web counter
 

At Least It's Not Speed Racer

By Steven Lloyd Wilson | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (14)

wachowskis.jpg

The Wachowski Siblings’ next project has been floating around the rumor department the last few months, with little concrete to go other than the description of “a Hard-R rated cinema verite-style gay romance iraq war film set in the near future.” That just reads like a movie description spit out of an automatic plot generator. It manages to be seven different types of specific without actually betraying anything tangible about the film. That’s going to change now with three concrete tidbits of news.

First, the film is titled CN9, which means absolutely nothing to anyone else on any movie news sites either. SlashFilm notes that Wikipedia says that “CN9” is an abbreviation for the 9th Cranial Nerve. If you search Google for CN9 but explicitly for pages not mentioning the Wachowskis, here are the top five things that come up besides the 9th Cranial Nerve:

  1. Something about genetics (I think), “Heterozygosity for Df(2R)cn9 results in 1.3% X chromosome nondisjunction”
  2. What appears to be a UK materials safety data sheet for ventilation, coded as CN9.
  3. A Cloning, Logging and Charting Software Package called CN9.
  4. A Battletech mech with the designation CN9. It’s Inner Sphere though, not Clan.
  5. A performance artist (maybe?) self described as “A CN9 EXPOSURE IS AN OVERALL EXERCISE IN INCREASED PSYCHIC AWARENESS AND GRANTS PERMISSION FOR PARTICIPANTS TO ACCESS UTOPIA VIA MEMORY AND MEDITATION.”

I really hope that the last one is the basis for the film.

The second and even stranger thing we know is that Arianna Huffington is in the film, because she tweeted and posted several pictures of her time at the set shooting her part.

The third and most surreal detail is that Jesse Ventura has also shot a part for the film. Here’s how Ventura described it on the Howard Stern Show:

“Wait til you hear what they did. They brought me, and they brought Arianna Huffington in after me. Arianna was there, and they had her looking like Cleopatra. What they did… Do you remember what John Travolta looked like in that horrible film Battlefield Earth? They put multicolored dreadlocks on me all the way to here. They gave me this crazy beard that was hanging down pointed, looked like Travolta, right? And they put a third eye in the middle of my forehead. Because what this is, is this is a hundred years in the future, and they wanted me to talk about the current war in Iraq and how I felt about it. And so I got to vent, looking like this maniac in this whole outfit.”

Wow, I’ve just got nothing. The more you find out about this film the less you know. It’s either the most brilliant campaign of misinformation ever waged, or this is going to be the most surreal film of the decade.

(source: SlashFilm)









Each Time You Like, Share, Tweet or Stumble a Pajiba Post, An Angel Does the Paul Rudd Dance

← Whimsiquirkilicious: The Really Good Kind! | It's Kind of a Funny Story Trailer | Devil Trailer | Trapped in an Elevator With M. Night Shyamalan →









Comments

Whatever it is, Hulk Hogan makes it sound good. I love that guy's enthusiasm.

Posted by: Cindy at July 14, 2010 10:06 AM

Like Jesse Ventura needs the dreads and third eye to look and sound like a maniac. That guy ain't got time to bleed!

Posted by: Chickaboom at July 14, 2010 10:22 AM

And just what the hell is wrong with 'Speed Racer?' Ham-tastic acting aside, that's a solid movie even without the awesome car-fu and soundtrack.

Posted by: Aislinn at July 14, 2010 10:28 AM

This could not sound like any more of a disaster waiting to happen.
What a fucking mess.
My guess is they were obviously abused as children.

Posted by: supafly at July 14, 2010 10:42 AM

4. A Battletech with the designation CN9. It’s Inner Sphere though, not Clan.

This made me laugh so hard. I don't get it; it just sounds like something even dorkier than the shit I do.

Posted by: superasente at July 14, 2010 10:59 AM

Speed Racer is a "solid" movie? Since when? It's not as bad as people made it out to be, but it is far, far, far away from being "solid." The whole thing is like anime, Roger Corman, Blade Runner, and Sunday comic strips were all put into a blender and set to "mutilate." The best thing about the movie is the hammy acting, it's the only aspect that's consistent throughout. Ugh. Speed Racer is not some diamond in the rough. It's just not. It's a really shiny bead a bedouin lost when he was trying to wrangle his camel after stopping at a mirage he thought was an oasis. I'm not saying it's worthless, but it's not really worthwhile.

/rant

Sorry. Maybe it was just built up too much, so by the time I saw it I was expecting something else. I should have just expected what I expected.

As for this, it sounds like Southland Tales without any of the fun.

Posted by: RobP at July 14, 2010 11:00 AM

I wouldn't be surprised if CN9 is discovered to be the homosexuality gene in the movie or something like that. Or maybe gays in the military are prosecuted/persecuted by people with psychic powers. When they ask, you can't not tell. (I should write tag lines...)

Posted by: L4NkYb at July 14, 2010 11:22 AM

All of that totally confuses me (especially Huffington as Cleopatra), but that line about the movie being, “a Hard-R rated cinema verite-style gay romance iraq war film set in the near future” sounds AWESOME.
Also, I used to think Jesse Ventura was kinda neat for a while, but now he just seems like every other conspiracy theory douchebag looking for a soapbox.

I know I'm kind of in the minority, but I actually loved Speed Racer. The show it's based on is utterly without plot and super goofy and I think the movie did a good job sticking to the spirit of that. I thought it was very entertaining, gorgeous to look at and just really fun. The movie even managed to have more of a plot than the show ever did.

Posted by: Sassafrass Green at July 14, 2010 1:14 PM

I won't call Speed Racer a winner, because it really wasn't. My take on it was that it was just incredibly focused in appeal; it really was the dream those guys had in their head of watching the comic from when they were kids, made real.

I was enough on their wavelength that I honestly enjoyed it. But I think most people were just staring at the screen thinking "a slurpee machine just threw up on the film! wtf!".

-Frob

Posted by: frobme at July 14, 2010 1:16 PM

I got what they were trying to do, I just think they failed miserably in Speed Racer. I think I'd rather watch Matrix: Reloaded than Speed Racer, again. Not Matrix: Revolutions, though. Few movies are that bad or disappointing.

Posted by: RobP at July 14, 2010 2:53 PM

I'll go there. Speed Racer is a solid and a helluva winner. It was one of my first blu-rays and it nevers disappoints. There was no build up for me so the only thing my expectations were going for was from the anime. And that's exactly what it was.

They set out to make a faithful adaptation - and it was near perfect. Wacky antics, hilarious costumes, crazy ass speeds, tracks my brain couldn't fathom.

I don't know what people wanted out of it? It's about a kid that races. That's it. That's the entire plot. Oh! He doesn't want to sell out. Shit. They nailed it.

Posted by: Zerath at July 14, 2010 3:56 PM

Pajiba hates "Speed Racer" cause Pajiba's a fun-hating asshole. Yeaaaaah I took your bait again, bite my ass!

Posted by: Jay at July 14, 2010 9:58 PM

Man I fucking love Speed Racer, seriously I don't understand all the hate for it?
It's also gotta be one of the damm prettiest movies I've ever seen.

Posted by: Ben at July 14, 2010 11:34 PM

I know some people here like Speed Racer (hi Jay! I can always count on you here), and MAYBE it was a fun movie, but it just made my eyes hurt. I tried to watch it, I really did! I liked the bits of over-the-top dialogue I saw but oh my god the colors just made my eyes hurt. Like a Soderbergh movie but worse.

Posted by: figgy at July 15, 2010 12:28 AM