Word: racer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...works effectively, as instant nostalgia - a class reunion of the old gang who in the '80s reinvigorated the classic action film with such expertise and brio. So don't expect the freshness of the what-one-man-can-do plot in Iron Man, or the oneiric visuals of Speed Racer. Spielberg and Lucas, and screenwriters David Koepp and Jeff Nathanson, are looking not forward but back, to the first three films. They know that moviegoers would be disappointed not to see the talismans of Indys past reappear here. Shall we itemize...
Iron Man is based on a marvel comic character introduced in 1963, Speed Racer on the Japanese animated TV series Mach GoGoGo, launched in 1967. The two new movies share the scientific optimism of that time, when the study of physics was, briefly, both a patriotic duty and a nifty option for American students; when doctors began installing artificial hearts; when President Kennedy said we'd go to the moon within a decade...
That's certainly true of Speed Racer, in which the texture is the text, and it's deliriously dense. Renouncing literal sense (Is the film set in the '50s or today? In America or Britain? Who knows? Who cares?), the Wachowskis have created a fantasyland that is part retro, part nextro. It's a rich, cartoonish dream: Op Art in nonstop, Mach 2 motion...
...actual car was used; these magnificent set pieces are almost totally animated. The Wachowskis' desktop dervishes invented so many new techniques, they had to create a bunch of new names for them. Effects supervisor John Gaeta itemizes some of them in the forthcoming book The Art of Speed Racer: "Faux lensing," "Photo Anime film format," "designer shape de-focus," "infinite depth of field," "bling and super-bling flare enhancements" and "candy-inspired Techno Color." You can tell that everyone had liberated fun making the film; it feels like the group effort of Mensa kids let loose in a paint store...
Movies like Polar Express and Sin City proffered seductive experiments in digital cinema and green screen, but Speed Racer brings the virtual movie to full maturity--the, for now, ultimate blending of man and machine. If you watch the film, are overwhelmed by the assault of seductive visual information and wonder what you're seeing, here's the happy answer: the future of movies. We sing the movie electric...