It's what you'd get if you throw Heathers, High School Musical and Mean Girls into a blender and it's brilliant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOU3bUDykrc
Can't find a video to embed but for you Journey lovers it's a link well worth following.
I'm sure I'll post more about this show as it goes along but for now I'll just it's the first new show I've really enjoyed on TV in long, long time.
Monday, 11 January 2010
The Matrix : Reappraised
Ok, over the last couple of days I have rewatched The Matrix trilogy (as blu-ray upgrading continues apace) and it's time for a reappraisal I think (especially now I have done some reading on and work with some of the key texts and thinkers used as touchstones by the series).
The Matrix was released in the summer of 1999 without any real fanfare as one of many mid range budget pictures out that year. It did decent business but then really got popular as one of the first releases to really take advantage of the DVD format.
Thus the Wachowski brothers took their chance and pushed forward with plans to realise their hoped for trilogy. Shot back to back The Matrix : Reloaded and The Matrix : Revolutions were released months apart in 2003 and were received with a somewhat mixed response.
I myself remember being exciting by Reloaded but then disappointed by Revolutions but I think it's time to look again at the films and also take a little time to look at some of the philosophy and theory that the series uses.
The Matrix is undoubtedly the best of the three; it's tight, well paced, imaginative and at the time showcased genuinely groundbreaking effects work. And that lobby scene is one still one of the best examples of a stylistically choreographed shoot out.
It is true too I think that the first film is also the closet to a normal 'action sci-fi' film, since despite it's direct use of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation (it both appears as the book Neo uses to hide a disk and one of Morpheus' lines is pretty much a direct lift from it) it has far less philosophical discussion and musing than the subsequent films.
Here we get the basic setup of the narrative's world and the sub textual discussion, that is of course the question of 'what is real?'. Baudrillard argues that the world has become a series of images that have worked to moves us further away from any sense of meaning, of the progression of the artificial image in society he writes ;
The Matrix takes this to the extreme where the reality of the masses is no longer that of the real world but rather a reflection of a reality that no longer exists beyond the recreation of it in image. Thus we have the Matrix in which the majority of the population exist oblivious the real world beyond it.
Of course in the film Neo (and us as the audience) are shown the difference between the real world and the unreal as he wakes up. Something also has roots in Buddhism in terms of the problem of sleeping in ignorance in a dreamworld, solved by waking to knowledge or enlightenment. Then fight begins as the Wachowskis seem to pretty much deliberately use a textbook version of a heroic myth story arc to tell the central story on which everything else is hung.
So the first is a striking piece of action cinema with a strong central concept and some great execution (notice the difference in the filtering and saturation of the real and the unreal worlds - which grew more pronounced as the series progressed).
As The Matrix : Reloaded opens Neo has basically become Superman within the system and a symbol of hope and salvation to many out in the real world. The second film upped the ante both in terms of the level of the production and the extent of philosophical discussion going on within the film.
Production wise the freeway sequence is an immense undertaking (although arguable Bad Boys II similar sequence bettered it later that year - but crucially the rest of that film was dire) and the fight in the Merovingian's lobby outdoes any of the fisty cuffs in the first plus you have the technical achievement of Neo's 'burly brawl' against the multiple Smiths.
However I find the more I see it the more I'm interested in what is going on in between the bursts of action. This time around on top of the question of reality we have questions on 'what is choice?', predestination and the influence of cause and effect. The issue of choice and predestination was touched upon in the first film during the sequence with The Oracle but was very much taking a backseat to the simulation issue as the bending spoon reminds us during that very sequence.
Now these are brought front and center by sequences again with The Oracle, The Merovingian and to some extent the newly 'enlightened' Agent Smith. From his discussion with The Oracle, Neo is told that he must make a choice that we decide the fate of (basically) all but also that he has already made the choice because of who he is but crucially to find awareness he must understand the choice.
Feeding into this is the Merovigian's belief in cause and effect above all else. Anything that happens is a direct result of what has already happened. Essentially we are not free to make choices because events we basically make the choice for us. Of course all charmingly illustrated with that piece of cake.
Neo may be the hero we are asked to cheer for but if you listen to those around him he is being played and channelled down a road not of his own making from the very beginning. So really it should come as no surprise when The Architect tells him exactly that! Although it is argued that The Architect cannot understand why Neo makes his choice since it is not the logical one to take. To him the concept of love is as false a reality as the Matrix is to Neo.
Reloaded suffers from being the middle child, it has some strong elements (as mentioned the freeway chase is impressivily done) but also weaknesses. The rave seqeunce is the most painfully indulgent thing within the trilogy and the film does suffer to some extent in having to move the players to the right positions for the third installment. Plus someone really should have taken another pass at The Architect's dialogue
Picking up pretty much directly after the conclusion of Reloaded, Revolutions was probably the least warmly received upon it's release. With much more taking place in the 'real' world (is it real? Does Neo's effect on the Sentinels mean it is a second artificial reality?) this time around as the city of Zion fights to survive.
For me the scenes of battle within Zion's dock are still far more impressive and kinetic than the battle at the end of Avatar. Although I do still do wish the climatic Neo vs Smith smackdown was shorter as it does repeat a number of action beats already featured within the same sequence and retread of the first film's lobby scene really does feel like a sequence inserted after someone called for more action (I'm looking at you Mr Silver).
Plus it is worth applauding Ian Bliss' mimicking of Hugo Weaving as Smith in the flesh of Bane
Elsewhere Neo ends his mythic journey sacrificing himself for the good of all others and ensuring peace. But there is still time for musing; mostly on the idea of choice and the false constructs of the human condition that we take for granted. For example Smith (like The Architect) cannot understand the concept of love as anything other a false impression of the world around you, as a form of madness telling you one person is much more important than another.
Come the end Zion is saved, the Matrix persists but a cycle is broken as we find The Oracle has coaxed events along seeing the chance to make a change from the normal series of events with Neo's love of Trinity and Smiths agent of disorder within the system.
Now I'm aware this post is getting quite long and I'm only briefly touching on things, I may well return to have a more in depth look at some of the specific themes in the coming days but for now I'll sum up.
The Matrix will remain a classic of it's genre I feel but the others will probably not be so fondly remembered. However I find these days I prefer Revolutions to Reloaded but I think they do both have merits and are good efforts at offering up something slightly different. Big, bold action blockbusters with something to ask. Ok they may not phrase it that well (lost under overly verbose machinations) and they get a little confused as to what they are asking sometimes but points for the effort. (And hey actual academics still debate the extent of and how well the films engage with the ideals used, so they did something right)
I do think that people look down on the films because they did up the level of philosophical chat involved instead of just simply offering bigger and bigger explosions alone. But then if they'd done that no doubt people would complain they were just retreads of the first with bigger explosions.
The Matrix was released in the summer of 1999 without any real fanfare as one of many mid range budget pictures out that year. It did decent business but then really got popular as one of the first releases to really take advantage of the DVD format.
Thus the Wachowski brothers took their chance and pushed forward with plans to realise their hoped for trilogy. Shot back to back The Matrix : Reloaded and The Matrix : Revolutions were released months apart in 2003 and were received with a somewhat mixed response.
I myself remember being exciting by Reloaded but then disappointed by Revolutions but I think it's time to look again at the films and also take a little time to look at some of the philosophy and theory that the series uses.
The Matrix is undoubtedly the best of the three; it's tight, well paced, imaginative and at the time showcased genuinely groundbreaking effects work. And that lobby scene is one still one of the best examples of a stylistically choreographed shoot out.
It is true too I think that the first film is also the closet to a normal 'action sci-fi' film, since despite it's direct use of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation (it both appears as the book Neo uses to hide a disk and one of Morpheus' lines is pretty much a direct lift from it) it has far less philosophical discussion and musing than the subsequent films.
Here we get the basic setup of the narrative's world and the sub textual discussion, that is of course the question of 'what is real?'. Baudrillard argues that the world has become a series of images that have worked to moves us further away from any sense of meaning, of the progression of the artificial image in society he writes ;
"it is the reflection of a profound reality.
it masks and denatures a profound reality.
it masks the absence of a profound reality.
it has no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum".
The Matrix takes this to the extreme where the reality of the masses is no longer that of the real world but rather a reflection of a reality that no longer exists beyond the recreation of it in image. Thus we have the Matrix in which the majority of the population exist oblivious the real world beyond it.
Of course in the film Neo (and us as the audience) are shown the difference between the real world and the unreal as he wakes up. Something also has roots in Buddhism in terms of the problem of sleeping in ignorance in a dreamworld, solved by waking to knowledge or enlightenment. Then fight begins as the Wachowskis seem to pretty much deliberately use a textbook version of a heroic myth story arc to tell the central story on which everything else is hung.
So the first is a striking piece of action cinema with a strong central concept and some great execution (notice the difference in the filtering and saturation of the real and the unreal worlds - which grew more pronounced as the series progressed).
As The Matrix : Reloaded opens Neo has basically become Superman within the system and a symbol of hope and salvation to many out in the real world. The second film upped the ante both in terms of the level of the production and the extent of philosophical discussion going on within the film.
Production wise the freeway sequence is an immense undertaking (although arguable Bad Boys II similar sequence bettered it later that year - but crucially the rest of that film was dire) and the fight in the Merovingian's lobby outdoes any of the fisty cuffs in the first plus you have the technical achievement of Neo's 'burly brawl' against the multiple Smiths.
However I find the more I see it the more I'm interested in what is going on in between the bursts of action. This time around on top of the question of reality we have questions on 'what is choice?', predestination and the influence of cause and effect. The issue of choice and predestination was touched upon in the first film during the sequence with The Oracle but was very much taking a backseat to the simulation issue as the bending spoon reminds us during that very sequence.
Now these are brought front and center by sequences again with The Oracle, The Merovingian and to some extent the newly 'enlightened' Agent Smith. From his discussion with The Oracle, Neo is told that he must make a choice that we decide the fate of (basically) all but also that he has already made the choice because of who he is but crucially to find awareness he must understand the choice.
Feeding into this is the Merovigian's belief in cause and effect above all else. Anything that happens is a direct result of what has already happened. Essentially we are not free to make choices because events we basically make the choice for us. Of course all charmingly illustrated with that piece of cake.
Neo may be the hero we are asked to cheer for but if you listen to those around him he is being played and channelled down a road not of his own making from the very beginning. So really it should come as no surprise when The Architect tells him exactly that! Although it is argued that The Architect cannot understand why Neo makes his choice since it is not the logical one to take. To him the concept of love is as false a reality as the Matrix is to Neo.
Reloaded suffers from being the middle child, it has some strong elements (as mentioned the freeway chase is impressivily done) but also weaknesses. The rave seqeunce is the most painfully indulgent thing within the trilogy and the film does suffer to some extent in having to move the players to the right positions for the third installment. Plus someone really should have taken another pass at The Architect's dialogue
Picking up pretty much directly after the conclusion of Reloaded, Revolutions was probably the least warmly received upon it's release. With much more taking place in the 'real' world (is it real? Does Neo's effect on the Sentinels mean it is a second artificial reality?) this time around as the city of Zion fights to survive.
For me the scenes of battle within Zion's dock are still far more impressive and kinetic than the battle at the end of Avatar. Although I do still do wish the climatic Neo vs Smith smackdown was shorter as it does repeat a number of action beats already featured within the same sequence and retread of the first film's lobby scene really does feel like a sequence inserted after someone called for more action (I'm looking at you Mr Silver).
Plus it is worth applauding Ian Bliss' mimicking of Hugo Weaving as Smith in the flesh of Bane
Elsewhere Neo ends his mythic journey sacrificing himself for the good of all others and ensuring peace. But there is still time for musing; mostly on the idea of choice and the false constructs of the human condition that we take for granted. For example Smith (like The Architect) cannot understand the concept of love as anything other a false impression of the world around you, as a form of madness telling you one person is much more important than another.
Come the end Zion is saved, the Matrix persists but a cycle is broken as we find The Oracle has coaxed events along seeing the chance to make a change from the normal series of events with Neo's love of Trinity and Smiths agent of disorder within the system.
Now I'm aware this post is getting quite long and I'm only briefly touching on things, I may well return to have a more in depth look at some of the specific themes in the coming days but for now I'll sum up.
The Matrix will remain a classic of it's genre I feel but the others will probably not be so fondly remembered. However I find these days I prefer Revolutions to Reloaded but I think they do both have merits and are good efforts at offering up something slightly different. Big, bold action blockbusters with something to ask. Ok they may not phrase it that well (lost under overly verbose machinations) and they get a little confused as to what they are asking sometimes but points for the effort. (And hey actual academics still debate the extent of and how well the films engage with the ideals used, so they did something right)
I do think that people look down on the films because they did up the level of philosophical chat involved instead of just simply offering bigger and bigger explosions alone. But then if they'd done that no doubt people would complain they were just retreads of the first with bigger explosions.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Band Of Brothers
I have recently been watching the excellent HBO miniseries Band Of Brothers again, this time from the Blu-ray set. Suffice to say the image quality is excellent and really shines during the combat sequences as you can see every grain of grit and debris, every deadly bullet strike.
But the real gems in the set are the two in-picture features. One sees the men of Easy company speaking about the events on screen as they remember them from the time whilst the other is an information track which pops up with everything from personnel backgrounds to tactical maps to military term definitions to German translations as the episode plays. Also from time to time it will play actual archive footage alongside the recreation of the series.
Fascinating stuff and it really brings home at lot of the events as it keeps track of the company's ever growing casualty list.
The set can be picked up for about £20 at present and I really recommend it if you have HD and blu-ray capability.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Obama won't stop you getting Lost
Even the president won't go up against the season premiere of Lost's last season
Friday, 8 January 2010
Things I have been watching : Enchanted
Enchanted is a film the satirises traditional Disney output much more successfully than Shrek ever did and does it with a genuine sense of affection for the subject. So no surprise really that it comes from the House Of Mouse itself, don't let anyone say the studio doesn't have a sense of humour about itself.
We open the film in animated style as Giselle sings about true love's kiss with her woodland friends, finds a Prince and is to be married the next day only for the Prince's evil stepmother to push her down a magical well on the other side of which she appears in real life New York
Pitching Giselle's hopeless romanticism and joy at life against the hard cold reality of New York is what generates most of the film's humour and edge (although the edge isn't too sharp, hey this is still a family film). As she stumbles lost in the city she meets divorce lawyer Robert and his young daughter, then further chaos ensues as the Prince and his manservant come through to find the lost Giselle.
Of course everyone learns a lesson (well nearly everyone) as the divorce lawyer learns to let his emotions out, Giselle learns not to go haplessly into the arms of the nearest prince and the manservant learns to be a decent stand up guy. Through in we have a message of female independence as Robert refuses to let his daughter believe in fairytales but tells her she can be whatever she wants to be (giving her book on Marie Curie et al) whilst Giselle comes to rescue the gentlemen in distress at the film's climax.
A large part of the film's appeal is down to Amy Adams' charming turn as Giselle, all bright eyes and energy. A musical number in Central Park really lets her show what she can do alongside being a strong comedian.
Plus the film is filled with sly visual references to much of Disney's back catalogue and spotting these is as much fun as anything else.
We open the film in animated style as Giselle sings about true love's kiss with her woodland friends, finds a Prince and is to be married the next day only for the Prince's evil stepmother to push her down a magical well on the other side of which she appears in real life New York
Pitching Giselle's hopeless romanticism and joy at life against the hard cold reality of New York is what generates most of the film's humour and edge (although the edge isn't too sharp, hey this is still a family film). As she stumbles lost in the city she meets divorce lawyer Robert and his young daughter, then further chaos ensues as the Prince and his manservant come through to find the lost Giselle.
Of course everyone learns a lesson (well nearly everyone) as the divorce lawyer learns to let his emotions out, Giselle learns not to go haplessly into the arms of the nearest prince and the manservant learns to be a decent stand up guy. Through in we have a message of female independence as Robert refuses to let his daughter believe in fairytales but tells her she can be whatever she wants to be (giving her book on Marie Curie et al) whilst Giselle comes to rescue the gentlemen in distress at the film's climax.
A large part of the film's appeal is down to Amy Adams' charming turn as Giselle, all bright eyes and energy. A musical number in Central Park really lets her show what she can do alongside being a strong comedian.
Plus the film is filled with sly visual references to much of Disney's back catalogue and spotting these is as much fun as anything else.
Thursday, 7 January 2010
On Hold Music
I was planning lots of interesting posts but the internet being down at HQ for the last couple of days has led to a backlog of things I want to write about.
So whilst I sort out what I'm going to post about (I typically think of lots of things once I can't actually put them up) I give you some on hold music. A track with a stupidly catchy hook of a chorus; Tik Tok by Ke$ha.....and yes there is a line about 'her junk'.
So whilst I sort out what I'm going to post about (I typically think of lots of things once I can't actually put them up) I give you some on hold music. A track with a stupidly catchy hook of a chorus; Tik Tok by Ke$ha.....and yes there is a line about 'her junk'.
Monday, 4 January 2010
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