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  Film: Nell Schofield previews Speedracer and Earth June 8, 2008 Reporter :Nell Schofield  Watch our review of SpeedracerWatch our review of Earth Film: Nell Schofield previews Speedracer and Earth Last Thursday was World Environment Day and to celebrate, our film reviewer Nell Schofield took a look at a documentary that offers some radical new angles on the planet’s natural spectacles. But first, she went on a wild cinematic ride into a highly stylised technicoloured future. I've seen the future and it’s clean, despite human life revolving around high speed car racing. The time is 2054 and planet Earth has survived no less than three climate changes thanks to some new fangled hybrid fuel that leaves everything ultra shiny and new. But corporate baddies are still on the prowl threatening to gobble up good old fashioned wholesome values as personified by young Speed and the Racer family. Emile Hirsch, who starred in Sean Penn’s terrific film Into the Wild, is behind the steering wheel of the classic Mach 5 as the eponymous Speed Racer. In order to qualify for the all important Grand Prix, he must enter The Casa Christo 500, a notoriously dangerous cross-country race that claimed his brother’s life. On his team is the masked superhero, Racer X - Matthew Fox - and Taejo Togokahn, played by Korean pop star Rain. Driving the engine behind the scenes is Pops - John Goodman -, Mom - Susan Sarandon -, Spritle - the precocious Paulie Litt-, his girlfriend Trixie - a very cute Christina Ricci - and Sparky played by Aussie actor Kick Gurry. This glossy “poptimistic” vision was created by filming against a giant green screen with the actors in computerised gimbals that synchronised car movements with pre-visualised scenes. Speed Racer is a hyper fluorescent neon adaptation of the 1967 Japanese cartoon series ‘Mach Go Go Go’ updated for the 21st century by Andy and Larry Wachowski. And like their previous Matrix movies, the thrill here is in the dazzling special effects. Working once again with Australian Production Designer Owen Paterson and Aussie costume designer Kym Barrett, they’ve created a retro-futuristic live action comic world that lies somewhere beyond The Flintstones, The Jetsons and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a bit like a heart-stopping slot car game in a yet to be conceived penny arcade but at least it’s a healthy place where the victory drink is not a magnum of champagne but a nice cold glass of milk. Meanwhile, in the real world, our fellow species continue to struggle for their very survival. Earth is a dramatic documentary from the BBC’s Natural History Unit that follows the sun from pole to pole over the course of one year capturing the migrations of various animals as they search for ever decreasing reserves of food and water. Forty different camera men and women were involved in the production including Justine Evans who used infra-red cameras to shoot a remarkable collision between the elephants of the Kalahari Desert and one of the biggest prides of lions in all of Africa. Earth was written and directed by Mark Linfield and Alistair Fothergill, who made the stunning ocean doco Deep Blue. It’s a sublime piece of cinema that uses revolutionary camera techniques to give us a heightened perspective of the world and the creatures that inhabit it with us. Unlike Speed Racer, there’s no Computer Generated Imagery on display here, just clever time lapse photography and privileged access to some incredible natural phenomena like the Aurora Australis in Antarctica. Spend a few hours watching this film with its rousing score by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and you might just get a new appreciation of the place they call ‘The Lucky Planet’. |
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