I’ve just fin­ished watch­ing Koy­aan­isqatsi by God­frey Reg­gio. It is still bril­liant. It has been quite a few years since I last saw it and it hasn’t lost any of its impact. It is a fant­astic meld of imagery and music. There was also a great inter­view with Reg­gio and Philip Glass on the DVD that I’d not seen before.
Thanks to Ali for lend­ing me his DVD. I would like my own copy, in fact with my birth­day com­ing soon, I’ve added it to my Amazon wish­list. Hint hint!

I hadn’t real­ised that Naqoyqatsi by God­frey Reg­gio had been made and released last year! I must get to see it as soon as I can. I loved the other two films in the Qatsi tri­logy. In fact I brought the soundtrack CD to both Koy­an­nisqatsi and Powaqqatsi home with me to listen to this weekend.

Story from slash­dot

“IGN.com is report­ing that Warner Bros. is releas­ing a 2-disc spe­cial edi­tion DVD of The Mat­rix (loaded with extras) on April 29^th and The Animat­rix (An Anime series set in the world of the Mat­rix) DVD on June 3^rd.”

Unfor­tu­nat­ley, the IGN site is slash­dot­ted (unavail­able because of massive num­bers of slash­dot read­ers). One slash­dot­ter man­aged to snaffle the text from the story:

Warner Home Video will be repack­aging The Mat­rix as a 2-disc set. The new edi­tion will essen­tially con­tain the cur­rent film and The Mat­rix Revis­ited discs. Revis­ited will be pad­ded out with new pro­mo­tional fea­tures like “Pre­load: On the Set of Reloaded,” epis­odes 1&2 of The Animat­rix: The Second Renais­sance, a pre­view of The Animat­rix, “What Is the Game?” trailer for the new Infograme “Enter The Mat­rix” video­game , a sample of music from Reloaded, and a Mar­ilyn Man­son “Rock Is Dead” music video. The set will also include a free ticket offer to The Mat­rix Reloaded. The Mat­rix: Spe­cial Edi­tion is due on April 29 and will retail $27.95. Oh, and the pack­aging will be “foil-wrapped” (insert eye-rolling).

Speak­ing of The Animat­rix, this more ambi­tious pro­ject will be released on June 3^rd. This disc will include nine short films con­ceived by the Wachow­ski broth­ers, delving into the world of the Mat­rix and its char­ac­ters. The col­lec­tion of shorts, ran­ging from tra­di­tional anime to full-blown CGI, will come from world-renowned anime dir­ect­ors Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Koji Mor­imoto, Mahiro Maeda, Take­shi Koike, Peter Chung and Andy Jones.” Epis­ode include “The Final Flight of the Osiris,” “The Second Renais­sance Parts 1 & 2,” “Kid’s Story,” “Pro­gram,” “World Record,” “Bey­ond,” “Detect­ive Story,” and “Matric­u­lated.” The Animat­rix will retail $24.98. As for the two actual sequels, the Reloaded and Revolu­tions DVDs are already in pro­duc­tion and are being prom­ised as “break­through discs”.

I may have to buy this one; I’ve held off buy­ing the DVD since I already have the VHS video, but this may be too tempt­ing.

I’ve just fin­ished watch­ing Minor­ity Report. What a great movie! I really enjoyed it. I liked pretty much everything about this movie. There wasn’t any­thing I could really com­plain about. Thanks to Andy Don for lend­ing me the DVD.
One thing though, here in the UK, the DVD was rated ‘12’ mean­ing not suit­able for chil­dren under 12. Or rather, as this BBFC rat­ing is restrict­ive, no-one under the age of 12 is allowed to see it. I per­son­ally would not allow a twelve year old to see this movie. I think the murders in it are too graphic (though they are not glor­i­fied) for that age group. I’ll leave the rest of my thoughts on this sub­ject to a later rant.

I watched Evol­u­tion tonight. Yeah I know it’s a bit late! I quite enjoyed it. I didn’t know it was a com­edy (Duh!), so it was quite a sur­prise. Recommended.

E! Online have this story sug­gest­ing that Michael Gam­bon my be the new Dumble­dore in the Harry Pot­ter movies after Richard Har­ris’ death last year.

Woo hoo! I just saw the Lord Of The Rings : The Two Towers today. It is abso­lutely bril­liant! It’s as good, if not bet­ter, than the first. There are a lot more battle scenes in it for you action fans. But the best for me was Gol­lum. The effects were fant­astic. As a main char­ac­ter for quite a few scenes through­out the film, you don’t even notice the CGI work. I’m not sure whether Andy Ser­kis just did the voice or acted as Gol­lum in some scenes, but I was totally impressed.
I thought the Ents were too thin, but oth­er­wise excel­lent, their slow delib­er­ate ways were under­stand­ably glossed over in the film, in fact quite a sec­tion of the book con­cern­ing the Ents was miss­ing.
The story about Eowyn of Rohan (played by Mir­anda Otto) was almost com­pletely miss­ing too.

All in all this is a must see film. Recommended!

Actor Richard Har­ris has died from Hodgkin’s dis­ease. He most recently played Pro­fessor Albus Dumble­dore in the first and second Harry Pot­ter films. But also played lead­ing roles in dozens of other great films.

The BBC has the story.