They Lingered There...

More summer film spam.

WALL-E 1

A cute little slave robot potters around a rubbish (garbage, not qualitative) planet tidying up. Riveting! By the looks of it, Wall-E will be a environmental parable about mankind's destructive legacy. I'll wager there's some unrequited love in there too. Wall-E himself looks like a mechanical ET by way of Short Circuit's Johnny 5, all squashed up and super deformed (Japan, beware) for toy markets. Thankfully, it's against Pixar law for their films to be sub-par. It's rumoured that both Cars and Ratatouille stunk up the place in their original forms before substantial delays and superstar directors were drafted in to salvage the projects. The most exciting news about Wall-E is the involvement of sound design superman Ben Burtt - he designed basically any noise you hear in any of the Star Wars films. Mr Burtt is recording 'voices' for the robots, these will no doubt be all manner of interesting blips and clicks. I am not being sarcastic. I find that exciting.

Speed Racer 1

The big action offering from the now resolutely gender non-specific Wachowskis. No doubt only vaguely based on Tatsuo Yoshida's (also responsible for Gatchaman / Battle of the Planets and Casshan) manga Mach GoGoGo, instead formed from a collective nostalgic bubble thought about the late 60s (limited) animation series. Judging by the trailers, Speed Racer is a madcap Spy Kids 3 alike with visual overtones suggestive of Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik and Mariho Maeda's kaleidoscope Count of Monte Cristo animated series: Gankutsuou. Phew! Add a heaped tablespoon of candy-colour Hot Wheels loop de loops, and a Chimp (oh yes), and you might be somewhere close to how excited I am. Hopefully the sleeper "awesome!" film of the summer. The Wachowskis demonstrated a firm understanding of car crash clap prompts in Matrix 2, successfully apeing and extending ideas from the Godfathers of sci-fi car crashin': Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Terminator 2. No-one else I know is even slightly interested. I shall go on my own if need be!

Hulk 2

Ang Lee's film wasn't quite good enough apparently. Oh well I thoroughly enjoyed it. Edward Norton heads up this instead-of-quel, which again seems patterned towards nostalgia - the first trailer was dripping with boring "remember how much you loved this when you were 5!" visual cues from the Bill Bixby TV series. As is routine with his projects, Norton has his grubby mitts all over this, not only acting but script re-writing too (probably bullied the director to death as well). Norton's presence is undoubtedly a positive though, without him this re-boot of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's Hyde monster would seem all-sop to the TV series. Disappointingly though Hulk's birth through medicinal Gamma radiation application is retained, rather than the original comics caught-in-an-atomic-explosion womb. Hulk himself looks darker and nastier than Ang Lee's chubby child muscler - Norton Hulk is patterned after an in-house design I can't ascribe a particular artist too, that was popular in the 80s. He looks mean. Shame the big bad Abomination looks like you typical crude video game bruiser (Gears of War's Berserker most especially). Notron's Banner is wire thin and sporting a goatee, he looks like your typical seething neurosis driven Steve Ditko render. Norton would've made an excellent Dr Strange. We have missed out.

Hellboy 2

After the fun but uninspiring first stab at Mignola's baby, Guillermo Del Toro returns with a hidden nation clash that looks much more in keeping with his oeuvre. It's Ron Pearlman vs all manner of supernatural children of the earth. Take that elves! Departing rapidly from the comic series' plotlines is probably for the best, not because the comics are in any way anything other than superb, rather it allows Del Toro to flex his own considerable imagination gland without having to reign himself in to fit a prescribed narrative. The undernation teased in the trailers is the Fairy kingdom of Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth in all but name, it'd be pulp perfect to see the big red beast of the apocalypse vandal his way through, dropping quips and chumps left and right.