Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Blu-Ray/Movie Collection Review: The Ultimate Matrix Collection

 


This is a six-disc box set with the original Matrix trilogy (1999's The Matrix and 2003's The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions). It also includes the set of animated shorts, The Animatrix, which fleshed out the content in the movies). The movies starred Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, and Hugo Weaving and included a strong supporting cast including Harry Lennix, Gloria Foster, Lambert Wilson, Monica Bellucci, and Joe Pantoliano, to name just a few. 

The Matrix franchise has been around long enough now that pretty much everyone knows the story. In a war between humans and machines, humans lost and were used as batteries to power the machines. A few formed a resistance and continued the war in an almost covert fashion (or so we are led to think).
The first movie was truly groundbreaking, both in the story (let's face it, it was one of the few original movies of its time that was not a reboot or sequel) and in terms of special effects. The whole "bullet time" concept that they used to give characters powers in The Matrix was like nothing that we had seen up to that point. Yes, CGI and digital effects have evolved in a huge way since then, but the original film was really the bridge between what was being done in films like Blade to what you got in the Harry Potter films, the Lord of the Rings movies, and almost every sci-fi/fantasy movie out now.

Most of the criticism of the movies themselves tends to center around the continuation of the story in Reloaded and Revolutions. Although given that the anticipation for the Matrix sequels rivaled that for the Star Wars Prequels (which also came out at the same time) given the popularity of the original film, I honestly don't know what story they could have told that would satisfy everybody. In some ways I do think the filmmakers had the Lucas complex of falling too much in love with the CGI, especially since at that point they did not have the technology to make the digital characters look as real as Gollum in LOTR, so during the burly brawl in Reloaded when they switch from the actors to all digital it looks like a video game. I personally however think the story continuation that was done in the 2nd and 3rd films is better upon repeated viewings than when I originally saw them in the theater.

What makes the set shine however is the tons of bonus material. For each 2 hr movie, you get anywhere from 3-4 hrs of bonus content per disc. There are multiple commentaries on each movie and several making-of and behind-the-scenes features for each movie. The extras include a lot of explanation of the digital effects and why the filmmakers and crew did things the way they did and a great look at the stunts and the training that all the actors did to do as much of the fight sequences and wire work as they could. Say what you want about Keanu Reeves's acting ability, but he busted his ass when it came to training to do the fight sequences which were of course the staple of his character.

Aside from the bonus material on each movie disc, you get all the Animatrix features that fleshed out the story (both before the original movie showing how the war started) and in between the films where we got bits and pieces of information but not the entire story. Plus you get a bunch of bonus material on how the animatrix stories were made. Finally, there are 2 discs that revolve more around the story itself, how the filmmakers came up with the story, and some of the early concept art, as well as the featurettes from the video game. So if you are one who loves going through the bonus material on the discs then you will be extremely happy with all you get, because you can spend hours upon hours with all that is there.

The A/V quality of the movies on blu ray is very good. There are some limitations because of the fact that the movies are older now (with the first movie being about 15 years old), but they are better on blu-ray than the original DVD releases. I would say that this set really is for hardcore fans of the series overall. If you hated the second and third movies as some do, then you are far better off getting the stand-alone Matrix blu ray and being done with that. Because that is only a small part of what you will get in this set. If you like the other movies but do not really care about going through all the bonus material then you probably just want to stick with the movie trilogy. But if you want to get the entire experience, then you cannot go wrong with what is here.

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