A wide ranging talk that corrects the record about banking, such as the the Catholic Church, as opposed to Jews, being the prime mover

The most underrated MetroidVania ever?

By: Toxicka Shock | ToxickaShock@gmail.com

Platform: Game Boy

Developer: Nintendo R&D 1

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre: MetroidVania

Release Date: Nov. 30, 1991

I’ve always thought the original Metroid was fairly overrated. Yes, it was innovative and well-designed, but it wasn’t exactly the funnest game to trudge through, either. In a pre-Internet world, getting lost in that fuckin’ game wasn’t just an issue, it was essentially the game itself. You pretty much HAD to buy a Nintendo Power guide to finish that thing and even then it wasn’t all that easy to make sense of the game’s convoluted level layout. And not even the incentive of seeing Samus in her underwear compensated for that — even now, it kinda’ makes me want to type in ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHERFUCKER on the password screen and brick whatever system I’m playing the damn thing on.

Metroid II on the Game Boy, though, is a VAST improvement over its NES precursor — which isn’t exactly something you’d expect to be the case, considering the obvious downgrade in technology. But even as a shrunken down portable adventure, Return of Samus (or, as those commercials pronounced it, SAM-MOOSE) actually manages to outdo its home console inspiration in just about every facet. Like, even graphically. Don’t let the monochrome color scheme fool you, the sprites in Metroid II are absolutely gorgeous and it’s kinda’ amazing just how much depth and variety the designers harnessed using just two colors. It’s a tremendous looking title, easily one of the most visually striking and technologically impressive Game Boy games ever. And the music is pretty damn good, too, even when the background sound is mostly ambiance. In that, the way Metroid II builds up atmosphere and tension and good, old fashion fear is remarkable. Like, there were actually moments in the game that made me jump out of my seat, and I think you can count on one hand just how many GB games are actually capable of that feat — and have a couple of fingers left over. 

Metroid II plays a lot more like Super Metroid than the NES game and you don’t need me to tell you that’s a positive thing. The sense of weight and gravity in the game is really neat, and at the time, mildly revolutionary — I mean, how many other GB games are out there that even attempt to have a little bit of inertia and physics as gameplay elements? Samus controls like a dream, and pretty much everything you do in the game — from doing cannonball leaps in the air to rolling around in “spider ball” sticky mode to the combat system — feels slick, smooth and intuitive. You never really have to wrestle with the controls and it doesn’t take long to figure out the mechanics of the more advanced power-ups. You can’t stack beams like in later Metroid games, but that’s not really an issue — the designers make it obvious which weapon you ought to have handy at which phase of the game, and they never really attempt to fool you into powering down your equipment (although, admittedly, finding that ice beam at the ass end of the game took me forever.)

Now, conceptually Metroid II is the same game as Metroid (you explore a massive labyrinth and pick up new tools and weapons to reach formerly inaccessible areas, etc.) but the execution is way different. This time around, you’re basically playing species eradicator ne plus ultra, with about three dozen different Metroids (some of whom don’t look like the traditional Metroids we’re used to) to locate, confront and neutralize in the name of science. Of course, the path to each mini-boss is littered with lesser enemies and tons of environmental hazards and a lot of tricky, quasi-puzzle sequences to navigate and overcome. It’s a MetroidVania game to the marrow, and it gives you everything you’d want out of the subgenre in buckets. And for a Game Boy title, it’s insanely long — like, on my first playthrough, it took me five hours to reach the end credits. Not bad, considering so many of its contemporaries on the handheld could be complete in less than an hour (and sometimes, less than half an hour.)

So you’re definitely getting a lot of content for the upfront investment. There’s not really much of an incentive to replay the game, outside of beating your own record time (which does include another fan service, bra-and-panties shot if you beat the game in under three hours, for whatever that’s worth.) But the entirety of the game is so gripping, so atmospheric, so distinct that you could probably give it a reverential playthrough every year or two. It’s unquestionably one of the best all-around Game Boy cartridges out there, and there’s a strong, strong argument to be made that it’s not just the most criminally underrated and underappreciated Metroid game ever, but perhaps the most woefully unsung and uncelebrated MetroidVania game from any brand or franchise.

The game has been remade twice so far (just, uh, once, if we’re being super official here) so I guess the lingering existential question here is whether or not revisiting this graphically and aurally inferior game is even necessary anymore. Like fuck you don’t already know my response: duh, of course it is! It’s one thing for Metroid II to turn out as well as it did, but for it to surmount so many structural limitations of the Game Boy system itself to get there makes it a must play experience by default. It’s a monumental achievement for a GB release, and it’s influence on every subsequent Metroid game is glaringly obvious.

Yes, not having an in-game map is a pain in the ass and if you dip in without a guide handy you WILL get lost in no time. And admittedly, some of the mechanics — like using the bomb function in spider ball mode — are a little iffy. But those are small problems in an otherwise excellent handheld offering. 

Return of Samus was kinda’ overlooked when it first came out and even now way too many people keep sleeping on it. It’s not without a few frustrations here and there, but by and large, it’s a downright tremendous addition to one of the most beloved (and consistently excellent) video game franchises ever.

And on top of that, just try and find a better grand finale sequence in a Game Boy game. I dare you. 

Rating: 9.5 out of 10.0

MY FIVE FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT THIS GAME:

— The kick-ass “surface world” musical theme.

— The SPAZER, mostly just because of its name.

— Getting the Screw Attack and literally somersaulting your way through the rest of the game while practically invincible.

— Those snazzy shoulder blades on the Varia suit upgrade.

— OMG, how adorable is the little baby Metroid at the end of the game?

This week’s post has been written by Devan Scott, host of the superb “How Would Lubitsch Do it?” podcast. As anyone familiar with this series will know, Devan is not only an exceedingly knowledgeable devotee of Lubitsch but an active participant in researching and promoting the director’s work. Here, he writes about the discovery of an alternate version of The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg and the light this copy sheds on the film’s production and exhibition across 1927-28. So, without further ado, I now hand over the reins to Devan…

The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg – also known under the title Old Heidelberg – has been an obsession of mine ever since I first watched it a half-decade ago, and I attribute this to the fact that it exists at a unique intersection between three interests of mine.

First: it is not only a film by Ernst Lubitsch, greatest of all directors of romantic comedies, but a great film. It is, as far as his American canon is concerned, an unusually simplistic bit of melodrama: a young, cloistered prince experiences the world for the first time and winds up in a doomed romance with someone below his station. There’s very little of Lubitsch’s trademark high-society gamesmanship, but it’s brilliant anyways because of his singular ability to shade every single gesture with the lightest of brushstrokes. It’s a swooning film of large gestures, but it’s never only that.

Second: the version of the film I first encountered features an orchestral score composed by Carl Davis, greatest of all retrospective silent film composers. In typical Davis fashion, it is a brash, boisterous marvel of a thing, with an uncommon sensitivity towards the film for which it has been composed. It interfaces with the film as readily as any of Lubitsch’s own gestures, and this collaboration across time has resulted in a masterpiece.

Third, and the focus of this blog piece: outside of the odd 35mm screening here or there, the film has solely been available in the form of a telecine of the 1984 restoration by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, for which Davis wrote his score. Released on laserdisc by MGM/UA Home Video in 1993, and occasionally broadcast since then, this telecine is a wholly inadequate representation of a work of such magnitude. (Retroformat recently posted a different version of Old Heidelberg. Though this version matches the cut restored by Brownlow/Gill, it derives from a heavily cropped 16mm print that is unfortunately inferior to the laserdisc.)

And so it came as a pleasant surprise that one day, out of the blue, a high-definition version of the film suddenly appeared on the Bundesarchiv’s digital platform. (Credit to Anthony on my Discord server for spotting this.) Per the opening title card, this version derives from the archives of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) – and features a distinct title. Whereas the widely circulating Brownlow/Gill version credited itself simply “Old Heidelberg”, this version was titled “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg.” Though a problematic transfer of an unrestored print, the improvement it offers on the laserdisc is obvious:

Clearly, the logical next step for me was to line it up with the laserdisc version so as to create an ideal hybrid video synchronized to the Carl Davis soundtrack. This is the point at which certain kinks made themselves known: it quickly became apparent that these two versions of the film featured often wildly divergent shot lengths and, in the case of the MoMA version, greatly extended sequences with distinct footage.

My initial suspicion was that this was an alternative negative, possibly struck for overseas territories; this suspicion was echoed by the many extremely helpful folks who generously responded to my various self-indulgent emails on the subject. (In addition to this blog’s proprietor, Dave Kehr, Peter Williamson, Scott Eyman, David Neary, Stefan Drossler, Jose Arroyo, and Matt Severson all contributed information and guidance to this piece.)

Further analysis of the film made it clear that – with a few exceptions involving alternate takes and a few extended or truncated scenes – the bulk of the changes were related to two elements:

1. New location footage of the real Heidelberg, Germany, totally absent from the earlier version which featured footage exclusively shot in the Los Angeles County area.

2. Norma Shearer’s performance, which has (compromised logistics of quick-and-dirty reshoots permitting) been largely reshot to the tune of at least fifty new distinct replacement shots. Only a few of these feature any other performers: the vast majority feature her and only her. (Note the production design inconsistencies in the example below (see images), which indicate pick-up photography done after principal had wrapped.)

The aesthetic implications of the first additions are limited: there’s a greater sense of verisimilitude around Heidelberg, the entrance to which is rendered with significantly more grandeur. A fine set of additions, but the fabric of the film is not fundamentally altered.

Shearer’s reshoots, on the other hand, have fascinating knock-on effects on the film’s form. She hits her emotional beats with far more emphasis in the new footage, and the rhythms of the performative edits are far more generous – geared to give her time in which to land those beats. The results are a mixed bag: certain beats cut through with more clarity, but (though this could be my own familiarity bias towards Old Heidelberg) at other points Shearer risks embodying Rawitch a little too closely.

The most interesting by-product of this new coverage is the way that scenes otherwise covered in long master shots have been broken up with somewhat more conventional coverage in the form of close-ups. Whether the motivation for doing so was to better highlight Shearer’s performance or to better suit the limited nature of pick-ups (it’s easier to recreate a set if the background is cropped and out-of-focus), the impact in the newer version is that the camera direction subtly changes whenever Shearer is on screen. There’s a slightly out-of-character (for Lubitsch) cuttiness, and Lubitsch was rarely one to lean on close-ups to make subtle emotional beats emphatic anyways. For example, in the below scene (see images) there is a common occurrence: a cut breaks up the final wide shot with a close-up, extending the scene and more forcefully punctuating the emotional beat.

As is probably clear at this point, this is no A-negative/B-negative situation but an updated version of the film assembled at a later date. What we know about the circumstances of the film’s development, production, and post-production cycle is in some ways illuminating and in others a contradictory fog-of-war situation…

The film’s origin lies with MGM’s purchase of the rights to the operetta The Student Prince (1924), itself based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s play In Old Heidelberg (1901), itself adapted from his novel Karl Heinrich (1898). William Wellman and Erich von Stroheim were at various points either attached or courted before Lubitsch – on loan in the midst of his move from Warner Brothers to Paramount – landed the project. Both Shearer and Navarro were reportedly insisted upon by the studio.

Principal photography wrapped up by early May 1927. Lubitsch’s desire to include footage of the real Heidelberg led him to decamp to Germany to record b-roll material there in mid-May. This is where things become hopelessly convoluted. Various sources, including The Exhibitor’s Herald and Picture Play, all seem to agree that John Stahl undertook reshoots in Lubitsch’s absence, but the details of these reshoots are contested: the Herald (August 1927) claims that these involved retakes of Shearer, and that additionally Paul Bern and Fred Niblo also took turns at the helm before Lubitsch resumed control when he returned from Germany. Picture Play (October & November 1927) claims that certain “love episodes” were “tempered”.

A frequently-made claim involves Stahl reshooting the film’s major “love scene” in particular. An odd claim, considering that this scene – the one in the moonlit field – is one of the few featuring Shearer that is virtually identical between the two cuts. Could this claim be referring to a later, far more subdued (and heavily reshot) scene in which Karl and Kathi kiss on a sofa before a fade-out (the sole time in the film that we’re invited to infer that the two have consummated their romance)?

Confusing matters further, Meyer-Förster and MGM were embroiled in various legal battles throughout 1927 over naming rights: various trade publications refer to the film in early 1927 as “Old Heidelberg” before transitioning to “The Student Prince” thereafter. Meyer-Förster’s lawsuit and appeal – though both rejected – would seem to have something to do with this name change, as reported in Picture Play:

[T]he author of “Old Heidelberg” took occasion to make some unpleasant remarks about the filming of his play. His contention was that the picture had been made without his permission. It seems that this had necessitated a change in title, and so “Old Heidelberg” will come to the screen as “The Student Prince”, thus linking it up with the recent musical version of the famous German play.

Whatever the provenance of the various shoots, the film premiered in September 1927 in New York and entered general release in January 1928. MGM’s continuity cutting report, filed in June 1928, would appear to indicate that the later “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg” cut – complete with reshoots – was what entered general release that year. By 1936, MoMA had acquired the nitrate print of “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg”, with a copy landing at the Bundesarchiv in 1970.

This version, however, seems to have been lost to film history at some point between MoMA’s acquisition and its resurfacing this year. Virtually everything written about the film – at least, what’s publicly available – is based on the “Old Heidelberg” version. To take one example, in a text from 2017 that continues to accompany screenings, Kevin Brownlow states that Lubitsch’s on-location footage taken in Heidelberg never made it into the final cut of the film. (This text has been reprinted at recent screenings of the film.) Yet the existence of “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg” cut – and its apparent status as the definitive released version – clearly indicates that this is not the case. Additionally, prior to my inquiries it seems that neither the Bundesarchiv nor MoMA had any information regarding this version and its distinctiveness: it appears to have fallen through the historical cracks until now. I look forward to a more detailed account of the two versions and their provenance, once more investigation has taken place.

Just as interesting are the numerous unanswered questions: did the Old Heidelberg cut ever see significant screenings in 1927? Perhaps this was what premiered in New York in 1927, or maybe it was relegated to overseas showings? Why did this version, almost certainly lesser-seen, eventually become the only widely-available one? Who or what instigated the Shearer-centric reshoots? It’s tantalizing to imagine that they were an Irving Thalberg initiative, given his relationship with Shearer. How much of the new footage was directed by Lubitsch? These questions vary in terms of knowability, but they’re fascinating to contemplate.

Happily, the resurfacing of “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg” cut has set gears in motion that might lead to a full restoration (and release) of the film. This should include the tinting scheme detailed by MGM’s continuity report of 1928. While most of the film remains monochrome, blue is indicated for nighttime scenes and lavender for the death of the king and its aftermath.

There remains the question of whether Carl Davis’s score can be made to synchronize with a different cut of the film. My own (amateur) synchronizing of the two versions indicates that Davis’s work could be adapted for the new cut without many compromises. (Some looping and grafting fixed most of the holes, but the different pacing of various scenes meant an increase of speed by as much as 10%.) I can only hope that such minor changes to the score/recording might be possible for any future (official) restoration.

Whatever happens, this is an exciting time to be one of this film’s fans. When unencumbered by the ravages of a decades-old laserdisc transfer, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg is a film of immense emotional power, and one of Lubitsch’s great silent works.

Devan Scott

My great thanks to Devan for writing this week’s post. I alert interested readers to his “How Would Lubitsch Do it?” podcast, which includes an episode on The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg. – Paul Cuff

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Twenty years after Jeffrey Epstein was exposed for his child sex abuse enterprise, the Justice Department this week made a startling revelation. Rather than the “dozens” of victims previously alleged by the government and media, Justice now says that there were “over one thousand” victims.

Everyone is talking about Epstein again, from MAGA types furious that the Trump administration is not producing a supposed client list, to the mainstream media, which is giddily mocking just about anyone critical of the Justice Department here as conspiracy theorists.

One person who doesn’t want to talk about it is Donald Trump, who told New York Magazine in 2002 that his buddy Epstein was a “fun” guy who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Seldom one to shy away from blurting out whatever, when asked this week about the Epstein memo, Trump uncharacteristically changed the subject. He admonished the reporter, telling him that the question was a “desecration” to the lives lost in the Texas flood.

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. We have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things — and are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time? I mean, I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.”  

Trump, of course, hung out with Epstein and feasted on his legendary get togethers in New York and West Palm Beach, so he probably isn’t keen on there being too much transparency here. But before this becomes a conspiracy theory itself, I note that former President Bill Clinton was also a frequent flier, especially on the Lolita Express which took prominent guests to Epstein’s private island. Those guests included financiers, billionaires, lawyers, and even a British prince.

The names of the hundreds (and now indeed possibly thousands) of johns involved — Jeffrey Epstein’s clients — have never been revealed by the government. Pam Bondi’s Justice Department evidently doesn’t have the stomach or the inclination to delve much deeper into the matter.

The new figure of over one thousand victims appears in a Trump administration’s review of FBI holdings concerning Epstein, a summary of which was released in the form of a two-page memo earlier this week.

“We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the undated and unsigned memo says.

Justice says it reviewed “more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence,” including “over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material.” 

There is no client list, Justice says in its memo; this despite Bondi herself implying in February that such a list was on her desk. (She now says she was referring to files more generally.)

There are so many explanations and unanswered questions raised by the release, which also says that there is “no credible evidence … that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.” That means that the theories alleging Epstein was operating some kind of operation to collect incriminating information for a foreign government (most notably the Israelis) has also been dismissed by the U.S. government.

Oh, and the memo says that because of this “exhaustive” search, there’s no need for Justice or the FBI to disclose anything further. This is a reversal of Trump’s promise to his voters that he would “take a look at” the Epstein case as president.

When the Justice Department indicted Epstein in 2019, it repeatedly referred to “dozens of minor girls” that he had abused. Federal prosecutors reportedly identified 36 underage victims in Florida, in line with the “dozens” described in the original federal indictment.

“Consistent with prior disclosures,” the Justice Department memo said this week, “this review confirmed that Epstein harmed over one thousand victims.” 

There was no such prior disclosure that Epstein’s victims were so numerous.

When I read the “over one thousand” phrase, I was genuinely shocked by the number, and then even more so when no one in the major media reported it. So I reached out to the FBI to ask about the discrepancy.

“The FBI declines to comment,” an unnamed Bureau official responded in email. (The Justice Department has not even responded to my request for clarification.)

There are some bizarre theories about Epstein out there, my personal favorite being the notion that Epstein never actually died in prison and that the man who did was a body double.

But you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see there’s more here than we were told before. You just have to read the Justice Department’s review carefully — which the media evidently did not.

It’s as if no one in power wants to deal with the substance of this scandal: that an industrial scale child abuse operation was taking place right under the noses of the countless household names with whom Epstein socialized. Now those same household names are ever so happy to cast the battle as a war between conspiracy nuts and the sober-minded adults, completely gliding over the obvious indictment here of the very high society of which they are a part.

What the Epstein case shows is that powerful men preying on the very young is condoned by high society, whether they’re a Republican or Democrat, an American or an Afghan warlord. And that’s why prominent people, from the government to the news media, seem to want this to go away.

As for Trump’s law enforcers and self-styled truth tellers who claim to be ending an era of politicization of the FBI and intelligence? It is entirely possible that in all the material they possess, there is no information about the johns. That’s because decades ago, they weren’t told to go after the men, or they decided not to. Either way, that’s the true cover-up, that no one was predisposed to investigate the perpetrators beyond Epstein and his staff, not in the Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden or Trump administrations.

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— Edited by William M. Arkin

The reality was far worse than he’d imagined. Now that he’s back in Santa Barbara, he can’t wait to leave again.

The post Santa Barbara Dentist James Rolfe, 85, Returns from Palestine appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

The stories of California’s indigenous populations have included very few happy endings in the last few hundred years. I learned about one such inspirational story in an L.A. Times article by Ian James.

The Yurok Tribe in northwest California recently regained some 73 square miles of habitat in a deal that took 23 years to complete. It may be the largest “LandBack” deal in California history.

The Yurok reservation was established in 1855 on a small fraction of the Yurok tribe’s ancestral lands around the Klamath River and the Pacific Coast.

Not long after, white settlers and speculators encroached by buying, bribing, and fraudulently acquiring additional lands to harvest timber, according to the Times article.

Bribery and fraud also were among the ways local Chumash lands came to be held by European immigrants.

In 1840, for example, the Chumash band living at Cieneguitas (roughly Modoc Road and Encore Avenue) was the largest remaining Chumash group.

About that time, two Chumash women were able to confirm the village’s traditional land rights through a judge. A document recording their statement was signed by the county district attorney and filed in the recorder’s office.

Legal documents did not prove sufficient.

A century later, a young UCSB historian named Gregory L. Schaaf uncovered the sordid story of Hope Ranch. Schaaf interviewed secondary sources and perused thousands of documents in Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, and at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

G. Pascal Zachary reported Schaaf’s research in a 1981 Santa Barbara News-Press article.

Schaaf found that in 1854 Thomas Hope, an Irish immigrant, was granted an unpaid position as “special” Indian agent to protect the rights of the indigenous living in the Cieneguitas area.

Hope acted in various capacities, including discouraging the practice of hiring Indians for a week of work while paying them only in “Indian rum.”

That same year, at the request of his supervisor, Hope sent a map and certificate of ownership to the federal Indian Affairs Office confirming the Chumash right to Cieneguitas. As late as 1856 more than 800 Chumash families lived in the village.
 
So far, so good. Yet, white settlers were already encroaching. One man had claimed the northern part of Cieneguitas and stolen about 900 head of cattle. A scant three years after the 1856 population count, a U.S. cavalry officer estimated only 40 Chumash remained.

Despite his position as protector, by the 1870s Hope acquired nearly all the Chumash land in the Hope Ranch area. Evidence shows he purchased some land at extremely low prices.

He paid a couple $30 for their property, for example, leasing it back to them for $20 per year. Soon, more than 100 indigenous were servants for 34 Hope Ranch families, including Hope’s.

The Yurok LandBack was accomplished by a Portland-based nonprofit called the Western Rivers Conservancy.

They cobbled together funds from foundations, corporations and philanthropists. Combined with tax credits, public grants, carbon credit sales, and state funding and efforts from California’s Wildlife Conservation Board and State Coastal Conservancy, the pool came to over $56 million.

Nelson Mathews, president of the Western Rivers Conservancy, noted, “This is the result of commitment, persistence and tenacity.”

Tribal lawyer Amy Bowers Cordalis observed that the return of the lands allows the tribe “to start rebuilding and to start taking care of our land and our resources.” She said they are committed to living in a balance with the natural world.

It would be more than courageous to picture Hope Ranch reverting to its Chumash owners any time soon.

The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, however, has taken its own baby step. NOAA’s website for the new sanctuary created in December 2024 states:

“With intention and respect, a key priority for this sanctuary is to provide meaningful opportunities for interested Tribes and Indigenous community members, including individuals with knowledge of Indigenous culture, history, and environment, to participate in collaborative co-stewardship of this special place.”

Marine Sanctuary Leadership is just one of several LandBack visions of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council (NCTC), described in Anthropic’s AI, Claude. These include Diablo Canyon Land Return, land restoration projects in sustainable farming and ecosystem protection, and funding support from groups like the Coastal Conservancy.

LandBacks and sustainable earth management: there could be more happy endings in the future.

The post Karen Telleen-Lawton: LandBack Deals appeared first on Noozhawk.