>
> Sitting at work doodling when a woman saw this sad bastard and asked > if I drew it. "Yes. Yes, I did. And its about to go in the garbage" > Theb she asked me to let her have it and sign it! Apparently this > sucker is going on her wall.
>
> I wish I would've drawn something better.
>
A strict "no camera" policy was enforced. Even still I managed to get some 120 or so images. The quality of these photographs ranges from "just okay"; to "ugh, that's pretty bad" but knowing that these may never be seen again its good enough for me.
Currently none of these pictures are labeled . If anyone is confused about the content of any of these images, feel free to email me.
I'd also like to give a special shout-out to the developers of the CameraPro.app for the iPhone. I highly recommend it. None of these pictures would have been possible without they're amazing app.
Enjoy.
(More info soon!)
So, call me crazy but after walking out of Speed Racer I was really stunned that this movie didn't make money.
Speed Racer's current score on RottenTomatoes is something like 36%. This is really odd to me.
It's a real sad state in the film criticism world where a film that is clearly trying to be inventive, and experimental, is just shunned for being too different.
Speed Racer is a visual feast. That doesn't mean that its mindless dribble. It means that here's a film that has clearly been designed meticulously from top to bottom and its so hard to believe that people aren't running out to go see this.
Now, this is not a Michael Bay movie.
There's a world of difference between Speed Racer and Transformers. Most of it is execution. The worst thing that you can say about Bay is that he's obsessed with making things "awesome". And you can tell that Bay really wants to be James Cameron when he grows up. The problem with Bay is he doesn't really design sequences, he just shoots the shit out stuff and cuts it together REALLY FAST. Now this is an art form in itself. But its more about fractured editing and imagery than it is about designing a frame. Bay's concern lies in the experience of a sequence.
The Wachowski's seem more interested in what the content of a shot is and building from there. This has always been true of their work. And while those last 2 Matrix film were shitty, you can tell that they really wanted play around with imagery they had created in the first film. Those last two seemed like experiments with how far they could take the imagery they created. The Neo vs. Tons of Agent Smiths and the big battle at the end of the last film are fucking great visually. But they kinda bore the shit out of you narratively.
And that's because that first film sparked such a fire in people's noggins that they wanted the philosophical head trip AND the bitchin' action sequences. It seemed to me that the Wachowski's gave up on the headier stuff and decided to play with their new bigger toys, while everyone was sitting around waiting for the next cultural zeitgeist.
That's what makes Speed Racer so fucking great. It doesn't have that baggage. It doesn't need it. It simple in its concept. Some kid named Speed Racer wants to race his car as fast as he can, and the Wachoski's want to watch him do it. And they want him to look cool. And they succeed.
Maybe I'm stupid or somethin' but I love, love, love, the color palette that explodes off the screen. It reminds me of Bava's Danger Diabolik! and (heresy) 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Tron, all mashed up in a blender. I've heard people say that the film looks crazy and is too much eye candy and blah, blah, blah. Funny how they didn't say the same thing for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Currently, Charlie has an 83% score on Rottentomatoes. What the fuck is that about? I love Tim Burton and Depp but this movie looks bizarre. I got no problem with bright costumes or sets but it looks nauseating when they're placed next to a brown river of sludge. And what is so great about Charlie that it gets an 83?! It seems like people see Johnny Depp and they refuse to give that guy a bad review. This movie was awful, the songs where horrible, the sets were psychotic and addition of the dentist dad was dopey.
But I digress...
There are sequences in this movie that really make you smile at their sheer visual brilliance. The Wachowki's love playing with cinema as much as Speed loves racing. They're bursting at the seams with their joy of all things flashy. Scene after scene in this film is really trying to do something inventive and different. With Speed Racer the Wachowski's seem like they really want to set themselves and they're movie apart from every other summer flick, and it seems now that they've alienated everyone in the process.
Funny how people complain about a lack of originality and experimentation in American film today. Then a movie that offers up those things gets ignored. Now everyone I talk to about Speed Racer says something like, "...yeah, but it didn't make any money". Since when was money the measuring stick for art?
