Daily Archives: September 14, 2007

Classic Game Room

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

The wild and woolly days of Internet start-ups aren’t completely behind us, but certainly the
dotcom bust of the new millennium brought a lot of dreams crashing to the floor
in a relatively permanent fashion. Still, of course, every one of those
entrepreneurs got a raw deal, and remains the star of their own story. It
wasn’t necessarily their idea (and certainly not them) that failed, so much as the mechanisms around them, right?

Classic Game Room, a title which charts, as its subtitle proclaims,
the rise and fall of the Internet’s greatest videogame review show — a
low-budget, self-produced program which, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, reviewed
arcade classics like Frogger, Duck Hunt, Missile Command, Perfect Dark
and Yars’ Revenge in the shadow of a
burgeoning, increasingly pixilated videogame craze. Hosted by Mark Bussler and
David Crosson, the show was a relaxed, beer-swilling affair that ran from
November 1999 to October 2000 on FromUSALive.com, a start-up that would
eventually succumb to the same cold fate of so many other mismanaged
businesses. While certainly self-celebratory, this title’s advantage lies in its
sardonic nature and wholehearted embrace of its cult/niche status.

Helmed by Bussler, the director of nonfiction titles Expo: Magic of the White City and Johnstown Flood, this movie is mostly a
fawning glimpse back in time, with a few modern day, context-providing
interview segments interspersed around plenty of footage from seven years ago.
The two hosts’ dry rapport is a real pleasure to watch, even if a little of this
goes a long, long way. Classic Game Room
is essentially a one-note inside joke, aimed at hardcore gamers. While bits
like a mock memorial to giant flying ostriches (part of the show’s Joust review) are amusing, there’s
overall not enough of an objective glimpse of the behind-the-scenes business
considerations related to the show’s demise to give this title any true,
second-rail parallel economic perspective.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Classic Game Room is presented in a 4×3 full-screen aspect ratio,
with a solid Dolby digital 2.0 stereo audio track. The DVD includes a feature-length
audio commentary track from writer-director Bussler, three video blogs on
production (including a bonus review of Berzerk
for Atari 2600) and a collection of trailers for this and other niche titles. All
in all, for those seeking a nostalgic fix of Gen-X ruminations on Dreamcast
titles like SeaMan and Sega GT, this flick is a good time. To
others, it might be a little too narrowly defined in its scope. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here.
B- (Movie) B- (Disc)

An Email From Alan Rickman…

Interviews

So once upon a time I had a phone interview set up with Alan Rickman, and then, when I slipped up and called him Hans Gruber, he unleashed a torrent of obscenity upon me and hung up. Or he simply stood me up, missed calling me. Or maybe had an assistant call in and cancel. One of the three, I honestly can’t remember. (Such is the curse of an active imagination.)

For the full piece, from FilmStew, click here.

Germany Reverses Valkyrie Ban

Ephemera


BBC News is reporting that the German government has reversed a decision to ban Tom Cruise’s new movie from filming at a key World War II memorial site. Named after the coded, secret plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, director Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie stars Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who was put to death for plotting to kill the German leader in 1944. A previous request to film at the site of his execution was initially rejected, but defense ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe said the change of heart came after officials were convinced the film would portray post-war Germany in a good light, and underline the fact that “barbarism did not win, but rather a democratic Germany finally arose.”

Jodie Foster on The Daily Show

Ephemera, Musings

I just last night polished off an episode of The Daily Show from September 11, with guest Jodie Foster on hand to promote The Brave One, and if anyone needed reminding that she’s a great personality and totally a movie star, they should flag their TiVo for reruns of this episode.

The formidable intelligence and almost otherworldly sense of focus — I think that comes through in her work, and people remember that. But I guess it’s because Foster does relatively few films, does sparse TV interviews to promote them, and then totally stays out of the public spotlight apart from these projects that people tend to sort of forget just how funny and witty she is. Hers is a low-key wattage, but one that shines sincerely, as her banter with Jon Stewart proved. Talking up her film’s Death Wish roots, she says, “It’s a very sophisticated movie — there’s a lot of polemic, a lot of political overtones — but it’s also a really unsophisticated movie that works in a very primal, elemental way.”

December Boys

Film Reviews

To answer the question that will completely define the life and
memory of this movie after it hits DVD, yes, Harry Potter loses his
virginity in December Boys. Still, Daniel Radcliffe is not prancing about nude with a horse, as he did in the West End production of Equus
that’s likely headed to Broadway next year. So, when you’re ordering
your priorities for shirtless Radcliffe entertainment, plan accordingly.

For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.

Pitt, Norton Agree to Play Together

Casting About, Musings

I’m somewhat late to this party, but Variety (in addition to other outlets) is reporting that Brad Pitt and Edward Norton have agreed to re-team for State of Play, a political drama penned by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Tony Gilroy, and set to be helmed by The Last King of Scotland director Kevin Macdonald.

In the film — based on the six-hour British miniseries of the same name — Norton will play a congressman whose speedy rise is
threatened by an investigation into the death of his mistress. Pitt
plays a politico-turned-journalist whose relationship with the lawmaker is
compromised when he oversees his newspaper’s investigation into the
murder, and subsequently develops a relationship with the pol’s estranged wife.

Universal is fast-tracking the project in anticipation of next year’s strike, which means a quick turnaround for Norton, who will jump into State of Play right after he wraps The Incredible Hulk. This is good news all around — for Macdonald, certainly, who scores a worthy narrative follow-up to The Last King of Scotland — but also Pitt and Norton, who just really seem to have an excellent rapport with one another. Yes, Fight Club was iconic and ahead of its time, and the glow of that collaboration is part of the allure. But there’s just something about their individual off-screen personas that really jibes and rubs me the right way — maybe it’s the old refrain from the Pet Shop Boys’ “Opportunities” — and I have a feeling this cleverly inverted casting will be great fun to watch.

Studio Screening Secrets & Lies

Irritations, Musings

Studios and publicists play convoluted games of keep-away with movies all the time — that’s just part of the business. A writer is only as powerful as their outlet and accrued reputation (sometimes the same thing, sometimes not), and even then that doesn’t always hold. When word comes down that the fix is in, the games of suppression begin. Still, the brazenness with which certain studios and PR companies are now… oh, let’s say dissembling in making sure that certain films stay off the radar of legit press (read: trades, weekly papers) is rather dispiriting.

Two of next week’s wide releases, Good Luck Chuck and Resident Evil: Extinction, are the most recent examples, among many, of this new culture. LionsGate and Sony subsidiary Screen Gems, respectively, are waging brutally aggressive campaigns of containment and repression with these movies; they don’t want them reviewed at all, but instead of just saying that, they’re playing around and trying to pull selective back-door strings, garnering feature coverage and a few free-pass (presumably friendly) reviews on power-demographic and/or fan-boy sites. They’re trying to stack the deck, in other words.

Sometimes these tactics take the guise of convenient lies of omission, which leave plausible deniability intact. (“Oh, that was a promotional screening, so our office didn’t know about it…”) Other times publicists will just lie, plain and simple. All of this, flat out, is an attempt to dumb down writing about film, to constrict and tamp it down. Studios and PR brethren won’t come out and say it, but they regard a handful of nouveau riche, Internet-only publications as more malleable, and thus less apt to offer criticism that could be perceived as hurting their product. There’s an element of truth to this, of course, but this is a short-sighted, loser’s game, predicated on symbiotic relationships that can’t and won’t continue forever.

I don’t begrudge studios the right to screen or not screen their product whenever they want, honestly, but such decisions really should be applied more evenly, and with an eye toward outlets that are reputable and fairly comprehensive in their coverage. Trying to “pre-screen” who you think is going to like a film is exhausting and stupid, for everyone involved. And for what it’s worth, I respect a lot more the publicists who are upfront about their complicity in executing decisions with which they might not agree.