Mike Carey Interview

Supernatural goings-on in an alternative future
Submitted by: Sandy Auden
On: 18.12.2004

Knowing that comics writer Mike Carey signed a book deal with Darren Nash at Orbit publishers wasn't enough for us. We decided we needed to know more and went in search of Carey to enquire about his first foray into the world of novel writing...

"The Castor novels are set in London in the present day - but it's a present day where the fact that the dead return is taken for granted," Carey explained when we found him. "Since just before the millennium, there's been a huge upsurge in hauntings and supernatural activity of all kinds, to the point where the most sceptical and pragmatic people now have to accept that death is not the end. Some people return as ghosts, others enjoy (if that's the right word) a bodily resurrection as zombies. And since the dead outnumber the living by about twenty to one, and since they're sometimes not the most sociable of creatures, there's suddenly a great call for exorcists: people who have the necessary skills and training to dispel the risen dead either back to their graves or onward to whatever awaits them next.

"That's what Felix Castor, the protagonist of the novels, does for a living: he binds and dismisses the dead. But he doesn't get the power to do this from any religious conviction: he just has a natural gift. In many ways he's less like the fighting priests of the Exorcist movies and more like a Chandleresque gumshoe: down at heel, cynical, in it for the money."

The novels fit nicely into Orbit's growing production of top-notch supernatural thrillers, joining Laurel K Hamilton, Kelley Armstrong, Tanya Huff and others. "The books are essentially crime novels," Carey agreed. "And they take place against this backdrop of a world which humankind is suddenly having to share with a scary menagerie of supernatural beings. And gradually we'll begin to get some indications as to why this is happening and what its deeper implications are.

"There's also a female protagonist, introduced part-way into the first book, who becomes first a foil for Castor and then a lead character in her own right. She's not fully human, but she doesn't belong to any of the obvious categories of undead either: she's frankly very scary, but also in some odd ways more sympathetic than Castor himself."

With Carey's background in comics like Lucifer and Inferno, you might expect the novels to be illustrated. "No, that's not the plan," he said. "A comics adaptation isn't out of the question at some point, but these are just straight-down-the-line novels. There'll be margins, though. People can draw pictures in the margins if they want..."

One of Carey's illustrated stories is due for release in late January instead - his new graphic novel, Constantine: All His Engines, with artwork by Leonardo Manco, is leading the spearhead of publicity for the new Constantine movie starring Keanu Reeves.

Titan Books are releasing three graphic novels ・a Carey, a Gaiman and a Grant Morrison ・in January and February 2005 to introduce Hellblazer and John Constantine to the movie-goers. In All His Engines, a worldwide plague puts millions into comas. When it strikes down the granddaughter of Chas Chandler, one of the Hellblazer痴 closest friends, John Constantine steps in with the "cure." However, in scratching the surface of a seemingly personal tragedy, he finds a mad demon in a body woven out of cancer cells, and a plot to build franchised Hells in the cities of men. To rescue a single innocent child from the clutches of evil, both John and Chas will have to face temptations they never dreamed of, forging alliances with monsters every bit as terrible as the ones they're fighting・

For Carey, there are some significant differences between writing for Hellblazer and his other well-known character, Lucifer Morningstar. "In many ways Lucifer and John Constantine are superficially very similar characters: both blond, both bastards, both a lot cleverer than most of the people they meet, and both as good with a put-down as a butcher is with a bone-saw.

"But the big difference is that John is human and Lucifer isn't. Lucifer is a monster in a very literal sense: incapable of empathy, incapable of change, so self-regarding that he regards his own convenience and his own freedom of action as being the only thing that matters in the whole of God's creation.

"John is ruthless, yes, but he's ruthless in a more understandable way ・a more human way. And when human beings do terrible things, they have to live with the consequences of those things. We see John as someone who has thrown himself or possibly been dragged into the breach between Earth and Hell. For a whole slew of reasons, some of them altruistic and some of them a lot more selfish and tangled, he fights this fight, and he'll do anything to get it done. He routinely lies, cheats and steals, and when he has to he betrays his friends with a degree of cold calculation that's absolutely chilling. But we also see him as a man who's haunted (literally) by these decisions that he's had to make: he can never just forget the harm he's done or absolve himself because the end justifies the means. He carries the weight of his memories on him palpably."

Where the dead are well read

December 19, 2004 - 12:00AM

In America, it's called schtick, and James Ellroy is hip-deep in it; a wading pool of profanity, single-entendre and slander, lightened by an occasional dose of insight and self-effacement - "the greatest 20th century figures in the world? Geeze, I don't know, I'm an American".

He bounces to the front of Vroman's bookshop in Pasadena and barks after he is introduced, as if all the pent-up energy and exasperation generated by a two-taxi, 212-hour ride from the airport can finally be unleashed.

This is book tour as a form of performance art; it's an act, which is where the Yiddish showbiz term schtick comes from. By the end of the event, Ellroy will have recited the poetry of Dylan Thomas and, with only the barest of references to the work in question before him, a chunk of one of the short stories from his latest work Destination: Morgue!

It's a sort of Ellroy's Greatest Hits, Vol. II, taken from his published stories in GQ magazine, as well as three novellas, the common theme of which is the longstanding, never-quite requited love affair between Rick Jenson, an LAPD homicide detective, and actress Donna Donahue. The novellas have titles such as Jungle Town Jihad .

AdvertisementAdvertisementIn terms of output, this counts as something of a breather while Ellroy regroups for the big task, the final instalment of the series that began in 1995 with American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand (2001), the twin deconstructions of American history in the 10 years from 1958.

The literary and historical momentum of American Tabloid and its account of the conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy evolved through The Cold Six Thousand with its terse, alliterative prose carrying the narrative through the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy and hyper-development of Las Vegas.

Now Ellroy is confronting the Nixon years, but without a point of reference such as Don DeLillo's Libra that he had for Tabloid to show the way. "I know it's possible," Ellroy told The Sunday Age of his new work, "because whatever I can conceive, I can execute. I learned that when I conceived LA Confidential .

"I'm still following the lead of Libra - that's how influential that book has been. That book gave me the template for America '58-'63, so it's very easy to come up with the broad strokes for American history '63-'68, the FBI's war on the civil rights movement, the Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, the Vietnam War, Howard Hughes' conquest of Las Vegas. It was very easy. It was going to be my huge novel of the political underbelly of the '60s. And now we're going '68-'72."

For his new novel, Ellroy says he has adopted a more explicative style. It will end on May 3, 1972, with the death of J. Edgar Hoover, the all-powerful founding director of the FBI. Death is a recurrent motif in Ellroy's books; in the creative sense, it is also a powerful liberating force. "When you're dead, you're mine," he once said of his use of historical characters.

"When (they're) dead you can write about someone fictionally without legal recourse (for the defamed party)," Ellroy said. "It's a limitation. For instance, if I wanted to go to Watergate, which I don't, I would not, because most of them are still alive."

Watergate was much more about politics than crime, which doesn't interest Ellroy. "I don't give a shit about it," he said. "Nobody got killed and it's been done to death. J. Edgar Hoover died in May of '72, that's a good place to end it - I'm not necessarily saying that I will."

The most memorable summation of the Ellroy style, by an English reviewer, was that he wrote "about men possessed, like a man possessed". One of Ellroy's books, LA Confidential, has been translated to film with some of that intensity intact. In March, filming will begin of another of his novels, The Black Dahlia, directed by Brian de Palma, and an Ellroy screenplay, The Night Watchman, directed by Spike Lee and starring Keanu Reeves.

But Ellroy retains an ambivalent relationship with Hollywood. He refers to the film, about the still-unsolved dismemberment of an aspiring actress in 1947 that spooked and enthralled Los Angeles, as "the upcoming fiasco . . . I predict an intriguing flop that will sell a shitload of books".

When we talked he was more prosaic: "If it's a bad movie, I have no right to criticise it for attribution because I took the money. I will always option anything I write to anybody who's got the money."

That said, Ellroy doubts that the images he puts on the page will ever be seen and felt by a film audience. "It would be impossible to do a complete Ellroy filmic adaptation in any form except a mini-series, and even then, I'm not entirely sure if the density of the plot would preclude that.

"An Ellroy novel is like a graph that's like this, (his hand, flattened, was raised) with the vertical of the personal lives and individual lives of the characters, as well as the actual dramatised plot going that way (horizontal gesture) so you've got a perfectly cross-hatched grid. I just love that sort of complexity and a narrative where everything means something and everything produces plot."

Ellroy lives in Monterey, on the central Californian coast, but LA holds his fascination as the definitive setting for his work. It shaped him, as the child of a murdered mother, and later as a vagrant, drug-abusing golf caddy. The irony of the third leg of his trilogy will be that in 1971, when the narrative will presumably be moving at the usual warp speed, Ellroy was arrested for being publicly drunk, with events in Washington arguably the furthest thing from his mind.

He does remember LA from that period though, when both he and it were very different. "LA still exerts a hold on me as far as journalism and short fiction," Ellroy said. "It's just the personal hold, the place that made me and formed me. I was lucky to have been born here.

"There's been a tremendous change - much more congested. It's really more like Beirut than the breezy sunny town I remember a long time ago. It's grossly overcrowded, the quality of living has declined. I won't be moving back."

Warner To Release 100-DVD Final Ultimate Complete Matrix Collection

Hollywood, CA - Warner Home Video announced that the recently released The Ultimate Matrix Collection 10-DVD boxed set would be followed next year by The Final Ultimate Complete Matrix Collection 100-DVD boxed set.

The Final Ultimate Complete Matrix will include the 10 disks from the Ultimate Matrix, but with 90 added DVDs. Highlights of these disks include The Making of the Making of The Matrix, DVD-ROMs of Matrix fan sites and various interpretations of The Matrix by film students.

"You might think after the 10 DVDs in The Ultimate Matrix Collection that it would be complete, but fans asked for more," said Warner Home Video Vice president Abraham Goldwyn. "We have commentary tracks from everyone appearing in the credits for all three movies including the Best Boy and Lead Grip. In addition, we have raw footage of people waiting in line at the theater for all the movies. Heck, we even threw in a special edition of Cannonball Run 3 which the Wachowski brothers said was the inspiration for the movies."

One disk included will be the controversial "Keanu Reeves at acting school" video, which many Internet fan sites have presumed to be fake.

Fan reaction to the announcement was mixed. Some fans were excited like Kyle Ward of Dallas, Texas. He said, "I'm a big fan of The Matrix so I'll buy any DVDs they release. I might have to flip a few extra hamburgers to get this one."

Some were upset. "I thought The Ultimate Matrix would be the last one released, I mean 'ultimate' means 'ultimate' doesn't it? I thought I could be done with my Matrix collection and could concentrate on keeping my Lord of the Rings DVD collection complete."

The 100 DVD set will have a suggested retail price of $399, and will include molded foam busts of Agent Smith, Neo, Trinity and Morpheus.

Constantine

Did anybody catch the footage on Access Hollywood? Oh, right, a scooper at Superhero Hype did, and emailed in a bit about it: "They showed great scenes with Keanu fighting demons and using the holy shotgun on them. They also showed him getting Rachael Weisz's character out of a bathtub using his powers. I don't think it was the whole trailer cause they kept repeating the same scenes over again, especially the really cool scene of Keanu jumping high in the air in what seems to be hell and demons right beneath him trying to grab him."

Constantine Trailer Footage Description

Source: Highlander December 7, 2004

'Highlander' caught a piece of the new Constantine trailer on TV Monday night and tells us what to look forward to:

Hi, they just showed about 30 seconds of the new Constantine trailer on Access Hollywood. The movie looks like its going to be great. They showed great scenes with Keanu fighting demons and using the holy shotgun on them. They also showed him getting Rachael Weisz's character out of a bathtub using his powers. I don't think it was the whole trailer cause they kept repeating the same scenes over again, especially the really cool scene of Keanu jumping high in the air in what seems to be hell and demons right beneath him trying to grab him. Can't wait for the movie to come out.

'The Ultimate Matrix Collection'

By DAVE KEHR

Published: December 7, 2004

This 10-disc set from Warner Home Video contains pretty much everything you would need to establish your own religion: the original three sacred scriptures of the "Matrix" trilogy, seven more volumes of noncanonical texts and assorted apocrypha and, if you buy the $129.95 "limited edition," a plastic bust of Keanu Reeves as the messianic central figure, Neo, all ready for out-of-the-box worship. It's a grandiose presentation fully in tune with the overreaching ambitions of the trilogy itself, which, after a gangbusters beginning with the 1999 "Matrix," expanded to cosmic pretentiousness and narrative incoherence with two back-to-back sequels, "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions" (both 2003).

Each feature has its accompanying disc packed to overflowing with making-of documentaries, including detailed looks at the complex technology behind the famous "bullet time" sequences, in which the characters seem to freeze in midair as the camera circles them. A seventh disc contains the previously released "Animatrix" collection of animated shorts based on "Matrix" themes; the eighth, "The Roots of the Matrix," contains two documentaries that modestly locate the film's themes in the work of Descartes, Kant and Jean Baudrillard. Disc No. 9, "The Burly Man Chronicles," is a 95-minute documentary on the simultaneous filming of the final two films, and disc No. 10, "The Zion Archives," brings together a vast collection of concept art for the series, including storyboards and production designs.

For fans of the series, the best news may be that Warner's has paid for a new, state-of-the-art transfer of the first feature, which does much more justice to the film's striking color scheme of pea-soup green and dusty rose. But the most fun to be had with these new editions lies in flipping between the two commentary tracks added to each of the features, one with a sober Talmudic commentary by a pair of philosophers, Cornel West and Ken Wilber, and the other filled with the less rapturous, often bluntly dismissive remarks of a trio of film critics: Todd McCarthy of Variety, John Powers of Vogue and David Thomson, the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. "Sheer duty," sighs Mr. Thomson as "The Matrix Revolutions" begins, echoing the feelings of many of the trilogy's more skeptical spectators. But this is a box for the believers, as its list price suggests. $79.92. R.

Whoa, dude -- Keanu is Canada's richest artist

By GUY DIXONTuesday, December 7, 2004 - Page R3

As wealthy and corporate as the Celine Dion juggernaut may seem, no amount of ballad-belting and plum endorsements for Air Canada were enough to keep the singer on Canadian Business magazine's list of the 100 wealthiest Canadians.

Instead, the only big-name star from the world of arts and entertainment to make the list of the Canadian wealthy this year was Keanu Reeves, the magazine reported yesterday. And Reeves just made barely made it, taking 100th spot with a net worth of $336-million, thanks to the Matrix films and a shrewd profit-sharing deal for increasing his bottom line.

Reeves, 40, is said to have received $15-million (U.S.) for each of the two Matrix sequels, but it's his reported 15-per-cent share of the films' profits that sent his income soaring. It could have probably been even higher if he hadn't given tens of millions of that back to The Matrix franchise's lesser-paid costume and effects designers, according to reports, or the fact that he bought his stunt men Harley-Davidsons as a thank-you. Reeves, who was born in Beirut to an American father and a British mother, immigrated to Canada as a child.

Dion, on the other hand, despite signing up to be the new voice for Air Canada, found herself jettisoned from the top-100 list. Last year, she held 97th place with a net worth of roughly $320-million (Canadian), according to Canadian Business senior writer Zena Olijnyk. Yet for all the attention on Reeves or Dion, Olijnyk said that much further up the list was the big show-biz money, namely Cirque du Soleil's founder and chief executive officer Guy Laliberte, at 39th place with a net worth of $925-million.

The Ultimate Matrix Collection

By Doug Pratt

In a bold attempt to certify the greatness of all three films as a single entity, Warner Home Video is releasing a compelling 10-platter set entitled "The Ultimate Matrix Collection" ($80). Written and directed by brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski, the three films, "The Matrix" (1999), "The Matrix Reloaded" (2003) and "The Matrix Revolutions" (2003) were conceived as a single mythological story. Despite the gap in production between the first movie, which had to prove itself, and the second two, which were able to cash in on its success, the three films have very consistent lines and one epic narrative. Each of the movies appears on a separate platter.

"The Matrix" is accompanied by a 123-minute retrospective production documentary, "The Matrix Revisited," which was already released individually by Warner in advance promotion of the second two films. The second two movies are each accompanied by a platter of special features as well. Rounding out the collection is a platter devoted to the made-for-video animated short film anthology, "The Animatrix," also released in 2003 to promote the sequels. There are also three more platters of supplementary materials.

Each of the three films is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The transfers on "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions" are identical to the previous releases. There are sequences that are deliberately grainy in both films, and contrasts seem a touch weak in places. But for the most part, the color transfer is sharp and finely detailed. The picture transfer on the original film is substantially improved. The older version looks brownish, while the new presentation has the properly thematic green tones and crisper shadings.

The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound on all three movies appears unaltered from the previous releases. It could stand to have a little more power in some of the separations, but is essentially boisterous and satisfying. The films have an alternate French audio track in 5.1 Dolby and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. The supplementary platters also have English captioning. "The Matrix" runs 136 minutes; "Reloaded" runs 138 minutes; and "Revolutions" runs 129 minutes.

Keanu Reeves stars as an individual, "Neo," chosen, and perhaps destined, to break free from a massive virtual world that is powered by humans who are kept in stasis by machines. He then helps lead other freed humans in a battle against the machines in the apparent "real" world, while at the same time he reenters the virtual world to search for the source and arbitrator of its design. There he battles against rogue programs that have begun to function independently.

With its computer-aided effects and culturally acute action scenes, the first film was a brilliant leap into 21st Century moviemaking.

It remains exhilaratingly entertaining despite its successors because its dramatic stakes, although deeply metaphorical, remain upon a graspable level of conflict.

The second film was a worthy follow up to the first movie. It has more fabulous, innovative action sequences, and, more importantly, it took the already rich intellectual content of the first film and exploded its precepts, widening and deepening not only its meanings, but its ability to engage and stimulate the most deeply held understandings in a viewer's cognitive system.

The third film, sadly, could not sustain the excellence of the first two. There are wonderful sequences in it -- spectacular action scenes and rich metaphorical constructions -- but the Wachowskis lose their storytelling sensibilities in the final hour. From the Big Bang to an acknowledgement of the roots of Reeves' character, there were many choices they could have gone with that would have created a satisfying but still ambiguous wrap up. The one they did choose, however, commits a graver sin than just being deliberately opaque. It is also boring.

The films always walk a fine line because most of the action is figurative, and different viewers lose their emotional bond with the films at different points in the story because of that. It is even easy to feel blase about the monumental freeway chase in the second film. When the choice is made at the end of the series to turn Reeves' character into one of those glowing light things that are popular at the end of ambiguous Japanese cartoons, what is left of a bond between the viewer and the emotional core of the film is severed. The images and symbols grind on, but they're no longer compelling. The irony is that throughout the three-film story, the hero continually questions the dogma surrounding him. But at the end, the filmmakers suddenly accept and embrace that dogma with the enthusiasm and sloppiness of an eager puppy, and you just want to get away.

Ah, but then there is the DVD. The failure of "The Matrix Revolutions" -- and it isn't a complete failure, just an annoying letdown that is magnified by the success that preceded it -- does not negate the many pleasures all three films have to offer. These pleasures are compounded by the DVD's supplements, which consciously take the movies to an even higher plane of wisdom and intellectual engagement.

Each film comes with two commentary tracks, one by three movie critics that didn't particularly care for the films all that much, and one by two professional philosophers who like the films a lot. As the Wachowskis explain in a text introduction to the commentaries, "The point was the juxtaposition of perspective so that in the implied dialogue that takes place between the two tracks, [viewers] would be offered reference points with which they might triangulate their own position."

The "philosophers," Cornel West (who has a bit part in "Revolutions") and Ken Wilber, take their time getting under way and speak less and less during the second two films, especially during the action sequences. But there are other instances where a listener's impulse is to stop and replay a segment a half dozen times to get a complete handle on what they are saying. Settling back, activating the English subtitles, and then watching the films and listening to their talk on all three movies is a great way to spend a day. It helps if you've had some basic exposure to Philosophy 101 (those numbers, incidentally, turn up several times in all three movies), but it isn't a total requirement, as they are almost as likely to say something as homey as, "The best way to know someone is to share a pizza with them," as they are to reference Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant or David Hume. They delve extensively into the concepts of free will and determinism, epistemology, and the links the films have to Eastern as well as Western religions.

West: "The dark subterranean dimension to this is, once one acknowledges one's limitations, how is one ever sure that the answers to one's fundamental questions, the answers to the 'Big Question' -- 'the meaning of life'; 'what is the nature of freedom?' If you're never going to be sure that there's an answer to those big questions -- 'why am I here?' -- then is it that the acknowledgement of one's limitations slides down a nihilistic slope, or is there still a way of coping, of wrestling, of grappling in a finite manner, and still preserving one's sense of meaning, always relative, and freedom, always contextual. That to me is part of the wrestling that's going on, not just in this film, but I think in some ways it's going on within the very souls of the Wachowskis themselves."

Wilber: "The other thing I'd point out in that regard, very similar, is we're following another train of themes, which is 'choice and choicelessness,' and choicelessness not in the neolistic sense, but in the sense of theologically what might be called, '100% acceptance,' a perfect acceptance of the divinity of everything. That's the choicelessness, in a sense, that we're talking about, versus the world of choice, and the Architect [a god-like character in the films] is going to say, 'Your problem has to do with choice,' and we find that coming up again and again and again, so that's another key ingredient of what we're hearing here."

West: "I think what we're actually seeing here is a particular philosophical anthropology, a conception of what it is to be human, and we've talked about limitation, but here, quite explicitly, we see the articulation of imperfection being integral to what it means to be human, that the very creator of the Matrix had to deal with the imperfections that were inescapable and therefore had to adjust the Matrix to those imperfections and limitations. So we're really, in a fascinating way here, getting an articulation of a vision of how we can define 'The Human,' how we can confine those acculturated organisms who are both prone to imperfection and yet at the same time exercises the very distinct gift of choosing. The political dimension of this is worth mentioning, too, because if we live in a civilization and empire that has thoroughly co-opted certain Messianic narratives, so that in the name of The One or in the name of Universal Humanity, you still reproduce the same structures of domination, forms of blindness, inability to cultivate a 'self' and a soul. Then in fact what the Wachowskis are saying, in part, is the choice that Neo is making is a choice that ought to be made by those who recognize the way in which salvation narratives have been co-opted by a corporate-capitalist world. Now that is very explicit, and that is serious. The Wachowskis come out of an American civilization which is a profoundly anti-intellectual civilization. It's a market-driven civilization, it's a business-oriented civilization, and to try and unleash Socratic energies in such a civilization is a fascinating project."

Wilber: "You know intellect has gotten a very bad rep. Intellect is sort of somehow meaning 'abstract' or 'dry, removed from life,' and it really just means, 'vitality.' It means a source of rich insight into what is happening. And so 'intellectual,' in the best sense, means you have to grapple with these issues, you have to use discriminating wisdom in the positive sense. You have to reach out and wrestle with these meanings as they apply in your everyday life. And certainly, all of the issues that we've looked at actually do. 'Do I have choice, do I not have choice?' 'Is there Fate or Free Will?' 'Am I suppose to love humanity abstractly, or in the flesh, and speaking of love in the flesh, just what does that mean? How high can love go? From body to mind to spirit, what happens if I don't integrate body and mind and spirit in my own self? Could it be that spirit appears as alienated machines trying to attack me? What happens if I don't integrate my own mind? Could it be that it, itself, is fragmented, nothing but programs, recycling the same old garbage over and over and over again? And what happens if I don't integrate body? It appears cut off from mind and spirit and self."

And yet, when they get to the end of "Revolutions," which they claim is an exposition of the spirit/machine metaphor, in a manner that doesn't just seem to be linguistically impossible but conceptually misconstrued as well -- that the machines are 'light,' i.e., 'spirit' -- the weakness of their arguments and analogies parallel the collapse of the film's visceral engagement. They speak elaborately and thoroughly about what the ending means, and point out plenty of evidence to back them up. But, to use a market-driven metaphor, you just can't buy it.

But again, no matter, sharing their time with the films on the whole is still a vastly rewarding experience. The pizza is great.

The critic talk is somewhat less satisfying, not because they're trashing the movies, but because they leave even longer gaps between comments as the films advance, and what they do have to say is less likely to energize your own thought process. Todd McCarthy, John Powers and David Thomson are pretty much of a like mind, too, about all three movies. They have a grudging respect for the first film, which they believe sets a standard that the second two fail to meet and that, furthermore, the choices made in the later films have soured aspects of the first movie, lessening its artistic value.

It is difficult not to laugh with them as they point out cliches and misfires, and they are aware, even with the third movie, of ideas and sequences that are successful, but disdain is a bowl of popcorn that is never far from their reach. While they're OK with the names of performers, they sometimes forget the names of fairly basic films ("The Night of the Lepus," "Outbreak") and make statements that seem completely off base (using "Metropolis" as an example, they claim that Fritz Lang was never interested in sequels, and even though one later corrects himself by citing the "Mabuse" films, the length and industry to which Lang did tackle long form, multiple-part features is never acknowledged).

The best critic tracks use the movie at hand as a text to teach viewers not only about the film but about filmmaking or, as is the case with West and Wilber, a great many other things. Here, that doesn't seem to be part of the assignment, and it can be draining to sit through the films being reminded of every shortcoming. You might as well wrap yourself in wet blanket before you start.

"The Matrix Revisited" documentary contains a wealth of behind-the-scenes footage along with comments from the members of the cast and the crew about their jobs and the project at hand. It shows how most of the big special effect sequences were accomplished and makes note of the filmmaking innovations that were involved. The special features on the "Revisited" platter in the ultimate collection differ from the supplement on the original DVD release of the documentary.

The most significant new extra is a collection of about three hours of music excerpted in the film, presented in audio-only format. There is also a 23-minute collection of raw behind-the-scenes footage from various action scenes, an 18-minute piece on the "bullet time" computer effects, and a 17-minute plug for the video game. The original DVD release came with a few brief featurettes, some of them offered as "hidden" menu selections, and brief promotions for other "Matrix"-related products. The best segment is a five-minute piece on the most enthusiastic fans.

Jada Pinkett Smith has a supporting role in the second two films, but she also shot a lot of live action footage for the video game, "Enter the Matrix," and 42 minutes of that footage has been compiled on the "Reloaded" special features platter. Most of the scenes involve setups for the characters to enter some passageway or online adventure, but there are a few special effects and a couple good one-liners. She also kisses Monica Bellucci in one segment. It can serve as a nice entr'acte between the second and third films if you're really making a day of it.

Also included on the platter are 138 minutes of production featurettes, most of which are fully involving. The major action sequences are thoroughly deconstructed, with extensive interviews and clips. A couple are shown in their entirety in a split screen, with the second screen shifting through various behind-the-scenes shots, storyboards and preliminary animation for every shot.

In another segment, all of the elements contributing to a single shot are deconstructed. Additionally, there is a substantial interview with martial arts director Yuen Wo Ping, and a look at the construction of the elaborate freeway set in Alameda. (When they were done, the filmmakers contributed the used lumber to a housing project in Mexico.) A couple of the pieces also appeared on the previous DVD release, but most are fresh. And one insight on our part -- there has been a lot of talk about making movies someday with avatars of Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe or that sort of thing, but perhaps more realistically, there are now, presumably in data storage somewhere, fully loaded image profiles of Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and who knows how many other of today's performers. If, for example, someone decides to make a film with Reeves a couple decades from now, and wants to include a flashback to his younger days, the data is waiting.

A few of the documentaries that appeared on the first "Revolutions" release are duplicated on that special features platter too. But again, most of the 165 minutes of material is new, including detailed examinations of all the big special effect sequences, segments on the recording of the musical score, the editing and other post-production applications, and the most enjoyable segment, a portrait of the extras who had to dress up in fetish costumes for the disco scene. (And can someone please tell us what the people of Zion eat?)

"Animatrix" is an unchanged duplication of the individual release. Several of the other cartoons are also very appealing, and the programs are supported by commentaries and other supplements.

The eighth platter has two highly stimulating documentaries. One, running 61 minutes, is a compendium of the allusions within the film to Western and Eastern philosophical thought, identifying the different concepts, such as Free Will, that the movies are specifically exploring, as well as the general philosophical principles that led to these concepts.

The second documentary, which also runs 61 minutes, is a dazzling look at the scientific foundations for the film, covering everything from virtual reality to the capabilities of robots. Author Steven Johnson points out the future is essentially here already; we just don't recognize it. "Video games are absolutely the quickest way to glimpse the future, and glimpse the future in a very serious way. We're actually exploring what it's like to interact with intelligent software that is posing as some kind of lifeform and interacting with us. Millions of kids, millions of people are interacting with these artificial, intelligent, kind of creatures every single day. It's become a part of life, but we don't think of it as being that significant because it's all off in this world of games, but in fact it's maybe the most interesting thing happening technologically right now."

Also included on the platter, in "hidden" menu options, are briefer pieces, apparently outtakes from the two documentaries, running a total of 20 minutes and looking at the meanings of the character names and other insights or trivia about the narratives (most of the car license plates in the trilogy, it turns out, refer to passages in the Bible).

A 94-minute production documentary looking at the combined shoot of the two sequels (and the videogame) is presented on the ninth platter. It contains prompts to shorter digressive profiles of various secondary cast and crewmembers and the work they perform, but those 82 minutes of profiles can also be accessed separately. The primary documentary skims over coverage of the shooting of the dramatic sequences but it gives you a thorough sense of how the major action scenes were staged. Better yet, it gives you a real sense of what the crew had to endure over the course of the two years it took to make the films. They shot the freeway chase first, knowing that they would need a long lead-time on the special effects (you kind of feel sorry for them, because they went through a monumental effort, building their own freeway and all, only to be trumped by "Bad Boys II" when the sequence finally made it to the screen).

Among other things, there is a look at some stuntmen doing test work in zero gravity, a demonstration of how dangerous blanks are and what they can do to an aluminum can (pretty much waste it), and a reminder, with the unrelated deaths of two cast members and September 11th, that there is no escaping reality on a movie set.

The 10th platter holds a wealth of still frame materials, most of it developmental artwork related to the two sequels. The storyboards, which have a variety of different styles, are presented in montage format, in 30 segments each running from a half-minute to several minutes. It is that variety of style that makes the section a page-turner. Arranged in alphabetical order, you begin to look forward to how each sequence will be presented. The remaining four sections, presenting characters/costumes (13 selections), vehicles (13 selections), big machines (11 selections), and sets/environments (51 selections), are in still frame format, with several stills and sometimes preliminary animation included for each selection.

While the characters and the locations are fairly understandable through the pictorial presentations alone, some of the vehicles and machines selections would have benefited from text introductions explaining each one's purpose or function within the films.

Also included on the platter are five trailers, 22 TV commercials, a Marilyn Manson music video for "The Matrix," a P.O.D. music video for "The Matrix Reloaded" and a nine-minute plug for a "Matrix" on-line game.

Finally, as a suitable conclusion to the marathon set, there is an excellent nine-minute music video combining the choral theme music from the films with a montage of preliminary special effects animation and footage from the two sequels. Crisply and smartly edited, it makes for an invigorating final splash of sensory input and leaves you feeling that perhaps it all was worthwhile after all.

The complete database of Doug Pratt's DVD-video reviews is available at http://dvdlaser.com. A sample copy of the DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter can be obtained by calling (516) 594-9304.

Steve McQueen and Bullitt Top Of Cool Chart

December 5, 2004, 12:05:07 BULLITT TOPS COOL LIST

STEVE McQUEEN's movie BULLITT has been crowned the 'coolest' film of all time in a new British poll

The 1968 film was hailed for its hunky star and its soundtrack in the survey conducted by TV TIMES magazine.

The listings publication called on voters to only pick films starring actors who are adored by women across the world.

A spokesman for TV Times says, "It's easy to see why McQueen was known as the King of Cool."McQueen and Bullitt - legendary for featuring one of the best car chases in big screen history - beat out

PAUL NEWMAN in COOL HAND LUKE and SIR SEAN CONNERY in GOLDFINGER. MARLON BRANDO's leather-jacketed turn in THE WILD ONE and a dark sunglasses-clad KEANU REEVES in THE MATRIX complete the top five.

Keanu Reeves to hell back

He's traveled through time for school projects, seen life without the illusion of the Matrix and saved entire busloads of people from a madman. For his next challenge, Keanu Reeves will play a supernatural detective who's actually been to hell and back. In "Constantine," based on the comic book "Hellblazer," Reeves' titular character teams up with a police officer to investigate her sister's suicide. Along the way, she gets to see the world of angels and demons that normally only Constantine is privy to. "TRL" co-host Damien caught up with Keanu on the set in Los Angeles.

Damien: What's the movie like? What's the plot of "Constantine"? It's based on a comic book, right?

Keanu Reeves: Yeah, it's inspired by "Hellblazer," and let's see ... I play a character named John Constantine, a man — an exorcist — condemned to hell for the life he took.

Damien: That's not good.

Keanu: Yeah. His own life, by the way. Condemned to hell for that, and he's trying to find a way to get back into heaven, so he's doing that by kind of casting out demons and trying to find a kind of redemption. On his way with doing that he uncovers a plot for certain forces that are trying to make a hell on earth, and there's only one man who stands in its way.

Watch the "Constantine" trailer

Check out more from "Constantine"

Damien: Who is that man?

Keanu: John Constantine.

Damien: That's right.

Keanu: And in that search, he comes up against ... he kind of has to make the ultimate sacrifice, which is something that goes quite against his nature. This piece has a certain kind of hardboiled aspect to it, there's a lot of horror to it, mystery, and it's quite genre-bending and blending, which has been really cool.

Damien: We just talked with Shia LaBeouf. How was it working with him? Is he a good kid? He's got great stuff to say about you.

Keanu: He's absolutely fantastic. He's got a lovely spirit, and he's a really talented actor, and it's been fun to throw down with him.

Damien: What's his role in the movie?

Keanu: Constantine calls him his "very appreciated apprentice," a kind of acolyte of sorts, and he gets involved in this whole ... he's kind of trying to live and learn with Constantine. He wants to kind of enter the world that Constantine lives in, but as we know, knowledge comes with a price.

Damien: Let's talk about the director, because I've heard that he is just ... I mean, Shia was singing his praises.

Keanu: Yeah, he's absolutely fantastic. Francis Lawrence is "the real deal," as they say. His eye is great, his instinct with a story, the way that he watches scenes, the way that he works with actors, very collaborative, at the same time knows what he wants and can communicate that. Not only with the actors, but the people on the crew, and all the other artisans involved. ... For me, it's been one of the best experiences I've had making a picture, just really collaborative, and seems to draw out some of the best work, which is great too.

Damien: What kind of stuff did you learn from him as a director?

"There was a real openness to collaboration ..."

Keanu: What I got to do, which was great, was early on in the process, there was a real openness to collaboration with the script, and with the ideas, and with what we thought we were going to try to do, and what that translated to on the set was ... he's got a really great and fresh-feeling sense of cinema, so I might kind of come up with an idea, and he would say, "OK." ... Sometimes he'd have some angles, and I'd ask, "What's this telling? What's this story we're telling?" and he was really great at communicating what he was doing, and so in terms of learning, it was more about just experiencing some of the best things that can happen in the creative act of making a film and telling a story, just, like, what do you think? And what do I think? And how do we go about it? How do we get this story out? How do we tell this story? And working with him has been really, for me, personally satisfying. And the cast that he assembled, his taste is really great. And he's got a real kind of earthy intellectual aspect to him, he's very thoughtful, and at the same time he's got a real kind of emotional connection to his thought, which is a cool combination in terms of telling stories.

Damien: Growing up, did you read comics at all? Was that your hobby? I know that I read comics as a kid, some people collected baseball cards.

Keanu: Yeah, yeah, there was about 10 years there where I was going out there on Wednesdays and Fridays or whatever and getting like the whole ...

Damien: The new "Spider-Man"?

Keanu: The whole thing, yeah. I remember when the "Dark Knight" came out, and when "Ronin" came out. The Frank Miller stuff was really like, "Wow, that's a new thing." Before then, I really liked "Spider-Man," "New Mutants," and I really loved "Wolverine," you know that four-issue series that Frank Miller did? Yeah, it was just f---ing awesome.

Damien: And, uh, you just said "f---in'."

Keanu: Well, that's the way it goes, man. You know, we're livin', we're talkin', we're hangin'. You know what I mean? We're in Los Angeles and rapping about comics, so what the heck.

Damien: So how long are the days here on the set? Are they grueling? Do you have to be up at like 4 a.m. and shoot until 2 a.m.?

Keanu: Standard filming days, once you arrive to when you finish, is 12 hours, and then it turns into overtime. But basically a normal day is generally about 14 hours.

Damien: Fourteen hours. And you know, I will be the conduit between Shia and you, because Shia's a little upset — your trailer's a little bigger than his. He was a little upset. His is on Jenga cubes. Seriously, the little wooden things over there — like little Jenga pieces.

Keanu: The young man's been doing it for I think five [years], I've got 20. You know what I mean? It's like I'm closer to the [retirement-gift] watch than he is in that sense, but one day all of these will be Shia's. With the way he's going, I'm sure he'll have the estate.

Damien: So we're going to be roaming around the set tonight, checking it out. What's going on tonight, and what other kinds of scenes can we look forward to?

Keanu: Let's see, tonight Constantine is talking about his experience going to hell. John Constantine has the ability to cross over planes, and he just talks about, you know, that time stops when you cross over, two minutes in hell. What else have we got? We have Shia's character, my character, going to the kind of showdown — we're driving to this kind of hospital where there's a showdown.

Damien: A little showdown. Are there guns involved? Are there weapons?

Keanu: Yeah, there's a holy shotgun. You might see the holy shotgun tonight.

Damien: The holy shotgun's coming out, ladies and gentlemen.

Keanu: The holy shotgun, which is quite a piece. Yeah, it's pretty great. And, what else do we have going on? And then there's a walk-and-talk with his character, Chaz. There's a place where Djimon Hounsou's character, Midnight — he's kind of in between heaven and hell, kind of neutral, kind of Switzerland — he owns this club where the half-breeds — half angel, half demons — can hang out and they mix together, and this is one of the spots that his character wants to get into, Midnight's. And so we're walking — he's going to try and get into that spot, but it doesn't work out.

Damien: It doesn't happen.

Keanu: Well, it does eventually, but ...

Damien: Well don't give away the movie!

Keanu: And then what happens is ...

Damien: No, no, no, no, no, please!