list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Chasing_Ghosts_Beyond_the_Arcade/322682/default.aspx Title: Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade
Year: 2007
Director: Lincoln Ruchti
Plot: In 1982, at the dawn of the video-game age, the world's giants of gaming gathered together in a now-legendary meeting at Iowa's Twin Galaxies Arcade. This documentary from director Lincoln Ruchti looks at the players then and now, offering an insightful and nostalgic look at the history of gaming fanaticism. Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the coveted Grand Jury Prize. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Number of Lists: 1
Number of blog posts: 9
SpoutRating: 4
]]>Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:00:40 GMTChasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade2007Lincoln RuchtiIn 1982, at the dawn of the video-game age, the world's giants of gaming gathered together in a now-legendary meeting at Iowa's Twin Galaxies Arcade. This documentary from director Lincoln Ruchti looks at the players then and now, offering an insightful and nostalgic look at the history of gaming fanaticism. Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for the coveted Grand Jury Prize. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide194http://www.spout.com/images/no_image.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Chasing_Ghosts_Beyond_the_Arcade/322682/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_September_21_Video_Games/625/43981/1/ShowPost.aspxPost By: leeroy711
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 9/22/2009 7:55:55 PM
Body: [quote user="Risselada"] I KNOW there is a new movie coming out soon where prisoner's bodies can be controlled by gamers in a death match in a kind of real life video game. WHAT IS THIS MOVIE CALLED!?!? I swear I saw a trailer for it or heard about it or something. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? [/quote] It's called Game and it's actually done by the same guys that did the Crank movies. [quote user="Risselada"] Also, The King of Kong is one my very favorite movies to come out in years. But I heard a lot of people respond that Chasing Ghosts about the same scene of people is even better. Anyone seen that one? Oh yeah, and I heard Grandma's Boy is pretty funny too. [/quote] Pretty funny is pretty generous for Grandma's boy.
]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:55:55 GMTleeroy711Weekly Theme9/22/2009 7:55:55 PM[quote user="Risselada"] I KNOW there is a new movie coming out soon where prisoner's bodies can be controlled by gamers in a death match in a kind of real life video game. WHAT IS THIS MOVIE CALLED!?!? I swear I saw a trailer for it or heard about it or something. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? [/quote] It's called Game and it's actually done by the same guys that did the Crank movies. [quote user="Risselada"] Also, The King of Kong is one my very favorite movies to come out in years. But I heard a lot of people respond that Chasing Ghosts about the same scene of people is even better. Anyone seen that one? Oh yeah, and I heard Grandma's Boy is pretty funny too. [/quote] Pretty funny is pretty generous for Grandma's boy. http://www.spout.com/groups/Weekly_Theme/Re_Weekly_Theme_for_September_21_Video_Games/625/43973/1/ShowPost.aspxPost By: Risselada
Post To: Weekly Theme
Post Date: 9/22/2009 12:18:23 PM
Body: [quote user="leeroy711"] Well this seems like a fun enough topic. Let's talk about video game films. I'm not really talking about movies that are based on video games like Lara Croft or Resident Evil. I'm talking more about movies that are about video games. I got the idea this weekend while I was watching the really bad but still pretty enjoyable horror flick from good old 1994 called Brainscan with Eddie Furlong and Frank Langella. It was about this kid that gets some sort of virtual reality CD-ROM, goes into a trance when he's playing it and starts killing people.... Sounds great right?? Okay maybe not, but it did make me start thinking about this as a topic. I remember watching Tron countless times when I was younger and loving it. I haven't watched it in many years and I'm pretty sure the experience would be ruined if I tried to sit through it now. I've also been wanting to re-watch eXisntenZ lately. I thought it was pretty brilliant in a very Cronenberg sort of way the first time I saw it and I am actually hoping to get a bit more out of it the next time. I also wonder if that film will be really dated in another 10 or 20 years. And I don't think I could mention video game movies without talking about The King Of Kong. I think this is the greatest doc I've ever seen. It was excatly what a documentary should be, in that it's about something that is very small to most of us but a huge deal to all the people that are being profiled. Well, that's all I got for now.. Peace, Love and watch more effing movies. [/quote] I actually never saw TRON until just a few years ago! I didn't find it THAT fascinating, but I can imagine if I saw it as a kid when it came out I might have felt differently. David Warner is always a fantastic villian though! What do you think about the new TRON movie coming out? Have you seen the trailer? The video game movie from my youth is The Wizard for sure. It was definitely a product of it's time. Something about the characters and the settings. Actually it was pretty depressing if you really look at it! But the video game stuff was of course cool for a kid. The kid with the Power Glove was so hilarious! "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad!" And then of course there was the AMAZING moment when the unveiled SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 3! One of the most exciting video game moments ever. But then it was shattered by the absurdity that even though no one had ever seen the game before, the girl in the audience was yelling up all kinds of tips and clues about how the game works and secret passages and such. I've never seen eXisntenZ but that whole trapped in a video game alternate reality thing is a pretty popular premise for movies. Acutally a lot more for animation. The other huge Nintendo love of my youth was the TV show Captain N: The Game Master. A guy gets sucked into his Nintendo and lives in a big Nintendo world where all of the different popular Nintendo games come together in one big universe. These characters and storylines that have nothing to do with each other come together while this guy's video game controller and zapper still work. Really pretty silly, but pretty sweet to see which video game characters they might encounter each week. There are a lot of Animes where people get sucked into video games too I belive. I haven't seen any, so I can only remember two off the top of my head. Avalon by the director of The Ghost in the Shell films (actually now I'm reading about it, I'm not sure if this anime...). An anime series called .hack//SIGN. I KNOW there is a new movie coming out soon where prisoner's bodies can be controlled by gamers in a death match in a kind of real life video game. WHAT IS THIS MOVIE CALLED!?!? I swear I saw a trailer for it or heard about it or something. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Also, The King of Kong is one my very favorite movies to come out in years. But I heard a lot of people respond that Chasing Ghosts about the same scene of people is even better. Anyone seen that one? Oh yeah, and I heard Grandma's Boy is pretty funny too.
]]>Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:18:23 GMTRisseladaWeekly Theme9/22/2009 12:18:23 PM[quote user="leeroy711"] Well this seems like a fun enough topic. Let's talk about video game films. I'm not really talking about movies that are based on video games like Lara Croft or Resident Evil. I'm talking more about movies that are about video games. I got the idea this weekend while I was watching the really bad but still pretty enjoyable horror flick from good old 1994 called Brainscan with Eddie Furlong and Frank Langella. It was about this kid that gets some sort of virtual reality CD-ROM, goes into a trance when he's playing it and starts killing people.... Sounds great right?? Okay maybe not, but it did make me start thinking about this as a topic. I remember watching Tron countless times when I was younger and loving it. I haven't watched it in many years and I'm pretty sure the experience would be ruined if I tried to sit through it now. I've also been wanting to re-watch eXisntenZ lately. I thought it was pretty brilliant in a very Cronenberg sort of way the first time I saw it and I am actually hoping to get a bit more out of it the next time. I also wonder if that film will be really dated in another 10 or 20 years. And I don't think I could mention video game movies without talking about The King Of Kong. I think this is the greatest doc I've ever seen. It was excatly what a documentary should be, in that it's about something that is very small to most of us but a huge deal to all the people that are being profiled. Well, that's all I got for now.. Peace, Love and watch more effing movies. [/quote] I actually never saw TRON until just a few years ago! I didn't find it THAT fascinating, but I can imagine if I saw it as a kid when it came out I might have felt differently. David Warner is always a fantastic villian though! What do you think about the new TRON movie coming out? Have you seen the trailer? The video game movie from my youth is The Wizard for sure. It was definitely a product of it's time. Something about the characters and the settings. Actually it was pretty depressing if you really look at it! But the video game stuff was of course cool for a kid. The kid with the Power Glove was so hilarious! "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad!" And then of course there was the AMAZING moment when the unveiled SUPER MARIO BROTHERS 3! One of the most exciting video game moments ever. But then it was shattered by the absurdity that even though no one had ever seen the game before, the girl in the audience was yelling up all kinds of tips and clues about how the game works and secret passages and such. I've never seen eXisntenZ but that whole trapped in a video game alternate reality thing is a pretty popular premise for movies. Acutally a lot more for animation. The other huge Nintendo love of my youth was the TV show Captain N: The Game Master. A guy gets sucked into his Nintendo and lives in a big Nintendo world where all of the different popular Nintendo games come together in one big universe. These characters and storylines that have nothing to do with each other come together while this guy's video game controller and zapper still work. Really pretty silly, but pretty sweet to see which video game characters they might encounter each week. There are a lot of Animes where people get sucked into video games too I belive. I haven't seen any, so I can only remember two off the top of my head. Avalon by the director of The Ghost in the Shell films (actually now I'm reading about it, I'm not sure if this anime...). An anime series called .hack//SIGN. I KNOW there is a new movie coming out soon where prisoner's bodies can be controlled by gamers in a death match in a kind of real life video game. WHAT IS THIS MOVIE CALLED!?!? I swear I saw a trailer for it or heard about it or something. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Also, The King of Kong is one my very favorite movies to come out in years. But I heard a lot of people respond that Chasing Ghosts about the same scene of people is even better. Anyone seen that one? Oh yeah, and I heard Grandma's Boy is pretty funny too. http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/12/18/38565.aspxPost By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 12/18/2008 4:00:40 PM
Body: Time once again to feature some of the Spout community’s core members. Along with that comes the opportunity to send each of these people a copy of Yule-A-Go-Go on DVD for all their “burlesque dancers shaking what was given to them in front of a fireplace” home video needs. –Chris Thilk, Director of Marketing. Username: mciocco Real First Name: Mark Location: West Chester, PA Last 5 movies I’ve seen that I’ve enjoyed a lot (loved is a strong word!): Black Christmas - Kind of amazed that this film was made by the same man who made A Christmas Story.  It’s also one of about 4 or 5 great precursors to the Slasher subgenre, and much of the trademarks of the Slasher pic were popularized here (i.e. POV shots, the telephone thing, etc…)  Brilliant stuff. The Man From Earth - I’d be surprised if anyone else has seen this low budget SF flick, and it certainly doesn’t sound like an exciting movie.  It’s basically a bunch of college professors in a cabin talking about stuff.  One of the things I like most about SF is the tendency to ask “What if…” and then explore a concept into the ground, and this movie does just that.  It’s not perfect, but I enjoyed it a lot. Bridge to Terabithia - I’d never read the book, so when the twist happens, I was absolutely devestated.  I don’t have much else to say about it, except that despite the fact that I was blindsided by the twist, I did end up enjoying it… Let the Right One In - An interesting take on the vampire story.  A bit somber for my tastes, but probably one of my favorites of this year anyway… Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade - Just saw this last night because I had read about it on the Spout Blog (don’t remember who posted about it, but thanks!)  It’s funny because it plays like a sequel or maybe a prequel to The King of Kong, which was one of my favorite movies of last year, but I really enjoyed this one too… My favorite groups on Spout: I’m a total genre hound, so I’d probably go with Horror 101 or Sci Fi.  I also really enjoy the Weekly Theme group, depending on the theme… The most unusual place you’ve ever watched a movie: That’s a tough one, as the grand majority of my movie watching happens in the comfort of my living room or the semi-comfort of the local multi-plex.  However, when I was in college I was the coordinator for the film program, which involved many things, including the occasional stint in the projectors booth.  Watching a movie from that perspective was somewhat unusual, but it’s not the most fun of jobs (especially when the projector breaks down and you’re forced to hand out IOUs to a hundred angry students!) So there you go.  Not sure if you were expecting mini-reviews of my 5 recent movies but I did it anyway:P ——————————— Username: Mercurial Real Name: Chris Current Location: Fresno, CA Last 5 Movies I’ve Loved: 1.) Milk 2.) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 3.) The Machine Girl 4.) Spring Fever 5.) Night of the Creeps My Favorite Group on Spout: Weekly Theme The Most Unusual Place I’ve Seen a Movie: Floating on an inner tube on a lake at night watching Jaws on a small makeshift blanket screen with a shoddy projector. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:00:40 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com12/18/2008 4:00:40 PMTime once again to feature some of the Spout community’s core members. Along with that comes the opportunity to send each of these people a copy of Yule-A-Go-Go on DVD for all their “burlesque dancers shaking what was given to them in front of a fireplace” home video needs. –Chris Thilk, Director of Marketing. Username: mciocco Real First Name: Mark Location: West Chester, PA Last 5 movies I’ve seen that I’ve enjoyed a lot (loved is a strong word!): Black Christmas - Kind of amazed that this film was made by the same man who made A Christmas Story.  It’s also one of about 4 or 5 great precursors to the Slasher subgenre, and much of the trademarks of the Slasher pic were popularized here (i.e. POV shots, the telephone thing, etc…)  Brilliant stuff. The Man From Earth - I’d be surprised if anyone else has seen this low budget SF flick, and it certainly doesn’t sound like an exciting movie.  It’s basically a bunch of college professors in a cabin talking about stuff.  One of the things I like most about SF is the tendency to ask “What if…” and then explore a concept into the ground, and this movie does just that.  It’s not perfect, but I enjoyed it a lot. Bridge to Terabithia - I’d never read the book, so when the twist happens, I was absolutely devestated.  I don’t have much else to say about it, except that despite the fact that I was blindsided by the twist, I did end up enjoying it… Let the Right One In - An interesting take on the vampire story.  A bit somber for my tastes, but probably one of my favorites of this year anyway… Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade - Just saw this last night because I had read about it on the Spout Blog (don’t remember who posted about it, but thanks!)  It’s funny because it plays like a sequel or maybe a prequel to The King of Kong, which was one of my favorite movies of last year, but I really enjoyed this one too… My favorite groups on Spout: I’m a total genre hound, so I’d probably go with Horror 101 or Sci Fi.  I also really enjoy the Weekly Theme group, depending on the theme… The most unusual place you’ve ever watched a movie: That’s a tough one, as the grand majority of my movie watching happens in the comfort of my living room or the semi-comfort of the local multi-plex.  However, when I was in college I was the coordinator for the film program, which involved many things, including the occasional stint in the projectors booth.  Watching a movie from that perspective was somewhat unusual, but it’s not the most fun of jobs (especially when the projector breaks down and you’re forced to hand out IOUs to a hundred angry students!) So there you go.  Not sure if you were expecting mini-reviews of my 5 recent movies but I did it anyway:P ——————————— Username: Mercurial Real Name: Chris Current Location: Fresno, CA Last 5 Movies I’ve Loved: 1.) Milk 2.) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 3.) The Machine Girl 4.) Spring Fever 5.) Night of the Creeps My Favorite Group on Spout: Weekly Theme The Most Unusual Place I’ve Seen a Movie: Floating on an inner tube on a lake at night watching Jaws on a small makeshift blanket screen with a shoddy projector. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/12/18/38563.aspxPost By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 12/18/2008 4:00:38 PM
Body: There are still quite a few people in the Spout community we’re looking forward to highlighting, including the two folks below. To reiterate why we’re doing this: Spout is only as powerful as it’s members and these are just a few of those members that are leading and participating in discussion, creating groups and otherwise being true to Spout’s mission to provide a place for those who are talking movies. Copies of the two-disc edition of Yule-A-Go-Go, featuring burlesque dancers doing their thing in front of a fireplace, will be making their way down these people’s chimneys as they will be for all those we’re featuring this week. You can learn more about Yule-A-Go-Go here. –Chris Thilk, Director of Marketing Username: mciocco Real First Name: Mark Location: West Chester, PA Last 5 movies I’ve seen that I’ve enjoyed a lot (loved is a strong word!): Black Christmas - Kind of amazed that this film was made by the same man who made A Christmas Story.  It’s also one of about 4 or 5 great precursors to the Slasher subgenre, and much of the trademarks of the Slasher pic were popularized here (i.e. POV shots, the telephone thing, etc…)  Brilliant stuff. The Man From Earth - I’d be surprised if anyone else has seen this low budget SF flick, and it certainly doesn’t sound like an exciting movie.  It’s basically a bunch of college professors in a cabin talking about stuff.  One of the things I like most about SF is the tendency to ask “What if…” and then explore a concept into the ground, and this movie does just that.  It’s not perfect, but I enjoyed it a lot. Bridge to Terabithia - I’d never read the book, so when the twist happens, I was absolutely devestated.  I don’t have much else to say about it, except that despite the fact that I was blindsided by the twist, I did end up enjoying it… Let the Right One In - An interesting take on the vampire story.  A bit somber for my tastes, but probably one of my favorites of this year anyway… Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade - Just saw this last night because I had read about it on the Spout Blog (don’t remember who posted about it, but thanks!)  It’s funny because it plays like a sequel or maybe a prequel to The King of Kong, which was one of my favorite movies of last year, but I really enjoyed this one too… My favorite groups on Spout: I’m a total genre hound, so I’d probably go with Horror 101 or Sci Fi.  I also really enjoy the Weekly Theme group, depending on the theme… The most unusual place you’ve ever watched a movie: That’s a tough one, as the grand majority of my movie watching happens in the comfort of my living room or the semi-comfort of the local multi-plex.  However, when I was in college I was the coordinator for the film program, which involved many things, including the occasional stint in the projectors booth.  Watching a movie from that perspective was somewhat unusual, but it’s not the most fun of jobs (especially when the projector breaks down and you’re forced to hand out IOUs to a hundred angry students!) So there you go.  Not sure if you were expecting mini-reviews of my 5 recent movies but I did it anyway:P —————- Username: Mercurial Real Name: Chris Current Location: Fresno, CA Last 5 Movies I’ve Loved: 1.) Milk 2.) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 3.) The Machine Girl 4.) Spring Fever 5.) Night of the Creeps My Favorite Group on Spout: Weekly Theme The Most Unusual Place I’ve Seen a Movie: Floating on an inner tube on a lake at night watching Jaws on a small makeshift blanket screen with a shoddy projector. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:00:38 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com12/18/2008 4:00:38 PMThere are still quite a few people in the Spout community we’re looking forward to highlighting, including the two folks below. To reiterate why we’re doing this: Spout is only as powerful as it’s members and these are just a few of those members that are leading and participating in discussion, creating groups and otherwise being true to Spout’s mission to provide a place for those who are talking movies. Copies of the two-disc edition of Yule-A-Go-Go, featuring burlesque dancers doing their thing in front of a fireplace, will be making their way down these people’s chimneys as they will be for all those we’re featuring this week. You can learn more about Yule-A-Go-Go here. –Chris Thilk, Director of Marketing Username: mciocco Real First Name: Mark Location: West Chester, PA Last 5 movies I’ve seen that I’ve enjoyed a lot (loved is a strong word!): Black Christmas - Kind of amazed that this film was made by the same man who made A Christmas Story.  It’s also one of about 4 or 5 great precursors to the Slasher subgenre, and much of the trademarks of the Slasher pic were popularized here (i.e. POV shots, the telephone thing, etc…)  Brilliant stuff. The Man From Earth - I’d be surprised if anyone else has seen this low budget SF flick, and it certainly doesn’t sound like an exciting movie.  It’s basically a bunch of college professors in a cabin talking about stuff.  One of the things I like most about SF is the tendency to ask “What if…” and then explore a concept into the ground, and this movie does just that.  It’s not perfect, but I enjoyed it a lot. Bridge to Terabithia - I’d never read the book, so when the twist happens, I was absolutely devestated.  I don’t have much else to say about it, except that despite the fact that I was blindsided by the twist, I did end up enjoying it… Let the Right One In - An interesting take on the vampire story.  A bit somber for my tastes, but probably one of my favorites of this year anyway… Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade - Just saw this last night because I had read about it on the Spout Blog (don’t remember who posted about it, but thanks!)  It’s funny because it plays like a sequel or maybe a prequel to The King of Kong, which was one of my favorite movies of last year, but I really enjoyed this one too… My favorite groups on Spout: I’m a total genre hound, so I’d probably go with Horror 101 or Sci Fi.  I also really enjoy the Weekly Theme group, depending on the theme… The most unusual place you’ve ever watched a movie: That’s a tough one, as the grand majority of my movie watching happens in the comfort of my living room or the semi-comfort of the local multi-plex.  However, when I was in college I was the coordinator for the film program, which involved many things, including the occasional stint in the projectors booth.  Watching a movie from that perspective was somewhat unusual, but it’s not the most fun of jobs (especially when the projector breaks down and you’re forced to hand out IOUs to a hundred angry students!) So there you go.  Not sure if you were expecting mini-reviews of my 5 recent movies but I did it anyway:P —————- Username: Mercurial Real Name: Chris Current Location: Fresno, CA Last 5 Movies I’ve Loved: 1.) Milk 2.) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 3.) The Machine Girl 4.) Spring Fever 5.) Night of the Creeps My Favorite Group on Spout: Weekly Theme The Most Unusual Place I’ve Seen a Movie: Floating on an inner tube on a lake at night watching Jaws on a small makeshift blanket screen with a shoddy projector. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/11/26/37696.aspxPost By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 11/26/2008 6:00:31 PM
Body: I recently had the chance to sit down with director Seth Gordon while he was promoting his holiday comedy Four Christmases, which is a decent enough film with a few laughs in it, most of them courtesy of Jon Favreau’s UFC fighter wannabe character and his redneck wife, excellently played by Katy Mixon. Growing up in Texas, it’s a great portrait of many holidays past. However, I couldn’t stop myself from asking him about The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, and the controversy it’s stirred up. In my other article talking about that movie and Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, my point was that Ghosts was a much better film if you’re looking for a documentary about the arcades of yesteryear. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t entertained by The King of Kong –– on the contrary I find it very entertaining, and having met Steve Wiebe several times, he literally is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, just like in the film. My main problem was the fact that Seth and his producer Ed Cunningham had seemed to play fast and loose with the facts when they edited their movie. Gordon doesn’t deny this, and he tantalizingly drops the fact that Billy Mitchell was actually much worse than they depicted in the movie. Does this mean that there needs to be a The King of Kong 2: Take This Hammer and Shove It sequel to set the record straight? I’d stand in line for that. So, I cover a lot of video game events for Joystiq, and going to these video game events I have run into Walter Day, who is very outspoken.  He has a whole page on Twin Galaxies sort of refuting facts in The King of Kong.  He breaks down the dinner and says, “Well, Billy actually did come into that dinner.  The movie makes it look like he just drove away after he found out he was there.”  And all these other facts. I know there is a frequently asked questions page on the The King of Kong website where you guys kind of address a couple things… Oh there is, right. But has Walter tried to contact you?  Do you know about the whole controversy?  Was the movie a product of kind of the editing process to help heighten the tension between Steve and Billy? It is such a complicated conversation.  The way we painted Billy and his actions is so much gentler that we could have, that it makes it hard for me to stomach the tiny little details that they are choosing to fight about, because his true actions were so ugly that we couldn’t use the complete truth, meaning we didn’t show him as dark as he really is. To have them take issue with these tiny, tiny little things makes me want to unveil the darker stuff, because it would silence them forever.  But it is not worth my time.  I don’t think it is worth the kind of bad blood that could bring to start really opening Pandora’s box. I could tell you off the record some of this stuff, but the dude is so much worse than we painted him out to be.  So we just included the stuff in the movie that was necessary to tell the story and to understand Steve’s fear of him and his reputation, but we didn’t go into any of the stuff we could have. All of their claims are fine, but someday we should have a symposium.  The truth is that Walter is regularly in touch with Ed Cunningham, specifically the producer of Kong, and they are good friends.  So there is no bad blood there. Some of those guys are pissed, like Dwayne.  Dwayne is sort of frothing at the mouth.  He is making his other documentary, I believe. Dwayne is an extreme dude.  I am excited to have a documentary that supposedly proves ours wrong. I invite it like, “Do the best you can dude.  Do whatever you want.”  But if we went to court and we brought all the evidence, I am sure they would regret that choice. The only other kind of exposure we have had to that world was Chasing Ghosts, which was at Sundance when you were at Slamdance, and then it kind of didn’t have nearly the success that Kong did, although it is coming out on Showtime next month, I just heard. Oh good. Yeah, it is going to finally be seen. You know what?  I didn’t know that they ever sold it.  I am excited for them. They are much lighter with Billy in that, although I haven’t talked to those filmmakers about the Kong controversy.  I would love to see if what they did similar to what you did.  When you do the feature film version, or the narrative, the scripted making of Kong, the remake I guess, is that something you would feel more comfortable pursuing? I mean, are these characters going to be named Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell? Yeah. Would you go down that dark road any with Billy’s character? Sure. Because you can say, “Well, you know.  This is scripted.  This is fake.” No, we would probably show a little more of the truth, but I think we would also hint at it more than making it…You don’t need to do much in a narrative film to suggest someone is sinister. I think if Billy in a narrative film behaved exactly like he did during our doc, you would consider him implausible and unbelievable, I think.  Right?  I am not talking about the footage we didn’t use. You are talking about what you did use. I am talking about the footage we did use.  Sure. Sure.  That is why everyone hates this guy after that movie. Right.  So I don’t think we would have to do much of that, but we might do a little bit. Tell me about The Only Living Boy in New York.  What is that all about? It is a great story.  It is along the lines of The Graduate.  There is a Greek tragedy kind of plot where a kid finds out his father has a mistress, and instead of doing…The way he handles it is he ends up seducing the mistress himself. So this woman is sleeping with both the father and the son.  Neither knows about it.  It is just really heavy.  In the process he learns that these sort of changes in some more of a semantic responsibility and accountability for his actions.  That ends up making it possible for him to fall for… The girl that he was interested in ends ups starting to get interested back in him and grow an unrequited love.  It is a great story. Is it based on something?  Is it original?  Did you write it? I didn’t write it.  Alan Lowe wrote it. Does it look like that will be your next film or do you think Kong will be the next one? I would imagine it will be close, because that script is done, done and the Kong script is a great first pass that is likely to take a big step up and then get cast.  So I would imagine it wouldn’t be sooner. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:00:31 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com11/26/2008 6:00:31 PM I recently had the chance to sit down with director Seth Gordon while he was promoting his holiday comedy Four Christmases, which is a decent enough film with a few laughs in it, most of them courtesy of Jon Favreau’s UFC fighter wannabe character and his redneck wife, excellently played by Katy Mixon. Growing up in Texas, it’s a great portrait of many holidays past. However, I couldn’t stop myself from asking him about The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, and the controversy it’s stirred up. In my other article talking about that movie and Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, my point was that Ghosts was a much better film if you’re looking for a documentary about the arcades of yesteryear. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t entertained by The King of Kong –– on the contrary I find it very entertaining, and having met Steve Wiebe several times, he literally is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, just like in the film. My main problem was the fact that Seth and his producer Ed Cunningham had seemed to play fast and loose with the facts when they edited their movie. Gordon doesn’t deny this, and he tantalizingly drops the fact that Billy Mitchell was actually much worse than they depicted in the movie. Does this mean that there needs to be a The King of Kong 2: Take This Hammer and Shove It sequel to set the record straight? I’d stand in line for that. So, I cover a lot of video game events for Joystiq, and going to these video game events I have run into Walter Day, who is very outspoken.  He has a whole page on Twin Galaxies sort of refuting facts in The King of Kong.  He breaks down the dinner and says, “Well, Billy actually did come into that dinner.  The movie makes it look like he just drove away after he found out he was there.”  And all these other facts. I know there is a frequently asked questions page on the The King of Kong website where you guys kind of address a couple things… Oh there is, right. But has Walter tried to contact you?  Do you know about the whole controversy?  Was the movie a product of kind of the editing process to help heighten the tension between Steve and Billy? It is such a complicated conversation.  The way we painted Billy and his actions is so much gentler that we could have, that it makes it hard for me to stomach the tiny little details that they are choosing to fight about, because his true actions were so ugly that we couldn’t use the complete truth, meaning we didn’t show him as dark as he really is. To have them take issue with these tiny, tiny little things makes me want to unveil the darker stuff, because it would silence them forever.  But it is not worth my time.  I don’t think it is worth the kind of bad blood that could bring to start really opening Pandora’s box. I could tell you off the record some of this stuff, but the dude is so much worse than we painted him out to be.  So we just included the stuff in the movie that was necessary to tell the story and to understand Steve’s fear of him and his reputation, but we didn’t go into any of the stuff we could have. All of their claims are fine, but someday we should have a symposium.  The truth is that Walter is regularly in touch with Ed Cunningham, specifically the producer of Kong, and they are good friends.  So there is no bad blood there. Some of those guys are pissed, like Dwayne.  Dwayne is sort of frothing at the mouth.  He is making his other documentary, I believe. Dwayne is an extreme dude.  I am excited to have a documentary that supposedly proves ours wrong. I invite it like, “Do the best you can dude.  Do whatever you want.”  But if we went to court and we brought all the evidence, I am sure they would regret that choice. The only other kind of exposure we have had to that world was Chasing Ghosts, which was at Sundance when you were at Slamdance, and then it kind of didn’t have nearly the success that Kong did, although it is coming out on Showtime next month, I just heard. Oh good. Yeah, it is going to finally be seen. You know what?  I didn’t know that they ever sold it.  I am excited for them. They are much lighter with Billy in that, although I haven’t talked to those filmmakers about the Kong controversy.  I would love to see if what they did similar to what you did.  When you do the feature film version, or the narrative, the scripted making of Kong, the remake I guess, is that something you would feel more comfortable pursuing? I mean, are these characters going to be named Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell? Yeah. Would you go down that dark road any with Billy’s character? Sure. Because you can say, “Well, you know.  This is scripted.  This is fake.” No, we would probably show a little more of the truth, but I think we would also hint at it more than making it…You don’t need to do much in a narrative film to suggest someone is sinister. I think if Billy in a narrative film behaved exactly like he did during our doc, you would consider him implausible and unbelievable, I think.  Right?  I am not talking about the footage we didn’t use. You are talking about what you did use. I am talking about the footage we did use.  Sure. Sure.  That is why everyone hates this guy after that movie. Right.  So I don’t think we would have to do much of that, but we might do a little bit. Tell me about The Only Living Boy in New York.  What is that all about? It is a great story.  It is along the lines of The Graduate.  There is a Greek tragedy kind of plot where a kid finds out his father has a mistress, and instead of doing…The way he handles it is he ends up seducing the mistress himself. So this woman is sleeping with both the father and the son.  Neither knows about it.  It is just really heavy.  In the process he learns that these sort of changes in some more of a semantic responsibility and accountability for his actions.  That ends up making it possible for him to fall for… The girl that he was interested in ends ups starting to get interested back in him and grow an unrequited love.  It is a great story. Is it based on something?  Is it original?  Did you write it? I didn’t write it.  Alan Lowe wrote it. Does it look like that will be your next film or do you think Kong will be the next one? I would imagine it will be close, because that script is done, done and the Kong script is a great first pass that is likely to take a big step up and then get cast.  So I would imagine it wouldn’t be sooner. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/11/13/37285.aspxPost By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 11/13/2008 4:01:26 PM
Body: Like a video game screen that says “Continue?”, video game documentaries keep popping up with extra lives. Just last week I wrote about the documentary Chasing Ghosts and how it’s a better movie than The King of Kong, and the good news is that Chasing Ghosts is now coming out next month on a cable channel near you. The even better news is that there are a lot more in the pipeline, and a few others worth seeking out and watching. Besides these two retro gaming documentaries, here’s a roundup of new and recent video game films that’ll keep you pushing buttons. Check out the list after the break. Second Skin Juan Carlos and Victor Pineiro-Escoriaza put together a movie about the people who inhabit this side of the screen in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing game phenomenon of games like World of Warcraft and Everquest. It’s a fairly intimate look inside the lives of many of these gamers, for better or for worse, and doesn’t take the easy route of just poking fun of these people. The film aims to make you understand what draws these people into the games, and what ends up keeping them there. It also shows you several people who left the game for various reasons, including addiction. Victor, who produced the film, recently told us to keep your eyes open, because you’ll be able to catch this movie outside of film festivals very soon. Get Lamp When I was a kid, one of my first gaming memories was playing the classic text-based adventure Zork on a friend’s Commodore 64. Even today, I’ll sometimes boot up a text game like A Mind Forever Voyaging or Trinity, which come much closer to the world of prose novels than they do of video games. They are beautifully created works of art, and one company was behind 99% of the successful text-based games in the 1980s / 1990s: Infocom. Get Lamp is a look at the people who created these games, and the rise and fall of the company. It’s a labor of love by director Jason Scott, who has spent as much time as possible on the other end of a blinking cursor. He completed principal photography earlier this year, leaving him with over 80 hours with of interviews the whittle down into a feature documentary, and we’re hoping there will be an update soon about the progress on his website. For now, you can catch the trailer for it here. /afk In the gaming world, /afk is how you’d signify that you’re “away from keyboard,” leaving your in-game character in a sort of limbo until you return. Like Second Skin, /afk seeks to show you the people behind the games, and what their lives are like both inside and outside, and it also asks if gaming should even be considered an addiction. The film had a clever marketing campaign that featured postcards that looked somewhat like baseball cards, with gamer’s stats listed on them. I haven’t heard much else about this film, other than briefly meeting director Greg Stuetze at the E3 gaming expo one year. Hopefully this film will see the light of day soon, because I’d like to see if it explores different ground than Second Skin does. I was at the launch event last night for World of Warcraft’s newest expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King, and I spoke with a lot of different people in line. They really are a fascinating bunch. Gold Farmers In the World of Warcraft and other online games, a lot of your time is spent killing low-level monsters, going on random quests, and trying to make a buck so you can buy new gear. This tedious and repetitive task is called “grinding” by players. Almost overnight, people and then companies sprang up that offered to do this for you for a price in real-world money. Now complete organizations (normally in China or other parts of Asia) hire groups of gamers, pay them extremely minimum wages and have them grind in-game so that they can sell gold, gear, and even complete characters to players. It’s not legal in the game (you’ll get banned for life if you’re caught on either side of the fence), but it’s also sometimes impossible to detect. UCSD doctoral student Ge Jin’s film Gold Farmers explores this real-world job for a virtual-world economy. Like /afk, the future of this doc is uncertain, but you can catch a trailer here. TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball Pinball machines have unfortunately been on the downward slide ever since coin-op video games overtook the flippers-and-balls gameplay. Then as in-home video games started becoming popular, and people stopped going into arcades for their gaming fixes, things got worse. In 1998, Williams Electronics, one of the pinball bigs, decided to try something new by meshing a video game and a pinball machine together in one unit called “Pinball 2000.” Although things seemed to be going very well and initial units were successful, Williams suddenly pulled the plug on the whole project. This documentary explores that entire project, and asks what happened. I still love pinball machines, but they are getting harder and harder to find. Check out the trailer and a scene from TILT right here. Playing Columbine Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was a video game created by Danny Ledonne after the school shootings in Colorado, and according to the movie he created it on a whim thinking no one would play it. It ended up setting off a huge controversy about video games, which reached a fever pitch when the game was submitted to the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition in 2007, and then later yanked from consideration for vague reasons. This documentary, by game author Danny Ledonne, explores the controversy around his game, and around violence in video games in general. While it’s not a fair and balanced look, since it comes from the creator of the game, it does ask a lot of interesting questions, and has some really good insight into the cultural phenomenon of gaming and how it may or may not relate to real-world violence. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:01:26 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com11/13/2008 4:01:26 PM Like a video game screen that says “Continue?”, video game documentaries keep popping up with extra lives. Just last week I wrote about the documentary Chasing Ghosts and how it’s a better movie than The King of Kong, and the good news is that Chasing Ghosts is now coming out next month on a cable channel near you. The even better news is that there are a lot more in the pipeline, and a few others worth seeking out and watching. Besides these two retro gaming documentaries, here’s a roundup of new and recent video game films that’ll keep you pushing buttons. Check out the list after the break. Second Skin Juan Carlos and Victor Pineiro-Escoriaza put together a movie about the people who inhabit this side of the screen in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing game phenomenon of games like World of Warcraft and Everquest. It’s a fairly intimate look inside the lives of many of these gamers, for better or for worse, and doesn’t take the easy route of just poking fun of these people. The film aims to make you understand what draws these people into the games, and what ends up keeping them there. It also shows you several people who left the game for various reasons, including addiction. Victor, who produced the film, recently told us to keep your eyes open, because you’ll be able to catch this movie outside of film festivals very soon. Get Lamp When I was a kid, one of my first gaming memories was playing the classic text-based adventure Zork on a friend’s Commodore 64. Even today, I’ll sometimes boot up a text game like A Mind Forever Voyaging or Trinity, which come much closer to the world of prose novels than they do of video games. They are beautifully created works of art, and one company was behind 99% of the successful text-based games in the 1980s / 1990s: Infocom. Get Lamp is a look at the people who created these games, and the rise and fall of the company. It’s a labor of love by director Jason Scott, who has spent as much time as possible on the other end of a blinking cursor. He completed principal photography earlier this year, leaving him with over 80 hours with of interviews the whittle down into a feature documentary, and we’re hoping there will be an update soon about the progress on his website. For now, you can catch the trailer for it here. /afk In the gaming world, /afk is how you’d signify that you’re “away from keyboard,” leaving your in-game character in a sort of limbo until you return. Like Second Skin, /afk seeks to show you the people behind the games, and what their lives are like both inside and outside, and it also asks if gaming should even be considered an addiction. The film had a clever marketing campaign that featured postcards that looked somewhat like baseball cards, with gamer’s stats listed on them. I haven’t heard much else about this film, other than briefly meeting director Greg Stuetze at the E3 gaming expo one year. Hopefully this film will see the light of day soon, because I’d like to see if it explores different ground than Second Skin does. I was at the launch event last night for World of Warcraft’s newest expansion, The Wrath of the Lich King, and I spoke with a lot of different people in line. They really are a fascinating bunch. Gold Farmers In the World of Warcraft and other online games, a lot of your time is spent killing low-level monsters, going on random quests, and trying to make a buck so you can buy new gear. This tedious and repetitive task is called “grinding” by players. Almost overnight, people and then companies sprang up that offered to do this for you for a price in real-world money. Now complete organizations (normally in China or other parts of Asia) hire groups of gamers, pay them extremely minimum wages and have them grind in-game so that they can sell gold, gear, and even complete characters to players. It’s not legal in the game (you’ll get banned for life if you’re caught on either side of the fence), but it’s also sometimes impossible to detect. UCSD doctoral student Ge Jin’s film Gold Farmers explores this real-world job for a virtual-world economy. Like /afk, the future of this doc is uncertain, but you can catch a trailer here. TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball Pinball machines have unfortunately been on the downward slide ever since coin-op video games overtook the flippers-and-balls gameplay. Then as in-home video games started becoming popular, and people stopped going into arcades for their gaming fixes, things got worse. In 1998, Williams Electronics, one of the pinball bigs, decided to try something new by meshing a video game and a pinball machine together in one unit called “Pinball 2000.” Although things seemed to be going very well and initial units were successful, Williams suddenly pulled the plug on the whole project. This documentary explores that entire project, and asks what happened. I still love pinball machines, but they are getting harder and harder to find. Check out the trailer and a scene from TILT right here. Playing Columbine Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was a video game created by Danny Ledonne after the school shootings in Colorado, and according to the movie he created it on a whim thinking no one would play it. It ended up setting off a huge controversy about video games, which reached a fever pitch when the game was submitted to the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition in 2007, and then later yanked from consideration for vague reasons. This documentary, by game author Danny Ledonne, explores the controversy around his game, and around violence in video games in general. While it’s not a fair and balanced look, since it comes from the creator of the game, it does ask a lot of interesting questions, and has some really good insight into the cultural phenomenon of gaming and how it may or may not relate to real-world violence. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2008/11/6/37027.aspxPost By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 11/6/2008 2:00:29 PM
Body: Two films about old-school arcade games premiered within a few days of each other in Park City in 2007. One was at Sundance, the other was at Slamdance. Guess which one you’ve never heard of? Ironically, it’s the one from Sundance. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters was the success story when these two films unintentionally butted heads, and the sad thing is that the other movie, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, is a much better film. But chances are you’ll never get to see it. Director Lincoln Ruchti and his producer Mark Verrechia set out to make a documentary not just about the height and popularity of the arcade gaming world back in the early 1980s, but specifically about a photo from a 1982 issue of Life magazine (at the top of the post — click for a bigger version). Right there in the center there is a lineup of classic video games with their record holders perched behind them and a bevy of cheerleaders in front. When they saw that image, they knew they had their movie. The next several months were spent contacting people, tracking down names, leads, old arcade locations, all in an effort to locate these gamers. They succeeded in finding most of them, including Billy Mitchell and Twin Galaxies head referee / enthusiast Walter Day. Using archival footage along with modern day interviews, Chasing Ghosts really puts a human face to the players of the video game industry during a snapshot moment in the 1980s. It doesn’t attempt to go into game development, but just focuses on the people who played the games, and why they went after these high scores. I could wax poetic about this for paragraphs, but if you’re really interested, you can read the review I wrote over at Joystiq last year. Instead of reviewing the film all over again, I want to focus on why it’s a better movie. One reason is that Ruchti and Verrechia’s film really shows you these characters, features appealing visuals, a killer 80s soundtrack, and a blend of nostalgia that uses Peter Hirschberg’s amazing CGI animations of the games and their cabinets in order to let the laymen know how some of these games were played. Even though these are completely faked (read: CGI) images of games that are almost 30 years old, they somehow feel completely tangible. You can almost reach out and drop a quarter in. On the flipside of that quarter is the fact that director Seth Gordon played extremely fast and loose with the editing in The King of Kong. In fact, he made it seem like Billy and Steve were bitter rivals, and that Billy would avoid Steve in public. The truth of the matter is that they had appeared in public together before, played games in public, and even given interviews together. There are plenty of moments in the movie where you find yourself thinking, “Geez, this Billy Mitchell guy is a real douche.” Unfortunately, most of those moments were created with a few mouse clicks, deftly removing scenes that would have told you otherwise. Now, Seth Gordon and his producer Ed Cunningham claim that some of these meetings happened before they started making the movie, in 2004, which would be forgivable. However, there’s a created scene in the film where it looks like Billy drives up to a restaurant and refuses to come in because Steve’s inside. According to Walter Day, Billy and his family actually came in and even spoke to Steve. The more you read about the way the film was put together, the more it unravels. While Billy Mitchell is indeed in Chasing Ghosts, he’s not portrayed like the arrogant asshole you see in The King of Kong. In fact, if you go to the Twin Galaxies website, Walter basically breaks down the inconsistencies and at least provides his view and recollection of the events. Seth and Ed have their own FAQ on the website for their film, but they don’t address anything other than the 2004 meeting of Billy and Steve at the Classic Gaming Expo. Someone needs to get in here with yet another documentary crew and stage an intervention. As long as it’s not Michael Moore, I’d support it. Now, this isn’t to say that The King of Kong isn’t an entertaining movie, because it is. My buddy Jon Gibson of I am 8 bit and Totally Nerdcore fame provides one of the commentaries on the DVD, and he sent me a copy. I’ve watched it several times, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy parts of it. Steve Wiebe is probably the nicest guy in the world, and some of the other characters like Brian Kuh and his repetitive “We’ve got a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up!” line is priceless. Hell, there’s even a t-shirt immortalizing it. It just didn’t hold up for me initially when I saw it after Chasing Ghosts, and once I started hearing about the controversy, my interest has been waning quickly. On paper, Kong sounds much more exciting. Two rivals, one an arrogant jerk, and the other a likeable everyman square off against each other for the high score of Donkey Kong? It sounds like a Will Ferrell movie idea that Judd Apatow scribbled on a cocktail napkin somewhere. In fact, a few months after the movie was screened at Slamdance, New Line announced that they were going to produce a scripted version of the doc. Truly bizarre. Although, we’ve heard nothing since then, and it looks like it fizzled out in development. Billy and Steve continue to appear at gaming events and play Donkey Kong, though. A worse byproduct of that proposed adaptation gone wrong is that it probably helped stomp Chasing Ghosts out of existence. I spoke with director Lincoln Ruchti at the Los Angeles premiere of the film last year, and he said that they were close to making a DVD deal with a company, but so far nothing has been announced. The website for the film is a bit out of date, with no news of a release on DVD or anywhere else. It’s unfortunate because it’s a far superior film (even without Steve Wiebe) that explores a brief history of the popularity of arcades while showing the lives, then and now, of many of the high score holders, including Mitchell and uber-ref Day. Ruchti told me that several people weren’t happy with the way they were portrayed in The King of Kong, and if you see Chasing Ghosts it’s easy to see why. The only trouble is, you may never have the opportunity to see it. If The King of Kong is as close as you can get to this story, just realize that you’re only scratching the surface of the characters. Pixar wunderkind Andrew Stanton saw Chasing Ghosts at Sundance that same year, and flew some of the crew up for a private screening for Pixar employees. Time Out New York film writer Stephen Garrett says in his review of Kong that Ghosts explores the gaming subculture a lot better. Hopefully this movie will be out in some form, even if it’s online, and you can see for yourself. Until then, I’ll try and step off this soapbox. Just one more game, I promise. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:00:29 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com11/6/2008 2:00:29 PM Two films about old-school arcade games premiered within a few days of each other in Park City in 2007. One was at Sundance, the other was at Slamdance. Guess which one you’ve never heard of? Ironically, it’s the one from Sundance. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters was the success story when these two films unintentionally butted heads, and the sad thing is that the other movie, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, is a much better film. But chances are you’ll never get to see it. Director Lincoln Ruchti and his producer Mark Verrechia set out to make a documentary not just about the height and popularity of the arcade gaming world back in the early 1980s, but specifically about a photo from a 1982 issue of Life magazine (at the top of the post — click for a bigger version). Right there in the center there is a lineup of classic video games with their record holders perched behind them and a bevy of cheerleaders in front. When they saw that image, they knew they had their movie. The next several months were spent contacting people, tracking down names, leads, old arcade locations, all in an effort to locate these gamers. They succeeded in finding most of them, including Billy Mitchell and Twin Galaxies head referee / enthusiast Walter Day. Using archival footage along with modern day interviews, Chasing Ghosts really puts a human face to the players of the video game industry during a snapshot moment in the 1980s. It doesn’t attempt to go into game development, but just focuses on the people who played the games, and why they went after these high scores. I could wax poetic about this for paragraphs, but if you’re really interested, you can read the review I wrote over at Joystiq last year. Instead of reviewing the film all over again, I want to focus on why it’s a better movie. One reason is that Ruchti and Verrechia’s film really shows you these characters, features appealing visuals, a killer 80s soundtrack, and a blend of nostalgia that uses Peter Hirschberg’s amazing CGI animations of the games and their cabinets in order to let the laymen know how some of these games were played. Even though these are completely faked (read: CGI) images of games that are almost 30 years old, they somehow feel completely tangible. You can almost reach out and drop a quarter in. On the flipside of that quarter is the fact that director Seth Gordon played extremely fast and loose with the editing in The King of Kong. In fact, he made it seem like Billy and Steve were bitter rivals, and that Billy would avoid Steve in public. The truth of the matter is that they had appeared in public together before, played games in public, and even given interviews together. There are plenty of moments in the movie where you find yourself thinking, “Geez, this Billy Mitchell guy is a real douche.” Unfortunately, most of those moments were created with a few mouse clicks, deftly removing scenes that would have told you otherwise. Now, Seth Gordon and his producer Ed Cunningham claim that some of these meetings happened before they started making the movie, in 2004, which would be forgivable. However, there’s a created scene in the film where it looks like Billy drives up to a restaurant and refuses to come in because Steve’s inside. According to Walter Day, Billy and his family actually came in and even spoke to Steve. The more you read about the way the film was put together, the more it unravels. While Billy Mitchell is indeed in Chasing Ghosts, he’s not portrayed like the arrogant asshole you see in The King of Kong. In fact, if you go to the Twin Galaxies website, Walter basically breaks down the inconsistencies and at least provides his view and recollection of the events. Seth and Ed have their own FAQ on the website for their film, but they don’t address anything other than the 2004 meeting of Billy and Steve at the Classic Gaming Expo. Someone needs to get in here with yet another documentary crew and stage an intervention. As long as it’s not Michael Moore, I’d support it. Now, this isn’t to say that The King of Kong isn’t an entertaining movie, because it is. My buddy Jon Gibson of I am 8 bit and Totally Nerdcore fame provides one of the commentaries on the DVD, and he sent me a copy. I’ve watched it several times, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy parts of it. Steve Wiebe is probably the nicest guy in the world, and some of the other characters like Brian Kuh and his repetitive “We’ve got a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up!” line is priceless. Hell, there’s even a t-shirt immortalizing it. It just didn’t hold up for me initially when I saw it after Chasing Ghosts, and once I started hearing about the controversy, my interest has been waning quickly. On paper, Kong sounds much more exciting. Two rivals, one an arrogant jerk, and the other a likeable everyman square off against each other for the high score of Donkey Kong? It sounds like a Will Ferrell movie idea that Judd Apatow scribbled on a cocktail napkin somewhere. In fact, a few months after the movie was screened at Slamdance, New Line announced that they were going to produce a scripted version of the doc. Truly bizarre. Although, we’ve heard nothing since then, and it looks like it fizzled out in development. Billy and Steve continue to appear at gaming events and play Donkey Kong, though. A worse byproduct of that proposed adaptation gone wrong is that it probably helped stomp Chasing Ghosts out of existence. I spoke with director Lincoln Ruchti at the Los Angeles premiere of the film last year, and he said that they were close to making a DVD deal with a company, but so far nothing has been announced. The website for the film is a bit out of date, with no news of a release on DVD or anywhere else. It’s unfortunate because it’s a far superior film (even without Steve Wiebe) that explores a brief history of the popularity of arcades while showing the lives, then and now, of many of the high score holders, including Mitchell and uber-ref Day. Ruchti told me that several people weren’t happy with the way they were portrayed in The King of Kong, and if you see Chasing Ghosts it’s easy to see why. The only trouble is, you may never have the opportunity to see it. If The King of Kong is as close as you can get to this story, just realize that you’re only scratching the surface of the characters. Pixar wunderkind Andrew Stanton saw Chasing Ghosts at Sundance that same year, and flew some of the crew up for a private screening for Pixar employees. Time Out New York film writer Stephen Garrett says in his review of Kong that Ghosts explores the gaming subculture a lot better. Hopefully this movie will be out in some form, even if it’s online, and you can see for yourself. Until then, I’ll try and step off this soapbox. Just one more game, I promise. Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/blogs/spoutblog/archive/2007/11/12/21619.aspxPost By: SpoutBlog
Post To: SpoutBlog on spout.com
Post Date: 11/12/2007 10:02:04 AM
Body: On the eve of the release of the documentary shortlist, the Academy’s list of semi-finalists for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination, AJ Schnack does the math to rank the 30 best reviewed documentaries of the year. His findings might surprise you. Although the race’s obvious heavyweights (particularly Michael Moore’s Sicko, and the two Iraq docs produced by Alex Gibney No End in Sight and Taxi to the Dark Side), do make the cut, data provided by Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic reveals that the most critically beloved documentary of the year is none other than The King of Kong, directed by Seth Gordon, who we interviewed back in August. Gordon’s video game rivalry doc certainly has come a long way since opening at Slamdance, where it competed for the attention of Park City with Chasing Ghosts, a Sundance entry covering some of the same ground and featuring some of the arcade all-stars. But Kong’s eventual dominance over that film by way of critical reception (99% on Rotten Tomatoes) and relative box office success ($678,000 so far, making it the eighth highest grossing doc of the year and one of the Top 100 docs of all time) may just have to be victory enough. With so many semi-high-profile non fiction films out this year about serious global crises, AJ implies that AMPAS might decide that Kong is too fluffy to make the shortlist. This might be the perfect example to reveal the growing chasm between film critics and the Academy. (more…) Originally posted on:SpoutBlog
]]>Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:02:04 GMTSpoutBlogSpoutBlog on spout.com11/12/2007 10:02:04 AMOn the eve of the release of the documentary shortlist, the Academy’s list of semi-finalists for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar nomination, AJ Schnack does the math to rank the 30 best reviewed documentaries of the year. His findings might surprise you. Although the race’s obvious heavyweights (particularly Michael Moore’s Sicko, and the two Iraq docs produced by Alex Gibney No End in Sight and Taxi to the Dark Side), do make the cut, data provided by Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic reveals that the most critically beloved documentary of the year is none other than The King of Kong, directed by Seth Gordon, who we interviewed back in August. Gordon’s video game rivalry doc certainly has come a long way since opening at Slamdance, where it competed for the attention of Park City with Chasing Ghosts, a Sundance entry covering some of the same ground and featuring some of the arcade all-stars. But Kong’s eventual dominance over that film by way of critical reception (99% on Rotten Tomatoes) and relative box office success ($678,000 so far, making it the eighth highest grossing doc of the year and one of the Top 100 docs of all time) may just have to be victory enough. With so many semi-high-profile non fiction films out this year about serious global crises, AJ implies that AMPAS might decide that Kong is too fluffy to make the shortlist. This might be the perfect example to reveal the growing chasm between film critics and the Academy. (more…) Originally posted on:SpoutBlog http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/videogames/MemberTagFilms.aspxvideogames
Number of films tagged: 80

Number of people who tagged: 5

Number of times used: 6

]]>Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:07:06 GMT8056Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/arcade-game/MemberTagFilms.aspxarcade-game
Number of films tagged: 6

Number of people who tagged: 1

Number of times used: 1

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