star-telegram.com: Movies

Calendar of summer movie releases

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:31 CDT

A week-by-week calendar of summer's other significant releases. (All dates are subject to change.)

May 16

How the Garcia Sisters Spent Their Summer Ugly Betty's America Ferrera is one of the stars of this comedy about three generations of Mexican-American women.

Short Order This Irish import offers a heaping helping of romantic quirk set in a struggling restaurant in a neglected cul-de-sac.

My Brother Is an Only Child Two brothers come of age in a small Italian town in the '60s and '70s.

May 23

Standard Operating Procedure Documentarian Errol Morris investigates the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

Constantine's Sword Oscar-nominated documentarian Oren Jacoby explores the life and work of author and former priest James Carroll.

Bra Boys The title refers to a gang of Aussie surfers in this doc about their changing beachside suburb.

Mister Lonely Kids writer Harmony Korine directs this unusual story centered on a group of celebrity impersonators living in a Scottish commune.

Postal Uwe Boll, one of the most hated directors in Hollywood, leads this sure-to-offend comedy about a down-on-his-luck loser who teams with his cult-leader uncle (Dave Foley) to rob an amusement park, only to learn that the Taliban has the same idea.

May 30

The Strangers Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are menaced by masked invaders in a remote vacation home in this horror thriller.

Savage Grace Tom Kalin (Swoon) directs this true-crime thriller about the 1972 murder of socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland (Julianne Moore).

June 6

Kung Fu Panda Jack Black plays an animated panda bear, which sounds even more annoying than Jack Black playing a real person.

You Don't Mess With Zohan A Mossad agent (Adam Sandler) fakes his death so he can re-emerge in New York City as a hairstylist. Hey, it could happen.

The Foot Fist Way This Will Ferrell-backed tae kwon do comedy stars Danny McBride.

The Children of Huang Shi Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a British journalist who helps save children orphaned during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937.

Stuck Stuart Gordon directs this thriller (loosely based on a Fort Worth incident) in which a retirement-home caregiver (Mena Suvari) hits a man (Stephen Rhea) with her car and leaves him stuck in her windshield.

SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:37 CDT

By Cary Darling

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Who's in it: Ben Barnes, Liam Neeson, Tilda Swinton, Eddie Izzard

What it's about: The sequel to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, this tale picks up 1,300 years after the original story. The adventurous Pevensie kids, who stumbled into the charmed netherworld of Narnia last time through a closet, are back to help defeat an evil king and restore good Prince Caspian (Barnes, last seen in the film Stardust) to the throne.

Why you need to see it: Uh, because your kids are going to make you. And, if you are a kid, then you should be able to count on that same mix of whimsy and wallop that made the first one such a pleasure. Andrew Adamson, who directed the initial film, is at the helm of this one, so there should be a continuity of care in terms of characters, story and special effects. It doesn't hurt that he's also got the Shrek franchise under his belt, so he knows a few things about developing a quality blockbuster.

MAY 16

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Who's in it: Harrison Ford, Shia LeBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen

What it's about: Indiana Jones comes out of retirement to help find out the secrets behind strange artifacts known as the crystal skulls. Whatever. It's just an excuse for lots of whip-cracking action ... not that there's anything wrong with that.

Why you need to see it: It's been nearly 20 years since the last Indy adventure, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, so it will be intriguing to see if the magic is still there for all involved. Can Ford, who turns 66 in July, still play the part of a stubbled, chiseled action hero? Can director Steven Spielberg, whose recent movies have either been dystopian fantasies (War of the Worlds, Minority Report), dramas (Munich, Catch Me If You Can) or comedy-dramas (The Terminal), still pull off the old-fashioned, matinee action-adventure? Stay tuned.

MAY 22

Sex and the City: The Movie

Who's in it: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, Chris Noth

What it's about: Set four years after Sex and the City, the TV series, left off, the film finds the BFF gal-pals living rather separate lives. Carrie (Parker) is set to tie the knot with Mr. Big (Noth), Samantha (Cattrall) is in Hollywood, Charlotte (Davis) is about to have a kid and Miranda (Nixon) is unhappily married. But some big event brings them back together -- Cosmos, no doubt, in hand.

Why you need to see it: At its best, the HBO series captured the giddy cosmopolitanism of modern life in New York. Though women bonded the most with the show, men too could appreciate its wise-gal humor, skewering the inanities of dating and trying to find Mr./Ms. Right. With show creator Michael Patrick King and the main players of the original cast on board for the movie, it should rise to the same high standard.

MAY 30

The Incredible Hulk

FILM REVIEW: Girls Rock!

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:39 CDT

By Kenneth Turan

Girls Rock!

(3 out of 5 stars)

PG (adult themes, strong language) 90 min.

Though some girls have been content to say they're with the band, more intrepid ones actually want to be in the band. It's the latter group that is the subject of Girls Rock!, an energetic documentary that shows how girls go about starting to make those dreams real.

Directed by Shane King and Arne Johnson, Girls Rock! is set at an event called Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls that takes place every summer in a Portland, Ore., warehouse. During a week of workshops, girls who attend in effect go from zeros to heroes: They learn instruments, often for the first time, form bands, write rock songs and perform them in front of an audience of 750.

The best thing about Girls Rock! is the passion of the girls, ages 8 to 18. Delighted to be making their mark on an area that's often viewed as a male preserve, these young people have an infectious energy.

It's also enlightening to hear the women who are counselors and run the place talk about the very real way the camp serves to empower girls.

Though Girls Rock! is nothing if not well-meaning, it doesn't always feel like the best possible film on the subject. The four girls chosen as the focus of the documentary are all interesting, but they don't truly grab our hearts the way the boys and girls did in Spellbound, which followed eight teens to the National Spelling Bee.

More of a problem is this film's tendency to turn periodically preachy. Inserted into the film at random moments are a series of what the press notes call "issue-driven animations." Created by visual artist Liz Canning, they push too hard in both style and content.

It's not that the statistics they pass on about girls and rock and girls and society aren't of interest, but putting them in our face, complete with sources, feels like an overly didactic reach for relevance.

The reason for this earnest miscalculation might be because the film's two directors are men. It's clear they care passionately about their subject and the place of women in the world. It's too bad they didn't realize that bending this far backward to spread their message wasn't necessary.

FILM REVIEW: Redbelt

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:35 CDT

By Rafer Guzman

Redbelt

(1 out of 5 stars)

R (strong language, violence) 95 min.

It sounds like a great idea: David Mamet, the playwright famous for brutal dialogue (Glengarry Glen Ross) and fiendish plot twists (House of Games), brings his formidable brain to the usually brainless genre of martial-arts action flicks. All the usual Mametian ingredients are here -- con men, magic tricks, the cauliflower-nosed actor Ricky Jay -- but there's also the promise of the visual excitement that comes when men pummel each other onscreen.

Redbelt fails on nearly every level, from its incoherent story line to its threadbare action sequences. Chiwetel Ejiofor (American Gangster) stars as Mike Terry, a jujitsu teacher with a samurai's composure: He uses his skills only reluctantly. But after he's conned by an aging action star (Tim Allen) and a sleazy movie producer (Joe Mantegna), he must enter a mixed martial-arts competition to make everything right. You've seen teen breakdancing flicks with better plots, and cooler acrobatics, than this.

For Mamet, who in recent years began studying jujitsu, Redbelt surely has some personal resonance and inner logic. For the rest of us, it's proof that even the most assured filmmaker can fall flat on his face.

Film Review: What Happens in Vegas

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:36 CDT

By Christopher Kelly

Joy (Cameron Diaz) is an uptight Wall Street trader recently jilted by her fiance (Jason Sudeikis). Jack (Ashton Kutcher) is an easy-does-it slacker recently fired by his father (Treat Williams) from the family furniture business. They meet cute in Las Vegas, where they're accidentally booked into the same hotel room, and they spend a boozy night together that culminates in their tying the knot. The next morning, just moments after they've agreed to an annulment, Jack drops one of Joy's quarters into a slot machine and wins $3 million. Which raises the thorny question: How, exactly, are they supposed to split the booty?

These are just the opening 10 minutes of What Happens in Vegas, a frantic romantic comedy that pays heed to no known rules of plausibility. Back in New York City, Joy and Jack take their case to court, where the judge (Dennis Miller) decides to teach them a lesson by freezing the $3 million and requiring the two of them to live together for six months. Unless they can prove to the court-appointed therapist (Queen Latifah) that they're actually working on the marriage, the money will be tied up in legal red tape for years. Written by Dana Fox, What Happens in Vegas falls squarely in the classic tradition of the "comedy of remarriage"-- a genre in which mismatched lovers must go through a series of hurdles and break-ups before finally realizing that they are truly meant for each other. The problem is, even at their screwiest, movies such as The Awful Truth (in which a divorcing husband and wife try to sabotage each other's romantic pursuits) and The Philadelphia Story (in which a man unexpectedly turns up at the wedding of his ex-wife) obeyed their own rules of internal logic. What Happens in Vegas, however, just throws one gag after another against the wall, to see what sticks. A few moments prove endearing, such as when Joy and Jack each try to induce the other to commit adultery by hosting a house party populated by his-and-her hotties. But that's not enough to prevent the proceedings from degenerating into utter senselessness.

The bigger problem, of course, is that Kutcher and Diaz are no Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. Admittedly, both performers are easy on the eyes, and they have a knack for physical comedy. But they never make us feel a sense of ardor between Joy and Jack; they give the audience no rooting interest in seeing the relationship work out. Indeed, much more than old-school titles like His Girl Friday and The Lady Eve, What Happens in Vegas mostly brings to mind rom-coms like Elizabethtown, Catch and Release and the most recent "comedy of remarriage," Fool's Gold: A narcissistic pretty-boy actor is cast opposite a narcissistic pretty-girl actress, and the two of them spend so much time preening that they never get around to generating romantic sparks.

The director, Tom Vaughan (Starter for 10), at least has the good sense to populate the cast with a couple of ripe supporting bananas, particularly Rob Corddry (The Daily Show) and Lake Bell (Over Her Dead Body), who play Jack and Joy's respective best friends, a hapless lawyer and a tough-talking bartender. The hirsute, soft-through-the-middle Corddry takes a page from Will Ferrell -- he's willing to do anything, including repeatedly stripping shirtless, to get a laugh. The lovely Bell, meanwhile, displays a mixture of spunk and snark that makes you wish the producers had cast her, instead of Diaz, in the lead. Together, they prevent the movie from turning completely noxious. As it stands now, it's merely pointless and forgettable.

What Happens in Vegas

(2 out of 5 stars)

Director: Tom Vaughan

Stars: Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher

Length: 99 min.

Rated: PG-13 (sexual content)

Film Review: Speed Racer

Fri, 09 May 2008 11:10 CDT

By CHRISTOPHER KELLY

Lights flash, bells jangle, and the audience gets whomped and bludgeoned from every direction: If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be a pinball in the moments before a full tilt, check out Speed Racer, Andy and Larry Wachowski’s big-screen reimagining of the 1960s Japanese anime series. For more than two hours, the Wachowskis flood the screen with unnaturally bright colors and ear-splitting noise, layering live-action atop animation atop still more live action. The movie looks like nothing you’ve seen before, and it induces an instant hangover. You don’t need sunglasses to make it to the end — you need two Valium.

What’s it all about? In a future world that might very well be the U.S., despite half the cast speaking with a British accent and seeming to have stumbled off the set of a drag-queen version of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, a young boy named Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) dreams of following in his late brother Rex’s footsteps and taking the race-car industry by storm. Speed is certainly impressive behind the wheel, so much so that the powerful head of a racing conglomerate, Royalton (Roger Allam), wants to recruit him. But Speed -- along with his independent-minded father (John Goodman); his doting mother (Susan Sarandon); his loving girlfriend (Christina Ricci); his younger brother, Spritle (Paulie Litt); and Spritle’s pet chimpanzee, Chim Chim -- has a natural aversion to corporate sponsorships. He refuses to join Royalton’s team, an act of resistance that sets off an elaborate chain of events and eventually uncovers a vast corruption ring that threatens to cripple the entire racing industry.

Or at least that’s as much as I could figure out, before my brain -- to protect further cells from being damaged -- went into hibernation mode. At various points in Speed Racer, we meet a gang of east London thugs who travel in the bed of an 18-wheeler; a Japanese ninja who threatens to inject our hero with a paralyzing poison; a mysterious quasi-superhero named Racer X (Lost's Matthew Fox), who may or may not be Speed's deceased brother; and -- I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried -- Shaft’s Richard Roundtree, who plays the legendary racer Ben Burns, whose iconic victory at the Grand Prix decades earlier may or may not have been rigged.

Pitching their wares squarely to the fanboys in the crowd, the Wachowskis (who also wrote the screenplay) seem to have decided to cram as many motifs from the original series into one elaborately tricked-out package. But from almost the first moment, the digital effects overwhelm the storytelling — we wouldn’t care about following the plot even if we could. Obsessed with creating a live-action corollary to Japanese anime, the Wachowskis place characters in the immediate foreground, while behind them a series of images unfold, rear projection-style. It’s an orgy of green screen technology — and it results in some very striking tableaux, with flashbacks and flash-forwards and parallel action all unfolding at the same time.

But while Speed Racer -- which uses a color palette that makes you think a gumball machine has exploded inside the projection booth -- can often be very entrancing to watch, it's not that entrancing. It's like a modern-art installation piece -- after about two minutes, you're ready to move on to the next gallery. Our sense of cabin fever is only heightened by the pace of the movie, which is alternately jittery and tedious: In between cartoonish kiddie hijinks involving the chimpanzee and the rules-breaking Spritle, we’re treated to endless racing sequences, in which the cars traverse sand, ice, sky and even loop-the-loops. (These latter scenes, which are mostly computer-animated, have all the charm and entertainment value of being invited over to a friend’s house and asked to sit politely while he demonstrates his new PlayStation.)

Forced to generate emotion out of thin air, the actors all look befuddled and/or completely overwhelmed; in some scenes, Hirsch doesn’t even seem to know in what direction he’s supposed to be looking. After about 90 minutes, the movie has turned so loud and exhausting that the only thing you can do is sink into your seat and wait until the feelings of nausea have passed. What makes this all the more disappointing is that the Wachowskis started out so promisingly, with the tightly wound same-sex thriller Bound and then the entertainingly elastic and mysterious The Matrix. They truly seemed like the first filmmakers of their generation who could make the virtual realm pulse with life.

But as they showed in their incomprehensible Matrix sequels, they've become consumed by arcana and trivia; and they've become slaves to the very technology they once wielded so masterfully. Indeed, for long and frenetic stretches, Speed Racer feels so cold, so alien, so utterly divorced from humanity that you start to wonder if the directors have left their editing suite at any point in the past five years. These would-be revolutionaries are officially wearing no clothes.

Speed Racer

Directors: Andy and Larry Wachowski

Stars: Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, John Goodman

Length: 129 min.

Rated: PG (action violence, mild language)

SCREEN TEST: movie trivia contest

Fri, 09 May 2008 15:04 CDT

By JANE HORWITZ

This week's question: Who turned down the role of Racer X in the new Speed Racer movie?

Send an e-mail to go@star-telegram.com by noon Monday.

Correct entries become eligible for a drawing for Cinemark movie passes and concession coupons. Please include your name and mailing address. Put "SCREEN TEST" in the subject line. Note: Please submit only one entry per person. Star-Telegram employees are not eligible.

Last week's question: Stan Lee, the creator of the Iron Man comic strip, had originally based Tony Stark -- a role played by Robert Downey Jr. in the new movie -- on whom?

Answer: Howard Hughes

The winner: Terry Kissell, Grapevine

Film Review: Then She Found Me

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:39 CDT

By Cathy Frisinger

- Then She Found Me

(3 out of 5 stars)

Hunt, who directed and stars in Then She Found Me , a low-budget dramedy, is so thin in this movie that her face is all hard lines and painful edges, adding a pall of grimness to the story.

Hunt plays teacher April Epner, a woman who has had a lifetime of second bests: She’s the adopted child in her family; she didn’t marry till late in life and he turned out to be a loser; and, most important, she’s a teacher who adores children but hasn’t been able to have a child of her own.

"Adopt," everyone tells her. But she doesn’t want to adopt.

April’s husband leaves her. She’s 39 and that clock is ticking — no, not ticking, blaring — and just when she’s certain her world can’t get any worse, her mother dies.

Into this dark chasm of a life walks Bernice Graves (Bette Midler), a cheerful, charming talk-show host who chats up the likes of Tim Robbins and Edie Falco for local viewers and occasionally reveals her own deep secrets on TV. One such secret is the baby she gave away when she was a teenager. Yes, Bernice is April’s birth mother, and Steve McQueen is April’s real father . . . or maybe not. Seems Bernice has some trouble with truthiness.

Thank the movie gods for Midler. She and Colin Firth, who plays April’s new love interest, pump some fun into this story, which Hunt plays in a relentlessly downbeat manner. Hunt’s character’s edginess, in fact, keeps this melodrama from being a Lifetime Channel pick.

Two more quick observations: Salman Rushdie plays a small role, and the final scene of Then She Found Me can be interpreted in two ways. It’s a satisfying bit of ambiguity, though.

Exclusive: Angelika Dallas, Angelika Plano

Film Review: Son of Rambow

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:38 CDT

By Colin Covert

Son of Rambow

***

PG-13 (some violence, reckless behavior) 96 min.

This joyous, touching story of friendship, mischief and imagination set in 1980s England gives us two boys of wildly different temperaments drawn together by the love of films.

Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner), a lonely schoolboy with a widowed fundamentalist mother (Jessica Stevenson) and an artistic imagination, fills his Bible with fantastic drawings of flying dogs and monstrous scarecrows. Although Will’s faith forbids him to watch movies or TV — he’s pushed into reading Scripture at a prayer vigil outside the local cinema — he draws animated flip-book cartoons. He hasn’t experienced moving pictures, but he intuitively understands their escapist magic.

Inside the picketed cinema, Lee Carter (Will Poulter), the school hooligan, puffs on a cigarette and casually copies Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo rampage in First Blood with a briefcase-sized VHS camcorder. When Lee shows Will his pirated movie, it’s like a jolt of rocket fuel for the sheltered boy’s imagination. Joining forces to make a feature-length video for a BBC young filmmaker competition, the boys discover that while they’re emotional opposites, they’re a natural team. Lee is bullying where Will is timid, and Lee is bottom-line oriented where Will is given to flights of fancy. In other words, Lee is a born film producer to Will’s instinctive writer-director-star.

Their project is Son of Rambow, in which the action icon’s kid sets out to rescue him from evildoers. It’s more than an excuse for the boys to put on costumes and tear around the countryside on imaginative adventures. Their home movie also becomes a vehicle for both boys to work out their absent-father issues. Lee lives under the care of his neglectful teenage brother while his mom is away on a semi-permanent European vacation. Unlike his new friend, who chafes under excessive control, Lee suffers from none.

The bond between the boys is tested when a ludicrously cool teenage French exchange student, Didier (Jules Sitruk), inserts himself in their epic as a master ninja. He threatens to hijack the production and sunder their friendship.

Writer-director Garth Jennings (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) deftly juggles serious themes and rambunctious comedy.The young actors are marvelously engaging and controlled, considering that neither Poulter nor Milner has acted before. Their adventures are unique, but their coming-of-age experiences are universal.

Exclusive: The Magolia in Dallas,

Angelika Plano

— Colin Covert, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

'Speed Racer' revs up interest in early anime

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:46 CDT

By CARY DARLING

Speed Racer careens into theaters Friday, dragging with it a $120 million budget, the bruised reputation of directors the Wachowski brothers -- whose careers need a shot of nitro after the flameouts of the last two Matrix debacles -- and the summer hopes of a movie industry desperately in need of a few winners.

Back in the 1960s and '70s, though, few could imagine that Hollywood would ever pin hopes on a live-action take on what then seemed to be strange, disturbingly violent Japanese cartoons that were totally at odds with American sensibilities. Speed Racer 1.0 -- like its contemporaries Gigantor, Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion -- was imported into the U.S. in the '60s through the wonders of syndication and an apparent need to fill afternoon airwaves with something other than Mike Douglas, old movies and teary soaps. Filler, thy name is Speed Racer.

Long before such land-of-the-rising-sun concepts as sushi, karaoke and Optimus Prime had filtered their way into the American psyche, this first wave of Japanese animation -- the Normandy Invasion of what would become the multimillion-dollar business known as anime -- was rather unnerving. This animation stood in stark, wide-eyed contrast to the lushness of Walt Disney's artistry, the wackiness of duck season-wabbit season Warner Bros.' anarchy, the modernist touch of Jay "Rocky & Bullwinkle" Ward's tomfoolery, and the friendly camaraderie of the Hanna-Barbera animal stable (Yogi and Boo Boo, Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looey and, my favorite, Lippy the Lion and his depressed, dyspeptic hyena sidekick, Hardy Har Har).

Speed Racer and his ilk were something different. With their fixed expressions, stiff movements and penchant for violence -- can't remember if it was Astro Boy or another of them but a pilot's headphones outfitted with skull-piercing blades sticks in the memory -- the Japanese imports were a shock to the system and seemingly as alien as those new Toyotas and Datsuns popping up on every street.

So, if the Wachowskis' vision is half as impressive as Iron Man, the big-screen vision of a prototypical American superhero, there's going to be increased interest in what they based it all on: those odd Japanese cartoons from an earlier era.

Astro Boy (1963-64)

This is the one that started it all. Based on a 1950s comic book by Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy was the first Japanese cartoon to be seen widely in the U.S.

And the plot's back story is arguably the darkest. It's the 21st century, and robotics engineer Dr. Boynton is bereft after the death of his son in a car accident. So he creates a robot in his son's image but, distraught that the replicant can't replace the real thing, sells him into slavery at a robot circus, where he's held under the cruel thumb of ringmaster Cacciatore. The boy, dubbed Astro Boy, is freed by a robots-rights activist, Dr. Elefun, who teaches the kid how to be a crime fighter and all-around conqueror of evil.

Astro Boy remains my favorite of the early Japanese imports, partly because it's the first and partly because of the warped stories. Absoluteanime.com and astroboy.tv give rundowns on some of them, whether it's 46 wrestling robots linking to become a mega-centipede or Astro Boy, sister Astro Girl and Elefun being flung 70,000 years into the future.

Updated versions of the tale were seen in 1980 and 2004.

DVDs available:Astro Boy: Ultra Collectors Edition, Set 1; Astro Boy: Ultra Collectors Edition, Set 2.

Gigantor (1965-66)

Gigantor, a giant robot controlled by a boy, has roots that go back to the '50s when Tokyo artist Mitsuteru Yokoyama came up with the story for a Japanese boys' magazine. That was later turned into a TV show, Tetsujin 28-Go (Iron Man 28).

American producer Fred Ladd liked the concept, obtained the rights for the American market, revamped the series for an English-speaking audience (the boy was renamed Jimmy Sparks) and called it Gigantor.

While the Speed Racer theme has become ubiquitous -- who can't joyously sing along to "Go, Speed Racer! Go, Speed Racer! Go, Speed Racer, Go!"? -- the Gigantor theme has a funkier edge and a deeper sense of menace: "Bigger than big, taller than tall, quicker than quick, stronger than strong, ready to fight for what's right, against wrong." Of course, when I was young, I thought the line was "ready to fight for what's right or what's wrong," which may have made Gigantor a more interesting personality though it also turned him into a big, metal bully. My bad.

DVDs available:Gigantor, Boxed Set 1, Episodes 1-26; Gigantor, Boxed Set 2, Episodes 27-52.

Speed Racer (1967-68)

Originally created by Japanese comic-book artist Tatsuo Yoshida, Speed Racer chronicled the adventures of race-car driver Speed (real name: Go Mifune, hence the "M" on his helmet), his girlfriend Trixie, his car Mach 5 and his nemesis, Racer X. The series, originally titled Mach Go Go Go, was slightly altered for the American market by director Peter Fernandez who, according to Entertainment Weekly, "toned down the violence ... and added that naggingly catchy theme song."

Though only 53 episodes were created, they continued to be syndicated through the '70s and '80s. As the kids weaned on Speed Racer grew up, the cartoon's imagery -- from T-shirts to music (an L.A. new-wave band took the name of Racer X) -- began to pop up in that ironic, can-you-believe-we-used-to-watch-that? way.

Today, Speed Racer'scontinuing popularity is seen as a precursor to the more widespread appreciation for Japanese animation (anime) and manga (Japanese graphic novels). It remains to be seen if the Wachowskis can magnify it yet again into a global, summer-movie blockbuster.