Word: racers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Lavish indeed, and relentless - a hallucinatory workout for the eyes. On his show this Monday, Stephen Colbert described Speed Racer as "the classic story of boy meets seizure-inducing lights," and noted that, to get a sense of the picture's cinema style, you should "put 80 pounds of fireworks into an industrial dryer, crawl right in there with them, turn it on and then light the fuse. It'll give you a good idea of the visual onslaught you'll be enduring." As usual with Colbert, the humor highlighted a sneaky truth: in its assaultive creativity, its high-speed...
...entire film exists in another, nether, Never-land where standard narrative and visual decisions are dismissed as way too confining. The location of the Racers' home seems to be in idyllic suburban America, yet Speed's schoolteacher and classmates speak with English accents. The time, never specified, could be today but is emotionally the '50s or early '60s. Mom and Pops Racer's three sons - Rex, Speed and the youngest, Spritle (Paulie Litt) - are each separated by about 15 years. So just never mind that Goodman 55, Sarandon 61, are more likely to be Spritle's grandparents than his parents...
...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...