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Pushing the Envelope For Matrix Reloaded SFX
BenTheDewpendent writes "I just read Steve Silberman's article on the Matrix Reloaded over at wired. I was only slightly anxious to see it previous to reading the article but what they are able to do technicaly now will put bullet time to shame."
I disagree, it will put nothing to shame.
Do we shame Star Wars, of course not, we put it on a pedestal as an acheivement for it's time, same applies here, just because it's gonna be better dosen't mean it's gonna put anything to shame.
p.s. The icon for the matrix is lame.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
... I naturally assumed that the movie would be chock full of rockin' sex scenes.
Ah well. I was thinking "18A", not "14A". I'm depressed now.
Is it just me or did the graphics on this game seem dated and bad... Not what I had expected from this group I hope the movie isn't as disappointing.
A few months back Newsweek did a cover story on the Matrix movies.
read it here
seriously...wonder how big the server farm was to render reloaded? if i remember correctly it was HUGE for the first matrix.
So I'm totally pumped to see what they do now.
After watching all the gay movies that copied the Matrix, i'm ready to see em innovate some more.
Hell, just maybe it will be so cool and complex it won't be on the next GAP commercials before December.
I got nothin'.
It's the big intrusive flash animation at wired.com that puts all other pop-up ads to shame.
Great, more trendy not-so-special effects to be used in commercials and parodied countless times for years.
there is no troll.
...hey, it worked!
The wise follow a damned path, for to know is to be forsaken.
They did the matrix it with so little cash flow compared to what they have this time around. So whose to say that it can't be great again, take another step and but another standard in cinematography. I loved Matrix, it was one fo the few films that kept me really intranced with the movie through all of it. I really hope that Reloaded will do the same, if not i'll be sad
Who cares. You're in a small minority who mistaken the very good old trilogy with the stinky new one.
You see, for the last 4 years, I've had to eat everything with a knife and fork.
"There is no spoon" indeed. Bleh. Have you ever tried to eat Grape Nuts with a knife and fork? Or even better, chopsticks???
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
If there is a Bullet-time shower scene starring Carrie Anne Moss's boobs then this would be the greatest movie ever. Lets seem ILM do that.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
it's like cool and stuff...
They're going to have to do better than a lame plot and cheese-bag special effects to reach today's sophisticated viewing public, I'll tell you that much for sure!
Should I eat the Red or the Blue Jellybean?
Got a bad feeling about this one. It will suffer from the "MIB II" - "Phantom Menace" - "Attack of the Clones" syndrome, meaning the software rules the film and nobody gives a rat's ass about the story. That's what happens when you try to stretch a 90-page screenplay for more than one film.
If the grape nuts don't even exist why bother?
Incase you were wondering, i know kung fu.
They're using hip, new effect called "Trollin' time!"
I watched the Reloaded trailer and from an effects standpoint, it sucks. Its more of that plastic-man, 100% 3D animated crap like SpiderMan and the Star Wars prequel. Like the scene where the agent jumps from car to car, so clearly 3D looking it sucks. I respected the first Matrix because most of the effects were "real world", and the looks showed it. The bullet time wasn't (so to speak) a CG thing, it was a series of cameras, and it looks so cool. But this time they've resorted to the Lucas path of "Let's just DO IT ALL IN 3D!" - Maybe the general public doesn't notice, but I sure notice, it's missing the real world feel, and turns into hokey real fast.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
for writing every detail about the presumably best fighting scene in the movie, thus ruining it.
Who cares. You're in a small minority who mistaken the very good old trilogy with the stinky new one.
I also despise the garbage known as Star Wars, and I have not seen any of the new ones. Completely over-rated.
This time, it takes half an hour for neo to finish saying "whoa".
Why would you eat chopsticks with a knife and fork? Just shove them in your mouth, no utensils required!
Such assumptions. I've never seen any of the new Star Wars "prequels", and yet I also think Star Wars is overrated trash. A soap opera in space, nothing more.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I wrote an Open Source Applet that simulates the scrolling green code seen in the matrix. You can get it at JavaBoutique. Enjoy- Scott
yes, but you are forgetting the wonders of sporks
*refills wine glass in bullet time* o0o0o0o0o0o
Reloaded...lookin forward to it, despite what the nay sayers say, hope it's gonna kick ass :D
how is babby formed?
The full story is here: http://www.arenafootball.com/around_the_afl/afl_he adlines/352498.html
"the Matrix raised the bar for action films by introducing new levels of realism into stunt work"
Somebody hasn't seen enough Jackie Chan movies from the seventies and 80s.
The original Drunken Master. Police Story, SuperCop.
Actually *doing* the stunts is way more realistic that looking like you're doing it.
Not sure what this is about...topless women in leather pants. (SFW)
What's cooler than a Toyota Matrix, all decked out in racing stickers?
Oh yeah, baby...Matrix, the board game
How about the Matrix folding bike? Before or after
The Vic-20 fans out there might appreciate a look at the Matrix game for that platform.
Flashback to math class! Matrix multiplication!
So you see, taco, you're only limited by your imagination. Of course, that could be like saying your writing is limited by your spelling and grammar but still...maybe someone can help you come up with something better.
j
I am reminded of why I enjoyed the original Matrix so much, why I saw it three times in its opening week.
I am the only real programmer/computer-nerd/technophile in my circle of friends. The rest live primarily in the realms of literature, audio engineering/theory, and studio art. This fact is only important, because I remember them chiding me about the somewhat cliche plot and often hammy acting in the original Matrix. I couldn't exactly explain to them why I found the movie so thoroughly enjoyable. I didn't claim it to be a masterpiece, but I couldn't make them understand why I could and can still watch the movie so many times and still find it so entertaining.
If you read the article, you instantly feel the passion for innovation, Gaeta's and the Wachowskis' hunger to create new and beautiful cinematographic standards. And I think I can finally explain that to my snobby friends.
Sure, the story is a little trite. The acting, while strong in many places, has some definite flaws. But anyone who has a similar desire to understand complex systems and improve upon them, sees these hopes in the original Matrix. They are just a bunch of skilled and creative geeks trying to innovate new and beautiful tools. And as I'm sure many slashdotters understand, that fact makes me feel all warm and cozy inside.
Source: Warner Bros. Pictures thinks the Arena Football League and its upcoming film "The Matrix Reloaded" are a perfect match.
The studio has partnered with NBC Sports to show the trailer for the "Matrix" sequel for the first time on broadcast television during NBC's Arena Football League coverage April 13. The 2-1/2-minute trailer will air at 3 p.m. EDT across all of NBC's regional games. The film opens May 15.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Even if the special effects for Reloaded are just spectactular they still haven't found a way to make Keanu Reeves an actor. He's a pretty boy who's acting range goes from stoner to surfer...
Now if they keep him from talking like they did in the first movie they should be ok.
"What good are special F/Xs when your lead can't act?
eh.. I'll still plunk down my cash
BAAA BAA
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
I suppose you had to actually see the movies in the theatre the first time around to genuinely respect it. I am guessing you weren't even born at that point. I would also point out that Star Wars had Harrison Ford, Alec Guiness, and James Earl Jones is it (all top shelf actors).
Hmmm, how can something be overrated? just because you don't like it it's automatically overrated? excuse me, you are the oracle of all movie opinions.
There are MANY people who think that the Star Wars trilogy is a great set of movies, hence it is not overrated, it's rated properly, overrated would be something that one person thinks being thrown out of proportion. This is the majority opinion, big difference, hence not overrated.
Posting useless rant since 2003.
Wow. I'm thinking the Wachowskis missed a incredibly opportunity here. Imagine seeing "There is no spork." on thousands of nerd-sites and in thousands of signatures. Ahhhh. It would have been priceless.
"There is no spoon" indeed. Bleh. Have you ever tried to eat Grape Nuts with a knife and fork? Or even better, chopsticks???
;)
I think trying to eat chopsticks would be hard no matter what you used.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
No story sullied the first one, so who would notice?
Give the people what they want!
Talented Keanu Reeves (grimacing): I am stuffed inside a coffee shop philosopher's febrile ramblings.
Talented Wachowski #1: Excellent! That's a wrap!
Talented Wachowski #2: What he said.
Laurence Fishburne (as Samuel L. Jackson): I fell down the stairs today. There was one survivor.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
That movie was "The Slow and the Dimwitted". What a retarted movie. It was like watching something written by 13 year olds for 13 years olds.
Hey! You better watch what you say about that movie!!11!1 It was awesome!!!
Vin Deisal kicks a$$!!11!.. and he's a better actor than.. umm, well.. uhh... he's a better actor than my dog!...oh, umm.. OK, maybe not..
I'm sorry, what were we talking about?
Oh, yea, the Fats and the Furryus! It r0x0rs!
They developed a ton of cool stuff that AGAIN is going to be ripped off by every damned sf-movie, commercial, and friggin Shrek II. Therefore they decided to do both films at once and release them this year. Then they don't have to work so hard to create even better effects in another 4 years from now.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
What if the grape nuts really tasted like chicken?
There's no place like ~/
See if I can precis here, for you:
A splinter faction ("ESC") of renegade uber-compositors and animators, originating at Mass.Illusion (founded by Douglas Trumball), led by some guy with the superhero name of Gaeta, has created the first true photogrammetric virtual cinematography technique, using gobs and gobs of technology and expertise. This technology has been put to good use in the new Matrix movies; the team works at a decommissioned 250,000-square-foot hangar in Alameda. Up to 500 artists have been hired.
Here's an example of what these people are like:
How deep did the rabbit hole go? A cast of each actor's head was sent to a company called Arius 3D, makers of ultrahigh-resolution scanners employed in 1999 to archive the works of Michelangelo. The Arius scanner is accurate down to 25 microns - the diameter of a mold spore. To get the clothing simulations just right, ESC sent swatches of Reeves' black cassock and Weaving's jacket to a company called Surface Optics, which builds devices to measure a property of light called the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Surface Optics happened to have one machine on hand scheduled to ship to Lockheed Martin a month later, where it was to be assigned to its usual task: evaluating the reflectivity of paint on stealth bombers.
Wow. That is... just... nuts. There's other good examples, like the mock highway they built, or the world's biggest motion-capture dojo.
It's definitely worth reading if you haven't. Particularly interesting are the bits where Gaeta talks about the in-joke he shares with the Wachowskis regarding the potential subversive uses, particularly for the military.. who have already directed DARPA funds towards such and end. (And before you yell about innefectual gov't spending, I'll remind the reader that DARPA gets shit done.) Even the possibility that this work they've done opens the door that much wider for nightmarish Orwellian realities. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
so, by making movies about it, we are slowly bringing the possibility of something like the matrix closer to reality!
would anyone on /. object to "Matrix" prisons for criminals? what about for the severely physically disabled? just for research?
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
from the article:
In the thick of it, Neo is dancing, chucking black-tied bodies skyward, pivoting around the signpost, and using shoulders as stepping-stones over the raging river of whup-ass.
If "raging river of whup-ass" isn't on a t-shirt at ThinkGeek yet, it damn well should be.
He threadjacked this to keanu
-- the people that read topics community
Why would you ruin a work of art like that? Why would you rob yourself of such an experience?
If the long-lost finale to Beethoven's 9th (make believe) were discovered today, and was going to be premiered by the London Philharmonic, heard for the first time in centuries, would you tune in and listen to it on your AM radio?
Pay the 6 bucks, grant yourself the once-in-a-lifetime experience of seeing this movie for the first time in the way that can do it the most justice: on a massive screen, with an awesome sound system, and with a bucket of overpriced, greasy (and yet oh-so-delicious) movie popcorn in your lap.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
"Overrated trash"
Yes! Yes! Yes! For years I have been waiting to see this statement. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
"Forget the can, visit the source - swim my raging river of whup-ass".
Hey, they did it with Helena Bonham Carter in "Fight Club". Mmm, special effects pr0n.
I think I have wood now.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
That depends on what 'ya want comin out 'o yer rabbit-hole.
What if the grape nuts really tasted like chicken?
;P
I would assume they'd be called "Chicken Nuts"...oh wait...they don't taste like grapes now, do they...
Nevermind
Now that it has the special FX set, all it needs is competent actors, a believable and original plot, good storywriting, and a decent title.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Seriously. Who is a good actor?
Mel Gibson? Vin Diesel?
Arnold Shwartzenegger?
Clint Eastwood?
Jack Nicholson?
Val Kilmer?
Or the 'mob guys': Pacino, Deniro, Pesci
Tell me that any of these brilliant actors dont just play every character with the exact same intonations and mannerisms.
Hollywood acting is just reading lines and looking pretty. Everything else is post production.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The in the article above was valid when the story was first postedm, but is no longer. The story is now at http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/auto/e paper/editions/monday/metro_state_2.html.
I still think Keanau sucks...practically anybody in the world would have made a better hero...well except for that mini-me guy.
One gigabyte PER SECOND?
OK, I'll go back to my little bit-shuffling job now...
Quintus malus puer est.
Let's not forget that The Matrix was one of the best showcases for the scalability and stability of FreeBSD as the world's best clustered OS.
for a second I thought I reading an AICN thread. C'mon folks. Its just a movie. No one's forcing you to watch it. If you get put off but the CG, leave it be. Stay home. Please don't start "organic web-shooters robbed me of my childhood" syndrome.
This trilogy is a unique movie concept that set a precedance on how movies are made. What more can the Wacho bros do?
Watch the movie if you want and then pass judgement. Otherwise, leave it be.
I always saw some movies in certain levels:
Theatre going worthy
Blockbuster night worthy
Download worthy
Skip
I see the matrix series as something threatre going worthy. It mentions advanced new affects in visuals and sound. Something that a download won't capture and a dvd rental (b/c I don't have a huge screen and 6.1 surround sound).
Plus, I know my local theatre's improved their screens and projectors (most with digital show, yea yea I know, it matters on what format the movie was shot in).
There's a noticeable difference when you watch it in theatres with friends than huddled alone in front of the computer with computer speakers and visual quality that is subpar.
This is one of the movies that makes theatre going enjoyable.
He's a dog, but Russell Crowe brings something different to every movie. "Gladiator" was a modest low point, and he still out-acted most everyone else that year. He did wonderful work in "A Beautiful Mind" and "The Insider".
Denzel Washington has brought different aspects to the movies he's been in. Lately, he's been taking too many of the "ubermench" roles, but his earlier work was decent. Just don't see "John Q".
Another couple of actors that belong on your pretty boy list: Tom Hanks and Robin Williams. They don't act, they emote the same character. (Excepting for Forrest, which was a definite stretch with decent dividends.)
Keanu Reeves doesn't lambast the audience with fervor(Jack Nicholson, Pacino) or feed off of facial ticks(Mel Gibson, Joe Pesci), but he does give off a good mellow temperment. I wouldn't put him in a romantic comedy, but he's just fine for a new-age action flick.
I've heard too many people complain about this. I'm starting to believe it all spawned from one critic and trickled down to the general public.
I think he did a fine job portraying a hacker/slacker type person. Most people I know like that, aren't the talkative type, socially.
Plus, this has to be character's first time discovering and learning each new ability. This has to emit odd emotions especially when you carry and air of 733tness for so long.
I think they picked the right man for the job. A real hacker would've been horrible. Besides I heard will smith was approached to be the original morpheous, imagine that!
You know when a movie/song catches the public when you hear kids imitating it, people talking about it.
Now a movie/song that catches the industry's attention, you know you're doing something right.
What the article actually said was not that the new 3D world modeling effect they have developed have been used in a GAP ad already.
What they were pointing out was that the GAP Swing ad which used something very much like Bullet-Time actually PRECEDED the release of the Matrix. Bullet-Time wasn't invented from the ground up by Gaeta and the Matrix team. They took an existing technology and idea and pushed it a little farther than anyone had done before and then used it in a medium(blockbuster movie) where everyone was sure to notice it. Likewise, they are doing the same thing with this new technology. They didn't invent it, but they are taking what already existed to entirely new places.
lysergically yours
n/t
Good job, too, on the latter count. The PR guy told us that the game has some *major* spoilers for Reloaded, and he was kind of pissed off at having had to see the footage to do his job! Thankfully he didn't spill his guts to us, though from the name of one of the levels I have a feeling one of the big twists involves Morpheus.
There was also a real "WTF?" moment as well when he was describing some of the enemies you meet (and the only way to kill them) in the Chateau level (the place with the fancy staircase from the trailers). Is this The Matrix or Buffy?
Actually, the game itself is like a cross between Xbox Buffy and Max Payne, with some Driver/Chase HQ sections in between. (Reflections supposedly worked on the car physics.) Combat in bullet-time (called 'focus' here, though it works just like in Max Payne, somewhat ironic considering where Rockstar ripped the idea off from!) is a good laugh, and your character picks up skills as they go. And yes, you can run up walls. There's also a neat 'hacking' (ie, cheat) mode where you can find codes online and enter them into the game to download new moves into your character. Looks pretty damn good overall, though hopefully the Xbox version will have slightly less jaggy graphics on some of the levels, as that's what I'll be playing it on!
All the main Matrix characters supposedly show up in the game, crossing over with events in the film, though I only saw Trinity and Agent Smith. The character models looked good for the most part, though some of the non mo-capped character movements were a bit wobbly.
The bad news - Jada Pinkett Smith's voice acting was really quite lousy! [Shopgirl monotone] "Let's get the hell out of here." Very wooden. I hope she's not like this throughout the film!
Since the film and game come out on the same day, I'd strongly recommend seeing the film before playing the game if you want to avoid having the ending of Reloaded spoiled...
You must think in Russian.
It's not a matter of how good the effects are. It's a matter of how they are used. Special effects should help you see something that is either impossible or difficult to film and make you believe it. The special effects in the Matrix pulled you in. In their corner was the fact that they were in VR most of the time so a lot of stuff was possible that was unlikely in the real world. However, for an example of effects killing a movie, look at Daredevil. Not that there wasn't enough wrong already, but they made this almost ordinary human jumping around like a a cartoon. I don't care how much the effects made it look just like Ben. He didn't move like a human, the character didn't move like the comic book character, and the results showed a reality that was far too seperated from what the audience could stomach.
I think the Matrix movie hinted at the obvious pitfalls of special effects when they described the first Matrix, a world so idyllic that it was unbelievable to the point that humans couldn't accept it. Those words may be prophetic because if Matrix 2 comes up with a bunch of effects that constantly remind me that I'm watching CG movie instead of watching something that might really happen, I wont accept it much either.
It's true that sequelism is an epidemic in Hollywood and that whenever a new sequel comes out there are always these interviews with the author of the original screenplay where they talk about how they were only able to tell a small part of the story they intended in the original film and they had planned for a trilogy from the start blah blah blah...
In the case of Star Wars- A New Hope, however, I think the fact that it was subtitled Episode Four lends some believability to the claim that there was more than this one segment to the original story. Regardless, the second Star Wars movie(Empire) was better than the first, hopefully the same will happen in this case.
lysergically yours
Nice job. You just redefined "overrated".
If, "To overrate" means "To rate or value too highly." (And it does), then "overrated" means "rated or valued too highly."
Agreed? He thinks Star Wars is valued too highly by the majority. If it were not valued highly by the majority, then it would not be possible for it to be overrated. His use of the word is completely proper, whether or not you agree.
BTW, some moderator is hilarious. You've been modded underrated.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Thanks for the link to the main wired page. I was wondering what this Wired thing was.
They did Star Wars it with so little cash flow compared to what they have this time around. So whose to say that it can't be great again, take another step and but another standard in cinematography. I loved Star Wars, it was one of the few films that kept me really intranced with the movie through all of it. I really hoped that Phantom and EPII would do the same, if not i'll be sad.
You know what the problem is with that artice? Not enought hype.
...what they are able to do technicaly now will put bullet time to shame.
Am I the only one hoping for "breast-jiggle time?"
IIRC, the creators of Spiderman speculated that audiences thought certain scenes looked fake, despite the great care the effects guys took to respect the laws of physics, because no one has ever seen a human run, jump, and swing from webbing at superhuman speeds. So our brains register it as fake. What made Matrix 1 great was that the effects, while definitely beyond the abilities of a human, were still limited and subtle enough for us not to reject them outright (plus, I think slow-motion looks more "real" than fast-motion, somehow). Neo flying around like Superman, however, doesn't give me confidence that this will be the case for Matrix 2 & 3.
I seriously hope you were joking when you mentioned Deniro.
Yes, he has been in quite a few gangster flicks (all of which were critically acclaimed) like Goodfellas, Godfathers, Mean Streets, etc.
But go check out Taxi Driver, The Deer Hunter, Cape Fear, Raging Bull, etc.
There is a reason he is considered one of the greatest film actors of all time.
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
The title should read VFX, not SFX, because we're dealing with VISUAL effects here. Dagnabit.
I am from a small, grease-loving country in the north called Ca-na-da.
While its true that making an action genre movie requires the use of fast panning and lots of guns and fighting, film makers seem to beleive the bigger your budget, the less you have to worry about the actual story. I just hate to see film after film jumping up and down to earn that largest gross of the year.
These Matrix guys claim to be such anime geeks, then they mix up the names of two directors that most any hardcore otaku would know! It's a faux pas, sure, but a glaring one.
On a slightly unrelated note, the mix of films listed was quite enlightening. It's an eclectic (and rather telling) mix... from Kubrick's 2001 to Reggio's Koyannisqatsi and Powaaqatsi.
No matter what kind of utensil you use, it all tastes like "Tasty Wheat" :)
Rumors say that the 2 minute, 40 second trailer will be released Thursday on the official Matrix website. Luckily, rumors about Matrix stuff usually tend to be correct. Warner Brothers really knows how to use the grassroots fanbase.
There are three negative moderation items.
Troll.
Flamebait.
Overrated.
If you think something is say, incorrect, or uninsightful, or just downright pointless (the opposite of many of the plus moderations) then you pick "overrated". Which is true, if it is indeed any of those things.
-josh
I was flipping channels some months ago, and ;^)
saw Vin on MTV being interviewed. I decided
to watch and came away with a new appreciation
for the intelligence of bricks. That guy is
SO f'ing stupid. I can't believe that let him
go around showing it! You'd think they would
want to keep that hidden. K.R. is a MUCH better
actor than V.D. and smarter too, he does very
few interviews!
Keanu-Voice(TM): Whooaa dude - your, like, a movie expert.. duuuude that ROCKS! Thanks for the, umm, compliment too! (insert-bill/ted-headnod)
The discussion reminded me that Monty Python's Holy Grail was originally announced as the picture that made Ben Hur look like an Epic....
:-)
I guess it's all relative
I suppose you had to actually see the movies in the theatre the first time around to genuinely respect it. I am guessing you weren't even born at that point.
I was born in 1979, I saw one in the theater during it's first run IIRC. I was pretty young at the time, however. If it makes you feel any better, I really like THX-1138.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
They are running it on there as an "exclusive".
They were as much the model's boobs as Neo's face is Keanu Reeves's. Photogrammetry will make it about as accurate as possible.
That said, if it wasn't her in the original shot that was scanned in, then never mind. But the point is, it was hot. Yes.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
OK, Star Wars has an Icon. Matrix, I now see, has an icon. Why not Lord of the Rings? People have been harping about this for a while. I guess I'll add my name to the list of harpers...
(How low can the Karma go?)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
As it happens, one group deeply interested in the new breed of hyperrealistic CG is the military. Darpa is fast-tracking image-based rendering and lighting for use in immersive battle simulations. In 1999, the US Army launched the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC, where Paul Debevec - Borshukov's former mentor at Berkeley - is now the head of graphics R&D.
Holy Crap! The Guy isnt crazy at all - we're NOT in Bagdad...it's all movie magic!
That's a little bit gauche don't you think? We're not animals after all.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Modest low point? The movie kicked ass.
Another couple of actors that belong on your pretty boy list: Tom Hanks and Robin Williams. They don't act, they emote the same character. (Excepting for Forrest, which was a definite stretch with decent dividends.)
Robin Williams, pretty boy? Huh?
Death To Smoochie was hilarious. Bicentenial man was quite good, though a fair departure from the novel. His parts in Aladdin where hilarious, and his Cable TV special was a laugh out loud event the entire way though.
Mrs. Doubtfire kicked ass.
Jack Nicholson has personality. He is a jackass, but it works.
Keanu Reeves doesn't HAVE any personality. Well besides irritating, but that normaly is an EFFECT of a personality, Keanu makes it his personality. .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
When I called it a low point, I meant of Russel Crowe's acting. I absolutely loved that movie, but he didn't have to push himself as hard to act the part.
Robin Williams is a comedian with a heart. This means he plays two roles: a comedian, or a normal man with a good heart. Death to Smoochy - comedian. Heart - doctor or teacher roles. Both - Mrs. Doubtfire. I would also call Mrs. Doubtfire his best movie.
Jack Nicholson hasn't acted since "The Shining". Keanu's not bringing a lot to a role, but what he does bring doesn't irritate me.
Batman.
As Good As It Gets.
Mars Attacks.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Audience: What will become of Linux when the Hurd is ready?
Eric Youngdale: Err... is Richard Stallman here?
-- From the Linux conference in spring '95, Berlin
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