Believe the unbelievable. com - the matrix fansite

The question faced by film and record executives when a marquee star dies unexpectedly is, how? A star's death naturally places their work smack in the middle of public view, potentially attracting a bigger audience at that moment than at any time while he or she was living.

There is always a temptation to release new movies or records to capitalize on that publicity, but if studios and record labels do this, they risk alienating the public and even their credibility with artists.

In film, Warner Bros. faces two significant hurdles. This fall the studio must wrestle with how it plans to market "Queen of the Damned," a youth-oriented, rock-driven horror film that features Aaliyah in the title role. Based on the Anne Rice novel of the same name, the $15-million to $20-million picture directed by Michael Rymer features Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat, who becomes a rock star and wakes up the queen of all vampires with his music.

Meanwhile, directors Andy and Larry Wachowski and producer Joel Silver are grappling with whether to recast Aaliyah as Zee in "The Matrix Reloaded," the highly anticipated sequel to their 1999 blockbuster "The Matrix." The filmmakers remain tight-lipped about their secret project. Silver, through a studio spokeswoman, declines to discuss how they will deal with Zee. A decision to recast the role of Zee would be a sensitive undertaking if, for no other reason, than any false step could alienate her fans.

Indeed, the pressure on the studio is already evident by a petition by some of fans posted on the Internet. The petition, addressed to Warner Bros., states:

"In the wake of the tragic death of R&B Singer/Actress Aaliyah, Warner Bros. is rumored to be cutting the scenes Aaliyah has already filmed for ['The Matrix Reloaded'] and recasting the role. We would like to urge WB to honor the memory of Aaliyah's life and keep her scenes .... "

While certain scenes have already been shot in the U.S., filming is scheduled to resume in Australia today). Silver told The Times shortly after Aaliyah's death that the actress was not scheduled to go before the cameras until late October. The mere possibility that such a choice part might be recast obviously has Hollywood's agents and managers primed.

"The reality is, there's a role available that a girl who was on her way to superstardom [was going to do]," said veteran manager Dolores Robinson. "Somebody is going to get that job. I don't think there is anything wrong with this. It's not a wait-and-see business. It's a business where you have to make decisions quickly."

Warner Bros. had big plans for Aaliyah. After "Queen of the Damned" and "The Matrix" sequel, the studio hoped to cast her in an updated remake of the 1976 musical "Sparkle."

Read the whole article <here>

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MATRIX DANCE >Source: <San Francisco Magazine>

Star choreographer Charles Moulton goes Sci-Fi with an outlandish Matrix number.

Modern dance hangouts were abuzz with gossip a few months ago about-of all things-the Matrix Sequel.We’d all heard that the film was shooting in the Bay Area, but the big news in the dance world was that Oakland-based choreographer Charles Moulton had been selected to create a colossal sequence for it. As the world-renowned Moulton geared up for the most bizarre project and venue (the Alameda naval base) of his career, dancers spread the word that there would be plenty of work: A thousand of them were needed for the number.

Moulton can speak only for his four, maybe five, minutes of screen time, but he likens the footage to that of Cecil B. DeMille. Yes, that’s right: A Keanu Reeves movie has been compared with The Ten Commandments. “ I saw the dailies, and they were absolutely spectacular. When we were shooting, there were hordes of people. They were using cranes, huge dollies, cables. Cameras came swooping down over the crowd.

What they were doing was absolutely wild.” Apparently, what they were shooting was too. Moulton, whose rambling resume includes the “Nine Person Precision Ball Passing” number—a knot of black-clad dancers passing hot-orange balls in quick, intricate patterns—outdid himself with the Matrix dance. “It’s huge,” he says. “Colossal.” He signed a gag order with Warner Bros., so he isn’t allowed to elaborate or explain how exactly a thousand-person dance would fit into the plot of the sci-fi movie. (Those who saw the first Matrix might have a sense of the wild visual imagery involved.)

When Moulton discusses the feeling of the dance, though, you gather that it might look like a Jacuzzi with every gizmo going. Or a wildfire in a high wind. It isn’t about tight rhythms, as the ball-passing was; rather, it’s syncopated, fugal: Six or seven distinct movement patterns get taken up by groups of 100 dance couples, so that the patterns rip through the entire crowd. He sounds like a DJ describing it: “It’s like making music, mixing together elements. It’s more about energy, like a field of activity.”

Moulton started with a core group of 11 and trained them, then graduated to a group of 100, and finally incorporated the rest of the dancers. He can’t say whether Reeves will be part of the scene, but he did have a chance to see the star in action. “Having worked with the best in the world, with Merce [Cunningham] and Baryshnikov, I can say he’s very physically disciplined. He takes instruction well. And I think he’s great in his movies. I watched the first Matrix, and I thought he was brilliant.” We’ll see about round two. The film wrapped production last month; it’s scheduled for release in 2003.

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ARTICLE ON KEANU >Source: <The Ottawa Citizen>

Keanu Reeves jokes with his young co-stars in a hotel hallway about their experience in Hardball, a heart-tugging baseball movie that opened last week. They have gathered to meet the media, and Reeves finishes the reunion by saying, "Thanks for watching my back." Then he walks into the room for this interview, and his joy deflates faster than a whoopee cushion.

He now must dole out information, a role that makes him far more uncomfortable than playing the hustler-turned-coach in Hardball. Reeves first earned attention as an easygoing dude in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). He became bankable with action turns in Point Break (1991) and Speed (1994). Then The Matrix (2000), a futuristic whirl of computer takeovers and slow-motion martial arts, put him in the let's-hand-him-the-vault category.

The 37-year-old actor has built his mystique by limiting the flow of information about him. "If one is a fan of an actor, I could see why he'd want to know more about them," he says. Not that he is about to indulge the public's wish or any reporter's. He is solemn for a man who has earned a reputation as a cosmic surfer boy.

Reeves, his dark Eurasian good looks blending in with a black sports jacket and T-shirt, answers questions with a brusque delivery. Some people in Hollywood say he is less than intelligent. Others say he is misunderstood. Most would agree that he is like no one else. He lives in hotels most of the time. He has said he likes to stare at the walls. And he often travels solo, one of the exceptions being when he plays bass with his band Dogstar.

He is capable of staggering generosity. He donated his profit-sharing points for the two Matrix sequels -- which could amount to millions of dollars -- to the special-effects and costume-design crews, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. He appears stricken when the subject comes up. "I'd rather people didn't know that," he says. "It's just a private event. It was something at the time that I could afford to do, hopefully, and it's a worthwhile thing to do."

Reeves' first name means "breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian, but one acquaintance suggests someone serene. Brian Robbins, the director of Hardball, was surprised that Reeves was interested in the part of a gambler who finds meaning in guiding a ragtag team of kids from the projects. But when Robbins met the actor, the choice made sense.

"Keanu Reeves, the person, has a sort of void," Robbins said. "He's a guy sort of needing something, looking for something, like the character in the movie. I thought it was a good fit."

During filming in Chicago, Robbins and his wife would run into Reeves on Sunday mornings, sipping coffee alone at a cafe. They would invite Reeves to join them, and sometimes he would accept. "I did try to bring him in because I felt like he needed that," the director said. The itinerant actor will spend the next nine months in Sydney, Australia, finishing up The Matrix sequels to be shot one after the other. (The first one, The Matrix Reloaded, is scheduled to open in 2003.)

The displacement does not faze him. "I try to be present," he says. "I'm so grateful to be there and so grateful to be working on something I love. Its demands are what's so great about it." Perhaps the one place Reeves could call home is just four blocks from where he sits. He spent his adolescence in Toronto with his mother, Patricia. She was a showgirl in Beirut, Lebanon, when she met Reeves' father, Samuel, a geologist. The two divorced shortly after Reeves was born. Reeves dropped out of four high schools in Toronto, clinging to his dream of becoming an actor. He does not visit old haunts when he returns because of limited time, but, he says, "There's a certain nostalgia to it, a certain reflection."

Reeves' detractors can be harsh, but complaints about his stiff acting cooled somewhat with his performance as a redneck in the supernatural thriller The Gift(2000). Two other recent efforts, the football comedy The Replacements and the romance Sweet November, did not fare well with critics or audiences. Robbins argues that Reeves has worked with some of the best directors, "so there must be something there."

Reeves began acting at age 15 because it made him happy. It still does. "I know that I want to have truthful acting," he says, "and so maybe that's something I'm searching for. Maybe that can turn into a truthful life."

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CONTENT REVISITED DVD >Source: <Digital Bits>

what can be expected from the DVD?

* Behind the scenes footage from The Matrix 2 (Reloaded)

* A preview of The Matrix Anime (also referred to as The Animatrix)

* A preview of the new website which is being developed to coincide with the release of the sequels

* Interviews with true hardcore fans of The Matrix

* A huge section on the fight choreography created for the film

* A "scene study" of the excellent Wet Wall and Bathroom Fight scenes

* A music clip with previously unseen footage from The Matrix

* Four hidden eggs, known only as "Chase in the Alley", "Gun Training", "The Woman in Red" and "Juke Box"

The DVD will be released on November 20th, and will sell at $19.98. There will also be a 2-disc set which will contain Revisited and The Matrix and this will sell for $39.98.

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ARTICLE ON VIOLENCE >Source: <New York Times>

By Elvis Mitchell:

Is the depiction of violence America's most heavily exported cultural product? After the events of last Tuesday, the question hangs in the air. The issue of violence in movies was raised in Senate hearings last year and figured to some degree in the presidential campaign.

Now, after so many have compared last Tuesday's disasters to events depicted in movies like "Independence Day," we have to face the question of violence as our country's cultural touchstone. If it's not our native tongue heard in the movies that we send around the globe, then it's the language we speak most ardently. The graphic image of the White House exploding in "Independence Day" has a frightening quality, and in hindsight, since the Bush administration has said the White House was a target of the terrorists, perhaps suggested the way to unlock the door to our national nightmares -- a horror-movie symbolism that shows the power of a grand gesture.

It is possible to tick off similar scenes without much effort, even in a serious drama like "The Siege," which doesn't treat terrorism as little more than a a playground for action sequences. The televised images of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers will occupy our dreams as similar scenes in "Independence Day" do, only without the fictional hero coming to the rescue to salve our damaged psyches. The dirty little secret that never comes up when Congressmen and concerned adults get together to rail against violence in movies is how effective an entertainment device the action sequences in movies are. The debate about film violence is conducted without acknowledging a sad fact: violence creates genuine excitement. And the bold, sweeping inventiveness of action sequences, the one thing that American movies consistently do well, has grown over the years. The vicarious thrills deliver the kind of goose bumps that we used to experience by reading violent fairy tales. As a country, we've probably lived too long like children, listening in rapt wonderment to gruesome tales from the Brothers Grimm.

The action movie has supplanted the musical, and the vitality of the action sequences in a movie like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," which moved the once marginal Hong Kong action film into the Oscar-nominated mainstream, can be as exhilarating as watching Fred Astaire float across the screen in "Follow the Fleet."

The replacement of dance numbers by shooting and hand-to-hand battles can almost be traced to the shoot'em-up action parody Astaire performs in "The Band Wagon" -- a balletic flair replicated by Keanu Reeves in "The Matrix." A nonpareil action director like John Woo uses tension in an enclosed space the same way that great musical directors like Stanley Donen and Mark Sandrich did. The technique generates a similar anticipatory vibrancy.

Action and violence in the hands of a gifted filmmaker function like a dance number, offering a display of explicit physical exertion. Dance numbers in musicals served as a stand-in for the sweatiness of sex, since for a long time studios couldn't show such encounters on the screen. The exuberant energy contained in on-screen violence appeals to young audiences because it stimulates them.

Classic depictions of action and violence can even stand alone like a musical number. When Quentin Tarantino used "Stuck in the Middle With You" by the group Stealer's Wheel in a bloody sequence, he forever changed associations with that song. And that was just half a mile away from what Steven Spielberg did with the music strings in "Jaws."

Some of the most remarkable filmed violence has an explicit quality that would not be allowed in depicting sex. In "Saving Private Ryan" there's a horrifying scene of a young American soldier in a knife fight with a Nazi that has the unforgettable feel of a rape scene; the American is pleading for his life, and the German is angrily telling him to stop fighting and give in. In its precise ugliness, it may the closest thing to a sex scene that Mr. Spielberg has ever made and underscores the ease with which filmmakers can manipulate violence.

The scary fact no one admits is that the technology of violence improves every year, and the power of such scenes keep audiences roaring with excitement. Violence is the one area where big-budget mainstream movies have shown confidence; the only moments of assurance in an awkward jumble of a picture like "Swordfish" -- which featured domestic terrorism as a plot gambit -- came in the action. Its star was John Travolta, an actor with an extraordinary amount of physical confidence (so much so that it borders on arrogance) and an actor who initially found stardom in musicals like "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease" in the late 1970's when the form was considered moribund.

A movie made with conviction in the straightforward and blood-soaked depiction of violence, as opposed to movies that manipulate it to crank up adrenaline levels, can still shock. When "The Wild Bunch" was rereleased a few years ago, the potency of Sam Peckinpah's imagery did what it was supposed to do: stun, not numb. The picture received an NC-17 rating.

After the pain inflicted last week, many movie releases have been swept under the rug. The adaptation of the comic novel "Big Trouble" has been shelved at least until early next year. (A plot point is how easy it was for several of the book's characters to gain access to potentially dangerous materials and transport them through airports.) The annual Arnold Schwarzenegger blood sport -- the very title, "Collateral Damage," comes from the phrase that sent a chill during Desert Storm -- has been postponed indefinitely. This takes care of a question that the film industry won't have to answer for a while: Who will be the next action hero whose name automatically draws the prized young audiences to movies again and again? It was Mr. Reeves in films like "Speed" and "The Matrix" -- the latter made such a cultural impact that it inspired two high-budget sequels. What will happen to the "Matrix" sequels now?

And what will be the future of violence in the movie industry? The highest-grossing movies of all time are action-oriented, ranging from all four "Star Wars" movies, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and "Terminator 2" to "Armageddon," "Jurassic Park" and "Independence Day." (The No. 1 movie of all time is based on an era-defining disaster: "Titanic." Last year's Oscar winner for best picture was steeped in gore and blood oaths -- "Gladiator.")

When people claim that movie action is bad -- and in many cases it is just that: thoughtless and childish, a reflexive and easy way to involve an audience -- they tend to be immune to its allure, which is perhaps why they can never suggest an alternative. After all, it's Jean-Luc Godard who noted that all you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.

Millions of dollars are at stake for the movie industry. As source material, violence sells overseas, splashes onto many genres, makes instant movie stars and has been with us from silent movies to the present.

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KEANU'S HARLEY >Source: <The Sunday Tasmanian>

MATRIX star Keanu Reeves hopped straight back on his bike after returning to Sydney from Los Angeles on Wednesday. And with filming of Matrix Reloaded due to start this week, the brooding young hunk looked much more the movie star than last week. He has shaved off his grungy facial growth in preparation for his first day on set with co-stars Lawrence Fishburne and Carrie-Ann Moss.

Dressed in his usual black street clothes, Reeves was seen burning up fashionable Oxford St on a Harley Davidson on Thursday night. He returned to Sydney on Wednesday after attending the Hollywood premiere of his film Hardball with co-star Amanda De Cadenet. He was on the same flight as pop princess Britney Spears and US Open hero Lleyton Hewitt, but escaped the waiting media circus.

However, the low-key action star was photographed preparing to ride out of his harbourside hotel. He has imported an impressive black Harley Davidson motorbike complete with California number plates to use while he films in Sydney. Reeves is expected to spend the next nine months in Sydney filming the two sequels to the smash hit Matrix at Fox Studios.

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MATRIX QUALIFIES FOR TAX BREAK >Source: <Variety>

By DON GROVES of Variety:

SYDNEY The U.S. studios bluntly told the Australian government last month the tax regime for international films was a huge impediment to shooting Down Under --- and last week, the government made amends. Arts Ministers Richard Alston and Peter McGauran trumpeted a new Canadian-style tax rebate for producers of big-budget productions (films and miniseries, but not TV series) that location in Oz.

The government fast-tracked a review of the situation after Hollywood execs slammed the Australian Tax Office's decision to deny tax breaks for the Aussie investors in 20th Century Fox's '"Moulin Rouge." Mutterings were heard that runaway production would decamp to countries like Canada and Ireland, which offer clear-cut concessions.

The government consulted closely with the Motion Picture Assn. and reps of studios including Warner Bros. and Fox on the kind of incentive needed. The outcome is a tax rebate to producers equal to 12.5% of money spent in Australia, effective immediately, so that upcoming films like "The Matrix" sequels will be eligible (though "Moulin Rouge," having already been produced, is not).

The original "Matrix" was funded under division 10B of the Tax Act, which gave Oz investors a 100% write-off; the ATO denied that deduction to "Moulin Rouge's" investors, deeming it tax avoidance. While it's still not clear whether producers will be able to use division 10B in the future, the ATO has promised to issue a clarification soon.

Regardless of that outcome, entertainment lawyer Ian Robertson welcomes the rebate as a far more attractive option, because it's "clear, quick and predictable --- and you don't need to have complex negotiations with lots of intermediaries."

Initial response from Hollywood was very positive. "There's a sense of relief among those who were committed to shooting in Australia --- or who were seeking to do so --- that something is in place which is effective immediately and can be easily accessed," says David Pratt, the L.A.-based commissioner for AusFILM, the industry's film marketing agency.

Facing an election before the end of this year, the government shrewdly coupled the rebate with a pledge to boost funding for local films and TV drama by A$ 92.7 million ($ 48.2 million) over the next five years. The Australian Film Finance Corp. and industry groups such as the Screen Producers Assn. had argued that Australia's success in winning offshore production relies on a healthy local industry to provide talent, skills and production infrastructure, which in turn relies on government support.

The FFC, which says its budget in terms of real dollars has been halved since 1988 while the cost of making a feature in Oz has more than doubled, will receive more funding for children's and adult TV drama. "An additional A$ 10.5 million ($ 5.46 million )from government will translate into about A$ 25 million ($ 13 million) worth of film and TV programs because we gear up our money by co-investing with the market, so it is a real win for the local industry," says FFC CEO Catriona Hughes.

McGauran also announced additional government funding for the Australian Film Commission, pubcaster SBS' production venture SBS Independent, docu producer Film Australia, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, and AusFILM. Indeed, the only potential losers from all this largesse are the lawyers, accountants and brokers who were structuring 10B deals --- and the wealthy Oz investors who used them to lower their tax bills.

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CAST KEEPS GROWING >Source: <Aint it cool news>

Good news for French people about The Matrix Reloaded: after the confirmation a few weeks ago about Monica Bellucci's involvment in the most awaited sequel(s) ever, French actor Lambert Wilson (last seen in JET SET) will also be part of the two cyber films... In what role ? Don't know yet... but I could imagine him very well as one of the new bad guys...

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INTERVIEW KEANU 2 >Source: <Detroit Free Press>

The day after this interview, Reeves was set to return to Australia, where he had been since July, to resume work in earnest on the two sequels to the 1999 surprise smash. The first of these, filming under the title "Matrix Reloaded," will be released in 2002.

Reeves says the next two "Matrix" chapters "are so beyond the first film it's unbelievable."

Without revealing anything about the plot, he promises the films will be deeper and more elaborate in every way, especially in regard to story. "They're just a lot more layered. "I never did think of 'The Matrix' as an action film," says Reeves. "To me it was science-fiction drama, and the special effects, as amazing as they were, are only part of the storytelling process.

What the Wachowskis (brothers Andy and Larry, who co-directed and co-wrote) have done is synthesized everything that's going on emotionally, technologically and philosophically in movies in ways that made everything else look instantly old-fashioned. I mean, all you have to do is see the movies that came out in the last year to see the influence it had."

Reeves will be in Australia for nine months making the films, but he's not one of those movie stars who takes along a squad of assistants or a posse of pals for diversion. A guitar, some books and a good job, he says, are pretty much his only requirements. "Nine months isn't that long when you have work to do and you're focused on it," says Reeves. "I think I'll survive it."

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INTERVIEW KEANU >Source: <JAM! showbizz>

Keanu Reeves is jet-lagged, tired, testy and sore. He's flown in from Australia, where he's filming two Matrix sequels, to promote his feel-good, sports movie Hardball, which opens today. At various times during the day he'll tell journalists he made the journey and the effort because he believes in the movie, is honouring his contract with Paramount Pictures, or takes every opportunity he can to spend time in Toronto.

He's not particularly effusive, but then that's never been his style. He is jovial, cracking jokes and deflecting a few made at his expense.

In Hardball, Reeves plays Connor O'Neill, a compulsive gambler who agrees to coach a Chicago inner-city little league baseball team to help pay off a gambling debt. Many of Reeves' pint-sized co-stars in Hardball are actual little league ball players. In their interviews, Michael Perkins, DeWayne Warren and Bryan Hearne claim baseball is not Reeves' forte and that he's just a big kid himself.

Before he can even sit down, Reeves learns how the kids have evaluated him. "You know kids love to lie and tease. I think you may have been treated to some of that at my expense." He doesn't comment on his 'big kid' status, but later director Brian Robbins sheds some light on the origin of these observations.

"At every opportunity they could, the kids would get Keanu to talk about The Matrix. They'd bombard him with questions and they impressed him because they knew whole scenes almost by heart," recalls Robbins.

"They loved getting him to dodge imaginary bullets in the way he did in the movie. They couldn't hear enough about The Matrix. They wanted desperately to know details about the Matrix sequels he's shooting." Reeves met with the same kind of prying from the journalists -- who had ostensibly come to chat about Hardball but really had a Matrix agenda.

"If you want specifics, I'll tell you what I told the kids. No comment. No comment. No comment." What Reeves was willing to divulge is that he'll be filming until January, shooting both sequels simultaneously. "I just think of what I'm doing as one very big movie that's going to be edited into two separate films," he said. "I never try to decide if the scene we're working on is from Matrix 2 or Matrix 3."

Reeves says the training for these new films "is more physically demanding than it was for the original movie. Trust me, you wouldn't want to be my knees in the morning before I start limbering up."

Reeves stresses he and his co-stars aren't the only ones working double duty on the new Matrix project. "The expectations for these next two films are so great that we know we all have to work to maximum capability. "It's more ambitious for me physically but it's the same for (filmmakers) Andy and Larry Wachowski. They're really pushing themselves creatively and technically."

His daily eight-hour training sessions might be exhausting, but they're not as hard as the few days Reeves spent filming Hardball last year in Chicago. Hardball is based on Daniel Coyle's book about his experiences coaching a youth baseball team in Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green Housing Project, an inner city area where gangs and mayhem ruled.