casey_choas66

Holy crap, what is this? I checked out the first episode of this show after seeing some people posting about it on Facebook. It's the pilot episode for comedy set in Toronto. Let me start off by saying, seeing my hometown on screen is one of my favourite things and this show starts with an awesome montage of a morning commute through the city. I have no idea how they shot this, but it's a pretty sick opener.

The show is about three people who get hired to be Recruiters. I've gotten calls from Recruiters before, but have to be honest, have never had any idea about what they do. From the look of it, their work is pretty crazy.

The show kind of reminds me of what would happen if David Fincher made an episode of The Office and had swearing. It's really funny but dark too. I really like the look they were going for.

The show isn't all comedy. It actually gets kind of serious towards the end when the hero Alex needs to make a decision that, not going to lie, had me pretty engaged for a minute. There's an awesome scene in a bathroom with the villain that I won't give away, and an awesome shot in a hallway. It's pretty impressive when you consider it sounds like these guys didn't have much money.

My favourite characters are the office jerk who doesn't like any of the new people (his scene in the bathroom is my favourite) and the stoner roommate who comes looking for money. I've lived with dudes like that. He's only in one scene, but it's pretty spot on and legit hilarious. I don't miss living with that dude. The office idiot (I think his name was Simon), had a lot of funny parts too. I may as well mention the sassy HR guy as well. Another one scene character, but really funny.

There are two female main characters too. A good one and a not as good one. The good one is kind of boring but she hints at things that could make her interesting. The bad one (who puts the idea in Alex's head about what to do to the office jerk) is really funny. I dated a girl like her once. It didn't last very long.

I'll be honest, I didn't go into this with much expectation. A Canadian TV pilot made with no money doesn't sound very good, but I was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed myself. I think they should try harder to focus more on the Recruitment stuff (I still have no idea what they do), but there are a lot of interesting characters and I'm excited to see where they will go next.

Can't wait for another episode. The web site says they are working on the next one, but doesn't really say when it's coming out. Hopefully soon. I'd recommend anyone who likes comedies or is from Toronto to check this out.

Deep down I know that the Matrix Revolutions is a good movie because it excites me to think about it. Ironic maybe because the more I think about it the more I like it. It hits us with ideas that the end is near because everything that begins must end, but in some ways it seems to breathe more life in its paradoxical conclusions than the first movie did with its cultural references. But it is not the best film in the trilogy because even though there is artistic poetry in the final showdown between Neo and Agent Smith, the Matrix Revolutions seems to forget its mass audience. At some point we see a transition from the self-professed philosophy of Reloaded, spawned from real philosophies and other cultural impacts, into a method in believing that we must fight for the end with our honour, our valour, and our pride. But the Wachowski Brothers get away with it because they have so much already invested in these characters that they were bound to succeed.

Yet the Matrix Revolutions is not simply a nice looking action picture. It focuses its story more on human connections in comparison to machines as Neo awakens in a place somewhere between the real world and the Matrix. After being saved by his comrades he talks to the Oracle who speaks prophecies that could be expected from a psychic at a Star Trek convention.

This lends Neo with the impression that he must venture to the machine world on his own because there he will find what the fate of human kind depends on. Far and wide between these ideas lies an immensely long action sequence with minimal cuts in relentlessness and no interwoven notions of Neo's state. But it still answered some of my questions. And even when it felt the need to sway from an explanation I didn't mind because the new questions left in the open were just as fascinating as the answers to the old ones. Then ending on a note of such curiosity that if a fourth film were made I would not watch it because coincidence does not merit an explanation.

This is a film that hinted at ideas, more fully explored in graphic detail in Darren Aronofsky's cult masterpiece Pi. In Pi, conscious decisions were made with prime material that this film didn't have room for due to mentioned action sequence of epic proportion. The hint in Revolutions that coincides with Pi is in that every human action is based on a code and that we need machines to be the mathematicians that our minds can't allow us to be. That film was kind of an elaborate set up for a look into a man's limit to his own sanity. This one speaks in tongues that show the better part of a grade eleven math course finally doing itself some good. The belief stems to say that every equation has equal opposition between worlds. In a mathematical sense, the figures that exist on both sides of the equal sign (parallel worlds) are, in turn, the same information, only presented in different forms. For example the number three could be opposed as being six divided by two in another universe making it the same power in a different identity. That's where the Matrix comes in. It was a system designed to balance the equations. The Architect, we learned in Reloaded, was a mathematician, who, in creating this vast program could balance the equations and hold the power of humanity in his hands, because those who hold the answer hold the understanding. In this film we find his equal opposition. That one whose attempts to unbalance the equations effect a chain reaction of unbalance between bi-polar opposites Neo and Smith. In Reloaded we were thrown a bunch of psychobabble about how Neo and Smith were one in the same. This is true in Revolutions as we find the only way to balance an equation is to make both sides of equal proportion, leading up to that final battle sequence, which may make sense of, or complicate matters even worse. That's what I would have liked to see more of in Revolutions. Although, it is a smarter film than critics are giving it credit for. And it doesn't surprise me. When something is given such mass appeal it is easy to become immobile to hate for no better reason than to be the one saying something different. Unlike the first two films, with Revolutions it comes down to a war between parallels that are acted out instead of further exploring reasons. I was looking for more curiosity in the methods behind the action, but such is not the case. All ideas seemed second to the endless shooting inside the Bay of Zion. But to a certain advantage point I was still content that this was a good film because we are receiving no more than what was avoided but pushed toward during Reloaded; a special effects extravaganza.

And an extravaganza it was. The person next to me in the theatre could only utter two words as the Sentinels swarmed into Zion, the first being `holy...' With that, there is no doubt in my mind that it will be years before the effects in this film will even be comprehensible to all the other special effects driven films to follow. I know that I have neglected to examine much of the story and characters of Revolutions but in all honesty it would be impossible to have someone follow anything that happens in this film without prior knowledge to the first two. I think of this as more a theoretical analysis rather than an opinionated view, because there is much more to be explained and discovered in the questions I was left with than in the actual technique of the filmmaking.

I'm reluctant to say that Revolutions is the worst film in the trilogy, simply because it was more entertainment than thought. But I still have my impressions that this series is not the culture-shock phenomenon that many claimed it to be. During the bonus features of the DVD for Reloaded I heard someone say in an interview that this could be the most complex movie ever made. I highly doubt that, but it could very well be the smartest and nicest looking action movie of its time.