Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Podcast

Speed Racer: The Sundae Presents Episode 4

Ciara and Dean co-host The Sundae Presents, a podcast in which each of us makes the other watch films they haven’t seen. This episode, Dean shows Ciara his favourite film released in his lifetime: the Wachowski Sisters’ 2008 children’s action blockbuster Speed Racer. They talk about digital effects, sensory overload and whether blockbusters can be anti-capitalist.

Speed Racer – The Sundae Presents

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Dean Buckley Television

Cancelled Too Soon: Sense8

This article is the part of the Cancelled Too Soon series. Previously, The Booth at the End.

There was a time not that long ago when Netflix could have had an actual identity instead of trying to become all of television by churning out exponentially more content than anyone else. It was a brief moment, between the initial excitement of the binge-viewing boom and the current glut of infinite trash when there were signs that Netflix, whatever else it was, could be the place to find the most innovative and exciting television anywhere in the world. Freed from the content limitations of traditional television, disinterested in dominating the direction of their original series, for a second there, Netflix was making television that was unlike anything else you’d ever seen. Some of it was thematically groundbreaking – Orange is the New Black, BoJack Horseman, Jessica Jones – and some of it was blowing up what we thought television could be as a medium – Lady Dynamite, The Get Down and, more than any other, Sense8.

But now it’s the future and the ones that were redefining the medium are all cancelled and Jessica Jones is gone to shit and Netflix’s brand is just excess for its own sake. When someone tells you about a new HBO show, HBO’s reputation tells you what the pull is: high production values, name actors, writer-driven shows with dark and complex themes. When you hear about a new Netflix show, there’s no sense of what it might be, because you’re already thinking about how you’re not going to watch it because you still haven’t watched the fifty other shows Netflix released in the past twenty minutes.

I mean, you haven’t even watched Sense8 yet, and Sense8 is one of the greatest television shows ever made.

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Dean Buckley Film, Television

Because I Choose To: The Horror and Hope of Free Will

The final battle between good and evil at the end of The Matrix Revolutions is the best part of a very flawed movie. Whatever else the Matrix sequels did wrong – and they did a fair bit – the last fight between Neo and Agent Smith is basically perfect. It’s not just a punching contest, it’s a distillation of every moral value at stake in their conflict. I know that’s a controversial statement because I’ve seen so many people make fun of the best part of the scene:

Agent Smith: “Why, Mr. Anderson? Why, why, why? Why do you do it? Why? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception! Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now! You can’t win! It’s pointless to keep fighting! Why, Mr. Anderson?! Why?! WHY DO YOU PERSIST?!”

Neo: “Because I choose to.”

I worry about what it means that such a beautiful and simple encapsulation of what it means to be a human being is so routinely mocked for its alleged meaninglessness: “Because I choose to”. There is something in our language, always present, but more and more prevalent as we sink deeper into the grey muck of modernity: we don’t know how to talk about freedom. We don’t know how to speak about each other as beings with free will. We speak of people driven by rage, rather than people who choose the path of rage. We speak of people who can’t help but be who they are and do what they do, rather than people who consistently choose to continue in their habits. We speak of people as if they’re machines, rather than people.

Some of it is well-intentioned, I’m sure. There are legitimate critiques of theories of freedom that ignore the ways we are prevented from exercising our free will. But we’re at risk of sprinting towards the other extreme. We’re at risk of denying that free will exists at all.

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Dean Buckley Film

Speed Racer Is Not An Art Film

The air crackles with potential. A change is coming. I see it on the horizon. Hope is home to roost at last. The tide is about to turn. I know the signs. People in Film Twitter ask some question – What film would you make everyone else in the world watch? What film would you take into the bunker with you if the bombs fall? – and ever more people give the same answer as me.

Speed Racer.

But it’s not just Speed Racer – it’s everything that writer-director team Lilly and Lana Wachowski do. People who never mentioned Sense8 in their life outed themselves as viewers in their hundreds when it was cancelled. The Matrix was never out, but it’s back in, and even the sequels are getting more appreciative second looks. I see gifs of Jupiter Ascending used in non-ironic contexts, and all of a sudden people remember that Bound exists. When my favourite film magazine took suggestions for future issues, I scream-tweeted “WACHOWSKIS ISSUE PLEASE” and six people liked it, only one of whom co-runs this blog. I knew it would happen, but I didn’t realise it would happen this soon.

The Wachowskis are on the verge of a critical rehabilitation.

Please don’t fuck it up by calling Speed Racer an art film.

Continue reading “Speed Racer Is Not An Art Film” →