8 Ways to Sunday

Just finished watching a subtitled foreign-language film, and I’m reminded of something a South American exchange student told me in (I think) high school.

He said the way native English speakers talk reminded him of a typewriter. Each word is the snap of a key, the end of each sentence a carriage return.

He contrasted it to native Spanish speakers, who flow their words all together. There was no judgement in his passing observation.

Clackity chkt click, snap. Vrrrrrt!

Feast your peepers on the teaser trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:

High-definition versions are available from Yahoo! Movies. If you’d like more info about the film, check out Vanity Fair’s feature article and their exclusive interview with Stephen Spielberg.

Based on some publicity photos I’ve seen of a grumpy and aged-looking Harrison Ford, I was worried that this would end up being Indiana Jones and the Damn Kids who Won’t Get Off His Lawn. This teaser leaves me a bit more hopeful.

The first trailer for the the Wachowski brothers’ live action Speed Racer movie hit the Web on Friday. It looks like a colorful, retro-futuristic, and fundamentally silly movie with exciting races, two-dimensional characters, and ridiculously over-the-top villains. A lot like the cartoon, in other words. You can watch the trailer in high-definition QuickTime format, or check out the fuzzier YouTubeized version below.

When I was a kid I thought that the original Speed Racer cartoon was awesome, but I’m not sure that nostalgia is enough reason to see this movie in a theatre. I’m withholding final judgment until there’s more than one trailer to go on. What’s interesting about the trailer is the several direct visual references to the opening sequence of the cartoon — both the Japanese and English versions.

The race sequences themselves owe an obvious debt to the F-Zero and Wipeout video game franchises. It’ll be interesting to see whether these varied influences can be knit together into a coherent movie.

More Speed Elsewhere

• Joe Hallock takes a brief look at the original Japanese anime and its differences from the American translation.
• ComingSoon.net has the company line on the movie’s plot.

To quote the t-shirt that director Michael Bay wore during production: GIANT FUCKING ROBOTS ARE COMING.

The Transformers were among my favorite toys as a kid. I was actually surprised to learn that they still make new Transformers toys. I guess there may be a market for this movie beyond those strange adult men who collect retro toys in unopened original boxes.

Even though I haven’t touched a Transformer in about twenty years, I was still pretty excited (in an utterly nerdy way) when I heard about this movie. I imagine anyone who ever pitted plastic Autobots and Decepticons against each other on a living room carpet will probably feel the same.

They even got the original Optimus Prime from the U.S. cartoon to voice Prime in the movie! Woo hoo!

I am such a dork.

TBS has cooked up a few amusing promos for their Lord of the Rings showings this weekend. Here’s my personal favorite, via YouTube:

Since when does TBS do slash fanfic?

Update

Turns out the embedded video above doesn’t agree with the Opera web browser. Opera users can still watch the commercial on the YouTube site, however.