Reading: A Gathering of Doorways
Music: Suicidal Tendencies
TV/Movie: Outland
Link o' the Day: Tribute to Robert Goddard--Rocket Scientist and Space Pioneer



I get the feeling that I'm not supposed to have liked the new Speed Racer movie by the Wachowski Bros. I mean, it's not Lawrence of Arabia, but I knew that beforehand. What it did turn out to be was a fairly decent adaptation of the classic 60s animated cartoon series. I thought it captured the spirit of an action-oriented anime on film quite well, all things considered, and I thought it had enough callbacks to the original series to make it enjoyable for those of adults, such as myself, who remember watching the cartoon on TV as kids.

Much of the non-driving action is still anime-oriented. It's goofy and fast. Like a Batman TV episode on fast-forward. Typical of kids programming, and of American television adaptations of Japanese anime, it's been sanitized for your protection. Maybe one use of the word "hell", and everyone who crashes their car is all right because you see either a protective bubble envelope them or a parachute deploys or somesuch. Even for the villains. No one really gets hurt so you can enjoy the destruction guilt-free.

Visually, the movie is a celebration of exaggeration and sensory overload via brightly colored lights and fast action. The original cartoon featured a lot of looped animation and fairly simple art that wouldn't cut it in today's films. It's bright, it's colorful. There's lots of fast, darting action and explosions. It's perfect theater for the ADS poster kids, or as we call them these days, anyone between 6 and 16. For me, I struggled to keep up, but I like multiple viewings, so I didn't mind if I missed part of the action. It will give me something to enjoy later.



Even the slow story scenes are brightly colored. Plot-wise, it's a pretty standard "Speed is going up against a cabal that runs fixed races who will stop at nothing to put an end to Speed Racer's goody-goody interference, but Racer X (who is probably Speed's dead brother) lends a hand." kind of storyline. No real surprises for old Speed hands like myself, but new enough, I guess, for the kiddies who, I'm guessing, this movie was also aimed quite squarely at. There were some great references to the original animated series. The megacar makes an appearance. When Speed jumps out of the Mach 5 after a race, he ends up in the familiar swinger-pose that showed up during the opening credits of the original series. Spritle and Chim-Chim still hide out in the trunk. The Mach 5's controls are a series of buttons on the steering wheel. Sparky is still a bit of a dork. And Trixie.. well Trixie (played very convincingly by Christina Ricci) is Trixie. Not exactly the covergirl for the modern woman, but not a non-entity like Mom Racer played by Susan Sarandon who must have been a fan or was in desperate need of a paycheck.

For the other actors, John Goodman as Pops Racer was a no-brainer, although it was weird for me to see him in this role, then a few hours later I caught him as the racist, sleezy dad of the bad guy in Death Sentence. Matthew Fox (Jack on Lost) did a good Racer X. Emile Hirsch was a convincing Speed. We'll have to see where this career move takes him. Oh, and Roger Allam as the villainous Arnold Royalton put in a nice over-the-top performance.

OK, recommendation time. If you loved Speed Racer as a kid and keep an open mind, you'll like this. If you're an obsessive fanboy who loves to nitpick, you will love to hate it. In either case, it's worth owning or renting. If you remember the series and merely enjoyed it, you won't care enough about the movie to pay much or anything unless you have kids. Kids will enjoy it. If Speed Racer never even entered your radar, you probably won't get much out of it and will simply find it silly for no reason. In that case, it's okay to avoid the movie. It probably wasn't meant for you to begin with.

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Work-wise, it's a steady week. I'm working mostly on the Design Integration book and Character Kings for BearManor. The May issue of the medical journal is out on proof, and the SFWA Bulletin should hit the printer by the weekend. This works for me as we're having a fairly busy week socially. Tonight is probably our only "night off" but then again, it's Lost night, so we try to keep that as open as possible. Tomorrow night...Gaelic Storm concert!



Rumor has it... Every time a mousetrap snaps, an angel's wings catch fire. Whether this is an argument for or against lethal traps is for you to decide.

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Today's link takes you to the Tribute to Robert Goddard--Rocket Scientist and Space Pioneer website. There's a pretty complete history of Goddard and his groundbreaking work on rocketry. A good read for a bit of history and science.

Cheers!