Moviegoings

Here are some things that caught my attention recently in the realm of the upcoming:

“Yeah. I can fly.” Definitely loving Robert Downey, Jr. in this role. His interaction with the robot in this scene is hilarious.

Speaking of hilarious, you have to see this new epic 4-minute trailer for Speed Racer. The sheer silliness on display here had me giggling with glee. What I’m seeing here is a pretty good balance between seizure-inducing action sequences and raw, vintage Speed Racer cheesiness. Which, if you must make a movie out of this material, is the way to go. I still say that casting Matthew Fox (Jack from Lost) as the mysterious Racer X is an inspired stroke of genius, and it looks like Christina Ricci sounds like she has a great tongue-in-cheek presence as well.

Watch for the moment when Racer X jumps his car to punch another driver in the face. Seeing that never fails to make me cackle (it’s at about 3:10 if you can’t stand to sit through the whole thing). That and Speed’s incredulous, “This race if full of cheaters!” Perhaps to get the full effect, though, I should include something from the original show, for flavor. The pickings are surprisingly slim on YouTube, and I couldn’t find anything that really embodied what I remember as one of the guilty pleasures (along with Superfriends) of my preteen years, but here is the intro:

Finally, for something truly jaw-dropping, take a look at this trailer for The Fall. It looks to be in the vein of Secondhand Lions and Big Fish in terms of its use of a fantastical story as the backdrop for more “realistic” events. This eye-popper seems to have been languishing in the festival circuit since September of 2006, if you can believe it, and will finally achieve limited release on May 9th. I’ll be watching for it, without bated breath, but its likely to be on DVD before I have any opportunity to see it. Such is the way of things.

~ by Jared on April 15, 2008.

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