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I loved the Blair Witch project. Amazing movie, very unique, extremely powerful, quite impressive.

But.

I am incredibly disturbed by the complete and utter lack of attention being given the lead players in Blair Witch. While I fully accept that directors can be shortchanged in the media spotlight, Mike, Josh, and Heather did an *amazing* job.

First, these three acted excellently, with far more convincing performances than you're likely to see from most. Did anyone for a second not completely believe their *confusion*, their distrust, their pure fear? The directors did an outstanding job creating an environment in which the actors could shine, but we should not ignore the fact that these actors did shine, quite outstandingly.

They also spoke a damn nice script, considering their was no script to speak from. Again, the directors did beautifully defining scene outlines, but as Hollywood has much trouble learning, good storyboards do not a compelling story make. Edited with oscar-worthy aplomb, the cast's dialogue, while hokey at times, reflected the nature of stranded, real people in the middle of a disturbingly surreal environment.

Speaking of the editing, have we forgotten that the filmwork of the entire movie was also executed beautifully by these three? Granted, the footage would have worked *awfully* without the amazing work of the directors and editors, but done right their work was critical to the success of this film.

I don't want to take away from the stellar performance of the directors. But Heather, Josh, and Mike deserve more than they're getting.

Of course, there's a reason they're being left out of the loop(for now): The marketroids want people to believe the movie is real.

This happens to be a good thing.

Now I know this is going to make some of you yell and scream, but the fact was if I could have seen this two months ago with absolutely no prior knowledge, I would have been scared out of my fucking mind. Suspension of disbelief is far easier when there's no disbelief to suspend, and while it's somewhat dishonest, it's dishonesty in an environment where the entire industry is built upon creating the most convincing lies possible. Arnold Schwartzenegger is not a cyborg creature sent back through time, and Shitbrick didn't get it on with Stiffler's Mom.

Blair Witch bent the rules. Consider how much more they could have broken them. They could have divulged that BW was fake in September(imagine how pissed you'd be!). The way they did it, everybody going to the movie sorta heard some people saying it was real and some people not--not altogether perfect, but a giant aid to suspending disbelief and a huge contributor to the success of the movie.

If one of the big studios tried this, they'd hang us out to dry with their ability to simultaneously assail the public with their "this is a true story!!!!!!" message, unrebutted, on all media fronts. There would be no doubt, no undercurrent of truth. It'd be so overdone, so disastrous-in-retrospect, that the studio would have no choice but to attempt to suppress any news that the original movie was fake.

I don't have much more faith in the Big Studio's plans for harvesting Net sentiment. Blair Witch and The Matrix have set the standard for what makes an excellent movie site. (The Matrix comic strips, incidentally, are required viewing for any Matrix fan. They add to the movie immensely, and increase my respect for the universe they've developed immensely.)

If the Studio's can actually express more originality than they could press onto the Celluloid into the web site, great. I'm just afraid of fake web sites, fake web rings, and most of all, fake "o i saw this movie it r000led O MY GOD JOHN DOECAPRIO IS SOOOOOO HOT!" manufactured 15 year old geocities pages that are really hacked together by some marketroid committee.

What do they have to lose? The worst they could do is discredit the Internet as a medium for movie discussion...which hurts them, how? If they can't own it...destroy it.

I know not everybody in Hollywood thinks this way. I know that there are some very hard working and ethical people out there.

I also know that there a very real chance that the three actors/screenwriters/camerapeople will get shortchanged by a media looking to move on to some new summer flick. This must not occur. Sooner or later, the Blair Witch Three need to be recognized for their excellent work. It's only fair.

I've talked long enough. What do the rest of you have to say?

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com


Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.

Think this is cool? Maybe. But it's also incredibly ironic.

--

Michael Chisari
dominion@beyondtheweb.com

Obviously they have to make at least one of them a sequal since they've already signed Ted (Keanu Reeves). But since TPM is a prequel they'll probably make one of each just to be cool.

If the Wachowski brothers have spent any time on the Internet at all the know that they better come up with something better than the batteries next time around. I wouldn't be surprised if we see some of the material on the official site seeping in.

Finally, do you think they'll base the original Chosen One (who is the obvious focus of a prequel) on the same Christian mythology or maybe pick another culture? Will they work to make this series the geek classic that Star Wars no longer is?

On a final note: I'm a little annoyed to see Sydney being chosen for all the reasons Vancouver is supposed to be. :)

At the very least, they show how many possibilities there are for good sequels to the first movie, even ones that don't involve the same characters. Who knows, one of these strips could inspire a whole screenplay.

At the very least, they show how many possibilities there are for good sequels to the first movie, even ones that don't involve the same characters. Who knows, one of these strips could inspire a whole screenplay.

I like the premise being used in many of the comics at the website. Humans are a powersource and a big-ass RAID. The matrix is used to keep the 10% of our brains we use content while the other 90% churns away.

Also, if I'm downloading something that's 1.5gig, I better be able to run a web server off of it ;)

Can't wait to see The Matrix on an IMAX screen... And I'm buying a DVD player as soon as it comes out.

* Or not...

It's on purpose. Check the website. The makers of Matrix call it anime with live actors.

-Zoyd

Isn't it a proven fact that without mental development

It's not so much the mental development -- it's touch. Children who are not touched often by their parents exhibit antisocial behavior. Harry Harlowe did some experiments with little monkeys on the subject to prove the case. Apparently the touching doesn't even have to be with a live parent -- it could be a simple plush doll. A baby monkey is quite happy to be protected by a non-living furball, therein free to play and develop mentally, socially, etc.

whatisthematrix.com is pretty lame, by the way, but it's the movie's website.

There are two competing approaches, one that is basically a morph, and the other with the multiple cameras. The Matrix used the multiple camera approach. Here's the proof:

Check out the stills section. A major pile of very nice cameras.

If you check out the "Behind the Scenes" section at The Matrix Webpage they have pictures of the setup they used to do the paused pan effect. And yes, it is a long row of cameras.

...then take a look at the comics they've got up on the movie site. Most of the site is just the usual Shockwave hype crap, but they've put a series of really cool comics by various artists. See the movie first though, or some of them won't make much sense.

Thank God somebody finally made a cyberpunk movie (since Blade Runner) that doesn't suck. Sorry, I digress.

wandrLST

The Matrix , starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne began showing yesterday (Wed 03/31). The basic premise of the film is the "brains in a vat" theory that you learned about in PHIL 101. Humans in the future (circa 2099) have been conquered and subjugated by the same reproductive machines that they created. In the human-machine war preceding subjugation, machines used solar power for energy. A last ditch effort by H. sapiens to stop the machines' energy source by nuclear detonation and the consequent pollution of the atmosphere with impenetrable clouds fails because the machines discover a new, abundant, self-replicating power source at their fingertips: human bioenergy.

Humans are grown in fields and maturated singly in hollow nests covering the sides of massive cliffs. These nests are filled with a pink liquid reminiscent of the liquid oxygen used in The Abyss. All subjugates are networked together by a massive computer program which produces through direct neurochemical stimulation an almost perfect replica of the peak of human civilization in 1999. This virtual reality is known commonly as the Matrix.

The only non-subjugate humans are a small group of crackers who "enter" the Matrix on pirate signal generated from their small hovership and an unconquered city known as Zion located hundreds of miles beneath the Earth's crust, near the core where it is still warm. This band of revolutionaries seeks the prophesied savior who can bend the Matrix at will and bring humankind out of subjugation and into the bittersweet darkness of the real world. Positive

Maybe I have seen Dune way too many times, but I still like the idea of a Kwisatz Haderach ubermensch savior of the future (even if it is Keanu Reeves, see below). The religious imagery, though drawn from different sources, is not Bible-, Ramayana-, or Koran-thumping. Carrie-Anne Moss' character's name, Trinity, is the identifier of the prophetic connection between Neo (Reeves), Morpheus (Fishburne), and herself. A young English boy, in monks' robes, bends a spoon with his mind and speaks Hindu philosophy to Neo to explain it, which makes sense within the context of the Matrix. The notion of jihad does not go unnoticed as the underdog H. sapiens battles the incarnately evil Darwinian machines in their pursuit of unfettered self-evolution. And there are others as well, but none seem overdone to me.

The setting in the real world was phenomenal. A blend of Descent, Geiger, the Borg, the Terminator future, and a few other splashes like the abovementioned pink fluid, the world is nicely rendered and extremely immersive. Bordering on sensory overload, this film was like a Matrix unto itself for me. Make sure you see this in a good theatre. Negative why? His deadpan (is he ever not deadpan?) portrayal lacks chemistry with the other actors and is generally boring. The character itself has plenty of room for working out various elements so he really does not have an excuse except that he is always that way. Alas, I think my friend said it best: "I think they chose him because of the way he says 'Whoa' in the Jump program scene." Though I am not a huge Fishburne fan, his religious Morpheus is much better than Reeves' normal-guy-[h,cr]acker-turns-savior-wannabe.

Item 2: This is sort of a nitpick, but is not out of place on /. A Sentient, a machine which can enter the Matrix disguised as a human, accuses Neo of numerous incidents of illegal "hacking." Now we all know that he should have said "cracking," not only because that is the correct term but because it would have been a good opportunity to educate movie-goers about this term. One would have thought that by 2099 they would have gotten it right.

Item 3: To find out where in the Matrix to send themselves, the revolutionaries have to have a real world visual interface to it. Since they do not have the computing power or whatever to display it in 3D on their LCD panels, they just read the object code, which looks like horizontal streams of cuneiform or ideograms, directly. Two words: yeah right. Now this is not quite so bad for a bunch of film people who would not know about what they are talking anyway. However, it is their further artistic indulgence that bugged the hell out of me. Neo, when he figures out all of his powers, starts to see all of the Matrix in object code, and not just strings of it in his head, but object code forming the outlines of everything in the Matrix (like using just ASCII to make a picture). ARGH! Conclusion

On the whole, I really enjoyed this film. It probably will not win any awards for being a groundbreaking artistic masterpiece, but the imagery is engrossing and immersive and the plot has that nice mixture of believability and unbelievability that makes for good science fiction. Go see it at a matinee tomorrow all you people who have Friday off, or Saturday even.

I know, I know: This review sucks, I suck, /. sucks, Rob is an idiot, Katz is a windbag, etc.

Here is the Salon review http://www.s alonmagazine.com/ent/movies/reviews/1999/04/02revi ewa.html

-l