Hacker Cinema
Speed Racer
2008 · Film · 135 min
Directed by Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski
Speed Racer is a young and brilliant racing driver. When corruption in the racing leagues costs his brother his life, Speed must team up with the police and the mysterious Racer X to bring an end to the corruption and criminal activities.
7 positive1 mixed8 neutralfrom 16 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
16 comments on Hacker News
Neuromodulation tools and systems that allow for a user to reverse normal reaction to stimuli is going to be a huge market soon. When I erg and just stare at the stats on the computer or phone, I struggle. In a good and not so good way. But when I put John Wick or Speed Racer (the movie) on a screen and pump up the volume, I can erg WAY past my normal break point. It's hard to stop, rather than hard to keep going. The new tools coming soon for focus, work, pain, and more.
I have like a 500GB drive with about enough content for a year of programming.
It was for me — although it is fun to think the kids could plop down and watch Speed Racer like I did. Unfortunately the girls were grown up before I created it.
Yeah, it's running all the time. The wife stops and watches from time to time — having to check the web site to see what a particular movie is. She got drawn into Columbo on Wednesdays when she was supposes to be working (from home as it were).
I'll stop too from time to time to watch an old Little Rascals or How It's Made. There's something about it just coming on rather than your having to make an effort to pull up the content. I guess just like TV.
I would claim that Matrix 2&3, Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas are incredible movies. What are your opinion on those movies?
I was young when dune was released and a big fan of herbert books. there was also star wars that ive seen at the same time. Dune is still today to me one of the great SF movies and I count a very few I really love (cloud atlas is another more recent one, speed racer too).
All his weirder movies were great experiences but my favorite ever Lynch movie is the Straight Story. such a perfect beautiful movie. I loved badalamenti music as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCzAetSFRC8&ab_channel=amasterofnothing1
I always thought writing and directing a movie of pure kindness and making it interesting as a piece of great art was the real mark of genius.
Interesting that you go to the movies for the quality.
My home cinema setup is literately just a high end OLED TV from 2019 configured to my tastes. But even with just that as my basis of comparison, I can barely stand how bad the sound and image quality of the best movie theater is around my place.
The blurryness of normal cinema is something I have a personal distaste for. I appreciated the Hobbit because they genuinely had an improvement there. But still, any action sequence in a movie is a blurry mess. Speed Racer also did something well in that regard. I play games at 170Hz, I dislike having my vision downgraded by 80 years of age just to enjoy a movie. Of course, this is largely not the fault of the movie theater. Movies also look blurry on my TV, just less so due to settings. I just have more choice of high quality content at home.
But by far the worst offender is sound. It seems the only thing movie theaters are trying to achieve when it comes to sound is booming bass registering on sismographs on the opposite side of the planet. There's instant distortion whenever the scene is not quiet. Highs are just horrible in general. And movie composers and sound designers seem to know this as they use highs sparingly, resulting in often jarringly unrealistic sound. And everything sounding bombastic even when it doesn't make sense thematically.
Near the end of Speed Racer is maybe the best use of CGI I've ever seen, and it has nothing to do with trying to be realistic.
The movie is worth it just for that part, which I rewatch every couple of months on its own.
There's definitely an angle of "actually this unrealistic treatment is director's intent", but it's hard to know on the basis of one out-of-context clip.
The live action Speed Racer film also got blasted at release for overuse of "cheesy" techniques that mimic the cartoon source material rather closely. It's become a cult classic, though.
A lot of this is predominant tastes preempting the discussion. American pop culture has focused for quite some time on achieving high detail and realism in photographic treatments, so when the trend is bucked for any reason it gets dinged as being not serious.
I kind of like the "90's FMV game" look to it, myself. Though it probably won't make me watch the film.
> sinks a movie franchise out of spite?
it's not spite. She didn't "sink" it because she was spiteful, she wanted to say something about the films and her work and chose to deconstruct the act of making a sequel to a trilogy after 20 years. It's their art, they can do what they want with it.
Their work since Matrix has always been avant-guard (Cloud Atlas is barely a film in any normal sense, a Speed Racer film by anyone else isn't _that_) they were never coming back to make another stock science-fiction action film.
The real question is, how did Warner green-light the script and release knowing that it was going say all those things.
To add to that, _Speed Racer_ should be the thing that TV manufacturers pack in to show off their fancy 4K HDR TVs — bright and vibrant in a way that Hollywood action movies avoid nowadays. The dialogue and acting are corny and stilted, but in a way that mirrors the TV show its adapting.
shrug I really liked it. It felt like Lana Wachowski re-imagining what they really wanted to do for the first movie, but now 20 years wiser and more experienced. I loved how it brought in more color--some scenes almost reminded me of Speed Racer with all the hues.
This reminds me of the Speed Racer movie where one of the competitors in the race drove a land train made of pure gold.
Not sure what the plot was but they were the villan trying to hide the gold. Speed Racer had to use his steering-wheel-radial-menu to summon equipment embedded in his aerodymanic car (up against this extraordinarily heavy freighter with lots a drag).
I find aggregated (and especially RT) scores mostly useless. Aggregated scores seem to consistently reward safe, samey material over anything interesting. Below are some of my absolute favourite movies from the last 10 years with RT score. A good chunk of these I would not have seen at all if I made my viewing decision based on "the wisdom of the crowds". I've also seen all the Marvel movies - they're so fleeting that I can't even tell you what happens in most of them. Almost all are "certified fresh".
- Speed Racer (40)
- Synecdoche: New York (69)
- Arrival (94)
- Her (94)
- The Neon Demon (57)
- Mad Max: Fury Road (97)
Speed Racer a documentary, wow.
i think The Matrix shows that it's at least possible to make a live action remake of an anime. i think what's actually needed is a director who understands the anime essense that well. eg the Wachowski bros
the Wachowski bros also directed Speed Racer (2008). it's one of my favorite movies and was 1,000,000x more awesome than it got credit for
I agree with the comments on the linked article, I liked the Speed Racer movie too. On the other hand, I thought the Lost In Space movie was worse than the original series. I was a kid when all three of these Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and Lost in Space were originally out, so we'll see how it goes. What's next though, Marine Boy, that's the only other major cartoon from the 70s left, that I can remember. Or maybe they'll do an Ultraman movie rather than the pukey Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers that supposedly evolved from it.
This technique is becoming increasingly common with the decreasing cost of digital film cameras. Expect a large jump in the popularity of this technique after the release of the next Wachowski siblings film, Speed Racer ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0811080/ ) in May 2008. This film will use the technique to remove mis-focus and create a live action effect which is more like cel animation.