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It wasn’t that long ago that Activision announced they’d struck a deal with Brett Ratner to develop movies based on their video games –– and that he wants to direct a Guitar Hero film. Now the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction as Electronic Arts just announced that they’ve struck a three video game deal with Zack Snyder.

We caught up with Zack at last night’s Watchmen event to find out the details. As it turns out, he’s a late-night gaming addict, even in the middle of trying to finish a huge Hollywood movie.

This summer at Comic-Con you said that you weren’t very happy with the Watchmen game that’s in development. Has that changed?

We have a game now that I think awesome. I think it was really just about those first fits and starts, where you’re talking about making a Watchmen game and how that was going to be. For me, it became about embracing the concept and allowing that to become the game. The work was to create a subversive concept that equals the movie, or the graphic novel. I think that we came around to that.

Have you been involved with the game?

As much as I can be, I certainly look at everything and will give input like, “Well, this could be better” or “This happens” and so on. It’s not like completely mine, I wouldn’t say. We’ve definitely had a lot of contact with them and I’ve given a lot of notes.

So the Electronic Arts deal, is that for original games?

Yeah, it’s orignal stuf that I’m going to develop for them. So basically, I have three titles that I will hopefully make with them.

Do you have anything in mind?

Yeah, I’ve got some things… for me, I really want to kind of blow it out to where I can do a video game, and start to develop a movie along the same lines. That way we don’t have like a short-lead game, but like a real game that has a real movie with it. One that really goes all the way.

Do you game yourself?

Oh definitely. I’m on the Xbox 360, and I just finished Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Wow, that just came out. Even with your schedule you have that much time to game?

Well, I got it early and I just went home and played. Debbie (his wife) would come out at like two o’clock in the morning and say “Are you kidding me?!” And I mean, she was asleep so it seemed like a good time.

Is this a good thing for video games? Has Zack Snyder been good for movies? It’s hard to argue that 300 didn’t have an impact on the world of filmmaking, especially since it contributed to the notion that you can create an entire film in green screen, never needing to build actual sets and go on location, which is basically what video games are all about. But, what does that mean to Snyder? So far, he’s directed a remake of Dawn of the Dead, a graphic novel adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300, and his third feature will take him down that road again with Watchmen… but can he tell an original story?

One positive thing is that he’s embracing the notion that video games can’t be created overnight, which is frequently the Hollywood approach to things. “Oh, we have this movie coming out in six months, it looks like it might do well, let’s slap a game together.” As a result, you just end up with a crappy game that has the movie titled glued on the box, instead of an immersive, quality gaming experience.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the beta for the upcoming game LittleBigPlanet, which has long been in development for Sony’s PlayStation 3. It’s a gorgeous game, with narration and tutorials provided by British comedian/actor Stephen Fry, and truly puts you into another world. It hasn’t been in development forever, but it has been a couple of years, and is the perfect example of what a little additional lead time can do for a game. It wouldn’t be surprising if they announced a children’s show on a movie based on this property, especially given Sony’s entertainment arm.

Hopefully whatever Snyder ends up producing for EA will follow a similar development path, which means more time and effort in developing the story and gameplay, rather than rushing something out with amazing visuals. This summer at Comic-Con Snyder said that video games can’t just be an afterthought. Let’s hope he follows through on that promise.

Kevin Kelly, a contributor to Joystiq, io9, Cinematical, Film School Rejects and countless other weblogs, will be weighing in on the intersection between film and video games every Thursday here on SpoutBlog. Please ask him personal questions, shower him with flattery and/or rip apart his argument in the comments. Game on.

This review originally appeared during the Toronto Film Festival. Nick and Norah opens nationwide tomorrow.

From its animated notebook-scrawl opening credits to a final scene in which two people finally, effortlessly unburden themselves of a MacGuffin and just decide to be together, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (based on the young adult novel by Rachel Cohn and David Leviathan) seems to have been packaged in the hopes that the lightning that made Juno an unignorable commodity a cultural phenomena will strike twice. Nick and Norah isn’t quite the assault to the teen romance genre that Juno was, and that’s both good and bad. Michael Cera’s Nick, Kat Denning’s Norah, and their assorted pals drift fluidly between irony-as-defense and taking both themselves, and the idea of love, very seriously. The result is a film that’s much more of a traditional teen romance, but also a more honest one.

Nick and Norah are two baby hipsters from New Jersey, strangers unwittingly linked by Tris, the shallow and slightly skanky ex-girlfriend who Nick inexplicably misses and whose frenemy games Norah listlessly tolerates. The three are thrown together at Arlene’s Grocery in the Lower East Side, where The Jerk-Offs, the otherwise all-queer band for which Nick plays bass (the singer does a hilariously deadpan Iggy Pop impersonation whilst fronting signature song, “(I Want To) Screw That Man”) opens for Bishop Allen. A number of plot contrivances send the title pair on an all night tour of Manhattan, ostensibly in search of a secret show by their favorite band and Norah’s lost, grotesquely drunk friend. But the kids are really on the lam, trying to outrun both Tris, who has decided in a fit of mean girl jealousy that she wants Nick back, and the night itself, Norah’s last before she has to make a major decision about her future.

Thought they may be, at least theoretically, aimed at the same audience, Nick and Norah and Cera’s last hit run the teenage outsider experience through very different filters. If Juno operated on a comic book level of gimmickry, with every line delivered as though it ended with an exclamation point and set dressing to match, Nick and Norah is an understated, comparatively arthouse-paced fairy tale, in which credible New York moments and teenage types are played a pitch shift or two closer to perfection than is reasonably plausible. The dreamy, grainy cinematography, full of halcyonic moments bathed in street lamp tints, makes everyone look both slightly sleazy and cherubic, as if they’re wearing blush and a lot of cherry Chapstick. The film’s general attitude towards mating is similarly a balance between precosity and innocence. The two main gay characters go cruising for a third to join them in their shaggin’ wagon, in which they drive around (ironically?) listening to death metal and serving as wise sages who coach the clueless straights in the ways of love and sex. Traditional heterosexuality is positioned as being sort of scary and gross, but sex itself is playful, sweet, and totally centered on the female orgasm. In some ways, it’s an empowerment fantasy for a very specific type of preteen girl, the type who will grow up to long for conventional romance even as they’re slightly too cynical for it.

The title and lead character names, of course, recall The Thin Man series of screwball romantic comedies about married, boozy detectives Nick and Nora Charles. If the allusion was intentional on the part of the novel’s authors, the material as translated here doesn’t make the most of the screwball tradition. Nick and Norah engage in a very different kind of banter, and in fact if there’s a single reason to see the film, it’s Cera and Dennings’ chemistry, which stems less from verbal play than from the counterpoint of her sulky, Cleopatra-eyed scowl to his bemused, wide-eyed smirk. These kids don’t seem to be colliding for the sake of generating sparks as often as they accidentally misinterpret or even deliberately antagonize the other. Thus, instead of a movie-long slow-but-steady build towards consummation, Nick and Norah’s courtship proceeds in fits and starts, with both boy and girl alternately getting up the courage to push things a little further, before shyly retreating after a misunderstanding or misplaced bravado leads to disappointment. This will probably ring more true for the average middle-class suburban high school kid than the tales of absurdly proactive boys and preternaturally poised girls that seem to fill most filmed media; this doesn’t mean that they won’t pretend to be above it. At the hybrid press screening/target audience sneak peek here in Toronto, a cadre of college-aged girls could be heard giggling from a back row during Nick and Norah’s most intimate and earnest moments. In the middle of one particularly tender scene, one of said girls loudly squealed, “It’s so corny!”

Nick and Norah may very well be a teen romantic comedy that plays not directly to teens, but to their two bracketing demographics. Its relative tameness may appeal most to tween girls who aspire to sleepless city nights (and who imagine “hooking up” as a long kiss followed by an ellipsis), while a certain segment of the post-collegiate class should relate (even if begrudgingly) to the completely sincere belief that the only things that truly matter in a mate are physical attraction and iPod compatibility.

• After the disappointment of Righteous Kill, which was blatantly sold as a Scorsese wannabe, it’s great to hear that Robert De Niro will play another mobster for his old friend Marty. This one will be adapted from the book I Heard You Paint Houses, about a real contract killer named Frank “The Irishman” Sheehan. It would be especially cool if Scorsese could find a part for Pacino, as well as a small role for Tina Fey to get kicked to death in.
• Also reunited: Yogi and Boo-Boo. The cartoon bears will now be computer-generated for a live-action/CG hybrid described as along the lines of Alvin and the Chipmunks. “Hey Boo-Boo, is that a poop in that pic-a-nic basket?”
• Also reunited, as expected: Jack Black and Angelina Jolie will reprise their vocal roles for a 3-D Kung Fu Panda sequel titled Pandamonium.
• Despite the fact that most people seem to want him to disappear from movies forever, Hayden Christensen has just received a three-picture deal with Screen Gems. Well, maybe he’ll do better with projects he picks out himself?
• Bollywood productions have shut down just as India’s blockbuster season begins, due to a strike from 22 separate unions, including extras and camera operators. The strike is expected to cause a lot of hardship and subsequent melodramatic situations followed by an epic song-and-dance number that also serves as new contract negotiations.