The King of Kong

Tonight I saw the movie The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters with Lemming and James Yoon.

This movie is right up there with Stardust, The Namesake, and The Transformers as my favorite films of the year. The movie was fantastic, and I encourage all of you to see it.

The basic premise involves a battle between two middle-aged men to obtain the world record in the arcade game Donkey Kong. (I spent a decent number of quarters on it, and it's pretty damned hard in my opinion. I found many of the older arcade games to be much easier than this one.) One of them, Billy Mitchell, is one of the hotshots from the "Golden Era" of arcade games. (The story of what they've done with their lives is told in the upcoming film, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, which is currently making the rounds in the film festivals and which I also really want to see. One of Mitchell's contemporaries was Steve Harris, the founder of a little magazine I like to call EGM.) He was depicted in the movie as a total asshole, which is also how I've read various articles depicting him over the years. The other is a newcomer to competitive gaming, Steve Wiebe, who (to put it mildly) was depicted in a much better light.

The film was amazing. The topic was really interesting, and the humor was rampant. (Wiebe's little girl had the funniest --- and wisest --- line of the film about people ruining their lives to get themselves into the Guinness Book of World Records. The background music included several songs that were both appropriate and awesome --- including Leonard Cohen's "Everybody Knows" and Animotion's "Obsession". There were some other recognizable tunes as well, such as the one that plays during the closing credits for which I wasn't properly braced (Techers: you've been warned).

We also saw some awesome trailers before the movie, so I now have a few more films that I am eagerly anticipating.

Anyway, The King of Kong gets my highest endorsement. Go see it!