And then they threw the bee's nest.

I feel like a prophet who has just spoken to God...in that I've seen something you haven't and when I tell you about it you're going to think I'm crazy. Speed Racer, despite it's critical trouncing and likely box office floundering, is a work of mad genius. That's right, genius. Genius fluff mind you, but genius nonetheless.

Let's get one thing out of the way immediately. Speed Racer is an adaptation of a popular 60's anime TV series and it remains for children and families. The advertising that is marketing this film for action junkies and hipsters is way, way off. This is a film for the young and young at heart, the people who clap for Tinkerbell, who hope that the force will be with Luke when he's going down the Death Star and the people who cheer for Mr. Smith's filibustering. The Wachowski's show that they have a deft hand for family material, ditching the dour tone of the Matrix sequels. The film quickly establishes the character of Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch), first as a boy then as a young man, with two great loves: his family and racing. The start of the film is a cinematic ode to motion and momentum as there is always something moving rapidly in the frame and it's exhilarating. Even just watching young Speed Racer tapping away at his desk at school the opening quickly sets up everything you need to know about the universe of Speed Racer and it's central character.
The plot, in aping the cartoon series shows a civilization obsessed with racing. There is a bunch of fluff dealing with industrial espionage and market manipulation but it's just a bunch of silly garnish. Basically the upper echelons of racing are very corrupt and it's up to Speed, racing for the memory of his late brother Rex (Scott Porter aka Jason Street of FNL) to help the mysterious Racer X change the league (Matthew Fox having fun being the coolest guy in the room) and help his family's independent car company stay in business. Oh and what a family. There's designer Pops Racer (John Goodman), Mom Racer (Susan Sarandon), younger brother Spritle (sensational discovery Paulie Litt), mechanic Sparky (Kick Gurry) and Speed's girlfriend Trixie (sexy Christina Ricci, not being given that much to do). Then there's Chim-Chim. Chim-Chim is Spritle's pet chimpanzee, who gets into mischief with Spritle. He wears clothes and is with the family in every scene they appear in the film. Every. Scene. This includes fight scenes and dramatic scenes. If you're the type of person who thinks adding a live chimpanzee to anything makes it better then this absolutely 100% the movie for you. Speed cares deeply for his family and extended family and the whole crew is constantly supporting and sacrificing for each other it's a very nice value to have underlined in a major studio release.
Still this may all ring familiar with readership. What sets this film apart is its style and its visuals. The performances match up to the visuals, which lead to some unusual bits of movement and line-reading, it takes some getting used to but it errs more on the side of charming than odd. The Wachowskis stuff the frame with kinetic visuals in all but the most tender scenes (in those they choose, wisely, to focus on the characters). The races are dazzling and not quite like anything presented before in film (the racetracks with their loops and twists and pop-candy color are reminiscent of video games like Mario Kart and F-Zero) and go gloriously cartoonishly over-the-top (without spoiling too much you can refer to this review's title). The cars jump, smash and flip like martial artists and it's fairly mind-blowing. The same goes for sequences like the Racer family visiting the corporate headquarters of Royalton Motors where the Wachowskis firmly lift their middle fingers at Tim Burton's Chocolate Factory. It's not just visuals though. The actual shooting style, to quote Frank, "rapes the 180 degree rule." Dialogue scenes, montages, flashbacks, whip pans and dozens of other conventional techniques are skewed creating a frenetic and surreal cinematic language that will delight and amuse the curious.

I can completely understand the critics discarding the film and audiences laughing at it rather than with it, but there's really a lot of commendable risks being taken in this film. It's daring, exciting and nicely keeping with the films of summer thus far, fun. I would advise you to check out the trailer for the film and if you think you can handle the visuals without getting a headache than by all means give it a shot and discover one of the secret successes of the summer and be on the ground floor of a film that will attain a cult status sometime in the next five years.

Curse of the Golden Man: Susan Sarandon

For many actors, winning an Oscar is the crowning achievement of a career, for others it's a way of elevating a career to the next level allowing actors the coveted ability to pick and chose roles. However, there is a darker side to an Oscar win. For one, it alters public perception; if an actor is universally recognized for a certain role and is then awarded for it, it can act as a brand. This brand forever marks the actor or actress as a certain "type." While being type-cast has it's advantages, casting agents always looking for a certain type, it also locks in actors into the same part over and over again, halting their progress as an artist. In this on-going series (as suggested by one of our favorite loyal readers, Cary) will take a look at some popular actors and act as a sort of career assessment slash therapy. I should point out that these articles are not meant to be mean-spirited, quite the opposite. They're to have us consider why we like these actors in the first place and make you, the educated film-enthusiast that visits this site, demand more from our favorites.

Tonight, our subject is Susan Sarandon.
Susan Sarandon is an actress of enormous talent and poise. She possesses a regal poise that shines through in every role and a real wisdom behind her penetrating gaze. But quite frankly
Sarandon has been more interesting lately and prolific as an activist and husband to Tim Robbins. At this point Sarandon has been far more interesting at say, the Democratic National Convention than on screen ever since...well lookee here, since her Oscar win. In 1996 Sarandon won her first Oscar (after several nominations) for playing Helen Prejean in her husband's film Dead Man Walking. Sister Prejean is a stern, compassionate and thoughtful woman, Sarandon has basically done riffs on this character ever since, except now the part is played alternatively as demure or too over-the-top.

One of her better, more passionate appearances

Don't believe me? The post-Oscar resume says it all.

Her first big starring role post-win was the syrupy Stepmom where Sarandon plays the terminally-ill saintly mom who indoctrinates the incoming titular stepmom played by Julia Roberts (which is gross when you stop and think about it for more than a minute). The film has since gone into regular rotation on the likes of TBS and can be found in bargain bins in your local electronics retailer. It also posited Sarandon as both "the mom" and "the wife." Here comes another mom the next year in the Natalie Portman vehicle Anywhere But Here. Sarandon does Mom AND wife with minor variations in The Banger Sisters (comic), Igby Goes Down (sardonic) and Moonlight Mile (maudlin), Shall We Dance (bland and paper-weight-ish) and finally in Elizabethtown (ugh, just...ugh, why was she tap dancing for those yokels-I mean the paying Elizabethtown audience). Oh and I forgot Mr. Woodcock (something my brain was grateful for until...just now). She's also a mom, or should I say stepmom (cocked eyebrow), in Enchanted. Her character, Queen Narissa is probably the worst part of the movie and any scene she's in suffers because she's written as though she A) belongs in a different movie and B) is played with a different kind of broadness (Enchanted is wonderfully illustrative as to there are many levels of "broad"). Of all the movies I've mentioned (and I've seen them all but Woodcock) Enchanted is by far and away the best that Sarandon has been in lately. And as the web's biggest fan of Enchanted (suck it KittyPrincess87!) let me firmly state that it pains me to think about any of this.

When Sarandon does "bring it" these days, she doesn't seem to do it with anyone watching. The whole impetus for this series came from a discussion about Cary watching In the Valley Of Elah (elah, elah, elah, hey, hey, hey, hey). I missed the film because the credits contained the phrase "directed by Paul Haggis" but the completist and awards fan in me has it on my "q" to ensure that I've taken a look at every nominated film. This doesn't change the fact that Elah was one of several "Iraq" films that tanked this year so if Sarandon did do some new and exciting work, most of the population doesn't know about it yet. Her work on the series Rescue Me has been well recieved and she had a good little bit of work in her hubby's other film The Cradle Will Rock (an unfortunately under-seen film). I liked her smooth, silky turn in the Alfie remake, but damn it, it's the ALFIE remake! Even her voice-over work has been poorly applied (with the noted exception of James and the Giant Peach).

Looking at these films simply does not inspire the confidence that Sarandon's earlier chunk of resume does.
I mean come on; Atlantic City, Thelma and Louise, Bull Durham, The Hunger (HOT!), The Witches of Eastwick, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Lorenzo's Oil, Little Women and Bob Roberts (hell why not throw in The Client, the performance is good, even if the movie is trash). In each film Sarandon plays dynamic, intriguing characters who cut a bold swath through their films. I know it's silly to say, why not pick more films like these? But could a younger, hungrier, pre-Oscar Sarandon have been more picky? It should also be noted that right about the time Sarandon started taking these broader, frothier roles in the public eye is right when her kids became old enough to become regular movie-goers. Now I won't begrudge an actor-parent wanting to make material suitable for their children but I'm curious to see through this series the returns start to diminish when the kids begin to grow-up.

Looking ahead for Sarandon she has a dramedy where she sacrifices one daughter's (another mom) college fund for another daughter's modeling career in Middle of Nowhere. She'll be Mom Racer in the upcoming Speed Racer live-action cartoon by the Wachowski's (not exactly a major acting challenge for one of Sarandon's considerable gifts). In her most Oscar-baity future role she'll be the Grandma in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. While transitioning from Mom to Grandma can be rough for an actress, the role has a lot of opportunities for Sarandon to really strut her stuff (and not just in a sassy Cloris Leachman type of way). Here's hoping.