Matrix

A long dormant plan to turn a vacant 180-acre parcel spanning Middletown and Lower Makefield Townships into a commercial behemoth has been resurrected. Matrix Development Corp., a developer based in Cranbury, N.J., is proposing is to build a complex that would include hotels, retail stores and office space in the two townships. But they have yet to buy the land or secure commitments from tenants. The lot, which straddles Big Oak Road between Route 1, Interstate 95 and Oxford Valley Road, is owned by the Bellemead Development Corp.

In The Matrix, everybody - save Keanu Reeves and a band of renegades in way-cool sunglasses - walks around in a simulated universe, oblivious to the fact that humankind is being manipulated by an evil artificial intelligence. The question "What is real?" is asked more than once. In eXistenZ, people plug into fleshy gamepods that transport their consciousness to another realm - one that looks very much like the realm they just left. After a while it becomes difficult for the players, whose nervous systems are jacked directly into the game, to tell the difference.

The field of candidates on the primary ballot for the township's Government Study Commission is a hodgepodge of former and current Lower Makefield supervisors, Matrix development opponents, and community activists. The candidates with Better Government for 2002, the group with ties to Residents Against Matrix, say they seek changes in township government to make it more responsive to residents' needs. Those running under the Citizens for Responsible Government banner say that Lower Makefield works and that the commission should represent the interests of the entire community, not just those of Residents Against Matrix.

Orfa Corp. said yesterday that the start-up date for its trash-recycling plant in Southwest Philadelphia has been delayed from September to "on or before Jan. 31, 1988. " At the same time, the Cherry Hill company said it had obtained $7.2 million, enough to finance the company through the end of 1988. It also said it had signed a cooperative agreement with Research-Cottrell Inc., which is building and financing the Philadelphia plant, under which the two companies intend to construct additional plants.

A few months after giving birth to her second child in 2000, Jada Pinkett Smith was on a plane to Australia and ready to join the Matrix cast as its newest - and arguably toughest - character. She plays Niobe, confident ex-flame of Lawrence Fishburne's Morpheus, in the second and third "Matrix" films. The wife of West Philly-raised Will Smith talked with the Daily News on a Warner Bros. sound stage recently about the rigorous training she went through for the role, her family life, and more.

The great advantage of being a science-fiction writer is the unlimited amount of liberating b.s. at your disposal. Sci-fi scribes boxed into a narrative corner can simply trot out a made-up phrase like "positronic matrix" and they're out of trouble, no explanation necessary. "Captain, they're gaining on us. " "OK, head for that positronic matrix. We'll lose them. " The more story trouble you encounter, the more technobabble you invoke. This would explain the enormous volume of space smoke that "Star Trek: Insurrection" blows in your face - enough to conceal the fact that this sequel is a leftover TV episode stretched uncomfortably to movie length and proportion.

The title "Tron: Legacy" makes you wonder what legacy Disney is talking about. "Tron" opened in 1982 to dismal reviews, and closed unloved by sci-fi audiences, who much preferred "E.T. " and "The Wrath of Khan. " "Tron" performed even more poorly that year than Disney's "The Dark Crystal," generally cited as the movie that marked the animation division's nadir and near-collapse. Lousy box-office isn't always destiny, of course. "Blade Runner" made less money in 1982 than "Tron," and is now regarded as a work of great vision, a sci-fi classic that produced a wave of imitations and homage.

The original death-dealer is back. After taking a break from the third Underworld film, Kate Beckinsale zips into the full-body black leather sheath once again to play Selene, the trigger-happy supernatural sheriff who targets werewolves, humans, and even her own kind, vampires. You want a herd thinned, Selene's your girl. As this sequel begins, Selene has been cryogenically frozen for 12 years, as humans have been systematically purging the world of the spookier species who have lived among them for centuries.

Wes Colley has to be one of the smarter guys in sports. He has a Ph. D. in astrophysical sciences from Princeton, has helped develop software to calculate the general relativistic effects of gravity on light rays, and led a team that developed software for object detection and correlation analysis. Colley has coded software for NASA, taught Harvard students mathematical skills for measuring light gathered from telescopes, and now works for MIT on an Air Force missile-defense research project.

To help you get ready for the "Revolution," which opens Wednesday, here's a recap of the first two "Matrix" films. In "The Matrix," a computer hacker named Neo (Keanu Reeves) discovers that life is an illusion created by machines that have taken over Earth and enslaved all of humanity, keeping them in pods where they produce electricity for the machines and live their lives inside their heads as part of the Matrix. This is not good. A dude in a black leather jacket named Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne)