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[Soundwave]

Yeah, HMV have had that deal for more than a year. I got mine from Amazon with some BlueRigger HDMI cables to make up for the ?20 minimum delivery cost spend. Mononoke is my favourite Ghibli.

Kill Bill films and the Matrix were 3 for 2 used in GAME. HMV wanted ?9 each of the Kill Bill films but I ended up paying like ?6 for all 3 films after handing over the change in my pocket and using the points on my GAME card. Haven't seen The Matrix before but I did watch it and it was pretty great. I still adore Kill Bill, looks amazing on blu too.

Great get on Escape from New Ywork though, need to get that myself.

Nice price on the Kills & Matrix.
I do need to replace my Jpn Kill Bill DVDs (wanted the colour crazy 88 scene) at some point but no real rush
I love Kill one the 2nd wasn't so good but still a good watch

The Matrix is one of my all time faves still so good but the sequels are pretty poor so I wouldn't worry if I was you.

Thanks.
I love EFNY.
That's the new Shout Factory US release which is unfortunately region locked to Region A but by all accounts the UK release isn't too shabby either

US Review...

http://www.dvdcompare.net/review.php?rid=3655

Comparison for various versions...

http://www.dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=13285

Screen Captures...

http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/multi_list.php?hd_multiID=1368

I'll have a look at my brothers UK release but apparently we actually get some exclusive extras that the US didn't so don't think you'll really be missing much with our one.

Neil

[QualityChimp]

It's crazy to think Speedo has only just seen The Matrix! I guess when it was released 16 years ago, you were about 2!

It must be weird watching it with so much baggage attached to it now. I remember being flabbergasted when I saw it in 1999. It was the cusp of the millennium and the only film that mattered that year was The Phantom Menace. Then this film came along with an intriguing tagline of "What is The Matrix" with a pair of unknown directors with only "Bound" under their belts.

I'm with Neil with it being one of my all time favourites.

I disagree with his dismissal of the sequels as "pretty poor", especially Reloaded. That's got some of the best fight and car chase sequences ever filmed. That's right, EVER! (IMHO...)
The Zion sequences are a little tough to get through, especially on repeated viewings (that's what the skip button is for!), but you could always try watching The Matrix DeZIONized, which trims the two sequels down to one film.

http://fanedit.org/ifdb/component/content/article/79-fanedit-database/fanfix/211-matrix-dezionized-the

I think they're worth seeing, especially Reloaded, but Revolutions doesn't have much going for it, I agree.

I have the UK SE DVD of Escape From New York and it's great! Plenty of features and a commentary track by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, which are always worth listening to.

[Soundwave]

It's crazy to think Speedo has only just seen The Matrix! I guess when it was released 16 years ago, you were about 2!

It must be weird watching it with so much baggage attached to it now. I remember being flabbergasted when I saw it in 1999. It was the cusp of the millennium and the only film that mattered that year was The Phantom Menace. Then this film came along with an intriguing tagline of "What is The Matrix" with a pair of unknown directors with only "Bound" under their belts.

I'm with Neil with it being one of my all time favourites.

I disagree with his dismissal of the sequels as "pretty poor", especially Reloaded. That's got some of the best fight and car chase sequences ever filmed. That's right, EVER! (IMHO...)
The Zion sequences are a little tough to get through, especially on repeated viewings (that's what the skip button is for!), but you could always try watching The Matrix DeZIONized, which trims the two sequels down to one film.

http://fanedit.org/ifdb/component/content/article/79-fanedit-database/fanfix/211-matrix-dezionized-the

I think they're worth seeing, especially Reloaded, but Revolutions doesn't have much going for it, I agree.

I have the UK SE DVD of Escape From New York and it's great! Plenty of features and a commentary track by John Carpenter and Kurt Russell, which are always worth listening to.

Lol yeah looking back at it in '99 I was utterly amazed by it & the sheer brilliance of the bullet time stuff was a major highlight.
I do need to watch it again.

Sorry I didn't mean they weren't worth watching just not up to the high standards set by the first.
I agree the fight scenes are still good but I do think the Zion bits seemed out of place.
In the 1st movie

->Open Spoiler<-

you are made to think that there are only a few members of the Zion resistance but then in 2 & 3 you see there are millions of them which I feel ruined the feel of the movies

I do think Revolutions was definitely one movie too far though.

I definitely recommend Speedy grab that UK SE for Escape looking at the screen grabs I barely see any real difference in quality between my 2K remaster other than being a bit darker.

Neil

[Dogg Thang]

My main problems with the sequels were a) they didn't deliver on the promise of the end of the first and b) they forgot that the hook of the Matrix was realising you could break the rules of the 'real world'. There was no sense of it being a world at all in the sequels. Also stupid long boring speeches about boring stuff.

[Colin]

Which one of the sequels had the old bloke giving the speech and saying "ergo" in what seemed like every sentence? I never do things like this but it was so utterly awful my brain didn't engage silent mode and I loudly blurted out "oh for f*** sake" in the cinema, my girlfriend was mortified.

[speedlolita]

I've heard much discussion about the sequels which is what frankly put me off of wanting to watch The Matrix for so long. Well that, and the awful video games...

[PaTaito]

I'm with QC on reloaded, it was decent overall despite various annoyances.

The fight in the weapon room(neo kicking ass with sai's ffs probably the coolest weapons of all), mass agent smith fight, car chases etc, were all glorious.

The 3rd was a total turd mind, and i hated how they concluded.

[wakka]

I'm around the same age as Speedy but watched the movie on release. Blew my mind at the time like you lot.

I hated the sequels though. Yeah there are some cool sequences but loads of boring rubbish, and I could never forgive them for the introduction of Zion. It massively took away from the universe they created in the first movie for me.

[Soundwave]

Which one of the sequels had the old bloke giving the speech and saying "ergo" in what seemed like every sentence? I never do things like this but it was so utterly awful my brain didn't engage silent mode and I loudly blurted out "oh for f*** sake" in the cinema, my girlfriend was mortified.

Lol I did that once with the 2nd Blair Witch project film & I blurted out this is f***** S*** before getting up & walking out...my Girlfriend at the time stayed though to finish it off & I was sat in the foyer waiting for her...slightly frosty drive home

I'm with QC on reloaded, it was decent overall despite various annoyances.

The fight in the weapon room(neo kicking ass with sai's )along with the mass agent smith fight, car chases, etc were all glorious.

The 3rd was a total turd mind, and i hated how they concluded.

I will say I was hasty...I'd forgotten all the good bits of the 2nd because I actually thought most of them happened in the 1st...shows the lasting impression the 2nd had on me as I assumed it was all one movie.

The 3rd though oh my god honestly the ending is still probably the crappiest in cinema history..absolutely ruined it

[QualityChimp]

Revolutions was definitely guilty of being a bit speechtastic, but I didn't think Reloaded was. I really enjoyed the part where (Spoilered for Speedo's sake!)

->Open Spoiler<-

Neo met the architect and they discuss fate Vs. freewill

, even with all the "ergo" in it (see the video at the bottom, Colin!). All of that comes after 90-odd minutes of amazing action. There aren't many seminal action films that promoted quite so much discussion walking out of the cinema. Closest I can think of is "Is the Predator a predator if he's hunting for sport, not food?"

Action-wise, Reloaded is jam-packed with great sequences. The first "Upgrades" fight alone is better than anything in the two Bourne sequels because of their awful shakycam abuse. I know the CGI has aged a bit now, but I still love the Burly Brawl, which is a really inventive sequence that still manages a nod to old kung-fu flicks.

Both that fight and the section from "I'll handle them" to the end of the freeway chase is exhausting! I've only felt that in The Raid films and Fury Road since.

Agreed about Revolutions though. It's a poor ending to the series that undid a lot of the good work from the first two films. The treatment of every single character seemed off and the action sequences felt like pale imitations of what had gone on before. The nightclub sequence was no Lobby Fight, that's for sure. I think it's this last film that has tainted the other films, especially Reloaded.

I quite liked Enter The Matrix, but never played Path of Neo. Hats off to the Wachowskis for filming 40-odd minutes of extra footage purely to go in the games and flesh out the sequences only referenced in the films. Makes the whole thing even bigger. They'll be on any of the DVD/Blu-Ray releases.

If you've not seen it, here's the MTV Movie Awards spoof on The Matrix Reloaded, which is pretty funny. Don't watch it until you've seen the actual film though, Speedo as there's spoilers.

[Dogg Thang]

No. No hats off to the Wachowskis, QC. No hats off at all. Putting stuff into games and shorts and all sorts of other things led to bloat and weird scenes of things that may or may not have happened. We shouldn't need to have seen other things to get why things just happened. If they had managed to make that work at all, it would have been invisible but it wasn't. My hat is staying put. And the mere idea of the upgrades scene annoys me all these years later because it was about the cheapest way to wave away the ending of a previous movie that I have ever seen in a movie. Highlander 2 demonstrated more respect for its previous movie.

[QualityChimp]

You're WRONG, Dogg and you'd better take that hat off... before somebody takes it off for you.

I don't think it left any scenes bloated or incomplete. They were just nice expansions, like The Animatrix was.
Enter The Matrix added background to the power station hack, but you didn't need to have played the game to understand how they got to that point, it was in the exposition.

In the same way, we understand "Many bothans died to bring us this information" doesn't need expanding, but I'm probably looking forward to Gareth Edwards' Rogue One more than The Force Awakens.

[Dogg Thang]

No way, QC. I am gluing my hat to my head and it is NEVER coming off. I felt there were missing pieces and awkward bloaty scenes in the two sequels (the Kid was one - I only knew why that one in particular was awkward from watching Animatrix). Let's just agree to meet in the middle that I am right about everything ever.

[MrKirov]

I never understood that in the first film, fighting an agent meant certain death. Yet in the second, Neo could now not kill them due to "upgrades" (retcons) but now Morpheus and Trinity could fight them on an even pegging?...and nearly win??

Matrix - awesome
Reloaded - Fight scenes were awesome, rest was guff
Revolutions - Complete guff (CGI slow mo punch in the face...awful)
Animatrix - Guff
Enter the Matrix - fun fights,but random moves, ultimately guff
Path of Neo - never played, but reason to believe it's guff.

[BaronSqwelch]

Which one of the sequels had the old bloke giving the speech and saying "ergo" in what seemed like every sentence? I never do things like this but it was so utterly awful my brain didn't engage silent mode and I loudly blurted out "oh for f*** sake" in the cinema, my girlfriend was mortified.

I always get told off for that...did it at Frightfest once and when the q&a started after realised I was sat directly behind the director