Ads in the paper proclaim that Matrix Reloaded DVD will be for sale at 12:01 am tomorrow, October 14. Ted actually will be on the “other side” of the Sound tonight, coming home from the airport late, and I joked with him that he should just stay over there another hour or so and head to Tukwila to pick up the DVD at Best Buy . The company site features a completely unflattering review of the movie, ending with this quote: “By the end of nearly two-and-a-half hours, the Matrix hasn’t been reloaded; it’s been deflated. ” Guess though that they must not be worried about selling the DVD; as they are not trying too hard to make the movie sound worth watching …
Little more than 3 weeks to go until the final movie, Matrix Revolutions. Time to start looking for a babysitter. Ted showed me the trailers a few weeks ago. Intriguing…! The Matrix web site also features news about the release on November 5 Matrix Revolutions Zero Hour Global Premiere which involves simultaneous release around the world and on IMAX (quotes below):
Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures will unveil THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, the final explosive chapter in the blockbuster MATRIX trilogy, at the exact same moment in time in every major city around the world on November 5. This unprecedented distribution scenario will make the highly anticipated film available to fans simultaneously at 6 a.m. in Los Angeles, 9 a.m. in New York, 2 p.m. in London, 5 p.m. in Moscow, 11 p.m. in Tokyo and at corresponding times in over 50 additional countries worldwide.
In conjunction with the REVOLUTIONS worldwide distribution event, THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS: The IMAX Experience will debut at IMAX Theatres in the United States on November 5. This marks the first time a major Hollywood live-action event film is released concurrently in 35mm and IMAX’s revolutionary 15/70 format.
Think we can find a babysitter to come over at 6 am?! Thanks to Slashdot ( I spied over Ted’s shoulder this morning)
A few weeks ago, Peter B. Lloyd, who wrote the “Glitches” essay wrote me a comment about my review of Taking the Red Pill . On his site I found a chapter-by-chapter brief review of Taking the Red Pill with links to author web sites. There I learned that two chapters from the book are available on the web. For those of you who don’t want to wait for the library book to come, look here for Lloyd’s original Glitches essay . After the second film, Lloyd wrote another essay called Glitches Reloaded . I enjoyed reading this one also. It’s a bit long, it seems to me longer than the first essay, but I especially liked his speculations about Persephone’s lipstick and the Oracle’s candy….Also I appreciated reading his postscript at the end of the essay.
Kurzweil’s chapter The Human Machine Merger: Are We Headed for the Matrix? is also available on line at Kurzweil’s site along with many other interesting essays and dialogues, including his take on the second Matrix film The Matrix Loses Its Way: Reflections on ‘Matrix’ and ‘Matrix Reloaded’
Speaking of Taking the Red Pill authors, Ted posted an entry recently about Bill Joy’s new adventures after leaving Sun… What’s Next for Bill Joy?
The latest book I read about the Matrix was The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real . This book is part of the “Popular Culture and Philosophy” series, including books about Simpsons and Seinfeld with William Irwin as editor. I only had time to skim through the first 80 pages before I had to return it to the library where others had it on hold.
So far, I was most interested in the essay by Carolyn Korsmeyer titled “Seeing, Believing, Touching, Truth” While the focus in Red Pill seemed to be Tasty Wheat and the Woman in Red issues, the scene of focus in this book seemed to be the club scene where Neo and Trinity meet: “It’s the question that drives us….”
“Why write about pop culture like the Matrix? Because that’s where the people are.” This quote from the book reveals the attitude behind the writings. On the one hand, there is truth that the Matrix is a popular movie, and writing where culture is can be a powerful way to speak with people. From skimming through the book, I got a sense that these professors would much rather write about more obscure and intellectual topics; there is a feel of condescension in writing about this movie. Unlike Red Pill authors who seemed serious about their subject, really “into it”, there is instead in this book, a sense of tolerating popular culture. The writing seems either dry and flat or else cutsie and suggestive, such as “Eliminative Materialism: Why Your Spouse Can Never Complain that She has a Headache”. Some essays seemed even offensive to me, such as “Penetrating Keanu” and “The Matrix or the Two Sides of Perversion”. While I wish I had had some more time to read this collection’s essay on Buddhism ( Michael Brannigan’s There is No Spoon: A Buddhist Mirror) and religion (Gregory Bassham), I decided that it wasn’t worth trying to get this book back from the library .
Now on my desk stack is Exploring the Matrix; Visions of the Cyber Present by Karen Haber. I left it out on the kitchen countertop one afternoon and I even caught Ted on a break spending some time flipping through it, reading essays here and there….so this one so far seems more promising to me…Peter Lloyd seems to have a good opinion of it too ….I’ll let you know mine….
