Let’s play that game where we compare quotes from two seemingly unrelated stories that happened to come out on the same day and thus seem to say something about the zeitgeist.
I remember the first time The Matrix made sense to me. It was a sunny afternoon at a Seattle multiplex in 1999; I was about thirty minutes into watching the discombobulated world of existential musings and wacky technological discontent when suddenly the whole thing clicked: The red/blue pill polarity that divided truth and illusion, how the advent of thinking machines threatens our individuality, the epic battle between those willing to break down and understand the world in all its true colors and others willing to blindly accept it. A few months later, The Sixth Sense would leave me scratching my head for several days before I made peace with the final act twist, but The Matrix offered instant satisfaction. I left the theater energized, ready to challenge my own notions of reality and match Neo’s heroic ambitions as the One. Then I went home and played a video game in quiet solitude.
And so we arrive at the central paradox of The Matrix paradigm: Technology can set us free, but it also threatens to bind us from the real world. Today marks the tenth anniversary of The Matrix’s triumphant theatrical release (a special edition Blu-ray DVD hits shelves on the same day). A decade after directors Larry and Andy Wachowski established their fictional timeline for humanity’s enslavement at the hands of artificial intelligence, several of the movie’s predictions about our relationship to new media have started to come true.
At the time of its release, the dot com bubble was on the brink of bursting, the inventors of Facebook and Twitter were in high school, and some people thought the world faced imminent destruction from the Y2K virus. With The Matrix, the Wachowskis suggested that technology would indeed precipitate our downfall — although not quite so soon. Still, many of its imaginary conceits proved strikingly prescient. Take the following detailing of its accuracy as an exciting testament to modern progress, a harbinger of the apocalypse, or some unseemly combination of both.
So, Aaron Sorkin, writer of such films as A Few Good Men, The American Presidentand Charlie Wilson’s War, and, of course, creator of TV’s The West Wing, is apparently now working on a movie about Facebook for Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin (No Country for Old Men). Yes, that’s right, a Facebook movie. News comes to us directly from the social networking site, as Sorkin himself announced the project by admitting that he has absolutely no clue what Facebook is. And I guess he’s looking for assistance or questions or something. Obviously he’s the perfect guy to be scripting a film about the founding of the site.
I’m drawing a blank right now as to whether or not any websites have officially spawned movies (does AOL count?), but I do recall an idea from 3 years ago to make an internet dating movie sponsored by Friendster, which was to be directed by Harold Ramis and star Topher Grace. I guess the fact that Friendster faded from popularity in favor of MySpace and then Facebook ruined those plans. But is it possible that this new project will fare any better? Social networking sites have a habit of falling out of fashion rather quickly. Oh well, if Facebook: The Movie doesn’t work out, Rudin and Sorkin are welcome to go with any of these other ideas:
10. Friendster- Just because the other Friendster project didn’t pan out doesn’t mean the site can’t still inspire another movie. This one would be all about how Friendster rose to the top quickly and lived the good life until attempts to get even higher went awry and its fans abandoned it. You know, the age old story of celebrity. Sorkin might be interested because of the way it could parallel his hit stage play (and upcoming film) The Farnsworth Invention.
Ain’t It Cool has pictures from the Morocco set of The Green Zone, a Paul Greengrass film about the war in Iraq starring Matt Damon. AICN’s tipster says the U.S. military has refused to provide props for the film because of the script’s critical stance towards the war. I don’t know that it’s exactly standard practice for the military to lend equipment to Hollywood productions anyway, but LIBERTAS says this is just one more sign that filmmakers who question the war are “enablers of evil willing to squander tens-of-millions in the hope of watching untold numbers of abandoned Iraqis fed into the meat grinder of death squads and terrorists.”
Eugene at indieWIRE notices the similarities between the new poster for Baghead, and the poster for 60s sex farce Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (starring young Elliott Gould….drool). I think the Baghead poster is kind of awesome––I love it that it downplays the totally (and I’m sure somewhat intentionally) unconvincing horror aspect of the film.
Vulture counts down budding filmmaker Madonna’s five worst in front of the camera contributions to the music video canon. The big loser is the partially-animated “Dear Jessie”, which is truly awful, but also enough of an oddity that it’s a shame it’s already been removed from YouTube.
To close the day on the most prurient note possible: the tabloids say Lindsay Lohan’s drinking again, but Radar says she’s just an avid Facebook updater who takes both her sobriety and alleged lesbian lover Samantha Ronson very seriously.
Roger Ebert, who underwent his third cancer-related surgery in January, has posted a letter on his web site announcing his intention to return to reviewing films for the Chicago Sun-Times after the 2008 installment of his Overlooked Film Festival. Ebert says that another operation would be required in order to restore his ability to speak, but he’s holding off for the time being. “I am still cancer-free, and not ready to think about more surgery at this time,” he writes, “I should be content with the abundance I have.”
According to TimeOut London, Pedro Almodovar will be blogging throughout the production of his next film, Broken Hugs. The blog will allegedly live here, but when I go to the page all I get is a sea of blackness.
Chris Thilk approves of the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull SuperPoke Facebook application, and he explains why: “I would be willing to bet there were more than a few people saying the studio needed to build their own “Whip Your Friends” application. But instead they decided to add functionality to an existing one, one that has a decent adoption rate already.”
At Twitch, Peter Martin offers a list that looks like it has the potential to become a giant meme: his Top 5 Experiences with New Cinema, or “the initial excursions into unexplored territory, the tentative expanding of boundaries and possibilities and new ways of looking at the world, all things that came about only when I broke down barriers I had set for myself and sampled various types of new cinema.”
Facebook and Seesmic have banned a promotion for the international rollout of the Diane Lane film Untraceable. The movie basically bombed when it was dumped here in late January, but because people on the internet love nothing better than making fun of mainstream cultural stuff that pretends to understand the internet, it garnered a bit of snarky blog attention for its ridiculous premise alone. Lane stars as some kind of FBI cyberterrorism analyst who is charged with stopping the mastermind behind KillWithMe.com, who pledges to murder captive victims when the site reaches a quota of page views. Totally misguided attempt to plumb the new web culture as dressing for the same old thriller, and thus a sure sign that Web 2.0 is dead? Or a genius satire of the internet publishing industry? Nobody cared either way, I guess––the film has so far failed to make back its production budget domestically.
Which means its international box office is key. Which explains why Universal, desperate to make some noise, would hire a firm to essentially replicate KillWithMe.com on social networks.
And now, for a bit of shameless self-promotion: behold the above widget, which will allow you to syndicate SpoutBlog headlines on your Facebook, MySpace, or on the sidebar of your own blog. You can grab the widget for yourself here. Do it, and show the world exactly how you feel about us.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Ain’t It Cool has pictures
Roger Ebert, who underwent his third cancer-related surgery in January, has posted 
Facebook and Seesmic have banned
