My Friends Enjoy Depressing Me
Posted by Dorian in movies, my fanboy entitlement is showing againThis little factoid was pointed out to me earlier today:
Yes, I realize that I’m in the minority of people who think Speed Racer was a really good movie, but no matter what you think of it, there is no objective standard by which you could argue that The DaVinci Code, a film based on the worst novel of all time, a novel inspired by right-wing French conspiracy theories from the 1930s, is a better film.
And yet, it not only made more money, it has sequels coming out.
Meanwhile, the visually stunning film that actually had something to say about the conflict between artistic integrity and working within the commercial corporate structure is just yet another thing nerds like to gripe about to impress each other with their supposed cultural superiority.
*sigh*
We really do get the film industry we deserve, don’t we?
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the worst novel of all time
Uhh, you read any of Brown’s other books? He’s his own competition, and Code was by no means his worst book.
I fucking sat through “Da Vinci Code” at the theater. Unbelievable. Did you ever think, during the heyday of “Turner & Hooch” and “Big,” that Tom Hanks would end up making movies this depressing and stupid?
I always figured THE DA VINCI CODE was a bit more leftish in its conspiracy theory- the subtext is basically “the Catholic Church oppresses and denigrates women”- but yes, SPEED RACER is amazing.
What got to me was not that it was a commercial flop but that the critics hated it as well. I’d figure one group or the other would hate it, but how both had such a uniformly negative reaction is beyond me.
Evan–The DaVinci Code, the novel, is a bit leftist, but the original conspiracy theorists who pulled the Rennes Le Chateau hoaxes were right-wing.
Well, leftist is a stretch, it seems to me. Liberal leaning, more likely. Less liberal than the way a professor of liberal arts or the common intelectual would be (liberal to a point where their times’ elite allow them). More like, luke-warm average liberalism that doesn’t spout immediatly revolting Fox News-friendly diatribes (we’ve come to such a sad state of affairs that anything outside of LimbaughLand is somehow a hippie commune).
I’m still amazed that Speed Racer didn’t got more (money, repercussion and good reviews). Maybe it’s because I’ve never watched the show and got more than what I was expecting.
Re: DaVinci. Never mind Brown. After Amelie Polan, I can’t watch anything with that actress ever again (seriously, it was like some chauvinist xenophobic american made a straight-faced satire of a french film in the way ‘Taken’ seemed like a chauvinist xenophobic frenchman’s straight-faced satire of an american film. Argh. So self-consciously precious).
Speed Racer is the Bees-knees! (viking racer car drivers)
And the pre-match: The Ninth Gate vs. Death Race 2000!
I was also stunned (and depressed) by the poor reception of “Speed Racer,” and not just because I’d spent the several weeks leading up to its premiere blogging about my love of the original cartoon. (http://www.thiel-a-vision.com/?tag=speed-racer)
I could understand reviewers not liking it, but every 10-year-old boy and fortysomething geek should’ve been salivating. I sat in a 2/3-empty house on opening night, while next door “Iron Man” was selling out. (“Iron Man” was good, but it wasn’t *that* good. Nor was it all that kid-friendly.)
What really impressed me about the film, beyond the woefully-overlooked technical wizardry, was the work that the Wachowskis put into designing their insane blend of NASCAR and X Games. There was a whole history there, with controversies, rivalries and dastardly opponents. It may have looked cartoony, but it felt like a real sport rather than something concocted for the sake of a single film. I’m sorry that we won’t have an opportunity to further explore that world.
I was amazed at how bad Code was, even with my very low expectations of it. But we’ll be seeing Angels & Demons for sure. Only because we read the book on the flight home from Rome. The ways in which it is enormously stupid are legion, but by coincidence, we had just been to EVERY single location named in the book, including the more obscure church where a body is in a well or something. So, it’ll be a travellogue for us.
Ewan MacGregor doesn’t hurt, though.
Fun fact: I found out at a Ward meeting that the Wachowski brothers’ sepcial effects computer lab is just two bocks away from my house here on the north side of Chicago.
Every now and then geeks, who normally will go see anything projected on a screen, will suddenly and inexplicably decide that their tastes are too high-brow for this foolishness, and usually it’s a good movie that suffers as a result.
I was one of the few film critics who gave “Speed Racer” a good review, and the more I see it the more it impresses me. The real tragedy? After seeing VFX supervisor John Gaeta speak in LA at Siggraph, I spoke to him briefly and he mentioned that he originally envisioned the movie as the ultimate View-Master experience and wanted to have layers and layers of flat images in stereoscopic 3D for a future release! Its poor critical and box office reception guarantees that will never happen now.
The problem isn’t that we get the film industry we deserve, it’s that we get the film industry the people who saw “The Da Vinci Code” deserve.
Honestly, Speed Racer sucked balls. They could’ve made it more cohesive (the story line) documenting an artist’s struggle against the machine.
but yeah fuck speed racer, fuck the da vinci code as well. My friend who’s an avid fan was more than a little disappointed in the adaptation. We should talk harry potter
Thank god I wasn’t the only one. I just saw Speed Racer on cable and at the risk of sounding like a hyperbolic blurb reviewer, I was kind of blown away. I mentioned this to a classmate the other day and my constitutional law professor said she liked it too! It was like watching race cars kung-fu fight through a jolly rancher camera filter or something. This is going to be on someones future cult classic list someday i think
Oh, and Speed Racer was definitely a movie for kids. If I were 10 I would have loved that crazy shit.
DaVinci code-I couldn’t get through it. It was booooring. And Tom Hanks had funny looking hair.
I don’t always agree with your take on cinema, Dorian, but… yeah.
I’ve seen Speed Racer theatrically more than any other film. Ever. Driving across town to the inconvenient drive-in theater. 3 times in IMAX (once on mushrooms, highly recommended, I didn’t blink for two hours).
It has a singular sense of color, light, and movement.
It features an unbelievably talented youngster–Paulie Litt is 8 going on 30.
John Goodman has never been as comfortable in a children’s film, and Susan Sarandon grounds all the madness.
By the end of the movie, I’m wrapped up in the story, I’m moved to tears by the spectacle and the confidence in what’s going on, and after the second week of theatrical release, I am just fucking crushed at the audience and critical reaction.
The silver lining is NINJA ASSASSIN, which I saw at a test screening a few months ago. It is live-action NINJA SCROLL, It is something that is NEEDED, and Rain is going to blow up domestically.
Add me to the “Speed Racer” love; I’m just waiting on my niece to hit age 5 so I can send my brother a copy and say “Watch this with her!”
And my mom took me to “The Da Vinci Code” after she couldn’t get my dad to go with her. She’d listened to the audio book and STILL groaned at the big reveal. I was thinking, “You KNEW this was coming! *I’m* the one who should be groaning!”
Speed Racer is a great movie. Very happy to see folks standing up for it.
‘Nother Speed Racer fan here! (Then again, I also loved The Matrix Revolutions) Still, we should hold a support group/drinking club at some convention sometime.
At least Time named it one of the Top 10 films of 2008.