A documentary about indie game makers, specifically Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes creators of, Super Meat Boy, Phil Fish, creator of FEZ, and Jonathan Blow creator of Braid, one of the highest-rated games of all time.
(Super Meat Boy)
LIke most people, I enjoy a good nerd movie. I like watching nerds at play, doing things that they love to do. See also, Dungeon Masters, which is the first doc I've seen where you get to watch nerds LARPing. If there are others, please let me know.
There's something incredibly sweet about Indie Game. You get a little philosophy of game creation. A little bit of talk about how these games are constructed, how developers move from sketch to program, some philosophical thoughts on user perspective. Jonathon Blow is a poet. Edmund McMillen gives you a little window into the metaphors and nightmares of his childhood and how they connect up with game experiences he creates today. You get to watch Phil Fish go from being a game darling to just another guy having a nervous breakdown in a pool. In a scene that reminded me a bit of Shortbus.
As a movie about games you want a doc like this to have a really appealing visual quality and it does, both when its in game and out of game.
See it because, in this movie, nerds win. BIG. You can go to the website and watch direct. Which you should do. And while you're there read up on what the filmmakers have to say about how they made the film and how they're distributing it. Go. Indie. Game.
And Everything is Going Fine
A documentary that looks at the career of Spalding Gray. There's a kind of well constructed patchwork effect to this doc, which pieces together interviews with Spalding Gray, family members, as well as footage from performances. It's a bit of a jagged timeline right up until the very end of Gray's career.
It's not surprising that a doc that gets this up close and personal with a subject like Spalding Gray is dark. It's intense, it is very personal, and frank, and heartbreaking, especially at the when where you see Gray post accident, seemingly lost and at the end of what he was willing to have be his time on the earth. It's also an incredibly inspiring thing to see the evolution of his work, and how that evolution came about as the result of his passions, experimentations, "limitations" and frustrations.
See it because, if you're a fan, it's a chance to see Spalding Gray perform. Again.
6 Days To Air: The Making of South Park
It's hard to say whether this is a documentary or just an ad for South Park. Mostly I think it's the later. It's not what I could call a gem of a movie, it's not particularly insightful. I mean, I didn't know it took 6 days to make an episode of South Park. It's impressive they do it in 6 days. The movie, though, doesn't get too much into the complexity of the creative process or anything beyond what you would expect from an A&E biography of its creators. What it does do is give you access to "the room."
If you've never sat in a room with a handful of supposedly funny people and tried to write something funny, you've missed out. And you should watch this. You should watch this because I think it's worth knowing that sometimes funny things come out of rooms where a bunch of guys or girls (not many girls in this case) sit around and try and think of something funny. I'm saying funny doesn't always come from funny. No. Wait. I'm saying funny DOES come from funny, but sometimes it's hard work. Or something. Maybe just watch this while you're making popcorn or cleaning the house. Keep it on in the background. Don't watch this while eating. Unless the idea of a human centipede and cuttle fish is something you find easy to stomach.