All Hail the Fingers Of Fury!

If a writer has writers' block, then a blogger will suffer from Blogger Clog, and that's certainly the case here. There are numerous reasons for my infrequent posting, perhaps most importantly this goddamn illness, which, while little more than a cold, has been hanging around for weeks. Hard to be prolific when one side of my head feels heavier than the other. On top of that is a much busier than usual week at work which has drained me of much energy, and oh God this election this fucking election it's driving my brain crazy with the excessive checking of the politiblogs, so much so that, even though I've been enjoying his updates, if Andrew Sullivan writes "know hope" one more time I'll either turn violent or cry or cry violently. It's the classic split between his faith and my atheism; he can know hope all he likes, but I'll not relax until Obama's inauguration. People who know me will be very familiar with my fatalistic tendencies. ::takes break from hard minute's blogging to check fivethirtyeight.com::

Another reason, which is probably the main one if I was willing to sit and poke at my ossified brain in order to find out, is my attempt to finish reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Though I'm wary of saying anything about it for fear of angering her many many fans/followers/cultists, I have to say it is about to defeat me. No, Randian visitors, her worldview has not dominated mine, as if it had been dismantled and bested by a philosophy of vast strength and power, like the machines that conquer and crush the rocks and mountains of the earth. I'm just, well, really really really fucking bored by now. Her insanely florid prose might have amused me before, but by now, after being shouted at in a self-pitying and mean-spirited tone for 700 pages, I might not be able to make it. But I must! For am I not a human being? Is not my mind the Alpha and Omega, the force that can harness nature and bend it to my will, able to withstand this mighty onslaught, bearing the winds and rains of her ideas and rising, triumphant, like a Titan, like the owner of himself and his destiny, masterful and immortal? Fuck you, book! You shall never defeat me!

However, I do just want to get it over and done with by now, if only because I need a break from it. I'm glad I'm reading it, especially at a time like this, when one presidential candidate is bellowing "Socialist!" and running from person to person like Kevin McCarthy in the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the world's most powerful Objectivist, Alan Greenspan, is talking about how there is a flaw in the world that makes his free market ideals untenable (I'm totally paraphrasing; please don't correct me, people). Before reading Atlas Shrugged I would have thought his comment rather cheeky, blaming people for the market disaster and not The Market itself, but now I see his point (though I don't necessarily agree with it). If I'm reading Atlas Shrugged right (again, don't comment, I don't need clarification just yet), the Objectivist creed would work just fine as long as everyone was "moral" by Rand's code, but after many many years Greenspan has apparently discovered that people (i.e. traders and bankers and economists and anyone who deals with money anywhere in the world ever) won't abide by that code of behaviour, and will in fact take as many short cuts as possible to fill their pockets with as much Fat Bank as they can. I see where he's coming from. I think he's a bit tapped to be suddenly saying, "Oh, it's humanity's fault for this and not mine for coming up with a system of economics that doesn't take into account actual human behaviour as it really actually exists for reals, but instead bases its assumptions about what people are like on the idealised ramblings of a writer from the 50s who had a weird thing for dominatory industrialists and smokestacks and trains going into tunnels and which therefore cannot possibly work," but I do see where he's coming from. Thanks for the recession, jerkwad.

So yeah, it's been interesting to listen to Republican and conservative thought with a new, deeper understanding of where it's coming from, and to finally comprehend why followers of that creed hate taxation as much as they do even though I think they're wrong, and so I do owe a debt of thanks to Ayn Rand for giving me such a long-winded peek into that mindset. Sadly, my brain is dying from the melodrama and the hate and the victimhood, and I just want to get it over with so I can move onto something fun (I got John Hodgman's new book two days ago and it's begging to be read). Until then, time I would devote to blogging is being taken up with enduring the endless Rand-ting, so it's like another blog slowdown, and one I really don't want to endure but will because I'm stubborn like that and hate leaving books unfinished (especially when I'm 700 pages in). I will get back to the planned post about Mad Men, and some Face/Offs I've been looking forward to as soon as I can, but for now, I must complete this mammoth task.

In the meantime, here is the other thing that has totally possessed my mind over the last week, but luckily it's a thing that is making the brain very very happy. Marnie Stern, super-genius guitarist, has just appeared on my Radar of Unbelievable Awesomeness with her new album This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That (which is a phrase attributed to Zen philosopher Alan Watts, according to AV Club). It is absolutely incredible, easily on my 2008 best list along with Re-Arrange Us by Mates of State and The Family Afloat by Bound Stems and several other lovely works. Stern's guitar playing is unlike anything I've heard before, and strumming along to it would be the most insane Rock Band challenge ever (especially as Zach Hill's drumming is almost as complex and frenetic). This is her new single, Transformer, and it should be number one across the planet.



Even better is her song Ruler, which you can find on her MySpace page. Thank you for keeping the book cooties from smothering my brain, Marnie Stern.

Adventures In Awesome: Eno + Byrne = Hyperintelligence

Another swift post, this time about my belated discovery of a new project by Lib-Dem youth affairs advisor Brian Eno and secret Scot David Byrne, called Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (I'm a sucker for long album titles). It's their first collaboration since the ground-breaking My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, and here is the opening song, Home, as a taster.



If that whets your appetite, it can be downloaded from this site, in such a way as to bypass the music industry and its evil grasp. Indeed, they have put their album out there in a way similar to Radiohead's In Rainbows (and I love that they are following in the footsteps of a band named after a Talking Heads song), though the difference is you can't elect to pay what you want for the album. That's not really that much of a problem, though. I think they're aware that, despite their Amazing Powers Of The Brain and the exponential talent co-efficient that exists because of that fearsome combination of hyperintellects, they're not going to sell as many copies as Radiohead did, and besides, it's still cheaper to get it via their site than it would be on iTunes, and you can choose to purchase the actual-not-virtual CD copy when it comes out in November for a couple of $s more. Besides, this is all part of Byrne's plan to save music itself from exploitation by corporate scum. What a guy.

Is it worth downloading? I've only listened to it once, and it is certainly pleasant enough, and a far cry from their more discordant collaborations, with high praise going to the lovely Life Is Long, which is adorable, but then their recent albums have been fairly muted in comparison to their early works, so it comes as no shock. It reminds me of Paul Simon's underrated Surprise, released a couple of years ago with "sonic landscapes" by Eno. I'm confident that is an example of his computer-generated wit.


Speaking of Eno and his other projects, I'm kind of nervous about dipping my toes in the official website of The Long Now Foundation (a typically forward-thinking project from the great man, and several other great men), though my research has inspired me to get a pack of Oblique Strategies cards. However I did have a good look around David Byrne's less imposing and highly entertaining site, and was filled with regret that while in New York a few weeks back I didn't get a chance to check out his Playing The Building installation. Whenever I ponder the works of men like Eno and Byrne, I realise how much I envy and admire people who have such creative energy and confidence and education that they can just sit around conceptualising crazy shit all day long, and then implement it with the help of other intelligent and ambitious people. It would be a much better life than one spent in a gray office like the one I was stuck in today.

And yes, I'm aware that I'm being particularly whiny and pessimistic this week. Apologies. This post, written in Byrne's trademark innocent and guileless voice (as familiar to anyone lucky enough to have seen his wonderful directorial debut True Stories) really did make me smile though. Please read it. It's quietly funny, and perceptive.

Letter of Complaint (Evan Almighty [1])

A couple of weeks ago we endured some pretty shoddy movies, and by that I don't mean amusingly dreadful like Cassandra's Dream or The Happening, but just flat-out godawful movies that made us mad. One of them was Dreamgirls, which made me froth at the mouth (those weak, repetitive Motown/Stax pastiches were an insult to the original work), and the other was Evan Almighty, which failed on every conceivable level, but most importantly, failed from the moment of conception.

I would have complained, but thanks to some internet sleuthing, I found out that far more impressive and forceful letters were sent by people with more clout. With their permission, this week I shall reprint my favourites here. I have no idea whether the makers of Evan Almighty ever responded.

Dear the makers of Evan Almighty,

I recently had the unfortunate experience of watching the movie Evan Almighty, starring the former Daily Show correspondent and, I assume from that, member of the Communist Party Steven Carell. Though the casting of someone as gallingly liberal as that would normally deter me from watching such a movie, I was swayed by the thought of a Hollywood project featuring a man of God working within government to better the world through the expansion of housing developments into areas of wildlife protected by those tree-hugging, pagan, sun-worshipping, eco-fascist Wiccan welfare scum who make the otherwise pleasurable job of acquiring billions of dollars such an uphill struggle. At last, the liberal hankie-fluttering nancys of Hollywood seemed willing to show the benefits of combining Church and State into one Holy Temple of Might, Money and Morality, and seemed to be so eager to do so that it dropped a significant amount of dollarage into the project (well, almost as much as a deposit on a Bilderberg Group membership, but a sizable amount for a movie).

So you can imagine my disgust when the Congressmen in the movie are not affiliated with any political party. What were you thinking? That man from King Ralph was obviously playing a Republican like myself. Did you decide against naming his colours because his actions would offend the righteous American heroes of the Republican party? As a Republican, I would be proud to put my name on such a brave housing bill. But oh boo hoo! The animals might die! Do animals vote? No. So what's the problem?

Even worse, Congressman Evan Almighty is put in conflict with Congressman King Ralph over the fates of the bunnies or whatever it was. This would never happen. Republicans never fight against each other, not while there are terrorist-worshipping Dummycrats around. And yes, you didn't say that Congressman Evan Almighty was a Republican either, but God talks to him, so it's obvious. The Republican God I worship doesn't talk to Democrats. He makes jokes about their weaknesses and spits on them. That's what rain is. Why do you think we refer to them as "wet"? No Republican has ever been caught in a rainstorm. That's a fact hidden from common knowledge by the liberal media, knowing that their own, inherently treacherous kind would flock to our banner just to stay dry.

So, if you go ahead with making a sequel, maybe one featuring that Molly Shannon lady like it seemed you were hinting at (Yeah, we caught that she was called Eve!), please be sure to give flag lapel pins to the Righteouslicans and have them properly labelled as God-fearing pro-dollar heroes. We deserve the credit for our endeavours, you deviant Commie schmucks.

Yours in frothing indignation,

Quintus "The Moneyman" Zirkman, CEO Dollar Absorption Incorporated (a subsidiary of SoulAnnex plc.).

More to come on Wednesday.

Ain't Got Time To Read! *

The limp I am currently exhibiting has nothing to do with my triumphant return to the gym after several years of very enjoyable, though enfattening lethargy. It's because I decided to walk around a town centre for about an hour yesterday morning, trying to find cheap copies of The Orange Box (note to bargain hunting gamers; even cheap copies are not that cheap yet), and then pacing around Waterstone's for ages, even though I wasn't going to buy anything. These are the things I do when I'm very very tired and my judgement is as impaired as that of a drunken businessman with haunted eyes trying with manic urgency to buy magnums of champagne for disinterested ladies even though his bank account is empty and his Ermenegildo Zegna shirt is caked in vomit.

With a new interest in health and the very likely possibility of long job searches ahead of me, my reading time is in danger of being severely cut into, with the result that my to-read list may explode in size if I'm not careful. I'm already just plodding through Naomi Novik's Empire of Ivory (which has already been definitively covered here by Canyon), not because I'm not enjoying it (I am, a lot), but just because I keep wanting to grab every other book from my shelves and read them all at the same time just to reduce the size of that list. It's like a multi-book pile-up in my head. Even before I get to the books I have at home, yesterday I strongly considered getting Peter F. Hamilton's The Dreaming Void, John Gray's Black Mass (though it would probably annoy the shit out of me, even taking into account this PWNing by populist philosopher and obviousness-stater A.C. Grayling), Matt Mason's The Pirate's Dilemma, and Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. Canyon pointed out that I would probably never read it and would just stick it on a shelf somewhere, and I probably would, between my unread copy of My Life by Bill Clinton and my unread copy of this bigass book on Nixon. Nevertheless, it's important to know what he's like, especially now that it seems almost certain it will be him going up against my boys.


Even without buying yet more books (as well as the ones on our Amazon.com list, including Matt Taibbi's The Great Derangement and pretty much every book linked by the Worst President Ever tag), my to-read list is already way too big. At the moment I plan to follow Empire of Ivory with Mass Effect: Revelation by Drew Karpyshyn, which could well be a total waste of my time, but I wanted to get through it before I play Bioware's Mass Effect, and by "play" I mean "become obsessive about for about a week and then stop playing due to time constraints, and never go back to, just like I did with Jade Empire". After that, another Naomi book, this time The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, yet another book I got as a hardback (as a very much-appreciated Christmas present) and have yet to read even though it is now out as a paperback. The large amount of unread hardbacks on our shelves drives Canyon into fits of apoplexy, and I really can't argue with that.

So, that's two books right there, and that's not counting the dozens of others I have my eye on right now, such as George Crile's Charlie Wilson's War, James Dallesandro's 1906, Greg Bear's Quantico, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes (another much-appreciated but unread hardback Christmas present that is about to come out in paperback), David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, Patrick O' Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series, and the Mass Effect Strategy Guide. Yes yes, this is all a lie. I'll most probably read the large amounts of comics I have filling our spare room. Even ones by Brian Michael Bendis, though hopefully they won't involve semi-naked women being humiliated by supervillains, or pissy, defensive, insulting jokes about the justified criticism just because he knows the blogosphere really are onto something.

Why am I blithering on about this here? Because while reading today's newspapers I found a couple more to add to the pile, and I've not yet bought them, though I really must. Guardian economics editor Larry Elliott, and Dan Atkinson, have written a book on the illusory magic of The Market, called The Gods That Failed. It sounds like a nice companion piece to Thomas Frank's One Market Under God, which I have talked about before, and think is essential reading for everyone, be they right-wing, left-wing, fiscal conservatives, blinkered laissez-faire obsessives, chrometophobic Socialists, Scrooge McDucks, or sentient coins of the realm. The Elliott/Atkinson could be as good. Here are two extracts from the book, if you're curious.

The other book I discovered tonight is Joseph Lanza's Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films, partially because that's an awesome title, but mostly because it sounds very entertaining. Ken Russell discussed it in this column in The Times, and this section definitely appeals to me:

[The] chapter revealing stories behind the scenes on Altered States is nothing short of revelatory - I appreciate the eye-opening account, now that the other side has had its say. It was with the stocky New Yorker and respected novelist Paddy Chayefsky that I had my heavyweight bout. He was the impossible-to-please writer-producer of the sci-fi epic about the effect of mind-bending drugs on a Harvard scientist, Dr Jessup. We sparred from the start, over the high-falutin' hi-sci dialogue, the colour of the set, the luncheon script sessions, the meetings over Sanka (a brand of decaffeinated coffee) and pressed turkey sandwiches, camera angles, tracking shots and over Paddy taking the actors aside for private chats on how to play the scene.

We slugged it out round after round, as Lanza details with quotes from all sides. And it all came to a head when I lost it on the phone and gave Paddy a final tongue-lashing. “Why don't you take your turkey sandwiches and your Sanka and stuff it up your ass and let me get on with the f***ing film!” Now, that's literature.

Awesome. Altered States is one of my all-time favourite movies, and there isn't enough literature on the making of it, so this is automatically an essential purchase. Still, how will I fit all of this in? Life is filled with distractions, both better than reading and far far worse than reading, and they're not going away any time soon. If I was even more misanthropic than I sometimes can be when under large amounts of stress, I could wish for a similar situation to that in Time Enough At Last, but that Rod Serling would probably screw me but good.


Guess I'll just have to clear time by not watching TV instead.

* As the title suggests, this post is dedicated to the memory of Sgt. Blain Cooper, brave soldier and sexual Tyrannosaurus, regrettably killed by a Predator armed with a plasmacaster, whatever the hell that is.


He, and his chawin' tabaccy, shall be missed.

Adventures in Heinous: Boycott Turner Classic Movies!

Much to our perpetual amazement, we have found that we actually control TV with nothing more than our brainwaves. All we have to do is discuss a film that one of us hasn't seen, proselytise about it at length, and make vague comments about hiring it out or buying it cheap. Then, voila, it turns up on TV a few days later. It has happened so often we're starting to take our power for granted. Surely this could be harnessed for good somehow? We could move to China and talk about Kundun a lot, so that it magically appears on one of their state-sponsored channels at peak time. That should resolve that human rights catastrophe in time to stop Sharon Stone wrecking what's left of her career because she just can't stop herself from speaking out about injustice.


Re: our superpower, case in point. Just a week ago I went into praise overload about Philip Kaufman's wonderful adaptation of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. I can't remember why I suddenly started on about it; perhaps it had something to do with overdosing on Geoff Johns' brilliant run on Green Lantern, which is currently revisiting the test pilot past of Hal Jordan (calling all comic fans wandering past this blog; buy Green Lantern! It's the easily the best DC title on the shelves right now). Whatever the reason for my rabid wild-eyed praise, I bent poor Canyon's ear about the movie for a loooong time, a filibuster she endured with much stoicism, and said she would watch it if we got in on DVD. And then, as usual, it turned up on Turner Classic Movies a couple of days ago. Huzzah! Last night we watched it, thinking it would be a pleasing experience after a week of watching some really crappy movies, some of which were misguided (Flags Of Our Fathers, Catch and Release), and some of which were just flat-out dreadful (Nell, Pearl Harbor).

For the most part, it was a great antidote to all of the nonsense we have been watching recently, filled with superb performances (especially Ed Harris as John Glenn), beautiful photography by the legendary Caleb Deschanel, and skillful writing and direction by Kaufman at the height of his powers. I loved it when I was young, and it was great seeing it again. At least, up to a point. It seems the movie's length was a problem for the culture-hating jerks at TCM, who removed several moments in order to shoehorn more adverts into it.


It's common knowledge that TCM was once in the habit of tinkering with recognised classics, such as colorising black and white films, a practise satirised by Joe Dante in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (in which Daniel Clamp's movie channel shows Casablanca "in colour, with new happy ending!"). I had hoped that with the cancellation of the colorisation project that that would mean the end of any future tinkering, but sadly not. While the US TCM has no adverts, UK TCM has a surfeit of the goddamn things (broadcast at a predictably earsplitting volume in comparison to the muted film), and as a result they think it's fine to hack away at the movies being shown. I honestly thought we had moved past this kind of behaviour, considering the success of the ad-free, uncut Sky Movies channels.

Sadly, no. While the meat of The Right Stuff remained in the film, an early shot of Yuri Gagarin's flight was hacked out, leaving behind a sliver of music in the next scene. Warning bells began to sound in my head. Later on, John Glenn's flight over Australia is truncated, missing out the moment where his arrival is heralded by sparks seemingly flying into space from a fire lit by Aboriginal magicians. While the movie doesn't seem damaged by that moment, the tone of the film shifts, something that is cemented by the appalling, ire-inducing decision to remove all of the cross-cutting from Chuck Yeager's final flight. In the original, while he risks his life and almost dies, we cut back and forth from his peril to scenes of the astronauts enjoying a reception meal to commemorate the opening if NASA's new HQ in Houston. While watching an ethereal dancer on stage, they seemingly become linked by a premonition that something important is happening elsewhere, that the man they most admire is still risking his life to push the envelope while they eat steak and shmooze. To have taken out every shot of the astronauts while leaving in the shots of Yeager's perilous flight must have taken a lot of effort and thought.


Or should I say lack of thought. When the movie ended and I began to calm down, Canyon asked me what I liked so much about the film (she enjoyed it, though she was as pissed as I was that it had been edited). Other than the sheer quality and intelligence of it, what I like most is that while it is a celebration of human spirit and courage, it is also a satire of such, puncturing the cockiness of the astronauts with broad comedic moments while never fully making them look like fools. There is still a nobility to them and their desire to become pioneers and explorers of a new frontier, even if there is, for a long period of the movie, a lot of egotistical behaviour and preening before the ever-present, chittering paparazzi. What helps get that across is the poetic nature of the movie, mostly conveyed during the two latter scenes that had been removed. By introducing a spiritual aspect to the movie (with the beautiful shots of Glenn's capsule being buzzed by mysterious embers being particularly important), the tone of the film is lightened of its machismo and broad comedy, becoming way more than the sum of its parts. Once those scenes are removed, it runs like a straight biopic about macho men trying to outdo each other with acts of derring-do and laddish one-up-manship.

So, basically, fuck Turner Classic Movies for wrecking one of my favorite movies. It's the very last time I will be watching anything on there, and now I'm wondering how many movies I've seen on there for the first time that might have been altered as well. I'm aware I'm probably a long way behind common knowledge of TCM's scissor-happy escapades, but I really thought these kinds of practises had been stopped by now, but apparently not. If you love movies, and want to ensure they are treated with respect as works of art, then you'll avoid the channel too. Bad TCM! Shades of Caruso most certainly doesn't approve.

Speed Racer Vs. Total Critical And Popular Apathy

Perhaps it was always going to be a hard sell. With the fanboys turning their noses up at what looked like a candy-coloured movie for babies, critics followed their cue, leaving a handful of cinema-goers excited about the film and feeling like pariahs (yes, poor me). Genre movies (by which I mean sci fi, fantasy, or horror) always get a hard time from critics, and while I'm not crazy enough to suggest that any film that fits the category is automatically worthy of praise (there's a lot of genuine shit out there), I would hope critics realise they are all worthy of serious attention. I get that it's hard for a critic to really give all of their attention to every movie released each week, but even so, any movie that fits the bill described above (and often any movie that can easily be sneeringly dismissed as "typically Hollywood") will be the one to fall by the wayside.


That I expected. The UK reviews of Speed Racer have been horrible, a litany of horrified complaint about the subject matter, the performances, the plot, the running time, and most often, the visual style. "A movie of such garishness and impenetrability as to test the stoicism of any audience member older than 14," says The Independent's Anthony Quinn! "I can’t begin to describe how creepy this futuristic movie is," says James Christopher of The Times! "You have to be 12 to like it, and I have to say there is little or nothing here to remind us why we were all quite so excited about The Matrix," says Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, who also describes Lost as "interminable," and as a result is removed from my Love List and placed on my Shit List (he was already on probation for that appalling Iron Man review last week).

In fact, the only mainstream critic who liked it was Sukhdev Sandhu of the Telegraph, who still had reservations but seemed to get that it was for kids and not think this was a terrible strike against it. James Christopher seemed to think that it was a kids' film by accident. I won't even begin to point out the laziness of Anthony Quinn's review, which led me to believe he had lost his press pack and couldn't be bothered to even Wikipedia the source material; he also missed vital plot points that were not that hard to spot and then bitched about subsequent "illogicalities" (his comments about Speed's race up a cliff-face are the ones that made me mad, if you're curious).


I would have liked to have seen Nigel Andrew's review, as he usually responds positively to films that are a bit out there, but he appears to be missing in action at the moment. The most positive review I've read so far is from Moriarty from Ain't It Cool News, and he did what the "respectable" critics couldn't be bothered to do: forget his prejudices and watch the movie on its own terms. You could say he only gave it a chance because he's a nerd critic, but even now, with the film about to be released, nerd opinion is massively critical of it. "It's too garish, it's too childish, it looks stupid, I hated the cartoon, it's got a chimp in it, it's too colourful, it's too fast, it's too weird, it's not violent enough, it's not The Matrix." The Wachowskis seem to have made a movie that no one wanted to see. And they say Hollywood only panders to its audience.


From all of that it should be apparent that I have a huge chip on my shoulder about this, and not just because I regularly get annoyed when critics dismiss genre movies, an annoyance that has been exacerbated by my current reading material, Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures. It's a hugely entertaining read, and Biskind is a terrific writer, but it is laced with snobbery about Hollywood product, even -- at one point in the introduction -- claiming that its subject matter, independent film, appeals to "real people" in contrast to mainstream populist fare. So is the usual mass audience not made up of people? What are they then, figments of his imagination? Pod people? Androids?

Ridiculous. And insulting. There are millions of people out there (REAL people, even), that will happily watch a movie as transcendently beautiful and moving as Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring one day, and then watch Pirates of the Caribbean the next day and have a different experience but one that is no more or less real than the previous one. One isn't better than the other because it does certain things that the other doesn't even attempt. If one has to be judged better than the other, let it be by internal criteria. Which one of them succeeds best at doing what it was made to do? Otherwise we're just going to be bitching at every movie that isn't Citizen Kane for not doing the things Citizen Kane does. That way lies misery and madness.


Sorry, I digressed. As I was saying, I do have an inherent bias towards Speed Racer that makes me touchy about it, and that's down to my love of The Matrix. It's my favourite film, one I can watch over and over again and never get bored of. I still remember the first time I saw it, and the shellshock I felt. I've heard the criticisms of it, and the carping about the sequels (one of which I liked), and I'm not interested. If a movie or book or song is meant to touch the viewer and move them, that's exactly what The Matrix did to me. It was as if the film I had been waiting all my life to see had finally arrived, and it was better than I had hoped for.

So I'm defensive about the Wachowski siblings, and get tetchy when their work is criticised, especially because experience has taught me that film critics will happily dismiss genre work rather than engage with it, as if by dint of its mere existence it is not worthy of the effort. The reviews have focused on two things that are cardinal sins of that enemy of quality that is glossy Hollywood product: how little the story matters, and how emotionally empty the movie is because of the technology used to create the film.


I'll grant that these can be valid criticisms, but only if they are used against films that fail in those respects (and many do; I'm not crazy!), and not just as a kneejerk response against that nasty Hollywood product. Well, I risked breaking my own brain with fatigue and sensory-overload by seeing Speed Racer yesterday, and I can give you my opinion on these most pressing of questions. Does Speed Racer fail in telling a story? No. Is it emotionally empty? No. Here are some other questions that are less important than those, but need answering nonetheless. Is it perfect? No. Does it matter? No. Is it impossible to follow what is going on during the races? As long as you're not sitting in row H of the London Waterloo IMAX or lower, no. Will it make any money at the box office? Probably not, no. Should it? Unequivocally, yes.

Here's a litmus test for anyone watching the movie, and that includes critics. The film starts pretty much in the middle of a race, during which we flash back and forth between the race and Speed Racer's childhood, where he bonds with his brother and idol, Rex, played by Scott "Whiny Jason on FNL" Porter.



The race continues for a little while past that clip, with Speed attempting to break the record set by his brother, who we learn died in disgrace many years later, an event that shaped the lives of the entire Racer family, who are gathered together in the stands watching Speed racing. It's a busy few minutes, setting up the bizarre palette (which you will grow accustomed to much quicker than you might expect), the otherworldly future physics of the race cars (all impossible spins, leaps, and crazy drifting), the family dynamic, the history of the Racer family, their triumphs and failures, and the sadness that haunts them.

If you've gone in expecting a garish, empty movie for kids, the sophistication of the criss-cross narrative format might throw you (there's a particularly bold time-shifting moment in the middle of the film I liked), but there's nothing there to convince you of any emotional depth, until the very end of the race. What Speed does as he's about to cross the finish line is a marker for whether the film is for you. If you don't notice or care about his decision, you're not going to care enough about the characters to give the film a fair shot, and you might as well walk out of the room. If Speed's decision makes you grin, and you understand exactly what his motivation is and admire the character for making that choice, then you might end up liking the movie a lot more than you would have expected.


And I did. A lot. For the majority of the movie I was very happy, if not overjoyed, by what I was experiencing. After a few minutes of discombobulation, the visuals made a lot more sense to me once I had figured out what the Wachowskis were trying to do with them -- i.e., they weren't building a multitude of 3D environments to place the green-screened actors in, and they chose instead to create a number of photographic backgrounds and use them the same way backdrops in animation are used, to slide past each other in a parallax effect.

The only time the environments look fully rendered is during the race scenes, with the tracks featuring a more conventional perspective. The other trick used throughout is the scrolling of talky-heads across the screen, just as in anime. I made my peace with that a lot faster, as it's a technique used so often in Japanese animation that I've become inured to it, though I had a moment of WTF, simply because I'd not seen it used in live-action before. It's a terrific effect, carrying us through expositional dialogue (of which there is quite a bit) without sacrificing pace.


In fact, the dialogue delivered during races, often as a form of flashback, barely alters the pace of the action, so completely does it add energy to what would normally be dreary. A lot of people have said the races are confusing, but I thought they were pretty clean and edited with plenty of clarity, though perhaps if you're not used to the floaty heads it might cause problems (plus, if you're invested in the narrative, they carry plenty of dramatic kick, contrary to the opinion of the critics, at least IMHO).

Those races would mean nothing if they were not surrounded by solid performances and a carefully crafted narrative, and the one we get, concerning the struggle of the little man to succeed in a world where the monolithic nature of The Market stands in the way of artistic expression or freedom of the spirit, as well as the value of teamwork and learning from your mistakes, is immensely satisfying, so much so that the final race, which is already overwhelmingly filmed, achieves a kind of emotional warp factor as dialogue from the previous two hours slides past the camera, and you see just how important it is that Speed wins that race.


The hapless Christopher Tookey of the Daily HateMail stated that the film is meaningless and soulless, but if you've been sucked in by the carefully constructed narrative, the committed, irony-free performances, and the emotionally resonant conflicts and tribulations of our heroes (all of which he missed, instead carping about not knowing what was going on and hating the commercialism of it), the final ten minutes are filled with significance. As I said earlier, for the majority of the film I thought it was very very good. However, my final verdict was boosted by the brilliant, resonant, and totally satisfying finale, where my "overall grade" leapt up about three notches. All of this is code for "I cried at the end." Laugh, you doubters! I don't care.


And yes, it is resolutely a kids' movie. The majority of the humour lies in the actions of Spritle, played by Paulie Litt, who has annoyed some critics but cracked me up consistently, and his simian buddy Chim Chim. They pretty much spend the whole film eating candy, getting into trouble, and throwing Chim Chim cookies around (and I'll let you see the movie and discover what they are). Maybe it's not as "sophisticated" as Jacques Tati and his pipe-smoking japery, but it works and fits the tone of the movie perfectly. However, the plot itself, though featuring a manichean battle between a big corporate scumbag (played to perfection by Roger Allam) and the innocent small guy Speed, is filled with corporate intrigue, reflections on achieving an almost artistic perfection through sport, and what it is to be free to do what you want. That it touches on some of the themes of The Matrix (purpose, free will, self-belief) came as a surprise even to a fan like me. There's even a shot of stock-market notations scrolling across the screen that echoed Matrix Code, a nice little touch that made me smile.


One of the criticisms I saw thrown around (particularly in Bradshaw's review and the AV Club's withering dismissal) is that the film is anti-corporate and yet, hypocritically, is a heavily marketed and expensive big-budget money-making machine unleashed by the Warner Brothers monolith. I'll be honest, I was very worried about that, and reckoned I might have trouble reconciling it with any possible enthusiasm I might have for all the whiz-bang. Again, the Wachowskis surprised me. Roger Allam's Royalton is obviously an unscrupulous bounder and cad, uninterested in racing as sport (or art) and only concerned about how he can gain a monopoly over the production of a revolutionary engine by manipulating the outcomes of races. However, his enthusiasm for the machinations of The Market (revealed in a brilliantly demented monologue about share values) is just as complete and almost childlike as Speed's obsession with racing, even if it does involve ruining the tiny, independent Racer family. Other CEOs featured in the movie do unscrupulous things too, but end up siding with Speed at the end, realising that he is blessed with true talent and artistry in a way that moves them.

Glenn Kenny of Premiere says in his review that, "the narrative of Speed Racer, such as it is, is one of the more blatantly anti-capitalist storylines to come down the cinematic pike since, I dunno, Bertolucci's 1900," which is not what I took from it at all. It's made clear that the Racer family is a business, one that thrives on making cars that will be used by Speed to win races, mostly for the love of the game. But as long as they are allowed to participate on a small level within the financial framework of their world, keeping their aims low, and not worrying about being swallowed up by big business, then they're fine. They don't opt out of the capitalist system at all. They just want to play the game on their own terms, using their talent and ingenuity to make a living. Surely that's at the heart of the capitalist message, something Anthony Lane should keep in mind as he delivers paranoid and inaccurate comments about the film being nothing more than "Pop fascism" (because it features crowds cheering at a sport, for crying out loud). Why doesn't he rail against actual crowds cheering actual sport? Why is it only bad in the context of a movie? Gah!!!


If anything, the film is merely anti-monopoly, anti-greed and anti-corruption, showing how a single spanner in the works of The Market can crush those who abuse their position of power, thus turning the pursuit of prosperity into a game on a level playing field, with room for monoliths and minnows, both aiding each other and prospering from that cooperation and mutual respect. Isn't that what Thomas Friedman naively thinks The Market already is? Of course, we're meant to side with the Racer family exclusively, but it's clear that, just as The Matrix Revolutions ended with a detente between the machines and the humans, Speed Racer finishes with a respectful distance left between his family's independent company and the almost benign Togokhan Racing. At least, that's how I saw it. I will admit I was more interested in the story as parable about one man chasing his dream, doing what he is built to do, and not letting anyone talk him down, but that's just where my head is at right now.


But enough of this. I want to lavish more praise on it. I've never really been a huge fan of John Goodman unless he's in a Coen Brothers film, but this is my favourite non-Lebowski performance by him. His sincerity won me over totally, as he screws up with one son and is given a chance to get it right with Speed. It's a testament to the skill of the Wachowskis that the scene where he attempts to bond with Speed at his lowest ebb is one of the best in the whole film, a finger in the eye of the doubters who insist the film is hollow.


Even better than Goodman (and I know Canyon will be pissed at me for saying it again [You are right. Foxy must be destroyed! -- Canyon]), Foxy is terrific as Racer X, playing it cool and mysterious for the most part, before opening up in two scenes towards the end that rank as my favourites in the whole film. He's come on in leaps and bounds over the past couple of years, and here he's in top form. Plus, he gets to beat up ninjas! Seeing him do some Neo moves on a bad guy made my nerd chip overheat. Also, much love to Owen Paterson, whose production design is a delight from start to finish, and Michael Giacchino, who delivers yet another wonderful soundtrack.

So yes, since seeing it, I've had images from the film popping up in my field of vision like a fever dream; the undulating desert landscape rolling behind Speed, the Eadweard Muybridge homage in the final race, cars exploding into flame and glitter, camera flashbulbs changing into love hearts, highways seen from a distance as glowing ribbons of light, oversaturated colours glowing during the single shootout, and, best of all, a Chim Chim cookie in a bad man's face. Even though I've been happy to rail against what I see as a dismissive critical attitude to it, at least some writers have been eager to point out how gorgeous the whole thing, and it is. It's new. It's something you've seen before done in a completely new way, and as such is a triumph of design, vision, and uncompromising chutzpah. I'd hesitate to recommend it wholeheartedly, because it's obvious it's not going to be for everyone (and I have a terrible feeling it will lose out at the box office to both Iron Man and What Happens In Vegas, which would hurt my feelings as I cannot stand Kutcher or Diaz), but try it out, and maybe apply that litmus test. It might surprise you. Bravo, Wachowskis! Bravo!