The Other Side Of The Tracks
Posted on | May 18, 2008 at 1:06 pm | 5 Comments
Yesterday, I went to the theater to watch a documentary about NASCAR. I don’t know much about the sport, so I thought it would be a good introduction. I did learn a lot of things; I guess I had a lot of misconceptions. For one thing, the cars were a lot more futuristic looking than what I remember from seeing races on TV. They even had failsafe mechanisms where if the car was destroyed, a cocoon of gunk would encircle the driver and safely deposit him in a hole in the track. Now, that’s some forward thinking!
The movie was pretty confusing. It focused a lot on corporate sponsorship and industrial espionage and race fixing and all sorts of complicated, indecipherable schemes. It mostly followed one semi-independent family, named (ironically enough) “The Racers”, and their driving prodigy son “Speed” (also an ironic name). I almost wish they had gotten an actor to play Speed, because the dude was pretty wooden and didn’t have a lot of emotional depth to him. Speed had two annoying little brothers, one of whom was a chimpanzee, and they were always getting into trouble. He also had an older brother who died and who then may or may not have turned into Jack from Lost, but I didn’t quite get what was going on there. One of the other drivers looked a lot like Stephen Colbert’s nemesis, the Korean pop star Rain. Anyway, when this Speed Racer guy started showing how good of a driver he was, the evil corporate shills came after him and wanted him to join up. When he refused and said he wanted to stay with his independent family company, then all hell broke loose. But by the end of the documentary, Speed and his family came out ahead and defeated the bad guys and showed that racing could be a pure sport once again. And that it was okay to drink cold milk in the Winner’s Circle with some English mechanic dude and pretend to kiss your fake girlfriend.
I can’t say much for the story, which felt somewhat manufactured and not really true-to-life, but the camera work was exquisite. You felt like you were right there in the middle of the race! (I didn’t realize NASCAR was so big on bright candy colors, but whatever sells!) Sometimes it was a little hard to figure out what was going on and who was doing what to who in the races, but that’s what happens when you’re trying to capture such fast action. It did kind of give me a headache though and I think I had a seizure at one point.
So, did this movie make me want to become a NASCAR fan? I have to say that it did make me look more favorably upon the sport. If they could capture that kind of action and dynamism on the TV screen every week, I might have to tune in. I’m especially anxious to see chicks flying helicopters!
Latre.
One additional note: For some reason, the lobby of the theater was dressed up as a Renaissance Faire, complete with people in costume and all. I don’t know why. It clashed a bit with the NASCAR motif.
Comments
5 Responses to “The Other Side Of The Tracks”
May 18th, 2008 @ 8:51 pm
> I can’t say much for the story,
If it was a documentary, what did you expect?
May 18th, 2008 @ 9:22 pm
Flasshe – You really should announce when you get Alanis Morissette to guest-blog for you. Sorry, but a race-car driver with the surname “Racer” and first name “Speed” isn’t “ironic”; it’s the opposite of ironic (for which we don’t have a convenient term – but it’s something like “unrealistically apt”). “Ironic” would be a race-car driver named “Molasses Amish” or something.
May 18th, 2008 @ 11:34 pm
Sorry, but a race-car driver with the surname “Racer” and first name “Speed” isn’t “ironic”
It’s ironic because he’s kind of slow (mentally).
Damn, I hate the “Morrisette Clause”.
May 19th, 2008 @ 4:45 pm
> we don’t have a convenient term – but it’s something like “unrealistically apt”)
I think that’s what my wife would call “twee”. But she makes up a lot of her words.
May 19th, 2008 @ 9:42 pm
It seems that this documentary was based on an obscure animated series of public service announcements about the need to protect your identity by calling yourself ‘X’.