The Matrix [1999)

I tried to make her understand.

I tried to tell her what she needed to hear.

I am still waiting.

Waiting for a sea change.

Assange is the superstar hacker.

Mendax.

QAnon lifted “follow the white rabbit” from this film.

Unless this film and the QAnon op stem from the same source.

Smith of 1984.

Turned.

Red-pill me on Tylenol.

LSD implications of Alice.

Mirror from Cocteau.

Keanu Reeves dips his fingers into Orphée (1950).

The Wachowski brothers have both now become trans women.

How fitting.

They are both (incidentally) married to women (Karin and Alisa).

From Walter Carlos to Wendy Carlos.

In which Neo wakes up in the “warm liquid goo” phase.

Brave New Fahrenheit 1984.

Baby farms of dystopia.

Elon Musk has been worried about the very premise of The Matrix.

Worried that his buddies at Google are creating for us the very hell foretold in this movie.

Really.

AI.

Pacified with free porn.

Zion of Joel Silver (producer).

With the “desert of the real”, we get Slavoj Žižek a few years later.

And one of my favorites:  Baudrillard.

Or vice versa.

Oracle like Oprah.

With cookies and everything.

Great acting by Gloria Foster who died in September 2001.

After 9/11.

And this film predates flying machines being swallowed by skyscrapers.

And mass shootings.

Indeed, Columbine kicked off a new era…a mere three weeks after The Matrix was released.

Hmmm…

Many kung fu rips.

It would be four more years before Tarantino began ripping kung fu with the first Kill Bill.

So The Matrix was first here.

A new Star Wars.

Luke Skywalker of Neo.

And the Holocaust chic costumes.

Schindler’s List set this up six years previous in 1993.

Kiss of life.

Great romance.

Sparks.

Channeling Bruce Lee the whole way through.

Great drum and bass tracks.

Cool soundtrack.

I can imagine Thom Yorke really getting into this shit.

The next Radiohead album after this film was the start of a new bleep bloop era.

Kid A.

And Carrie-Anne Moss is really pretty.

Good movie!

 

-PD

Stromboli, terra di Dio [1950)

Trying to get over that mountain.

A volcano.

Stumble, fall.

Not meant to be.

In this place.

A sadness of place.

But I’m just a simple fisherman now.

Pulling in tunas.

Folkways.

She’s had it.

Ingrid in her plain pattern dress.

The wind never stops messing with her hair.

And it’s painful just to look around.

Out to sea.

Mario Vitale.  Takes a simple job.

But the town surveils.

So that the empty winds blow like in LAvventura.

On an island.

Ingrid from Sweden playing Karin from Lithuania.

Argentina does not accept her.

And so she marries.

The best option of no options.

But she has her spirit broken.

By tradition.

By dumb muscle.

She’s a little flower crushed by the rock.

But it’s true.

She’s a mean melancholic.  A flailing tuna with one last whip of the tail.

Hoping to return to the ocean.

And she is pricked on all sides.

Hoisted.

And piled with the other creatures lengthwise.

My heart breaks for Ingrid.

Because of Roberto Rossellini.

A new style of filmmaking here.

Similar to his other film of 1950:  Francesco, giullare di Dio.

The flowers of introspection.

Existentialism.

Italy.

And now in Ginostra you might find Jacopo Fedi catching octopi or Marco Nicolosi relaxing.

In real life (away from celebrities), it is hard to make friends.

What Žižek might call “the desert of the real”.

Some turnovers you can eat, others you just have to live with.

 

-PD