Some rambling thoughts...

[seawasp]

You know what's really great but I can't find anywhere? GINGER Altoids. Found them once a few months ago in, I think, an airport, and never seen them before or since. But they were great.

HOW THE HELL do you make barbeque, etc., potato chips? It's not just figuring out the right spice mixture (though obviously that's a major trick -- it's not just spices but some kind of sweetener, maybe something like cornstarch, what?), there's some trick to making the chips themselves and getting the stuff to STICK.

I think "Speed Racer" is the second movie I've really liked that TOTALLY bombed (as in, didn't even come CLOSE to making its money back at the box office. The first -- which beats it hands-down in Total Bombery -- was Cutthroat Island, which IIRC cost about $120M to make, and earned $18M at the box office. (I think Speed Racer cost about the same and it earned I think $40+M, so in adjusted dollars it cost less and made back more)

Secondhand smoke: Are there actually studies proving it's bad that were done by disinterested parties? I've run into someone claiming there aren't.

Why exactly do we get "bags" under our eyes?

I am known for being an anime fan, so it sorta makes sense that I get Japanese spam, but why the hell am I suddenly getting Russian spam?

I love aspects of current video games, but I wish I could WRITE some that work the way I know they could. Alas, this would require an army of programmers and artists.

Comments

Re: RE Speed Racer...

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I liked Speed Racer. Not enough to rave over it, but enough to buy the DVD when it came out.

It was fun. It was ridiculous and campy and fun, and it adamantly refused to mock its source material. (Tease, yes; mock, no.) It's much the same reason I liked Kung Fu Panda.

I'll admit to being torn between admiring the movie for actually going to the trouble of having a plot which explains why the bad guys can only be defeated by winning a series of races, and being impatient that they were spending so much time on the plot when they should just be getting back to the racing already because who watches Speed Racer for the plot?

But that's a quibble. Mostly it was fun.

Re: RE Speed Racer...

[seawasp]

The "not mock" is the key to me. It's also why I loved Galaxy Quest despite normally hating parodies. It clearly understood WHY Old Trek was still beloved by so many people -- and understood that MOCKING that love, even if it seemed silly to others, would be directly attacking the primary demographic at which the movie was aimed.

I admire the movie for the worldbuilding. You NEEDED that to make it work as a movie -- and work it did.

Re: RE Speed Racer...

[full-metal-ox.livejournal.com]

Everything fans loved (or hated) about the original cartoon was not only present but cranked up to 11--the stilted voice acting and delivery (which the Wachowskis managed to construe as an extremely stylized acting convention, like Kabuki); the ninja battles for the whole family; the wincingly cornball character names; the Car Fu; the pervasive Day-Glo color scheme; the vaudevillean national stereotypes--they had an unshakeable sense of where in Storyland they were supposed to be. (Bonus points for the Wacky Races in-jokes; I recognized cheerfully brazen knock-offs of Penelope Pitstop and Sergeant Blast among Speed's opponents, and Skull Duggery was played as a near-clone of Dick Dastardly.)

The only off note was the Mach 6, which I choose to regard as a numerical typo; I consider the multi-layered punning implicit in the word "go", and the auspicious connotations of the number 5, an intrinsic part of the show's mythology.

Re: RE Speed Racer...

[seawasp]

I think the Mach 6 was the right choice. It fit with the world -- i.e., that you had to have a different vehicle for the Grand Prix than for an offroad race like the Casa Cristo -- and the Mach 5 had already been prominently on display for most of the movie.

I never saw any Whacky Races AFAIK, but my wife recognized a lot of the references.

One of the other things I appreciated about Speed Racer was the self-control of the actors; no matter how ridiculous things got, they portrayed their characters as seriously living in this world. (I mean, really. Opening a door and saying "Inspector Detector." with a straight face has to be a major achievement in acting)

And how can you go wrong with a movie that has lines like:


"My god, was that a ninja?"

"More like a non-ja. Terrible what passes for ninjas these days."