The Billionty-Oneth Geek: Older Than 8 Since 1991

I first heard of Indie Game: The Movie while I was watching CBC News at work.  I was gobsmacked.  A documentary about video games, made by Canadians that was critically acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival.  What!? Indie Game follows four different independent game developers: Jonathan Blow (developer of Braid ), Ed McMillen and Tommy Refenes (developers of Super Meat Boy ) and Phil Fish (developer of Fez ).  With Ed, Tommy and Phil, we follow their lives as they attempt to get their games developed and launched.  We see their struggles with the industry, and their David and Goliath attitudes as they try to get their games out.  They each provide their reasons for why they’ve given up everything they have to develop games.  With Jonathan Blow, since his game was already released, we get a more reflective perspective.   Overall, Indie Game: The Movie was enjoyable.  Technically, it was a very sharp, clean looking do...

So before I talk about Jackass 3D , let me preface it with a real life story. So last week, I bared witness to a Jackass-like scenario. My work's office is on the 21st floor of a building in the upper downtown area where my office space is right by the windows, facing Toronto's west. I've got a great view of the city and an even better view of the apartment building that is right beside ours. So last Friday I was sitting at my desk and out of the corner of my eye, I see a bunch of teenagers hobbling on top of the roof. Bad. You see, the apartment building is about 20 storeys high — a long way to fall. And of course, teens are teens, and you know they're up to no good when they're on roofs. So they're smoking what they're smoking, drinking what they're drinking, walking around on the roof without any sense of balance. I ask one of the managers at the office whether we had the number for security in that building. She instead wisely calls the police. Wh...

Before I say anything, I want to note that this will be a SPOILER-FREE look at the film, just in case you're fearful of anything important being revealed. And I think that it's best to go in this way anyhow. After all, "Don't Let Anyone Tell You What It Is", is the tagline. I caught a screening of Catfish last night and I'm still reeling in from the whole experience. It has been circulating the film festivals over the past year, oftentimes stealing all the attention. The film has created an electric buzz over its audience, causing fervent discussions amongst the crowds. Catfish is a documentary about a young man named Nev, chronicling the heated relationship he made with a girl he met on Facebook. He's a New York photographer who connects with a family in Michigan after they see his work in a newspaper. They start sending him paintings of some of the photos he takes, painted by a 9 year old prodigy named Abby. He starts to develop a relationship wit...

Earlier last week I was browsing around on IMDB as I normally do and was looking up the movie Stigmata — a movie that I hadn't seen in a long time but enjoyed when I was a teen. I looked up its director, Rupert Wainwright, as I wasn't familiar with any of his works. Well, it turns out that he hasn't done too much since then but one of his upcoming movies is a movie called Waco due next year. I remember the Waco incident very faintly. I think I was only 8 or 9 years old at the time, but I remember seeing pictures of the big fire on newspaper covers everywhere. It caught me and my brother's attention as it graced the covers of those "Globe News" fake newspapers (you know, the ones at your grocery store that are filled with ridiculous stories like UFO's, big foot, and Elvis sightings?). I remember there was one particular cover story that claimed that the leader of the Waco incident, David Koresh, was in fact Satan himself. I don't know why those ne...

Strangely enough, I heard about Manufactured Landscapes on a gaming podcast ( 1Up's Oddcast ). I forget how the subject came about, but one of the hosts started talking about the movie and the subject piqued my interest. This award winning documentary is a showcase of photographer Edward Burtynsky's work. The subject matter deals specifically with China, a land that was not long ago 90% agrarian and 10% urban, but now is closer to 70% urban. Because of this drastic change over the decades, the landscape of the country has changed dramatically through industrialization. Burtynsky's photographs show us the destructivity of this change, but in a way, brings about the beauty from what would otherwise be monstrous images. To me, the most gripping imagery is in the first shot of the movie. It's a long 5 minute shot that slowly pans across an electronics factory in China. We see the workers working like ants, and there are probably a thousand of them lined up in rows buildin...

Afghan Star is a documentary that follows four individuals who have made it into the top ten finals of the show under the same name, "Afghan Star". As the name would suggest, the movie takes place in Afghanistan, a country that we don't regularly associate with glitz and glamour as much as we do war and strife. The show is basically Afghanistan's version of "American Idol" here in America. The movie shows us some of the hardships that the contestants have to overcome in order to chase their dreams. But their dreams don't seem much to be rooted in fame. Rather, it's that opportunity to express themselves through an artistic manner that seems most important; a facet that is rare in their culture. This was a powerful movie for me mostly because of my naivety in that I've never thought of the Afghan people in this way. We see and hear about Afghanistan in the news all the time and because of the news, I feel I've been manipulated to think that ...

When The Cove debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, it was received with wide acclaim, taking home the much coveted Audience Award, overcoming 879 other movies to take the win. Later in the year, it also took home the Audience Award at the Hot Docs Film Festival. So going into this movie, I had high expectations. At times, The Cove was tear jerking, at other times, brutal, but in the end, there's a great sense of triumph. The movie follows an activist named Ric O'Barry who is trying to stop the people in the Japanese town of Taiji from hunting dolphins. The dolphins are herded off into this secluded area of a national park, dubbed "The Cove", where they are then slaughtered by the fishermen/hunters. Because the dolphins are worth so much money, the town and the Japanese government protect the hunters from doing their deeds, even prohibiting O'Barry from entering the closed off area. The irony is that O'Barry who is now an activist was al...

When I first read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation , the stories he told of the fast food industry made me so disgusted that it threw me off of fast food for a good 3 or 4 months. So it was with some trepidation when I watched in Food, Inc . knowing that Schlosser had produced it... because... well I just couldn't go off of all food for 3 to 4 months. Food Inc. manages to cover a wide range of topics related to the food industry in an attempt to unravel the insidious and corrupt aspects of the business. We're shown how more and more of all the food products we see in the supermarkets are controlled by fewer and fewer companies. Often on food labelling, we'll see pictures of farms or farmers, yet the food in reality is produced at factories, not farms at all. The great irony. Perhaps one of the most sickening sights we see is at a chicken house operated under the Perdue company. We see how chickens are mass produced and how many of them often die because they can...

I had no idea what I was in for when I popped in Anvil: The Story of Anvil the other day. I'm not a big fan of heavy metal or 80's hair bands, but I read reviews on some boards and saw the aforementioned Anvil promote their band on Conan O'Brien early this week, so I decided to give them a shot. What a powerful movie this was; it will make grown men shed a tear. The movie opens up with a montage of interviews and video clips with various people in the metal industry talking about how awesome Anvil were back in the day. We're shown clips of them playing to crowds of thousands of people and on tour with big bands like White Snake, Poison and Bon Jovi amongst others. All these other bands grew to great success but for some reason, Anvil was left behind. Yet at the same time, they were apparently quite an influential band to many of the popular hair bands of the 80's including Motorhead, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and so on. After the brief intro, things pick up in...

Two documentaries in a row. Although Man on Wire is being touted as a favourite for an Oscar nomination and win, I much more enjoyed American Teen , one of the breakout films at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. By no means is this a great film or one that inspires hope like Man on Wire does, but this is still a damn enjoyable movie. The movie focuses on four teenagers in Warsaw, Indiana as they go through their final year of high school and of course we get to see all the drama that's related with it; there's the geek who's trying to find his true love and his identity, there's the artistic tortured soul who seeks to escape Indiana to live out her Hollywood dreams, there's the jock that lives with the pressure from his overbearing father, and finally the blonde bitchy "princess" who's the grade-A drama queen. That's all you really need to know as most of the joy is from watching their lives unfold. I guess it's similar to a lo...

Man On Wire is an auspicious documentary that follows a french man's dream of walking on a high wire between the World Trade Center in the 70's. It was quite an astonishing feat when it occured, making headlines worldwide. You need only Google the name Philippe Petit to find endless articles on all his high wire acts. The main story told is the WTC act, but stories of his other feats are also intertwined so that we get a sense of who he is and what other things he has accomplished. We discover that Philippe is a passionate man, one filled with hopes and dreams, and it was his dream as a young child to one day cross these immense towers... towers that at the time were not even constructed yet. The story is similar to something right out of a heist movie a la Ocean's 11 or The Bank Job , with a clearly defined goal outlined in the beginning and then quickly assembling a team of experts for each task that needs to be completed. As Philippe recounts the story, we are fille...

"Roman Polanski... In France, he's desired and in America, he's wanted." I first heard of Roman Polanski's controversy some nine years ago when my grade 11 english teacher brought it up after watching his Macbeth . Years later I learned a bit more about his background and tragedy after reading Helter Skelter , the book about the Charles Manson murders. Polanski's story is an intriguing one, a tragic one at that. He is the central subject of the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired . If you are unfamiliar with his works, Polanski is a world renowned director (and sometimes actor) with such classics as Chinatown , Rosemary's Baby , and Macbeth , but more recently he's directed The Pianist which earned him an Oscar. In 1969, his wife, the beautiful model and actress, Sharon Tate, was murdered by members of the Manson Family while she was 8 months pregnant. Polanski was out of town when it occured, and was in an emotional spiral afterwards. ...

I won tickets to an early screening of Religulous and took my brother to watch it earlier tonight. The film was directed by Larry Charles (of Seinfeld , Curb Your Enthusiasm , and Borat fame), but clearly this was the Bill Maher show. The movie follows Maher as he treks around the world trying to find out why people believe what they do. He is basically questioning them as to why they are so certain, as he himself tries to promote doub.t The movie primarily focuses on western religions, but in the latter half he tries to do a lightning round with other faiths (ie. Scientology, Mormonism, Islam, etc). He interviews a bevy of loony characters to ensure laughs, and oftentimes with a smug and arrogant flair. In that sense, the movie works as it balances with more serious talks as he learns about other religions. But more often than not, the discussions are with wacky people rather than learned professionals. One of the high points for me was a scene in a London park where he pretend...