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A few weeks ago I wrote a story about the wealth of video game documentaries that were out there or coming soon, and one of the commenters mentioned Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball. I hadn’t seen this before, and hadn’t even heard about it. It’s a documentary about the Pinball 2000 project that Williams Electronics, the world’s largest pinball manufacturer at the time, initiated to try and meld video games and pinball machines into one gaming unit. The effort ultimately failed, and signaled the death blow for pinball machines.

Director Greg Maletic could have focused on the entire history of pinball, from the early beginnings as “bagatelle” in the 1700s, to its current near-death rattle, but instead he chose to single out the Pinball 2000 project from Williams. He was able to speak with all of the players involved, except for the actual plug-pullers at Williams, and it’s an amazing documentary that stands as a testament to what could have been.

Maletic was a busy running a software development company when he first came across a Pinball 2000 machine. He says in the film’s press kit, “After a couple decades of video game playing, it got me interested in pinball again. This led me to wonder… how could this amazing thing have failed?” After watching his employees become obsessed with the game, he decided he wanted to make a documentary about the project. “If you take a look at a Pinball 2000 machine, you won’t think that anymore. It’s easy to see how pinball could have staved off its demise.”

When video games came along, pinball saw a quick and steady decline that was punctuated by short periods of success. When the coin-op video boom ended, pinball’s decline hastened and was further hurt when home video game consoles started ruling the market. Oddly enough, in 1993 pinball had one of its strongest years ever, thanks to licensed games like Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and The Addams Family from the year before (which is still the bestselling pinball machine ever). But, the writing was on the wall, and companies like Gottlieb, Capcom and Data East began selling off their pinball divisions of shuttering the doors. That was until 1998, when Williams thought they could fight the tide by bringing pinball and video games together. The saddest part? They almost did it.

Tilt: The Battle To Save Pinball fully explores the Pinball 2000 project, and talks to legendary pinball gaming developers George Gomez, Larry DeMar, Pat Lawlor, Roger Sharpe, Steve Kordek. You can plainly see their passion for game design when they talk about the project, but it’s really when George Gomez tries to find the words to explain how he felt after Williams shut down the pinball division that really drives everything home. He literally can’t speak, and it’s the most painful moment in the entire film.

The film documents every stage of the project from concept to creation, and details how pinball games are created from scratch. Although this was an entirely new concept they were asked to created in 18 month - the same amount of time they were given to create a standard pinball machine. They were making new modular games that could be changed out in just a few minutes, rather than crating games up and hauling them in and out of arcades, which is where most of the wear and tear comes from. You would Just ship out a new playfield, video, and cabinet art, and you’d have a whole new game. It allowed for on-screen interaction (via a reflected glass camera trick known as “Pepper’s Ghost”) between the pinball and the video, which was incredibly innovative for the time.

The irony is that while the first Pinball 2000 game, Revenge From Mars was a success, it was killed by the lackluster performance and poor gameplay of their second project, the Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace game. It was developed under a shroud of Lucas-required secrecy which didn’t allow other designers to weigh in on the gameplay. As a result the final product felt flat, and only sold just over 3,000 units. While it was a hit at the box office, it wasn’t in the gaming world, because of the gameplay and the fact that the game wasn’t completed in time to come out with the movie. There’s a lot of near misses like this that are covered in this documentary which helped kill the project, and caused Williams to focus on their cash cow: slot machines.

Like Who Killed The Electric Car and Tucker: The Man and his Dream, Tilt is one of those movies that makes you wonder “What if…” The film makes you realize if only a few things had gone differently, it might have helped save the pinball industry. Williams was the largest pinball manufacturer in the world, but when they killed this project, they also shut down their entire pinball division and haven’t made a game since. The only manufacturer left standing today is Stern Pinball, Inc, which actually employs many of the Williams pinball developers. But how much longer will they be around?

You can purchase a DVD of Tilt on their website for the low price of $20 plus shipping. It’s a huge value, because the second disc is loaded with extra material, including some great insights into game design, pinball or otherwise. My only complaint about this movie is that it’s too short. The documentary is only 60 minutes long, but the disc of extras more than makes up for that. If Maletic ever has the time and the money, I hope he develops some sort of a massive Ken Burns-style project about pinball. There is a lot of rich history to be explored there, and the games are just too beautiful not to see closeup on a big screen. Until then, you’ve got Tilt, which is a lot like pinball pornography.

So yesterday, the Los Angeles Film Critics made the stunning move of voting Wall-E as the Best Film of 2008. Stunning, because this is the first time the body has ever given their top honor to an animated film; stunning because last year, they gave it to the decidedly less commercial There Will Be Blood, thereby giving that film one of the boosts it needed to be nominated for Best Picture. The rest of the LAFCA awards were split amongst a wide range of films: Danny Boyle for director, Sean Penn for Actor, Happy-Go-Lucky’s Sally Hawkins as Actor, and, in the biggest wealth-spreading move of all, Waltz With Bashir as Best Animated Film.

Now, today, the New York Film Critics Circle are voting on thier awards as we speak, and the results are leaking in dribs and drabs via member Mike D’Angelo’s Twitter stream. Like their LA counterparts, the New York critics have so far shared the love amongst a number of pictures––Rachel Getting Married for its screenplay, Slumdog Millionaire for its cinematography, Hawkins for Actress, Mike Leigh for Best Director––and so unless Happy-Go-Lucky takes Best Picture, we can either call this magnanimity, or we can call it what it likely is: there is not a single film this year that stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Sure, some critics have favorites, but some of the best loved films of the year are also the least critically defensible. Those critics sucked in by Slumdog Millionaire, this year’s little choo choo that could, obviously have not as of yet been able to convince their (cynical? rational?) peers of its alleged total brilliance. It seems to be Sean Penn’s year, but beyond its performances the love for Milk doesn’t seem to run deep (or maybe it does — see update below). And everybody seems to agree that the bulk of the much-anticipated year-end expected Oscar sweepers –– the Benjamin Buttons, the Revolutionary Roads ––are “enh” at best.

It’s still super, super early; Oscar nominations are almost six weeks away. But as I said in an IM conversation yesterday, if 2008 is an interesting year, it’s only because the films engineered for attention haven’t been that interesting.

UPDATE, 12:46 PM: D’Angelo just Twittered that the NYFCC has selected Milk as Best Picture. The NYFCC are known for their contentious voting sessions, and there was some delay before the announcement of the final award, so stories of inter-Circle squabbling may be soon to come.