We’ve all read, and probably disagreed with, the reviews from film critics, magazines and tabloids on Keanu’s work and career, so with this in mind we’ve tried to create an unbiased page made by the fans for the fans to share our own reviews and thoughts on Keanu’s TV commercials and films. This issue we’re taking a closer look at:
I'm so far removed from the dedicated 'sci-fi' fan they would think me a joke. I have never sat and fully watched either Star Wars (I know...slapped hand) or Dr Who for that matter, yet for week after painful week; I desperately counted down the endless days until the Matrix hit our screens. In those torturously long and boring weeks, I deliberately ignored all the press and turned a deaf ear to all the hype. I refused to read the magazines and reviews. I even frantically grabbed for my remote control and desperately switched over TV channels whenever the 'Matrix' was advertised as I lived in fear I'd grow to expect far too much from this film. I didn't want anything to ruin the first time I sat and watched (whilst feverishly eating my popcorn and sipping on my coke) the Matrix on the big screen you see and thankfully all my blissful ignorance paid off big time. This film has a lot of meanings for me and it's hard to know where to start or how to explain. For one it's visually stunning and bombastic, with reflections of Lewis Carol's white rabbit from 'Alice in Wonderland'. It’s also a fast paced computer-based existence and action/martial arts Hong Kong movie rolled into one which has a much deeper meaning along with an excellent original plot. The movie includes several marvellous bullet battles (my favourite has to be in the tube subway), an amazing helicopter stunt, and many well-choreographed fight scenes in which the fighters seem to appear to hang wonderfully in mid-air. We also see a very lean Keanu performing kung fu spectacularly (which made me smile inanely for hours afterwards.) Yet instead of filming the more traditional 'training scenes' for these wonderful fight scenes, the skills needed to outwit the enemy are conveniently downloaded into the brain from a computer. If only all learning was this easy! A device, which helps to transform Thomas Anderson into hard-kicking Neo, believably, overnight.
The film centres around Thomas Anderson (Reeves), aka Neo, a nice enough chap who puts the rubbish out for his landlady and who holds a full time job but who is also, in his spare time, a top-notch programmer and computer hacker who deals with underworld software on the side. A lone man who's always had the premonition that he was living in a dream world instead of reality. A man who was seemingly meant for more. As we grow to know Thomas it comes to our attention that this man is constantly in front of his computer both at work and at home. Our first glimpse of him is in his rented flat. With his head bent we see him fast asleep on the desk, headphones on, snoring away when suddenly he awakes to see strange messages appearing on his PC screen. Soon, he's searching for and being pursued by a legendary figure named Morpheus (Fishburne), a man who may unlock the secrets to the 'Matrix'. In an original plot, the Wachowski brothers ('Bound') have imagined a very grey and dark cyber-world in which everything we think we know is really a computer-programme. The Matrix, as it's called, keeps our minds busy with the notion that our lives are real and solid; while our bodies are used for energy by artificially intelligent beings we innocently created during the late twentieth century. We are now simply living rechargeable batteries for this same artificially intelligent existence. However just when we thought we could laugh at all our seemingly unreal credit card bills and unreal and very unpaid parking fines, a small band of rebels, some born in the free world, know the truth -and fight day after day to free the rest of the human race. These rebels, led by Morpheus believe they've found their saviour, the man to free them and us, in this computer geek, Thomas aka Neo, but Neo is far from sure. He is quickly welcomed aboard Morpheus' ship however (and who in their right mind wouldn’t quickly welcome him….) where he meets the rest of the crew, including Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) and the beautiful Trinity (the excellent Carrie-Anne Moss), who is thankfully no damsel in distress.
From that moment on Neo is chased by a variety of 'Agents' including 'Agent Smith' (Hugo Weaving), figures that eerily jump from one body to another and seem unstoppable. In order to escape, Neo and Trinity have to dodge bullets; all in slow motion while their enemies shake them off in a blur. Neo and Trinity run up and along walls and fly through the air marvellously and pump out clips of ammunition. In one spectacular scene hundreds of empty bullet shells fall from the helicopter Trinity is flying to the floor like raindrops about your TV screen. They both use kung fu in hand-to-hand combat trying to save us all whilst the remaining percentage of the population, in a word ‘us’, are divided between those who know the truth and want to destroy the Matrix, and those who know the truth but would prolong the illusion. It's not difficult to differentiate between the two factions either. The good guys wear black leather, sunglasses and look simply stunning; the bad guys wear dark suits and dark shades and luckily don’t look simply stunning. In all this mayhem Neo (as he is now known) soon discovers to his horror that machines have created every aspect of his world. His home, workplace and environment even his landlady are nothing more than bits of data created by an artificial intelligence gone amuck and fed to him intravenously. He’s never truly experienced pain or joy, as he’s never used his body before. To his astonishment he learns he’s never moved a muscle or even looked through his own eyes. The world as he knew it, or thought he knew it, does not exist. It wasn’t real. It was all a celebrate dream. Every memory he had, every object he touched or smelt or loved were nothing more than computer created illusions, dreams, to pacify him whilst he slept in a large vat of pink ooze. When he is rescued and truly awakes he soon discovers our world is in reality a barren wasteland with a burnt sky all created by a war between man and machine and that chicken, amazingly, tastes like everything and nothing and that in reality he’s never even eaten chicken before. The most revered character in this movie, I felt, was the 'Oracle'. A wise old lady who knows and sees all. As I sat in that darkened cinema chomping on my popcorn, I learnt of the ’Oracle’ and thought of her as someone to be feared, someone with whom an audience is the highest honour and found myself holding my breath as Neo travelled to finally met her. Yet when Neo clumsily walks through the door and into the room to meet her, he finds an older woman baking cookies in a regular kitchen, which smell 'real good,' and probably taste nothing like chicken at all.
This in itself paints a portrait of a very cool and enlightened reality that’s refreshing and far from expected. Yet these tit-bits are only there if you want to look for them. Like the ‘lady in red’, everything’s there if we want it enough. We can achieve anything if we put our minds to it and want it enough. Yet, it’s just as easy to go into this movie, have a great time getting your mind blown away with the marvellous effects, and leave none the wiser and seemingly missing the plot altogether, yet still having a wonderful time. I have several favourite scenes. As already mentioned I adore the fight scene between Neo and Agent Smith in the subway station. Especially the look on Agent Smiths’ face when Neo breaks his glasses whilst they’re still perched firmly on the bridge of his nose! I also particularly like the office scene set at the beginning of the film. Here we see Thomas being disciplined by his boss for once again being late into work. In this one scene there is a window cleaner, Thomas notices, cleaning the high window to his superiors office. Thomas watches as the soap suds trickle down the tall window as the Matrix does about our lives, and the cleaner who is wiping away at the suds, clearing them away as Neo will clear our lives from the Matrix. Thomas looks to the suds and sees more yet it’s obviously from the look on his face he can’t understand what he feels or sees. It’s all there for us to see, if we’re willing to look. Another of my favourite aspects to the Matrix are the many varied and complicated visual and special effects we watch without realising the time consuming, unbearable and dedicated work which went into creating these scenes, some of which only last a few seconds, yet taking hours to make and which proved to be a satisfying project for prosthetic make-up artists Paul Katte and Nick Nicolaou both based in Sydney. M.E.G were asked to create some very interesting and complicated make-up effects for the film, such as constructing a realistic animatronic counterpart Keanu Reeves’ torso for the Agents to place a mechanical bug into. (In the Matrix nothing is as it seems for who would have thought that in this scene you weren’t seeing Keanu’s body? I know I did...) M.E.G also modelled an animatronic human newborn baby for the ‘growing fields’ which came together through a combination of fifty-five cables existing along the underside of the baby. A breathing mechanism for the baby was created for lung and stomach movement as a final unnerving touch. They also made many breakable arms for the fabulous fighting scenes for Trinity to plough her way through throughout the film. Along with making skeleton torsos and silicone skin for the film M.E.G. received a life cast cast mould of Keanu's’ torso (check out the *THUD ALERT* picture *WHOA*) but sadly found it too poor to work with, so as a result reconstructed Keanu’s natural body form, skin textures along with body casting to recreate a perfect positive sculpture of his torso which made my smile a mile wide. Thank you M.E.G! This disciplined project took many weeks to complete, was expertly presented and proved very pleasing on my eye. M.E.G. said of their work on the bug, “For the interrogation scene we created a fully articulated animatronic torso of Neo, as well as the bug that gets inserted into his navel. It was a cable controlled animatronic puppet capable of full articulation. It was cast from translucent silicone around a tiny and intricate mechanism that could snake around and writhe via a couple of puppeteers hidden beneath the animatronic torso.” The work that went into these prosthetics must have been all time consuming as they look perfect and to the untrained eye, such as mine, convincingly real. The silicone skins were a combination of hand painting and airbrushing. Keanu’s torso was made using fine pigmentations and details, such as body scars, indents and textures which were layered in washes over the silicone. skin to give a very realistic and translucent look. After which individual hand punched hair work completed the overall finish. M.E.G. went on to say, “The final effect was very realistic even if you were standing right next to it in the work shop. Once on set, the stomach was lit appropriately and the results were stunning.” The Matrix has many meanings to us all yet seems to have leapt out of a comic book or at least seems to have that certain 'fun' quality to it. It's a film which is lavish and dazzling to watch and a film which stands firmly on its own merits…..plus it doesn't hurt that the latex clad shade-wearing hero looks good enough to eat! So next time you sit down to watch Keanu squirm about on the table desperately trying to escape the bug remember, nothing is real in the ‘Matrix' you know…..
'Did you know.....'
Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity) played Liz Teel in the TV series "Matrix" (1993). In the first minutes of the film during the scene in which Trinity is chased by one of the agents and she leaps from one house to the next, an advertisement saying "GUNS" can be seen on the second building. The gun pictured in the ad is exactly the same make and model as the guns used by all agents during the film. As Neo runs through the old lady's apartment near the end of the film, we see an image on the TV of a menacing man in a black suit coat. The image is that of one of the Number 2's from the TV show "The Prisoner” All of the references to street corners (e.g. Wells and Lake) are real intersections in Chicago, USA, the Wachowski brothers' hometown. The subway train has signs for "Loop," another Chicago reference. The film however is quite obviously not set in Chicago or any other real city. Inside the Nebuchadnezzar there is a brief shot of a plaque with the ship's name, above which it says "Mark 3 no. 11." The Biblical verse Mark 3:11 is, “And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out saying, `You are the Son of God.” Check out the room numbers for Trinity and Neo. When the cops burst in on Trinity in the opening scene the number is 303 ("trinity," 3) and since Neo is ‘The One’ the number of his apartment is 101. When Neo is meeting with the Oracle, the music playing in the background in her apartment is Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light," a reference to Neo's continued awakening.
In the first minutes of the film during the scene in which Trinity is chased by one of the agents and she leaps from one house to the next, an advertisement saying "GUNS" can be seen on the second building. The gun pictured in the ad is exactly the same make and model as the guns used by all agents during the film. As Neo runs through the old lady's apartment near the end of the film, we see an image on the TV of a menacing man in a black suit coat. The image is that of one of the Number 2's from the TV show "The Prisoner” All of the references to street corners (e.g. Wells and Lake) are real intersections in Chicago, USA, the Wachowski brothers' hometown. The subway train has signs for "Loop," another Chicago reference. The film however is quite obviously not set in Chicago or any other real city. Inside the Nebuchadnezzar there is a brief shot of a plaque with the ship's name, above which it says "Mark 3 no. 11." The Biblical verse Mark 3:11 is, “And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out saying, `You are the Son of God.” Check out the room numbers for Trinity and Neo. When the cops burst in on Trinity in the opening scene the number is 303 ("trinity," 3) and since Neo is ‘The One’ the number of his apartment is 101. When Neo is meeting with the Oracle, the music playing in the background in her apartment is Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light," a reference to Neo's continued awakening.
As Neo runs through the old lady's apartment near the end of the film, we see an image on the TV of a menacing man in a black suit coat. The image is that of one of the Number 2's from the TV show "The Prisoner” All of the references to street corners (e.g. Wells and Lake) are real intersections in Chicago, USA, the Wachowski brothers' hometown. The subway train has signs for "Loop," another Chicago reference. The film however is quite obviously not set in Chicago or any other real city. Inside the Nebuchadnezzar there is a brief shot of a plaque with the ship's name, above which it says "Mark 3 no. 11." The Biblical verse Mark 3:11 is, “And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out saying, `You are the Son of God.” Check out the room numbers for Trinity and Neo. When the cops burst in on Trinity in the opening scene the number is 303 ("trinity," 3) and since Neo is ‘The One’ the number of his apartment is 101. When Neo is meeting with the Oracle, the music playing in the background in her apartment is Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light," a reference to Neo's continued awakening.
All of the references to street corners (e.g. Wells and Lake) are real intersections in Chicago, USA, the Wachowski brothers' hometown. The subway train has signs for "Loop," another Chicago reference. The film however is quite obviously not set in Chicago or any other real city. Inside the Nebuchadnezzar there is a brief shot of a plaque with the ship's name, above which it says "Mark 3 no. 11." The Biblical verse Mark 3:11 is, “And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out saying, `You are the Son of God.” Check out the room numbers for Trinity and Neo. When the cops burst in on Trinity in the opening scene the number is 303 ("trinity," 3) and since Neo is ‘The One’ the number of his apartment is 101. When Neo is meeting with the Oracle, the music playing in the background in her apartment is Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light," a reference to Neo's continued awakening.
Inside the Nebuchadnezzar there is a brief shot of a plaque with the ship's name, above which it says "Mark 3 no. 11." The Biblical verse Mark 3:11 is, “And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out saying, `You are the Son of God.” Check out the room numbers for Trinity and Neo. When the cops burst in on Trinity in the opening scene the number is 303 ("trinity," 3) and since Neo is ‘The One’ the number of his apartment is 101. When Neo is meeting with the Oracle, the music playing in the background in her apartment is Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light," a reference to Neo's continued awakening.
Check out the room numbers for Trinity and Neo. When the cops burst in on Trinity in the opening scene the number is 303 ("trinity," 3) and since Neo is ‘The One’ the number of his apartment is 101. When Neo is meeting with the Oracle, the music playing in the background in her apartment is Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light," a reference to Neo's continued awakening.
When Neo is meeting with the Oracle, the music playing in the background in her apartment is Duke Ellington's "I'm Beginning to See the Light," a reference to Neo's continued awakening.
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