Speed Racer is a live action movie based on a Japanese cartoon television series from the 60s called “Speed Racer.”

I would’ve thought that was obvious, but based on the reviews, I’ve got to wonder what the hell these people were expecting. They’re fanning themselves with their press kits, complaining of “nausea” at all the colors and motion (in a movie called Speed Racer) and bemoaning the incoherent script (in a movie based on a 60s Japanese cartoon). Did you guys never bother to watch the original cartoon? Or any one of the trailers, for that matter?

The movie is an almost slavishly faithful homage to its source material, right down to the chonk chonk chonk sound whenever the Mach 5 jumps, and the inclusion of both English and Japanese lyrics in both of the movie’s heavily-sampled theme songs. When the source material is “Speed Racer,” that means nonsensical wackiness, ridiculously amped-up driving, and slapstick.

When someone complains about the screenwriting in a movie with an annoying little brother named Spritle with a pet chimpanzee named Chim-Chim who dress identically, you just have to smack yourself in the forehead and ask “Why don’t they get it?”

I said “almost faithful” because the overall look of the movie is way beyond what the original animators could have ever accomplished, assuming they’d wanted to. The environments look like the cities of the Star Wars prequels with the saturation knob turned past its maximum, and the race tracks are filled with flashing corkscrews and Hot Wheels loops. It feels like the Wachowskis’ homage to the show they wanted to see, instead of the show as it actually existed. You can also see the Wachowskis’ influence in the casting — all of the side characters are straight from a Matrix-like Eurotrash freak show.

And they dropped the ball with Inspector Detector; I was actually kind of looking forward to seeing them try to do that beard in a live-action movie.

Overall, the movie’s got exactly what I was expecting from a live action Speed Racer, with a few nice surprises. A bee catapult! A weird Zoetrope tunnel with an animated zebra! Their own version of the mammoth car! Fight scenes with the anime-style speed line backgrounds! The ominous Maltese Ice Cave! Even the main bad guy sounds like a typical Speed Racer villain. I was disappointed the Alpha Team wasn’t included, but I guess you can’t have everything.

Although in a movie this long, you’d expect it to have everything — it’s over two hours long, and it should’ve been about 45 minutes shorter. The scene-to-scene pacing is all right, since the manic episodes are balanced with slower moments. The problem is that the slower moments drag on forever. It’s as if they weren’t just trying to mix up the pacing, but were actually trying to make a “real” movie, with a plot and everything, which was their downfall.

The other big problem is that everything gets repeated so often that it stops being cool. Everything in the movie is so unapologetically fake, it’s surprising that the race sequences have any feeling to them at all. But the first time you see a car flip over another one, it’s impressive. Then they do it again, about a billion times. It’s the same with the anime-background fight scenes, and the montage sequences with a character in profile panning across the foreground, and the heart-to-heart speeches Speed has with Mom, Pops, and pretty much every other character.

You get a real sense that this movie wasn’t just made about speed, but made on it as well. And that they just refused to cut anything out. Pretty much the entire thing reminded me of the second Matrix movie, in that it was just a hyperactive dump of ideas, many of them good, but without any regard for the overall story and pacing.

But still, I liked it. It’s goofy, manic, spectacle, with more than a few genuinely cool moments. And best of all, it struck me as being full of genuine affection, or at least nostalgia, for something the filmmakers grew up with. Poop jokes and all.

Speaking of series that blur the line between science fiction and “real” stories: this week’s episode of “Battlestar Galactica” hit me like a ton of space-bricks. It’s called “Faith” and the rest is spoilers and you’re gonna have to give me a second because I think there’s something in my eye…

I was already annoyed with the episode even before the opening credits started, because its episodic television underwear was showing. Characters were doing stuff not because it made sense, but because the writers needed them to go from here to there and squeeze a cliffhanger in the middle. So there’s a big standoff with everybody yelling at each other and pointing guns and I was hoping that somebody would just shoot already. And then they did, and it wasn’t as cool as I’d been hoping for.

But then it all started to kick in, and they tapped right into the section of my brain that can have me bawling at a TV show. I can make a list of all the parts that made me gasp and/or tear up and/or were intensely creepy:

• Showing an FTL jump from the cockpit
• Jumping right into the middle of the semi-organic Basestar wreckage
• Starbuck finally seeing the gas giant and “comet” from her vision
• Six’s violent attack, and the crew member trying to talk and take a few steps before falling down dead
• Roslin’s description of her mother’s (or her own) fear of death
• The hybrid’s long sustained scream as she was about to be unplugged
• Emily Cancerpatient running to her family on the shore
• Adama telling Roslin that she’s the one who gave him faith in finding Earth

This is the only episode of “Battlestar Galactica” that’s really moved me like this — going from genuinely scary (that scene with the hybrid really creeped me out, reminding me of the scene in Miller’s Crossing where the Dane gets attacked), to genuinely moving without being maudlin. It’s the potential of the whole series that’s always been hinted at, but in my opinion was never quite achieved.

“The X-Files” tried to hit on the same themes of death and purpose and faith and belief, struggling to be more than just genre television, but ultimately imploding from the mass of its gimmicks. It almost never worked; Scully’s cancer was more tedious than moving, and many of the episodes managed to be good but not all that deep or meaningful.

A lot of “Battlestar” has the same problem, actually: whenever they try to be relevant, it seems like ham-fisted allegory or a clumsy attempt to shoehorn “meaning” into a sci-fi/action show plot. (Worse is when they try to shove “shades of gray” into a situation that hasn’t earned it.) The characters and stories are strong enough that it’s usually good television, but I always feel like I’m giving them credit for being intelligent enough to make an effort, not that it’s made me genuinely feel like they want me to feel.

All of the scenes with Roslin and Emily Cancerpatient totally worked for me, though, even though their version of the afterlife wasn’t all that original. (And they were especially moving performances when compared to Gaeta’s “don’t let them take my leg” stuff, which just struck me as fake drama coming out of nowhere). And what was genius was finding a way to have it not be just a standalone episode, but fit in with all the themes of the series — the search for Earth, the Cylons’ questioning their existence, and all the characters trying to figure out their purpose, their individuality, and their identity.

Plus, apparently there’s going to be a Cylon Basestar in the Colonial fleet now. That’s kind of cool, right? And Lucy Lawless is coming back!

And if anybody was wondering like I was, but didn’t feel like looking back through the end credits: the other cancer patient was played by Nana Visitor from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

Most of the people who wander into this blog are looking for one thing: pictures of the star of Resident Evil without any clothes on. But the ones who don’t get here via misguided Google searches usually mention the “Lost” recaps. I missed last week’s because I’ve been commuting between Strong Badia and Liberty City.

It’s just as well, since last week’s episode, “Something Nice Back Home,” was kind of dull. There are still spoilers though: Jack had his appendix taken out, Claire revealed who her dad was (to the audience, who’d already figured it out anyway), and… Baltar hung out with a bunch of horny women? I can’t remember. Something about Jack being haunted and getting engaged to Kate in the future, too.

This week’s episode, “Cabin Fever,” made up for it by being double plus cool. I started counting “holy crap!” moments, where I actually said, out loud, watching alone in my apartment, “No other show would do something like that.” There was only one of those, but plenty of times I was reminded how cool this show is. Here’s a list!

• Seeing creepy immortal guys following Locke around his entire, 50s-cliched life.
• It made me feel mysteriously smart, somehow, when I was able to predict that Locke would pick the vial of salt (sand?), the compass, and the knife before he did it. And that the knife would be the wrong choice.
• I liked young Locke repeating the old Locke’s “Don’t ever tell me what I can’t do” mantra. I didn’t like it so much that this guy has had the most miserable life imaginable, but it does kind of make you root for his being happy on the island for once.
• Special-ops guy tries to shoot Michael and fails; I’d already forgotten that the island was keeping him alive.
• I was surprised to see the doctor up and about on the ship, since I mis-remembered him already getting snuffed in an earlier episode. It was kind of perfunctory how they closed off that time loop real quick — special-ops guy just does not understand the word “hostage” — but I still appreciate the effort.
• “Lost” has the coolest dream sequences; Locke’s dream about Horace Mathematician is my favorite since Hurley’s dream inside the bunker where Jin showed up speaking English.
• I wasn’t expecting to see Jack’s dad in the cabin, and I definitely wasn’t expecting to see Hot Claire lounging there, either. I’m still hoping that there’s some point to that, and it wasn’t just there for shock value.
• Some of this feels like moving pieces around on a game board and having to skip a few moves — what was the point of Desmond just sitting there and watching the climax on the boat take place?
• In case anybody reading this has access to the writers’ room, could you sneak an index card that says “DANIELLE’S BACK STORY” up on the board somewhere? It shouldn’t be a problem to sneak some explanation in the show, since they’ve got no problem making dead people main characters.

I’ve been plenty frustrated with the series, but every once in a while you’ve got to take a step back and marvel at how such a weird show got to be such a huge phenomenon. Larry mentioned in a comment that they “lied” about its not being a sci-fi show, but really, it’s not. It’s just a conglomeration of pop culture detritus, and sci-fi is just ingrained in pop culture at this point. Treating it as a separate genre just seems kind of weird and dated now; when everybody has a communicator and a robot that’ll vacuum your house, and time travel is a concept that most people can grasp with no problem, what’s to be gained by trying to confine this stuff to some nerdy ghetto?

Holy crap this movie is awesome!

I had zero interest in seeing Iron Man. I’ve always been a DC guy, not Marvel. All I knew about Iron Man was that he was a drunk, and that his cartoon had the best theme song. So I’d be sitting in theaters with my peer group, seeing a trailer for the movie and watching everybody around me go absolutely nuts, where I just wasn’t feeling it. It’s a guy in a flying suit of armor, with a couple of Air Force jets. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that we finally have a superhero movie made by people who really get superhero movies. Most of the other ones, even the best ones, act as if the audience is really into characters and action-movie plots, so it’s the burden of a superhero movie to convince the audience how cool the powers and fight scenes are. Iron Man just takes for granted that a guy in a flying suit of armor who shoots power beams out of his hands is inherently cool, so it puts the bulk of its effort into showing why the characters are cool.

Everything I’ve read mentions how Robert Downey, Jr. carries the movie, and he is really, really good. A character who’s really an unlikeable asshole, but somehow manages to win people over by being so charismatic, is not an easy character to play. But everybody in the cast did a good job, and you don’t want to underestimate the influence of the director and screenwriters, either.

It helps that Jon Favreau directed a great, effects-heavy romantic comedy, because Iron Man feels a little like a romantic comedy with some phenomenal action sequences. The characters are charming, and the dialogue feels authentic while still staying just on the edge of comic book camp. And the movie’s genuinely funny, not just through references or one-liners, but sequences where they really earn the punchline. (The suit testing sequence is hilarious).

It’s hard to find problems with it. You kind of wish Terrence Howard’s character did more — I don’t know what his role is in the comic book, but it feels like he’s supposed to be more important, somehow. But then again, it’s good that his character is involved in the major scenes, but his role remains fairly realistic. And you definitely wish the fight scenes were longer. But then again, they’re exactly as long as they need to be, they deliver on all the coolest moments, and they leave you wanting more.

So I guess the only real problem I have with the movie is that when Iron Man takes off, he holds his arms straight down to his sides and sticks his palms out, like a little girl doing a curtsey. And that’s not cool. Other than that, the movie’s flawless.

And speaking of being left wanting more: as I said, I’ve been out of the loop on the background stuff on the movie and all the fan speculation, so I don’t know what their franchise plans are. There is a scene after the credits end that seems to be important. I just hope they keep the scope manageable instead of letting the franchise get bloated, like they did with X-Men 3 and Spider-man 3. I know I’d be perfectly happy with an Iron Man 2, even if they just did more of the same.

Book
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

Synopsis
The history of “the only rock we eat,” and how finding, producing, and transporting it has shaped economies and governments from pre-history to the modern day.

Pros
Extremely well-organized, with short chapters presented in chronological order describing how a particular region and a particular group of people were affected by salt during that time. Keeps the subject interesting by using personal stories wherever possible. Exhaustively researched, throwing together travelogues, personal accounts, recipes, and descriptions of scientific breakthroughs and production techniques, along with the geography and descriptions of economics, governments and trade routes you’d expect from a history book.

Satisfied my trivia requirement in the first few chapters — e.g. the words “soldier,” “salary,” and calling the Celts “Gauls” all derived from words for salt. Answered a question I’ve been wondering for years, but was always too lazy to look up: what are those weird geometric pink and brown pools in the south San Francisco Bay? (They’re salt ponds). Manages to follow tangents like the development of tabasco and the creation of Israeli resorts on the Dead Sea, without straying too far from the main story.

Cons
It’s still a book about salt. The book spends so much time talking about salted cod and Basque salt producers, that you can’t help but feel like the author cribbed a lot of the material from his earlier books. Reading the book kept making me crave weird food and games of Civilization. The subject inspires a ton of terrible cliches and puns in book reviews.

Verdict
The highest compliment I can give to any documentary or history work is that it reminds me of James Burke’s Connections series. Despite the quote from Anthony Bourdain on its cover, Salt is more than just a food history book; it really does feel like an extended episode of Connections with a fixation on one particular topic. You get a real sense of the epic history of salt, and you can understand how something that is now so common could have once been scarce enough to influence the outcome of wars and the success of entire civilizations.

I’m always hearing people (sometimes it’s me) complaining about a TV or comic series, saying, “They’re making it up as they go along!” Most of the time, I don’t see the big deal about that — they don’t have everything planned out? Cool! It means they’re “nimble,” right? But sometimes it gets awkward.

This week’s episode of “Lost” was called “The Shape of Things to Come,” and it felt like they had to saw a few of the rough edges off before they could get everything to fit with The Shape of Things That Have Been Coming So Far. There was a lot of awesome stuff going on, and the episode itself had a solid story. But it also felt like they had to prune out a few characters instead of following through on them, and that they suddenly decided which of the two dozen storylines they were going to run with.

Everything else is a spoiler:

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I’d been looking forward to seeing Forgetting Sarah Marshall, since I’m a fan of “How I Met Your Mother,” and Knocked Up was one of my favorite movies of last year. I wasn’t disappointed; the movie’s hilarious, and I’d recommend it to just about anybody.

Anybody who’s not in my immediate family, at least, since the movie continues the trend of Judd Apatow-produced raunchy romantic comedies. This one is the most bipolar of the ones I’ve seen — the plot is about as straightforward as a romantic comedy gets, but the scenes and language are about as explicit as an R rating will allow.

Everything I’d read and heard about the movie makes a big deal about the scene at the beginning where Jason Segel appears naked; after seeing the movie, you’ve got to wonder what all the fuss is about. The camera keeps cutting away quickly, not for artistic effect but because there’s only so much they’re allowed to show, and the scene on the whole feels oddly truncated, like you get the idea of how awkward and pathetic it was supposed to be, but it doesn’t carry through. Besides, every major character appears naked — you don’t see as much, but everybody’s got a scene or two having sex with somebody else, in all kinds of positions, filmed from all kinds of different angles.

But the movie’s goofy, oddly romantic, mostly good-natured, and overall, sweet. It doesn’t even have the edge that Knocked Up has; it’s got a simpler, be-comfortable-with-yourself-and-you’ll-find-happiness mentality. You have to like Segel’s character to like the movie, but it’s not that difficult. He’s not just one of the crass, horny losers of Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin or worse, the execrable Superbad; he’s a big, goofy, earnest and kind-hearted guy disguised as one of those losers.

It struck me as a lot more daring and exposed to put on a rock opera about Dracula performed by puppets, than it was to appear on screen naked and sobbing. Ultimately he just comes across as a guy who’s comfortable with himself — laugh at him if you want to, but more likely than not, he’s in on on the joke.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters got a ton of attention from videogame sites around its release last year, as well as from the critics. It’s all deserved; it’s just a great movie.

Of course, to appreciate it to the fullest, you have to have spent a good bit of the 80s in front of an arcade machine, but it’s not the geek-core exploitation of nostalgia that I expected it to be. As it starts out, you think you know where it’s going — an hour and a half of “look at the funny videogame geeks!” And there is plenty of that. But as the movie spends more time with these people, the condescension and mockery fades away, and a genuinely compelling story develops.

Story’s the key word here; nobody’s going to accuse The King of Kong of being objective. They might as well superimpose a halo around Steve Wiebe’s head and show Billy Mitchell surrounded in hellfire. But it’s masterfully edited: gleefully manipulative without making you feel like you’re being manipulated. It’s a classic story filtered through 8-bit nostalgia, the plot of every other 80s movie superimposed on an 80s pasttime. You’ve got a comically arrogant champion as your villain and the straight-shooting challenger coming out of nowhere as your hero. And the movie keeps the right tone throughout, letting you laugh at the characters as much as you get caught up in the story.

Now I’m glad I didn’t see it in the theater, because the DVD is the way to go. They add a few updates on the big rivalry, and more importantly, include interviews done for promotion of the movie as well as extended interviews deleted from the final cut. Those give you the sense that the movie’s not entirely mean-spirited or purely manipulative, and remind you that the people involved are passionate about these games, but can still laugh at themselves.

Plus, it’s got a gallery of art from I Am 8-Bit, including a Donkey Kong painting by Steve Purcell. And the DVD has an alternate cover by Scott Campbell of Double Fine. The version I saw was a rental, but I’m going out to buy a copy as soon as possible to support the movie.