I sent a letter to TTC.

“For the convenience of customers, please move back”.

Your drivers love playing that message up to 2-3 times per stop when things are busy, but the problem  could just as easily be solved by sending more cars. I think a new policy should be that they can’t play that message more than twice for every streetcar that leaves Broadview station. That would mean that the only reason they’re playing it on loop like a bad hip-hop remix feat. DJ Giambrone is because there are streetcars back-to-back all the way to the start of the line.

Otherwise, get your drivers to stop playing that damned audio clip over and over and over.

There are still a number of things I’m trying to get ‘right’ on my new phone. I’m still trying to figure out the most effective way to post new blog entries (this will be posted via email) – update: process was a failure and this was posted manually later. I’m also a bit upset that Wind Mobile’s coverage in East York is spotty at best, and non-existant on my block.

However, one advantage of using a Nokia phone over the iPhone, or even the Android, is the wealth of developed apps. While North Americans like myself know little to nothing about the Symbian OS, the rest of the world has been developing on it for years.

On top of that, my Nokia 5230 lets me install ‘unsigned’ apps right out of the box, so open-source development apps like SCUMMVM work without a hitch. So far, I have dug out my old copies of Monkey Island (1), and The Dig. After dropping the files unmoddified onto my phone’s internal memory, I can play though these old games again.

After picking up Steven Speilberg’s first season of ‘Amazing Stories’ (which inspired his contribution to The Dig’s great plot), I’ve had an urge to play it through again. Now I can do exactly that while on my daily commute…

…at least, if I’m not trying to figure out how to post a blog entry on my site.

photo credit: Michael Jaeger

While out with Simone on my evening constitution (I’ve always wanted to use that in a sentence), I spotted a comet in the night sky. It turns out that some dude named McNaught saw it before me… back in September. So my search resumes for “Comet theMediaman”.

Take a look for it. It’s very clear, even in the city lights of East York. Go check it out (North-ish) before the latter part of June when the moon gets full and the comet drops low on the horizon.

It looks like a bright, fuzzy star. That ‘fuzz’ you’re seeing is the particles coming off the comet!

More information on the Sky and Telescope website. If you’re doing your own browsing on the topic, don’t get it mixed up with the other Comet McNaught back in 2006/07.

The platform at Finch station is killer in the winter, and roasting in the summer. It’s only May and it’s brutal to stand out here. The seats in the bus are nicer than the TTC, but not as nice as they look from the perspective of someone who’s only seen them from the outside. Exact change is to be expected, but if they’re charging $3.25, they need to get coin slots that can take a handful of coins. When I got on, the whole thing jammed and held up the line.

I’m not sure the shocks are any better than the 54E I used to take (TTC), but I was able to type most of this on my phone. On the ttc bus, it vibrated so bad that it was impossible to read and my neck was usually sore by the time I got to work.

Final opinion: meh. I’d rather try a Viva bus and see what that’s like.

Same view… Future sourced from 3D plugin from Google Earth. Sweet.

See for yourself.

Ahh… The wonders of the modern world. This is the view of the downtown Toronto core, as i sit and type out a blog post on my cell phone.

We’re totally living in the future, boys and girls. It’s 2010 and we’re totally living in the future.

A frequently underused feature of my site is the Random link on the left menu bar. From time to time I browse through my older posts by repeatedly clicking on that link. I  reminisce until I have something better to do, or the guilt of not regularly updating in the best time of my life becomes overwhelming and I go back to browsing Engadget.

Among the facts interesting to me but probably few (if anyone ) else, is that there is simply an irrational number of posts about Spider-man.

Now, I haven’t read the comics since I had a paper route, and I never got caught up in the last two or three cartoon series. However, the movies directed by Sam Raimi and starring Toby Maguire have been the highlight of my lifelong Spider-man fandom.

Just to get some of my points out of the way, I will list them here so that I can (finally) get to the point of my post.

• Sam Raimi as director worried me until I learned that Spider-man was “his comic book” growing up. I then decided to keep an open mind and give him one chance to impress me.
• Toby Maguire as Peter Parker was genius casting, and was glad that production was delayed for 8-10 years because there had never been an actor better suited or the roll
• Kirsten Dunst is a horrible, horrible, horrible pick for Mary Jane. Horrible pick. Horrible.
• The third movie was the weakest. And it borders on bad. However, it has a higher rating on IMDB AND RottenTomatoes.com than this year’s Transformers 2, Twilight: New Moon, 2012, or Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 (which combined brought in over $1 billion). Anyone who wasted time on that predictably bad crap loses the privilege to criticize a movie consistently rated higher, like Spider-man 3.

So, in the end, I got what I wanted. The trilogy was not artwork, but they were three of the most fun movies I saw from 2000-2009. So you can imagine my elation when I heard that they were in pre-production for a 4th movie, or even a second trilogy. Hell, I was ecstatic when I read that Sam Raimi had stopped production because he thought the script was crap, and wanted to hold up production while it was fixed.

After all the complaints of films with awesome special effects, and sub-par scripts (read any critic’s column on why Avatar should NOT win the Oscar for Best Feature Film) it is upsetting to consider that there are powers in place who would rather take Sam Raimi and Toby Maguire off the film and reboot it with Mark Webb, the director of “(500) Days of Summer”.

Anyone who was upset by “Emo-Parker” from the third movie will not likely feel vindicated with a director like this. At first I doubted Sam Raimi, but was willing to give him a chance. So should I do so with Mark Webb? Perhaps.

But if Zooey Deschanel that kid from Third Rock From The Sun are the principle actors in the new Spider-man movie, then expect a very, very low rating on RottenTomatoes…

…though it may still bring in several hundred million dollars. Crap.

Still, I got what I wanted. I have the trilogy on DVD and will someday have it on Blu-ray. Thank you, Sam. Thank you, Tobey. And of course, thanks, Stan. Excelsior!

Yeah, I bitched and moaned about having to cut the grass and rake the leaves for only five bucks a chore back when I was a teenager. Still, it’s amazing what several years of living in apartments will do to your wants and needs for a li’l piece of land to call my own.

This is also my least favourite, but that’s largely due to visual style. I’m not sure I can explain why, just that I find the abstraction of reality in the artist’s style to be too distracting. It’s an interesting story, but it’s also a bit of a throwaway film as a restult of it’s parallel storyline to the rest of the franchise.

There is a segment that reflects’ Neo’s own waking sequence, thus it’s well situated after the first film. However, the three I chose before and immediately after the first film seemed perfect. It just seemed reasonable to put three shorts each to precede the feature-length films.

Beyond:

From my least-favourite to my most-favourite. Again, this story sits parallel to the main storyline, but it’s helpful to have seen The Matrix Reloaded for a couple of reasons. The first is the Oracle’s speech on how everything in the Matrix has a program to govern how it works. Also, sometimes those programs aren’t working properly and that leads to a glitch.

Since this is situated in Japan  I have set it to Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. Even the walking signal music has significance. Listen to the commentary sometime to learn about it.

In this entry, some neighbourhood kids find an old house where a glitch is causing problems like screwed up gravity and time-dilation. Because the End of the War is coming, in combination with Agent Smith’s screwing around in the second film, it makes sense to watch this film between the second and third.

Wow. This is the first time I’m watching this short with surround sound. It’s completely a new film. The weirdness surrounds you like it does the characters.

Rain falling from a clear sky. A broken lightbulb lighting up. The errors in the code manifest themselves as they would in a haunted house.

I can’t say why I like this one so much. Maybe it’s because it’s the childlike wonder at the ways the Matrix can be manipulated. That can probably go some way to explaining why they don’t ‘free’ a mind once it’s reached a certain age.

Matriculated:

The final short is again a very solemn story. Again, probably one of the low ones on my list of favourites, but fits better as well as any between the second and third films. By the end, there’s a possibility of peace to be found between the humans and the robots. And while this involves humans in the Real World, it also proves to be a story showing a different philosophy on dealing with the war. As a result, they act independent of Zion and thus would not have been called back to defend the city.

I forgot to switch it back to English, but didn’t realize that until the 5-minute mark. There is no dialogue through the first act of this film. Still, I choose to watch the rest in English since this is done in the same style as the artists’ original seris, Aeon Flux. Unfortunately, the audio and subtitle buttons are locked out of the DVD programming. I have to make the switch from the menu, then navigate back into the short. Given my experience with DVD programming, and knowing the variety of languages and commentary tracks to deal with, I can’t blame the programmers of this DVD.

Back to the film, the next part of the film enters a sureal world where they try to help the machine that they’ve captured to see the ‘folly’ of its ways. I’ve never been a fan of surreal art and environments, so this movie already has an uphill battle in connecting with me. The whole thing is meant to feel like a dream, but I’m still not entirely sure of the point. In these cases, I wonder if there even is one, or if the artist is just creating something that looks and feels weird.

The Matrix Revolutions:

One point unrelated to the movie itself that I want to make is how the advertising missed a brilliant opportunity. The monochromatic tone of the first film’s campaign was blue. The second’s campaign was green. The third’s was… green again. They should have made the monochromatic tone red. Following the victory of the machines in the second film, the third could focus on the red, death-like eyes of the machines. The connection between all three campaigns could come from the tones being blue, green and red; the three colours that are used in computer monitors.

Well, no crying over spilt milk. Let’s start the movie.

Starting with another overture with green code, we see the disoriented crew trying to find why Neo is stuck in a coma. Neo, although he isn’t physically ‘jacked in’, he appears to be. He appears in a ‘train station’ named Mobil Ave… somewhere Matrix-like, but not in the Matrix itself.

Morpheus and Trinity meet with the Oracle… who is now played by a new actress. Here change of appearance is attributed to her ‘choice’ to help Neo. Sort of a rogue program Witness Relocation Program. The unfortunate truth being that the original actress died during production. It’s nicely tied up in spite of that lose end.

Storming the Merovingian’s club starts with a scene that clearly is inteded to be an ‘upgrade’ on the landmark Lobby Scene from the first movie. Since both sices bend the rules of the Matrix, gravity has very little effect. It’s pretty sweet. In the club, it’s a bit of a glamorized version of the the club in the first movie… though a little too sex-slave to make a prude like myself comfortable.

Bane – infected with Smith’s consciousness – awakens. For some reason, someone is throwing crap at him from off screen. I’m not too sure what that’s about, but whatever.

Wow. When Smith takes over the Oracle’s powers, he lets out the creepiest laugh I’ve ever heard outside anime. It’s so upsetting it even creeps out the other Smiths.

Trinity and Neo take one of the ships to the Machine City. But before they leave, they have a problem with the power. Send the woman, and “I’ll be right back”. *sigh*

Neo gets his eyes burned out, and I have to admit that I found that unexpected. It became quite apparent that with that injury that he was not going to survive the movie. I remember that adding a new level of tragedy to how this film will end. One downside to the movie is that is uses the first half of the movie to set up the final battle. While most stories would have more character development to do, this film obviously doesn’t Instead, it fills it with foreboding and suspense. While “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” was able to do this effectively, I think that’s one place where this film did not succeed.

Finally, the outer wall is breached, and the battle starts. The percussion of gunfire is constant, and over five or ten minutes becomes overwhelming. However, when looks like they’re starting to hold their own, a flood of sentinels fly in and make the attack much more one sided. The possibility that the humans might not win this war suddenly breaches our suspension of disbelief.

The crew gets back to Zion and fires the EMP, shorting out the first wave of sentinels. Precisely because things were looking so dark, you really feel the same relief once the first battle is over.

The story rejoins Neo and Trinity. Neo has reached that higher state of being that allows him to kick collective robot ass just by thinking it. However, they’re overwhelmed. Beautifully and tragically, Trinity is the first human in hundreds of years to see the Sun – the real Sun – just before she loses her life. The scene as she dies is sad.. but a little monologue-heavy… a little heavy on rhetoric. Still, it’s a powerful scene.

Neo stands at the center of the Machine City. Some weird construct appears in order to discuss the Smith program that is growing beyond the control of the machines. Back in Zion, there’s a temporary end to the violence as Neo re-enters the Matrix.

Once again, Neo and Smith show down. The fight takes on a flying-over-the-city view like we’ve seen in many anime movies. It’s strange, then, that this scene reminds me of the finale of Dark City more than any other movie. I find it strange because that movie was made as one of the very last, special-effects laden films before Computer Graphics took over all such post production. This film, on the other hand, is the pinnacle of a decade of computer effects as the status quo in mainstream movies.

I’m still not entirely sure how Neo becoming a Smith at the end conquers him, but there you have it. The literal Christ metaphor is a bit of a slap in the face of obviousness. At some point I’m going to watch with the commentary track on and find that out. For now, this is the ending the Wachowski brothers had in mind.

Program:

Along with A Detective Story, and the two parts of Second Renaissance, this was one of four films released online before the Animatrix was released. Perhaps it’s out-of-order to consider three of these films as perfect material to watch before the first movie, when their purpose was to drum up interest for the sequels.

I’ve chosen to watch it in Japanese with English subtitles. There is a mix of shorts that view better with Japanese dialogue and those that are better in English. I wish there was an option on the DVD menu that would sync the film with the original language the lip-syncing was done.

I’ll just have to remember to turn it back to English before the next film.

It’s a fascinating film, since it extrapolates what we’ve learned about the world of the Matrix films to include simulations not set in modern times. Setting the film in feudal Japan adds a sense of genuineness to the use of Anime.

This film sits well between the first and second films because it shows concepts that we’ve seen already – on-ship Matrix simulation, re-entering the Matrix, etc. The difference here is questioning what someone else in the same situation might do. It also fits better here because, by the end of the second film most of the ships and their crew have been destroyed.

Kid’s Story:

Certainly the most visually distinct film of the nine, and also the most melancholy.

It tells the Matrix escape story of one of the characters introduced in the second film. Chronologically, this is one of two no-brainers since “Neo” has already been revealed to be “The One”, but he has also escaped before The Matrix Reloaded.

However, if placed before the time of The Matrix, then a side-story could be told of how Neo is just a part of a larger underground movement of hackers who believe that the world we live in might not be real. We see Neo have these doubts in the first movie, so it’s not a stretch to think that there’s some underground group that believes the same.

While that’s a nice thought-experiment, that’s not the case. We see Neo at the end in “The Real World”. Still, I would like to see that reveal removed and allow the film to float in another layer of interpretation.

Final Flight of the Osiris:

The other no-brainer for placement in the chronology is the one the precedes The Matrix Reloaded by mere hours.

It uses the technology that was developed – and later bankrupted -  Squaresoft. Even by 3D standards today, it’s still the best, most realistic 3D technology available. the Final Fantasy movie that this technology was developed for really did an incredible job of jumping the Uncanny Valley.

The Matrix simulation fight sits in stark contrast to the one in Program. It’s very sexual in nature, both through the visuals and actions.

The segment that acts as a prologue for the first sequel is intense. With only seconds to go, the message is delivered to Zion that the machines are readying an attack. It’s a powerful film, and certainly the most entertaining to watch from a brain-candy perspective.

The Matrix Reloaded:

After waiting for years for the inevitable sequel to arrive in front of our eyes, the movie starts with an extended opening… an overture to the 4-5 hours left in the series.

We find that the first segments are simply Neo’s foreshadowing, prophetical dreams. So, it seems that a one-of-a-kind connection to the Matrix causes you to dream in green ASCII. I’ve had a dream with subtitles once and that was unsettling. It would suck to have all of your dreams in green, early 80’s technology. Although I guess having all my dreams in CGA would probably be worse.

The meeting of leather-clad captains is sort of like the club scene at the beginning of The Matrix, but without the kick-ass Rob Zombie remix music. Too bad, because the blah-blah-blah is unfortunate foreshadowing the the dialogue-heavy infighting amongst the humans through the rest of this film.

And then the first, kick-ass fight to a thumping soundtrack. Neo comments, “hmm. Upgrades”. Obviously referencing the better defensive abilities of the Agents, but subtly telling us that the fights are about to get a whole lot more interesting than they were in the last film.

Neo doing his “Superman Thing” suffers from a plunge into that Uncanny Valley. It’s really too bad, since the the Final Flight of the Osiris technology might have helped.

In the Real World, everyone goes by their hacker alias. I’m guessing that’s a reference to taking on a new name once being freed from slavery. However, I’m concerned that if I were similarly ‘freed’, that I would forever be known only as ‘theMediaman’, or worse, my gaming alias, “Bongo McFarlane”.

Either case would leave me in the Real World not doing much other than A/V work… or percussion. Given the upcoming rave scene, it would suck to be stuck up with the band during all that hot, sweaty rompin’.

Ew. Keanu bum.

Then we see the viral replication of Agent Smith, into a real human who then jumps back into the real world. It’s an interesting philosophical question – replacing a human brain with a computer program. But it’s not altogether unbelievable. There’s already technology that allows memories to be written to a mouse’s brain. Can it be that much further off to write a completely new, computer generated intelligence to the machines of a human brain? Well, for that we’re drifting into "”Ghost In The Shell” world.

Yet another philosophical question about who needs who more between the humans and the machines. While it is a symbiotic relationship they still war. A fact debated, but not fully discussed.  Perhaps the get-out-of-free card is how the old man says that he’s old and doesn’t have to make a point. Well, good, but there are a lot of brilliant philosophical questions raised in this film that don’t get answers.

One more philosophical discussion – this time with The Oracle. It has enough foreshadowing that it doesn’t let you completely fall asleep. Luckily the next scene involves an irrational number of Agent Smiths trying to beat the snot out of Neo.

Returning to the discussion on the Uncanny Valley, it would be very easy to screw up this scene with all of these Smiths. If the lighting on even one of a dozen of them were wrong, it would kick the viewer out of the action. Instead it does a fantastic job of creating a realistic, believable scene in spite of the unbelievable circumstances.

The introduction of rogue programs as other ‘people’ in the Matrix really stretches the metaphor, but it’s probably one of the most fun parts of the sequels. “Keymaker” is like a decryption algorithm. But making such a function into a cute, old Asian man. Turning code into something as unassuming a piece of chocolate cake is a stretch in everything but the Matrix.

Monica Bellucci’s Persephone is one of the most interesting characters not fully explored in this series. I know that she has a much more important role in the video game, “Enter The Matrix”, and that her scenes can be watched on the bonus disc for this entry to the series. However, aside from being drop dead gorgeous, her character than the actress’s performance are fascinating. Her husband, The Merovingian is the focus of the scene, but it’s Persephone that really steals the scene.

Now the weapons fight scene. I believe this was one of the first scenes filmed for the new movies. It doesn’t show in how it it’s filmed or performed. Very complex filming and quick shots. The fight has many stages and ranges all over the room.

One of the scenes from the trailer that really got me excited was Morpheus with a freakin’ Samurai sword. When the final scene comes up, it’s really one of the highlights of the whole series.

Just from the beginning, the ghost-like Twins are fun adaptations of that programming metaphor. The scene then starts using one of the new, redesigned Cadillac CTS’s as the chariot for the heroes. This is was Cadillac’s shot at getting into the youth market. I have to admit, it slooks like a slick vehicle, and was one of the first cars of the 2000’s decade that I actually thought looked pretty cool. 

Add on that the fact that they built a 3-mile stretch of highway JUST FOR THIS MOVIE and that just adds to how much fun this scene is. 

OOOooo, yeah. Freaking Samurai sword in bullet time.

The fight between Morpheus and the Agent on top of the truck is set up like a Street Fighter intro. The first time I watched this movie I expected two health bars to pop up and the word ‘FIGHT’  to show in large, red letters.

Fun Fact: The software that’s running on the computer systems at the power station is nmap, which is a popular hacker tool. Clearly, they did their research.

As with many landmark films, they can sometimes be eclipsed by satire. There is a scene in the opening of the MTV Video Awards where Will Farrell plays The Archetect. Now, when I watch this scene, it’s very revealing… but just not as purely entertaining as the satire. I think it’s on the extras disc, I’ll have to load it up after this.

Boy, he really does use a lot of multisyllabic and Latin vernacular.

We’re told that the Matrix had been reset six times before, but this is clearly something different from all times before. I would have chosen a much higher number – the altered Matrix takes into account the anomaly, but obviously doesn’t take into account an anomaly in the anomalies (Neo). I would expect that it would take more than six before someone like Neo comes along.

One more “Superman Thing” and he saves Trinity.

The ending is very dark and uncertain. In this way it follows the ‘trilogy’ rule of The Good Guys winning the first film, while The Bad Guys win the second.

Finish with a teaser trailer of the third movie and on to the last collection of films.

more to come…