Studios learn sharing burden can be risky business

By CLAUDIA ELLER
Los Angeles Times

HOLLYWOOD -- If Warner Bros.' double-barreled The Matrix sequels hit as big as expected, Hollywood may get schooled in one of the trickier lessons of contemporary film finance: The biggest risk of all can be sharing the risk -- which can mean having to share enormous rewards.

Keanu Reeves stars in The Matrix Reloaded, the sequel to the box office success The Matrix. Since the mid-1990s, virtually every major studio has reduced financial exposure by splitting ownership of many films with partners, much as Warner shared both the cost and the returns of The Matrix with the small local movie unit of Australia-based Village Roadshow Pictures Ltd.

Such arrangements have brought welcome relief from the pain of box-office disasters. Village Roadshow Pictures, for instance, helped the studio, owned by AOL Time Warner Inc., suffer through The Adventures of Pluto Nash, The Majestic and, more recently, Dreamcatcher.

With The Matrix, however, the movie industry also is learning what it means to share not just the uncertainties of a new creation, but the relatively sure profits that follow when a surprise hit spawns an entire "franchise" -- and brings the financing partner with it.

"We're delighted to see that money go out the door," said Warner Bros. President Alan Horn, who is philosophical about the need to share both the ups and downs. "If Village is successful, that helps keep them partnered with us on lots of movies and helps mitigate the volatility inherent in the moviemaking process."

Village will get a big bite of another Warner franchise next year, when it helps underwrite Ocean's Twelve, a big-budget sequel to Ocean's Eleven, which took in $446 million at the worldwide box-office for the partners. Of course, sequels can bring their own risk: Analyze That -- starring Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro -- made just $57 million worldwide for Warner and Village despite the popularity of its predecessor, Analyze This. Warner relies on partners for about a third of its annual 25-film schedule, and fills another third by distributing pictures entirely financed by others. Over the last five years, the studio has co-financed 31 releases with Village, and in January agreed to share an additional 40 films. Although declining to discuss specifics, executives with both companies said the existing portfolio of films has been profitable for each.

Under their deal, Warner and Village share all production and marketing costs on movies they jointly finance and split the profits once the studio takes a distribution fee of 10 percent to 15 percent off the top. Warner releases the movies worldwide except in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Greece, where Village's parent company is both a major distributor and exhibitor.

Hollywood's current wave of risk-sharing followed the success of Titanic, which cost over $200 million to produce but brought enormous returns for Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, which split ownership of the picture. Since then, major studios and financial allies such as New Regency, Spyglass Entertainment, Beacon Communications and Lakeshore Entertainment have cultivated webs of relationships that appear to have turned the film industry into a gigantic risk-sharing family.

"The studios have tried to avoid the boom or bust of the theatrical business which is still low-margin," says media analyst Tom Wolzien of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. "If you're going to play it safe, you're not going to get the massive upside. But on the other hand, you're not going to tank your company with a stream of flops."

Even the biggest companies are generally reluctant to tie up funds on an entire slate of 20 or more films in an era when the average Hollywood movie costs $60 million to produce and an additional $30 million to market.

"While we have very deep pockets, there's a limit as to how much capital to allocate to the production process," said Jim Gianopulos, chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's media empire News Corp.

Most studios still prefer not to have joint custody of their potentially lucrative franchise movies, such as Sony Picture Entertainment's Spider-Man and Warner Bros.' Harry Potter. "They're not suppose to be shared," said one studio chief, who asked not to be identified.

Five years ago, however, Warner brass didn't see The Matrix as a runaway hit.

Set in a virtual-reality universe, the story was considered confusing at best. The production, originally budgeted at $55 million but ultimately costing about $80 million, was to be directed by screenwriters Andy and Larry Wachowski, young filmmaking brothers whose only directorial outing was a stylish, low-budget crime thriller called Bound that grossed just $3.8 million. And the movie was to star down-on-his-luck actor Keanu Reeves, who hadn't had a hit since Speed years earlier.

"There's no question it was a gamble," recalled Bob Daly, who along with Terry Semel ran Warner Bros. for 20 years before leaving in 1999 and later becoming chairman and managing partner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. "The script was not easy to understand and it was hard to get inside the heads of these two young guys to get a feel for what their vision was."

The studio had just signed a 20-picture, five-year co-financing agreement with Village, whose publicly traded parent is the largest entertainment conglomerate in Australia and a longtime business ally of Warner. With former Warner Bros. production chief Bruce Berman as its new chairman, Village was anxious to expand from financing low-budget independent movies such as Breaker Morant, made mostly for the Australian market, to bigger-budget fare such as The Matrix.

"The script for some people, including me, was dense and hard to understand, but this was a movie we agreed to start our deal with," said Berman, who was head of Warner's production division in 1994 when the studio bought the Wachowskis' Matrix screenplay for producer Joel Silver.

Ultimately, the inaugural project for Warner and Village grossed $460 million worldwide, and became the first film to sell 1 million DVDs. It went on to sell over 30 million DVDs and home videos and spawned two sequels -- The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions -- that are being released six months apart, on May 15 and Nov. 7.

Warner's profit on the original Matrix is estimated by sources at about $250 million. Village, according to sources, made about $190 million.

"The first Matrix movie allowed our company to exist for the first five years," Berman said. "Being able to participate in a franchise like this allows you to defy the odds of staying in the game."

And that doesn't come cheap. Shot simultaneously over 270 days in New Zealand, the sequels cost over $300 million to produce, and marketing expenses will easily exceed $100 million.

Inside the Matrix

April 19 2003

Hugo Weaving. Photo: Annabel Moeller

Some actors would work for free to be in Hollywood's biggest films. Hugo Weaving just put his neck out. Garry Maddox reports.

Hugo Weaving's hair is a mess. His jeans are ripped, his shirt untucked. He is wearing slip-on shoes without socks. He is, in a word, relaxed.

Despite shunning Los Angeles and staying close to his Sydney home, Weaving's profile has soared in recent years thanks to roles in the hit movies The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix.

Mentioning this profile is all it takes to trip him up. When asked about appearing in two of the biggest trilogies in cinema history or - even worse - himself, an awkwardness creeps into his movements. His hands are never still. He draws his knees beneath him, then splays his legs like a gangly six-year-old.

"The celebrity side of it scares me," he says. "I've never been comfortable with it. That's not why I became an actor. The reason I became an actor is because when I was a kid I was putting on clothes and being in little plays and I loved that."

He is, "increasingly unconfident" when it comes to the red carpet premieres, photo sessions, passionate, geeky fans and promotional tours where "you're essentially a puppet and a clothes horse" with your life on a schedule to sell a film.

A constant stream of theatre and film roles over the past 20 years since graduating from NIDA did little to prepare him for his time in the spotlight. "I know it's bizarre, but I feel like a charlatan. I don't like being famous for being famous. I don't want to be a big name just because I'm a big name."

Ask whether he ever dared think "one day I'll be a star" after leaving drama school and he concedes he probably did. He just didn't realise what came with it.

This insecurity is not an act.

Meet Weaving socially and he talks enthusiastically and without ego about acting and filmmakers. Colleagues often refer to the truthfulness of his performances, but that sincerity is discernible off-screen as well.

The 43-year-old is also renowned for his versatility. On screen, he has played starchy English cricket captain Douglas Jardine (in the 1984 mini-series Bodyline), a doomed drug smuggler (Barlow and Chambers: a Long Way From Home), a blind photographer (Proof), a drag queen (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), a suspected murderer (The Interview, 1998), a lusty gay real estate agent (Bedrooms and Hallways), the voice of a noble sheepdog (Babe), a nervy private investigator (Russian Doll), a dignified elf (The Lord of the Rings) and the malevolent Agent Smith in The Matrix.

He is not what you'd call conventionally good-looking, yet he brings a memorable presence to every role, an edge that can be funny or tragic, romantic or evil. His off-screen uncertainties vanish.

Born in Nigeria to British parents, Weaving spent his childhood in South Africa, England and Australia. He discovered drama at Knox Grammar School and continued his training at NIDA.

Weaving is an epileptic. On medication since his first seizure at age 13, he has spoken of the terrifying moment before each fit as possibly his "last few seconds on Earth". "I'm a strong believer that all your lows are also your highs ... that the things that happen to you which are most awful are often the things you learn most from."

Geoffrey Rush, who taught Weaving clowning at drama school and has appeared with him in numerous plays, describes him as one of the great character actors, with the stature of a leading man. "In some ways, he's probably lucky that he's avoided celebrity status because all people tend to write about is where you live and who you live with and what you do in your time off," he says.

"He's a truly seasoned and very diverse actor - you can't really nail him with a couple of quick and easy populist attributes."

Craig Monahan, who is directing Weaving in the romantic drama Peaches in South Australia, notes that the actor often works more than once with filmmakers. He's worked twice with Monahan - winning an AFI award last time around for The Interview - twice with Stavros Kazantzidis (in True Love and Chaos and Russian Doll) and three times each with Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) and Andy and Larry Wachowski (The Matrix).

"I'd work with him again in a second," Monahan says, adding that Weaving is disciplined, prepared and "just a lovely person".

When the original Matrix started filming in Sydney in 1998, Weaving was the sole Australian with a lead role, performing alongside Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss. While he had worked overseas - making the low-budget British comedy Bedrooms and Hallways - there was nothing in Weaving's CV before The Matrix that even faintly resembled a Hollywood blockbuster.

Initially, he didn't bother properly reading The Matrix script because it seemed like "just another sci-fi thing". Then he met the Wachowskis (who had noticed him in Proof), saw the film's storyboards and early art department work, and came to believe the film was going to be special.

So it proved a year later, when The Matrix hit the cinema screen and became a runaway international success. Rather than angle for mega-stardom in Los Angeles, however, Weaving turned down offers of a handful of Hollywood roles - "a number of pretty humourless boring villains".

"I went back to LA for a couple of months to see my agent there and see some people but I'm uncomfortable in LA," he says. "I actually want to work here. There's a part of me which sees so many American stories and so much American culture in the world as it is. I don't want to go over and add to it hugely."

Through The Matrix, he won the role of elf lord Elrond in The Lord of the Rings. "Barrie Osborne, who was producing The Lord of the Rings and had produced The Matrix, rang me and said, 'Do you want to do this thing?' I thought playing an elf would be fun so I jumped on board. But having done two huge trilogies, I'm really keen to get back into some Australian films again."

Weaving says there are many Australian films he has loved in recent years - The Boys, Lantana, Walking on Water and Beneath Clouds. "They're the sort of things I would dearly love to be involved with. And try to get involved with. If I get a job, I think, 'Fantastic, I don't have to go back to Los Angeles.' "

His ideal lifestyle is to mix roles in Australian films and theatre while spending time with his long-time partner, artist Katrina Greenwood, and their two children, Harry, 14, and Holly, nine. "That part of my life is very important - what the kids are doing and how they're going."

Making The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions seemed "endless", he says. "The first one seemed very contained. It was long, but the energy was maintained. But the sequels were really draining on a lot of people. They pushed through it and every day got what they wanted. But it was a much more strenuous battle."

In the sequels, Weaving's Agent Smith has the ability to replicate, which means 100 of him take on Reeves's Neo. The filming required Weaving to be surrounded by 12 actors of the same height and build.

"They'd had all their hair shaved and my hair on and glasses," he says. "They kind of looked vaguely like me. They put me in the centre of the frame and did face replacements on them after the event. Or not, depending on the shot."

While he thinks it works well on screen, he says it was a weird experience. "The strange thing about it really was doing scenes with myself. When we were shooting it, I got to know them all as Rob or Mike or whatever. I just treated them as other people. But halfway through a scene, I'd have to do some dialogue with myself and that was peculiar. You'd be doing it with someone else then have to jump in and do the scene with yourself."

Some actors would work for nothing to be in The Matrix sequels, though Weaving says much of the filming was tedious as it was against a visual-effects blue screen.

"I'd much rather work on an eight-week shoot in Australia with other actors."

For the moment, he has a busy schedule, finishing Peaches, after which he will spend a month overseas promoting The Matrix, doing reshoots for the final instalment of The Lord of the Rings, appearing in a short film based on a Raymond Carver story, then Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing for the Sydney Theatre Company in October.

"Last year and the year before, even though I was doing The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings, I didn't feel very busy, funnily enough. I'd been living back in Sydney and hadn't travelled that much. After that and then a couple of months' summer holidays with the kids, I thought I'd try and jump in and get heavily busy this year."

When he's not acting: "I'm just a dad, really. I hang out with my friends and family and just do whatever families do. I read a lot and I watch films and muck around with the kids."

He also writes. "I've got reams and reams of crap written down," he says. "I was considering trying to write this film script, which is still in a very embryonic stage. There's plenty of time. We'll see whether that ever happens."

Being in two successful film franchises has brought Weaving new fans, some of them fanatics. The letters he gets include "dangerous things like they're wanting to kill themselves unless something happens". Most, however, are from "people who've collected everything to do with Lord of the Rings and they've read the books 5 million times and they know everything about it and they've got everyone's signatures except for mine".

When confronted by this attention, Weaving tries to step away from it. "But often getting involved is easier. If someone talks to you in the street, I'll try to be civil."

The Matrix Rehabilitation

Making the two sequels for The Matrix was a brutal business for the main actors, Weaving says. "There were a lot of injuries again this time around."

Carrie-Anne Moss, who plays Trinity, broke her leg training for a wire stunt. Laurence Fishburne, aka Morpheus, fractured an arm in another training incident. And Weaving put out a disc in his neck while being pulled back on a wire. "I was flying through the air and I had to land on my back," he says of the whiplash-style injury.

While he kept working, doctors advised that Weaving drop particular movements from his repertoire during fight scenes. "I was getting these strange tinglings down my arm and in my fingers."

Keanu Reeves, who plays Neo, managed to avoid the hospital ward. "His skills were fantastic," says Weaving. "He wants to be able to do everything himself and gets really angry if he can't."

The high-action fight scenes that were such a feature of the original Matrix are echoed in its physically demanding sequels. "Training seems to be more dangerous than the actual shoot because you're stretching yourself, seeing what you can do and doing things for the first time and trying to make things work," Weaving says.

Once the cameras started rolling, perfecting scenes became the focus. For one shot, Weaving and Reeves had to hit and kick each other for 93 takes.

The Matrix Reloaded opens on May 15

Matrix Reloaded sales begin

Marketing hype for the expected summer blockbuster The Matrix Reloaded moves to a new level today with Famous Players' launch of a revamped Web site to sell advance tickets online as well as at the box offices of some theatres.

The movie doesn't officially open until May 15, the Thursday before the Victoria Day long weekend in Canada, but advance screenings are scheduled for Wednesday May 14 at 10 p.m.

Details at http://www.famousplayers.com.

The much-anticipated sequel to the 1999 cult favourite Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves, will kick off the summer blockbuster season, which traditionally begins with the U.S. Memorial Day holiday, May 26 this year.

A second sequel, The Matrix Revolutions, is scheduled to open in November.

Problems Plague SF Movies

-production problems are plaguing upcoming summer genre films, including The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and The Matrix Reloaded, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The problems may add cost and effort to the films, the trade paper reported.

Fox's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was budgeted at well over $100 million, but saved money by shooting nonunion in Prague. When the production returned to Los Angeles to shoot its second-unit models and miniature work, producers discovered that mishaps with inexperienced international and local second-unit crews required days of costly reshoots, the trade paper reported. None of the reshoots involved actors, sources told the trade paper.

Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow's upcoming sequels The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, meanwhile, have seen their fair share of glitches, the trade paper reported. Visual-effects producer Ed Jones, who was on staff at ESC in Alameda, Calif., was let go in the middle of production. Post-production executives Mark Solomon and Amy Harrington were shuffled into less high-profile roles, while Chris DeFaria (Looney Toons: Back in Action) was brought on to oversee the remainder of the sequels' complex and voluminous effects work, the trade paper reported.

Further glitches arose when Centropolis Effects closed its doors midway through production, the trade paper reported. Centropolis' shots were reallocated to Sony Pictures Imageworks for what sources told the trade paper is a sum well beyond Centropolis' original cost.

A year of the Matrix

A roundup of Matrix short films, prequels and the video game

Dreamcatcher may have been the cinematic equivalent of humping a porcupine, but its redemption came after its credits rolled.

The 11-minute cinematic orgasm I'm referring to is The Final Flight of the Osiris, the prequel to this May's much anticipated sequel The Matrix Reloaded. Osiris (the god of the dead for those not up to date with Egyptian mythology) is a visually stunning and concise action piece that has more innovation in a single second than most movies shown on screens lately have in two entire hours. It begins with a thrilling virtual reality duel that recalls memories of the original Matrix masterpiece and proves to be the most original stripping scene found in any film yet.

The plot soon thickens and we find ourselves on the Osiris, piloted by Capt. Thaddeus. The eerie sentinels (the Matrix's robot enforcers in the real world) are chasing the crew, which ends up on the scorched post-apocalyptic surface world of the Earth. There they find the machines are building a robotic army of sentinels with one purpose: The destruction of Zion, the last human civilization in existence. Pursued by sentinels, they must warn the last remaining humans of the threat before perishing, or take the human race's last chance down with them.

It hardly ends there, though.

While Osiris is continued in Matrix Reloaded, it is only one of nine short Japanese anime films collectively called The Animatrix, which tell the background stories of the Matrix trilogy. All of them will be available on DVD June 3, and three of them are also available now online for free at www.theanimatrix.com. A fourth comes out May 4.

All of these films are brainchildren of the genius Wachowski brothers, who wrote and directed all three Matrix movies (Reloaded is due May 15, Matrix Revolutions Nov. 5), wrote four of the nine short films and inspired all of them. Some are done in classic Japanese anime style, and some (like Osiris) are well-done computer animation. They are directed by some of the best in the anime business, such as Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Ninja Scroll), Mahiro Maeda and Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop). I may be a Japanese anime freak, but you don't have to be to love these films.

The other films online are no less engaging than Osiris. The Second Renaissance Part I chronicles how the machines took over, uses discontenting graphic and stunning images from history. Detective Story is a noir-style film about a private investigator hired to locate the cybercriminal Trinity and Program is a story of a samurai training program for the Matrix.

These films are the first in a revolutionary concept creating not only a theatrical release of a film but an entire interconnected revolution of filmmaking. In addition to sporting virtual cinematography, a breakthrough visual effects innovation that will make "bullet time" look as exciting as a cow sitting on a flat rock, the two new Matrix films will be released along with these nine stories, an unbelievable soundtrack featuring P.O.D. and the breakthrough in video gaming, Enter the Matrix.

Enter the Matrix, available for virtually every gaming system under the sun, contains an hour of footage filmed by cast members and a 244 page story written by the Wachowski exclusively for the game. Not only does it have movie segments in it, but it provides phenomenal graphics, action choreographed by none other than Yuen Wo-ping (the incredible master who designed the fights for the trilogy) and a storyline that unfolds concurrently with actions mentioned but not seen during Reloaded. It will be the revolution for video gaming that The Matrix was for movies.

Along with the rousing game, these marvelous short films are another testament to how incredibly gifted the Wachowski brothers are and how damn cool the Matrix is. They're a sensational sci-fi/action phenomenon and yet also have deeper roots in mythology, existentialism, theology and psychology. The Animatrix is not only a kick-ass ride and salute to Japanese anime but is also an unbelievable experience that wets our appetite for 2003, the year of The Matrix.

Los Angeles Anime Festival

posted on 2003-04-16 19:00:37

First incarnation of annual film festival to run for 9 days and feature a long list of Anime.

The American Cinematheque has announced the first annual Los Angeles Anime Festival. The festival will take place over nine days between May 2nd and May 15th (not every day) and feature screenings of a long list of Anime titles, some licensed, other not. Most screenings will take place at the in Hollywood, tickets raneg from $6 to $9.

Features:

The American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre presents THE 1st ANNUAL LOS ANGELES ANIME FESTIVAL (May 2-15, 2003). Spaning nine days the festival features some of the newest and most challenging work from Japan, including the U.S. Premieres of the latest Studio Ghibli feature THE CAT RETURNS, the mondo-insane TAMALA2010 A PUNK CAT IN SPACE, the lovely fable PRINCESS ARETE, the long-awaited 3-part anthology film MEMORIES, and Miramax Films' POKEMON 5. The series also features Sneak Previews of unreleased episodes from several cult-hit series, including "CRUSH GEAR TURBO," "AURA BATTLER DUNBINE," "BRIGADOON," "SCRYED," "PLEASE, TEACHER," "YOU'RE UNDER ARREST," "DNA²," "READ OR DIE," "RAHXEPHON," "PARASITE DOLLS" -- and a very special Sneak Peak at "The Matrix"-inspired THE ANIMATRIX, with all 9 episodes shown for the first time anywhere!

The Festival will also feature special one-night tributes to legendary manga artist Rumiko Takahashi ("RANMA 1/2," "INU YASHA"), erotic fantasy master Toshio Maeda (LEGEND OF THE OVERFIEND, DEMON WARRIOR KOJI), lost anime gems like JACK & THE BEANSTALK and special late-night programs of triple X rated hentai adult animation! Guests appear subject to their availability.

All screenings are at the newly renovated Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre, unless otherwise noted, at the historic Egyptian (6712 Hollywood Boulevard between Highland and Las Palmas) in Hollywood.

Friday May 2, 2003

The festival begins on Friday, May 2nd at 7:00 PM with the US Premiere of THE CAT RETURNS (NEKO NO ONGAESHI), (2002, Studio Ghibli, 75 min.) directed by Hiroyuki Morita. A major hit in Japan last year, THE CAT RETURNS is the latest from Studio Ghibli, the legendary team behind SPIRITED AWAY, PRINCESS MONONOKE and MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO. 17-year-old Haru is not finding life as a teenager in modern Japan to her liking - the rush of busy schooldays is overwhelming, her classes boring and sports exhausting. One day Haru spots a cat carrying a small box trying to cross a busy street against the red light. She impulsively dashes out and saves the cat just as it is about to be hit by a truck. That night an unusual thing happens: the Cat King accompanied by his servants pays Haru a visit, and invites her to visit with them in the Kingdom of the Cats ... (In Japanese with English subtitles.) Discussion following with director Hiroyuki Morita and producer Nozomu Takahashi.

Following at 9:30 PM is a Special Sneak Preview of two upcoming releases from Bandai: "SCRYED" (Episodes 1 - 2, 2001, Bandai (Sunrise), 50 min. total.) series directed by Goro Taniguchi. "SCRYED" is an instantly addictive series about a quarantined area of Japan called The Lost Ground, where outcast "alter-users" employ telekinetic power to deconstruct and reconstruct reality with explosive force. In the first episodes, rebellious gun-for-hire Kazuma finds himself hunted by the shadowy government organization HOLY, which pits mercenary alter-users against their mutantbrothers.

Next on the same bill is "PLEASE, TEACHER" (Episodes 1 - 3, 2002, Bandai, 75 min. total.) directed by Yasunori Ide. "Nothing ever changes," sighs frail, introverted high school student Kei - until the night that a gorgeous, redheaded alien drops from the sky into his lap, then turns up the next day as his new teacher! This terrifically sexy and very funny new series piles one compromising situation on top of another as Kei frantically tries to protect Ms. Kazumi's true identity from his classmates and foster parents. Favorite buzzwords: "This is a Priority One!!" (All episodes in Japanese with English subtitles.)

Saturday May 3, 2003

The Saturday May 3rd program begins at 3:00 PM with a Children's Matinee of "SPEED RACER" - Uncut and Subtitled!, (1967, Speedracer.com, 100 min. total.) directed by Ippei Kuri, Hiroshi Sasagawa, Seitaro Hara. (Episodes 3- 4: "Challenge Of The Masked Racer" and Episodes 7 - 8: "The Mammoth Car.") One of the most beloved television series in animation history, "SPEED RACER" has thrilled audiences worldwide since its debut in 1967. When it was released in the U.S., the Japanese names of the original were Americanized ("Go Mifune" became the famous "Speed"), minor cuts were made - and of course all of the episodes were dubbed. Until now, that is - please join us for four episodes of the classic "SPEED RACER," in their original, uncut, Japanese language versions (with English subtitles) - !!

Following at 5:15 PM is a Special Sneak Preview of three upcoming releases from AD Vision: "AURA BATTLER DUNBINE" Episodes 1 - 2, (1983, AD Vision (Sunrise), 25 min.) series directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino. The legendary "AURA BATTLER DUNBINE" finally makes its U.S. appearance here! A young motorcyclist is magically transported into a combination medieval/mechanized world ala ARMY OF DARKNESS, where knights ride unicorns and mermaid princesses are locked in water-filled cells. To survive, he must learn to control an enormous suit of flying armor.

Next on the same bill is "RAHXEPHON" Episode 6, (2002, AD Vision (Studio Bones), 25 min.) series directed by Yutaka Izubuchi. This excellent, enigmatic new series revolves around an artistic teenaged boy who suffers from strange visions that connect him to a mysterious giant robot built by the Japanese military. Next on the same bill is "NOIR" Episode 10, (2001, AD Vision, 25 min.) directed by Kouichi Mashimo. "I am Noir. Beyond that, I know nothing," murmurs amnesiac school girl Kirika to fellow assassin Mireille - together the two women form an uneasy partnership as killers-for-hire, until they can learn Kirika's true identity. (All episodes in Japanese with English)

Following at 7:30 PM is the U.S. Premiere of TAMALA2010 A PUNK CAT IN SPACE, (2002, Kinetique Co., 92 min.) Imagine a mutant hybrid of Hello Kitty and Philip K. Dick, animated in the classic 1950's TV style of Osamu Tezuka, and you have some idea of the incredible strangeness of TAMALA2010 A PUNK CAT IN SPACE, the amazing new feature from the two-man music and visual artist unit called "t.o.L". Super-cute space kitty Tamala goes head-to-head with the Dark God of Death, killer dogs, a robotic Colonel Sanders with an axe in his head and more, using her trademark karate kick and heart-shaped sunglasses. A sample of some of the dialogue? "Later you anaconda bitch!," "Moimoi, me very tasty. Wanna eat me?," and "Beware, Martial Law has been enforced in the Eastern Hate District!" Trust us - it's like nothing you've ever seen before. (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Following at 10:00 PM is a program of two upcoming releases from Manga Entertainment: KAIDOHMARU, (2001, Manga Ent., 46 min.) directed by Kanji Wakabayashi. From Production I.G. and I.G. Plus, the animators behind BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE, KAIDOHMARU is a fully-digital, epic historical fantasy set in 8th century Japan. Kaidohmaru is the only woman among four legendary knights who protect the peace of the kingdom - but when her childhood friend, Princess Ouni-Hime, becomes jealous of her friendship with fellow warrior Raikoh, Kaidohmaru is forced into a violent and tragic confrontation with her own past.

Next on the same bill is "READ OR DIE," (2001, Manga Ent. (Studio Orphee/Aniplex), 90 min.) directed by Kouji Masunari. READ OR DIE is based on the novels and manga by Kurata Hideyuki, and follows the story of Yomiko Readman, a substitute teacher who has a consuming passion for collecting books. However, when the occasion arises, she has an altogether different occupation: she's an operative for the Special Operations Force of the British Library! Yomiko becomes entrenched in a plot for world domination revealed through the writing in the margins of certain rare books. (Note: The entire 3-part OVA of READ OR DIE will screen.) (All in Japanese with English subtitles.)

Sunday May 4, 2003

The Sunday, May 4th program begins at 12:00 PM noon with a Children's Matinee of a Special Sneak Preview of JUNKERS COME HERE, (1995, Bandai (Triangle Staff), 100 min.) directed by Junichi Sato. JUNKERS COME HERE is a refreshing, realistic and beautifully told story of a teenaged girl, Hiromi, who faces problems small (bratty boys at school) and large (her mother works too late, her parents don't get along) with the help of a talking Scottish terrier named Junkers. The wistful tone and attention to everyday details bring to mind Studio Ghibli's lovely WHISPER OF THE HEART.

(In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Following at 5:00 PM is a Sneak Preview of upcoming releases from Tokyo Pop and Sunrise: "BRIGADOON" Episodes 1 - 2, (2000, Tokyo Pop (Sunrise), 50 min. total.) directed by Yoshitomo Yometani. Irresistible sci-fi/comedy about a relentlessly chirpy 13-year-old orphan, Mari, and her armored protector, a "monomakia" (living weapon) named Melan Blue who hails from the flying city in the sky, Brigadoon. Terrific, high-energy storytelling and animation that mixes a young girl's curiosity about growing up with some serious butt-kicking giant robot action. A winner all the way. (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Next on the same bill is "CRUSH GEAR TURBO" Episodes 1 - 3, (2001, Sunrise, 75 min. total.). Series directed by Hideharu Iuchi. Super-entertaining, Saturday morning style show about kids obsessed with the sport of Crush Gear Fighting, using mini "gogetsu" mechanical cars in high-speed gladiatorial matches. Our spunky hero Kuya has to contend with his late brother's legacy, along with his own hot temper, to recruit new members for the Tobida Crush Gear Club, including feisty girl Karu, hefty, bun-loving Giro, tech-wiz Kiyosuki and zen-like fighter Karudo. Plus it's got our favorite anime theme song: "Crush allright! Crush on hippy! Crush gear fight!!" (just don't ask us what it means!) (English dubbed version.)

Following at 7:45 PM is the U.S. Premiere of "PARASITE DOLLS", (2002, Urban Vision (A.I.C.), 180 min.) directed by Nakazawa Kazuto. Robot hookers going schizo, sinister young girls in red, energy-sucking metallic scorpions ... welcome to Tokyo, 2034. This latest installment in the "BUBBLEGUM CRISIS" prequel series "AD POLICE" revolves around a special squad of Tokyo cops who are trying to discover the cause of mysterious homicidal breakdowns by synthetic humanoids in the city. (Note: The entire 3-part OVA of "PARASITE DOLLS" will screen.) (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Wednesday May 7, 2003

The Wednesday May 7th program begins at 7:00 PM with a Sneak Preview of upcoming releases from Animeigo and Central Park media: "YOU'RE UNDER ARREST" Episodes 39 & 49, (1997, Animeigo (Studio Deen/Toei), 50 min. total.) directed by Junji Nishimura. This TV series doesn't involve robots, demons, alternate dimensions or anything with swords/spikes/multiple heads - instead, it follows the trials and tribulations of two female cops in Tokyo's Traffic Division, level-headed Miyuki and her impulsive partner Natsumi. Whether it's competing in a beach volleyball tournament or dealing with the possible break-up of their partnership, these girls do it with charm and style. Based on the manga by "OH MY GODDESS" creator Kosuke Fujishima.

Next on the same bill is "DNA²" Episodes 7 - 8, (1994, Central Park Media (Powhouse), 50 min. total.) directed by Junichi Sakata. Teenaged loser Junta literally loses his lunch every time he gets near an attractive girl - until blue-haired genetic cop from the future Karin accidentally re-arranges his DNA, turning him into an irresistible babe magnet, the Mega Playboy - ! But his charms don't last for very long, in this sexy high school comedy in the vein of Rumiko Takahashi's URUSEI YATSURA. (All episodes in Japanese with English subtitles.)

Following at 9:30 PM is JUNGLE EMPEROR LEO (JANGURU TAITEI), (1997, Media Blasters/Shochiku (Tezuka Prod.), 98 min.) directed by Takao Takeuchi. Inspired by anime master Osamu Tezuka's classic 1960's series "JUNGLE TAITEI" (released here as "KIMBA THE WHITE LION"), JUNGLE EMPEROR LEO is a sweeping family adventure about the noble King of the Jungle and his inexperienced young cub, who must face fire, flood and corrupt human intruders in their struggle to save their fellow animals. (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Friday May 9, 2003The Friday, May 9th program begins at 7:00 PM with A TREE OF PALME (PALUMUNO KI), (2002, Genco/Synch-Point/Digital Manga, 130 min.) directed by Takashi Nakamura. Superbly animated, incredibly imaginative fantasy about the quest of a Pinocchio-like wooden puppet, Palme, to return a mystic egg to the World Below and the all-powerful deity Soma. To do so, he's forced to navigate an epic landscape of warring tribes, labyrinthine cities and caverns, luminous jellyfish and giant worms, with the aid of a ragtag band including an enigmatic girl Popo, a young warrior Shatta, and two donkey-eared friends, Pu and Mu. Features some of the most haunting images of nature this side of PRINCESS MONONOKE, with echoes of everything from Rene Laloux's FANTASTIC PLANET to Andrei Tarkovsky's SOLARIS. Absolutely breathtaking. (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Following at 9:45 PM is a Hayao Miyazaki Double-Feature. First up is CASTLE IN THE SKY (TENKU NO SHIRO LAPUTA), (1986, Walt Disney (Studio Ghibli), 124 min.) Inspired by the floating island in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Hayao Miyazaki's breathtaking masterpiece of fantasy and adventure follows two orphans, a 14-year-old boy named Pazu and 13-year-old girl named Sheeta, as they make an incredible journey to a long-lost city in the sky. (English dubbed version.)

Next on the same bill is KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE (MAJO NO TAKKYUBIN), (1989, Walt Disney (Studio Ghibli), 102 min A plucky but inexperienced young witch named Kiki is forced to leave her family home on her thirteenth birthday and travel into the great, wide world, so she can learn about life and the true purpose of her magical powers. Based on the novel by Eido Kadono, KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE is a pure marvel of charm and innocence. (English dubbed version.)

Saturday May 10, 2003

The Saturday May 10th program begins at 12:00 Noon with a Children's Matinee of JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, (1974, Columbia (Group TAC), 92 min.) directed by Gisaburo Sugii. This sumptuous version of the classic children's story features some of the most spectacularly beautiful Japanese animation of the 1970's. Hailed by The Anime Encyclopedia as "an excellent musical anime that could easily have given Disney's films of the day a run for their money," JACK & THE BEANSTALK makes an incredibly rare revival appearance here - don't miss it! (English dubbed version.)

Following at 5:00 PM is the U.S. Premiere of PRINCESS ARETE (ARETE HIME), (2001, Studio 4�‹C, 105 min.) From director Sunao Katabuchi, a protégé of Hayao Miyazaki's who worked on KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE, PRINCESS ARETE is a poetic, melancholy fable for adults about an unhappy Princess who's treated as a precious object by everyone in her life, from her mercenary father to the heartless wizard Boax who kidnaps her as his prize. As she whiles away her days in Boax's remote castle, the Princess slowly starts to believe that only she can ever truly free herself from those who claim to "love" her ... Based on the acclaimed children's novel The Clever Princess by Diana Coles. (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Following at 7:30 PM is the US Premiere of MEMORIES, (1996, Columbia, 113 min.) This long-awaited 3-part anthology film features the talents of some of the finest directors in Japanese anime: Katsuhiro Otomo (AKIRA), Koji Morimoto (THE ANIMATRIX, ROBOT CARNIVAL), and Tensai Okamuro. In Episode 1, the truly astounding "Magnetic Rose," an interstellar salvage crew finds itself trapped on an abandoned space station filled with the living memories of a long-gone opera diva. In Episode 2, "Stink Bomb," a chemical researcher mistakes an experimental government drug for common flu medication - with surreal and disastrous results. And in Episode 3, "Cannon Fodder," Katsuhiro Otomo offers a vision of a nightmarish alternate world, where giant factories spew out pure destruction. (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Following at 10:00 PM is an Adult Anime Program. First up is "SEX DEMON QUEEN," (2000, Kitty Media (Green Bunny), 30 min.) directed by Takeshi Aoki. Strap yourself in (in more ways than one) for this wildly demented, Sex and Sorcery comedy about two female ring-warriors named Cooley and Rima who team up to stop the sinister Amabire and her dog-demons from reviving the ancient God of Sex - if they can all keep a cutie-pie named Sour from driving them crazy with the lesbian love techniques she learned in the convent!! Rated XXX. (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Next on the same bill is "KOIHIME," (2000, NuTech Digital (Pink Pineapple), 60 min. total.) directed by Masaki Shinichi. Pony-tailed college student Musashi returns on summer holiday to the peaceful mountain village where he grew up - and immediately gets reacquainted with former childhood sweethearts Nami, Anzu, Suzaku and Muyaki, who are overjoyed (and then some) to see him back, even though he can't seem to remember any of them. His strange memory lapse begins to make sense, though, when the true nature of the village and its lovely inhabitants is revealed. Rated XXX. (English dubbed version.)

Next on the same bill is a Special Sneak Preview of "F FORCE," (2001, Central Park Media, 90 min.) directed by Yousaku Aoi. The gorgeous, supernaturally powered Alicia has been kidnapped by demons, enslaved for their unspeakably perverted pleasures. Her only hope for survival: a team of busty barbarians known as the F Force! Each fabulous fighting female has her own style and deadly weapons of choice, but all share a love of danger and excitement. And there will be plenty of both as they fight to rescue their comrade from the ravages of evil! Rated XXX. (In Japanese with English subtitles.) (Note: these programs contain graphic sexual content meant for adults only. No one under 18 will be admitted to this program!)

Sunday May 11, 2003

The Sunday May 11th program begins at 5:00 PM with a Special Sneak Preview of POKEMON 5, (2002, Miramax Films (Toei Animation Co.), 80 min.) directed by Kunihiko Yuyama. The latest installment of the Japanese animation phenomenon sends Ash and Pikachu off to Altomare, a beautiful and mysterious city on water, where they find the treasured Soul Dew. Two new Pokémon, Latias and Latios, are the protectors of the Soul Dew, and they join with Ash and Pikachu to keep it safe from Annie and Oakley. But when a flood threatens Altomare's very existence, who will come to the rescue? A Miramax Films release. (English dubbed version.)

Following at 7:00 PM is a Special Sneak Preview of SAKURA WARS THE MOVIE, (2001, Pioneer (Prodn. IG), 85 min.) directed by Mitsuru Hongo. It is 1926, the 15th year of the reign of Japan's Taisho Emperor. In Tokyo, behind a world of brilliance and beauty, there exists a dark realm inhabited by mutating monsters, the Kouma. The battle against them is entrusted to the Teikoku Kagekidan, the Imperial Fighting Troupe, a secret organization formed to battle the forces of darkness. Surprisingly, except for its commander, the Troupe is comprised solely of lovely young maidens. By day, they lead the glittering lives of stage actresses as part of the Imperial Operetta Troupe. From Production I.G., the studio behind GHOST IN THE SHELL and NEON GENESIS EVANGELION. (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Wednesday May 14, 2003

The Wednesday, May 14th program begins at 7:00 PM with a Rumiko Takahashi Tribute. One of the most phenomenally popular and beloved manga artists in Japan, Rumiko Takahashi has created a wildly colorful universe where the impossible and the everyday collide head-on, with hilarious results, in works like "Urusei Yatsura," "Ranma 1/2" and many others. Join us for a program of episodes from three different television series based on Ms. Takahashi's creations.

First up is "INU YASHA" Episodes 1 and 4, (2000, Viz (Sunrise), 50 min. total.) directed by Masashi Ikeda. Kagome Higurashi is a 15-year-old schoolgirl living at a history-filled Japanese shrine. After a chance fall into an abandoned well, Kagome meets the well-named "dog demon" Inu Yasha, a half-human hybrid who longs to become all-demon. Can Kagome bring him to heel before he starts sharpening his claws - on her??

Next on the same bill is "RANMA 1/2" Episode 2, (1989, Viz (Kitty Films), 25 min.) series directed by Tomomitsu Mochizuki. At the time, martial arts teacher Soun Tendo thought engaging one of his three daughters to Ranma - the son of longtime friend and training partner Genma Saotome - was a good idea, but that was before "he" turned out to be a "she"!! Youngest Tendo daughter Akane (who's always claimed to "hate boys" anyway) is quickly nominated for bridal duty by her older sisters, while an unruly Ranma must come to grips with the mixed blessing of his/her own appeal ... to both boys and girls!

Next on the same bill is "MAISON IKKOKU" Episode 5, (1986, Viz (Kitty Films), 25 min.) series directed by Kazuo Yamazaki. Yusaku Godai has more than his share of problems - he's young, he's broke, and he lives in a rickety old boarding house filled with the most nosy (and noisy!) neighbors in Japan. But even these extremely eccentric housemates aren't enough to drive young Godai away from the boarding house - because the building's manager is a lovely young woman who always seems so close ... and yet so far away. How can he ever find a way to tell her what he feels? (All episodes in Japanese with English subtitles.)

Following at 9:15 PM is a Special Sneak Preview of THE ANIMATRIX, (2003, Warner Home Video, 90 min.) An unprecedented fusion of CG-animation and Japanese anime, THE ANIMATRIX is a groundbreaking collection of nine original short films from the creators of THE MATRIX trilogy, Andy and Larry Wachowski. Inspired by the visionary action and innovative storytelling that powered the trilogy, this spectacularly visual short film series delves deeper into the mind-bending world of THE MATRIX. Featuring shorts directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri (NINJA SCROLL, VAMPIRE HUNTER D), Shinchiro Watanabe (COWBOY BEBOP), Koji Morimoto (MEMORIES), Mahiro Maeda, Takeshi Koike (lead animator on WICKED CITY), Peter Chung (MTV's "AEON FLUX") and Andy Jones (FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN). While several of THE ANIMATRIX episodes have been available over the internet, this is the first time all nine episodes will be screened theatrically in public!! (Original English-language version.)

Thursday May 15, 2003

The Thursday, May 15th program begins at 7:00 PM with a Sneak Preview of "SPIRIT OF WONDER - SCIENTIFIC BOYS CLUB," (2001, Bandai, 90 min.) directed by Takashi Annou. Unusually poetic and wistful adventure story based on Kenji Tsuruta's acclaimed manga comics (which were themselves inspired by the work of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne), about a brilliant planetary scientist named Wendy who reluctantly helps her inexperienced husband and their mad professor friend build a dirigible capable of riding the ethereal currents to Mars. And watch out for the wild prologue and epilogue, featuring a sexy, karate-kicking waitress named China, in her own other-worldly adventures! (Note: This is a sequel to the 1992 anime adaptation of SPIRIT OF WONDER.) (In Japanese with English subtitles.)

Following at 9:00 PM is a Toshio Maeda Tribute. Please join us for a special tribute devoted to the work of one of the most subversive and controversial manga artists in Japan, Toshio Maeda, featuring two shocking anime features based on his artwork and stories.

First up is LEGEND OF THE OVERFIEND (CHOJIN DENSETSU UROTSUKIDOJI), (1989, Central Park Media, 108 min.) directed by Hideki Takayama. Otherworldly The Wandering Kid tries to stop the Overfiend from uniting the worlds of man-beasts, demons and humans in this controversial hentai groundbreaker. Rated XXX.

Next on the same bill is DEMON WARRIOR KOJI (GOKURAKU SATSUJIN CHOKEN KAN), (1999, Central Park Media, 120 min.) directed by Yasunori Urata. Sex crime investigator Koji is really a benevolent demon attempting to halt the influx of supernatural and alien monsters hungry for human sex. Rated XXX (Both in Japanese with English subtitles.) (Note: these programs contain graphic sexual content meant for adults only. No one under 18 will be admitted to this program!)

A complete calendar/flyer listing of these films and Information is available on our website www.egyptiantheatre.com.

NEW TICKET PRICES AS OF JANUARY 2, 2003: $9 General; $6 Cinematheque Members. $8 Seniors (65+ years) and students with valid ID card. Must be shown at box office at time of purchase.

The decline of the R

With family-friendly movies scoring big at the box office, edgier fare faces an uncertain future

By STEVE PERSALL
St. Petersburg Times

�gTHE MATRIX RELOADED�h: Much of the audience for the science-fiction adventure, starring Keanu Reeves, won�ft be able to buy tickets without their parents or legal guardians along.

Guess how many of the Top 20 moneymakers at U.S. box offices last year were R-rated films?

The answer: None, although Eminem's "8 Mile" just missed, ranking at No. 21.

Guess how many R-rated movies have ever cracked $200-million in domestic ticket grosses?

The answer: Only four of the 46 films surpassing that total were R-rated, and none since "Saving Private Ryan" nearly five years ago.

Now, try to predict the future of bold, adult-themed cinema deserving R ratings.

That is anyone's guess. But in an industry where imitation breeds success, things aren't looking good for movie-goers who enjoy edgier, sexier or more violent film entertainment.

"Year after year, the box office results tell an important story about movies and the ratings," said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, in his address to last month's ShoWest convention in Las Vegas. "Most family-friendly films sell big. Most R-rated features do not."

That's the leader of all megaplexes talking, representing exhibitors who are the conduit between studios and audiences. They collect the money, and the headaches of enforcing age restrictions. If theater owners don't wish to devote as many screens to R-rated films, studios will give them what they want, films tailored for no higher than PG-13 ratings.

This could be a makeor-break year for R-rated movies. Rising production costs make box-office results more important to studios that already have begun reducing production of movies with that rating. Several films budgeted at more than $110-million are in this year's lineup. They must make money, with several factors working against them, in order for Hollywood to keep pouring money into movies for grown-ups.

One obstacle is that theater owners are enforcing age restrictions more vigilantly than when, say, "The Basketball Diaries" debuted in 1995. That film's purported influence on the teenage Columbine High School killers raised parental and political concerns. Theater owners had to tighten their security under threat of legislation that would make admitting underage viewers a felony.

Other barriers include advertising restrictions allowing preview trailers for R-rated movies on television only after 9 p.m., and only in theaters before similarly rated films. Family-friendly corporations such as fast-food chains and convenience stores generally won't accept marketing tie-ins that could make R-rated films appealing to youths.

Those two deadly Columbine students weren't the only people younger than 17 who saw such R-rated fare as "The Basketball Diaries" or "The Matrix" in theaters when ID checks weren't as common, or later on home video. When the "Matrix" sequel, "The Matrix Reloaded" (also rated R), debuts May 15, much of the audience for that science-fiction adventure won't be able to buy tickets without their parents or legal guardians accompanying them.

Watchdog groups made a big deal of "8 Mile's" appeal to young movie-goers, alerting the media that underage decoys would be used randomly nationwide to keep theater owners honest with ID checks. The movie still made $51.2million during its opening weekend, and it could have been bigger. Those organizations can be expected to do the same with "The Matrix Reloaded"; its Nov. 15 sequel," The Matrix Revolutions"; and such R-rated sequels as "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," "American Wedding" (the third "American Pie" movie) and "Bad Boys 2."

Despite those potential blockbusters, Hollywood actually has decreased its R-rated output since feeling the heat in 1999.

According to Daily Variety, two-thirds of all films released in 2001 earned an R, and they grabbed only 28 percent of the dollars spent at U.S. box offices. Last year, 58 percent of new movies were R-rated, and those accounted for 24 percent of ticket sales.

Studios are hedging their bets by editing their films after receiving R ratings from the MPAA. The comedy "Anger Management" and the upcoming Robert De Niro thriller "Godsend" trimmed some content and successfully appealed to have their ratings changed to PG-13 for wider box- office appeal.

About half of 2003's films are expected to get R ratings. "The Matrix," "Terminator" and "Bad Boys" sequels have the distinct advantage of high-powered action that translates to hefty overseas profits even without subtitles. They will eventually recoup their expenses after converting yen, marks and lire to U.S. currency.

But you have to wonder about the future of more thoughtful R-rated films as the teen market continues to drive box-office receipts. There will always be a place in theaters for mature films geared to win awards; nearly half of the best picture Academy Award winners since the MPAA's ratings began in 1968 have been rated R.

But what about the fringe cinema, films without star power to push them into wide distribution, with themes that can't be sold through Happy Meals? We already see some of the most provocative U.S. cinema shuffled into art houses along with foreign films and documentaries that studios decided didn't have mass appeal.

Mature films could have even fewer chances to succeed in wide release. It almost happened with "The Pianist," until Adrien Brody single-handedly saved the movie from admired obscurity with his best-actor acceptance speech at the Oscars.

Let's hope the trend is reversed, before megaplexes hang signs in the box office declaring that no one over the age of 17 will be admitted.

keanu needs the love of a good woman

KEANU REEVES is Hollywood�fs least �gHollywood�h star and its most enduring riddle. But with forty movies to his credit and the starring role in the industry�fs most ass-kicking franchise, the �gMatrix�h trilogy, he�fs clearly doing something right. By Lucy Kaylin

KEANU REEVES is thinking back to a distant place and time — long before the unimaginable days of messianic roles in history-making trilogies and salaries of $30 million. It was Toronto, maybe 1980. He was 16 years old, and he was selling soda pop.

The Coca-Cola commercial had Reeves in the role of a plucky kid competing in a bike race. �gThere was the evil Teutonic guy; the Italian guy,�h he recalls. �gI was the new kid who falls behind but comes in second. And the winner goes, �eGreat race, kid. Who�fs your coach?�f And I say, �eMy daaad�f �h — this in a broad, chin-chucking sort of way. �gThen the man playing my dad goes, �eHere, son,�f and he hands me a Coke. And I had the classic experience of having to drink the drink like six times with the director saying, �eOK, now grab the drink. You�fre the thirstiest guy in the desert and this is water�f — which eventually turns into �eIt�fs pussy! It�fs fuckin�f pussy! Grab it! Get it! Drink iiit!�f �h Reeves bellows in this fashion for several seconds, starling restaurant patrons a few feet away.

�gThen I did a cornflakes commercial. I�fm the crazy loner guy setting up the tables in a huge, Etonesque dining hall, and I sneak a bite of cornflakes. And again from the director it�fs �eOK, you�fre hungry, you�fre starving... It�fs pussy! You�fre having an orgasm! Eat it! Eat those cornflakes! You�fre coming!�f �h Reeves laughs, �gDirectors just like saying that kind of stuff – it�fs really for them. Aah, it helps. Every little bit helps.�h

I appreciate the story for a couple of reasons. Given Reeves�fs penchant for a kind of stilted formality and turgid phraseology – describing one of his better projects as �gthis work, this film, this art, this endeavor�h – it is a relief to see him loosen up long enough to get silly. It�fs like catching a glimpse of the air-strumming Ted from Bill & Ted�fs Excellent Adventure or the buoyant loser Tod from Parenthood – winsome portrayals so different in spirit from the increasingly poker-faced, craft-conscious work for which Reeves is now better known.

I also like the subtext of miles logged and progress made – the sense of a career with contours and sweep. After forty movies, Reeves has earned the right to tell goofy stories about the early days. Say what you will about the quality of his output, perhaps best described as an acquired taste – Reeves has proved himself an uncommonly game and dedicated actor.

Yet there will always be something sort of curious about his rank as one of our best-known, highest-paid stars, probably because there has always been something curious about him, starting with his pan-ethnic appearance – the Asian eyes fixed in the square-jawed mien of a California surfer. That dichotomy is echoed in his name – the exoticism of Keanu paired with the stony strength of Reeves – which somehow suits an actor who can play Buddha and a SWAT cop with equal conviction. In Reeves the supposed paradox resolves itself, and that contributes to his slippery mystique. What other leading man can boast the appeal of both a black Lab and a shar-pei?

Nor can many actors zigzag as fluidly between potty-mouthed reminiscences and pedantic references to things like �gthe iconography of religion�h and the commedia dell�farte. Although Reeves is a Shakespeare devotee who keeps the collect works close at hand, he�fs as easily transported by playing bass in his occasional band, Dogstar, perpetrators of what he once called folk thrash. When the band is on tour, it�fs a decidedly lowbrow outing – fans pelting the stage with cups, bottles, bras, panties, teddy bears, letters, roses... �gOh, I know what the weirdest one was,�h Reeves says when asked. �gWe were in Washington, and this woman put her, like, 2-year-old baby on the stage. I don�ft remember any crying, though; it was probably stunned by the amplifiers blasting into its cranium.�h Keanu Reeves is a man of odd, barely interlocking parts, and there is something kind of intriguing about that. To function at his level of fame and remain humble, well liked and yet thoroughly opaque adds to his allure. He actively resists movie star trappings

�gHe doesn�ft even have an ounce of that in his life,�h says Reeves�fs Matrix costar Carrie-Anne Moss. �gHe doesn�ft have the perks to the extent where you sometimes want to say, �eHey, get a little help! Get an assistant!�f He�fs not about fame at all. And his choices are never about box office – it�fs about what strikes his heart.�h Which is why Reeves�fs status as king of the Matrix franchise has a vaguely Being There quality. He is just the sort of guy whose genuine appreciation for the trippy, deep and cool might luck him into something extraordinary. Asked what originally drew him to The Matrix, Reeves says, �gI was looking for work.�h

Put another way, he�fs the accidental superstar, approaching big-budget studio projects with the thespian brio of a summer-stock player. Outlandish rewards were never the goal. It�fs what makes Reeves so believable as Neo, the reluctant her of The Matrix. �gOftentimes we�fd be sitting around talking about what we were doing in the piece,�h says costar Laurence Fishburne, �gand I remember Keanu saying, �eHere�fs this guy, he�fs living his life and all of a sudden somebody comes along and says, �gHey! You�fre gonna save the world!�h That�fs heavy shit! What do you do with that?�f I don�ft think Keanu sees himself as being heroic in any way. If there�fs anything about his characters he relates to it�fs their ordinariness – the stuff that makes them human, not the stuff that makes them superhuman. I know that he really had great affection and love for Neo. He had compassion for the man assigned this great responsibility.�h

Unsurprisingly, in a self-aggrandizing line of work Reeves can be selfless – requesting that his bloated, tricked-out trailer on the set of The Replacements be exchanged for something smaller, in deference to the rest of the cast; diverting some of his salary to the key crew on The Matrix; kicking in more than a million dollars of his own money for The Devil�fs Advocate when the studio complained that Al Pacino would be too expensive; doing roughly the same for Gene Hackman on The Replacements. He is congenitally polite, which is why the role of the wife-beating Donnie Barksdale in 2000�fs The Gift was, for him, such a mind-blowing leap. During some exploratory improv, Reeves found himself in a trailer with his on-screen wife, Hilary Swank, slapping her silly. �gI put a little mustard on it,�h he admits, �gI�fm not going to abuse a trust, but in order to investigate the situation you have to commit. And it ended with her up against a wall and me behind her starting to take off her pants. Then we stopped.�h

The incident only hints at the possibility of a dark side to Reeevs; he has been so successful at cocooning his public image in a kind of enigmatic murk, one can only guess at the number and the nature of his demons. Personal questions are met with a practiced minimalism. When I ask if he has a girlfriend, he replies, �gNo, I do not have a girlfriend right now, no,�h in the manner of a witness for the prosecution. When I ask how he celebrated landing his first move role, in 1986�fs Youngblood, he says he leaped over a steel fence. Memories of his early boyhood in New York City are served up haiku style. �gI remember playing in the park,�h he says. �gI remember Monster Balls. These Super Balls with monsters on the inside. I remember running after those things.�h

Of course, more revealing tidbits have drifted out over time, and they tend to be troubling: The fact that he is estranged from his half-Chinese, half-Hawaiian father, a man who did jail time for drug possession; the fact that one of Reeves�fs two sisters is battling leukemia; the fact that the baby Reeves was to have with his girlfriend two years ago died in the womb, and his girlfriend – by then an ex – was killed in a car accident shortly afterward. Questioning Reeves about such things would be both churlish and fruitless. That people sometimes do takes his breath away still.

Sitting in the bar part of a restaurant on New York�fs Upper West Side, Reeves pulls his long arms around himself protectively, draping them loosely in his lap. He�fs wearing a black jacket that�fs layered over a black shirt that�fs layered over yet another black shirt. He smokes a cigarette and takes a sip of red wine. His legs are crossed at the thigh. He�fs tall – a more looming figure in the corner of a bar than I�fd expected him to be, given his typically kinetic and boyish screen presence. In person he is preposterously handsome.

When I tell him we�fd actually met fourteen years ago in the Berkshires, at the cast party for a production of The Tempest in which he�fd played Trinculo, he unfolds a bit. Bill & Ted�fs had made him a star, and I remember how Ted-like he was at the time: amiable, with stringy hair, swigging on a pint of something, a renowned terror on his motorcycle. �gYes, yes,�h Reeves recalls. �gI had a 750 GSXR – my first sport bike. It was lovely. There was a great winding road from the theater to the house, and one day I ran into a police block. Two patrol cars and however many patrolmen basically saying �eCease and desist�f going so quickly. It was beyond ticketing: Over the course of the weeks I�fd built up a reputation, so it was a community kind of thing, asking the police to tell me to calm down a little bit.�h He smiles to himself. �gI was enjoying the countryside.�h

Telling me this, Reeves sounds as stagily debonair as Bruce Wayne, as if he should be wearing an ascot and saying, �gBut I�fve put away childish things�h – when in fact he hasn�ft at all. Even now, Reeves is said to enjoy the occasional night ride with his headlight off. He has an artful array of scars – a squiggle on his leg, a snake on his abdomen, a bald spot in the whiskers above his lip that attest to periodic lapses in judgment (although he�fs never had a spill that necessitated the removal of his spleen, a subject of some dispute in sundry Keanuana). �gI�fm a very safe, conservative motorcycle operator,�h Reeves offers. �gEspecially when there�fs a full moon and you�fre in the [Hollywood] Hills and it�fs summery. Never. Never would I do that�h – ride with the headlight off. Again, the private smile.

With Reeves, motorcycles are a passable topic of conversation, although movies are even better – or maybe they�fre safer. I mention that I�fve watched thirteen of his in the past two and a half days, and this seems to delight him. �gThirteen?�h Reeves says, settling in. �gYou saw a third of my body of work. Did you go through the classics? Did you see My Own Private Idaho? Little Buddha? River�fs Edge?�h When I tell him I saw the seminal disaffected-youth movie, River�fs Edge, yesterday for only the first time since it came out in 1986, he says, �gOh really? Wow!�h – genuinely surprised, as if everyone were reviewing his greatest hits at regular intervals. But coming from him, there is nothing arrogant or self-involved about it. Reeves just loves the movies, vast swatches of which he is able to quote, and wouldn�ft that be great if they�fve given you some pleasure, too?

I ask him to name his favorites. He says he can�ft – �gIt�fs like picking children... River�fs Edge certainly, Youngblood, Bill & Ted�fs Excellent Adventure, Parenthood, Little Buddha, The Devil�fs Advocate, My Own Private Idaho, The Matrix – Reloaded and Revolutions, Hardball...�h I like the fact that he even includes the dogs, such as Johnny Mnemonic and Bram Stoker�fs Dracula. Then he says, �gExcuse me while I skip to the loo.�h Reeves returns a minute or two later. �gDid I say Devil�fs Advocate?...Devil�fs Advocate, Dangerous Liaisons, I Love You to Death...�h Clearly, he�fd been thinking about it in the john.

I find myself wondering about the difficulty of trying to break into movies when your first name sounds like some little-known species of steppe-dwelling yak. Apparently, there were issues early on. A few years after the Coke and cornflakes commercials, Reeves drove with his then girlfriend from Toronto, where he�fd been living since he was 7, to L.A., in search of acting jobs. Upon his arrival, his agent and manager called to say they were getting �gethnic feedback�h on his picture and résumé. �gI don�ft know what the fuck that meant,�h says Reeves. �gI guess it was a bad thing, because they wanted me to change my name. I was like, �eOK, man, I want to work here, so if I�fve got to do that I�fll do that.�f So they took my first and middle initials and made a name out of that,�h and the rugged-sounding all-American K.C. Reeves was born.

�gBut then what would happen is I would go into auditions and they�fd call for K.C. and I�fd miss the appointment. I wasn�ft even looking up. Eventually I�fd go up and say, �eHi, I came in at 11:15.�f They�fd say, �eAre you K.C.?�f And I�fd be like, �eOh, shit, um yeah! I guess I am.�f That lasted about a month, maybe. And I had all these pictures I had to pay for with fucking �eK.C.�f on them. What was I gonna do?�h Reeves tells the story in that plumy, stentorian stoner voice of his, recognizable from almost every one of his movies. Sometimes it�fs dead wrong for the role; why should the guileless chocolate salesman from A Walk in the Clouds always seem on the verge of a soliloquy? On the other hand, with a character like the high-born hustler in My Own Private Idaho, the voice is just right – probably because he soliloquizes regularly, arms thrown wide toward his comrades. Which is to say, the success or failure of a Reeves performance depends greatly on how well he�fs chosen – on whether the role flatters his uneven gifts. His character in Speed, for instance, was an inspired choice, actually benefiting from his uninflected earnestness; basically, he was required to look tense and buff from the first frame to the last. �gI thought the film was ridiculous in such a beautiful way,�h says Reeves. �gA bus that can�ft go under fifty-five miles an hour. A SWAT guy named Jack Traven. Who could resist?�h

Which brings us to this work, this film, this art, this endeavor otherwise known as The Matrix, whose first sequel, Reloaded, opens this month. Indeed, no actor dead or alive has ever been better matched with a role than Reeves is with Neo, the computer hacker who comes to learn that humans are living in a sinister dreamscape generated by machines that are actually, systematically, turning them into batteries. Or something like that. Keanu critics though he got awfully lucky with the part, which asked him to look cool in fetish wear that couldn�ft miss – bad-ass shades and overlong black trench coats functioning as the world�fs hippest tutus in the balletic fight sequences.

But that sells Reeves short. Apart from being a slick and credible action hero, he owned the movie because he committed so totally, fusing himself to its arcane internal logic. And his ramrod seriousness underscored the notion of profound questions lurking beneath the elaborate cinematic armature and the requisite blam blam. Reeves, who has a soft spot for heady, ambitious, slightly pretentious discourse, is very at-home with the movie�fs philosophical musings about life, death, free will, fate, illusion, reality and, for good measure, creation. �gNeo has a lovely line that he says a couple of times: �eWhat truth?�f What truth,�h he repeats. �gIt�fs something that�fs part of my makeup. One of my earliest phrases was How come? So I related to the piece.�h Says Carrie-Anne Moss, �gI don�ft know if anyone else could have played that part, because he is so that guy. He is so committed, and yet he questions everything.�h

For Reeves, the allegorical dimension of The Matrix was as satisfying as its plentiful �gcool shit,�h like the airborne kung fu. Any movie that raises the sorts of questions Shakespeare and Buddha might have pondered while spawning a video game aimed squarely at the Bills and Ted and Dogstar fans (hitting stores this month, to coincide with the release of the first sequel) is making the most of him. Reeves deserves a lot of credit for recognizing its potential. �gKeanu has the soul of an artist,�h says Lorenzo di Bonaventura, president of worldwide production at Warner Bros. during the making of The Matrix, �gand a lot of courage for taking a chance on very daring material and young filmmakers. Once he read the script, he was on board very quickly�h – unlike Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith and Brad Pitt, who flirted with the project but ultimately passed. �gHe never wavered, and he fought for the movie in every way.�h

Reeves refers to himself as a �gMatrix zealot,�h in fact; it is his calling. As such he has been a willing servant to the Wachowski brothers, who wrote and directed all three movies. (The third one, Revolutions, opens six months after Reloaded.) Like everyone else, Reeves refers to the Wachowskis as �gthe brothers,�h which lends an appropriate air of cultishness to the secretive proceedings. And a certain degree of zealotry was mandatory on the 270-day shoot in Australia, during which both sequels were made simultaneously. Although Reeves will be handsomely compensated for his trouble – $30 million against 15 percent of the gross for both movies – by Hollywood standards he�fs earned it. �gYou just can�ft even imagine how that guy showed up every day,�h Moss says, describing Reeves�fs shrieks of pain that accompanied long hours of stretching on the set before his fight scenes were filmed. �gHe�fd have fights that were fifteen or sixteen days of shooting. You do one day like that and you don�ft know if you�fll ever walk again.�h

�gYou can imagine a lot of actors doing action movies just to look cool – you know they�fre not doing the work and they don�ft care,�h Moss says. �gKeanu cares so much. He�fs not looking to have it easy at all.�h Or as Reeves himself puts it, �gI love The Matrix – love it through and through. And so the sacrifices – what it demands, what it hopes for – had me body and soul. And to feel that is one of the more remarkable things in my life�h

Of course, the demands of making films – even insanely ambitious, billion-dollar-grossing ones – are dwarfed by the burden of superstardom when it is nothing you ever wished for yourself. With The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions upon us – letting us fly vicariously at a time when we badly need to – the quest for Keanu is sure to intensify. But he�fll ward it off, as he always has, as he does the stiff wind blowing in his face after coffee one wintry morning last February. Stylishly under-dressed, shivering in a thin black coat, eyes narrowed against the cold, Reeves escorts me a few blocks and wishes me well at the corner – one of the few famous actors to remember a journalist�fs name and use it. �gAnd thanks,�h he calls out as he turns to go, �gfor watching the movies.�h

Keanu, meet Sailor Moon

'The Matrix' owes a lot to Japanese animé. Now its producers are giving something back

One of the most memorable visuals from 1999's The Matrix was the green computer code cascading down the screen at the opening of the movie. Representing the titular virtual-reality program, it perfectly encapsulated the film's mix of the familiar and futuristic, played a prominent role in the trailers and became a favourite screen-saver download for millions of fans. What many of us may not remember is that amid the scrolling alphanumeric symbols were characters from the Japanese katakana script -- a subtle clue to the Japanese influences in the rest of the film.

Indeed, while The Matrix may have broken new ground in Hollywood -- its supercool stylized aesthetic and pioneering special effects have since been copped by everything from the Jet Li vehicle The One and Wesley Snipes's Blade II to the big-screen Charlie's Angels -- it was essentially built from borrowed parts: Eastern philosophy, blaxploitation cool, sci-fi futurism and, of course, kung fu fighting. However, its biggest debt is undoubtedly owed to the Japanese animated art form known as animé.

Animé in Japan actually refers to any kind of animation, though North Americans usually associate its unique drawing style with the sci-fi/fantasy genre. A foil to our own kidcentric animation industry, animé has long exulted in violent and sexual subject matter, while also producing children's cartoons, such as Sailor Moon. In Japan, the film Spirited Away, an Oscar-winner for best animated film this year, has surpassed Titanic to earn $340-million and become the country's all-time box-office champ.

Animé's doe-eyed characters and design aesthetic have had a presence in North America since Osamu Tezuka's Astroboy first hit the airwaves in the 1960s. Many kids have been junkies for the likes of Robotech, Pokémon, and Beyblade ever since. And more mature creations, such as the 1988 futuristic feature film Akira, which was re-released in digitally enhanced form in 2001, have become cult classics and enjoy regular screenings at art-house theatres here, while TV series such as Aeon Flux and Blue Submarine No. 6 have gained considerable popularity on American cable outlets such as MTV and Cartoon Network. However, animé remains generally below the adult mainstream's radar.

The Matrix served as a subtle introduction to the form by getting mainstream audiences adjusted to the aesthetic. The film's visuals, most notably its groundbreaking "bullet-time" technique, were ripped right out of the animé style book and have since bled into contemporary filmmaking as effectively as the original Star Wars. The Matrix's storylines and mythology, too, recycle animé's standard tropes -- fear of technology, messianic saviours and utter disregard for the laws of physics. Like Akira, The Matrix revels in a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk future. Its themes -- computer-program-cum-secret agents, virtual reality and self-aware artificial intelligence -- borrow from Ghost in the Shell, the popular mid-1990s crossover animated movie. And in The Matrix, as in feature films such as X, a lone man with unforeseen powers must save (or destroy) the world. All that's missing is the "big eyes, small mouth" drawings (though Keanu Reeves's features aren't that far off).

The movie's creators, Andy and Larry Wachowski, long-time animé fans, have never denied their influences. And, as the ramp-up to The Matrix's sequels begins (the first, Reloaded, is due on May 15, and the next, Revolutions, in November), they are finally paying tribute, with a nine-part animé anthology DVD, dubbed The Animatrix, distributed by Warner Home Video and due out on June 3; and a groundbreaking video game called Enter The Matrix.

The Animatrix's nine short films are directed by such animé greats as Yoshiaki Kawajiri (creator of the Wachowski favourite, Ninja Scroll), Akira animator Koji Morimoto, Shinichiro Watanabe (whose Cowboy Bebop film is currently in theatres) and Aeon Flux creator Peter Chung.

The film and DVD certainly aren't essential for understanding the sequels, but they will build anticipation -- not to mention The Matrix franchise -- and extend the film's universe for hardcore fans. Together with the live-action Matrix movies, though, they could prove a catalyst in adult animé crossing over from art house to megaplex.

The concept for the anthology came in 1999, when the Wachowski brothers visited a few animé production houses in Japan, to meet their animator heroes. "On the flight back, they came up with the idea to do these shorts with the animé directors," says Andy Jones, the director of the Final Flight of the Osiris short in The Animatrix. Though Jones is not a traditional animé artist, the photo-realistic style of his computer-animation company, Square USA, set new standards in film imagery (if not storytelling) by bringing the Japanese videogame series Final Fantasy to the big screen in 2001. The other short films in the collection consist of traditional cel-drawn images (with some computer-enhancement).

Not all of this is about commerce. Three of the stories -- Program, Detective Story and Part 1 of the prequel epic Second Renaissance -- are now available for free download at www.intothematrix.com. Part 2 of Second Renaissance becomes available next month, and the 11-minute Osiris is currently playing before the film Dreamcatcher. (Osiris can't be seen anywhere else until the DVD release.)

All the films reflect the stylized movements peculiar to animé. Originally, animé was made cheaply, and the tricks employed to make do with fewer frames -- slow-motion action, delaying frames over time, unconventional perspective shots -- became stylistic devices that distinguished the form. "I call it a poetic action, the way they slow down moments of the action to allow you to focus on specific parts," Jones explains. "It's more musical, in a way. It's beautifully done, instead of a traditional action scene, which is just cut, cut, cut and half the time you don't know what happened."

What's also striking is the breathtakingly detailed imagery, which often seems nearly as real as the original Matrix film -- and almost as iconic. In such scenes as a column of squid-like sentinels chasing down a rebel ship, and a gut-wrenching robot holocaust, the animation in The Animatrix offers a level of intensity and sophistication rarely seen by North American audiences.

This is exactly what the Wachowskis, who wrote four of the nine scripts, were aiming for as they supervised the production remotely from Australia, where they were shooting the two Matrix sequels. "A lot of their feedback was to amp everything up -- more sexy, bigger muzzle flashes, more intense, more sentinels," Jones says. "Everything was just, Raise it up another level."

Raising it to another level will be crucial if the Wachowskis are to broaden animé's appeal. The art form is already growing as a cult phenomenon in North America. On Victoria Day weekend, Toronto will host the seventh annual Animé North, Canada's largest fan-run convention, which organizers hope will attract nearly 5,000 participants (up from 3,000 last year).

And, while there will certainly be many typical otaku (animé enthusiasts) in attendance, the crowd will consist of more than prepubescent boys. The convention organizer, for instance, is Tamara Macdonald, a 37-year-old mother of two. She hopes to debunk certain myths, such as the notion that animé is pornographic. Some adult animé works are highly sexual, she admits -- consider the erotic sword-fighting scene in Osiris, or the bum-cleavage-baring protagonist in Program. But most are, as Andy Jones puts it, "more like action films. The stories are a little darker, and they deal with serious situations in terms of explosions and bombs and things you don't put in a kids' film -- life and death and spirituality."

Tokyo-based Animatrix producer Michael Arias notes that in Japan, animators tackle almost any subject, because audiences are more open. "In the U.S., I always feel as though people look askance at animation, perhaps because it is not 'real,' " he says. "I think it's quite strange that Americans will pay to watch the Terminator wreak havoc, but they won't accept that kind of action in a cartoon -- as though the Terminator is any less of an invention than the characters in Japanese animation."

It may be Warner Bros.' hope that The Animatrix will establish something of a beachhead for a full-on animé invasion. Arias is not optimistic. "I'm certain this will inspire the birth of other American projects of a similar bent," he says. "I'm also certain that there will be a wave of imports from Japan. But Americans like their meat well-done and their films fairly middle-of-the-road, so I think it will take more than one anthology like Animatrix to get Japanese animation on everyone's breakfast table."

"What The Animatrix will do is push animé further into the mainstream," Tamara MacDonald predicts. "But I haven't seen the complete package, and the proof is in the pudding. Final Fantasy trailers were very exciting, and people were cheering at the convention, but then you saw the reviews. The fans, they want it to be flawless.

"The Matrix," she adds, "that was flawless. It's the closest thing you can get to live-action animé."

'Matrix': Kicking gaming up a notch

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY

Just as The Matrix broke visual ground in movies, Enter the Matrix is likely to break virtual ground in video games based on movies.

Filmmakers Andy and Larry Wachowski, both avid video game players, view the game not just as marketing fodder but also as an integral element of the universe they unveiled in 1999 with the original blockbuster. (The game is due May 15, the same day as the first film sequel, The Matrix: Reloaded.)

Their hands-on approach involved going to unprecedented lengths to make the Matrix game have all the style and snap of the film trilogy:

• They wrote a 244-page script with parallel plot twists to Reloaded.
• They filmed an hour's worth of live-action footage with stars such as Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss specifically for the game.
• They filmed an additional hour of scenes for computer-generated animations, which the Wachowskis are calling "cineractives." They'll help connect live-action clips to game segments.
• The movie's martial-arts choreographer, the stunt team and principal actors did special motion-capture sessions to provide game action. Actors also did game-specific voice recordings.

"You would have actors doing this scene from the movie and the next day this scene from the game," says Rosanna Sun, the interactive producer for the Wachowskis' production company, Eon. "You had to make sure the costumes matched from the moment in the film to the game, that the structure of the buildings matched, that they had whatever (props) they would bring to the scene. All that stuff was very choreographed and discussed with the (Wachowski) brothers, the costumers, the set people, everybody."

Behind-the-scenes trailers detailing the collaboration arrive Tuesday on www.enterthematrix.com.

Historically, Hollywood and video-game makers have had a hit-and-miss relationship. A movie studio typically licenses a film's rights to a publisher who makes a video game that either mimics the story line or emphasizes one aspect of the movie (such as dinosaur target practice in the Jurassic Park game).

Games based on movies typically don't have the visual quality of the film. But the graphics technology built into video game systems such as Sony's PlayStation 2 and Microsoft's Xbox — both of which also can play DVD movies — now allows game makers to deliver near-cinematic experiences.

As a result, movie-based games are evolving, and filmmakers are more likely to assist. Electronic Arts' The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers used footage, models and other assets from the movie, and the game for the third Rings chapter, Return of the King, will use movements digitally captured from the film. Similarly, the developers of Activision's Spider-Man game worked closely with director Sam Raimi to do justice to the big-screen web slinger. The plotline for Vivendi's The Hulk video game begins after the events in the movie. (The game arrives June 3; the film is due June 20.)

Nonetheless, Enter the Matrix— which can be played on PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube and PCs — represents a new level of synergy between Hollywood and game developers, says Bryan Intihar of Electronic Gaming Monthly, who played an early version. "I believe it will have a significant impact on the entertainment industry," he says. "You're also going to see game companies start hiring Hollywood writers to give their games more emotion."

Dave Perry, president of Shiny Entertainment, which developed the game for publisher Infogrames, says the Matrix experience certainly differed from his past Hollywood pairings. When he helped develop a game based on the first Terminator movie, neither Arnold Schwarzenegger's nor Linda Hamilton's characters could be used. Instead, they had to use Kyle Reese, the soldier who came from the future to prevent the Terminator from killing Hamilton.

"Gamers do not want to be the guy who dies halfway through the movie," Perry says.

When Shiny began working with the Wachowskis, Perry's goal was to have some film footage for the introduction. "It turns out they already had a plan. They had a script and were going to direct the game themselves and basically give us movie footage with the score, all edited and ready to go."

The film and the video game start at the same point in time, but while the film focuses on Neo (Reeves) and the gang, the game brings supporting characters Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Ghost (Anthony Wong) to the forefront. Sun says there's a scene in the film in which Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and others discuss planting a bomb and the bomb going off; in the game, there's live-action footage continuing the discussion and gameplay in which Niobe and Ghost must fight their way into a secure building to set the bomb.

"It's like this string of multimedia pieces that all fit together," Sun says.

Says Intihar: Video game players will "know all the nuances in the film that can only be understood by those that have played through the game. It's like the Wachowskis are rewarding gamers for simply being gamers."

Discovering Buddhism

Each Episode of The Discovering Buddhism 13 Part Video Series is introduced by Richard Gere and Keanu Reeves. The series features His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ribur Rinpoche, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and other Tibetan Lamas. Western teachers in the Discovering Buddhism video series include, Ven. Robina Courtin, Ven. Sangye Kahdro, Ven. Thubten Chodron, and others. The series is expected to be arrive at Shop FPMT on April 25th, due to production delays.

Keanu Reeves on the Small Screen

Keanu Reeves, star of such hit movies as The Matrix (a Dharma cult classic) and Speed, recorded his instructions to Dharma Vision's Mongolian series while he was in San Francisco to film scenes from the two upcoming Matrix sequels. He said that although he has no "formal Buddhist practice," playing the part of Prince Siddhartha in the film, Little Buddha left a strong impression on him.

"When I played this innocent prince who starts to suspect something when he has the first revelations about old age, sickness and death, it hit me. It's something they speak about all the time ...but we forget -- we want to forget. That lesson has never left me," he said. "Most of the things I"ve come away with from Buddhism have been human - understanding feelings, impermanence, and trying to understand other people and where they're coming from."

Described by Matrix co-stars as Zen-like and a man with not an ounce of movie-star ego in him, Reeves talked about the responsibility he feels in choosing roles as an actor. "I want to say something about life, even if the film is fantasy. For instance, Speed was completely ridiculous and fun, but there's something about my character that's noble.

"But I've also played characters like in the film The Last Time I Committed Suicide, a character who was self-destructive and alcoholic. But that dark quality is just another part of life, too. My character helps teach the main character about his nature -- helps him develop and transform. I hope that film as artwork can bring transformation, and can show the contrast between dark and light. I hope the films can help, entertain, provoke."

Reloading the Matrix

Four years ago Larry and Andy Wachowski revolutionized the action genre with The Matrix. Now, with two more movies, the first ever Matrix video game and a groundbreaking companion DVD taking fans deeper into its richly imagined universe, find out why NEWSWEEK called 2003 "The Year of the Matrix".

In February of 2001 , a construction crew was hired to erect a two-mile freeway, complete with exit signs, dividers, an on ramp and an overpass - on an old US naval base in Alameda, California. It is here that action filmmaking and visual effects will be redefined for years to come. This unconnected freeway is the stage for what Newsweek described as "the most audaciously conceived, thrillingly executed car chase ever filmed." And like everything else in two of 2003's most anticipated movies, it's the kind of chase that could take place nowhere else but inside the Matrix.

The high speed chase - which involves dozens of wrecked cars, high risk kung fu insidemultiple moving vehicles, and villains that can take the wheel of any car on the road - is unlike any live action stunt ever put to film. But for Larry and Andy Wachowski, it's just one component of the writing/directing duo's plans for an assault of jaw-dropping visual experiences that will reinvent the action genre while kicking up the adrenaline in everything from gaming to home entertainment, making 2003 the year of the Matrix. Fans who have been waiting five years to return to the Matrix universe will get a year's worth, starting with Matrix Reloaded, the first sequel, which opens in May 1 5 in the US and several territories around the world. Also on May 15, the adventure will be brought to audiences' fingertips with the first-ever Matrix videogame, Enter the Matrix, followed this summer by an unprecedented DVD collection of original anime short films that take fresh looks inside the universe the Wachowskis created. Titled The Animatrix, the DVD will be unleashed worldwide in June. And finally, Matrix Revolutions, the final film in the trilogy which provides answers to many of the films' myriad puzzles, will be released just six months after Reloaded,in November.

THE MATRIX PHENOMENON

In 1999, writer-directors Larry and Andy Wachowski, whose only big screen credit was the acclaimed noir film Bound, came out of nowhere with a film that would flip the concept of an action movie and bring a new level of style to everything from fight choreography to visual effects to runway fashion. Like the film's unsuspecting protagonist Neo (Keanu Reeves), who has to free his mind to truly see, audiences knew they were glimpsing a brave, new world for the first time - the world of the Matrix, a complex computer simulation created by machines to enslave the human race. Once awakened from his lifelong sleep, Neo discovers that he's a messianic figure known as the One, and that it is his destiny to save the world.The Matrix grossed $171 million in the US and $209 million internationally before becoming the first DVD, then a relatively new format, to sell a million copies. Overthe years since its release, the film's legion of fans have mined the DVD and the groundbreaking website, whatisthematrix.com, for layers of meaning in the most arcane details of the film, eagerly anticipating the time they could enter the Matrix again.

That time is finally here.

After years of careful planning, inventing and execution, the Wachowski brothers are gearing up to deliver a new Matrix experience: Matrix Reloaded, which features the original surviving cast from the first film,in May; followed by Matrix Revolutions six months later, in early November. "Our fans would be angry at us if we made them wait any longer," producer Joel Silver told Newsweek. "Reloaded ends, I promise you, at a moment of true filmus interruptus." Following seven weeks of principal photography on the Alameda base and other northern California locations, a marathon 270-day schedule commenced in Australia, where both films were shot simultaneously throughout 2001 and 2002. The production has been shrouded in secrecy, with even the stars only seeing a few scraps of film by the end of principal photography. It's a feat that demanded not only far-reaching vision, but also intricate planning and coordination between what was live action, computer generated, and an imperceptible fusion of both.

THE MATRIX REVEALED

Though fans are divided between clamoring for information and remaining "spoiler-free" on the storylines of the next two films, some plot details have funneled out. Reloaded begins where The Matrix left off. The machines made a terrifying discovery: they've learned the location of Zion, the last human city, hidden near the Earth's core, and the humans have only 72 hours until thousands of Sentinels - the squidlike probes

from part one - tunnel down to obliterate it. Their only hope is to track down a mysterious figure known as the Keymaker, who is being guarded by a pair of switchblade-wielding villains known as the Twins (Neil and Adrien Rayment), unnaturally white assassins that can vanish and reappear like ghosts. In addition to the now-iconic returning cast - Reeves as Neo, Lawrence Fishbume as Morpheus, Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity, Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith and the late Gloria Foster as The Oracle - Reloaded introduces new characters including a Buddha-like figure named Seraph (Lung Yun Chou); Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith), a former lover of Morpheus; and Persephone (Monica Bellucci), a deadly temptress who has her eyes on Neo.

The revelations in the next two films are many. Reloaded reveals the dimensions of the Matrix itself - a megacity more than ten times the size of New York - for the first time. We also learn of the existence of powerful machines that have been surpassed by newer, more ruthless models, and are ambivalent of what their own generations of innovation have wrought.

Agent Smith has learned to replicate himself like a virus, and in one bravura sequence filmed with a breakthrough technique the Wachowskis call "virtual cinematography," when Neo faces off against 100 Agent Smiths. Reloaded ends as a cliff- hanger, setting the stage for the final film in the trilogy, Revolutions.

Matrix Revolutions is one all out war between humans and the machines. While Reloaded is largely set inside the Matrix, Revolutions unfolds in the smoking ruins of the futuristic real world. Joel Silver, the titan producer behind the Lethal Weapon series, promises action on par with nothing that's ever been seen before in movies.

ARCHITECTS OF THE MATRIX

Brothers Larry (37) and Andy (35) Wachowski made their first film largely to prove themselves to Wamer Bros, in a bid to make the original Matrix, which they had always conceived as a trilogy. Little is known about the brothers themselves. Silver, who has been deputized to speak for "the boys," calls them naturally storytellers who rose through the ranks in comics, distinguishing themselves as visionaries, who have created a deep universe of stories and themes for the Matrix, some of which is only touched on in the film. The cast and crew of the films all refer to the brothers as two parts of one whole. They note that the siblings never seem to disagree, are heavy readers - of philosophy (tarry) and science fiction (Andy). In the game of "good cop/bad cop," Andy is the softer of the two.

Also returning to the dual productions to reprise their artistry from The Matrix are Academy Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor John Gaeta and Special Effects Supervisor Steve Courtley; Director of Photography Bill Pope; Production Designer Owen Paterson; Oscar-winning Editor Zach Staenberg; Costume Designer Kym Barrett; Oscar-winning Sound Recordist David Lee; and master fighter Yuen Wo Ping, the choreographer and wire team leader of the highly innovative fight sequences in The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

DRIVING TECHNOLOGY

To take visual effects to the next level, John Gaeta's task was to utilize, and in some cases invent, all-new technology to truly present images that have never seen before, as The Matrix did when it was released. Gaeta's previous company, Manix, battled effects giant ILM's Star Wars Episode One - The Phantom Menace for that year's visual effects Oscar and won. But Manix was too small to handle the output for the next two chapters of the trilogy, and as technology to mind hadn't been invented yet, Gaeta regrouped a team to establish Esc (the word on the "escape" button on a computer keyboard), based in Alameda, California. Esc is in a huge 250,000 square-foot hangar on the base in Alameda, in which the edgy effects maestro's offices sit directly above the pyrotechnics department, where at any time of day they could be blowing up sentinels or wrecking cars.

Esc and six other effects houses will together deliver more than 2,500 separate shots, many of which have been three years in the making, eclipsing the 412 digital shots in The Matrix. As with "bullet time" in the first film, "virtual cinematography" will soon be burned into the contemporary vernacular once the next chapters of the trilogy are released. Virtual cinematography blurs the line between what is real and what was created in a computer. Every detail, down to a single strand of hair,is not only an approximation - it's perfect.Gaeta's team can create anything virtually, from humans to cars, rooms, vehicles, any environment or object. The key is basing each digital image on a live one.Using five high resolution digital cameras, the effects team records an actor's performance down to the pores and hair follicles. This process is called universal capture (U-cap for short). The information from all five cameras is then fed into a computer, which calculates the actor's t performance from every angle. Once the actor's body is captured in immersive 3-D, the visual effects team use it to portray virtually anything, from a kung fu fight to Neo flying at 2,000 miles per hour through a metropol is.

As with the Matrix itself, those watching the film will be likewise immersed in a world in which the difference between what's real and what isn't is virtually imperceptible.

REFLEXIVE INFLUENCES

The Matrix universe is heavily influenced by several sources - mostly comic books, Japanese anime (such as Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell), cyberpunk fiction (such as the work of visionary William Gibson) and Asian kung fu movies, but also with a large degree of mythology gleaned from sources as diverse as Greek mythology and the Bible.

Conversely, since the first film was released in 1999, it is The Matrix that has become prime source material for homage - inspiring everything from commercials to other films - utilizing the dazzling "bullet time" technology, in which the cameraappears to whiz 360 degrees around a central image. It has been used in fightchoreography in Charlie's Angels and parodied in Shrek and Scary Movie. The Foxnetwork used the technology at the 2002 Superbowl to show plays from differentangles. The frequency and utility with which the technology has been mimicked hasmotivated the Wachowski brothers to work twice as hard to create images that no onecould reproduce in the upcoming installments.

THE YEAR OF THE MATRIX

In the fall of 1999, after The Matrix exploded across movie screens around the world,Larry Wachowski took out a yellow pad and drew up the brothers' plan for worlddomination. Not only would there be two films and the pioneering website www.thematrix.com, the brothers had plans for a series of side projects that wouldexpand the world of the Matrix across different media.

First, they wanted to produce a collection of anime short films set in the Matrix universe. They also wanted to accompany the films' release with the first-ever Matrix videogame, Enter the Matrix. But the Wachowskis wanted to maintain deep involvement in all aspects of the world they created. They wrote four of the nine animes that make up The Animatrix DVD, hitting the market this summer, then personally approved the screenplays and designs for the other five. "The Final Flight of the Osiris," which features the next level of near photrealistic computer generated images from the makers of Final Fantasy, will debut in theaters with Warner Bros. Pictures forthcoming Dreamcatcher. "Second Renaissance," part one and part two, directed by Mahiro Maeda, tells the story of the machines' takeover from the perspective of the machines themselves. The two part adventure will debut onwww.theanimatrix.com this spring and be downloadable freely to anyone with an internet connection.

The Wachowskis also wrote a 244-page script specifically for the first-ever Matrix interactive game and broke out of the industry standard by shooting all new footage using the same cast, crew and sets as for their films. The game fleshes out off screen moments only alluded to in Reloaded, using Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Ghost (Anthony Wong) as its stars. Enter the Matrix recreates the rush of watching the movie, with all the heart-stopping stunts, running up walls and taking balletic turns through the air, all created by master choreographer Yuen Wo Ping and his Hong Kong stunt team. The game makers have also dreamed up a text- based game that allows the player to "hack" into the Matrix using DOS commands, upgrade characters and unlock the games secrets.Shiny, the company that is developing the game, describes it as a way to have a deeper understanding of the world laid out in the Matrix films.

According to producer Silver, the dramatic synergy of this film's inventive multi-media assault - the animes, the website, the game and the movie - all work together to tell the story and bring into deep focus the complex universe of the Matrix.It is this multi-level attack - from the big screen to the small screen to the videogame console - that will make 2003 the year of the Matrix.

Virtual Cinematography Has Arrived With 'The Matrix Reloaded'

After inventing the special effect technique known as Bullet Time for the 1999 sci-fi thriller The Matrix, special effects supervisor John Gaeta has been continually asked how he would top that in the sequel The Matrix Reloaded, which opens in theatres May 15. "People get really preoccupied with, 'Are you going to top yourselves this time? Are you really gonna come up with a zinger?'" Gaeta tells Wired in a new feature article. "My job has nothing to do with making zingers. The point is not to knock you over with a visual trick. The point is to be able to construct events that are so complex, in terms of what human bodies need to do, that the total 'effect' is impossible choreography. 'My God! It looks real, but it just can't be.'"

Like many in the film industry, Gaeta has long talked of the promise of virtual cinematography, a confluence of technologies that will allow directors to digitally sculpt actors' performances with ease. To create Reloaded's fight scene between Neo and a hundred Agent Smiths (nicknamed the 'Burly Brawl'), Bullet Time would have required tangles of crisscrossing still-camera rigs and years of compositing. What Gaeta needed was a virtual camera that could fly through the 3-D scene with absolute freedom. "The concept of Bullet Time had to graduate to the true technology it suggested," he says. "For Reloaded, we had to finish the job so that we could get relentless, uninterrupted, and editable chunks of Neo in the zone." Essentially, Gaeta needed to make virtual cinematography a reality.

When Neo and Agent Smith walk into the courtyard, we see the real actors Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving. But once the fighting starts, everyone and everything on the screen is computer-generated--including the perspective of the camera itself, steering through arcs at speeds that would tear any physical camera apart. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Burly Brawl is that it doesn't look virtual at all. The digital faces of Reeves and Weaving are flawless, the buildings look dreary and lived-in.

The standard way of creating a computer generated world is to build it from the inside out, building objects out of polygons and applying textures and lighting. For Reloaded, the special effects team took a radically different approach known as image-based rendering, loading as much of the real world as possible into the computer first, essentially building from the outside in. While the topography of the human face is difficult to simulate digitally, it turns out to be easy to map photogrammetrically, having few shadows and occlusions. To replace the faces of the stuntmen with that of Agent Smith, Gaeta and his team built a system for sampling the real at a higher resolution than had ever before been attempted, dubbing this process "universal capture". Once a scene is captured, filmmakers can now fly the virtual camera through thousands of "takes" of the original performance, from any angle, zooming in and out, or launching into the sky. Virtual cinematography.

But the ability to create photorealistic virtual human beings, and to cut-and-paste them into any landscape, raises unsettling questions. Questions that troubled Gaeta so much that, several years ago, he wrote a letter alerting President Clinton to the fact that such technology could be used for purposes of mass deception. The letter was never answered. It turns out that DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is very interested in using image-based rendering and lighting for use in immersive battle simulations. In 1999, the US Army launched the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California.

The paradox is not lossed on Gaeta. "You have these paranoid films about the Matrix depicting how people are put in a mental prison by misusing this technology, and you have the military constructing something like the actual Matrix. Or maybe our technology will become the actual Matrix, and we have inadvertently spilled the vial of green shit out onto the planet."

Matrix Poster Contest

Crack the code and you could win a very cool poster for The Matrix: Reloaded.

Premiere magazine has gone behind the scenes with unprecedented access to The Matrix Reloaded, and brings readers four collector's editions of a special Matrix cover.

All four special collector�fs edition covers will be available on nationwide newsstands on April 15 with exclusive newsstand promotions happening in New York, Chicago and Boston on April 10. Premiere subscribers will receive the first of four collectible covers, featuring Keanu Reeves�f �gNeo�h in costume on the Sydney, Australia set. Readers who see all four of Premiere's collector's edition covers will be able to find the clues to an eight-letter code that could win them a poster for the movie. You do not need to purchase any covers to win. If you think you know the code, enter it in the form below. Fifty of the people who crack the code will be selected to receive a limited-edition Matrix poster! Here are a few hints for those of you who are stumped.

Hint 1: Note the small differences in the four covers.
Hint 2: You will need the "power" to figure it out.
Hint 3: Your "initial" hunch may be on the money.

Entertainment Today: Showbiz News

SPIELBERG IS NO. 1 ON HOLLYWOOD POWER LIST

Steven Spielberg is No. 1 on Premiere magazine's 2003 Power List of the 100 most influential people in Hollywood.

The director of "Catch Me if You Can" knocked off AOL-Time Warner honchos Richard Parsons and Robert Pittman to finish on top of this year's list, moving up from No. 6 last year. The rest of the Top 10 are all producers, including George Lucas -- who last year directed the fifth "Star Wars" movie.

"Spielberg is the Tiger Woods of the movies," said Premiere's Editor-in-Chief Peter Herbst, "the guy who's so talented, smart, and hard-working that he seems to be playing a different game than everyone else."

The most bankable movie stars in Hollywood right now, according to Premiere, are Tom Hanks (No. 13), Tom Cruise (No. 14), Mel Gibson (No. 15) and Julia Roberts (No. 16).

Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman jumped from No. 83 to No. 31, and Oscar-nominated actress Renée Zellweger went from No. 97 to No. 63. The biggest jump of all was Reese Witherspoon, who went from No. 96 last year to No. 32 on this year's power list.

Jack Nicholson came in at No. 74, after not making the list at all last year. Some newcomers to the list include Tobey Maguire ("Spider-Man"), director Rob Marshall ("Chicago") and writer Charlie Kaufman ("Adaptation"). Colin Farrell ("Minority Report," "Daredevil") also made the power list.

Halle Berry made the list, but only came in at No. 96 -- after a year in which she won a Best Actress Oscar and scored a blockbuster hit, co-starring with Pierce Brosnan in the latest James Bond picture.

The list also includes producer Brian Grazer (No. 18), producer Jerry Bruckheimer (No. 19), "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson (No. 20), "Signs" writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (No. 21) and director Ron Howard (No. 26).

Denzel Washington moved up from No. 40 last year to No. 28 this year, and "The Matrix" directing team of Andy and Larry Wachowski is No. 27 this year -- up from No. 89 last year.

(Thanks to UPI's Pat Nason in Los Angeles)

AFL on NBC goes Matrix

The Arena Football League and NBC will score a major scoop Sunday when they will present the new 2.5-minute trailer for The Matrix Reloaded, the highly anticipated The Matrix sequel that will be released by Warner Brothers on May 15. The trailer makes its theatrical debut today, but Sunday's presentation during the AFL telecast at 3 p.m. will be its first showing outside of theaters.

Joel Silver, "objective" producer of the film, said: "We're excited to give fans a preview of the incredible action, mind-blowing visuals and innovative storytelling that power this truly astounding film."

Money did not exchange hands on this agreement, because Warner Brothers and NBC feel that the national audience for arena football should be receptive to the kind of action anticipated for The Matrix Reloaded.

Orlando will watch the Arizona at Los Angeles game.

Of a mind over 'The Matrix'

By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist, 4/10/2003

War, pestilence, bankruptcies -- I don't know about you, but I have had all the reality I can handle. It's time to reenter . . . ''The Matrix.'' The campaign against Saddam Hussein is winding down and the hype for ''The Matrix Reloaded'' movie is ramping up -- coincidence, or something more? How convenient of Bush & Co. to spool down the war just in time for Warner Bros. to provide some real entertainment.

It is indeed time to return to what Newsweek -- that unpredictable smorgasbord of information and absurdity -- called ''The Year of `The Matrix.' '' In a vast advertisement-thinly-disguised-as-a-cover-story, Newsweek dared to suggest that in creating the fantastically popular, digitally unreal world of ''The Matrix,'' filmmakers Andy and Larry Wachowski ''borrowed heavily from several sources, mostly comic books, Japanese anime and Asian kung fu movies.''

I should think not! If one of the most eminent boatload of fee-for-hire philosophers can be believed, the true sources of ''The Matrix'' are Plato, the Gnostic gospels, Ren Descartes, and Mahayana Buddhism. In preparation for the May 15 release of ''Reloaded,'' Warner Bros. retained Brooklyn College professor Christopher Grau to recruit some of the country's best known academic philosophers -- David Chalmers, Colin McGinn, James Pryor, and Hubert Dreyfus among them -- to write 14 articles analyzing the occasionally mystifying content of the greatest movie ever made.

''I was able to get people who are superstars in the world of philosophy,'' Grau says. ''Of course no one has ever heard of them.'' Part of the assignment's allure was the exotic material: ''I'm a fan of the movie, and writing about it was a lot of fun,'' says Julia Driver, an ethics professor at Dartmouth who has been showing the first film to students, with excellent results. Grau explains an added attraction: ''We were able to pay rates comparable to mainstream journalism, which compares favorably with the professional philosophy journals. They pay nothing.''

I have always found philosophy texts to be heavy paddling, and these essays are no exception. Wheaton College's John Partridge has one, ''Plato's Cave and `The Matrix,' '' which is pretty comprehensible. Chalmer's contribution, ''The Matrix as Metaphysics,'' is borderline understandable, until you reach this warning sign: ''This slightly technical section can be skipped without too much loss.''

Chalmers, director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, likens the perceptual challenge offered by ''The Matrix'' to the philosophical conundrum of an ''envatted'' brain, a laboratory brain stored in a vat and programmed to receive stimuli from the ''real world.'' He seemed quite fascinated when I mentioned Krang, the envatted brain who battles the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from inside the Technodrome. But I digress.

You can read the articles at the official Matrix website, www.thematrix.com. And they are being peer-reviewed by readers for the Oxford University Press for possible publication. ''If Oxford printed these, that would be huge,'' Grau admits.

I would commend them to your attention, because, like me, you may gain some practical information. ''It may well be that we're living in a matrix,'' says Chalmers, who has given the matter considerable thought. ''It's not something I would rule out.''

Strike fourAfter I wrote disparagingly last month about Major League Baseball Advanced Media's herky-jerky ''free'' online broadcast of a Red Sox game, MLB.com spokesman Jim Gallagher wrote to my editor and me, demanding a retraction: ''To explicitly represent that you had to pay $15 for our `free' service is nothing short of blatantly false.'' Well, now the ''false'' $15 monthly charge has shown up on my credit card bill, and I can't get rid of it. On Monday, an MLB.com customer service rep said he would help me and get back to me and never did. I spent about a half-hour Tuesday holding for service that never came, and then the line was busy several times in the afternoon. In desperation, I asked Gallagher, the spokesman, to take care of my problem. No reply. Bravo, Major League Baseball. You can't buy bad publicity like this.