Word: racers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that dreamed up the chromatic excesses of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) don't want to evoke feelings so much as visualize them. When young Speed first meets young Trixie, candy hearts and roses bloom around him, illuminating his innocent ardor. The color scheme of the Racer home evokes Pee-wee's Playhouse in its cartoon cheeriness, and the decor is pure '50s Populuxe. Even the choice of wallpaper - cheery flowers in the kitchen, a tangle of rectangles for Rex's room - will have you smiling; it reinforces the sunny, mid-century mood of the last decade...
...Matrix, the brothers hid allusions to the Bible, Greek mythology and mathematics. If there's any complex philosophy in Speed Racer, it went over my head (probably at the speed of light). Here, the texture is the text, and it's deliriously dense, with more than 2,000 effects shots, often layered on top of each other. The effect, if you get into it, isn't just a store window of technology. It is, as Mom says of Speed's mastery behind the wheel, "inspiring, and beautiful, and everything art should be." That's what the Wachowskis are aiming...
...sideways and fly over other cars on stilts. In a reference to the Ben-Hur chariot race, they brandish hubcap spear hooks to disable their opponent's vehicle. And, since the rallies take place in Virtual World, there's no fretting about the waste of fuel. All of Speed Racer is a holiday not only from the gas tax, but from...
...devising this mach (or mock) world, the Wachowskis' desktop dervishes invented so many new techniques they had to create a bunch of new names for them. As effects supervisor John Gaeta itemizes them in the forthcoming book The Art of Speed Racer: "'Faux lensing' toward a 'Photo Anime' film format (including 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 the paint store. More than the story...
...Movies like Polar Express and Sin City proffered seductive experiments in digital cinema and green screen, but Speed Racer announces the arrival of the virtual movie. If you watch the film overwhelmed by the assault of seductive visual information and wonder what you're seeing, here's the happy answer: the future of movies. And the people who made it? They're the industry's can-do-anything superheroes. Not Spider-Men, not Hulks or X-Men. No: Speed Demons...