Somehow I missed this on Thursday, but apparently so did everyone else, since I didn't see it linked anywhere. Roger Ebert was hanging out at a post-production studio in Chicago, watching the restored new print of The Godfather, when he was unexpectedly joined by Larry and Andy Wachowski, the famously inaccessible duo behind The Matrix, Speed Racer, and (people forget) Bound. Afterward, he got a chance to chat with them -- not in a conventional interview setting, complete with a hovering publicist (the brothers don't do that, remember?), but over a beer.

Ebert was impressed with the "zillionaires": "Nice people. Friendly. No Hollywood attitude." He writes that "[t]he blogosphere paints them as mysterious recluses, which may add to the legend but doesn't match the reality." But their being nice and friendly doesn't make them any less mysterious and reclusive: I'd wager that Ebert only ran the piece because of their reputation for not giving interviews or talking to anyone in the press.

Anyway, it's really interesting to "hear" them speak, though they mostly talk about the difficulties of keeping a moving 35 mm shot in focus and the brilliance of Coppola's Godfather shot selection. It's funny how keeping silent for a while will make such brief, mundane snippets into objects of arcane fascination. (Though since I think the Wachowskis are pretty formidable visual artists themselves, I find their perspective on that sort of thing interesting in its own right.)

No photo, of course; all you get is that old shot of the two admiring a Matrix comic book.

What do you do after Speed Racer fails to bring in the Matrix-like crowds of fan freaks, auto nuts and Ricci stalkers? Well, apparently, if you're the Wachowski siblings, you reunite with Keanu Reeves and bring Plastic Man to the big screen. According to CHUD (who received a tip they're skeptical on, so take this all with a grain of salt), a scooper from Berlin says Joel Silver announced the aforementioned news during an interview on German radio. Now since the Wachowskis had already written a Plastic Man script prior to their Matrix films, that's becoming the foundation for what we imagine will be a hot-to-trot PG-13 flick featuring Keanu Reeves saying "Whoa" every time his arms or legs stretch out. "Whoa, my arms are like plastic. Whoa."

This certainly seems like the logical place to go for the Wachowski individuals, especially since it's a comic property (hot), a script is already written (even hotter) and they can market the whole Matrix reunion with Reeves (hotter than the hottest hot you've even touched). Personally, I'm not a big fan of Reeves and I don't think he has the personality to play someone like Plastic Man, but maybe he'll have fun with it, we'll have fun with it and they'll make seven sequels. Joel Silver will be at Comic Con next week, so if nothing is announced before then, look for several folks to hound him until the man gives.

I don't know a lot about Speed Racer aside from what I've gleaned from the theme song over the years -- apparently, the young man's a demon on wheels -- so, in many ways, I'm the best possible audience for Larry and Andy Wachowski's new big-screen interpretation of the character. Originally a Japanese animation program exported and re-dubbed for the American market in the '60s, Speed Racer has now been revived and revitalized for now. And the Wachowskis have created a blast of pure pop family fun; Speed Racer's a bright, bold visual spectacle designed for kids.

And why shouldn't it be? Or, rather, how could it not? This is a property where one of the supporting characters is, after all, a monkey; any fully-grown individual hoping for an adult action film or racing realism is looking in the wrong place. Speed Racer plays like a car-crazed visual wonder -- it looks and feels like what pop artist Roy Lichtenstein would dream if you locked him in a room full of gas fumes, gave him only candy to eat and showed him nothing but Tron, Indianapolis 500 footage, episodes of the '60s Batman TV show and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. All at the same time. With the volume very, very high.

"They make us feel indebted
For saving us from hell
And then they put us through it
It's time the bastards fell!"

-- "Suspect Device," Stiff Little Fingers, 1979

"The revolution will not be televised."

-- Gil-Scott Heron

The more things stay the same, the more they change. Or vice-versa. Originally written and published in 1981, the comic book V for Vendetta was created by Englishmen Alan Moore (writer) and David Lloyd (artist) in response to political events in their home nation. They created a dark fantasia about life under fascism in a near-future England, and a masked man who sprung from the shadows to smash the iron grip of power. Over two decades later, V for Vendetta comes to the big screen with a script adaptation by Andy and Larry Wachowski, with big stars and big money all apparent in the final product. And once again, Hollywood moves at the speed of lead; a rousing response to Thatcherism is exactly what the world needs now.

Time turns all artifacts of rebellion into fetish objects: Ronald Reagan is immortalized as a collectible plate. Che Guevara's known mostly as a T-shirt. Billy Bragg's early on-the-cheap LP's of protest songs have been re-mastered for a CD box set with bonus DVDs. And turning any work of art into a movie inevitably takes time. The question of whether the world of 2006 resembles that of 1981 politically is a matter of personal opinion; the question of whether filmmaking has changed in the past 25 years is not. Moore's original vision (which I read when it was first published in serial form, riveted with adolescent angst) is so old it takes place in a future that is now our past. (It's also worth nothing that Moore has asked for his name to be removed from the film as part of a dispute with DC Comics - which, like Cinematical, is nestled under the corporate umbrella of Time Warner, along with Warner Brothers Films.)

The story is still essentially the same; after political chaos and mass destruction, England's risen from the ashes of ruin to be reborn as a orderly, healthy, efficiently-run dictatorship, complete with secret police and propaganda broadcasts.  A young woman, Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) is out past curfew and set upon by the feared 'Fingermen' – secret police that can call anything you do a crime and whose every action is, by definition, legal. The cops are stopped by a single man – a cape-wearing phantasm wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, an unceasing, unsettling smile beaming out as he dispatches any who oppose him. (The film shows and explains how Fawkes attempted to destroy the House of Parliament in 1605 in a prologue, so American audiences won't be left wondering why the dude kicking ass is wearing what looks like, as near as they can tell, a Hamburglar mask.)