[ DRAWN & QUARTERED ]
Graphic Arts As Literature
Nine very different animators tell individual short stories of life in the Matrix world, in "The Animatrix," which will be released on DVD in June.
It'd be a hoot to say that Andy and Larry Wachowski probably have no idea what they hath wrought, but I suspect they're on top of their game here. The elaborate, utterly mind-bending scope of their "Matrix" films, both past and yet to come, offers not only impossibly rich storytelling possibilities, but imposes a jouncing elastic structure that, curiously, also frees traditional narrative possibilities. Colossal ‘Matrix’ unhinges
norms for storytellingBy Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.comThe heat caused by the bipolar pull of inner and outer realities had particular resonance in the latter half of the 20th century, as storytellers turned away from God and Fate as drama reagents and toward entropy, chaos theory and Freud's niggling suspicions about our inner selves. It also fed on nightmare suspicions of technology and biology becoming intertwined, which is a peculiarly modern terror.
The first "Matrix" film hit like lightning on a black night -- in the flare and ozone-crackle, possibilities were glimpsed, revealed in the darkness, and stayed like afterimages light-tattooed on the retina.
Way cool! "Matrix" has the potential to be the next big three-ring circus of the mind; the other, inner country of popular culture's Zeitgeist, where the tides of society play out -- like the "Star Trek" universe, or the Middle Earth of "The Lord of the Rings," it's the place we go to put the real world in perspective.
"The Matrix: Reloaded" opens next month, and "The Matrix: Revolutions" comes out at the end of the year. But in between is potentially the most interesting variant of all, called "The Animatrix." Basically, the Wachowskis wrote miniscripts, like short stories, of life in the Matrix world and gave them to nine different -- very different -- animators to make them bloom. These grown-up animations or "animes" will be collected together on a DVD release in June. Some will be viewable in theaters (one has already showed as a prelude to "Dreamcatcher"), and others can be downloaded online (theanimatrix.com) in low-resolution format. The DVD release, however, will include plenty of extras, and the highly interactive DVD controls available, plus the high resolution, make this format ideal.
Nine very different animators tell individual short stories of life in the Matrix world, in "The Animatrix," which will be released on DVD in June.
"The Animatrix" shorts, directed by American, Japanese and Korean animators, include work by Square, the formerly Honolulu-based animation company whose "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" feature film was a grand, glorious, spooky, impenetrable vision that died at the box office.
The directors include Mahiro Maeda, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Shinichiro Watanabe, Takeshi Koike, Koji Morimoto, Peter Chung, Shinichiro Watanabe and Andy Jones.
The DVD will retail for $24.95 and include a techno soundtrack featuring Juno Reactor, Death in Vegas, DJ Shadow and others. Special features, so far, include:
Nine very different animators tell individual short stories of life in the Matrix world, in "The Animatrix," which will be released on DVD in June.
>> Scrolls to Screen -- The History and Culture of Anime.
>> Seven "making-of" featurettes, including director profiles, interviews and behind-the-scenes looks at each short.
>> Four audio commentaries, with Japanese audio and English subtitles.
>> An Enter the Matrix trailer about the video game, with interviews from film stars Jada Pinkett Smith and Carrie-Anne Moss.
So, heads up! It just might become the best-selling DVD of the year, and do so in bullet time.
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