I have vague memories of watching the original Speed Racer cartoon as a kid, though I’m not sure how young I was then. Fresher in my memory is The New Adventures of Speed Racer, an American adaptation that was more like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles than anything else. According to Wikipedia, it was pretty unsuccessful and only ran for 13 episodes. That’s a damn shame, because the theme song rocked.

The new movie was a perfect adaptation of what I remember from the original cartoon. It felt like watching a cartoon. It was so exaggerated and over-the-top that I was giddy the entire time. It was outrageous, chock full of cartoon-style action, impossible physics, wild colours, ninjas, cheese, and everything else that I love about movies. Speed Racer was the most awesome movie I’ve seen since Godzilla: Final Wars. It’s a total throwback to old school Japananimation, from back when it was still called Japanimation. If you’ve ever paid attention to how those old cartoons were animated, you’ll love all the little details in Speed Racer. There were some scenes that were a cool modernization of the multiplane camera, where buildings in the background seemed 2-dimensional in an otherwise completely 3-dimensional world. Visually, the movie was stunning. The casting was likewise perfect. We’re talking Patrick-Stewart-as-Professor-X calibre of perfect.

Speed Racer isn’t a movie for people who are expecting a real movie. It’s a movie for people who want to see a cartoon exploding all over their brains. It’s a movie I’d watch over and over again and again like Godzilla Final Wars, which is my current movie of choice for when I need a dose of instant awesome.

Speed Racer made me all happy and giddy. I’d see it again any time.

I used to stay up late watching the random movies they show on CBC immediately before they sign off. I remember seeing the entry for Soylent Green in the TV guide and the fact that it was classified as “Sci-Fi” and figured I’d watch it. The first time I saw it (it turns out, Soylent Green is a common CBC late night movie) I thought it was ridiculous and lame. Nothing happened during the entire movie, until “Soylent Green is people!!!”. It didn’t really have much of a point.

The reason I say I’m lucky, is that when I later started watching comedies, many of them parodied and referenced the famous line. If I had seen the parodies before watching Soylent Green, there’s no way I could have appreciated the comedy as much. I would’ve heard the joke, watched the movie, thought “this movie is lame”, and then the joke would forever be in my mind as this back-ported kind of reference. Seeing the movie in my youth let me appreciate the humour.

I wonder how people who haven’t seen the original Star Wars trilogy get through life. Pretty much every popular form of comedy references Star Wars at one point or another. Do they just not get the jokes? Or is it that they’re so used to hearing the Star Wars references that they’ve pretty much pieced together the entire trilogy in their minds? If these people were to watch Star Wars now, could they get any enjoyment out of it? Would the jokes be funnier after having seen Star Wars?

Seriously. Everyone should see Star Wars. At least once. (And Soylent Green, too.)

But one thing stands out above all others:

The Snakes property of the Flight class.

The phone booth in the movie should stand out, since there was a Chinese pagoda sitting atop it, making for a pretty distinct-looking phone booth. So Lunchy & James, our native New-Yorker buddies, guided us around Chinatown looking for a phone booth that had a pagoda on top of it.

We couldn’t find any.

Upon closer inspection of the movie, I think I can figure out why:

In these screenshots, it’s pretty clear that the pagoda isn’t a permanent fixture on the phone booth at all. Instead it seems to be a little wooden prop that the filmmakers placed on the phone to make it look more … Chinatown-y.

In the second screenshot you can see a better view of the street. I’m pretty sure we were at the very intersection, at that very payphone, walking down that very street – only we didn’t notice the payphone’s significance due to lack of pagoda. I’m pretty sure that’s the street we walked on to get to this little restaurant that was supposed to have awesome soups, only to have it close exactly as we approached the front door.

• Tokyo Zombie was very disappointing. It was mostly boring, but the last 10 minutes were gloriously amazing. Unfortunately they were too little too late. I wanted a ridiculous and funny zombie movie, but what I got was … well I don’t know what it was but it was boring.
• A Bittersweet Life is easily one of the best movies I saw this year. It was a Korean movie, but a gangster movie in the same vein as John Woo’s The Killer with Chow Yun-Fat. While it doesn’t offer anything original in the way of story (it’s pretty run-of-the-mill John Woo), A Bittersweet Life distinguishes itself by being beautiful. It was well shot, masterfully directed and so well executed that you kind of just lose yourself in the world that the movie creates for you. It’s much, much more than just a gangster movie.
• Princess Aurora was a pretty interesting Korean serial-killer flick, instead of being purely senseless and violent, it was violent and very entertaining. It also has the most awesome website I’ve ever seen (make sure to enable popups before going).
• Shinobi is kind of like Romeo & Juliet but with ninjas. Actually, it was a lot more than that, and it was a pretty awesome movie, too. Excellent fight scenes, beautifully shot… While it was based on a manga (called Basilisk) you can tell that the movie only covers one aspect of the whole story.
• Hell was a very disappointing Thai horror movie. Basically a bunch of people go to Hell, and the rest of the movie is spent with them trying to come back. It wasn’t scary, and hell, it wasn’t even interesting.
• Necromancer is another Thai horror movie. It was even worse than Hell. There are basically these Necromancers with magic-like powers … but they don’t really _do_ anything. I think one of them was a cop or something… Anyway, the movie had no discernable thread. Nothing for the viewer to follow, and no characters to rally for or against or anything. And it kept doing this irritating thing where it would show you a scene that has nothing to do with anything, and then an hour later it will show you the rest of the scene (and by that time you’d forgotten the beginning since it had nothing to do with anything). The only good thing was the music, which was loud and triumphant and great. But the music’s greatness only made the movie look even duller by comparison.
• SARS Wars was another Thai movie. This one is a parody of every zombie movie ever made. An hilarious parody. The premise: the SARS Type 4 virus turns people into zombies, and a hero, and old guy, a sexy doctor and schoolgirl (as well as her would-be kidnappers) have to fight their way out of the zombie-infested building. This movie made fun of everything from Night of the Living Dead to Star Wars.
• Black Kiss wasn’t nearly as weird as I’d hoped. It was still a pretty interesting movie with compelling enough characters that make you constantly wanting to know more about them … but it kind of flopped at the end.
• My Scary Girl. There’s something about Korean romantic comedies that I like. I think it’s because they’re some of the funniest movies ever made. While the classic My Sassy Girl had a deeper love story, My Scary Girl was almost pure laughs. It’s like the Korean version of 40-Year-Old Virgin only instead of the girl being a grandmother, she’s a serial killer. I’d recommend this movie to anyone. (Holy fuck, Hollywood is remaking My Sassy Girl. Please don’t see it; whatever you do.)
• A Chinese Tall Story’s trailer made it look like China’s answer to Godzilla: Final Wars. Unfortunately it was nothing like that. The movie had awesome special effects, but I think the horrendous translation did it the most harm. I don’t know why Cantonese movies are so badly subtitled, but I had no idea what the hell was happening the whole time (and I’m no n00b to Chinese cinema). The special effects and action were great, though.
• Funky Forest almost deserves an entire post of its own. I think it was the most absurd movie I have ever seen (I don’t recommend it if you’re a lightweight of Asian cinema). The movie had three directors and took the form of many sketches involving a lot of the same characters. Kind of a like sketch comedy … There were a few episodes of “GUITAR BROTHER” which were these random sketches of Tadanobu Asano with a guitar and a kid that couldn’t speak Japanese. There was also this weird school with a funky homeroom teacher and aliens and a band that only plays music in your dreams and these weird ExistenZ-like creatures. I loved this movie, but I don’t think you’ll enjoy it if you’re a stranger to absurdist movies.
• Lost In Wu Song was a movie about making a movie about the Chinese mythical hero, Wu Song. The movie focuses on the director as he tries to find the perfect actor to play “Wu Song”, and he often tells stories about Wu Song to his friends at the local eatery. It reminded me of Of Mice And Men only it was good. (I hated that book).
• Executive Koala (from the same director as Calamari Wrestler) is about an executive at a large food company… who happens to be a man-sized koala. Other than that he’s normal. Well, the company’s president is a giant albino rabbit and the clerk at the 7-11 is a frog. The movie itself would probably have been pretty lame had it not been for the inclusion of giant animals. But because we had the giant koala there to constantly remind us that the movie is for entertainment purposses only, it was pretty enjoyable. Think about how many more movies would be improved by a giant animal? (Think of Superman, if Clark Kent were really a walrus or something, and then when he takes off his glasses he becomes Superman, and still nobody can tell that Clark Kent is Superman… even if he’s the only walrus. That would be awesome.) Executive Koala also deserves recognition for the line “There’s nothing wrong with you! You’re a perfectly decent koala.”
• Strange Circus was strange and disturbing. Yet for some reason I liked it. I don’t know why I liked it, but I did. I’m not even sure what it was about, but it was certainly interesting.
• All Out Nine: The Field of Nightmares. Japan certainly knows how to make a damn good baseball movie. And I normally hate sports movies. But All Out Nine isn’t so much about baseball as it is about overcoming adversity. Indeed, the word adversity is constantly flown across the screen, sprouting out from the ground or falling from outer space. This movie had just the right amount of ridiculousness and absurdity to make it entertaining and thoughtful.
• Arthouse Ultraman was four episodes of the recent Ultraman MAX TV Series, each directed by a famous (and artsy, hence “Arthouse”) Japanese director. In fact, two of the episodes were directed by Takashi Miike, known for his insanely messed up movies. Two of these episodes were extraordinary (one of them by Miike, the other by … some other famous guy whose name escapes me). The other two were okay. One of the awesome episodes (not the Miike one) was actually pretty deep. The other one (the Miike one) was hysterical.
• Vampire Cop Ricky followed the more-or-less typical Korean formula for action/comedies. There’s no one named Ricky in this movie. There _is_ however, a cop that turns into a vampire – but only when he’s horny or extremely angry. Hilarity ensues.
• Sukeban Boy was one of the most wildly fun and entertaining movies ever. It was a short film, but it was all about boobies. Gratuitous booby-shot after gratuitous booby-shot. Not a single chest was left covered. There are fights, and boobies that turn into cannons, and a boy that turns into a girl (more boobies!). You can read a real review here. So … many … boobies.
• The Idol was another short film that showed with Sukeban Boy (boobies!). This one had more depth and was more interesting. It was a very good movie, especially as far as short films go. Basically there’s a doll that gets passed on from planet to planet sucking up people’s emotional highs and lows… it was very well done (especially on such a low budget).
• Negadon was an entirely computer generated (and fucking beautiful at that) tribute to 50’s sci-fi flicks. It’s a little slow going, but it’s only 25 minutes long and the animation and action (once you finally get to it) more than make up for the slow intro.
• In Samurai Commando 1549 a platoon of modern day soldiers accidently end up in the year 1549 and start screwing with Japanese history, so another troop is sent to bring them back. It wasn’t particularly great, but it was entertaining. And there was a guy named Yoda.
• Red Shoes was a Korean horror movie about these shows (they’re pink, not red) that kill whomever wears them. But it wasn’t very scary, there was too much forewarning (the music) to the would-be scary scenes. I found it hard to sympathize with the main character, since I didn’t really like her very much at all. The whole movie took the idea of the red shoes (which had potential) and fizzled it.
• The Glamorous Life Of Sachiko Hanai was one of the more interesting movies this year. It might have been a softcore porn, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t intelligent. On some level, at least, you can read into things. Sachiko is a tutor (the dirty kind of tutor) who gets shot in the head and ends up becoming super smart. She starts really teaching things as the movie goes on. Eventually the world is destroyed. I liked it a lot. (And not just because of the boobies).
• Reincarnation is Takashi Shimizu’s latest. Takashi Shimizu has directed Ju-On about 30,000 times. There were at least two Ju-On made-for-TV movies, and the two feature length ones, for example. Reincarnation more or less proved that he can’t escape it, since it was almost just like Ju-On in every respect – except a lot less scary. That’s not to say it was bad… I actually liked it, but it could’ve been much better. Too many scenes from Reincarnation were almost identical to ones in Ju-On.
• Zombie Self Defense Force was a low-budget Japanese zombie/comedy movie. It was simple and fun and had a female robocop kick some zombie ass.
• Death Trance was a fucking good action movie. Post-acopaclyptic yet over-the-top enough to be amusing. Fantastic fight scenes and some ass-kicking soundtrack. Not to mention it combined sword fighting, gun fighting and bazookas in a way so rarely seen in theatres.
• Seven Swords was freaking long. A lot longer than it should’ve been. I mean there were whole side-arcs (read: “useless time wasters that contributed nothing to the plot nor character development”) that took like, 20 minutes of fucking “sending the horses off” … Argh. I could’ve done without that. … But the action was great. Some awesome people in this movie: Donnie Yen, Lau Kar-Leung (the old guy from Drunken Master) among others. There were some great action scenes … but all things considered I’ve lost faith in Tsui Hark. (Actually, I lost faith in him after seeing Black Mask 2, with Rob Van Damme. There’s a reason you never knew they made a Black Mask 2.)

And there we go. That’s Fantasia 2006 for you. I might have accidently left out a couple of movies but I think that’s just about all of them. I was disappointed that there were no Godzilla movies this year. Hopefully there’ll be a bigger, better one next year. (I can’t wait to see them try to top Final Wars).