 By Marianne anyway.
And though she'll beg to differ, I feel that a daughter's first sortie in the big city with a young man (though not the boyfriend) and nobody else is a "blog-worthy" event. Especially since her alarm clock also woke Daddy at eight o'clock on a Sunday morning.
They're going to see 'Matrix Reloaded' in Odessa street. Sorry, Lee my friend, two more for those maddening crowds of yours.
Yesterday, we didn't go as far as the Max Linder after all, but to Les Cinq Caumartins, a high-quality place worth publicity as part of one of the diminishing number of independents left in town. Getting there 95 minutes early was Pariscope's fault, not mine, they billed the time wrong. Parisians should know this, because many don't, even Fnac card-holders: if you've got one, you get cut-price tickets at this cinema as well as a handful of the other "indies".
Sorry, was it 'Reloaded' you want to know about?
In a phrase: well worth the wait!
I too shall see it again. A good 9/10 like the first, but different. Had the mysterious Wachowski brothers risked their first inclinations and 'Reloaded' and 'Matrix Revolution' (due in November) been a single film more than four hours long, even the extra bowel-clearing prelude time offered by an over-early arrival wouldn't have been enough for me in my current condition. Moreover, the movie demands constant attention and to every detail, as did the first part of the story and I didn't "get it" all in one go.
Some things, even the obvious ones in the private 21st-century recast mythology of the makers, only hit in my sleep (I dreamed, no kidding, of machines). Persephone (Monica Bellucci) had, of course, to be named for her ambiguous role at a gateway, wife of Hades too. And a seductress. Apart from the kingship aspect, I have yet to find my second and third degrees in her screen husband, Merovingian (an excellent Lambert Wilson, whose brief foul-mouthed excursions into his native tongue had a French audience roaring with laughter).
 I suspect that a few of those who have expressed disappointment with "number two" wanted even more of the sheer bravura John "Bullet" Gaeta displayed with the special effects in 'Matrix' itself, but you can hardly revolutionize that side of the multi-media industry and trigger so many good and bad clones twice in a decade.
As it is, 'Reloaded' had quite enough surprises for me, including a car (and other vehicle) chase unlike any predecessor, as breath-takingly new in its way as the one in 'The French Connection' was way back in 1971.
Every bit as luscious to look at as 'Matrix' was, 'Reloaded' is equally genially paced. Just one scene seemed a little longer than it needed to be (Marianne felt the same way), but to say which would either disclose a key plot detail you know already or don't want to in advance.
My guesswork last month on the plot was wrong. So was almost everybody else I heard or read. So much the better...
Since it's no mystery that Neo and Trinity are in love, it will come as no spoiler to remark that such snatched love as Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss make in 'Reloaded' is precisely that: l'amour, not "just" sex.
Among other rarities or novelties, Zion is magnificent (I enjoyed the Rasta references) while the machinery took me right back to Metropolis. Randall Duk Kim is The Keymaker, a role that scarcely needs "explaining", the Twins (Adrian and Neil Rayment) and their powers make things worse most satisfactorily, and Morpheus's fellow captain, as Niobe (work that one out), is a stunning Jada Pinkett Smith. There are too many other new faces to mention.
We learn more of the nature of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), including his own love life, and Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) lives up to the multiplicity of his name, while the nature of the Oracle becomes more clear.
Whether Gloria Foster will be back in 'Revolution' I don't know. One of the much-visited Source sites lists her last film as 'Reloaded', before diabetes claimed her life in September 2001, but the Wachowski brothers will only tell us want they want to there!
Even Ms Moss herself says she didn't know, once on set after all the months of training our heroes endured at the hands of martial arts master Yuen Wo Ping, whether the scenes she was working on for a year and a half would end up part of 'Reloaded' or 'Revolution'.
That much she was prepared to tell 'CINE Film(s)' (whence the pix here). I was unjust the other day to slag this off the other day for charging too much for its special on 'Reloaded' (and I'd looked at the price for the wrong country too, so it wasn't just Francis who was bleary-eyed). For 4.95 euros in fact, Marianne's souvenir edition is packed with fascinating details, intelligent writing and interviews, and some good stuff from behind the scenes.
One thing I learned from it last night, for instance, after taking most of the car chase scene for technical wizardry when we watched it, was that it isn't. It was filmed the good old-fashioned way, with real people in real vehicles, and one of the stunt women got damned near killed at 140 kilometres an hour (87 mph)
It's slightly frustrating to learn that a forthcoming DVD will contain five more revealing and related shorts to add to the four at the Animatrix (not, regrettably, the easiest of download places for those with slow connections), since I have no plans to get a telly while a DVD player is way down low on my shopping list. I'll find a friend! The whole article on Matrix, anime and the Japanese connection is an interesting read, worth exploring further on the Net.
|
|
postbox
