Please note that all blog posts before 8 April 2007 were automatically imported from LiveJournal. To see the comments and any LiveJournal-specific extras such as polls and user icons, please find the source posting at http://brianenigma.livejournal.com/2003/05/A number of us went to see Matrix Reloaded last night. One word: sucktastic. I went in there with pretty low expectations–more of the first movie, but with better graphics. I was thinking Neo would go around saving people and kicking some bad-guy ass. I was not expecting very little plot–not to be spoon-fed gallons of bland plot. The whole thing felt like a video game. Obtain the gold key to open the gold lock; kill the big boss of level 3; obtain the +3 blunderbuss (+4 against polymorphs); get the purple key to open the purple lock; kill the level 7 boss. Why? Because that is how you get to the next level to finish the game. Trinity using nmap and ssh1 to hack the power station was pretty funny, but I do not think it was intended that way. The concept of the network of backdoors was pretty nifty, though, and probably the only good thing about the movie. The blatant Cadillac advertising was a bit much, though.
Supposedly the lady that plays the Oracle died part-way through the filming of Matrix 2. She had done most of her scenes for 2, but none for 3. I wonder what they had to rewrite to deal with this? Come to think of it, they probably could just computer-generate her and they would be fine.
Friday, I picked up two DVDs (well, okay, one is a boxed set of three). The first was a Best of the Muppet Show DVD with three episodes: Mark Hamil, Paul Simon, and Raquel Welch. The first two episodes were great and the last one was horrid. After looking through the other Muppet DVD offerings, it seems this is a trend. You put two good episodes (Peter Sellers, John Cleese) with a bad one (Dudley Moore). The other DVD purchase was “Mr. Bean: The Whole Bean.” This is all of the Mr. Bean episodes in one box set. Best nearly-silent visual hume-or ev-ar!
