part 1, Jada Pinkett-Smith interview

5.5.03
By Burly Brawlin' Smilin' Jack Ruby
Contributing sources:

Hoo-boy.

It's going to be two, two, two weeks of non-stop Matrix Reloaded coverage "Tales From the Junket Circuit"-style (meaning: poorly written and bizarre, but with some decent quotes from the involved talent). We've got all kinds of mad junket stuff, bits on the Animatrix DVD, and a ton of other stuff leading up to my review of the movie, which I'm debating whether to just go ahead and do a spoiler-filled one that just has a ton of see-it-first-before-you-read-it type stuff in it so I can discuss the ending.

But regardless, we're starting with the junket from last Friday where we talked with Keanu, Carrie-Anne, Laurence, Jada, Monica, Lord Silver, John Gaeta and others...

Wait. Just wait a minute. It's impossible to approach this like any other fucking movie. I was on the set of Matrix Reloaded in Sydney. I've written articles on it that appeared everywhere from The Philadelphia Inquirer to Starburst Magazine. I attended the premiere of The Final Flight of the Osiris where I got drunk while playing Enter the Matrix. I've reported quotes on it from Lord Silver in almost everything I've written about him since the junket for Swordfish ("It's called...The Matrix Reloaded. Got that? The Matrix...Reloaded!!!). I don't think I've ever covered a movie more than this or awaited a film more hotly. I kind of figured I'd know what I was getting into.

Not even close. With X2, I was pretty close to the film coverage-wise and, I hate to say it, I'm starting to think that might've ruined it a bit for me as there were no real surprises and the saturation factor nailed me. With Reloaded, my expectations for what the movie would be turned out to have FUCK-ALL to do with the actual film. I was thinking The Matrix Reloaded would be "the next Matrix" movie in the franchise and really didn't listen when everybody said – for the past two years or so – that it was going to be completely different, completely expanded, and take the series in a completely different direction. Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back fit together pretty easily. The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded are more similar to something like Evil Dead and Evil Dead II.

Okay, so maybe that's a bizarre analogy, but oh, well. Once you'll see it, you'll get the idea.

Anyway, so after seeing the pic last Thursday, I had to go do the junket on the Warners lot (yep, a'la Scooby-Doo, sans "talking dog" over speaker phone interview as translated by James Gunn and Richard Suckle). At the breakfast beforehand, I talked to a lot of press people who were extremely mixed on the movie – moreso than I figured would be. Almost negative were some of the comments and though it would be great to write it all up as "expectation backlash," I believe it comes from the film just being not something you can just easily wrap your head around. I'm seeing it for the second time this Thursday night and I'm sure it won't be the last time I catch it on the big screen. This is one of those movies with LOTS of secrets that you really want to get into. It's fascinating and you keep thinking about it – day after day after day. You talk about it with those who have seen it, deconstructing the ending and talking about all its implications.

I can honestly say, it's like reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon or something. It's a weighty film with lots going on in it. Because most film critics see upwards of 7 or 8 movies a week, it's oftentimes frustrating when, suddenly, you can't have a "quick opinion" on a movie. When a film stops you in your tracks and DEMANDS that you think about its every implication. I was kind of like, "huh" after the film and tried desperately to come up with a "quick" opinion, something fast and witty to say, but it ain't that kind of movie. The Matrix Reloaded, upon further reflection, is absolutely visionary and one helluva thing to think about. I pretty much stopped thinking about X2 the morning after I saw it. I was thinking about Reloaded as I was driving around today.

So, that's just about the highest recommendation you can give a film. BUT, you have to alter your expectations a bit from the first one.

Anyway, enough of my meandering ramblings.

Jada Pinkett-Smith plays Niobe in The Matrix Reloaded, a plucky hovership captain who used to be "with" Morpheus, but now is with his rival, Commander Lock (Harry J. Lennix), who finds Morpheus to be both insubordinate, but also a bit crazy in his religious devotion to finding "the One." Anyway, I'd talking to Jada a little bit about the movie at the premiere of Final Flight which she attended with husband Will Smith with kids in tow, but this time she really laid it out for us about her part in the film (much expanded in Revolutions – it seems that she did more work for Enter the Matrix than in Reloaded, actually).

The first question came up as to how Jada felt about coming into a pre-established ensemble as "the new kid." "Well, it felt great," Pinkett-Smith enthused. "I had an opportunity to actually meet the Wachowski Brothers several times for the first Matrix. I knew the story very well. I knew exactly what they were trying to do in the first one and was happy to see that they were successful with it. And so when I found out that they actually had an idea for two and three and found out that they created a character for me, of course I was elated, flattered and excited." So, they had you in mind for this one? "I didn't find out until, let me see, I think they were two months away from actually starting training," she admitted. "I didn't know at the time of meeting with them about Matrix, the first one, that they had this concept of two and three. It's actually one big movie."

As the role is pretty physical for Niobe – allegedly in the third movie in particular – we asked about her training regimen, which she had commented on at the Sydney junket as being particularly grueling. "When I took on the role, I was nine months pregnant," Pinkett-Smith laughed. "I said, 'Well, don't worry about it.' Willow was due on November 11th but I told them that Willow was coming in October. And she came October 31st. She came at the end of October. She did me that little solid there. And then two months later, I started training. I had fight training in the morning and then the afternoon was all weight training. I put on 15 pounds of muscle. I was bench-pressing about 170. You don't really get to see it in this movie, but the next movie you'll see all the work that I did - it was hardcore training. My fight training wasn't as stressful as Keanu and Carrie-Ann and Laurence. Actually the Kung Fu training for me was actually pretty easy, you know, just because of my height and because I'm such a petite person. So, the wires were not difficult. They would actually say I was a Kung Fu natural."

As for her tight leather costume, we asked if she ever got tired of wearing it. "No, I always loved being in that outfit because I really felt very Niobe-ish in the outfit, so the more I could put the outfit on, the more I got to," she replied. But wasn't it constricting for the fight scenes? "You know what? It's funny because you have a stretchy material for the fight scenes. It's not the leather for the fight scenes. It's a stretchy material that they make like the leather. So, it stretches, it moves with your body."

As for what Jada thought of the philosophy behind the movie, that was something she really got into. "It's funny because they're actually philosophies that we deal with every day of our life," Pinkett-Smith suggested. "First one, dealing with what do you believe, you know. This one is about choices. Every day we have to make choices of some sort. Am I going to run this yellow light? Am I going to stop until it's red? You have to make choices throughout your whole day. You have your small choices, you have your big choices. And, um, so I mean, that's what I love about it. It's just such a universal concept."

The Wachowski Brothers – who I have never met, no matter how much coverage I claim to have done for the movie (no, we didn't even see them on set in Australia. Hilariously, I was reading a Creative Screenwriting article the other day with quotes from them – got excited that they had done an interview and discovered that the quotes were just taken from some documentary on the Matrix DVD) – were a constant source of conversation with the talent, so of course, we asked Jada about her opinion of the mysterious, unseen brothers. "The Wachowski Brothers are very unique," Pinkett-Smith laughed. "They are probably- - Larry and Andy are probably two of the smartest people I know. Larry reads everything. He reads everything. I mean, everything, you know what I mean. One thing I learned through Larry, through Andy also, is that life is about research. Larry, he's constantly researching. And he's constantly reading and that's one thing that I've taken away from this project, that life is about research."

As for how much explanation the brothers give to their actors about the movie, Pinkett-Smith said that it doesn't interfere with the actors' own interpretations. "You know what-they've done a lot of talking with Keanu and they also give story, a list of books to read," Pinkett-Smith said. "But they really try not to infringe upon, they give you a general concept. It's kinda like how the film has been made. It doesn't infringe upon what your personal opinion might be. It leaves room for you to kind of add in your own philosophy, and that's really how they work.

"You'll probably see this in the gossip columns farmed out by a personal publicist soon to show what a nice guy Keanu is (he really is, by the way – just oddly centered), but you saw it here FIRST as Jada told us a nice tale about him. "I just remember we finished training one day and this big truck pulled up to the set, this huge truck," Pinkett-Smith recalled. "And in this truck was 12 Harleys. A Harley for each of the stunt guys that had worked on the Burly Brawl with [Keanu]. He gave each of them a motorcycle with a helmet and a whole deal and I was like, 'God damn.' He just had a truckload of Harleys come in. It was like 'Unload 'em, here you guys go' and he was just so gracious and it wasn't like, 'Yeah, makin' a big deal, I got these Harleys.' He's like 'That's for you guys' and he went on his way.

"Finally, as a mom of young kids, the question came up of whether or not she felt it appropriate for her kids to see the movie. "No, not my youngest ones," Pinkett-Smith replied. "My 10 year old is going to see it. I would allow him to see it." But not your youngest son? "He's four," she added. "I think it's just a lot for him to understand and I think he would get bored. I don't really look at the violence as being- - I look at the martial arts as being more of a dance and not violence. And I actually love the sensuality that was in it. I thought it was- - you know, we'll easily let our kids play video games to shoot people up but then the minute there's a kiss or some passion involved, we're like (gasps) 'Can't watch that!' My 10 year old, I think he can handle it. I think it'll actually be good for him."And that's the roundtable with Jada Pinkett-Smith from the junket of The Matrix Reloaded. Look for much, much more from the junket in coming days (I think I'll send Nick Carrie-Anne Moss for tomorrow). The Matrix Reloaded blasts into theaters everywhere on May 15th.

part 2, Carrie-Anne Moss interview

5.6.03
By Burly Brawlin' Smilin' Jack Ruby
Contributing sources:

Next up in our marathon coverage, the lovely Carrie-Anne Moss aka Trinity, the ass-kicking, black leather-wearing femme fatale we all wish would come up to us in a bar and begin speaking drunken gibberish that made no sense.

Anyway, Carrie-Anne is quite pregnant at the moment (dispelling all those "she's a virgin" rumors), but happily going and doing press for The Matrix Reloaded and yapping at us press types about the film. The roundtable got spoilery, so this is a bit censored, but whatever. Straight from the top, we asked her about the new romantic elements involved between Trinity and Neo and if that was a challenge of sorts. "It wasn't challenging, it was beautiful," Moss admitted. "I liked that, I liked finding more layers to Trinity and having her change. From the first Matrix, I always thought of her as this warrior who had this secret that had to do with her purpose and with Neo and if he was the One or not. In the second and third one, I got to really have a more softer side of her come out through being in love, because things change when you're in love. I mean, I personally, my whole life changed when I fell in love. So I really had to put that into it."

It was widely reported early on the Carrie-Anne had broken her leg on this one, so we asked just how much harder Reloaded and Revolutions were for her. "It was much harder for me," Moss said. "But I knew what to expect. The first time around, I had no idea. I was very, you know, 'ignorance is bliss.' I just wanted to be in this movie and do what I could. The second one was much harder. It was a lot longer. And I broke my leg right away during training. It was tough. I broke my leg in the beginning of training, so that was six months before we started shooting. So I had 8 weeks where I was really forced to sit out and watch. It was brutal."

What's interesting about The Matrix Reloaded versus The Matrix is that Morpheus isn't the "prophet" he's implied to be in the first movie. In Zion, there are many who think that Morpheus is just a crazy person. So, of course, the question came as to why Trinity so fervently believes in Morpheus and Neo. "I always had an idea about Trinity, about her back story," said Moss. "One thing that I always thought about her was that she was taken out of the Matrix very young, like 11 or 12. And I always thought that her conviction was just very strong. What I love about Morpheus in the second one is that you almost start going, is he crazy? Whereas in the first one, it's just like there's Morpheus and you believe in him. But all of a sudden you go, how does he know what he knows? And so many people are doubting him and other characters are going, the guy's wacky, and you suddenly have this whole different perspective. Whereas for Trinity, I've always believed that she so full-heartedly believes in what she believes in."

The oh-so-elusive Wachowski Brothers were asked about again, particularly in how they were different one film to the next. "Well, they grew," Moss suggested. "They're definitely evolving as human beings, growing and changing just like all of us have changed so much. They're even more committed and even more dedicated. And they also had so much more on their plate. They were setting the tone for the whole thing, so they're responsible for inspiring a big group of people. I don't know if you remember at the end of the movie, all the people that it took to make it? I was just, 'Oh my God, ya know?' And every person, from the set decorators to the set painters to the construction, people were so inspired to work on this film and really cared and really wanted to do it. And why? Because of them." Were they more or less stressed out? "Well, after 270 days of shooting, they were pretty thin!"

As Carrie-Anne was really a B-movie veteran prior to The Matrix and her character has become so iconic - despite roles in such varied projects as Chocolat and Memento - we asked if she was ever worried about being typecast as Trinity. "No, I don't think like that." Moss replied. "I feel a lot of different things about that, but the first thing that comes to mind is I'm just so grateful that I got this job and got to do these movies. It's, like, the highlight of my career. I'm not looking to go bigger and attain something more. This is like, if this is it for me, then thank you God, it was great and I had such a good time. I'm kind of about living my life. I want to be an actor, but it's not the be-all end-all for me. If I play strong, powerful women for the rest of my career, thank you God."

That said, do you ever tire of all the leather? "Yeah, a little bit," Moss admitted sheepishly. "But I got to wear so many different things this time around. But by the end, when I got to take it off, and I knew it was the last time I wore it, although I felt sad. The brothers gave me, as a gift, my jacket and my glasses suspended in this glass thing. It really ought to be in a museum, 'cause I don't know where it would go in my house. Toilet paper on it, I don't know. And it has pictures of, like, all of the journey of her, and you can plug it in and it lights. I didn't want to keep anything when I was finished because it was like I gave everything I had to play her for two years, and I loved it and thanked it, but I was ready to find a new experience."

As you've seen in the trailers and the stills, Trinity has a bad ass motorcycle chase and, YES, that is Carrie-Anne on the bike. "It was really challenging for me and I really didn't know if I would do it until the day that I actually did it," Moss said. "I didn't want to feel pressured. I didn't want to endanger my life and another actor's life based on wanting to please someone. Although I felt responsible to do it, I also knew that, in the end, I had to be really responsible for that. So I trained like crazy to learn how to overcome my fear on the bike."

But, you trained your ass off for it, right? "Months," Moss replied. "I started out on a really little bike, and I worked myself up. My fear being that, if I fell off that bike and I have no helmet, you know? And this actor that I adore on the back . But on the day that I did it, I didn't allow myself to doubt myself for one minute. Whereas like, on the wire and doing other stuff, I have kind of a process that I found that I would do in action sequences, which is where I come in kind of serious, I'd give it and give and then I'd have a bit of a breakdown somewhere. Sometimes I'd need to have that breakdown in order to overcome it. It's like I'd have to go, 'Oh, I can't do this' to "OK, fuck, I can do this!' Whereas on the bike, I was like, Today, Carrie-Anne, you don't get to indulge in any part of our neuroses about who you are as a person and la la la. You are going to be hardcore serious. This is about having a goal. So for that week, and afterwards . . . Sometimes, I drive my car now and I think about it, and I get overwhelmed by it. It was absolutely terrifying for me." Did the Wachowskis pressure you to do it? "They wanted me to do it," Moss admitted. "They let me know, pretty early on, that they expected it of me." But they did tell you that you didn't have to do it, right? "Ummm . . . I wouldn't say that they did," Moss replied in all seriousness. "They really wanted me to do it and it sells the whole thing that I did what I did, and I understand why I needed to do what I did because without it, it wouldn't have worked. You needed to see me on that bike, you needed to have those shots."

Damn. The Wachowskis are pretty hardcore, eh?

Moving away from writer-directors threatening to kill their actors in elaborate stunts, we asked Moss what she thought of the film's philosophy. "I love it and I believe in it strongly," Moss enthused. "I really believe in the philosophies of the movies - having a purpose in life, being aligned with that purpose, being committed to that purpose. Believing in something. Being awake. Choosing to see life how you see life. Being part of a team, supporting other people to be the greatest people that they can be. Supporting other people in having their purpose executed. Love."

Yeah, but fuck all that, what about the big fight scenes you're a part of. "Keanu's fights are just incredible to me," Moss said. "I wish you could all see the extent of his commitment, because you would respect him even more. He is unlike any actor I have ever met; any person I've met, actually. Physically, he just takes himself to the edge. He is willing to do whatever it takes to learn. He is so hardcore with himself and so hard on himself. It took that kind of commitment. He's the One, ya know? I don't think there's any other actor that could have played that character. I know it. And without any kind of movie star bullshit. He's not in it to be hot and strong and aren't-I-cool? There's just none of that. He's there because he loves this character and he loves the brothers and he loves the movie and he really wants to be in them."

Finally, as a follow-up, we asked about why impossibly well-choreographed martial arts were so important to these movies which are, for all intents and purposes, actually really exhaustive fables about the human condition. "Because we made two movies and the expectation was greater," Moss suggested. "It's different, though, now. We've seen so much martial arts in films that it doesn't have quite the impact, I think, that the first film had in terms of that was like the first time that some people ever saw that kind of stuff. But I mean, that brawl with Keanu and all those Hugos? That's unbelievable. Then you incorporate special effects in that, and you just have something that is so incredible."

And that's the lovely Carrie-Anne Moss talking up her role as Trinity in The Matrix Reloaded. Tomorrow, well, shit, I don't know. Maybe it'll be Laurence Fishburne, which would be cool as he was really fun and caustic. Or maybe somebody else. We've got a long way to go, peeps (and yeah, I think both me and the Nick-ster (Nick-son?) are going to review the Animaxtrix DVD so it's ALL MATRIX, ALL THE TIME.

Before, of course, we drop it like a hot potato on May 16th and move on to covering whatever the next one is. Such is liff.

The Matrix Reloaded hits theaters from Warner Brothers on May 15th.

part 3, Laurence Fishburne interview

5.7.03
By Burly Brawlin' Smilin' Jack Ruby
Contributing sources:

And we're back with Part 3. Somebody mentioned on the boards that the way I was writing these up was a little "off" or confusing, so do you want straight transcripts? We'll try today and see what you cats say.

I should mention that the Hollywood Reporter review hit and it's pretty interesting, citing the long, philosophical bits in The Matrix Reloaded as a problem for them as well (something that's being mentioned in many a review). It's a good, spoilerish review, so if you're bound and determined to ruin the movie for yourself, check it out!

Next up at the junket was the booming presence of Laurence Fishburne, a hell of a guy who always shoots straight and gives great "quote," though he knows the game and won't ever be caught off-point in an interview. He's a sharp, sharp guy – one of the sharpest around – and if he doesn't want to answer your question, he won't. But, he's not a dick about it like Harrison Ford or anything – he's just to the point. So, I really dig the guy.

Regardless, here's Fishburne, speaking at the junket roundtables for The Matrix Reloaded. If you HATE the Q&A fashion, mention it on the boards and I'll go back to whatever.

Question: Morpheus was infallible in The Matrix, but now we have reason to doubt his sanity...

Laurence: How nice is that? It makes him human. It's wonderful.

Question: But you're a different kind of leader now.

Laurence: Well, he's the general in this movie. He's the guy that goes, 'Follow me. Everyone follow me.' He's that guy. It's like Patton.

Question: Does that mean there's a different Morpheus in the third movie?

Laurence: Well, yeah. Surely there's another shift for him in the third movie that involves being even more vulnerable I think.

Question: Did the success of The Matrix change the Wachowskis?

Laurence: I'm sure it has changed them. I'm not exactly sure how, as Larry and Andy are very private people and they don't share the intimate details of their lives with very many people. Outside of their immediate family, I don't know who they share those things with. It would be foolish to think that it hasn't affected them. The obvious thing to me is that they put themselves under a great amount of pressure to make sure that these two movies meet the expectations that they had for them. Not necessarily anybody else's expectations but their own expectations. I think they put themselves under a tremendous amount of pressure.

Question: Did you like doing those big Zion Zion scenes?

Laurence: It was great. We had those extras there. There were like 1500 people or something in this huge building. It was actually kind of like being in the theater.

Question: So, you're really looking at all those extras when you give your speech?

Laurence: Yes.

Question: Did it pump you up?

Laurence: Yeah, it's like being in the theater. It's wonderful to have a real audience.

Question: What was it like doing that fight sequence on top of the tractor trailer?

Laurence: Well, it was long. It was about 45 days to shoot the entire freeway sequence and there were a lot if different elements to it, because there's everything that leads out of the garage. It starts in the garage, comes out onto the street, from the street through the fence, under the freeway and then through another fence and then onto the freeway. Then going one way on the freeway and another way on the freeway and the bike and the truck and the things. So, a lot of different elements to put together. The first thing you should know is I said to Erik Rondell - I just looked at him and I said I'm scared. He said, "I know. I'm going to take care of you." So, he sent Carrie-Anne, myself and the Rayment twins, Adrian and Neil all out to driving school. And we spent a day out there learning how to do 180s and, you know, 90s and 45 degree angles and skids and all of that shit. Let me tell you something, Carrie Ann can really get down. She can really do it. So, we got that out of the way and that was getting us comfortable with being in a car and having a car do those kind of things. And then we went out to the freeway. The first day we went out to the freeway and I was really, really nervous because it was the first day we were going to actually be one the freeway moving around in the cars. It was kind of a rehearsal day. I looked around and I saw Henry Kenji and I saw Buddy Joe Hooker and I saw a bunch of other stunt guys that I've worked with before, some of them who had coordinated with me, some of them who just came in, did a bit for the day, whatever. And I was like, 'Oh my God.' They were all like the best drivers in our business. All of them.

Question: So was it rough doing the truck bit?

Laurence: The truck top stuff was really tricky because Daniel [Bernhardt – who plays Agent Johnson] and I had to work on a platform that was actually moving. And Daniel has a lot of experience with fighting in the movies. More than I do. It's really a brutal kind of fight. It's these two big men fighting. So, the nice part about it was that any time we were sort of urged to swing harder and make it look closer, more power and all of that shit, Daniel would always whisper to me going, 'I'm not going to hurt you.'

Question: Were you actually filming on a truck?

Laurence: No, we weren't moving on the highway, but we were on a moving platform.

Question: What's the big difference between this film and the last one?

Laurence: This one's bigger. In every way. It's just more. It's just more stuff.

Question: With this intensive of a shoot, how does it compare to something like Apocalypse Now?

Laurence: Apocalypse was harder. We didn't have- - we were in the southern hemisphere, we were in a country that was under martial law and we were living in the jungle. We weren't living in like Sydney.

Question: Was it shocking they pushed the story that far in this?

Laurence: No, no. I think it's exciting. The Wachowski describe the themes of the trilogy in this way. The first movie is about birth. The second movie is about life and the third movie's about death. So, in life, anything's possible.

Question: Did you distinguish between the films?

Laurence: It's all one movie. It's all one movie. You have to think of it as one movie.

Question: What do you think about the film's philosophies?

Laurence: I don't think very much about them. I'm not a philosopher. I don't pretend to be a philosopher. I'm not a student of philosophy.

Question: Did you take it on faith they knew what they were doing?

Laurence: Of course, yeah. That's really where I operate from is a place of intuitiveness.

Question: Why was the fighting so important?

Laurence: I think it's part of the audience's expectation that they have to absolutely fulfill.

Question: Was the training for this more than before?

Laurence: No, it was pretty much the same stuff.

Question: Was it hard to keep those sunglasses on?

Laurence: No, you just gotta be really cool when you wear them.

Question: What was the hardest thing?

Laurence: The hardest thing to do was falling off the truck, because I had to- - think about it. They're going to put you on a fucking truck, put you 30 feet in the air, tell you, "Okay, now you fall backwards onto a car and don't look behind you."

Question: How many times did you have to do that?

Laurence: I did that three or four times.

Question: Should we, as members of the press, talk about all the multi-ethnic aspects of these movies?

Laurence: That's up to you, baby. That's up to you.

Question: Well, do you have feelings about it?

Laurence: That is up to you. That's on you.

Question: Do you think Morpheus is really crazy?

Laurence: Well, it's interesting for me because when we were doing the first movie, the Wachowskis kept saying Morpheus is crazy. Morpheus is crazy. And I kept going no, he's not. There's nothing crazy about him. Because if you're playing somebody who's crazy, you can't play him like they're crazy, right? That's boring. But in this movie when that whole- - when the whole freeway sequence happens, when I read that, I was like oh, I see. Okay. You get to see how crazy he is. He's really fucking out of his mind. But, he's so committed to whatever this thing is that he'll make you crazy before you make him sane.

Question: Were you there when Keanu was doing his fighting?

Laurence: I stayed away from that fight. It was too hot in there for me. The lights they had in there were just nuts and it was one of those really tedious things. Also, Keanu can be really hard on himself. I don't really like- - I don't enjoy being around him when he's being hard on himself.

Question: Why is he hard on himself?

Laurence: He just is because he gives a shit.

Question: Is he a perfectionist?

Laurence: No, he's just really hard on himself and he gives a shit, and that's that. So I don't like being around him when he's being hard on himself. And he was hard on himself the whole time they did the burly brawl, which is why I wasn't around.

Question: What can you tell us about Keanu?

Laurence: Not a fucking thing. I've known the man for five years. All I can tell you that I know, certainly I know, I love that motherfucker, but I don't know a fucking thing about him. I'm telling you the truth. That motherfucker's like nobody else on the planet. That's why he's the one.

Question: What's your favorite aspect of The Matrix?

Laurence: For me, it's all about the fact that here's this piece of material where there's one world and it's the real world. And then there's the other world and it exists in your brain and that means that anything is possible, and that to me is just brilliant. There are endless possibilities with that.

Okay, so that's Laurence Fishburne at the junket for The Matrix Reloaded – spoilers omitted. Next up, well, who the hell knows – likely visual effects supervisor John Gaeta talking it up with Lord Joel Silver, but maybe Keanu Reaves himself. We'll see. Yeah, Monica Bellucci won't be until NEXT week, playas.

And it continues...

The Matrix Reloaded, like you didn't fucking know, opens on March 15th every-fucking-where.

part 4, Joel Silver/John Gaeta interview

5.8.03
By Burly Brawlin' Smilin' Jack Ruby
Contributing sources

Lord help us, we're back with Part 4 of the neverending Tales From The Junket Circuit column concerning the upcoming sci-fi sequel, The Matrix Reloaded. This time, we're talking to the One and Only, His Holiness Lord Joel Silver and one of the guys who took home a special effects Oscar on the last one, Visual Effects Supervisor, John Gaeta.

Why no hoopla for Lord Joel, really? Well, to be frank, Lord Joel looked pretty tuckered out by the time he got to our table, I had interviewed him just recently at the Animatrix press line and I wasn't likely to get Gaeta again, so I really wanted to rapid-fire ask Gaeta as much shit as possible.

Have you listened to the commentary on the DVD to The Matrix? To me, I thought Gaeta sounded pretentious as hell on the disc and it matched with the guy I saw on the Oscars – all spiffed out in black leather looking like a mean-ass motherfucker, but also kind of a nerd. But then in Sydney, I met the guy and thought he was not only fucking cool as hell, but also one talented visionary who not only knew his shit, but also knew where he wanted visual effects to go. I like John Gaeta and I think his work on The Matrixand its sequels are right up there with the ground-breaking work done on the first Star Wars film.

Oh, and he gives long answers. He's not going for sound bytes, he's going for trying to make you really understand what the fuck he's talking about. Yet another reason to think John Gaeta is this shit. Without further ado, here's a subdued Lord Joel and a pumped-up John Gaeta.

First thing out of my mouth was I asked him what he was looking to perfect from other movies with the work in Reloaded and what kind of goals he had when he wanted to raise the bar a few more notches this go round. "There’s a variety of things," Gaeta replied. "There are ideas that have gone on in a few other films past, and then there’s our own last project, both areas we wanted to create our own extension, evolution. Without a doubt, really evolving up the superhuman, superhero action that has been attempted in many projects of the last ten years, fifteen years, but really always seeming to fall short because of the physical realities of trying to move men in tights with wires is really – is an obstacle that has prevented the real idea of the power, the energy, the essence of that type of a character from really getting through. That’s where you at some point can get stopped in your tracks and lose the connection to the story, at that point when you see the failure of the power. So what we really wanted to do was to create a mechanism, a method, that allowed us a limitless ability to show superhuman events. That was an approach that we – the approach we crafted was using virtual humans and virtual environments effectively in all digital scenes to have the tools for the directors to really get what they wanted to out of those ideas. On a more simple local level you could say flying, for example, is like a subject that has been screwed up countless times through the history of film. It often looks forced and we wanted to approach it like everything else in the Matrix, as in it is an experience within the mind, it’s a subconscious event, and so our approach was to make that a lot more mental than a physical feat. Lots of little things like that."

Fred Topel of About.com had made the point to me that certain producers had been telling him of late that they would "blur" CG stuntmen effects to make them look more real (ie. Bulletproof Monk). So, naturally that question came up as well and why Reloaded didn't go there. "It’s an effective method of hiding mistakes," Gaeta laughed. "The Matrix is about hyper-reality. Let’s put it this way, the visual experience is hyper-real when you’re inside the matrix, so clarity and ultra-sharpness has been the nuance that we actually have spent a lot of time working on. It makes things ten times harder of course, because the detail – it’s there on the big screen, when it moves in ultra slow motion, you are exposed completely every little detail, error or not, is visible, but it is the visual goal for the brothers to make everything as crisp, clean, sharp and as distinct as possible."

The neverending questions about what the Wachowskis were Really Like kept coming back up with one journo asking if one of the brothers would take the lead on the effects stuff more than the other. "No, they are very much into the application of visual effects to reach a more fantastic design," Gaeta replied. "The one thing about them is, once they’ve observed a process in any of the design disciplines, whether it be production design or cinematography or visual effects or costumes, they are very astute at understanding the process and then they start asking very specific questions that fit within your process to try to pull out new ways of getting details. They are both like that, they both relate back and forth on what they want out of the details, so it’s really about the content more than the visual effects. They are always interested in the content you’re going to get."

So, how would you describe the brothers? "How would I describe them?" Gaeta said. "Well, they are very intelligent, they’re very funny, they’re very specific in what they want, they don’t beat around the bush trying to find the thought or the idea, they know it. Really at times your experience with them it can be a hilarious or it can be one in which you’ve thought harder, which can be a very stressful one too as you try to solve some kind of problem. It’s a whole range of things. It’s a fantastic land between the very intellectual and very lighthearted. It’s a nice balance." Well, does one have a particular strength over the other? "No, I’m not going to get into all of that," Gaeta said. "They are brothers, and brothers are brothers – they have connections between each other, and they’re filmmakers and they have their way of going about getting their material – they each have their own personalities, of course, and they have their interests that they show."

Straight up, we asked Silver if – after his looooong-ass time doing of big movies, if this was biggest thing of his career. Naturally, Silver replied in the affirmative. "I think of anybody’s," Silver replied. "You’re dealing with a situation where these guys, the Wachowski brothers, had a passion for telling this story in so many mediums that it gave us the opportunity to really expand the notion of a story in a movie, because you have a video game with an hour’s worth of footage with a lot more story, you have these nine animes which also in some cases directly impact the story, and you have just a whole sweeping area of production that is trying to have all these things come together and happen at the same time. At the same time you have two movies that are going to come out six months apart, and new technology that has never existed before that is creating – we’re not the military, so we had to figure out the best way to do it ourselves, and just changing the way people make movies and tell stories. So you’re talking about a massive amount of new – it’s all new."

Something that really surprised the fuck out of me about The Matrix Reloaded was that despite all the leaps forward in CGI, there were quite a few practical miniatures in the movie – particularly with the first shots of Zion – that are spectacular. I asked Gaeta about this blend. "You make different choices based on what the content is," Gaeta explained. "We have two distinctly different worlds, one is the matrix, which is hyper-realism, electronic environment, it’s got very clean, contemporary designs related to it, then you have the real world which tends to be more of a Dystopian age and arcane world, and the textures and the qualities of the details in the real world at times lend themselves to the synchratic results you get when you splatter paint on a surface. [Production Designer (and all-around bad ass)] Owen Patterson is a master at painting his sets in all of that. And we thought for certain types of scenes that we really wanted to follow his lead in his approach, so we literally incorporated some of the same people to recreate textures like that. Our job is to create extensions for the stuff that’s happening on a macro level, and so we chose to do certain things in an analog fashion The truth of the matter is, about 95% is digital. And then there’s this gray zone, because we believe that the blend that you need, the fluidity that you need to ride from the all photographic shot into the all visual shot really mandates that you are stealing and sourcing every aspect that you possibly can from the real, so everything in the matrix that you may see which is a fully digital environment, and there’s quite a lot – probably a lot more than you realize, it has been constructed with new methods that we have created to acquire the form, shape, texture, every nuance of the real things that we’ve made. It’s kind of like they’re dimensional representations of the real things that we did make. It’s a nice marriage of things."

After seeing the movie, we were wondering a bit as to why the movie was rated R. It's violent, yeah, but it's not as bad as you might think. So, we asked Lord Silver why it was an R-rating. "That’s a question for the MPAA," Silver sighed. "It’s for science fiction violence. I don’t really know what that means exactly. These are action pictures that are a little tougher than what is conventionally a PG-13 movie. It doesn’t have things in it that I think are directly R-rated themes, but the first one was a R movie and this one is too. It’s interesting, in Scandinavia it got what they call 11, which means anyone from 7 years old and up can see the movie, I guess 6 years old is a little bit too young. Even in Germany where we had very specific – gave it 15, which means anybody over 15 can see the movie. And it’s troubling too, because on the opening weekend people are going to be comparing it to Spider-Man, or whatever, big grossing pictures, and they are going to have to realize that the largest R rated movie of all time was half the gross of Spider-Man, so it’s just troubling that they are going to compare it."

Next up, we asked Gaeta about the more complex of the special effects in the movie, just in general, and which ones were the most extensive. "There are visual effects in the film that are completely computer generated, every detail from the foreground action with the lead characters’ close up shots and all of that, every aspect, every other character, every dynamic event of things exploding or falling apart, the entire environment, every single thing that you saw in the frame during certain scenes, like for example the fight against the hundred Smiths, which is not all digital all the time, we weaved towards 100 percent digital, but the whole final third of that fight is completely computer generated, every aspect of it," replied Gaeta, all in one sentence. "We began our research on that and conceptual development, creative development, in January and February 2000, and we delivered the final shots from that scene five weeks ago. That was the gestation period to get those kinds of shots. There are other scenes that have taken advantage of that technology, but once you get to the level of complexity with the choreography that’s occurring in that scene, if you were to talk to Master Woo Ping, he would easily be able to tell you how unbelievably difficult it would be to even coordinate a fraction of what’s going on in the frame at any given time. So what we did was he, along with Larry and Andy, crafted, choreographed many, many events which we compiled together with some understanding of how they would relate to each other, but events that were occurring all in the frame at the same time that could never ever be put together at the same time."

The point came up that there are long sequences without camera cuts, something Gaeta seemed pretty happy about. "If you get to, why would you do it?" Gaeta asked. "One, you can get towards superhuman events obviously with the characters because you can create extensions off of the performances with complete freedom to compose, and effectively when you have the scene – here you have the scene, it has no cameras attached to it, it plays out in front of you, it’s like a minute of non-stop martial arts beauty. It's as if you were John Lasseter crafting Toy Story, you can now just go in and infinitely compose at will. And anything that you would desire – if you want a precise counter-move to some kung fu move, I can place a camera so perfectly, so precisely, I can be exactly where I need to be for every single event that I want to see, when I want to see it, I can have perfect moves that you could never get with cranes or the opposite – it’s about cinematic freedom. "

Finally, we asked Lord Silver if there was every anything – with the skyrocketing budget in mind – that they had to say "no" to. "There were some things where cost became a factor," Silver admitted. "We had certain things that we just couldn’t do, that we weren’t able to do."

Yeah, right. I can't fucking imagine what that would be, actually. The Matrix Reloaded has some effects work in it that had my jaw on the floor (seriously – my mouth opened and stayed open when they flew into Zion for the first time – better than anything in Attack of the Clones by a country mile). John Gaeta is like Stan Winston doing Jurassic Park and T2, like Rick Baker doing American Werewolf, like Rob Bottin doing The Thing, like John Chambers doing Planet of the Apes, like Pixar's work on Toy Story, like WETA's stuff on Lord of the Rings. It's incredible what he pulled off in this film.

Anyway, the Matrix Reloaded junket rolls on like a motherfucker. Probably do Monica Bellucci soon or the Animatrix guys next, though Keanu is a'comin'.

The Matrix Reloaded hits next Thursday, May 15th (though many theaters are doing midnight screenings on Wednesday the 14th – saw a sign at the theater next to USC over the weekend announcing as such). I'll be seeing it again tomorrow night, so I'll be interested to see how I feel about the movie after a "second" viewing.

part 5, Monica Bellucci interview

5.9.03
By Burly Brawlin' Smilin' Jack Ruby
Contributing sources:

Okay, so something just impossibly fucked up happened last night.

Like really fucked up. After seeing The Matrix Reloaded for the first time, I was like, "Wow, yeah, it's great, but the pacing is off and there are long philosophical meanderings that stop the movie cold after awhile. What the fuck?" It was something I talked about on the boards, something I talked about with the other members of press at the junket and it just kind of bugged me right and left.

Well, I saw Reloaded again last night (I must suck a LOT of Warner Brother cock, huh?) and it was night-and-day. I had zero problems with the pacing, the speeches, anything at all. I watched the movie and was like, "Wow, this is one of my favorite movies of the year, bar-none." WHA???

Yeah, it kind of shook me up a bit as things that really troubled me didn't the second time around. I was like, wait a minute. When the fuck did that ever happen before? The guy I saw the movie with had a lot of the same problems I had with it the first time around and was left cold by the flick, but I kept saying, "See it again!" Luckily, after the screening there was a second screening and who should be in line, but my pal David Poland (it was his third time seeing it). I said, "My God! It's 500 million times better when you see it a second time! What the FUCK?" He was like, "I know!!!"

I talked to a few more press types that had seen the movie twice and we were all like, "What the hell? What changed?" Well, one theory is that our expectations were in check. Another theory is, that, well...once you know the ending, the movie is completely different and operates on a different level (speeches from the Merovingian and the Oracle take on different meanings). But when you get to the end of a movie like The Usual Suspects, you track it back and are like, "Oh, okay. It makes sense! What a great puzzle box movie." With The Matrix Reloaded, it's such a fucked up movie to wrap your head around that I genuinely think – after seeing the first movie – you're simply not ready to see this as a sequel as it is so impossibly far-removed from the first one.

But whatever. There will be those who say that I'm just too big a Lord Joel fan to have any perspective on this (wouldn't it just be the GENIUS of Lord Joel to create a movie that absolutely requires its audience to see the film twice in order to ENFORCE two viewings and thereby, double the box office?), but whatever. I know what I saw. I love The Matrix Reloaded now, something I couldn't say before. I really, really think this is a Great Film. End of story. How weird is that?

Anyway, that's just a prelude to the main event, right? I'd never met Monica Bellucci before. I think she is one of the single most beautiful women working in film today (not anywhere near as beautiful as my girlfriend, of course, and as she occasionally reads the site, I felt I needed to add that) and I was looking forward to meeting her even though her appearance in Reloaded was little more than a cameo. Bellucci plays Persephone, the somewhat captive bride (read your mythology) of the Merovingian who plays a very important role in how Neo and the crew gets ahold of the Keymaker (it all makes sense when you see the movie). It's not a big part, but it's fun and DAMN if she ain't fine. F.I.N.E. Fine. Thank you. Good night.

Anyway, when Monica showed up at the junket, we thought it was over and were packing up. Then, a tall woman in black pants wearing a see-through linen shirt walked up to the table and had a seat, so we knew the junket was not only not over, but that...oh, nevermind. Bellucci comes off as being rather intelligent, rather well-spoken, and marvelously European. She's just everything you might expect her to be.

We started off, after gawking like mad men, asking Bellucci about her character in the film – but she was really intent on avoiding spoilers. "All I can say is that I'm very happy to be part of this project because I'm a big fan of Larry and Andy Wachowski and because [of] Bound, Bound was a big hit in Europe," Bellucci enthused. "When I saw Matrix, of course, I sat in love like everybody. And when I came out from the theater, I said to myself, 'I would love to be in a movie like that.' But I didn't know at the time that it was possible. It was four years ago, '99 it came out. Then Malena came out in America and the Wachowski brothers wanted to see me. Actually, today, when I see Persephone I understand why because the way she dressed, the way she talked, the way she walked was very Malena. And then I had a great time working with them, with the Wachowski brothers because they are completely in control. I come from Europe, a European school. For me, the directors are in control of the situation. Sometimes in America it's different because the producer has so much power, because the actor has so much power. Sometimes the actor will tell the director where to put the camera. Not in Europe, it doesn't exist because it's the director who is in control of the situation. And the Wachowski brothers feel that if they do whatever they want. If they need 20 takes or 40 takes, they do. If they don't like something, they're going to re-shoot the day after. And I love to work like that because I feel protected. I feel that I'm working with someone who's completely in control of the situation. So, and of course, it was great working with Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Ann Moss because Laurence to me is The Lion King (S.J.R. Note: In case you were wondering, no, Fishburne had nothing to do with The Lion King). He has such big presence. He'll take care of you. He's so protective. I mean, you are always scared when you come from Europe and you're in a movie where the actors have been working already together. It's like I'm going to feel out of the story, I don't know how it's going to be. And they were so, so nice. And Carrie is more shy, but has such a big heart. Carrie-Anne, we get along so well. When I saw her in Matrix, it was incredible how you can see an actress in an action movie where she can be strong and feminine at the same time. At the same time, it was a new representation of the woman in an action movie. And the Wachowski brothers respect women, because even in Bound, the female characters were so beautiful. And, my character, Persephone, nothing is a coincidence in this movie. What the actors do and also the name of the actor is never a coincidence. Persephone, I'm sure as you know, comes from the Greek mythology. Persephone is the daughter of the king of the gods, Zeus and the goddess of fertility, Demeter. She was kidnapped by the king of the underworld, Hades, to be his queen. She was allowed to come back into the living world just part of the year. This story means a lot to understand my character who is an old program who comes from an old matrix. So, she's not human, but she wants human emotions. So, she doesn't have feelings anymore but she can feel something just touching, just through the others. So, there is something really sad or really tragic about her. So, when people say oh, she's an evil character. No, she's not evil. She's desperate. There is something so tragic and so sad about this character." So, she helps them? "Yeah, but it's a game," Bellucci admitted. "It's so great with Lambert Wilson (who plays the Merovingian) in the movie. I think he's so funny and so beautiful, what he does."

Naturally, the question came up about the Wachowskis, next... "Larry and Andy are so mysterious, both of them," the equally mysterious Bellucci replied. "It's so mysterious. And actually, I'm so sad that I didn't have time to get deep in the relation with them because I would love to know where Matrix is coming from. Which kind of philosophies they read. I would like to know because this film is much more than a visual movie. It's much more than a beautiful special effects movie. There is a deep meaning, a philosophy of life and a story about love. It's what man is looking for inside himself and is looking for answers. It's very religious, because the Keymaker says, 'I'm here because I have to be here. This is my meaning, like all of us. We all have a different meaning.' There is something really religious about this movie."

Next, we asked her if she was bummed that she didn't get to do any martial arts. "Yeah, but [this dress] would be so difficult to do martial arts in," she said. Tell us about the dress. "My character was Kym Barrett's idea," Bellucci continued. "I mean, I went to Australia and the dress was ready. I just put the dress on and Persephone was there. Also, the way you had to walk, the way she has to move, I couldn't sit, I couldn't do anything. That's the way she has to be straight and everything, it helped me to play the character."

As we asked pretty much everyone this as they always came back with great answers, we asked Monica what she thought about the philosophies presented in the movie. "I come from a Catholic religion, but I'm not Catholic," smiled Bellucci. "But like everybody, I'm looking for answers, so in a different way, I think we all recognize ourselves in the characters. It's incredible because sometimes even in each movie I do, there is always meanings like that. When we did press for Irreversible, we talked a lot about life and the meaning of things. I just finished Passion with Mel Gibson. There are all these things about meaning." Uh-oh. The Passion. Is the film anti-Semitic? "No," Bellucci said. "I heard there are so many controversial subjects already about Passion. I don't know. I don't know why. I mean, I love controversial things, but visually it's going to be so beautiful, the film. And the story, it'll be something we all know. It won't be nothing against Jews absolutely, because actually, the Romans killed Jesus. The Romans put Jesus on the cross, not the Jews." So, as an Italian, are you offended? "No," laughed Bellucci. "I didn't do it. Just my old, old, old [ancestors]!"

As it's an interesting subject (and yeah, I had an interest from stomping around the on the set there – see here), we kept talking about The Passion and whether it will feel like an American film or a European one? "It's an American film, but with many European actors shooting in Europe," said Bellucci. "So, for me it was an American film in Italy which was great because this is my country so I didn't have to move. And it was great to work in Cinecitta and it was beautiful. All those people coming from everywhere and different religions. We are Christian and Orthodox and Jews and Muslims. There were people from every different religion to be part of the same movie. So, it was a different experience not just as an actor, but also as a human, to be part of such diversity." What source material does the film come from? "I have no idea," she replied.

Finally, we asked her if she would have to choose between being an American actress with stuff like Tears of the Sun, The Passion and The Matrix Reloaded and a European one, with stuff like Irreversible, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, Ricordati di Me and the currently filming Agents Secrets, which Monica has cut her hair short (around her shoulders) for. "I can't," said Bellucci. "Because, for example, now I want to have a big break after June, after Cannes. I want to make a big break because I've done too many things. I need to take a break for me. Because I think acting is the interpretation of life, but you need to live. You can't just be on sets and planes and hotels. I need to take a break and have a few beautiful things. I just want to make my choice. I don't want to be in a rush to follow anything or to take points, or a goal. I just want to do what I feel, to work with who I want. I have more choices because I move from different- - Italy, France, America. I don't feel under pressure and I don't want to feel under pressure. As I said, I love America, but I feel European, so I need to keep working in Italian films and French films and do American films if I find the right character because I'm European. So, I have to find a character that fits for me. I'm not ready to accept anything just because it's American. I want to do things where I feel comfortable."

And that's the absolutely stunningly beautiful Monica Bellucci. Her new film, The Matrix Reloaded, hits theaters next week on Thursday, May 15th, though theaters nationwide are banking on Wednesday midnight screenings as well. Next up on Tales From the Junket Circuit, well, who the hell knows? Maybe Keanu, maybe the Animatrix guys. We'll see. It's going to be a busy weekend and let's just see if I survive seeing The Dan Band tonight.

part 6 Keanu Reeves interview)

5.14.03
By Smiliin' Jack Ruby
Contributing sources:

God, everybody fucking hates this movie. Yeah, Knowles and the AICN crew hated the movie before they saw it, but there've been a lot of other sites that disparaged the hell out of it, too. Oh, well. It's tiring, I don't give a shit anymore, the movie is going to make $125 million or so by Monday and it'll be a gargantuan hit whether or not people can wrap their heads around it or not. All I know is this - when I saw The Phantom Menace the first time, I hated it. When I saw it a second time, I hated it then, too. When I saw The Matrix Reloaded the first time, I had a lot of problems with it. When I saw it the second time, I absolutely loved it.

But, maybe that's just me. Who the fuck cares, I've got too much work to do, I'm ready to move on to the next movie (saw Down With Love and chuckled throughout, but my girlfriend and just about everyone else on the planet just hated the thing and called it boring as hell), and I just hate it when people piss on a movie before it even hits because of personal bias (though I am guilty of that with Freddy Vs. Jason as the Kane Hodder-thing still bugs me). Whatever. Here's Keanu. I'll review Reloaded tomorrow, more than likely, unless I'm just swamped as fuck again (I really wanted to get an article in about how much I fucking love The Animatrix - particularly the two Second Renaissance pieces and Beyond, but oh, well).

I've met Keanu Reeves a few times before and can honestly say, I like the guy. He's kind of distant, kind of reserved and doesn't really go in for the usual hype bullshit, but he seems like a pretty down-to-earth fellow despite all the weird stuff around him that makes it into the gossip pages (like the fact that he lives sparse-as-hell and Really Takes Acting Seriously). Anyway, here he is showing up at the Reloaded roundtables a pair of weeks ago talking up the pic.

The first question came up about the money Keanu put back on the movie in order for it to better come under budget. "What I did was I put part of what was given in my contract to create a pool, so that other people who don't usually do profit participation could see some money," Reeves replied succinctly. So, why did you do this? "Because I wanted to."

And there you go. That's such a perfect example of the way Reeves talks, even down in Sydney at the big Matrix press conference. It's great (and easy as fuck to transcribe). Read on...

Next up, somebody asked Reeves how he decides which sequels to do and not do. "How I feel and the scripts," Reeves said. "The material. Like for Speed 2, if there had been a really good script and I had been in a place to do it, I would have done it, but at that time it wasn't something that I wanted to do. But in terms of these, the scripts were great and I had such a great experience and faith and believe in Andrew and Larry Wachowski, the writers and directors that I just said yes." So, what was it like when those scripts showed up? "I was in Chicago and I got the two scripts, sat down and read them and thought they were very moving and exciting and original and I thought they had done such an incredible job," Reeves added. "There are some really great surprises in there."

As with most of the cast folks, we asked Reeves about whether or not he fully understands all the philosophy in the movies. "You know, I can't!" exclaimed Reeves. "I don't understand it in the sense that I can take you all the way to the end to a finite position and 'Here's your answer. There's one person who knows the whole thing.' Maybe Larry and Andrew do. I know they certainly feel they do. But I don't think there are things that have an end in these pieces. The analogy I use is that it is like a Moebius strip. There are more launch points. There are more things that I feel if you do take something from it, if you want to talk about cause and effect and its relationship to fate. The aspects of those kinds of things, it's fun and intriguing and something that I think is beneficial to think about."

As Jada told us that Keanu was all cool and gave his burly brawl stuntmen a bunch of Harleys as presents, we asked him about that (which has already made it into the personality pages). "That was it," Reeves said. "There is a fight where Neo confronts Smith and Smith confronts Neo. Actually, it's Smith confronts Neo. And I worked basically with 12 stuntmen for about three weeks intensely, going through the fight. Then we filmed for almost a month every day. And these guys just fucking 'go' every time I said lets do it again. There is this one scene where Neo gets grabbed by two agents and I do a back flip and kick two guys in the head, and flip back and then the two guys get thrown back. Well those guys got pulled into the floor 21 times. And every time I said I would like to do it again, I was like, 'Tim, you okay?' He's like, 'Yeah, man. Let's go!' And we would just go through the fight every day, the three stages of the fight, and everyone was so supportive and helpful. You know, we were doing that sequence, and oftentimes in the first part of that sequence, it's a Steadicam. It was doing a 180 degree turn and I've got in some of those sequences 30 moves, 25 moves, one, two, three, four, five six and I'm hitting eight guys. So they all had to be in the right spot to sell every hit. They'd come here and then go there. We all had to adjust. So we were all in this thing for like three months and we were training together beforehand. So I just wanted to somehow - besides just saying 'thank you' - something, a bigger thank you to all those guys who helped me make this one of the great movie fights in the history of cinema. So I worked it out and I had them bring up a truck and I got to give 'them all a Harley! That made me smile for fucking months! I'd be in bed and be like 'Ha-ha-ha-ha!'"

As Fishburne had mentioned what a hard-ass Reeves was on himself (which took Keanu a little by surprise that Fishburne would go on the record with that), we asked him why. "Well, just because it's important," Reeves replied simply. "It was my job to do whatever the brothers asked me to do. So, I'm just trying to do that." You don't think you're hard on yourself? "I can be," Reeves admitted. "But you know, I don't think I need any therapy or anything. I am not so out of my mind. But it is an aspect of the piece that as well as why we work so hard to try to get the emotional aspects right. In those scenes, in those sequences, there is something about symmetry and having those scenes so that you believe it. If I do something and I don't hit it right or it doesn't look right, you instantly feel it and see it and you go, 'Aw...' You don't want that. You want it to be perfect."

When you see The Matrix Reloaded, you'll see that there's just tons of fighting in the movie, but also a lot of dialogue bits. We asked Reeves about the differences in the fights one movie to the next. "There is much more dialogue in Reloaded," Reeves replied. "What I think is one of the unique things that the brothers have found a way to do is they will give you such an intense scene of dialogue, say between Neo and the architect, that's a pretty dense scene - then they'll give you a fight scene. Then they'll give you maybe the scene with Lambert, the Merovingian talking about the power of why and cause and effect, and then they'll give you a 13 minute car chase. Andrew Wachowski would say, 'Oftentimes with movies, you can sit through bad dialogue to see the spectacle, so you can sit through good dialogue, too!' Which I agree with. It's a very ambitious film Reloaded. But I think the brothers pull it off."

On the set, Jada and Laurence told us all about how beat up Keanu got and how many ice baths he used to soak himself in. Naturally, we asked him how much tougher it was to make this one than the last one. "This one was much harder," Reeves said. "It took more time. There was much more involved. It demanded a lot more. In the first one I could do most of it. In the second one, if you take out the CGI aspect of my fight with Smith, I am doing probably 92% of my fighting. Not the landings, not the wall shit and crashes, but the fighting. But there was a lot of stuff with the weapons, I was like 'I wish I could have been better. I wish I could have done this move!' - because the more I would get, the more that Wo Ping and the brothers would go, 'Well, how about this?' But it was harder to get, it was harder to do and it was harder to come back. Some days, you'd finish a fight and then get new choreography and fighting on weekends so that you could film on Tuesday."

After all that, we asked Keanu if he was sick of fighting by the end or couldn't wait to get back into it. "You know, I didn't like that when I was doing it," said Reeves. "I just kept thinking this is what I have to do. Once I threw my last kick and my last punch it was like, 'Okay, we did it. I hope I did it well enough.'" And that's when you reached for the Scotch bottle? "I had a bottle of Scotch in my trailer every day," joked Reeves. "It was actually symbolic. I swear to God I had a bottle of McClelland's right there." Okay, so what was that for? "Because it was just there!" Reeves enthused. "And there were some Fridays when you would finish work and just a glass of Scotch after some filming and some fighting is really good. You know what I mean? It's like that beer after you've been lifting shit. You know what I mean?" (S.J.R. note: As I sit here typing this with a bottle Ballantine's at my side [yes, trying a new brand], I can definitely understand where he's coming from.)

As Keanu is Canadian and we'd been joking about Reloaded having some stuff in common with Rush's 2112 album (sort of), we asked Keanu if he'd reprised what he'd done on the last film and listened to a lot of Rush while prepping for this movie. "No," Reeves laughed. "I didn't do any Rush this time! But I just read a great book about punk rock. Have you read Please Kill Me?" Yep - and you guys can check it out as well, edited by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Full title: Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. "Is that a great book?" Reeves enthused. "It's awesome, it's inspiring - a great book. I highly recommend it."

So, finally, we asked Keanu what he's learned from Neo and what from him has rubbed off on Neo. "It's not an easy question," Reeves admitted. "That's like asking, 'What has your mother learned from you and what have you learned from your mother?' It's one of those thing that's, to make it - I really find that Neo is a beautiful man. His ethics and his morals and his search for his authentic life and how he deals with people and he deals with himself, I really admire." Have you brought anything out of him into your daily life? "Yeah," Reeves admitted. "It's like, can you live up to that? Can you live up to the best part of yourself every day? - which I think is a really great question. Can you live to the best part of yourself all the time? It's hard. I try, but I think that that aspect is something the film is actually also asking."

And that's Keanu Reeves from the junket for The Matrix Reloaded. The movie opens on May 15th officially, but in midnight screenings across the country Wednesday night.

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Review-"The Matrix Reloaded"

5.14.03
By Smilin' Jack Ruby
Contributing sources:

The first time I saw The Matrix Reloaded, I walked out of the screening like, "Huh?" and called it the "weirdest Battlestar Galactica episode ever." I thought there were long sequences of philosophizing, bits of pacing that sucked ass, and then stuff that didn't work at all - though the visuals were astounding, the fights were pretty bad-ass, and I loved where the movie ended up going by the end. The next day, I chatted with a number of press folks who had similar feelings. A lot of folks just flat out hated the movie and didn't get into it at all. The junket was an odd thing and though I knew the movie was certainly a pretty damn great pic, I wasn't totally on board and absolutely loving the thing the way I did the first movie. If I had reviewed it the next day, rationally thinking, the most I would've given it was a 7.75.

But then I saw it again and all of that left. Shockingly, I had zero problems with the movie the second time, was really into it, and loved the thing. It was the exact same movie, naturally, but with different expectations, I suddenly didn't hate the thing. Bizarre, eh?

Anyway, everyone is now online trashing the movie with the kind of spite usually reserved for a Star Wars movie - as if it's the "in" thing to do to dump on this movie because expectations couldn't have been higher and the movie was nothing what people expected it to be. I think it's sad (like the other day when somebody told me that Hulk was long, boring and didn't go anywhere because it focused on the drama - something I keep hearing - and wasn't the X2 or Spider-Man that Universal wanted and the execs there are freakin'), but oh, well. I have a movie now that I loved on a second viewing and, frankly, I don't care if everyone else in the fucking world hated it, I enjoyed it and that's why I go to the movies. I'm a fan of Death to Smoochy (which the world hates) and Down With Love (which even my girlfriend hates) and just got to weather people walking up to me saying that Identity sucked and that people boo-ed in the screening they saw. Oh, well - fuck it. The Matrix Reloaded fucking rocks the casbah, it's an amazing bit of filmmaking and, like The Prisoner, is a mindfuck that has you talking about the movie (and thinking about it) for weeks. I'll be seeing the movie again in the theater and can't wait for Revolutions.

When we last saw Neo (Keanu Reeves), he had fully realized just the extent of his powers within the matrix and was setting about to go into the real world to free a bunch more minds. Cut to six months later. Neo is having trouble sleeping - having dreams of his girlfriend Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) being killed by villainous agents - and something troubling is afoot. Turns out, in fact (if you've seen Final Flight of the Osiris, you're a few steps ahead), that the machines are drilling towards Zion with 250,000 sentinels in tow to completely wipe out the remaining human beings. There are two minds of what to do about the machines - the Zion military leader Commander Lock (Harry J. Lennix) who believes the humans must unite their hoverships and fight the machines and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), who believes that everything will be fine as all the prophecies revolving around Neo as "the One" have thus been proved true. He tells the people of Zion that there's nothing to worry about and they tend to believe him.

But not all is well in the Matrix. The Oracle (Gloria Foster) hasn't been heard from in awhile and Neo is beginning to worry. And then there's the pesky Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) who is acting all bat-shit. He's no longer an agent and has a number of new and unusual powers that include massive replication (as well as a few other tricks). For some reason, Smith is no longer an Agent, but has more or less gone rogue and decided to just fuck shit up (which includes Neo). In the biggest fight of the movie (which intercuts real stuntmen with CG stuntmen - and it shows, one of the only bad things about the film), Neo has to fight multiple Agent Smith's in what could only be considered a relentless, no hold's barred bit of martial arts. It's quite something and Neo's "solution" is something that would've made Spock proud (whereas X2 has a spiritual cousin in Star Trek II [with everything from the score to the bookending with a book], Reloaded is Evil Dead II to The Matrix's Evil Dead).

When Neo finally does find the Oracle, she sends him on a quest through the matrix after the Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim - who is great here) in order to get Neo close to whatever The Source is, the thing Neo, Morpheus and the others believe will allow the humans to conquer the machines once and for all.

To really say anything more would be criminal.

There are fantastic technical sequences in this movie like we haven't seen since Star Wars. This movie is a major leap forward in effects and it's pretty damn beautiful at times, particularly with the blend of miniatures and special effects that make up Zion. My jaw was on the floor in the docking sequence when the Nebuchadnezzer came home for the first time in the film. To me, it was like the great undocking and docking bits from the Star Trek films - particularly the amazing "getting under way" sequence in Wrath of Khan (blended with the perfect score) and then the solemn, returning-to-dock sequence in Search for Spock. I just was really into it and thought it looked beautiful.

On top of that, the production design and costumes are fantastic (Monica Bellucci looks just absolutely stunning). There's such attention to detail in this movie that's it's insane. The "twins" (Adrian and Neil Rayment) are pretty amazing, too, not only in their look, but also in conception. I thought they were so much fun and great to see.

But all that says nothing of the plot. The final ten minutes of the film - the bit with the Architect in particular - are unbelievable (though the actual cliffhanger is kind of "TV") in what they assert about the Matrix and what it's all about. As a HUGE fan of The Prisoner, I don't want to say much more than, yes, it's an amazing pay-off and changes every single thing you think you know about the movies. It's a bitch to get your head around (well, sort of) and even if you think you watched the movie through the first time and see where everything fits together, well...when I saw it a second time, I noticed many, many subtle bits - particularly spoken by the Merovingian - that made sense the first time, but had a double meaning the second time around.

At the end of the day, you're either on board with this film or not after you catch it a couple of times. It looks like The Matrix backlash is in full swing and as much as you don't want such a thing to happen, OF COURSE it was going to. Oh, well.

Still, I loved it, had a great experience with it and can't wait to see it again (and see Matrix Revolutions).

Lash backs on the Message Boards!

Gotta stay hydrated in a hot Neverland

P-town's newest hot spot may be Aura, at West Burnside and 11th. Open just four weeks now, it's packing them in. ... Be sure to check out the one-way mirrors in the restrooms. You can see out, but they can't see in. At least, I think so. ... Don't look now, but Keanu Reeves, star of "Matrix," "Matrix Reloaded" and undoubtedly "Matrix Reloaded Returns," may be coming to town. ... Hollywood-based UPM Productions hopes to film a movie called "Thumbsucker" here. As a matter of fact, they've already set up a production office in town -- but everything's on hold while the state decides whether to grant certain financial incentives.

Neo Realism

Cyberpunk postmodernism, classicism, Judaeo-Christian messianism, Zen, False Consciousness, leather. That's THE MATRICES.

SANDIPAN DEB

What is real? If you're talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you池e talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain. morpheus to Neo, The Matrix, 1999

Rarely has any film been studied and analysed, its meaning and subtext debated as much as the Wachowski Brothers・two Matrix movies (the third, Matrix Revolutions, will hit the cinemas in December).

With their many-layered meanings, their treasury of slippery allusions to everything from Zen to Alice in Wonderland, they have displaced 2001 and Blade Runner as the ultimate cult films for sci-fi fans, wannabe philosophers and, of course, computer geeks. They have been subjected to every sort of analysis possible: Christian, Marxist, nihilist, postmodern, and, of course, fashion: like, those black leather outfits and sunglasses are the height of cool, right?

Start with a simple question That are the films about?And the possible answers would include: free will and destiny, the nature of reality, the purpose of life, the meaning of all creation, faith and salvation, Microsoft and open source computing.... Well, maybe not Microsoft and open source computing, but you get the drift.

For the unmatrixified, here's the basic storyline. Towards the end of the 21st century, man created intelligent machines, which obviously then decided to be the dominant species on earth. The machines won the war against humankind, but the war also "scorched the sky", so they could not draw solar energy to survive. But they found a new power source in the human body, which "generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 btus of body heat". Except for one secret human settlement, Zion, the machines enslaved all mankind, put each human in a womb-like vat, and sucked power from their bodies. To keep humans from revolting, they created the Matrix, a computer-generated virtual world (which looks just like ours), jacked each sleeping human痴 brain into this enormous collective dream, and went about their business. Everyone is happy since everyone thinks they池e going to office and digging their noses and having sex, while they are all actually dreaming in chemical-filled vats.

But a small bunch of rebels escape from their vats and make it their mission to destroy the matrix, defeat the machines and return humanity to real life. They believe a prophecy that a man, The One, will come and liberate humankind. So, they find Neo (Latin for New, anagram of One) and open his eyes to the actual state of affairs. At the end of the first film, Neo achieves enlightenment, that is, he understands the structure of the matrix (the nature of reality), and as a result develops certain superhuman skills inside the dream world, like the ability to fly.

The second film takes Neo deeper into the purpose of the matrix and ends with Zion and the machines poised for a final war that could wipe out all human life, even irreparably tear apart the fabric of all realities, both the dream and flesh-and-blood varieties.

One principal theme should be obvious even from this bare-bones plot outline. If we are all inside a computer program, free will is clearly the biggest scam of all time. But by cracking the Creation Code, man can exert free will, as Neo seems increasingly capable of. But the Wachowskis don稚 play that simple. They make it also clear that Neo is destined to be the messiah, he has no choice about that. And as the conversation between Neo and the Architect (the human projection of the software that built the matrix) at the end of Reloaded makes clear, this destiny was written into the matrix痴 computer code.

"Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix," the Architect tells Neo. He is a bug in the system, but a bug that the Architect deliberately put in.

The first matrix the Architect built was, as Agent Smith tells Morpheus in the first film, a perfect world "where none suffered". But "the perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrums kept trying to wake up from", because "human beings define their reality through suffering and misery". So, the matrix was redesigned to reflect this. There seems to be a Garden of Eden allusion lurking here, waiting to be captured. Which makes life even more difficult for the analyst. Is Neo then Lucifer, since his mission is to bring "knowledge" to mankind and subvert the Architect, the God figure? But the films abound with allusions that link Neo to Christ. Plus the Wachowskis have admitted their Buddhist influence, so with his monk-like look and expertise in Oriental martial arts, Neo could also be Bodhisattva.

The films revel in these riddles and paradoxes. Morpheus is named after the Greek god of dreams, but is the man who wakes Neo from his dream. The traitor Cypher痴 real name is Reagan. The evil Merovingian is named after a French dynasty which claimed to be descended from Christ.

The Architect finally figured out that 99.9 per cent of all humans became satisfied with their lot if they were given an illusion of "choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near-unconscious level". Once he built that into the matrix, it worked. But this illusion of choice was also the bug, the "systemic anomaly, that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself". So, the matrix is a fundamentally unstable system, which has to be periodically rebooted and upgraded when a Neo rises and human rebellion reaches an inflexion point and the software looks set to crash. The current Neo is in fact the sixth Neo, the current Zion is Zion 6.0! Reincarnation, avatars, cycles of creation...endlessly debatable allusions....

But the metaphors hardly end at the religious-mythical-philosophical area. In the first film, Neo has a copy of Jean Baudrillard痴 Simulacra and Simulation, which theorises that postmodern culture is all about creating images that have no basis in reality. But the book itself is a simulacrum: Neo has hollowed it out to store contraband software. The final choice that Neo has to make in Reloaded is a clear reference to the 賎rand Inquisitor・chapter in The Brothers Karamazov. In Reloaded, Agent Smith, who was killed by Neo (that is, his code garbled) in The Matrix, appears as a virus program, replicating himself endlessly. And remember, Smith, who lives (if that is the word) to destroy Neo, is played by Hugo Weaving, who was the maniacally focused Douglas Jardine in the TV series Bodyline. But the Wachowskis・allusions cannot possibly extend to cricket, can they? I sincerely hope so.

"Hope," The Architect tells Neo, "is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness." Lakhs of people around the globe today live in the hope that they will some day figure out what the hell the Matrix trilogy is all about, that they will be able to hack the Wachowskis・brains. Come to think of it, that could just be as big an achievement as Neo痴.

Matrix 4 from HotDog July issue

Hey there, Wyverex here in the UK with my first post for Filmrot! These three little bits of news were reported in the July issue of a movie magazine over here called “Hotdog”.

“Producer Joel Silver and Village Roadshow are so rapturous with the reception The Matrix Reloaded has got, that plans are quietly underway for a fourth adventure of the mind-boggling sci-fi sensation. Just one problem – Keanu Reeves has already told them he’s not doing it. If the Matrix 4 gets the greenlight, as insiders are expecting, it looks like there will be a new face playing Neo or a certain character missing from the next chapter.”If this is true then all of my nightmares have come true at once and The Matrix is going to really turn into this generations’ Star Wars! Someone else playing Neo, or no Neo, in another Matrix movie just makes it feel like it’s going to be a cheap rip-off!!! Please don’t let them do this!!!!

Ok that’s it for now. I’ll hopefully be posting my first reviews for Filmrot in the next couple of days.

The chameleon in Wong

Entertainment: The chameleon in Wong
Faridul Anwar Farinordin

July 5: Anthony Wong, who stars as Ghost in 'Matrix Reloaded' is no stereotype of an Asian actor. His love of diverse roles on stage and in cinema matches his love of good food. FARIDUL ANWAR FARINORDIN writes.

ANTHONY Wong appreciates good food. Just ask this well-built Australian actor, who stars as Ghost in the current blockbuster The Matrix Reloaded, to list down eateries places to eat in his Sydney neighbourhood and temporary Los Angeles home and he will would be happily to write them down for you - including their respective website addresses! And it is also because of food, apart from giving Press interviews to promote the movie, that brought him to Malaysia.

"The food here is incredible," he said in a heavy thick Australian accent in during an interview with Life & Times, recently, referring to places he visited since his arrival in the country such as Penang, Ipoh and Kuala Kangsar. He was in Malaysia "mainly for a holiday because I've heard so much about it and its food" but added he was here and came to the country for the first time in 1998 to do a TV series Tanamera: Lion of Singapore, which was shot in Singapore and Kota Tinggi in Johor.

It didn't take long for him to finally ask: "What are the places where I can find good hawker food here? Where can I get good satay? How far is Kajang from here? Can you tell me where Jalan Alor (hawker food haven in KL) is? Yes, food and acting play a great role in Wong's life. Growing up with his two sisters, His parents run a Chinese restaurant in Sydney. He took up acting lessons as a part-time course while studying at Macquarie University, Sydney, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in political science, in 1986.

To date, Wong is one of Australia's most acclaimed and diverse actors and a veteran performer with more than 30 Australian and international hit TV programmes, films and stage productions to his name. He is also an accomplished singer, writer, and stand-up comedian.

In 1992, he won the Victorian Green Room Best Actor Award (theatre) for his performance as a Filipino transvestite in Sex Diary of an Infidel, which also netted him a Sydney Critics Circle Award nomination. He made his Hollywood debut in The Matrix Reloaded and will reprise his role as the weapons expert Ghost in The Matrix Revolutions later this year.

"Being an Asian actor, I don't have the same scope of roles that a Caucasian has.So I have to be more diverse and competitive. I would like to think that as an actor I am an all-rounder," actor," said Wong the actor who also specialises in different English accents including American, British-Cockney, Italian, Greek and Canadian. When he first got the role in Matrix Reloaded, "I was shocked that I was not involved in it a bit more. My role wasn't that big. I asked the Wachowski brothers (Andy and Larry, the directors) and they said they have so many characters they want to develop but couldn't do it in one movie. Otherwise, the film would have 40 story lines.

"So they decided to tell the story through other mediums - the Enter The Matrix video games and the Animatrix anime series. Each medium tells the story of different characters. Well, I got to play a much bigger role in the third instalment and the video games." A former reporter with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald newspapers, Wong said he finds it easier to establish a rapport with journalists during interviews because "I have been on the other side, so I know how it's like to get a good story".

"A lot of actors are very suspicious of the media during interviews. They constantly wonder what interviewers are really trying to get out of them - you know, that kind of attitude," he said, adding "I've always loved journalism and having a background in the field surely helps me in doing research for my roles." But Wong said he didn't get to do much research for intohis role as the weapons expert Ghost, whom he referred to as a "Zen Buddhist Aztec killer - one part Chow Yun-fat and one part Dalai Lama".

"Except for the main stars - Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Ann Moss - other cast members in Reloaded did not receive the full script when they received the offer were offered to play the characters. Basically, we accepted the roles them on faith that they would be are gonna be great roles. I didn't don't know whether I was going to got to play a prostitute, a priest or a panda bear! "It was only Only when I arrived in San Francisco (the movie location) that I saw the full script for the first time, so I couldn't prepare much for the role. To me, it was quite scary to arrive in the US for my first blockbuster Hollywood project without doing a full research on for my role." Although Wong finally received his scripts both for Reloaded, Revolutions and the game, he said other actors, such as Helmut Bakaitis who played the role of The Architect, only received the script for the scenes they were he was in. "In the movie, The Architect is the father of the Matrix, the creator if you like, and they didn't even let him see the full script - that's how secretive they were," he said, adding "our names were printed on in every single page on the script in big letters, so if it went goes missing, or was stolen, they could trace it back to the owners! Referring to the cast as a "close-knit family", Wong said events that took place during the filming of the movie bonded the actors and crew. together.

"While making the movie, we lost singer/actress Aaliyah, who died after shooting a few scenes for the movie, and Gloria Foster who played The Oracle. The circumstances humanised everything and unified the as all as a cast. Also, Jada Pinkett Smith (who played Niobe) brought her husband Will and children along, so that mellowed everybody (having children on the set)." Did he get to hang out with Keanu and Fishburne? "Yes, Keanu and I always played ping pong together - he is actually a very shy man and so down-to-earth. Fishburne is also very friendly. You know, before meeting them, I had have heard a lot of bad stuff about Hollywood stars and their eccentricities but I didn't experience any of that while making this movie." Wong named Ang Lee as his hero because "he could've been stereotyped as an Asian director and asked to do kungfu movies, but instead he transcended that by doing different genres of movies (Sense and Sensibility, Hulk, The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)".

"My goal is to do more work s where I get to portray different sides of my personalities. Acting To me, acting allows me tap into all aspects of the human condition/psyche. It's a humbling experience. Just when you think you know it all, you'll get a completely different perspective on life once you step into someone else's shoes." Currently commuting between Sydney and Los Angeles where he is staying at a friend's apartment (and visiting good restaurants there regularly), Wong's next move is to make it big in Hollywood. "Following the success of Reloaded, people started to know me. So I have to be based base myself in California to allow me totake up more acting jobs there," said Wong who hopes to take on more challenging film roles in film as well as Broadway shows in New York.

One thing is for sure, he doesn't want don't give him "stereotypical straitjacket" Asian roles which he has spent years trying to break free from by doing all sorts of performancesby performing in from a stand-up comedy and to musicals, as well as playing taking up various unconventional characters ranging roles from a transsexual to a priest.

"In September, I will start doing promotional work activities for Revolutions. It's quite sad that I haven't seen much of my family, but I guess I have to go with the flow. You have to grab the moment to make it in the showbiz industry," he said, adding that his current project is a theatre production in Melbourne called Coup d'Etat.

With the growing interest to cast Australian actors such as Eric Bana, Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger and Hugo Weaving in Hollywood, does he see an opportunity chance to make it big there? "A director once told me that the audience likes to see Aussie men because they are a lot rawer than the American men - they scratch their armpits during interviews and so on. There is a certain rugged masculinity about them, compared to the Americans who are more interested in their physical appearances.

Although Wong is "certainly not a prototype of that", he hoped that his eclectic acting abilities will do much of the talking. And he may just succeed.

Thumbs up to a juicy role

Actor in locally based film plays confused, orally fixated teen
By MICHAELA BANCUD
Issue date: Fri, Jul 4, 2003
The Tribune

Actor Lou Taylor Pucci isn't famous.
That's likely to change after the release of "Thumbsucker," a quirky feature film that begins shooting in Beaverton on July 9. Pucci's blond hair has been dyed brown and cut shorter for the lead role of a teenage boy with an oral fixation who's trying to kick his habit and make sense of his life.
And though he plays a head case, the 17-year-old doesn't come off like one in an interview.
What does Pucci make of his peculiar character?
"His name is Justin Cobb. And he just doesn't know," Pucci says. "He's trying to figure out who he is and where he belongs in his family. And sometimes it's just him, alone. He goes through a lot of changes."
When Cobb is "cured" of his thumb-sucking by his dentist (Keanu Reeves), he self-medicates with Ritalin, codeine, alcohol and marijuana -- anything he can get his hands on.
Pucci's first film role was in the small, independent "Personal Velocity," in which he played a boy with mysterious wounds. His character, who has only a few lines, is picked up on the side of the road by a woman played by Fairuza Balk.
Pucci, who is from New Jersey, has more extensive experience in musical theater. Among other roles, he played the older son, Friedrich, in "The Sound of Music" from 1997 to 1998 on Broadway.
With a $3 million budget, "Thumbsucker" will have a homespun feel to it, says director Mike Mills. Producers for the independent feature are Bob Stephenson and Anthony Bregman.
Stephenson explains why he chose Pucci: "Most kid actors are like, 'Here is my happy face. Here is my sad face.' Lou blew us away with his audition."
Despite its relatively low budget, the film has a first-rate ensemble cast that includes Reeves, Vincent D'Onofrio and Tilda Swinton. Matthew McConaughey dropped out of the project early this week. Twelve-year-old Portland actor Chase Offerle plays the part of Justin's younger brother.
The screenplay is adapted from Walter Kirn's 1999 comic novel, which Pucci has chosen not to read. "I'm the one who's avoiding it," he says. "I don't want it to change anything for me."
The actors are rehearsing now for "Thumbsucker." Swinton ("Orlando," "Adaptation") plays Justin's adored and complicated mother, Audrey.
"Tilda's just so awesome," Pucci says. "The director sent us to the mall a few days ago so we could just hang out. Be friends." In the film, Justin is much closer to the mother than he is to the father. D'Onofrio, who plays the father, arrived this week.
Since coming to Oregon for pre-production last week, Pucci has ventured into Portland a few times. "It's like New York City, but a hell of a lot cleaner," he says.
Pucci, who likes card tricks, also discovered Callin's House of Magic in downtown Portland and has been playing laser tag.
Pucci graduated from high school two days before he hopped an airplane for the first time for a flight to Los Angeles to meet with the film's director and backers.
He was on the beach with friends in New Jersey when he heard he'd landed the part of "Thumbsucker." Then he did what anybody would do: "I just yelled like hell!"

Contact Michaela Bancud at mbancud@portlandtribune.com.

Beaverton lad lands role in indie flick

Chase Offerle, 12, will play a supporting part in 'Thumbsucker'
By MICHAELA BANCUD Issue date: Fri, Jul 4, 2003
The Tribune

Twelve-year-old Beaverton actor Chase Offerle has landed the part of the younger brother in the feature film "Thumbsucker." The independent production begins shooting in Beaverton on Wednesday Chase plays the title character's younger brother, Joel. The lead part will be played by Lou Taylor Pucci. The film's ensemble cast includes Keanu Reeves, Tilda Swinton and Vincent D'Onofrio. All of the actors, except for Reeves, are currently in Beaverton."He's just kind of a laid-back kid, nothing ruffles his feathers," Chase says about his character. "The brother gets all the attention because he does all the bad things. So my character isn't noticed, he sort of flies under the radar." Another point worth mentioning: "My character has two scenes with Keanu." Chase and his mom, Marisa Menkins, read the script -- about a boy who kicks his thumb-sucking habit and replaces it with an array of substitutes -- and decided it was a good part.

"We've read the script and there's a lot of adult stuff," Menkins says. "I said I was OK with it if he wasn't in any of those scenes." In the end, nearly 700 kids tried for the part of Joel in open and closed auditions. Just two years into acting, Chase got his start at the Garden Home Recreation Center, where he met his now-agent Sandra Peabody. She helped Chase get roles in prior independent projects such as "The Dust Factory," "The Freak," and a TV documentary called "The Other Shores." Chase attended Whitford Middle School last year. Next year he will attend the Arts & Communication Magnet Academy in Beaverton.

Matrix is taken to the Imax

London may be getting a preview of the next big thing for ailing cinema industry

David Teather in New York
Friday July 4, 2003
The Guardian

The Matrix: Reloaded, one of the biggest films of the summer, is about to get even bigger. The science fiction sequel, starring Keanu Reeves, will today

begin a run at the bfi Imax cinema close to London's Waterloo station on a screen as high as five double-decker buses. It is one of 10 huge prints of the film being released outside the US. For Warner Brothers, the Hollywood studio behind the film, the run is an intriguing experiment and a means of gaining additional ticket sales from a movie that has already been out for a couple of months.

About 80% of people seeing the film at Imax cinemas in the US had already watched it in a conventional cinema but were prepared to pay for a second viewing in large format. The screens - the largest Imax cinemas are eight storeys high and three times the size of a typical screen - curve gently to take in peripheral vision.

For Imax Corporation, the company based in Toronto and New York that licenses the large-screen technology and brand name to theatres, the film is about much more than a slice of incremental revenues. The Matrix films are a springboard into the Hollywood mainstream and, they hope, financial security after coming close to disaster.

Test run

In November, the final instalment in the trilogy, Matrix Revolutions, will be the first live action Hollywood blockbuster to debut on Imax screens on the same day as conventional cinemas.

In his office in midtown Manhattan, Imax co-chief executive Richard Gelfond proudly reaches into the bottom drawer of a cabinet by his desk and pulls out an Oscar, awarded to the company for technical achievements in 1997. His mind, however, is on the future. On the wall are posters for the two Hollywood movies released in Imax last year as a test run for the studios: 1995's Apollo 13 and Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, six months on from its theatrical release.

"Our strategy is to release Hollywood blockbuster films on the same day as conventional theatres and it is time to show the strategy works," he says. "The idea was always to move in a more commercial direction. Our heritage is museums and science centres and, while we try to be true to that, we recognise that to grow significantly we need to go into more commercial markets. The idea is to show five or six Hollywood blockbusters a year."

Imax was founded in 1967 by a group of Canadian film-makers. Mr Gelfond and Bradley J Wechsler, former investment bankers, bought the company in 1994 for $80m (£48m), with backing from Wasserstein Perella. Three months later, they took it public.

There are 230 Imax cinemas in 30 countries, about half in museums or theme parks. Imax owns 14 but the majority are independent and lease the technology. As well as licensing revenue, Imax makes money from a share of box office receipts, its wholly owned theatres and producing films.

The company has been held back not by the size of its ambitions but by technical limitations. A conventional 35mm film projected on to an Imax screen produces a grainy, out of focus picture. Purpose-made films have largely been restricted to low-budget - typically $5m - documentaries such as Everest and Space Station. The highest-grossing Imax film, The Dream is Alive, a 1985 space documentary, has taken $150m.

Last year Imax had a breakthrough with a technology it dubs DMR, an acronym for digital remastering. Conventional 35mm film is scanned into digital format and missing data filled in, edges sharpened, colour enhanced and the grain sup pressed, all under the eye of the director. The film is then converted back to the 70mm format used in Imax projectors. The cost is $2m-$4m per movie.

Imax struggled as the debt-laden cinema industry faced meltdown at the end of the 1990s and many of its customers went bankrupt. In 2001 its revenues fell by 40% and its share price crashed from$32.69 to 58 cents. Last year it appeared to have regained momentum. Revenues rose from $119m to $131m and it turned a $145m loss into a $12m profit. The number of companies signing licensing agreements for new theatres is accelerating, 21 against 12 in 2001. Its shares are back at $9.

It is now a matter of convincing the studios. "Pretty much half the studios we have done films with already and we are in a dialogue with the others," Mr Gelfond says. "If you think of a director as an artist with the opportunity to paint on the largest canvas in the world, that's a pretty alluring proposition."

The people behind Apollo 13 were initially sceptical. Tom Hanks, the film's star, expressed concerns in the New York Times last year about close-ups. "Are they going to be able to see every hair and pimple on my face?" But they were won over. Director Ron Howard was convinced by the added emotional punch from a scene focusing on the face of Kathleen Quinlan, who played Mr Hanks' wife. "It was already a great performance, but somehow seeing it that big made it even better."

'Immersive'

Randy Greenberg, senior vice-president of international theatrical distribution and marketing for Universal Pictures, the studio behind Apollo 13, said he was eager to put new movies on to Imax screens. "It is about finding the right movies. Romantic comedies don't work. You have to find the sci-fi or the thriller that fits with that theatrical experience. With Apollo 13 it is an awesome, immersive experience. It is like you are in the cockpit with the crew."

Lucasfilm added $8.5m to the second Star Wars prequel box office receipts from a six-week Imax run. The Matrix: Reloaded was taking in $18,000 a screen in its first weekend on the big-screen format in the US, compared with $2,000 in a conventional theatre. Four weeks later that has dropped only marginally to $15,000.

Warner Bros is in talks about other simultaneous releases of big-budget films including Polar Express, directed by Robert Zemekis. Peter Jackson, director of Lord of the Rings, has asked to see how his films would look on the larger screen.

The company believes London can support perhaps seven Imax cinemas; Britain as a whole could take 50. There are seven now. The company is talking to British chains about a slightly smaller, less expensive version of Imax, called MPX, aimed at existing multiplexes.

The bfi London Imax has sold 2,000 advance tickets for The Matrix: Reloaded. The view of the future in the Matrix trilogy is dystopian. Imax hopes its own is brighter.

Enter the Matrix

Computer Game: System: Now Platform: PS2/Xbox/GameCube/PC. Developer: Shiny Publisher: Atari. Type: 3rd person shoot 粗m up. Price: RRP ｣39.99 Players 1 (2 when multiplayer is activated) ESPA age rating: 15)

Anything to do with 禅he Matrix・has been eagerly awaited. The Wachowski brothers have kept a careful eye over all things Matrix-esque. Everything is tied to everything else, expanding the Matrix universe and the game is no exception.

From conception to direction, the brothers had control and this shows in the game. The biggest plus for Matrix fans is an extra hour of new FMV shot during the filming of 閃atrix Reloaded・ You are rewarded with cut scenes and FMV that expand the story that is told in 然eloaded・in a similar way to the 羨nimatrix・shorts.

OK, so what's the game like and who do you play I hear you ask. Film/game tie-ins often suck. They are a relatively cheap way to cash in on the success of a major film. Not so with this one, it cost a lot of money to make. The game itself consists of you taking control of either Ghost or Niobe (two minor characters from the 然eloaded・film).

Your first task is to pick up the data drop in a post office box left by the Osiris. This follows neatly from the 羨nimatix: Last Flight Of The Osiris・by Square. You are guided through the Matrix by an arrow and messages from Sparks (your operator) that appear in a window at the bottom of the screen.

As the game progresses, you follow along a parallel path to that of the film 然eloaded・ with your path crossing those of Trinity, Morpheus and also Agent Smith or more precisely 100 Agent Smiths!! Depending on who you play, the levels vary in style from all out 'run like hell while kicking butt' to driving, more shooting and also flying. Some of the locations will seem familiar to those in the film. For example, you help Neo by destroying the nuclear power station and aid Morpheus on the freeway to name a few.

The bulk of the game is running and combat (with both characters). So games like these need good combat systems and a good camera to follow the action and generally this game has both. The fighting is easy to pick up with a choice of hand-to-hand combat (kung fu style) and a healthy assortment of guns.

It's very easy to look good with all the Matrix-style moves included. To get the 'bullet time' slo-mo effect going you have a focus button and meter. Once activated you can pull off impressive moves, dodge bullets and shoot more accurately. This also increases the more you fight using hand-to-hand combat.

Occasionally, the controls can seem a little clunky but the hyper active camera generally keeps up and works! The one area I felt was poor was the driving. It felt sluggish and the physics didn't seem 'right'. OK, so it's 禅he Matrix・but I just feel it could be better.

If you play Ghost this isn't a problem as he mostly provides back up in the form of shooting while Niobe drives. The agents toward the end of the game are impossibly hard, if you get cornered you might as well forget it and restart the level.

For a game of this budget and scope, you would have thought the graphics would be spot on but this isn't the case. I've only played the PS2 version but I've been informed that the Xbox is the best of a bad bunch. The texture mapping of the backgrounds could be better. Although the character's moves have been motion captured the animation occasionally seems a bit ropy.

The focus mode is impressive to watch especially when bullets are flying or you are doing an impossible leap between buildings.

The general level design is fairly linear but mostly this isn't a problem because a huge amount of tension is created as you rush though buildings and jump over roofs to escape pursuit. In a way, it feels almost like an extended version of Trinity's initial escape in the first Matrix movie.

The levels diverge to some degree depending on whom you play. With Ghost, for example, in the airport, you keep providing sniper support whereas with Niobe it's a lot more hands on combat.

One good sideline is the hacking game. You need a game already saved to start playing this. Anyone who is familiar with old style Commandline interface of DOS or UNIX will feel right at home. You have to find the appropriate commands and hard drives to access deeper into the system. Further in, you get to 'talk' to Trinity and Sparks.

With a bit more exploration you can view the FMV, artwork, open up two player and secret levels as well as activate cheats. There are codes scattered on the Matrix websites that also activate some of these features. You can also make weapon drops and activate training programs (I managed to find a sword training file - I don't know whether there are anymore to find).

So, overall, is it any good. For a film Tie-In, it's one of the better games of this year and fans can get more of the Matrix story and universe in the shape of the game and FMV film footage. I would say it's a tad short but does have re-play value in the shape of two different characters to play and there are differences in both levels and FMV. So it is definitely worth playing both to see all the material.

The game certainly raises the adrenaline levels when an agent is chasing you across roofs leaping for your life. Taking down a SWAT team using focus is really good fun using all those juicy Matrix moves. Comparisons are going to be made with previous games that use 'Bullet Time' effects such as 閃ax Payne・but altogether 閃atrix Reloaded・is better because focus can be applied to both hand-to-hand and shooting, although targeting is automatic.

Would I recommend it? Yes, if you loved the film(s) and want more but also this works as a game in isolation. It may not be the best game of the year but it's still very enjoyable.

Go get it and kick some slo-mo butt!

Phil Jones

Human or not?

July 3 2003

Sci-fi films are grappling with humanity’s future. Reed Johnson asks if a non-human can be a person.

Centuries from now, when someone writes the defin-itive guide to 21st century cinema, he, she or it may take note of the exact moment when The Matrix series ceased to be fun. It occurs in The Matrix Reloaded when Neo, the hero played by Keanu Reeves, turns into a robot.

Not literally, of course. If you saw the 1999 sci-fi hit The Matrix you already know that Neo is one of a handful of human characters battling an army of evil machines that keep people suspended in pods, seducing their minds with virtual-reality fantasies while their unprotesting bodies are drained to make battery juice.

Although Neo retains his humanity in The Matrix Reloaded, the original’s much-anticipated follow-up, viewers still may have trouble telling Homo sapiens from cyborgs without a DNA test.

Not so long ago, when men were men and machines had cogs, we imag- ined robots and other mechanical pseudo-humans as our opposites.

Now, wired to our home computers, Prozac and Palm Pilots in hand, Botox and breast implants lending a spooky "perfection" to our features as we ponder shuffling our genes in order to build perfect babies, we don’t seem as fazed by the idea of reprogramming ourselves into something beyond the merely human.

No wonder pop culture is increas-ingly ambivalent about whether people or androids and their ilk deserve to inherit the Earth - and which group is ultimately more "human".

Matrix Reloaded starts to muddy the old man v machine debate in a sequence in which Neo single-hand-edly routs a posse of clones descended from the dry-witted, revenge-minded Agent Smith; they swarm on Neo like hysterical schoolgirls chasing the Fab Four in A Hard Day’s Night.

The episode should electrify, but it fizzles because the audience quickly realises that Neo has become just another invulnerable Hollywood stunt-assailants like so many gnats while barely ruffling his leather duster.

In the first Matrix instalment, though Neo could dodge bullets and vault across rooftops, he was still largely bound by his human limita-tions, vulnerable and sweet in a geeky, kid-brother kind of way. We could identify with his fears of confronting a terrifying hidden reality, his existential dread at the state of the world.

But the Reloaded Neo is humourless and preternaturally reserved, and with practically unlimited powers — he can fly; he can intuit the bad guys’ presence like a cybernetic Miss Cleo (an American psychic) — he’s hardly discernible from the unfeeling, brutally efficient machines he’s supposed to be fighting for the sake of the human race.

Since The Matrix was released four years ago, thousands of words have been written citing its philosophical and literary influences, from Plato’s analogy of the cave to French bad-boy intellectual Jean Baudrillard. But another book that speaks resonantly to the themes the movie raises is Bill McKibben’s just-published Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (Times Books).

In it, the author of The End of Nature argues that new technologies such as genetic engineering and advanced robotics threaten not only human survival, but also human identity.

What will it mean for any person to an IQ of 160 if it’s all mapped out in a lab before birth, McKibben asks? What will be distinctive about these achieve-ments if they can be attained by anyone who can afford to buy the right chromosome sequence?

It’s in sci-fi treatments such as The Matrix and the novels of William Gibson and Greg Egan, McKibben asserts, that we can best see the consequences of such once-unimaginable scenarios. "I think that we’d be wise not to try to turn ourselves into robots, or robots into ourselves if there’s no need to do it," he says. "It’s not clear what the necessity is for that in our lives."

The problem may be that we don’t exactly know how to define "human" anymore. (We’ll see another cinematic example of the receding line between people and ’bots when the third instalment of the Terminator series blasts onto cineplex screens this month. What does it say about a film’s view of the human condition when the machine, Arnold Schwarzenegger, keeps being asked back for the sequels?)

"There’s a huge philosophical discussion about what makes a person a person, but I think the important thing to acknowledge is that a non-human can be a person," says Michael McKenna, an associate professor of philosophy at Ithaca College in New York State.

"E.T. could be a person, Data from Star Trek could be a person. There are some scientists who think that a dolphin could be a person.

Consciousness depends on the ability to reflect upon and evaluate oneself. You needn’t be a human being to be a person, and given that it’s possible there are animals that are non-human persons, it’s not inconceivable to imagine that you could build a person."

Films such as Blade Runner and Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, radically and disturbingly argued that if humans no longer acted like humans, what reason was there to barrack for them against the machines? Other ’70s dystopian movies such as Silent Running and Westworld showed humans to have poisoned the planet through greed, warfare, moral decadence or environmental destruction, while becoming as cold and unfeeling as any robot. When the actual robots took over, or took their revenge, it was hard not to cheer under your breath. We’d come a long way from the evil, steel doppelganger in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Blade Runner initially flopped with many reviewers and the public because its human characters were deemed too inhuman - which, of course, was exactly the point. The "post-human" feel that Pauline Kael and other critics found in Blade Runner was deliberately created by Scott and his production team to scramble the distinction between the ostensibly human charac-ters such as Deckard, the robot-hunting mercenary played by Harrison Ford, and the exploited, cruelly short-lived "replicants", who’d been pressed into slavery by their human masters.

Later movies such as Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and The Matrix pushed these arguments even further, daring to ask whether simulated intelligence, non-human personhood and a virtual existence might not actually be better than the "real"’ thing. The A.I. robot portrayed by Haley Joel Osment is much more sensitive and likable than the scheming biological offspring of his adoptive human parents, making him endearing and unnerving. This visionary fairy tale of a film unsettled some viewers and critics who may have been expecting director Spielberg at his warm and fuzziest. Instead, A.I. reminds us that robots are really the mechanical stand-ins for our own desires and fears - and their seeming perfection throws our shortcomings into high relief.

Faced with a choice between an unbearably grim, human-made reality and a seductive electronic fantasy, a virtual existence concocted by a machine, The Matrix asks how many, or rather how few, people would rather fight than surrender their core humanity - not only their physical bodies, but also their capacity for free will.

Neo’s fearless quest to know the truth is supposed to represent the antithesis of Cypher’s cynical surrender. By the end of Reloaded, according to the movie’s internal logic, Neo has truly begun to liberate himself in transcendent Zen fashion. Yet his evolution makes him appear not more human, but less so. Because his powers now rival or even exceed those of the machines, his choices are less consequential; his exercise of free will carries less weight than it did when he was more obviously made of mere flesh and blood.

Although Morpheus tells Neo he is the One, the saviour of mankind, Neo’s cool clashes sharply with the hot-blooded primitives living in Zion, the last human holdout, who rave against the machines by throwing massive dance parties that morph into orgies.

Until near the end of the second film, when he risks Zion’s survival to save his love interest, Trinity, Neo’s attitude toward the machine-oppressors might as well be: "Can’t beat ’em, might as well join ’em."

Of course, we’ll have to wait for the final instalment of the Wachowskis’ trilogy, The Matrix Revolutions, before we’ll know how Neo handles his new powers.

Are robots and other intelligent machines our enemies, or our alter egos and heirs? Reloaded probably won’t be the last film to raise that uncomfortable question, to make us interrogate our own identities and even wonder if life as a Tin Man or Tin Woman might really be so bad after all if we only had a heart.

Terminator 3 opens on July 17.

'Matrix' Trilogy Raises The Effects Bar

By Susan Thomas

Jul 2, 2003, 14:30 PST

In 1999, movie audiences got a taste of something fresh and exciting when the Wachowski Brothers and Producer Joel Silver released The Matrix. The Warner Brothers' futuristic, sci-fi adventure featured some of the most extraordinary and groundbreaking special effects seen in film in years, clearly pushing the limits of cinematic possibilities.

As a result of the enormous box-office, video, DVD, and video game success, it allowed the writer-directors to tunnel deeper into a story they had only begun to tell; similar-type effects have been imitated in countless commercials, music videos, and movies; and Visual Effects Supervisor John Gaeta (who worked with the production's own in-house visual effects division, ESC-pronounced "Escape"), won an Academy Award. Now, as the filmmakers continue the saga into a second and third installation of the trilogy, the visual effects bar has been raised even higher.

The visual effects process for Reloaded and Revolutions-an enormous undertaking-began in March 2000 at ESC where Gaeta supervised the creation of more than 1,000 virtual effects shots for Reloaded alone-dwarfing in size and scope the 412 VFX shots created for The Matrix. The sheer volume of virtual effects-and the time needed to render them-necessitated that Gaeta delegate a portion of the workload to additional VFX vendors, who created specific shots under his supervision. Some of those vendors included BUF, Tippett Studios, Sony Imageworks, Giant Killer Robots, and Animal Logic. In all, more than 500 digital artists worked on the virtual effects elements of Reloaded and Revolutions. Additionally, these artists were able to reach the goals set by the filmmakers with the help of some of today's leading content creation tools from such companies as Pinnacle Systems, Apple, Softimage, Avid, and Digidesign.

For instance, Pinnacle's Cin餮ave RT Pro editing and compositing system was used by Beverly Hills-based Ocean Video to deliver on-location video assist for the films' production of action scenes. Ocean Video's Brainstorm solution used a mobile Pinnacle Cin餮ave, with Apple's Final Cut Pro, on a movie set to provide directors with immediate feedback for their live-action shots, increasing efficiency, improving continuity, and reducing the number of takes required to complete scenes.

"Action scenes like those in The Matrix Reloaded are very serious business and are both costly and challenging," says Jeb Johenning, partner, Ocean Video. "Using our Cin餮ave RT Pro system we enabled the directors to preview exactly what the final shot would look like before they got to real shooting. This enabled them to reach critical decisions more quickly and complete their shots in fewer takes."

Ocean Video participated in the production of one of the movie's pivotal action scenes, which took nearly two months to shoot and features numerous consecutive complex sequences. During production, Ocean Video transmitted live video directly from the film camera to a mobile Cin餮ave system powered by an Apple Titanium PowerBook. Ocean Video used Cin餮ave and its Commotion Pro compositing software to execute a ramp effect in which the action changed speed over time.

VFX tools from Avid, Softimage, and Digidesign were also used for completing the feature film, video game (developed by Atari and Shiny Entertainment-"Enter The Matrix,") and a DVD package of nine animated short films "The Animatrix." The tools were all employed for scenes ranging from fight sequences to massive car chases and used to edit picture and sound, as well as for pre-visualization and creating effects.

More specifically, Avid's Film Composer and Unity MediaNetworks were used by Zach Staenberg for film editing on Reloaded; Digidesign's Pro Tools HD, ProControl, and Control|24 were used by Danetracks for audio editing on Reloaded, the video game, and the DVD package; SOFTIMAGE/XSI was used by Pixel Liberation Front for pre-visualization on Reloaded and video game; Avid Xpress DV was used by The Works/Graff Network Services for motion capture pre-visualization and editing on Reloaded and video game; SOFTIMAGE|XSI and Avid Media Composer were used by Studio 4ｺC and SOFTIMAGE|3D and Avid|DS were used by Madhouse Studios for animation, design, and editing of the DVD package.

Another technology employed by Gaeta to help create some of the film's most outrageous scenes was motion capture. But that didn't come into prominence until the second and third installments. Originally, Gaeta's primary innovation for The Matrix was the "Bullet Time" technique, created to depict cinematic action in the style of anime animation. Bullet Time refers to a conceptual state of being inside the virtual reality of the Matrix, in which a character-primarily Neo (played by Keanu Reeves)-obtains a "mind-over-Matrix" capability. The creative process for bringing Bullet Time to the screen is called "virtual cinematography," a digital solution developed by Gaeta and the Matrix filmmakers to depict these "mind-over-Matrix" moments in slow-motion, as seen by a camera moving at regular speed.

But this initial version of virtual cinematography was deemed inadequate by Gaeta for rendering the super-human events the Wachowski Brothers envisioned for Reloaded and Revolutions. Their ambitious scripts called for Neo to battle 100 Agent Smiths at once and fly at 2000 miles per hour over the Matrix megacity. Gaeta also had to find a way to show 250,000 Sentinels snaking through a massive tunnel, and then ignite a scorching 14-minute freeway chase that involves two high-velocity martial arts battles, a motorcycle pursuit into oncoming traffic, characters leaping impossibly between moving vehicles, and a spectacular ballet of crashes, explosions, and virtual destruction.

"It was evident that we couldn't go any further by utilizing the technology from the first Bullet Time shots," says Gaeta. "It was too restrictive and too labor intensive."

What Gaeta needed was technology that did not yet exist. Gaeta and the Wachowskis decided "to create images that no one could copy," says Producer Joel Silver.

The centerpiece of Gaeta and Company's answer to the first phase of virtual cinematography is their creation of virtual, 3D depictions of the main characters for the purpose of enacting their impossible super-human feats.

Months' worth of motion capture data was acquired for the creation of several key super-human events. In editing the motion capture, Gaeta's team literally fleshed out the virtual characters' computer-generated bodies, adding photo-realistic muscles and wardrobe. Layering lifelike expressions onto the computer-generated cast involved another extreme innovation that the Matrix virtual artists have dubbed Universal Capture ("u-cap"). Five high-resolution Sony HDW 900 cameras were arranged in a semi-circle around each actor's face. As the actor conveyed a range of emotions and expressions, the cameras recorded the performance to the most minute detail-all the way down to the pores and hair follicles.

Using these five real-time recordings to extrapolate the shapes of the characters' faces to an extremely high resolution, the VFX team then applied the dimensional facial textures to the digital characters' bodies, resulting in the most realistic computer-generated human images rendered to date.

Once the master content of each sequence was captured and fused with intricate layers of visual elements, virtual cinematography opened up infinite camera composition and editorial possibilities, resulting in what the Matrix VFX team has dubbed "virtual cinema."

"We're all fans of Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott movies and the dark universe perfection that comes with their films" Gaeta enthuses. "We hope to carry on their more refined, intelligent aesthetic with the most modern approaches available in this phase of computer-generated imagery. We want to scare people so badly that one day, when those damn machines smack us back, we're ready."

Star salivates for our steak

By Peter Mitchell in Los Angeles
July 01, 2003

KEANU Reeves has a thirst for $350 bottles of Australian red wine but veteran Hollywood actor Donald Sutherland thinks it is a waste of money.

However, a good Aussie steak is a worthy purchase, according to Sutherland.

The 68-year-old star of film classics Klute and The Dirty Dozen became a fan of downunder beef while in Australia in April to shoot the US television mini-series Salem's Lot with Rob Lowe.

Sutherland said some Aussies he met on a flight to Australia suggested he try some Penfolds Grange Hermitage when he landed in Melbourne.

"These people said, 'You should drink a glass of Penfolds Grange'," Sutherland said.

"But they said it was like $350 a bottle!

"I couldn't believe it."

When Sutherland showed little interest in the pricey red wine, his Aussie flying acquaintances suggested he try one of Melbourne's best steak restaurants, Vlado's Charcoal Grill in Richmond.

"I remember I arrived at Vlado's very tired at six o'clock at night and there were these four men standing there in black uniforms," Sutherland, who was almost salivating, told a group of international journalists in the US while promoting his new film The Italian Job.

"I said 'May I see the menu?' and they brought me over a plate with four steaks on it.

"I said 'OK, I'll have that one' and I said 'What about vegetables?' and they said they didn't have any vegetables. I said 'Potatoes?' and they said 'No potatoes' and I said 'Salad?' and they said 'Well you can have this bit of lettuce and coleslaw and sausage' and that was it.

"Oh, I also had a strawberry pancake at the end.

"It was delicious, unbelievable."

Matrix star Reeves probably wouldn't be a good dinner companion for Sutherland.

While promoting the Matrix Reloaded in Los Angeles in May, Reeves revealed his love of Australian red wine, proudly telling reporters how he stocked up on bottles of 1971 Grange, worth about $875 a bottle, and $420 a bottle 1990 Mount Mary Quintet cabernet blend.

Sutherland's The Italian Job, a re-make of the 1969 heist film of the same name starring Michael Caine, opens in Australia in August.

The film, which co-stars Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton and Charlize Theron, has been a hit in the US, collecting $US76.8 million at the box office since opening five weeks ago.

THE ANIMATRIX on the big screen at San Diego Comic-Con

Limited four-day theatrical run for animated film

Due in part to the positive fan response, Warner Home Video is scheduling a four-day theatrical run of THE ANIMATRIX at this year's San Diego International Comic-Con. All nine short films that encompass THE ANIMATRIX will be shown in 35mm format at the Pacific Theaters Gaslamp starting Thursday, July 17th, and running until Sunday, July 20th.

Ticket prices will be at their regular cost except for Comic-Con attendees. Everyone who shows their Comic-Con registration badge will receive a discount on their ticket purchase. The theater, located at 701 Fifth Ave. (at G St.) in San Diego, is within walking distance of the convention center.

The theatrical print of THE ANIMATRIX features a slightly different order of the shorts than the DVD release. There are also no end credits for each short; instead, full credits will run at the conclusion of the film. The film will remain full-length and uncut and be presented in English-language format.

As far as we know, this is the only theatrical screening of THE ANIMATRIX being put together by Warners.

Again, the screening information is:

THE ANIMATRIX
July 17 - July 20
Pacific Theatres Gaslamp
701 Fifth Ave.
San Diego, CA 92101