Monday, November 10, 2003

I, Farticus

Cobb's take on "The Matrix Revolutions" centers on the void left by the late Gloria Foster, the actress who played The Oracle in the first two Matrix films. While I'm hoping to concentrate on where the movie goes metaphysically, I'm a movie fan, and Bowen is highlighting something that we movie geeks do pay attention to: the aesthetic/dramatic implications when one actor replaces another in a filmic series. Fans of Kirstie Alley's Saavik from "Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan" will know immediately what I'm talking about: Robin Curtis's Saavik, who appeared in the third and fourth Trek films, was no substitute for Alley's arched eyebrows, amazing lips, and aerodynamic breasticles.

Choice kernels of Cobb:

The change in the Oracle over-reverbrates in this film. She was more human than all of the humans. And yet she is there in a new gaunter body. Everything that comes out of the Oracle's mouth is oracular. But the smile is gone, the smoking cigarettes seem to be a painful chore. She's some other woman in your mother's kitchen and the cookies just don't taste the same. It's worse than watching the new Darrin on Bewitched. It's worse than listening to the new fake Fred Flintstone in the Fruity Pebbles commercials. It's like living with Jesse Jackson after Martin Luther King is dead.

Someday soon, I'll be seeing the flick and adding my two cents. Promise.
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