Watching The Matrix

When the country all had to convert to digital broadcast, my house didn’t. We only used the tv portion of the tv to watch storms roll in on the weather radar in the summer. So, instead of upgrading the tv we invested in better surge protectors and a UPS for the computers. Now, during bad weather, we can watch the radar on the computers. And we don’t have any broadcast.

I don’t miss it.

I mean, I kind of miss it right this moment, because Dan Faust has been twittering about watching Leverage. But I’ll watch the episode tomorrow evening on my computer. I never watched tv shows when they aired anyway — I have kids, I always watched broadcast shows on dvd, on pirated download, or now I watch on legal streaming sites. I never had cable or satellite, I never had Tivo or any or recording.

I’m watching, right now, The Matrix. Re-watching, obviously. I’ve seen it a ton of times before. But Heroine Content just had a series of posts about the franchise, in honor of the tenth anniversary. Wow. Ten years. Yeesh.

I loved this first movie. I liked the second two, differently. I never cared much about the whole “is anything really real” idea of the story — the Brain in a Jar philosophical conundrum doesn’t grab me. I answer with a shrug — I think I act how I act, and I find out later what was real, or I never do. I can’t control it so it doesn’t bother me. But I loved the characters. Loved them. I loved the City underground, I loved the way the fighters made their avatars look in the matrix, I loved the chutzpah of geeks fighting to save the world. I loved the design of the movie, the contrasts between the matrix and reality. I loved the sheer generic-ness of the matrix urban environment, all cities and none. I loved the color palette and I loved with a burning love the soundtrack.

Forty minutes in, I still like this movie. I can still quote the lines. And I still cackle with glee and delight at the effects.

July miscellane

1. Today is Wednesday, so new comics ahoy!

2. K lost a tooth, so both kids are down one tooth. Yay for them.

3. I just read a bunch of reviews and commentary regarding Detective Comics, Kate Kane, and Renee Montoya. All of which made me a wee bit irked. The hypothesis of these remarks seemed to be that Batwoman is hypersexualized because she is a femme lesbian and it serves no purpose but fanboy wank-fodder. Which I could not disagree with more. I think the contrasts, the clear contrasts between Batwoman as a role and Kate Kane as a person indicate that Kate is deliberately using the sexuality of the persona as another weapon in her crime-fighting arsenal. That Kate herself views what she does as a job, a duty, a privilege — as something to be done to the best of her ability, using all the tools at her disposal. I think it’s part of the story. I think this is made perfectly clear in the stunning two-page J.H. Williams III montage of Batwoman riding her motorcycle home.

I also read on an iFanboy thread that the Dark X-men plot is, apparently, “contrived” and “forced,” which is, just for the record, totally wrong. Erm.

In short, I should not read these things this early in the morning, it makes me cranky.

4. Today I go meet the artist for Cool Kids and we engage in some production. Boo-yah.

5. The BBC reports on a new theory of antidepressants, namely that they don’t fix a “wrong” brain chemistry at all — that “wrong brain chemistry” is a myth — but merely drug the person who is depressed into not caring that they are depressed. Check it out. ETA: The BBC is commenting in an opinion piece, not exactly reporting. Take it for what you will.