Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

May 19 2003

After hearing Mindcrime bash The Matrix Reloaded a…

After hearing Mindcrime bash The Matrix Reloaded all weekend, I decided to go see it this morning. I thought that an earlier showing would be better to escape the idiots with cell phones, but I discovered instead that idiots will talk on their cellphones no matter what showing you go to. As an added bonus, there was even a couple making out a few rows back from me, and periodically I’d hear loud sucking sounds coming from their seats, though they themselves weren’t visible. Between the smulching sounds and Cellphone Guy I was distracted from parts of the movie.

Still, it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t as good as the first one, but then that would be hard to do, since the Wachowskis can’t really repeat the discoveries made in the first film over and over again. I suspect that the second movie would have been better if the first one hadn’t made such a big fuss and given the sequels so much pretention to live up to. I think the filmmakers incorrectly identified the major attractions of the first film, and plugged the second with factors that were merely sugar-coating in the first, without the actual substance behind that coating, which was what made it a good movie. Things like the fight scenes, the flying around, the multiple taking-off and putting-on of various characters’ sunglasses, etc. got really old after the first hundred times. The wire/CG-fu looked fake and unimpressive because it was obvious that the actors weren’t doing these things at all, much less under their own power, which was what made old Hong Kong Kung-fu flicks so impressive. The attempts at “deep” philosophy felt like they were inserted at the last minute, the whole “I love swearing in French” thing was unnecessary, and the writing felt like it was written the night before shooting. It’s hard to believe that it took them four years to make this movie, and nobody ever noticed any of these problems. I suppose they were too busy planning the pre-war rave in Zion. Sheesh.

The ending was abrupt of course, in the unresolved way Back to the Future II was, so I guess I need to hold judgement until I’ve seen the third movie. Still, in spite of the drawbacks, parts of the movie were quite good. The mere sound of the lucious Ducati motorcycle engine was wonderful, and I’m all about car chases no matter what movie they’re in as long as they’re reasonably well done. I can also forgive their not including Tank from the first movie after seeing his fine-ass replacement Link, whom I look forward to seeing more of in the next movie.

The weather today is nice, sunny and hot of course, now that our shooting schedule is sufficiently screwed up. I just hope it holds. We’re aiming for Thursday night, which should be long enough for most of the bruises from rehearsal to heal, but hopefully not so long that everyone’s forgotten their moves. Well, Shirzi will be on hand to, ah….remind them. With a pointy stick! Mwahaha.

They passed out forms at work today. Basically it’s a list of questions asking if you have SARS, and there’s a box to check “Yes” and “No”. This must be part of the government’s “Get Tough on SARS” campaign. Brilliant! Of course everyone is going to check “No”. They also handed out packages of cheap masks, which will work much better than Beijing’s strategy of actually trying to deal with the disease. Now we all have great confidence in the Taiwan government!

Not.

posted by Poagao at 8:27 am  

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