Wednesday
Nov042009
26 - It's ON Like 'King of Kong'
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 8:09AM This is our half-year anniversary, and what better movie to review than the winner of our Last Exit to Nowhere giveaway @charlesyi! His winning selection was 'The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters'.
In addition to this being 6 months, a fan selection, and a contest winning entry, it's also our first documentary. KoK follows competetive Donky Kong players as they try to break a high score set TWENTY years before.
Have you played Donkey Kong recently? It's REALLY effing hard...
Buy 'The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters' on DVD!
tagged documentary, episode, independent, review
documentary, episode, independent, review
Reader Comments (6)
AAAAAAAAH, this MOVIE!
You know, now that you guys've made the parallel, I think I understand how it feels to be a true michael moore believer. I've been essentially taught mega-hippy-style, no-holds-barred, heavy-heanded skepticism of the man, but I guess my guard is completely down when it comes to other authors/editors/FILTHY HIJACKERS. I'm no better than the Mitchell cronies, man! I'm a sucker!
I feel like I'm in high school again, arguing over he said - she said like my life depended on it. Probably why the debate polarises into the former and higher-ground disdain. You can't get into this argument without turning into a muckraker.
Fascinating. This movie's worse than politics.
Zaxxon...going to have Zaxxon dreams now.
LOL!
Hey Zac!
Lee and I got into a REALLY tiffy "discussion" on the nature of truth in documentary. Whether you can have true objectivity in film. Just the simple act of turning a camera on and pointing it at something means that the man behind the camera has decided that one direction is more important than another, and we all know (thanks to reality TV) that editing can make the exact same footage look like any "story" the producers want.
We eventually decided that the only way to have some sense of objectivity would be to fore-warn the audience as to the perspective, and then employ NO editing. For example:
"Lee & Juan are proud to present, 6 complete hours of Sunset Blvd, from a camera facing west."
Least. Entertaining. Documentary. EVAR.
Hey LonelyPond!
For us it was all about Tempest and Galaga. I think those are still really fun arcade games.
Donkey Kong, though, not fun... Never been fun... Never WILL be fun...
I just saw this and I have to say that I really liked it. If the focus was really Donkey Kong, it would have been a lot less enjoyable. Don't get me wrong - I grew up on these things, too, spending all of my allowance attempting to crush my brother at Joust. But you can take out the video machines in this movie and replace them with knitting needles, tap shoes, pianos, darts or any other competitive hobby and you can essentially get the same result. It's a human interest story.
Though I realize the story was askew, I don't think the film makers had to work very hard to make Billy out to be a dickhead. He did a pretty good job of that himself, just by opening his mouth. Being one of those obnoxiously sincere people myself, I was SO on Steve's side from the first frame he was in. I had a lot of fun playing into the director's hand by putting the two of them in little 'good' and 'bad' boxes for the duration of the movie. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see the older woman playing Qbert at the competition, though. I wonder if she beat the record ...
Thanks for reviewing it!
Hey Lisa!
Yeah Billy pretty much puts himself out there as kind of a douche, but I think the interesting thing about the way the doc is edited is apparently Billy and Steve are actually friendly. Some even describe them as being pals. That's where I question the film's "perspective".
Other than that it is entertaining as hell.