killed. Anyway, this de facto abduction-in-tribute of a daughter of Bora Bora is framed as a great honour by the foreign emissary, which I find hilarious. But Reri's bf (Matahi) is heartbroken and defies the Tabu (1931) to run off with her, prompting sinister old fart Hitu to hunt them down as they seek refuge among sailors on another island, where this dude does the best dance of all time of the week:

>ywn bust these sick moves why live?

WILL our young lovers outrun their destiny? CAN Hitu recapture Reri? IS the Tabu (1931) a lazy metaphor for Murnau being a bumboy? Fortunately, NO to the last one: whatever the great filmmaker's extremely dubiously alleged proclivities, he had the Tolkienian taste to avoid clumsy allegorising in favour of a nonspecific but endlessly applicable and thus timeless idea. Tabu doesn't even stipulate whether the Tabu is meant to be a good thing or a bad thing. It's the one-in-a-zillion film that's actually content to let the viewer ponder it over for himself. Perhaps Murnau shed his didacticism as he did his intertitles: all the text in Tabu is artfully framed as actual writing in-story.

There's no intertitle for what this kid yells so you're free to assume it's the funniest slur.

Also, Murnau was said to be exceptionally tall, with heights from 6'4" to 6'11" variously cited, so even if he did rail dudes that's basically like a normal guy railing bitches, but in this house, Murnau was a STRAIGHT king.

The wet dresses, topless chicks and Baywatch bounce per reel of footage tells a distinctly hetero story, and for 1931? Forgetaboutit.

Flaherty only directed the opening sequence and seems to have become quite disenchanted with the project and ceded it mostly to Murnau, but it was his familiarity with the locale and love of the world cultures first ignored and then homogenised away by the steamroller of libshit modernity that fired the project and made it viable to begin with. None of these cultures can exist on their own terms anymore, as every manifestation of them is now filtered through self-consciousness and anticolonialist self-righteousness, like when those Māori assclowns do the goofy haka dance in the New Zealand parliament while wearing suits**. Only le problematic shitlords like Flaherty or Mel Gibson can pay authentic tribute to the great and terrible cultures of the world that was.

"Check these dubs" - Bora Bora anon.

*Waah, waah, he broke the rules of documentary filmmaking that were made up after the term was first coined to describe one of his own films! Shut up, bitch!

**The Māori eagerly adopted European technology from the off, specifically muskets, which they immediately used to murder one another en masse, most egregiously the pacifistic Moriori of the Chatham Islands. You'd think this would make them by far the least sympathetic anticolonialist hypocrites, but the same sort of thing happened throughout North America too, so they're more or less average in that ignoble regard.