Wednesday, March 19, 2008

The Good, the Bad and the Really Eccentric

We seem to be on a documentary kick when it comes to rentals lately. This first one, Crazy Love, is appropriately named. A woman ends up happily married to a man who previously went to prison for hiring someone to throw acid in her face, blinding and disfiguring her. Seems incomprehensible, and I hate to admit it, but I actually ended up understanding why she did it. I could relate. Love can make a person do some mighty strange things, and what a couple these two are!

King of Kong, a Fistful of Quarters. This is one I was curious about anyway, based on high Tomatometer and Dr. Monkey's recommendation. We saw the trailer a lot at the Alamo Drafthouse, partly because they staged an event surrounding it (it gets a mention in the DVD extras), they brought in a vintage Donkey Kong game and Steve Wiebe, in person, attempted to break the record (again) in the theater lobby. ----> video.

The hard-core arcade gamers in the film were really a very weird bunch, not bad-weird, just interesting-weird, with Roy Shildt (Mr. Awesome) winning the Superstar of Weird prize.

The Real Dirt on Farmer John is about a man who "bloomed where he was planted" (sorry about the cornball pun). John had a traditional farming background, and managed to weather the economic troubles of that profession, plus major problems relating to his traditional Illinois farmer neighbors (who didn't much appreciate his "hippie" lifestyle of the 60s and John's love of wearing feather-boas while riding the tractor -- stuff like that didn't win many Brownie points to put it mildly). He turns his luck around by transforming his land into an organic, community farming operation, and becomes a mentor and inspiration for many (feather boas and all). The movie comes stamped with kudos from Al Gore! [IMDB]

1 comment:

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

Thanks for the link and I'll have to check out that farmer movie.