Auuuhh!? Speed Racer Pics!

I wasn't too interested in this so called "Speed Racer Movie" until Albo told me that order to give the film an anime inspired look, the Wachowski's are shooting/compositing the movie with both the foreground and background of shots in focus, which essentially means this film will have unlimited depth of field, which may well cause a viewer's brain to spark and sizzle like a toaster with a fork in it. Did anyone out there read Infinite Jest? Speed Racer actually be The Entertainment.

Of course I could be wrong, maybe it'll just look real CG'd out. The film's environments are almost entirely green screen, as if you couldn't tell from the above still with those columns that look like a Windows 2000 desktop pattern. More interesting to me is that the character's costumes and hairstyles have been recreated with jarring accuracy, pictures and analysis after the jump...

Original story link via The Beat

Look at that hair! They nailed it! These pictures came from a USA Today article, which mentions that Speed's appearance will change throughout the movie, so don't expect him to be wearing that jaunty neckerchief the whole time (damn!). Racer X is looking very Matrix, but I suppose that can't be helped.

This shot is pretty cool, and immediately brings to mind the white-knuckled euphoria of Rainbow Road from Mario Kart. One phrase that keeps popping up in PR for this movie is "car-fu", which is supposedly a very innovative special-effects technique that could not have been created even one second sooner than now because it's just that advanced. I'm guessing it will be kind of like a cross between the Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle Motocross scene and Ben Hur.

The first thing I thought when I saw this still was, hey, they made Squirtle a boy? That's bullshit! But one Wikipedia search later I realized that A) Spritle has always been a boy and B) I've never actually seen a whole episode of Speed Racer. Like many members of my accursed generation, my only understanding of pre-1988 culture comes from pop culture parodies. In the USA Today Article, Christina Ricci mentions that she only knew about Speed Racer because of that Geico commercial. My whole idea of the show comes from this episode of Dexter's Lab...



Although in fairness to me, how is this kid not a girl?

I looked almost exactly like that when I was 4-9 years old, minus the hat and the monkey.