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Quint's look at Sundance flicks CHASING GHOSTS (a video game doco) and KING OF CALIFORNIA starring Michael Douglas' crazy beard!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another pair of reviews. This is the first I've written since leaving Utah. I've seen 5 or 6 movies so far here in Santa Barbara, but before I can start writing them up, I need to bang out the remainder of my Sundance films. Here are my views on KING OF CALIFORNIA with Michael Douglas and Evan Rachel Wood and the video game documentary CHASING GHOSTS!!!
KING OF CALIFORNIA
Monki visited the Caribbean last year where he sent in pictures of a Q&A with Michael Douglas with his crazy wildman beard. I saw it and I thought Douglas was going insane or senile or both and then I saw the first trailer for KING OF CALIFORNIA and then felt bad about thinking Douglas was ratshit insane.
Douglas plays Charlie, a nutty single father thrown in the looney bin for 2 years, getting out to find his now 15 year old daughter, Miranda (played by Evan Rachel Wood), has successfully manipulated the system to gain a complete independence. She has a fast food job, she dropped out of school, she bought a car on ebay, etc. She was able to make child services believe she was with relatives and relatives believe she was in foster care, etc.
When Charlie is released from the nuthouse, Miranda's life is thrown out of whack. She had slipped into a life of convenience, keeping her responsibilities light and enjoying the peace and quiet. Though she's a dropout, she's an incredibly intelligent girl. Suddenly, Charlie is forced back into her life and he came back with a crazy plan. He thinks he cracked a code hidden in the writings of a Spanish Monk who was one of the first to travel the American West. He had a cache of gold coins and Charlie thinks he knows how to track his route, ending in his final resting place and the as yet undiscovered treasure.
Is Charlie crazy? Is he on to something? You don't know as you go through. There are moments that lead you to believe one way for a few minutes, then another soon thereafter. It's not until the end where you get a definite answer one way or the other.
Alexander Payne produced this flick for first time writer/director Mike Cahill and it feels like it belongs in the same universe as ABOUT SCHMIDT or SIDEWAYS.
Douglas is vibrant and alive, his blue eyes flashing between concern, insanity and intelligence at a moment's notice. He gives a very great "big" performance that has a lot of depth when you look closer at it. Evan Rachel Wood has a really difficult role. She was a character of contradictions. She wants to be independent, but she also wants the love of her father. She fights to keep her quiet life, but is tempted by her father's crazy scheme. She's responsible, but does some very irresponsible things.
Her character could have come off as either completely unreal or annoying, but Wood makes Miranda so likable, so sympathetic that you never really question her getting caught up with her dad's crazy scheme.
The film is a little long, but I never found myself bored. It's got that trademarked Payne deliberate pacing. But, like Payne's work, there's always an interesting character to watch, even during the slowest periods.
First Look picked it up after Fox Searchlight dropped it pre-fest, so it'll roll out this year, I'm sure.
CHASING GHOSTS
This flick was one of the many on the Sundance preview list compiled by myself and Rav. How could it not be? It's a documentary on the arcade craze and the superstars that briefly shined in the early '80s. I don't know about you, but I grew up in arcades in the Bay Area. TILT, BULLWINKLE'S... hell, I spent my 10th birthday in an Aladdin's Castle in the local mall... after hours, with 90% of the games set on free-play. That was a good night filled with all my friends playing the TMNT game and all the classics like Pac Man and Centipede.
This doc is about a handful of nerds who became the best of the best in 1982. They are superstars, experts at certain games, with egos and rivalries to match.
The documentary is focused on creating a reunion based around a 1982 photoshoot for Life Magazine, which featured the highest scoring geeks at the time set up in the middle of a small town street leaning on top of a row of video game cabinets.
There are some crazy motherfuckers in this movie. There's one guy who collects some... graphic art. There's another that lied about his scores to stay #1. Then there's the one accused of lying about his scores... who probably did. He calls himself Mr. Awesome or something like that and comes across as a huge dickhead, an egomaniac who made his own comic book featuring black and white pictures of himself with a 50 year old woman with huge, bare tits going on crazy adventures. He also calls one of the champions named Billy Mitchell (an even bigger ego maniac, but he has a mullet) "Silly Bitchell," which was so juvenile that coming out of a middle aged, balding man... it just made me laugh. "I call him Silly Bitchell because he is a silly bitch."
The coolest part of the doc had to be the animated segues. They'd be talking about a specific game and then we'd see this 3D animation that totally looks like the world. Let's take Space Invaders. The camera flies around the world, first on you moving back and forth, hiding behind the hills as the lines of aliens creep down the page and then up the ranks of the aliens as they're blasted. There are at least a half-dozen of those, each representing a different game. Too cool.
I know this review is a little lame, but I'm finding it hard to talk in-depth about the film without taking away the joy of watching this film. On a purely nostalgic level, this is a joy to watch, but the guys are so crazy you can't help but be pulled along with the film.
This is going to be a popular one amongst the readers of this site and other nostalgic '80s geeks.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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I'd buy one of those table-top Pac-Man arcade machines they used to have in Pizza Huts. I see Amazon advertising them all the time. Any references to The Last Starfighter?
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I remember hitting the mall and heading for the Arcade, right after hitting Kay-Bees of course. For months there was a crowd around that game. I must have beat the fucker 6 times ands till come back for more. I remember after you beat it you and the three other guys who you had been playing with would look at each other and give satisfied knowing knods as if you had just successfully taken a hill from the Viet Kong. Good times. Three friends and I played it through on an emulator disc on X-Box a few years back. We were stupified as to how difficult Krang was. Of course that game was a mere precursor to the original Mortal Kombat. The first time I ever saw a guy get uppercut into a pit full of spikes was like a religious experience. My two favorite things, horror movies and videogames, had been made as one. Joy.
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Ha, I wanna see this. Middle aged balding nerds indeed!
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during the scene where they track down a 300 lb. Pac-Man trying to score some powerpills in Compton.
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Bally's Aladdin's Castle arcades, at Fayette Mall in Lexington, KY, the #1 game that EVERYBODY wanted to play was Dragon's Lair. They had a second monitor attached to the top of the cab so people could watch it since there was always a huge crowd around it. That was truly the largest arcade I had ever been in. There were hundreds of games. It was geek heaven. Now there's a food court where it used to be. The times, they are a-changin'.
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Unless your japanese or over 20 the arcade is pretty much dead thanks to the home console, but thoese who remember wasting away in front of thoese glow boxes i am sure chasing ghosts will be a blast.
gonna have to keep my eye out for this flick....i'll never forget that hacked street fighter i used the play. -
I remember the shock of having to battle your friend to the death at the end of the game.
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Did anyone ever beat Mr. Big at the end of NARC? I always ran out of rocket bombs. Any hints?
Killer clowns are still scary! -
The end battle of Double Dragon was crazy! You just spent hours and tons of quarters working together to beat the game and then your dickhead friend beats you senseless with a bat, gets the girl, and the glory. SUXXX!
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The first film to be seen by a negative number of people.
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I remember my elementary school days in rural Kentucky, when we would visit Lexington for sporting events and academic competitions. Getting to stop at the mall and the arcade was the always the highlight of every trip.
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Four games, plus an amazing cabinet.
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The video game show with host Geoff Edwards. I loved that show!
You always got a preview of the new games coming soon to your arcade. That's where I saw Q-bert, Robotron, Journey, Dragon's Lair etc. for the first time. It was so exciting when the games you saw on TV came to your arcade. -
The arcade version of Clin Eastwood's Firefox. The game showed clips from the film and I think they used the plate shots from the film in the game as well when you had to fly through cannions.
Also one summer in Mallorca I was dead hooked on Splatter house. Nothing better than to be a Jason Vorhees clone beating monsters and zombies to shit. Good times.
Is there a trailer for Chasing Ghosts? I want to see this sucker bad. -
I used to play Splatterhouse on my uncle's Turbo-Grafix 16, along with Bonk's Adventure, and golf.
Turbo Grafix 16 you left TOO SOON! -
I remember (some of these have already been said) 1.)NARC 2.)Lethal Enforcers 3.)Smash TV 4.)The Simpsons Arcade Game 5.)Tron 6.)Pole Position 7.)Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. I'm trying to surf the web to jog my memory but my fucking work blocks any site that is scanned with 'video games', sweet. I wonder if I could file a discriminatory law suit against my corporation on behalf of geeks and dorks like myself.
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BOOM SHACKA LACKA!!!!!!!!
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Star Castle, Front Line, Jungle King, Asteroids, Gorf, Gauntlet, Defender, Galaga, Robotron. Ms. Pac Man was really huge when it came out, too, and improved on the deep Pac Man mythos. Another big one a few years later was the Star Wars game where you flew the X-Wing. Like Star Castle and Tempest, it had those awesome vector graphics or whatever they were called.
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...Missle Command.
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Jan 29, 2007 11:05:49 AM CST
I love almost all the AICN catchphrases but...
by judge dredds dirty undies
THIS YEAR'S LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is really fucking shit. AICN catchphrases GOTTA EAT.
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About the ET cartridge for the Arari 2600 I'd probably go see it. That was messed up. You just fall in the pit, float out, fall in a pit, over, and over, and over...
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Judge Dredd, The originator of the LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE stuff I think was banned and now has returned as Terry Bollea. LOOK AT HIS STYLE, HIS LEXICON!
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No one could beat The Ghoul in NBA Jams. I always had Brad Daughtery and Marc Price. Of course, I used passwords and set the game to big-head mode!
HE'S ON FIRE! -
Greatest game ever. Also loved Rainbow Islands. And I finished Outrun on each ending!! Good times
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Y'all know it!
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to seeing Chasing Ghosts. I grew up playing arcade games. Some of the greats: TMNT, Simpsons, Star Wars Trilogy, House of the Dead, Virtua Cop, Asteroids, X-Men, Avengers, Alien vs. Predator, MK2, Samurai Showdown, Outrun, and Off Road Derby. Ahh the memories.
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The documentary about the Street Fighter II Championships? Anyone? Anyone? Doesn't seem to be available on DVD...
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Battlezone! Zaxxon! Galaga! Robotron 2084! Phoenix! Marble Madness! Popeye! Crazy Climber! Can I get some love for Crazy Climber?
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I'm not counting Pong and the gazillion clones, sequels, and sequels to clones of Pong - just video game systems based on cartridges. No home computers either or else we'll be here all day. Besides the Atari VCS/2600, there was the Odyssey2, Intellivision, Bally Astrocade, Vectrex, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, and that's just off the top of my memory. I could look it up, but I think there was even a Sega home console that predated the SMS in some markets, if not America. ColecoVision was not to be fronted on, it came damn close to bringing arcade-quality graphics home. Donkey Kong on ColecoVision looked like actual Donkey Kong for the most part.
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Ahh, yes the classic Tron 4-in-1. Shooting those ants to get to the top of the screen, check. Light cycles - check (I still remember how to do it...you gotta make a P shape on the screen and trap that idiot in the loop of the P). Shooting holes in that descending cone thingy - check. And then there's the freakin' tanks maze part where you have to use the spinner to move your turret - whilst also moving the tank with the joystick. Too much co-ordination required for an eight year old, I think. I also played a lot of BOMBJACK, KUNG FU MASTER (remember that, you just walk from right to left, kicking and punching dudes, and on later levels they throw in snakes and MIDGETS to miz it up), OUT RUN, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (I still remember that heart-hurling fucker saying 'Soon, Kali Ma will rule the world' when he kills you), PAPERBOY (everyone wanted to play it because of the cool handlebar controllers), the STAR WARS sit-down-in-the-cabinet game, and DRAGON'S LAIR, which again, everyone wanted to play, but nobody had any idea what to do and the game was over after about ten seconds.
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Ah, the SMS. My buddy had that growing up. Remember Space Harrier, Fantasy Zone, and Ghostbusters. That system was legit, with some great games. I also had Coleco Vision (but can barely remember it) and the Turbo Grafix 16, that was a quality system as well. The most rare system I had was the Atari Lynx, hand held. I think Atari tried to release their own 64 bit machine back in the day but that was the time I sort of 'retired' from video games. It's funny, if you put a system in front of me I'd probably play for hours but I just don't anymore or actively seek one out.
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Where a large portion of my allowance went every week. I used to loiter for HOURS just watching people play games. Arcades were the Studio 54 for the pre-teen crowd.
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Was the first system to start keeping kids out of the arcades. The games were starting to look & play just like the cabinet versions and I never had one. But my jaw dropped the first time I played a Colecovision Donkey Kong demo in a store. Remember the segment in the movie Nightmares where Emilio Estevez battles "The Bishop Of Battle" and eventually loses, thus becoming part of the game....Creepy! j/k
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In Greece the consoles came late. From 85 to 90 half greeks had an Amstrad and the other half had an Amiga or an Atari ST ,... It was madness... Bombjack, Basket master, wonderboy,Shinobi, Kung fu Master, International Karate +, Double Dragon, Saboteur, Chase HQ, Rick Dangerous and of course the best beat em up of all... Target Renegade.... the Amiga guys had better machines and better grafics. Speedball 2, Nitro, Final Fight, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Silkworm so many great games. Then they decided to bring all the consoles in one year. In 1990 we all of a sudden had to choose between Gameboy, NES, Megadrive (your Genesis) and Sega master system. Gameboy kicked all asses. So many hours on so many games. Alex Kidd, Forgoten Worlds on the SMS and Double Dragon , Tetris, Metroid, Robocop on my Gameboy... Then the SNES came along. I cannot describe the obsession i had over Street Fighter. Mario Kart and The Star wars games , NBA JAM , ROCK N ROLL RACING!!!!! , Contra, Mortal Kombat 2, what can I say I was hooked... The Arcades are currently banned over here but in those days you could not be a 15 yr old and not be impressed by Mortal Kombat, Golden Axe, Terminator 2, Super Sidekicks, Samurai Showdown, Virtual Cop, Tekken and many others... I remember having a SNES and waiting fot the MK game to have the fatalities and the blood . Those Genesis bastards won that battle .. They also had Sonic... and Streets of Rage.... Great Times... We are due for video games documentaries.
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In Greece the consoles came late. From 85 to 90 half greeks had an Amstrad and the other half had an Amiga or an Atari ST ,... It was madness... Bombjack, Basket master, wonderboy,Shinobi, Kung fu Master, International Karate +, Double Dragon, Saboteur, Chase HQ, Rick Dangerous and of course the best beat em up of all... Target Renegade.... the Amiga guys had better machines and better grafics. Speedball 2, Nitro, Final Fight, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Silkworm so many great games. Then they decided to bring all the consoles in one year. In 1990 we all of a sudden had to choose between Gameboy, NES, Megadrive (your Genesis) and Sega master system. Gameboy kicked all asses. So many hours on so many games. Alex Kidd, Forgoten Worlds on the SMS and Double Dragon , Tetris, Metroid, Robocop on my Gameboy... Then the SNES came along. I cannot describe the obsession i had over Street Fighter. Mario Kart and The Star wars games , NBA JAM , ROCK N ROLL RACING!!!!! , Contra, Mortal Kombat 2, what can I say I was hooked... The Arcades are currently banned over here but in those days you could not be a 15 yr old and not be impressed by Mortal Kombat, Golden Axe, Terminator 2, Super Sidekicks, Samurai Showdown, Virtual Cop, Tekken and many others... I remember having a SNES and waiting fot the MK game to have the fatalities and the blood . Those Genesis bastards won that battle .. They also had Sonic... and Streets of Rage.... Great Times... We are due for video games documentaries.
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Worst movie attempt to "cash in" on the video game craze. 80's sex romp that takes place in an arcade. They couldn't afford to license the artwork and graphics for most of the games, so the cabinets are generic looking and you never see the hits of that time. Best reference: The opening of "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" shows what the 80's arcade was like in all its glory.
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"I'm not going back there..."
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Who's the bitch NOW??!!??
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Lynx was a very good system indeed - a bit hefty size and price-wise, but way ahead of its time in that its graphics and sound were beyond all other portables until the GameBoy Advance came out... but the 64-Bit Jaguar was total garbage, and a sad final note for Atari. It would be like if Spielberg had died during post-production on WAR OF THE WORLDS... just tragic and a totally unworthy end to a legendary figure.
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Holy shit, that's such a great analogy. (I'm serious, it's difficult to express tone in TB's). Was the Jaguar really that bad?
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Hey, very interesting. What part of rural Kentucky did you grow up in? Because I, too, grew up in rural Kentucky. Lincoln County to be precise. Living an hour away from Lexington was harsh, because I was so close to all the Aladdin's Castle excitement, but didn't get to be there very often. Usually only on holidays or, as you stated, during school trips. Rest assured, though, whenever I was there, I was in that arcade, wasting quarters and just hanging around. Several good games have been mentioned here. I was always partial to Tron and Robotron. I recall seeing tron at the Danville Cinemas when it came out, and then when it was over, I walked across the parking lot to the Kentucky Arcade and played the game. Talk about heaven...
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In half a dozen years of attending "The Dance," this was the absolute greatest promotion ever. Gotta prop the publicists for this one.
Talk about a great idea, they took over a storefront -- an art gallery, I think -- and for a few days, they turned it into a full-blown, old school arcade stocked with classic games: Tron(!), Pac Man, Missile Command, Joust, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Tempest, Centipede and more ... all set to free play! I was in geekified heaven and found myself visiting the spot multiple times daily. Got to chat with the filmmakers who were really cool dudes and thanked them for doing it.
Oh and the film? AWE-some. They documented the period, caught up with ex-champs and, most importantly, they accorded the subjects deserved respect. Someone distribute this NOW. -
What a great game that was! Though it was also the one that was most often broken, due to people slamming both joysticks up and down all day.
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I fondly recall the greatest gaming age of all time: 80's arcades. I LOVED going to the arcades from the early 80's(I remember the day Xevious came out in 1982, one of my ALL time favorites) til the late 80's. My fave games are NARC(forget GTA 3, this was visceral hyper violence with hookers, exploding limbs and drugs way before Mortal Kombat), as well as Double Dragon 1 and 2, Strider(such a glorious dynamic), TMNT(no way you could get 4 strangers to cooperate together now days), Toobin, The Ninja Warriors(one of THE best soundtracks next to Rastan), the deluxe cabinet of OutRun, Rampage,
Vs Super Mario Bros, Golden Axe, APB, etc. Thankfully thru modern day compilations and emulators everyone can relive these classics, but nothing can replace the time these actually came out. Oh, and Im STILL in my 20's despite being an avid gamer since the days of Centepede and Pacman:) I feel really bad for kids growing up today who will never know the glory of the old games. I wrote a song called "1989" that's an ode to this great arcade era: http://www.xenocanon.com/mp3.php -
Im very glad the Wizard finally came to dvd. I absolutely love that film.
For me tho, it was all about Tilt, Aladdin's Castle and "The Game Room" in Sacramento California circa 1985-1989:) Back then, it was ok to be preteen and dropped off at the arcades all day. -
Oh yes! .... Speedball 2 .....'ice cream'!!!!
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"Kill the humanoid. Kill the intruder!"
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These are a few of my favorite arcade memories. My brother, Father and me pounding away at Double Dragon at the local 7-11 on weekends, along with Alien Syndrome, HEAVY BARREL!!! and Ikari Warriors. Then at the Pizza Hut playing Gauntlet, Bad Dudes, Golden Axe, and Bubble Bobble. Then there were the large arcades after school huddled with friends around TMNT, X-men, Avengers, Smash TV, SF II, Lethal Enforcers, MK I and II, and Knights of the Round. Good times all of them. My solo faves were Strider, Bionic Commando, Rad Mobile (the car you sat in that tilted with every turn), Black Tiger, and Magic Sword.
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