“Disgusting mammals.”
Remember that vaporwave-infused double feature, to celebrate Cineville at Wonderville’s one-year anniversary, earlier this summer? RACERWAVE (otherwise known as SPEED VAPOR, and is their take on the Wachowski’s Speed Racer) and HEATWAVE (aka their take on Michael Mann’s Heat) are “the first two products of a group of nameless faceless restless editors based in los angeles who now go by racer trash” according to the official bio provided & both works are significant artifacts with much cultural and historical value, as it pertains to the year 2020.
I should maybe also mention that I am the unofficial racer trash historian; because a grad school requirement for my MLIS is an internship, which may not happen anytime soon due to COVID, I basically have to create my own archival related projects (I’m also documenting the current non-gaming side of Twitch, aka “cable access 2.0”, but that’s more for my personal blog). Anyhow, I actually discovered racer trash via their third effort, ID4.MP4 (aka their take on Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day), which I’m also a huge fan of, yet my personal favorite… largely due to video games lol… is VAPOR MARIO BROS (nowadays referred to as simply VAPOR MARIO, and is their take on the live action Super Mario Bros flick).
And it’s playing once again TONIGHT, at 7:00PM PST / 10:00PM EST, as part of this year’s WTFilm Fest! Or should I saw the virtual version; the 6th edition of the What The Film Festival was originally supposed to take place in April, but was cancelled due to you know what. It’s now happening in conjunction with some kind of virtual zine fair (or at least I think that’s what it is; the site is kinda confusing). Also, fun fact: I had originally hoped to screen VAPOR MARIO at the next Super MAGFest… which itself was inevitably cancelled as well. It’s now going to be online as well, but I’ve been too busy with grad school to keep track of any organizational efforts. Anyhow, I believe you can catch tonight’s screening via this link.
So here’s how racer trash productions work: each movie is broken up into parts, which are all listed on a spreadsheet, with various editors picking & choosing what they’d like. And here’s a fave VAPOR MARIO segment of mine, by Grimy Ghost (who is actually part of yet another collective that you may be familiar with, Everything Is Terrible)…
… But trust me; every single second of VAPRO MARIO is pure f’n gold. But because Grimy is the only contributor who puts their work on YouTube (I think), here’s another, this one from the last racer trash production, R+J (aka their take on Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet)…
BTW/FYI, time for a cheap plug: so my own aforementioned film programming initiative has been paused for the time being, but in its place is (long-awaited) Twitch iteration of my email-based film “club”. Much like Cineville towards the end, the focus is not video game-related cinema, but at the very least it’s towards the end of October, which means some scary movies are in order…
… Consider this my obligatory nod to Halloween, cuz I’m too busy with a move at the end of the month to celebrate proper (hence why the flyer on Wonderville’s website has that silly typo).
