Peter's new project. I'm trying to get a handle on how this project will play out. The article says its probable to be about the war between humanity and the artificial intelligence that led to the future seen in the Matrix. Peter said its a DVD with several animators doing segments. I'm wondering how this can be strung together. Or will it? Anyhow, I am getting a 'Liquid Television' impression of this but that could be for my lack of imagination. Anyone ?

-- Barb e. (Suesuebeo9@cs.com), October 30, 2001

Answers

Square Pictures mystery project revealed [12.14.01] » Studio's last hurrah closely tied to upcoming Matrix sequel. As previously reported, Square Pictures is currently involved in at least one more project before the studio is sold due to movie losses. The project is a ten-minute long prequel to the upcoming Matrix sequel, The Matrix Reloaded. This currently untitled CG short will employ techniques perfected by Square Pictures during the creation of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Shots and conception artwork for the project can be found on the recently released Matrix Revisited DVD, which lists the short as part of "Animatrix," a compilation of short sequences produced by popular anime artists. No release date has been mentioned.

Thanks to numerous readers for the heads-up.

-- Barb e. (Suesuesbeo9@cs.com), January 06, 2002.

For some reason, I'm thinking "Heavy Metal" here.

-- Inukko (nadisrec@worldnet.att.net), October 30, 2001.

Yeah "Heavy Metal", the original. Also maybe a little Robot Carnival. After all, this is one of your typical man vs. machine stories. By the way, if anyone knows where I can get a region 1 DVD of Robot Carnival please tell me.

-- Logo (vosepherus@aol.com), October 31, 2001.

Hey, you know - the whole fucked-up thing about The Matrix is that it the movie is itself but a prime example, cultural exponent of the hyperreal, simulationist or "Room 101" out of which we've no escape at the end of the adventure (save that of escapism as end unto itself)...you go see that movie now you're back in the room where you fill out the tax forms now just like any other year, you know you do this every year but, no shit, there's some strange, peripheral pinching nattering about at my sensoria - something nauseous, ill-fitted, out-of-true....is it my memory of same - its familiarity a product of its own natural accompaniment part and parcal altogether with the familiar draining, enervating drear whose lull tardies the draw of the next nigh-palsied inhalation to return over and overdue...? is it rather in fact ITS OWN REGISTERED, SIGNATURE aftertaste! WHEN WE'RE THE UNABOMBER gunning from the hip all the way from Columbine, swath of jetblack trenchware sweeping away your surprise YES RUNNING MAD THROUGH THE LOBBY FLOOR OF THE BIG, VAULTED DOWNTOWN BLDG., NO, this is NO MADE FOR TV MOVIE THIS is MY LIFE! SEEEE???? I'M not made-for-tv; I'm inta experumentul alturnutiv folms hey y'evuh see The Matrix? The life of my whole story...

sorry... I hope that made sense (a little bit oblique, again....)

I mean, Keanu (obviously) certainly can never hope to just wake up in the middle of the Matrix movie, now can he and walk off the studio lot in the middle of the next scene, and that be the end of his psychotomimetic co-option by the Sinister Forces That Be Who lurk under the Subtext slithering thither in yon smarm or circumstance etcetera ad absurdum...and therefore neither can we/audience. As it (the movie) were altohether at once the looming contraption of our own fresh, grudging conceit en masse - what we have authored for ourselves as preview-prolog not as movie some other guy made that he thought would sell - now at once contiguity becomes a cosmic reversion where principles of first cause-subsequent effect are rendered anti/synthetically, at abstract and arbitrary service of our narrative retracings against the machine-language PCB template which must know its purpose as its own and as new or unique and not of the stuff of some base, deterministic zero-sum/bottomless- line assembly stochasticine regime, the mere excrescences of some superform project of hyperarticulated function or owned or controlled by remote and address code transmissions correct to the last penal code -

-- dangerboy (artian@earthlink.net), November 02, 2001.

Foreign hard to understand guy-talk.

-- Barb e. (Suesuebeo9@cs.com), November 02, 2001.

Personally, I think The Matrix taps into our deep-seated need to see helicopters crash into buildings.

http://isometric.spaceninja.com/_/matrox/

-- Inukko (nadisrec@worldnet.att.net), November 02, 2001.

I'm a guy and I don't know what the hell this dude is talking about. We in "the Purge" thread think that he is on crack...or possibly mescaline.

-- Logo (vosepherus@aol.com), November 02, 2001.

I'd recognize that ranting style anywhere. Introductions are in order. Friends, the scribe of many of the most memorable lines of dialogue that have been discussed on this very forum has graced us with his visit. Mark Mars. I encourage everyone to ask him lots of questions.

But I'm puzzled by one thing. Filling out tax forms every year? Since when, Mars?

-- Peter Chung (neo830holy@orgio.net), November 03, 2001.

Mark Mars! I have been made stranger. It has been elevating to have been confused by you. But wait! How can you complain "we've no escape from the end of the adventure in the Matrix" after seeing this group of shipwrecked escapists here? We who are still time-locked in those Flux scripts you wrote; Thanatophobia, Utopia/Deuteranopia and Last time for Everything. For us there has been no escape. As you say, you were not made for t.v. (as evidenced by the small but boggled minds over at MTV). However, we need more 'experumentul alturnatuv folms'! We miss your work. For my question: Were you really the voice of Sinnah, one of the three thug-like helpers of Trevor?

-- Barb e. (Suesuebeo9@cs.com), November 03, 2001.

Well, since you are Mark Mars (albeit a very strange incarnation) I'll ask you this: did you, as a writer for an animated series, have to deal with timing/dubbing problems? I've always been curious as to whether the page-per-minute ratio holds up in animation. And something a little less technical: were you the sole writer on Thanatophobia?

-- Inukko (nadisrec@worldnet.att.net), November 05, 2001.

This guy wrote Flux episodes!? How did that show ever get off the ground?

-- Logo (vosepherus@aol.com), November 05, 2001.

holy shit - I meam, sheep, I mean you mean - WHY ID DERE NO AIR IN HERE where is bsp? where is boooboo! I goddagoholdit

-- dangerboy (artian@earthlink.net), November 07, 2001.

Um, hi again. This is Mark Mars (no relation...). Finally I get a moment's respite to spirit off some overdue responses to some questions here. I apologize for taking so long to get back to this. The interest of other individuals in the possibility that we were trying to do something deliberately to force the issue of TV's inertia and passivity as a medium, to create or to design a product that would appeal to the engaged imagination to the exclusion of, therefore, the traditional inert/passive/critically- indifferent viewer or audience in this outrageous production, this is by no means lost on me and I want you to know that I am flattered to have been invited on board to intervolve in this project of Aeon Flux, and am appreciative of the quality of mind and level of sophistication and intuitive turn of poetic instinct therefore immediately evident in (and by way too then of evidence as such to our success) your present chains of correspondences in this BBS.

If this was some bullshit shmutz-ass chickenshit BBS without anything going on in here but what amounted to a self-driven market research vehicle for MTV to skimp on budgeting product focus group research of their own (just glean from a webpage like this what were useful to extrapolate into a bunch of bottom-line sales as projected some next quarter - thanx fans now will that probably be Jolt or SoBe's? Shit that's right the %*@)ing Creative for this one has skewed our profiles by having inadvertantly hyped that soda in some interview in WIRED but that was last year so who cares - CAN WE GET THESE PEOPLE TO BE MORE YOU KNOW CAREFUL WITH ANY FRIGGIN BRAND NAMES AROUND HEEEERE PLEEEEEASE??? YOU KNOW HWHO YOU ARE PEOPLE OKAAAAAY??? - ) it would not be the immediately apparent evidencing of what I am pleased to discover an appropriately and formidably intelligent, incendiary, disturbing, intrepid, abysmal and turgid or now halcyon and animated quasi-aviary of tangential freestyle and "Great Conversation. Certainly not inane or hydrocephalitic or even sophistried, I'm simply very proud that the grade of dicourse - even the idle chatter or rattled diatribe - reflects the stuff I at one time only dreamed of ever seriously engaging on so stratospheric a critical level.

"We miss your work." THANK YOU SO FUCKING MUCH BARB E. I'm really pleased to sound out so delightful a missive from someone whose correspondence in particular I've noticed is so sweepingly, disarmingly and subversively blythe though soundly grounded in a stable good humor, agile and at ease.

I mean, if you guys had turned out to be a whole real wacky, screwball, quirky, loony gaggle o' goof-offs, who, ya know just mebbe like to get a little off the beaten path with their own zany, far-out and, ya know? Eclectic choice of pop entertainment or TV-watching fare I'd just look like a piece of human dog shit I mean, motherfuckers, you guy s are pretty friggin' good. I knew some day I'd wind up in a kick-ass, superstellaroverdrive chatroom like this if I were patient...

Oh...The Voice of Sinnah. Yes, that's one of my little cameo's. (Peter was recklessly indulgent of me while we were at it I owe that rock'nroll God like some serious cosmic payback one of these days like say I win the lotto $$-millions m-hmm fork it the fuck right over then, buddy who loves ya Mars...freakshow loon from hell God the clothes if you saw that fool walk across the street one time in broad daylight around here, baby what a certified Heat-magnet yer regular all-points-bulletin race-riot replete with a friggin' earring no I shit you notlet's get the video ready or something you know what I'm sayin'? No. No, I mean, totally out of control, it's patently ridiculous, utterly unregulated somebody better keep that one way out of the viewfinder or I'm just gonna shit. Just fuck it get the gun GET THE GUN )

RE: Inukko - Timing/Dubbing problems...? Do you know, I wasn't engaged at so severely technical a level or degree of involvement in production that these concerns (I presume you refer to other-languages dub-versions for overseas audiences) ever scored any trace of particular notice that I recall. If, however, you mean just the collation of recorded dialog, sound-FX, soundtrack audio elements as are tediously edited, compiled, sweetened, polished and finally mastered, I can tell you the studio facilitation we had for our effort wasjustso no-hassle/ no-swamp/ just top shelf friggin' Fortune 500 quintuple- platinum totally bitchin', man i'd just see how that Mac monitor display just had all of it sewn perfectly together it just looked like some dort of cruel practical joke unless this soundstudio they making like they got up and running here is the total smooth-operator deal! Now if only fucking Drew would avail me a practicable modicum of common reghard here behind the board I'll never just lose that tinge of loser riffraff shitheel punk street aspect now will I? Shiiiiit.

RE: THANATOPHOBIA, Peter and I regarded as "a true collaboration" between the two of us, and I'm well aware of the immediate, full-on register of bang-zoom CACHET...GRAVITAS... IMMANENCE which therewith was branded to my jacket.

A LAST TIME FOR EVERYTHING and UTOPIA OR DEUTERONOPIA were the only other of the season's series I was availed other writing or editorial credit. I believe a grand total of eight out of the ten scripts (including, of course the three aforementiones) saw my professional attentions. I also am in fact the author of the series-season's opening titles. For some strange reason, I really kicked some hard-time butt for the duration of our three-odd-year streak together on that whole fabulous dizzied halcyon skyride.

A whole fuckload gang of full-on bitchslappied, DefCon-5/0'd absolutely unbelievable kick-ass toocool for god fly shit was also simultaneously slated for spinoff-product development and duly negotiated through production/post all the way to the threshold of commercial deployment/distribution (along with whatever attendant publicity ad-productions might be imagined approriate and these secondary, broadly-scoped and intelligible subproductions also commanded their own dedicated studio time/production sechedules as a result). But almost none of this stuff ever made it anywhere out of development. I apologize for not immediately going into detail; it'sa whole blitzkrieg grip of trip-like-your-mother-when-the-Rapture-hi-ass juju shit! I think Ieven got all of it, too. I'm of course available for any correspondence, person to person or otherwise, in regards to all or anty of the above or other.

I thank you all again; it's a splendid delight and a pleasure to be introduced to this excellent forum. Thank you Peter, too, for the thoughtful announcement you saw to post.

10/4 MM

-- dangerboy (artian@earthlink.net), November 09, 2001.

"Thank you so fucking much Barb e"...how I will treasure those words:) (..) It really did make my heart soar to read you, Mark Mars paint a portrait of ME in such sweet style. I gathered a few friends to actually come and read it and was duly patted on the back for that glory (knowing what it means to me of course). Life is good. It breaks my heart to read of the 'spin off' workups. Where are they? MTV vaults no doubt rusting along with the rest of the good ideas they shelve in passive aggressive m.t.vland's backroom of ideas too good to be used at all. But we do love your song...'Dangerboy'.

-- Barb e. (Suesuebeo9@cs.com), November 09, 2001.

Saw the Matrix last night, still very good and very Aeonesque. Wanting to see 'animatrix' with real delight at the thought of more work from Peter Chung, and his other project is always playing on my mind. The one we don't ask about or talk about. That one.

-- Barb e. (Suesuebeo9@cs.com), December 09, 2001.

It seems that Square Pictures is going to be making one of the shorts for the Animatrix movie.

http://www.thegia.com/news/0112/n14a.html

-- Logo (Vosepherus@aol.com), December 14, 2001.