Triptych: Great Hero, Not-So-Great Plumber

"SMB3: Grass Land" by Nolan F. Kennedy

"Etude: Mario" by Greg Guillemin

"Deconstructed Plumber" by Dirty Great Pixels

Triptych: The Luckiest Luckdragon

"The Fighting Luckdragons" (t-shirt) by JC Thomason

"Falkor Folklore" (t-shirt) by Crystal Fontan

"The Nothing Is Coming" (t-shirt) by Matthew James Parsons

Triptych: Billy Bumbler

"Nineteen" (t-shirt) by Megan Lara

"Tower of Darkness" (t-shirt) by Mike Handy

"Deschain" (t-shirt) by John Midgleyp>

Triptych: All Work And No Play

"Classic Movies In Miniature Style: The Shining" by Murat Palta

"The Nooning" (t-shirt) by James Hance

"The Legend of Kubrick" (t-shirt) by Drew Wise

I have always had very ambiguous feelings about Stanley Kubrick. As a film studies graduate, I was made to watch and study the majority of his films, and he was considered to be on par with Hitchcock or John Ford in terms of importance and influence. And far be it from me to argue with that: he was a great filmmaker, end of story.

But my first introduction to Kubrick came when I was about sixteen years old, and watched A Clockwork Orange for the first time. On that first viewing, and on every subsequent viewing of A Clockwork Orange, the impression that I was left with was, primarily, "This film is a narrative shambles." I am not a fan of A Clockwork Orange. I don't feel like it conveys its plot, or its themes, even remotely effectively. It is highly dated and comes across as placing far too much emphasis on shock value - or what passed for shock value in 1971. And yet, it is consistently considered by many to be Kubrick's finest hour.

It wasn't until I took a course in American film directors that I finally saw some of his other films: Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket. And in watching those films, I came to appreciate what Stanley Kubrick was all about. His films all involve an unravelling of some sort, whether it comes as part of the character development or narrative (as in The Shining) or as part of the structure of the film (2001, Dr. Strangelove) and often in both (Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut). Certainly A Clockwork Orange fits into this aesthetic, but Kubrick accomplished the same thing more effectively elsewhere in his oeuvre.

Dr. Strangelove was an epiphany to me, a dry-witted satire unlike anything I had ever seen before. That film is absolutely made by Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. But of all of Kubrick's films, the one that has sat with me, uneasily, over the years has been The Shining. I'd read the Stephen King novel more than once in my teens; Kubrick's adaptation, while hardly faithful, was a thrilling example of the art of novel-to-film adaptation. It's a genuinely frightening movie, moreso for Jack Torrance's deterioration than for his (admittedly chilling) hallucinations. Stephen King was reportedly very dissatisfied with the adaptation but to me it stands as one of the finest horror movies ever made.

Triptych: Time and Dimension in 8-Bit Space

"Super Doc Who" (t-shirt) by Baznet

"Pixelate! Triplets" (t-shirt) by Mike Jacobsen

"Adventure Time And Space!" (t-shirt) by Blair Campbell

Triptych: Super Adventure Time!

(Click for full-size)
"Super Adventure Time" by evsboy123

"Adventure Time Calling" by Alfredo Conrique

"Adventure Time" by Pascal Brander

Triptych: Studio Ghibli Style

"Princess Mononoke" by Miles Corless

"Neko Bus Stop" (t-shirt) by Jason Cryer

"Howl" (t-shirt) by Ashley Hay

My three favorite Ghiblis: Princess Mononoke (the first Studio Ghibli film I ever saw, by virtue of Neil Gaiman writing the English-language script), My Neighbour Totoro (the Catbus is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen) and Howl's Moving Castle (Calcifer and the scarecrow are the best parts of a pretty awesome movie.) Not pictured: Grave of the Fireflies, AKA the saddest movie of all time.

Triptych: Ours Is The Fury

"Winter Time With Jon and Ghost" by Daisy May

"Use Wildfire" (t-shirt) by Baznet

(Click for full-size)
"Game of Mushroom Kingdoms" by titan413

Showcase: Ty Lettau's Minimalist Nintendo Games

Mega Man, Metroid, Super Mario Bros.

Final Fantasy, Tetris, Dig Dug

The Legend of Zelda, Rampage, Excitebike, Donkey Kong

Ty Lettau is someone I've featured here before, I think. I'm always incredibly impressed not only with the quality of his work but also his dedication to covering a ton of ground within each concept - for example, in his Super Bros. set, in which pop culture characters are redesigned in the style of the original Super Mario Bros. sprites, is comprised of just shy of seven hundred entries - and his new Minimalist Nintendo Game theme looks like it will be equally expansive.

[Ty Lettau on Flickr]

Triptych: The Songbirds of Columbia

"Infinite" by Huzaa

"Elizabeth and The Songbird" by Algabir Stacado (account deactivated)

"Not All Is As It Seems" by Hatm0nster

Last weekend I finally finished Bioshock 2. While I always enjoy my visits to Rapture, I definitely felt that it didn't quite live up to the mind-blowing experience of the first Bioshock; the novelty of playing a Big Daddy sustained me for quite a while, but by around the 2/3rd mark, I was looking at the current and upcoming level maps and starting to feel like it was a bit of a drag. For the most part, Bioshock 2 should have been half as long and released as a DLC pack.

Having said that, I'm unduly excited about Bioshock Infinite. I'm not entirely sure how it will relate to the whole established Andrew Ryan\Rapture\plasmid narrative of the first two Bioshock games, but the extreme change in setting and the brilliant enemy designs, not to mention the fact that the game will apparently do for the philosophy of American exceptionalism what the first two did for Randian objectivism, have me eagerly awaiting its release on February 26th, 2013.