The_Matrix

October 13, 2010 • The Matrix has had a strong effect on action film-making in Hollywood. It set a new standard for cinematic fight scenes. • Following The Matrix, films made abundant use of slow-motion, spinning cameras, and, often, the bullet time effect of a character freezing or slowing down and the camera dollying around them. The ability to slow down time enough to distinguish the motion of bullets was used as a central game play mechanic of several video games, including Max Payne, in which the feature was explicitly referred to as "bullet time" (although the game went into production before the film was released). • The Matrix became the first DVD to sell more than three million copies in the US. • The Matrix makes numerous references to recent films and literature, and to historical myths and philosophy. These include Advaita/Hinduism,Messianism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Christianity, Existentialism, Nihilism, and occult tarot. The film's premise resembles Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Calderon de la Barca's Life is a Dream, Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland, René Descartes's evil genius, Georges Gurdjieff's The Sleeping Man[18],Kant's reflections on the Phenomenon versus the Ding an sich, and the brain in a vat thought experiment. • The Matrix - Interpretations of The Matrix often reference Baudrillard's philosophy to demonstrate that the movie is an allegory for contemporary experience in a heavily commercialized, media-driven society, especially of the developed countries. • The Matrix - Actor Will Smith turned down the role of Neo to make Wild Wild West, due to skepticism over the film's ambitious bullet time special effects. He later stated that he was "not mature enough as an actor" at that time, and that if given the role, he "would have messed it up". • The Matrix was a co-production of Warner Bros. and Australian Village Roadshow Pictures, and all but a few scenes were filmed at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia, and in the city itself. • The Matrix The rooftop set that Trinity uses to escape from Agent Jones early in the film was leftover from the production of Dark City, which has been remarked upon due to the thematic similarities of the films. • Deep Impact - Jenny Lerner, the character played by Tea Leoni, was originally intended to work for CNN. CNN rejected this because it would be "inappropriate". MSNBC agreed to be featured in the movie instead, seeing it as a way to gain exposure for the newly created network • Deep Impact - Domestically, it became the highest grossing film directed by a woman and held that record for a decade until Twilight claimed the record in 2008