IT TELLS IT LIKE IT IS!!
my mum took me to see thunderbirds are go! when i wz eight, and says she sat rigid w.boredom thru the entire thing – i can’t see why!! it wz on c5 this afternoon, and i watched it avidly: it is a searing michael moore-style indictment of the bureaucratic complacency of the 21st century military industrial complex (security and safety measures surrounding the zero-x mars mission spacecraft are lamentable) and a powerful argument in favour of indie inventiveness, intelligence and mobility (ie the tracy family business) against the sloth of the corporate state (cf comments on zero-x mars mission), as well as an indictment of thoughtless xenophobic technological imperialism (the zero-x opens fire at the rock snakes on the surface of mars, thinking they are geological formations, and they wake up and retaliate violently) (VIETNAM METAPHOR AHOY!!??)
i had a special-edition magazine as well, sadly long lost: glossy photos from the film plus behind the scenes interviews with all concerned, and pored over it intently (i think it might have bought when i wz ill, i associate the red of supermarionation explosions and booster-rockets w.feverishness and nausea): intently enough that there were no scenes during today’s showing which i did not remember exactly, colour, staging, mise-en-scene etc etc
what i had forgotten, tohugh, wz the sheer oddity of the extended dream sequence, where alan – who has missed a night of R&R at a club – has a hot date w.lady penelope at the SWINGING STAR, a slinky club actually in space, where CLIFF RICHARD and THE SHADOWS are performing (in uncannily accurate puppet-form) (haha it is actually “cliff richard jr”, so prophecy failed them a bit there in re i. his eternal boyish looks well into the 21st century) and ii. his eternal childless bachelorhood ditto): the song itself is kinda grebt in its loungecore countryish beatlish softened elvisish way, but it’s the dreamness which is best: the group perform standing on a giant guitar floating in space, and the whole fantasy sequence ends with lady p. mocking alan for his inability to perform – ie jump the gap between the spacekerb and the pink rolls: goaded, he attempts it and ends up falling falling falling…
the little-brother-left-out meme is smart, given the likely age of viewers who wd enjoy the movie, but this odd sexual edge, how they played it and THAT they played it, that gripped me today – there’s also, a bit earlier, a scene where a shy and huffy young alan being flirted w.at poolside by a bikinied tin tin (she throws a beachball at him from in the water, to get him to play; but he is all wrapped up in a cardigan despite the heat and rattles his magazine grumpily)
(it also occurred to me that the entire reason they are hiding out on tracy island is that jeff t and brains are lovers in a future where stonewall never happened, but i wd not push this angle in respect of visible evidence)