Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Some things I watched

I read Bringing Down the House a few years ago and anytime a book I read is made into a movie, I'll go see it. If it's bad, I'll just tell them I read the book so I was curious to see it.

21 had one major thing going against it from the get go. I hate Jim Sturgess. I don't know him from anything other than a two and half minute trailer for Across The Universe, but I hate him because of it. I wasn't expecting much more than a popcorn flick whose sole purpose was to make me want to go back to Vegas again, and that's pretty much what Im got.

It was very overstylized which is to be expected when Vegas was involved, Kevin Spacey was a little too over-the-top my problem with his character is that it was a little riduclous to believe a college professor can wield as much power as he did.

If I was going to rate this movie on a scale of 1 to 35, I'd probably give it around a 21.

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A welcome surprise from my Netflix queue, The King of Kong probably ranks in my top 5 documentaries right now. Any film that can have me mocking a whole subculture in the first ten minutes to me having a rooting interest in one of the characters less than seventy minutes later deserves alot of credit.

I would have thought these characters were made up if the concept of people caring about classic video game high scores wasn't so bizarre that it had to be true. You have the born loser Steve Wiebe who has had opportunities for success taken away from him on numerous occasions and finds solace in trying to beat the high score in Donkey Kong after getting laid off from work. Billy Mitchell is the classic arcade game Wunderkind who at one point held high scores in a few classic arcade games but his Donkey Kong record is the only one he still holds. He's the least physically intimidating person you could imagine but with a dark beard and a sweet, jet black mullet, he's gotten himself a "trophy" wife (that could only be considered hot in the video gaming subculture) and a bunch of hero worshippers who are his eyes and ears at the arcade. It's crazy. I couldn't recommend it more.

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