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.
The Day The Earth Stood Still managed to pull in $30 million dollars this past weekend, which you can mostly attribute to clever marketing, but it’s not a promising number for the much-loathed movie, which is sitting at 21% on Rotten Tomatoes right now. Beyond the wooden acting and the eviscerating of a beloved sci fi classic that most people are talking about, there are some moments in this movie that just make my teeth clench. Moments that are so poorly written, thought out, filmed, and constructed that I just can’t keep myself from venting. Read on to see all five, and just in case it’s not clear enough from the header: there are spoilers below.
One of the biggest travesties about the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still is that Jon Hamm only has a bit part in it. Frankly, if he’d played Klaatu, this might have been a movie worth watching. He’s spent the last two years winning our hearts and wardrobes over as Don Draper on AMC’s Mad Men, and he’s worth a lot more than a small part in a science fiction remake.
WIth that in mind, here are five classic science fiction remakes that we’d like to see Jon Hamm take the helm in. If he brings along any of his television co-stars, that would bring some bonus points. But his slicked-back hair and calm demeanor don’t need any assistance. Check out the list after the break and hope that someone at a studio somewhere is paying attention.
Apparently Keanu Reeves can play an 18th century Japanese warrior in Universal’s samurai epic 47 Ronin because he’s “half-Asian.” Specifically, he’s half Hawaiian-Chinese, which is only the same as Japanese in the disappointing sort of Orientalism still practiced in Hollywood.
Ben Affleck may follow up Gone Baby Gone by directing Arizona, the true story of an investigative journalist killed while uncovering political corruption. This could be Affleck’s third work as a director if he’s still helming The Town, which he was linked to back in September.
New trend in Hollywood: kid writers. While Paramount’s got that 12-year-old food critic film, Fox now has the rights to 9-year-old love expert Alec Greven’s advice series How to Talk to Girls.
I wonder if Columbia’s untitled bounty hunter project starring Gerard Butler as a man hired to retrieve his ex-wife (played by Jennifer Aniston) will be more like It Happened One Night or His Girl Friday or neither of the above.
Another YouTube documentary: this one details the online love affair of an Australian and an American whose relationship played out on the video site for all to see. Wait, so why do we need the film?
Twilight has already sold out around 500 midnight shows for Thursday and at least 400 shows throughout the weekend. Thanks to the report from The Hollywood Reporter, I finally understand the appeal: apparently it’s a movie about an “interspecies love affair.”
It’s no coincidence that movie rights for another “vampyre” series of young adult novels has just been optioned. House of Night: Marked will be the link between Twilight and Harry Potter with its plot of pubescent bloodsuckers attending a special school just for their kind.
One-time documentarian Seth Gordon is apparently satisfied directing fiction for awhile. Following Four Christmases, he’s now set to helm a con job caper titled Suicide Squad. However, he’s still reportedly doing a fictional remake of his doc The King of Kong and producing a new doc titled Freakonomics.
It’s not definite yet, but it looks like Oscar-nominated actor/director Kenneth Branagh will be taking the helm of Marvel Studios’ comic book adaptation Thor. Most young moviegoers know Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart (from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), but he’s otherwise better known for primarily directing films of Shakespeare’s works. He also tends to cast mostly trained Shakespearean actors, although he has been known to include an Alicia Silverstone or a Matthew Lillard in his ensembles. Additionally, he’s been known for odd casting choices, such as Robert De Niro for the Monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Who will he cast this time in the Asgardian ensemble that will make up the film? It might not actually be totally up to him, but if it is, it might look a little like this:
I know what you’re thinking. He’s old. But he’s only five years older than Iron Man’s Robert Downey Jr. and only 3 years older than Brad Pitt, who recently was rumored to be at the top of Marvel’s wish list for the role. Anyway, he’s cast himself as Hamlet, Dr. Frankenstein and Henry V. So, it would be fitting if he cast himself in the lead here, too. The only issue, of course, is that the script now apparently features Thor’s alter ego, Donald Blake, and he’s reportedly written as a med student, not a full-on doctor. Oh, and for Thor, Branagh will have to beef up tremendously. Or not. If he actually got away with playing the character, he could probably also get away with not giving in to the whole height and muscle problem.
Keanu Reeves tells Kevin Buist–in very inhuman terms–what it’s like to be an alien getting in touch with his “humanness,” just before Kevin gets melted by a cosmic glare for being near Keanu at Comic-Con. So, what’s up with all these A-list Hollywood types going to a comic book convention? Kevin tells the story of his first Comic-Con visit.
Eureka! One of the great documentaries to slip through the cracks in 2004 was released this week through new DVD label, Carnivalesque FIlms. Mardi Gras: Made in China deftly examines globalization by stringing together life in a Chinese bead factory with the drunken, breast-baring party life of New Orleans during Mardi Gras.
Plus, a listener emails us two movies about female vigilantes. Can you guess what they are?
FOX Studio really does it up at Comic-Con 2008 with Keanu, Jennifer Connelly (The Day the Earth Stood Still) Mark Wahlberg, Ludacris (Max Payne) and a surprise appearance by Hugh Jackman with footage “from his bag” of Wolverine.
Highlights:
- Surprise preview reel of Wolverine joins previews of The Day the Earth Stood Still and Max Payne.
- TDESS should really piss of conservatives with it’s heavy human vs. environment condemnation.
- Mark Wahlberg speaks Russian? (Of course, girls love it)
- Max Payne looks like “The Departed with 1,000 times more violence.”
- Wolverine will cut Liev Schreiber’s “goddam head off.”
Read the full liveblogging transcript below. …Read more
Though it may be more appropriate to watch videos of his comedy routines, particularly of his classic “Seven Dirty Words” bit or his routine on death, this is a film blog, so I’m sharing a clip from … an animated television series. But it’s a cartoon spun-off from a movie, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which is probably Carlin’s most memorable film, so I find it worthy. Especially because Carlin reprised his role as Rufus.
The first season of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures actually featured the voices of Carlin, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, as Rufus, Ted and Bill, respectively. It wasn’t completely rare for cartoon spin-offs to retain the lead actors of the original movies/TV shows, and it’s not like any of the principals were too big for Saturday morning (Reeves didn’t really become a big star until a few years later), but in retrospect it at least seems surprising.
Oh, Keanu Reeves, must you continue playing cops? I’d rather you did more Shakespeare, in which you’re actually more believable. But no, after Point Break(I consider FBI agents to be cops) and Speed, you have to go and do Street Kings and try to make us accept you as one of the hardest vice detectives to ever grace the big screen. Want a cookie? Or an Oscar? Even if you do pull off the equivalent of what Ethan Hawke did in Training Day, you’re not going to get the notice of the Academy. The only thing keeping you from being the least likely actor to be taken seriously as a tough undercover officer is the existence of Paul Walker, whose performance in The Fast and the Furiousmakes you look like Dirty Harry.
Speaking of Training Day and The Fast and the Furious, the screenwriter behind those two movies, David Ayer, is the director of Street Kings. Fortunately, he didn’t write this one. The guys who did write it are L.A. Confidentialnovelist James Ellroy, who also came up with the original story, Equilibriumwriter-director Kurt Wimmer and an apparent newcomer named Jamie Moss. Co-starring in the film, some of whom are sure to make Reeves’ acting appear even worse, are Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans (if you saw Sunshine, you know he’s actually a pretty good actor), Common, Jay Mohr, John Corbett, Cedric the Entertainer, The Game and Naomie Harris. OK, enough ragging on Reeves. But despite the appealing names of Ellroy and Whitaker, this still looks like a generic cops-and-gangstas movie. I’d rather just wait for Keanu as Klaatu later this year.
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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