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Her acting career spanned four decades and she won numerous awards. It was, however, perhaps for her wonderful performance in her most recent role, as the Oracle in The Matrix (1999), that she will be best remembered.

Gloria Foster was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 15 1936, and was raised by her maternal grandparents at Janesville, Wisconsin. As a child she idolised Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge, despite her grandparents' disapproval of show people.

It was her godmother who supported Gloria's ambition, encouraging her study of Mark Twain, Shakespeare and Greek mythology. When she won a scholarship to the Goodman Theatre School of Drama in Chicago, her grandparents at first would not allow her to go. They felt there were no role models for black Americans within the arts, as most black actors were restricted to playing slaves or domestic staff. It was only through the intervention of one of Gloria's teachers that they relented.

In 1963, Gloria Foster travelled to New York, appearing in fringe productions, before winning the title role in Martin B Davidson's In White America. In the play, she portrayed 27 characters and explored the experience of black Americans, from the 18th-century slave ships to the 20th-century campaign for civil rights. Critics singled out her performance as the first black schoolchild to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, for particular praise.

With the New York Shakespeare Festival, Gloria Foster played many of the classical roles she loved, including Medea, Jocasta and Hecuba, Andromache and Clytemnestra. On film, she made her debut with Shirley Clarke's The Cool World in 1963. Other credits included Nothing But a Man (1964) with Ivan Dixon, The Comedians (1967) with Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Lillian Gish, The Angel Levine (1971) and Man and Boy (1972), opposite Bill Cosby.

During the 1970s she appeared as a guest on television shows including The Brady Bunch and The White Shadow. The following decade saw one of her busiest periods; she played Mrs Hatch in Alastair Reid's The Files on Jill Hatch (1983) and joined the cast for the 1985 mini-series The Atlanta Child Murders. In 1995, she won acclaim on Broadway in Having Our Say, playing a 103-year-old woman.

Gloria Foster made her last stage appearance in a 1999 revival of A Raisin in the Sun, and had completed most of her scenes for a sequel to the 1999 blockbuster The Matrix (The Matrix Reloaded) just days before her death.

She is survived by a daughter.

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ZERO GRAVITY PLANE >Source: <Corona>

We haven't heard of this reported anywhere else, but according to a reader of the site, yesterday E! Daily News showed a preview of the upcoming The Matrix Revisited DVD, and one of the segments showed the Matrix filmmakers borrowing a camera trick from Apollo 13. It seems that in order to create some never-before-seen aerial fighting scenes for Reloaded, the Matrix production crew took the actors inside NASA's infamous "Vomit Comet" plane, used to train astronauts in a zero gravity environment. Director Ron Howard was the first to use the Vomit Comet to film the scenes showing the Apollo 13 crew floating in a weightless environment.

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MATRIX REVISITED DVD REVIEW >Source: <The Matrix Online>

The Matrix Revisited Review By Glitch2002 for thematrixonline.com:

What is the Matrix? It’s pushing the limits and exceeding them. It’s training 9 hours a day, being sore from the pain and coming back the next day for more. It’s finishing a scene even though you tore a muscle. It’s training even though your neck hasn’t fully recovered from surgery. It’s working through the blood, sweat and tears.

If there is anything left un-answered for you from the first Matrix, then it’s probably answered in the Matrix Revisited, which, for any hard-core fans, is a dream come true. It’s good that Warner Bros. gives us fans something while in the waiting for the two next parts in the trilogy. I recently got a look at the unfinished version of the new dvd that is coming our way November 20th and from what i’ve seen it’s going to blow everyone away.

Kung Fu

Those of you who are fans of the kung-fu action from the flick, there are documents of Yuen Woo Ping’s blocking tapes that were used to see how it would look with different angles and such. Beginning with the Agent Smith vs. Morpheus hotel bathroom scene, to the final Agent Smith vs. Neo showdown in the train station tunnel. They also show the four main stars, Keanu, Carrie-Anne, Laurence, and Hugo, training with Wo Ping and Co. There’s talk about what a usual day of training is and how far they’ve come from not being able to side-kick to kicking 4 times and kicking behind their heads.

Special Effects

The fans of the Visual Effects will be glad to know that there are sequences that are broken down which include the bullet time and the agent training program, showing how they pulled off freezing the Matrix to composing different shots at one time. John Gaeta tells how it’s all done and it will leave you all in a “Whoa”. They show the new Eon Entertainment building which has a cool set up of the infamous red leather chair that Morpheus sits in.

Miscellaneous

There’s interesting little tidbits of fan interviews, there’s a 3 minute preview of the new things to come to the official Matrix website, which tells us of a third comic series launching in January 2002. One of the more interesting documents was the 6-minute preview of the Matrix video game from Interplay. It shows the stunt teams with wires and trackers. Yuen Wo Ping, and the Wachowski Brothers are helping make the game to make sure it’s up to martial art standards & video game fans expectations.

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for…

Spoiler: (Message from Code 808 - before I get a lot of emails because of the 'notice' on the top of this page - this is an official movie preview from Warner Brothers, so yes, it is true, and no, it won't completely ruin the experience, because The Wachowski Brothers probably know what kind of things they can show and tell us.)

The Matrix Reloaded preview!!!

For those who don’t want to know, stop reading this now and save yourself the spoilers. Ok you gone? Didn’t think so! Who doesn’t want to know?

Okay, and now those of you ready to know every little tidbit of info you can scrap and be ready to drool.

I would like to be the first to say “whoa”. For the most part it looks definitely bigger with the fights, better with the agents and better with the visual effects. A person who i’ve been talking to said they were in the works of adding a teaser trailer to this, so by the time they get this out in stores it should be on there. In the short 7 to 8 minute preview, it shows us a fight they were working on in the Manex Studios in Alameda, California.

And guess what fight it is? The very much talked and heard about Neo vs. 100 versions of himself. It’s 8 guys vs. our original Neo and from the video it looks like each different version has a different fighting style like ju-jitsu and such, like Neo has been shattered into 101 pieces, each with a different trait. It’s hard to explain but easily understood when seen.

Then they showed Trinity’s new suit, and it looks awesome, it’s like a PVC dress version of Morpheus’ trench coat, completed with PVC gloves and knee high boots with some cool new shades. They show Morpheus’ two new looks and one main thing is his shirts are red. Like Cypher, so if red is the symbol of blood or death, then that doesn’t sound good. I’ll leave that up to you to decide. Morpheus now sports a red sleeveless trench coat, no shirt, and black leather pants, I’m guessing that’s a Matrix costume, the other one looked exactly like his first real world outfit, boots, raggedy pants, and a red long sleeve shirt, instead of gray and black.

From my browsing, I found no anime preview or hidden features yet put on, so I definitely think there’s going to be tons more and trust me, it’s worth the twenty bucks. I can’t explain too much because, in the words of Morpheus, "You have to see it for yourself". I don’t know about you but I’m counting down the days till 2003.

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PUBLIC SQUARE SHOOTING >Source: <Dark Horizons>

Some major shooting looks scheduled to be happen in one of Sydney's busiest public squares. A memo has apparently gone out indicating shooting will take place on Tuesday November 6th at 39 Martin Place to "film car driving sequences designed to recreate an American street scene. This will involve several American cars operating on the streets and travelling in the wrong direction".

Martin Place featured in several sequences in the first film, most visibly the waterfall in its center serving as the backdrop for the "Woman In The Red Dress" scene. To do the sequences - Elizabeth Street between Hunter St and Market St, and the cross road of King St between Castlereagh St and Phillip St (south) at the corner of Queens Square will be closed through till 6am the next morning.

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INTERVIEW JOEL SILVER >Source: <Cinescape>

Eric Moro of Cinescape had an interview with Joel Silver:

While promoting 13 GHOSTS – the remake of the 1960 William Castle haunted house pic – producer Joel Silver discussed the status of the highly anticipated THE MATRIX RELOADED, currently in production.

Praising the advances 1999’s THE MATRIX made for the art of sci-fi action storytelling, Silver points out that these types of films can indeed contain intelligence and sophistication, and that its two sequels “are very, very smart.” Additionally, the producer believes that the only obstacles standing before the production (in terms of repeating its prior success) are those generated by directors the Wachowski brothers.

“It’s the boys – they want to outdo themselves,” says Silver. “That’s what [the challenges] are. They feel that there are so many movies now that have literally Xeroxed whole parts of their picture – digital effects, ideas, points of view, images from the movie. So they are desperate to make something that you’ve never seen before and I’m telling you, they are doing that.”

As for the fan campaign demanding that scenes containing singer-turned-actress Aaliyah (who died in an Aug. 25 plane crash) be kept in the movie, the producer explains that none had been committed to film at the time of the actress’ death.

“Most of the work in San Francisco was plate photography because the real movie is being shot in Australia,” explains Silver. “So there were a lot of plates that we shot up there and plates are like backgrounds for other scenes. She wasn’t really in anything. There’s nothing we have – she’s not in the movie because her scenes were all in Australia. It’s sad that she couldn’t play the part. She had a great role; it was a great part. Z (Zee) is an incredible character.”

Silver goes on to explain that the character does not start shooting until January, giving the production time to find a suitable replacement. THE MATRIX RELOADED is set to wrap principal photography in May.

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MATRIX 3 TITLE >Source: <13th street>

[...] Joel Silver, producer of Thirteen Ghosts, the upcoming fright flick from Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures. As most everyone knows, Joel's also producing the two sequels to the blockbuster hit, The Matrix, the highest grossing film in the history of the studio. Right around the time of the release of Swordfish, Joel dropped the scoop that the second film would be entitled The Matrix Reloaded. Now we know the title of the third one: The Matrix Revolutions.

There have been rumors for months about the title of the third movie (similar to all the hoopla around the title for the second Star Wars film) with titles like The Matrix Crashes and The Matrix: Revolution coming close. Patrick Sauriol of Coming Attractions first reported the Revolutions rumor (he breaks all those damn Matrix rumors, doesn't he?), but now it's official. So official, in fact, it is now in Joel's new official bio that went out in the Thirteen Ghosts production notes.

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HULME HUMOR >Source: <Moviehole>

The latest addition to the cyber world sequel, Australia's Lachy Hulme ("Let's Get Skase") got talking to NW about his participation in the next Two "Matrix" movies. "I've done a few months in the states on it, and I go back to work on it now. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix 3 is a terrifically big production, and the Wachowski brothers - the directors - have a very specific vision for the films. They're, of course, hamstrung a little bit because they didn't have the superstar power, the money and the resources that (Hulme's film) Let's Get Skase has. But if they want to try out these news kids like Laurence Fishburne and Keanu Reeves and give them a shot in show business, then that's fine (laughs). Lachy is awaiting his invitation to Hollywood.

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TORY MUSSETT ADDED >Source: <The Matrix online>

FROM the "big things are predicted for..." files: Model-actress Tory Mussett, who scored a lead role in FOX8's upcoming drama Crash Palace, has been spotted at Fox Studios, in rehearsals for her role as Code Woman in the Matrix sequels, working alongside Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne. She also appears as the host of tonight's FOX8 special Buffy Bites Back, which includes commentary on the most popular vampire slayer from Natasha Stott Despoja, Triple J's Wil Anderson, author John Birmingham and Rolling Stone editor Andrew Humphreys.

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FILMING IN NORTH SYDNEY? >Source: <The Matrix online>

Milson's Point is a small suburb in North Sydney's business district. It is literally almost tucked underneath the northern end of the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge, and it is home to many locations including Luna Park, the defunct amusement park, and the North Sydney Swimming Pool.

Today it was also home to a large filming crew. What they were filming was uncertain, but it is possible that it was to do with the Matrix sequels being filmed right here in Sydney. Men and Women in casual attire unloaded filming gear from six or so white vans into Bradfield Park, overlooking the Harbour from the shadow of the bridge. As they did so, a black helicopter flew overhead, followed by a blue and white helicopter. My good friend Jack said this about the helicopters: "They definitely weren't military helicopters. In the morning, while the crews were unpacking, a black helicopter flew over the bridge. And another one, just like it, but blue with a white tail- like police colours, except it had no writing on it."

Does this mean that there is a potential helicopter chase scene in the sequels? I personally tend to think that maybe it wasn't to do with the filming, due to the fact that they flew quite close to the bridge and the crew do as much as they can to eliminate prominent Australian locations from the scenery.

The vans themselves were white. Jack spotted that one of them had "EMPIRE" emblazoned across the side it big black letters. Another was was seen to have a cartoonish blue rocket blasting off pictured on it's side. Jack's wife, Dru, noted that one van resembled a make-up truck and she saw two people emerge from it and walk towards the swimming pool at the end of Alfred Street, and that they looked more like actors than crew. She didn't have a chance to ask anybody what was happening, although she noted that their lunch break is at ten to one the afternoon.

The filming may be happening again tomorrow, so if anybody in the North Sydney area could get down there and snap some pics, or bring back reports, that would be great

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CLAYTON WATSON ADDED >Source: <Moviehole>

TV WEEK reports that Another actor has been added to the cast of "The Matrix Reloaded" and the third film. He is Clayton Watson, and he has signed the contract to appear in both sequels. "My Character is called the kid", he says. "He's introduced in the first sequel and follows through to the second. I started filming in San Francisco in July; and I'll do more in January at Fox Studios in Sydney". Currently Watson is among the ensemble cast of high-rating Aussie soapie "Always Greener", in which he plays army brat, Mickey Steele. "Going from TV to film is a dream. Always Greener has given me time off to do both. I couldn't be more thrilled".

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GLORIA "THE ORACLE" FOSTER DECEASED >Source: <Corona>

A representative for Village Roadshow confirmed our source's story today: actress Gloria Foster indeed passed away last weekend. How this will affect her role in The Matrix Reloaded and Matrix 3 remains unclear. The person that first broke the news to us informed CA that at the time of her death, Foster had completed most of her work for Reloaded but none for Matrix 3. She was 64 years old.

My condolences go out to her friends and family. The Matrix won't be the same without her...

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LACHY HULME ADDED >Source: <Moviehole>

Australian actor Lachy Hulme ("Let's Get Skase") nabbed a role in "The Matrix Reloaded" and spilled the beans on how it happened and how it's shaping up. Hulme heard that the films were being shot in Sydney and set his agent on the chase for an audition early on. It was a gig he scored - "And you know I'll be working on that for the next 50 years of my life."

Hulme is reluctant to give away too much. "Ï don't wan't Warner Bros. to send out a hitman after me". He will say though that, without equivocation, that "The Matrix 2 and 3 will make The Matrix 1 look like amateur hour. They're mind boggling".

Hulme also got goose bumps when he saw the first film playing in the "Virgin Megastore" in San Francisco. "I felt like turning around to everybody in the store: 'Listen listen, I'm in the new Matrix films, they're going to be great!'"

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KEANU WANTS TO END BAD LUCK >Source: <IMDB>

Hollywood hunk Keanu Reeves has placed his faith in ancient Buddhist practices in a desperate bid to end his bad luck.

Keanu has been cursed with misfortune for the past year - his sister was diagnosed with leukemia, he had a near-fatal motorbike accident, his ex-girlfriend Jennifer Syme was killed in a car crash and then his Matrix Reloaded co-star Aaliyah died in a plane crash. But Keanu is determined to fight back - and he's placed his hope with the Buddhist faith he first encountered on the set of 1993's Little Buddha.

A worker on the Matrix sequel's set reveals that Keanu and his co-stars chant prayers and throw lit rice paper into a "make-shift pyre". American Buddhist guru Reverend Kusala says, "By chanting to ward off evil spirits, Keanu is ensuring the studio is blessed with good karma. It could actually be taking it further, and asking that the movie pass good karma around the world every time it's watched."

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AUSTRALIAN SHOOTING STARTED >Source: <13th Street>

The Aussie portion of Reloaded started filming on September 24, a little over one week ago. The first scenes the Wachowski brothers shot were in Fox's Sydney studios stage 3. The set consists of an underground subway set that's meant to exist within the world of the Matrix. Jada Pinkett-Smith, the actress who plays the new character of Niobe, was around for this scene. She plays the love interest of Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) in the movie.

Also of news: there's been a bit of new casting to report. It seems Australian singer named Christine Anu has been cast in a smaller role for Reloaded. Anu performed at the Sydney 2000 Olympics last summer.